Dies-Non: Refusal of Work in the 21St Century P
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Notes on Gender in Marx's Capital
CONTINENTAL THOUGHT & THEORY: A JOURNAL OF INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM Notes on Gender in Marx’s Capital Volume 1 | Issue 4: 150 years of Capital 19-37| ISSN: 2463-333X Notes on Gender in Marx’s Capital Silvia Federici Abstract As interest in Marxism and Feminism is reviving and Marx’s views on ‘gender’ are receiving a new attention, some areas of agreement among feminists are emerging that also shape my approach to the subject. 1 First, while denunciations of gender inequalities and patriarchal control in the family and society can be found in Marx’s work from an early stage, it is agreed that Marx “did not have much to say on gender and the family” 2 and, even in Capital his views on the subject must be reconstructed from scattered observations. Nevertheless, Marx’s work has given a significant contribution to the development of feminist theory, although not primarily based on his direct pronouncements on the subject. Not only has his historical materialist method helped demonstrate the constructed character of gender hierarchies and identities.3 Marx’s analysis of capitalist accumulation and value creation have given feminists of my generation powerful tools to rethink the specific forms of exploitation to which women have been subjected in capitalist society and the relation between ‘sex, race, and class.’4 However the use that feminists have made of Marx has at best taken them in a different direction from the one he traced. 19 CONTINENTAL THOUGHT & THEORY: A JOURNAL OF INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM Notes on Gender in Marx’s Capital Key words: Gender, Marx, Labour-Power, Feminism, Wages for Housework Movement, Domestic Work, Reproduction Writing about gender in Capital, then, is coming to terms with two different Marxes and, I add, two different viewpoints on gender and the class struggle. -
Democratic Citizenship in the Heart of Empire Dissertation Presented In
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION: Democratic Citizenship in the Heart of Empire Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University Thomas Michael Falk B.A., M.A. Graduate Program in Education The Ohio State University Summer, 2012 Committee Members: Bryan Warnick (Chair), Phil Smith, Ann Allen Copyright by Thomas Michael Falk 2012 ABSTRACT Chief among the goals of American education is the cultivation of democratic citizens. Contrary to State catechism delivered through our schools, America was not born a democracy; rather it emerged as a republic with a distinct bias against democracy. Nonetheless we inherit a great demotic heritage. Abolition, the labor struggle, women’s suffrage, and Civil Rights, for example, struck mighty blows against the established political and economic power of the State. State political economies, whether capitalist, socialist, or communist, each express characteristics of a slave society. All feature oppression, exploitation, starvation, and destitution as constitutive elements. In order to survive in our capitalist society, the average person must sell the contents of her life in exchange for a wage. Fundamentally, I challenge the equation of State schooling with public and/or democratic education. Our schools have not historically belonged to a democratic public. Rather, they have been created, funded, and managed by an elite class wielding local, state, and federal government as its executive arms. Schools are economic institutions, serving a division of labor in the reproduction of the larger economy. Rather than the school, our workplaces are the chief educational institutions of our lives. -
Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams
The Long Read: What Will We Do in the Post-Work Utopia? by Mareile Pfannebecker and J.A. Smith blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2016/06/17/the-long-read-what-will-we-do-in-the-post-work-utopia-by-mareile-pfannebecker-and-j-a-smith/ The Refusal of Work: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work . David Frayne. Zed Books. 2015. Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work. Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams. Verso. 2015. Find these books: There is today a preoccupation with the idea of ‘the end of work’: whether in chronicling the decline of permanent careers in the age of precarity; dystopian warnings that digitisation is about to bring a new age of mass unemployment; or utopian demands that we seize the opportunity to radically redefine our relationship to work. The most practical proposal of the latter is the campaign for a Universal Basic Income, an amount paid to every citizen without means- testing, the cost of which, it is argued, could be defrayed by a combination of savings in welfare bureaucracy and reductions in health spending. Until recently, UBI was spoken of as a ‘thought experiment’, but numerous countries are now witnessing campaigns and trials dedicated to making the policy a reality. In Britain, the Green Party, Labour and the SNP have expressed varying levels of openness to it, and there are also advocates on the libertarian Right. The basic annual amount of £3,692 proposed by UK campaigners may not keep the majority from pursuing further income, but such practical questions are less significant than the change that UBI represents to the very ontology of work. -
