From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: (Fwd) Re: AUT: a new thread
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 12:29:17 -0600


The role of debt and money in capital's attempts at decomposing the class
are really important.  One graphic example involves personal debt in terms
of debt to income ratios.  In the US, debt currently consumes around 93% of
total yearly income, compared to around 15% in 1975.  State indebtedness for
many countries has also not receded from early 1980's 'debt crisis' levels.
The dynamic between the ways in which state debt get pushed back onto the
working class, the use of personal debt to enforce labor discipline, and the
flexibilization of work has yet to be grappled with sufficiently.  The turn
to the money form, specifically in the form of credit/debt, and away from
production, marked the last 20-odd years.

Nate's point about medical debt is very interesting, but so is the
ballooning of personal credit type debt.  Prior to the credit card, serious
personal debt largely resulted, from what I can tell, from specific kinds of
purchases, such as houses, cars, or large household goods like appliances
and furniture.  Of course, we have to be attentive to the fact that credit
has always been a central part of working class life in the poorest parts of
the class.  In the U.S., the African American, Native American and
Mexican/Chicano communities have had high debt/income rations for a long
time.  Buying on credit is not so new as a form of catastrophic daily
survival in those sections of the working class.  So we can also try to
grapple with the ways in which the racially privileged section of the
working class has had its existence reduced downwards towards that of
racially oppressed sections of the working class, and what, if anything,
this has meant in terms of attitudes towards the state, towards notions of
'fiscal responsibility', and types of struggle.  For example, most white
people (working class or not, depending on one's definition, etc.) I know do
not understand all the myriad ways of avoiding paying bills, shuffling debt,
etc. which is more familiar to African Americans I know (neither of these
should be treated as absolutes, since I do know some poorer whites who know
these scams too, and African Americans, usually more privileged, who do
not).  This also impacts things like self-percpetion, racial bonds, etc.
Some significant part of whiteness has been constructed on the basis of
'fiscal responsibility' and non-criminality in reference to debt, bills,
scamming social service agencies (such as child care subsidies), etc.  That
sensibility (consciousness, if you will) plays a distinct role in the
decomposition of class solidarity, but also in cross-class alliance based on
race and 'racial profling'.

The entire way in which debt and racialization played into each other was
maintained in a world where a largely white section of the working class
could afford 'fiscal responsibility'.  What does it mean that even the more
highly skilled/highly paid/racially privileged sections of the working class
cannot afford 'fiscal responsibility'?

On Bologna, I think he raises some good points around the issue of
self-employment, and I really liked Peter's points too.  However, Bologna's
piece struck me as very problem-ridden.  Some things I noted were:
1.  The treatment of Fordism and the need for perpetual study of Fordism was
phrased like an academic research project.  The study could be endless and
endlessly employ academics.  The academic treatment of questions ran
throughout the piece, but that struck me as the worst.  Although the
reference to the work of Studs Terkel just mad me and a friend of mine
laugh.  We live in Chicago where Terkel lives and I find him something of a
joke, a man who writes for and is active among the working class.  He is a
public intellectual in the typical sense, translating for the middle class
what the savages in the jungle are saying.  He is the man who speaks for the
subaltern.  And the despair over the loss of working class photogenicity(??)
Ugh, it was very annoying.
2.  Steve's points were well-made as well.
3.  If we look at the broader world, I think we have to see that Peter's
points become very important about the ways in which Bologna's perspective
does not apply outside the more developed capitalist countries.  I have been
thinking about this idea of class composition, esp. in terms of combined and
uneven development (yes, I used to be a Trotskyist), and in reference to a
critique of Trotsky's notion of permanent revolution.  A friend of mine, a
Trotskyist without a party, and I were discussing this and he raised
something very perceptive.  I raised the idea that often as a new
composition is in crisis, if capital is able to resolve the crisis, it
partially involves passing the old class composition on to other parts of
the world (speaking very schematically) because it is not as if steel
production is no longer needed, for example.  But it does so by transferring
production via the newest means of production enabled by the newer class
composition in the more developed capitalist regions (so that companies do
not open up a steel mill with technology from 1945 in South Korea, but from
199?.)  He raised the point that that is not entirely true.  There can be a
wide variety of differentiation within an industry in those situations,
which does not mean that a super-hi-tech factory gets created in South
Korea.  Some of it is super-hi-tech (very scientific language, eh?), but
some of the means will be very old, taking advantage of low labor costs.

