Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 11:26:41 +1100
Subject: AUT: Workers' Credit
From: Thiago Oppermann <difference_3ngine-AT-yahoo.com.br>


Hi all,

After the recent election here there's been a lot of talk about the
'aspirational' working class, which lives in a place called Mortgage Belt,
and who go in the red one dollar for every hundred they earned, unlike the
good old days of Social Democratic prudence when workers saved five bucks
for every hundred. 

The more orthodox socialists attitudes to this varies from indignation to
soothsaying. At least, so goes the story, this shows that Howard's
government has demolished workers, perhaps he transformed the country into a
huge sort of pyramid scheme.

There is doubting the figures - debt in Australia is gone through the roof,
although most of it is still related to house purchases. Something like half
of all households owe money, although only a fraction are 'hanging by the
short and curlies'. The country hasn't moved into Ponzi territory...yet.

And that would, of course, be a very bad thing to happen, as would turning
the credit tap off without raising wages (which the ALP, ominously, never
talks about - they're neoclassicists, after all)

I am wondering if there are any analyses of this increased reliance on
credit which people would like to recommend.

I am particularly interested in how this stuff relates to the ideology of
Financial Independence. You know, the idea that the truly smart individual
is the one who has become his own boss, and has left the circuit of wages
into the circuit of capital. Such an individual is a true Producer, not at
all a parasite; the true parasites are those people hanging onto the teats
of the state, and only marginally up from them are workers who 'whinge' for
higher wages, rather than 'doing something about it'. This kind of stuff is
wildly popular in Australia as I am sure it is elsewhere. The fastest
growing church in Australia, I think I mentioned before, is really the very
slick worship of this pious ferrari-driving M-M' machine. The whole ideology
is about Security; which is fitting enough for a precarious workforce. (And
just as financialization is mostly a dream/nightmare, so precarious workers
are a tiny minority who serves as warning/model.)

I find it remarkable how little rewriting is necessary to take Financial
Independence ideology and arrive at Marx's circuits of production. I am
hallucinating here?

Of course this sort of pettit bourgeois ideology has been around for ever.
But the striking thing about it now is that it facilitates the working of
this system of mass credit (which is a rhizomatic network of power par
excellence, as my fellow possessors of burnt credit cards will know). Before
the paradigmatic Australian worker was a man working a stable job paying a
mortgage on his house. Now the idealised worker's worker is somebody who has
cut his ties to a specific workplace, and taken a mortgage out on the house
to buy another house to rent out, who is blessed enough to obtain personal
credit. The reality isn't quite that, but curiously enough, that's the
dream. Is this dream just inculcated in people's heads by bank advertising,
or is there something deeper going on that makes people desire
'financialization'?

Thiago















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