Is This Not the Kind of Fasting.Pdf
This material is still protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Please contact the publisher for permission to copy, distribute or reprint. From J. Chaplin and P. Marshall (eds.). Political Theory and Christian Vision. Essays in Memory of Bernard Zylstra. Maryland: University Press of American. Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. 1994 “Is This Not The Kind of Fasting I Have Chosen?”1 Simone Weil's Life and Labor Johanna Selles-Roney In a photograph taken of her class at the Lycee Henri IV in 1926,2 Simone Weil is distinguished from her male classmates by an intensity of gaze and an air of somewhat amused detachment. Weil, who graduated from the prestigious “Ecole Normale” in 1931, spent her brief thirty-four years engaged in a passionate search for truth. In many ways, she began this quest from a privileged position-the comfort of a middle-class home, parents who placed a high value on superior education, and the advantage of the best schools and teachers. She struggled with limited success to free herself from these advantages and place herself in a position to understand life from the point of view of the humblest laborer. Weil's fascination with labor3 was a consistent theme in her life and consequently offers a key to understanding her thought.4 Her reflections on the subject are marked by the application of a philosophical method which was rooted in the nineteenth-century voluntarist, spiritueliste line of French philosophy.5 Labor was more 268 Johanna Selles-Roney than a central theoretical concern; her life demonstrated a practical fascination with the existence of an ordinary laborer, whether in industry, agriculture, or other work. -
In Reply Refer to UODA
In reply refer to UODA U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR Manpower Administration Bureau of Employment Security Unemployment Insurance Program Letter No. 984 September 20, 1968 TO: ALL STATE EMPLOYMENT SECURITY AGENCIES SUBJECT: Benefit Determinations and Appeals Decisions Which Require Determination of Prevailing Wages, Hours, or Other Conditions of Work REFERENCES: Section 3304(a)(5)(B) of the Federal Unemployment Tax Act; Principles Underlying the Prevailing Conditions of Work Standard, September 1950, BSSUI (originally issued January 6, 1947 as Unemployment Compensation Program Letter No. 130) Purpose and Scope To advise State agencies and appeal authorities of the interpretation of the phrase "new work" for the purpose of applying the prevailing wage and conditions-of-work standard in section 3304(a)(5)(B) of the Federal Unemployment Tax Act, particularly in relation to an offer of work made by an employer for whom the individual is working at the time the offer is made. This letter is prompted primarily by a current problem arising from a number of recent cases in which findings were not made with respect to the prevailing wages, hours, or other conditions of the work, because appar- ently it was not considered that "new work" was involved. Federal Statutory Provision Involved Section 3304(a)(5) of the Federal Unemployment Tax Act, the so-called labor standards provision, requires State unemployment insurance laws, as a condition of approval for tax credit, to provide that: "compensation shall not be denied in such State to any otherwise -
Sisyphus and the Labour of Imagination: Autonomy, Cultural Production, and the Antinomies of Worker Self-Management
Sisyphus and the Labour of Imagination: Autonomy, Cultural Production, and the Antinomies of Worker Self-Management Stevphen Shukaitis1 Abstract Is there any radical potential left in the notion and practices of worker self-management? What I want do in this essay is to try and see if it is possible to distill something of a radical kernel from the many difficulties and complications that confront it, particularly within fields of cultural production. How can self- management contribute to what Jacques Ranciere describes as a movement not of slaves filled with ressentiment, but of people living and embodying a new time of sociability and cooperation, creating resources and skills that can spread out from this, rather than being caught and contained by the conditions of is own creation? Drawing from my own experiences working in Ever Reviled Records, a worker owned and run record label, I want to ferret out--conducting something akin to an organizational autoethnography--hints as to whether or not self-management could be useful for radical social struggles today. Introduction Let us imagine, for a change, an association of free men working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labour-power in full self-awareness as one single social labour force…. The total product of our imagined association is a social product…. This, however, requires that society possess a material foundation, or a series of material conditions of existence, which in their turn are the natural and spontaneous product -
The Temporary Autonomous Zone
THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE "...this time however I come as the victorious Dionysus, who will turn the world into a holiday...Not that I have much time..." --Nietzsche (from his last "insane" letter to Cosima Wagner) Pirate Utopias THE SEA-ROVERS AND CORSAIRS of the 18th century created an "information network" that spanned the globe: primitive and devoted primarily to grim busi- ness, the net nevertheless functioned admirably. Scattered throughout the net were islands, remote hideouts where ships could be watered and provisioned, booty traded for luxuries and necessities. Some of these islands supported "intentional communities," whole mini-societies living consciously outside the law and determined to keep it up, even if only for a short but merry life. Some years ago I looked through a lot of secondary material on piracy hoping to find a study of these enclaves--but it appeared as if no historian has yet found them worthy of analysis. (William Burroughs has mentioned the subject, as did the late British anarchist Larry Law--but no systematic research has been carried out.) I retreated to primary sources and constructed my own theory, some aspects of which will be discussed in this essay. I called the settle- ments "Pirate Utopias." Recently Bruce Sterling, one of the leading exponents of Cyberpunk science fiction, published a near-future romance based on the assumption that the decay of political systems will lead to a decentralized proliferation of experiments in living: giant worker-owned corporations, independent enclaves devoted to "data piracy," Green-Social-Democrat enclaves, Zerowork enclaves, anarchist liberated zones, etc. -
Seeking and Accepting Suitable Work
SECTION VI – SEEK AND ACCEPT WORK / REFUSAL OF WORK VI-1 Definition of Seeking and Accepting Suitable Work VI-10 Search for Work (A) Commission Required Contacts (B) Lack of Transportation (C) Moving to Different Area (D) Newspaper Advertisements (E) Telephone Contacts Only (F) Undue Restrictions (G) Union VI-20 Refusal of Referral (A) Commuting Distance (B) Different Shift (C) Part-Time or Temporary Work (D) Personal Reasons (E) Relocation (F) Union Hiring Hall Referral (G) Unsuitable Work VI-30 Refusal of Employment (A) After Receipt of 50% of Benefits (B) Before Filing for Benefits (C) Child Care (D) Commuting Distance (E) Humiliation or Embarrassment (F) Job Offered to Deny Claimant Benefits (G) Medical Limitations (H) Same Job/ Different Shift (I) Seasonal Work (J) Undue Restrictions (K) Unsuitable Work (L) -1-2 Wages (M) With Former Employer SECTION VII- PROCEDURES FOR OBJECTIONS AND APPEALS SECTION VIII - MISCELLANEOUS SEEKING AND ACCEPTING SUITABLE WORK A claimant’s search for work and willingness to apply for and accept suitable work is a good indication of continuing availability for work as required in Sec. 2-205 and is closely linked to the adjudication of that issue. A claimant for UI benefits is expected to demonstrate continued availability for work measured by what one does in an attempt to become reemployed in a reasonable time. Reemployment of unemployed workers is an important part of the original mission of the Employment Security system; involving both the job placement/training and UI components of that system. The goal is to encourage and assist in that reemployment before the exhaustion of benefits in order to maintain or restore the economic security of the worker. -
Leaving the Left Behind 115 Post-Left Anarchy?
Anarchy after Leftism 5 Preface . 7 Introduction . 11 Chapter 1: Murray Bookchin, Grumpy Old Man . 15 Chapter 2: What is Individualist Anarchism? . 25 Chapter 3: Lifestyle Anarchism . 37 Chapter 4: On Organization . 43 Chapter 5: Murray Bookchin, Municipal Statist . 53 Chapter 6: Reason and Revolution . 61 Chapter 7: In Search of the Primitivists Part I: Pristine Angles . 71 Chapter 8: In Search of the Primitivists Part II: Primitive Affluence . 83 Chapter 9: From Primitive Affluence to Labor-Enslaving Technology . 89 Chapter 10: Shut Up, Marxist! . 95 Chapter 11: Anarchy after Leftism . 97 References . 105 Post-Left Anarchy: Leaving the Left Behind 115 Prologue to Post-Left Anarchy . 117 Introduction . 118 Leftists in the Anarchist Milieu . 120 Recuperation and the Left-Wing of Capital . 121 Anarchy as a Theory & Critique of Organization . 122 Anarchy as a Theory & Critique of Ideology . 125 Neither God, nor Master, nor Moral Order: Anarchy as Critique of Morality and Moralism . 126 Post-Left Anarchy: Neither Left, nor Right, but Autonomous . 128 Post-Left Anarchy? 131 Leftism 101 137 What is Leftism? . 139 Moderate, Radical, and Extreme Leftism . 140 Tactics and strategies . 140 Relationship to capitalists . 140 The role of the State . 141 The role of the individual . 142 A Generic Leftism? . 142 Are All Forms of Anarchism Leftism . 143 1 Anarchists, Don’t let the Left(overs) Ruin your Appetite 147 Introduction . 149 Anarchists and the International Labor Movement, Part I . 149 Interlude: Anarchists in the Mexican and Russian Revolutions . 151 Anarchists in the International Labor Movement, Part II . 154 Spain . 154 The Left . 155 The ’60s and ’70s . -
They Call It Love Wages for Housework and Emotional
