#physiologically equal labour

[rotenotes]

Χρήσιμη εργασία/αφηρημένη εργασία (Useful labour/abstract labour)

[Derek Sayer (1979), Marx’s Method: Ideology Science and Critique in Capital, pp. 17-24] Marx’s Method: Ideology, Science and Critique in Capital | Derek Sayer – Academia.edu [17] (γ) Χρήσιμη εργασία/αφηρημένη εργασία Αυτή η τρίτη διάκριση είναι κατά την εκτίμηση του ίδιου του Μαρξ «ο άξονας στονοποίο μιασαφής κατανόηση της Πολιτικής Οικονομίας στρέφεται» (ibid. 41, cf 1867f,1868d).^9 Ακριβώς…

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#abstract labour #commodity #commodity production #concrete labour #exchange #exchange value #Karl Marx #physiologically equal labour #private labour #social division of labour #social labour #use value #useful labour #value

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Chapter XIV. Summary and Conclusion

It has been said of Newton, to express the immensity of his discoveries, that he has revealed the abyss of human ignorance.

There is no Newton here, and no one can claim in economics a part equal to that which posterity assigns to this great man in the science of the universe. But I dare to say that there is here more than Newton has ever guessed. The depth of the heavens does not equal the depth of our intelligence, within which wonderful systems move. It looks like a new, unknown region that exists outside space and time, like the heavenly realms and infernal abodes, and on which our eyes plunge, with silent admiration, as in a bottomless abyss.

Non secùs ac si quâ penitùs vi terra dehiscens

Infernas reseret sedes et regna recludat

Pallida, Dis invisa, superque immane barathrum

Cernatur, trepidentque immisso lumine Manes.

Virgil. Aeneid. lib. viii.[51]

Here the throng, collision, swing of eternal forces; there the mysteries of Providence are revealed, and the secrets of fate appear uncovered. It is the invisible making itself visible, the intangible rendered material, the idea becoming reality, and reality a thousand times more wonderful, more grandiose than the most fantastic utopias. So far we do not see, in its simple formula, the unity of that vast machine: the synthesis of these gigantic gears, in which the well-being and misery of generations are ground, and which are shaping a new creation, still evades us. But we already know that nothing that happens in social economy has a copy in nature; we are forced to constantly invent special names, to create a new language, for facts without analogues. It is a transcendent world, whose principles are superior to geometry and algebra, whose powers derive neither from attraction nor from any physical force, but which use geometry and algebra as subordinate instruments, and takes as material the very powers of nature; a world finally freed from the categories of time, space, generation, life and death, where everything seems both eternal and phenomenal, simultaneous and successive, limited and unlimited, ponderable and imponderable… What more can I say? It is even creation, caught, so to speak, in the act!

And this world, which appears to us as a fable, which inverts our judicial habits, and never ceases to deny our reason; this world which envelops us, penetrates us, agitates us, without us even seeing it in any other way than the mind’s eye, touching it only by signs, this strange world is society, it is us!

Who has seen monopoly and competition, except by their effects, that is, by their signs? Who has felt credit and property? What is collective force, division of labour and value? And yet, what is stronger, more certain, more intelligible, more real than all that? Look in the distance at this carriage drawn by eight horses on a beaten field, and driven by a man dressed in a old smock: it is only a mass of matter, moved on four wheels by an animal form. You discover there, in appearance, only a phenomenon of mechanics, determined by a phenomenon of physiology, beyond which you perceive nothing more. Penetrate further: ask this man what he does, where he goes; by what thought, what title, he drives this vehicle. And presently he will show you a letter, his authority, his providence, as he himself is the providence of his equipment. You will read in this letter that he is a carter, that it is in this capacity that he carries out the transportation of a certain quantity of merchandise, so much according upon the weight and distance; that he must carry out his journey by such a route and within such a time, barely covering the cost of his service; that this service implies on the part of the carter the responsibility for the losses and damages that result from other causes than force majeure and an inherent defect of the objects; that the price of the vehicle includes or not includes insurance against unforeseen accidents, and a thousand other details which are the hazard of the law and the torment of jurists. This man, I say, in a piece of paper as big as the hand, will reveal to you an infinite order, an inconceivable mixture of empiricism and pure reason, and that all the genius of man, assisted by the experience of the universe, would have been powerless to discover, if man has not left individual existence to enter collective life.

