Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 15:23:57 -0500 (EST)
From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: How to bring workers together. On Gloria Steinem.


On Fri, 28 Mar 1997, Carrol Cox wrote:

> That was finally and conclusively demonstrated when she threw away every
> conceivable principle of decency last summer to rally around Clinton-- 
> and found a good thing (a greater stretch than even Sid or Andrew gone
> ballistic can manage) to say about the welfare reform bill, which
> probably ranks with Taft-Hartley and the Tonkin Bay Resolution as the
> worst action by Congress in the twentieth century. 

So the owner of MS magazine, a bourgeois feminist clearinghouse, joined
with representatives of the ruling class and supported class warfare
against the least among us. And to criticize her views and actions is
"stupidity"? It is not only not stupid, it is class-dialectical (see my
analysis below)

> Whatever "ruling class feminism" is (and it will help clarity of thought
> a good deal if we substitute "ruling class" for "bourgeios"), Steinem
> isn't it, though it is obviously a kind of feminism which the ruling
> class is willing, perhaps anxious, to encourage.

And if Steinem supported Clinton and the devolution of welfare targeted at
poor children and their mothers this is the ruling class supporting
Steinem? Or the other way around?

> My own guess is, though this would need to be explored, that her
> "feminism" falls under the general heading of "aristocracy of
> labor"--not even *petty bourgeois* feminism. 

How is owning MS, which turns a profit and exploits labor NOT bourgeois?

There are few things that should be opened up for discussion.  Terms are
being slung around rather recklessly, with no theoretical or empirical
foundation, at least not much of one.  First, by the term "ruling class,"
we should mean "an economic class that rules politically." Chilcote, for
example, observes that a ruling class "tends to be a class of varied
interests that become cohesive." I refer to individuals in this
politically dominant economic class as "ruling elites." How elites carry
out political rule, and why their interests are cohesive, is the real
issue in these posts. If we are to carry out a discussion on bourgeois
feminism we have to understand why this form of feminism exists, what its
function and goals are in capitalist society, and where it fits with our
goals as Marxists. This isn't about building a coalition with like-minded
people who simply play down social class. This is about not accepting as
comrades people who stand against working people generally by advancing
the ideology of domination in capitalism. 

Sure, the ruling class carry out their rule through state, whether
instrumentally or structurally conceived (the real world hold elements of
both); but they also, and perhaps for the most part, maintain dominance
over society through extrastate machinery and processes. This is what
Marxists call "political society," and it includes key elements (or
institutions) of civil society. We are at a mesotheoretical level here
that incorporates both structural and behavioral aspects of the social
formation. Antonio Gramsci called this amalgamation the "extended state,"
and may be useful for us to use this formulation here. 

Now, we also have a dispute here regarding the structure of social class.
Class structure changes as social formations evolve, and so any analysis
of social class should be pursued on the ground. It is crucial to remember
that political rule cannot be separated from the economic form of
exploitation and domination that makes political rule a possibility.
Therefore, in discussing the role of the state and extrastate machinery in
maintaining and legitimating the capitalist system, we also reference the
social class system requiring the existence of coercive and consensual
apparatuses. 

As I have noted before on this list, I adopt the Marxian class-dialectical
model. This differs from many of the reified class models offered by
various Marxist fractions because it draws on the analytical model of Marx
and builds inductive-derived models (successive generalizations from the
empirical world guided retroductive). It has been pointed out that I seek
to separate Marx from Marxism (Siddharth to Klo? Or was it Klo? I don't
directly recall). Sort of. What I am really trying to do is re-establish
the framework of historical material and distinguish if from the
pseudoscientific frame of diamat. I do so because Marxists neglect the
method of Marx, rather reifying his conclusions, which are historically
and structurally bounded. In other words, to assert as transepochal
conclusions bounded by historicity is to violate *the major tenet of
historical materialism*! This is being done here constantly, and it is
primitive and juvenile. Of course, when I point this out I am endlessly
attacked as anti-Marxist. I find it incredibly paradoxical that I am most
viciously attacked for being more true to the Marxian method--historical
materialism--that anybody else on this channel. My previous four-part post
on the correctness of my position was never challenged. The most
"penetrating" critique was that I used all the right quotes but that my
interpretation was "questionable," or something to that effect.