THEY CALL IT LOVE WAGES FOR HOUSEWORK AND EMOTIONAL REPRODUCTION ALVA GOTBY A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of West London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2019 1 Abstract This thesis is a study of two sets of literature on capitalism, gender, and emotion. Firstly, it explores the writings of the Wages for Housework (WFH) movement – a network of Marxist feminist activist groups, founded in 1972, whose activity was centred on women’s reproductive labour. Secondly, this thesis draws on the body of writing on emotional labour. Coined by Arlie Hochschild in 1983, this term describes the work of producing emotional states in another person. While WFH were attentive to emotional aspects of reproductive labour, their writings mention emotional labour only in passing. Hochschild’s work concentrates on emotional labour in particular service occupations, but neglects broader issues of social reproduction. Synthesising these bodies of work, I introduce the concept of emotional reproduction, thus applying the WFH perspective to the theme introduced by Hochschild. Emotional reproduction denotes processes across waged and unwaged forms of labour, intended to enhance the relative emotional wellbeing of a recipient, to the extent that they are able to participate in waged labour. These processes often take place in the private sphere, and are constructed as a typically feminine activity. I argue for the importance of understanding these processes as a form of labour, which is integral to capitalist social reproduction. Through the notion of emotional reproduction, this thesis offers an account of gendered subjectivity. It highlights the construction of gendered and historically specific forms of skill, which are essential for emotional labour. -
Ursula Mctaggart
RADICALISM IN AMERICA’S “INDUSTRIAL JUNGLE”: METAPHORS OF THE PRIMITIVE AND THE INDUSTRIAL IN ACTIVIST TEXTS Ursula McTaggart Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy In the Departments of English and American Studies Indiana University June 2008 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Doctoral Committee ________________________________ Purnima Bose, Co-Chairperson ________________________________ Margo Crawford, Co-Chairperson ________________________________ DeWitt Kilgore ________________________________ Robert Terrill June 18, 2008 ii © 2008 Ursula McTaggart ALL RIGHTS RESERVED iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A host of people have helped make this dissertation possible. My primary thanks go to Purnima Bose and Margo Crawford, who directed the project, offering constant support and invaluable advice. They have been mentors as well as friends throughout this process. Margo’s enthusiasm and brilliant ideas have buoyed my excitement and confidence about the project, while Purnima’s detailed, pragmatic advice has kept it historically grounded, well documented, and on time! Readers De Witt Kilgore and Robert Terrill also provided insight and commentary that have helped shape the final product. In addition, Purnima Bose’s dissertation group of fellow graduate students Anne Delgado, Chia-Li Kao, Laila Amine, and Karen Dillon has stimulated and refined my thinking along the way. Anne, Chia-Li, Laila, and Karen have devoted their own valuable time to reading drafts and making comments even in the midst of their own dissertation work. This dissertation has also been dependent on the activist work of the Black Panther Party, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the International Socialists, the Socialist Workers Party, and the diverse field of contemporary anarchists. -
“Bifo” Berardi Marco Deseriis Theory & Event, Volume 1
Irony and the Politics of Composition in the Philosophy of Franco “Bifo” Berardi Marco Deseriis Theory & Event, Volume 15, Issue 4, 2012. Abstract By analyzing Franco Berardi’s reflections on irony as an extension of his political praxis, the article first examines the multifaceted functions of this rhetorical device in the contexts of the late-1960s social struggles against factory work in Italy, the communication experiments of the Autonomia movement, and the information overload of the contemporary mediascape. In the second part, the text addresses Berardi’s attempt to reconcile Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s theory of desire to end with a reflection on how his distinction between irony and cynicism may offer a counterpoint to Slavoj Žižek’s critique of ideology. Keywords Irony; class composition; Italian workerism; social movements; subjectivity; autonomy. Born in Bologna in 1949, Franco “Bifo” Berardi has participated in four major anti-capitalist movements in the past four decades: the 1968 as a member of the Marxist revolutionary group Potere Operaio (Workers’ Power); the movement of Autonomia in 1977; the alter-globalization movement in the late 1990s-early 2000s; and the current European movement against austerity measures, the precarization of labor conditions, and the budget cuts to public education. Berardi has combined this personal engagement with an ongoing experimentation with social movement media such as the magazine A/Traverso, the experimental community radio Radio Alice, both founded in Bologna in the mid-1970s. In the late 1990s, he launched the e-mail list Rekombinant and, in the early 2000s, the community TV Orfeo TV.