Date: Sat, 11 Oct 1997 18:19:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: Siddharth Chatterjee <siddhart-AT-mailbox.syr.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Get back in the kitchen and rattle them pots & pans!



On Sat, 11 Oct 1997, Rakesh Bhandari wrote:

<snip>
> 
> The Financial Times ran a short article by Richard Adams of their economics
> staff which reported on a study performed in England on the value of unpaid
> household work.
> 
> According to the British study performed by the Office of National
> Statistics, cooking, claiming and other work around the home would have cost
> at least $550 billion last year if it had been paid for at market rates.
> This figure is almost as much as Britons received from paid employment last
> year.

<snip>
> 
> The total monetary value of unpaid household work, including tax, national
> insurance and pensions, would be between 56 and 122 percent of the UK gross
> domestic product.  The figure depends on how unpaid work is valued.
 
Rakesh points out the truly staggering amounts of value generated by
unpaid household work, a portion of which surely flows to big capital
or the "haute bourgeoise" using Doug's terminology. One has to wonder
where big capital would be without it. There is of course contradiction
between the h.b and the p.b (petty bourgeoise) - we have only to remember
that between the rising bourgeoise and feudalism which was subsequently 
overthrown in many parts of the world. And as big capital increases its
power, more and more of its values and ideology will dominate society
as the p.b is hurled down to the ranks of the proletariat.

The big bourgeoise will not tolerate any actions that threaten its
hegemony as far as its power to extracts profits goes. Thus the
attack on the British lord by the FT for his racist views which creates
a bad publicity and can hamper the h.b's operations in certain manners
(e.g., boycott of products by the affected like recent events at Texaco
in the US, or roadblocks in hiring during periods of high demand, etc.).
However, at other times, this same h.b. and their political represen-
tatives will attack welfare, affirmative action, women's gains and use
quite racist and divisive tactics to do so - the paring down
of all kinds of welfare programs in the industrialized countries.

So, things are not so simple. The h.b. can be progressive during certain
periods while during others (crisis) it can show its reactionary face.
And we should also remember this. The h.b. may speak in a
"progressive" manner in an effort to show themselves to be forward-looking
but it is their actions that count.

I used to work for the really big bourgeoise (annually turnover billions
of dollars). If you looked at the written company policies, they were
anti-racist and "progressive" in one sense. And when you walked into
the company offices, you saw quite a few women workers. But most of them
were in secretarial or clerical jobs. And almost all of them were white.
The top "power" jobs were exclusively in the hands of white males. One
just had to get used this fact of reality. In the location I worked, there
was only one African-American lady out of a total of approximately 300
employees, who was subsequently laid off.

Frequently, big capital is forced to change its behavior due to government
decrees brought about by grass-roots pressure. This can be seen in
environmental and anti-racist (affirmative action) legislation. I know 
for a fact in the former area that the big companies were forced against
their will to adopt more stringent emission standards (pollution control
devices can be very expensive) due to government pressure. The decrease
in ambient air pollutant concentrations of the criteria pollutants that
has occurred in the industrialized world can be attributed solely due to
this and not to any benevolence of big capital. And when the h.b has
adopted some of this control measures, they try to gain mileage out of it
by advertising (e.g., the Dupont dolphins).

Regarding Doug's point about atomization and alienation, it is true
that they have become a characteristic feature of western societies
due to the power of the h.b. In the third world, this power over the
masses is still not complete and so weaker. Thus inspite of the poverty,
lack of oportunity and generally backward conditions, there, one still
feels hope and solidarity with his/her fellow human being. After all,
if both you and your neighbour are living from day to day, there is
not much chance of being alienated from one another. As to the spirit
of the times, I guess we should try to maintain one of "revolutionary
optimism" .)

S. Chatterjee



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