I don't want to lecture, but the Marxian-based class-dialectic model is an
analytical tool for understanding social dynamics and change. And this
method of analysis takes place in the larger metatheoretical framework of
historical materialism--the* theory of Marx. From this perspective, the
contemporary class structure can be most simply delineated by listing the
social classes, their characteristics, and their relationship (the most
important delineation, since historical materialism is above all a
relational ontology) to other social classes. For the sake of clarity I
think it is best that I set forth a close-to-reality scheme of social
class. This model is drawn from Chilcote (who is drawing from Dos Santos
and Wright) and is a bit dated (1984), but nevertheless takes us much
closer to the empirical world that the simple dichotomous--I dare say
manichean--arguments presented on this list thus far. We can identify
different structures in globalized society, but I haven't finished my
class analysis of these dramatic qualitative transformations yet, so it
will have to wait. 

BOURGEOISIE. "Owners of capital who purchase means of production and
labor." They can be defined in the following ways: 

1. Property relationships. 
   a. Monopolistic or oligopolic bourgeoisie: "large owners of industry
      [interlocking directorates], and banking capital who may have ties
      with foreign capitalists and imperialism and own factories,
      insurance companies, banks, and large commercial companies; they may
      also be large land owners." You can think of these entities as the
      internationalist capitalist class (ICC). Here we find most TNCs.
   b. Nonmonopolistic bourgeoisie: "owners of certain industrial and
      commercial firms who are sometimes allied with the monopolistic or
      foreign bourgeoisie; they may be owners of small industrial and
      commercial enterprise or middle-sized and small farms; and they tend
      to be nationalist, sometimes opposed to imperialism." You can think
      of these entities as the national capitalist class (NCC).

2. Type of capital or means of production possessed:
   a. Agrarian bourgeoisie: "modern landowners who run farms with machinery, 
      pay salaries to workers, and make profits; or traditional landowners
      who operate large estates, live in cities and invest little in their
      land."
   b. Mining bourgeoisie
   c. Industrial and commercial bourgeoisie, "usually large owners
      (sometimes allied with monopolistic or foreign bourgeoisie)
      but also owners of small enterprise."
   d. Banking bourgeoisie.

3. It is possible to rank order various groups in this class along large,
   medium, or small bourgeoisie.

PETTY BOURGEOISIE "Small capitalists who directly or indirectly control
their means of production but, unlike large capitalists, do not possess
capital. They may desire to acquire capital or feel oppressed by the
bourgeoisie. They reside in

1. urban areas as owners or tenants of small artisan industries and
   businesses or as independent professionals (attorneys, some physicians
   [those not proletarianized by HMOs yet] and architects, engineers,
   artists, writers, teachers, or intelligentsia).
2. rural areas as sharecroppers, tenant farmers, etc.

NEW MIDDLE CLASS OR NEW PETTY BOURGEOISIE. "Some professional,
bureaucrats, and managers who may influence capitalist but, like workers,
do not usually own the means of production." 

PROLETARIAT. "Workers who do not own means of production and who sell
their labor power form money. They may by urban [blue-collar] workers in
monopolistic and nonmonopolisitc industries and white-collar workers in
private or public industry, banks, etc.; or rural farmhands and
sharecroppers who earn wages." 

PEASANTS. "Farmers who do not own their land and usually are associated
with precapitalist modes of production, for example, squatters, renters,
and unpaid family workers."

LUMPENPROLETARIAT. Surplus labor population, supernumeraries, unemployed
idle persons, etc.

Now, returning to the importance of political society, its roots in civil
society, coupled with class location, we can see that Steinem belongs to
several bourgeois categories. In property relations she is a member of the
nonmonopolistic bourgeoisie, that is, an owner of a commercial firm, often
allied with monopolistic or foreign bourgeoisie; MS is a major site for
corporate propaganda and the magazine advances their interests in
editorials and articles. The type of capital owned is commercial capital.
Of course, there is considerable intellectual production, so it is a major
component of the liberal intellectual industry. She and her staff also can
be characterized as more traditionally petty bourgeoisie and in the New
Petty Bourgeoisie (refer to above scheme).

Moreover, Steinem is part of the bourgeois political class. The construct
of social logic is a very useful construct for understanding how
ideologies and theories beneficial to the ruling classes are produced and
disseminated and for identifying class collaborators and elements of the
bourgeoisie class who present a liberal point of view (which some members
of this list uncritically express an affinity with). The construct of
social logic recognizes that there is a logic embedded in ideology,
theory, and other ideational products of a particular sociohistorical
frame; in the present discussion this is a capital logic. Social logic
sets limits on the thinkable; these parameters become structures for
controlling the debate. Social logic under capitalism is the encoding of
structures of domination. For example, these produce the "dominant
ideologies [that] set circumscribed frames of reference in which
subordinate groups politically challenge the dominant" (quoting Bill
Robinson). The political class, or what Noam Chomsky calls the "commissar
class" (the top 20% of the population in the U.S., for example), are the
most heavily indoctrinated (although Chomsky is a rationalist-anarchist,
his analysis of ideology and hegemony is very Gramscian, although he
doesn't sufficiently recognize this linkage, imo). And it is from this
class, a mixture of public policy makers, opinion makers, academics, etc.,
that (the social logic most deeply embedded in this location, thoroughly
and often authentically infiltrating ideational production) that the
theoretical and ideological products emanate. Chomsky notes, importantly,
that this is "their social role." "I don't mean to say they're conscious
of it," he writes; "In fact, they're not. In a really effective system of
indoctrination the commissar are quite unaware of it and believe that they
themselves are independent, critical minds. If you investigate the actual
production of the media, the journals of opinion, etc. you find...a very
narrow, tightly constrained and grotesquely inaccurate account of the
world in which we live." The other 80% of the population are supposed to
go away, to be distracted by the consumer culture, to drop out of the
political process, so forth. 