He gave me the example of the Russian steel works in the early 1900's.  They
would use very modern machine tools, but the beams would be moved from place
to place not by modern mechanical cranes (as in Germany, the US, etc), but
by artels.  Artels were basically groups of big, strong guys who would lift
and move the beams after each process.  So you saw, simultaneously, in the
same work place, the most advanced technology where needed, alongside
extremely 'backwards', labor intensive processes as well.

How does that play out today?  I was thinking about in terms of Taiwanese
computer chip manufacturers.  The bulk of CPU's are built in Germany and the
US, but many secondary chips for motherboard chipsets and very specific
chips that go into cars to computer control an engine process are made in
Taiwan.  Taiwan and Malaysia are also the major places for motherboard
manufacturing, which use the secondary chipsets directly.  Where are the
Taiwanese artels?  In the hand-soldering of motherboards?

Or thinking in terms of the relationship of India to the US in the computer
industry.  Most commercial applications are written in the US, Japan, and
Europe (mostly the US and Europe), but Indian programmers and developers are
increasingly common.  For what?  First, for doing software management and
development on older systems, such as AS/400.  Secondly, for doing
development on newer platforms, whether Oracle databases or Sun servers,
etc.  The Indian programmers do not write these applications and operating
systems, but they are an increasingly important source of labor for working
with them.  Then there is the farming out of help desks to India, but this
is less surprising, since it is really lower-skilled labor.  The programming
really interests me more, as does some layer of network management (but
rarely network engineering or design in the true sense.)  Also, what is the
relationship of the H1-B visa bearing worker to the 'native-born' worker?
Their conditions of work are atrocious in some ways and their legal rights
are nil.

Anyway, I am taking my son to see Lord of the Rings (speaking of computers,
since it is highly animated), so I have to go for now.

Just my thoughts.  I hope we keep this thread going.

Cheers,
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nate Holdren" <nateholdren-AT-hotmail.com>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 3:21 PM
Subject: Re: (Fwd) Re: AUT: a new thread


> Studying consumer credit and consumer debt sounds interesting and possibly
> fruitful. I once saw a study on debt as compared with income for various
> economic strata of the US, I'll see if I can find that again.
> Student loan debt seems to be in line with this, as a lot of high-end
> self-employed people (as opposed to day laborers) do have higher education
> qualifications. Student loan debt would also be a way to require regular
> income.
> I went to Scotland right after graduating from university and I had to be
> back to the US before I had to start paying my loans as it would be
> prohibitively expensive to pay them from Scotland. I then entered
volunteer
> service so as to avoid paying my loans for another year (the program puts
> off payment of my loans and gives me a small sum to pay into my loan
debt),
> in return I'm working for just below minimum wage and work usually above
> full time hours.
>
> It seems to me that different levels of social service/welfare provisions
in
> different countries would impact the ability of people to opt into a
> self-employed position. are attacks on welfare provisions also attempts to
> limit worker mobility and self activity?
>
> How would bankruptcy fit in to a discussion of the role of consumer
credit?
> I have a friend who is planning to declare bankruptcy because he can't pay
> his medical bills for his cancer treatment (luckily he has still received
> treatment), and medical debt is the main reason why people in the US
declare
> bankruptcy, prompting medical industry representatives to call for changes
> in our bankruptcy laws to make them stricter. As I understand it, once
> declaring bankrupty, my friend no longer owes on his debt and the only
real
> downside is that he's barred access to certain forms of consumer credit,
> which he doesn't mind as he's already got trouble accessing credit because
> he's defaulted on rents and other payments in the past.
> If consumer credit is a way to force reliance on regular income then being
> barred access to consumer credit may in one sense help assist resisting
this
> force reliance on regular income.
>
> Nate
>
>
> >Finally, I think the question of self-employment in a case like mine
> >(more 'First World'ish) - high wage, part time or contract work as a
> >computer programmer - needs to be linked to a study of consumer
> >credit, and the uses thereof from a workers point of view. I know
> >credit cards, car payments, house payments, etc. are a powerful means
> >of regularising my need for income - money needs to come in in a
> >more-or-less consistent way. In some ways, self-employment is an
> >effective strategy for me to the extent that I manage to operate
> >without recourse to consumer credit. Certainly this is the case for my
> >lower-waged friends. From living a year in the UK, where consumer
> >credit is way more prevalent than in South Africa, I've got a feeling
> >that such regular debt payments are a crucial part of the work
> >discipline of the temp workforce I got to know there.
> >
> >Anyway, Steve, thanks for raising the question. Anyone else feel like
> >taking it up?
> >
> >Peter
>
>
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