Ideology is defined here as a cohesive force in social unification, or
Gramsci called it, the "cement" that holds the naturally conflicted social
order together. Hegemony, another term used to describe the nature of
consensual domination, is conceptualized as more than ideology. Robinson,
in *Promoting Polyarchy* stresses that hegemony is not reducible to Marx's
"false consciousness." It is "a social relation which brings together a
'bloc' of diverse classes and groups under circumstances of consensual
domination, such that subordinate groups give their 'spontaneous consent'
to 'the direction imposed on social life' by the dominant groups."
"Hegemony mediates relations between dominant and subordinate groups and
also relations among dominant groups." "Hegemony is 'consensus armored by
coercion.'" Social control of this sort takes place on two levels: first,
in civil society, which is roughly analogous to the social structure of
accumulation, that is the web of institutions and their arrangements in
society, sustaining social order. Second through the state, which is the
coercive machinery of the modern social order. These two constructs
combine in Gramsci's notion of the "extended state." 

"Ideology constitutes the glue that sustains social control under
consensual arrangements. Ideology is more than an anthropological belief
system and is not equivalent to mere illusion. It is a material force
insofar as it orients and sets limits on human action by establishing
generalized codes of conduct which organize entire populations.
Consciousness is the medium between structure and agency, mediating
between objective conditions and social action as subjective response to
those conditions" (Robinson). 

What I have done in this post is to demonstrate an exemplar in
on-the-ground class-dialectical analysis. You are free to disagree with
conclusions I draw, and even to question the framework, but you should
understand how this *Marxian* analysis proceeds before you criticize me on
*Marxist* ground because in my view these two views verge on
incommensurable, at the very least there are key points of
incompatibility. And clearly, dragging liberalism uncritically into the
discussion completely distorts the dialogue. This sort of stealth
liberalism (being defended, ironically, on Marxist grounds) is the primary
agent in distorting the discussion here. Siddharth is correct in his
particular argument because his perspective has successfully alienated the
liberal ideology that underpins social logic in capitalist society.
Whatever disagreements I have over his particular ideological frame, it is
clear that he has managed to step beyond the parameters of bounded
bourgeois rationality and is thinking dialectically (which is always, as
is perhaps everything, a matter of degree). Yes, this means I am saying
that many people on this channel, Cox, Proyect, etc. are insufficiently
class conscious in their arguments. Proyect, for example, barely has any
consciousness on the matter at all, living in a Limbaugh world where
"liberal" and "conservative"  constitute some sort of objective polarity
in contemporary capitalist society. This mere-surface and phenomenological
approach is clearly not class-dialectal, or even critical.  Failing to see
bourgeois feminism in its most class collaborative form is a sure sign of
insufficient self-criticism. I invite those who hold these anti-working
class positions to turn their critique inward (rather than calling names
and giving tutorials in English prose) and examine their own beliefs. You
have to do what William James called becoming "twice-born," which means
dragging out all of your beliefs and then, in a dialectical fashion,
resolving internal contradictions. This is the act of becoming. The
support of bourgeois feminism--indeed, the inability to properly note its
existence, is a completely contradictory position. 

Couple of other issues that need to be addressed. One in a post I will
submit tomorrow concerns the charge that I don't understand the structure
of power, a completely bogus charge that if not attributable to ignorance
of my position is a lie. I think that at this point we can completely
dismiss Adolfo and others (like Klo) as way outside the mainstream of
class-dialectical thought and democratic socialist praxis. Again, as I
have remarked before and will remark in the future, people have been
snowed by eloquence of rhetoric. Finally, there is a post I wrote
privately to Louis Proyect which contains an important sidebar to this
discussion, and this is globalization. I am not sure why Louis took the
conversation private, but he said some provocative things in these posts
that I would like to discuss. If he would post the longer of these posts
to the list I would like to post my response.

Respectfully Submitted,
Andrew Austin



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