Indeed, these ideas of work, value, exchange, traffic, responsibility, property, solidarity, association, etc., where are the architypes? who provided the exemplars? what is this world half material, half intelligible; half necessity, half fiction? What is this force, called work, which carries us along with ever greater certainty that we believe we are more free? Which of our joys and torments does this collective life, which burns us with an inextinguishable flame, cause? As long as we live, we are, without our being aware of it, and according to the extent of our faculties and the speciality of our industry, the thinking springs, thinking wheels, thinking gears, thinking weights, etc., of an immense machine that thinks and goes by itself. Science, we said, is based on the accord of reason and experience; but it creates neither one nor the other. And here, on the contrary, a science appears to us, in which nothing is given to us, a priori, neither by experience nor by reason; a science in which humanity draws everything from itself, noumenon[52] and phenomena, universals and categories, facts and ideas; a science, finally, which instead of simply consisting, like any other science, of a reasoned description of reality, is the very creation of reality and reason!

Thus the author of economic reason is man; the creator of economic matter is man; the architect of the economic system is again man. After having produced reason and social experience, humanity proceeds to the construction of social science in the same way as for the construction of the natural sciences; it brings together in agreement the reason and the experience it has given itself, and by the most inconceivable marvel, when everything in it takes after utopia, principles and actions, it only comes to know itself by excluding utopia.

Socialism is right in protesting against political economy and saying to it: You are nothing but a routine that does not understand itself. And political economy is right to say to socialism: you are only a utopia without reality or possible application. But both denying in turn, socialism the experience of humanity, political economy the reason of humanity, both lack the essential conditions of human truth.

Social science is the agreement of reason and social practice. Now, this science, of which our masters have only seen rare sparks, will be given to our century to contemplate it in its sublime splendour and harmony!

But what am I doing? Alas! It is a question, at this moment when quackery and prejudice share the world, of raising our hopes. It is not incredulity that we have to fight, it is presumption. Let us start by noting that social science is not finished, that it is still in a state of vague premonition.

“Malthus,” says his excellent biographer, M. Charles Comte, “had the profound conviction that there exists in political economy principles which are true only insofar as they are contained within certain limits; he saw the main difficulties of the science in the frequent combination of complicated causes, in the action and reaction of effects and causes with each other, and in the necessity of setting limits or making exception for many important proposals.”

This is what Malthus thought of political economy, and the work we have published at this moment is only a demonstration of his idea. To this testimony we add another just as worthy of belief. In one of the final sessions of the Academy of Moral Sciences, M. Dunoyer, as a truly superior man, who does not allow himself to be dazzled either by the interest of a clique, nor by the disdain that inspires ignorant opponents, made the same confession with as much candour and nobility as Malthus.

“Political economy, which has a number of certain principles, which rests on a considerable mass of exact facts and well deduced observations, nevertheless seems far from being a set science. There is no complete agreement on the extent of the field in which its research should be extended, nor on the fundamental object which it must suggest. It is not suitable for all the work it embraces, nor the means to which the power of its work is linked, nor the precise meaning to be attached to most of the words that form its vocabulary. The science, rich in truths of detail, leaves a great deal to be desired as a whole, and as a science it still seems far from being constituted.”

M. Rossi goes further than M. Dunoyer: he formulated his judgement in the form of a reprimand addressed to the modern representatives of the science.

“Every thought of method now seemed abandoned in economics,” he cries, “and yet there is no science without method.” (Compte-rendu par M. Rossi du cours de M. Whateley [Report by M. Rossi of M. Whateley’s course])

Messrs. Blanqui, Wolowski, Chevalier, everyone who has glanced every so briefly on the economy of societies speaks the same. And the writer who best appreciates the value of modern utopias, Pierre Leroux, writes on every page of the Revue sociale [Social Review]: “let us seek the solution of the problem of the proletariat; let us keep looking for it until we find it. It is the entire work of our epoch!...” Now, the problem of the proletariat is the constitution of social science. There are only short-sighed economists and fanatical socialists, for whom the science is summed up entirely in a formula, Laissez faire, laisses passer, or else, To each according to his needs as far as social resources allow, who boast of possessing economic science.

What then causes this delay of social truth, which alone maintains the disappointment of the economist and gives credit to the operations of the alleged reformers? The cause, in our opinion, is the separation, already very old, of philosophy and political economy.

Philosophy, that is to say metaphysics, or if it is preferred, logic, is the algebra of society; political economy is the realisation of this algebra. This was not noticed by J.B. Say, nor Bentham, no anyone else who, under the names of economists and utilitarians, created a split in morals and rose against almost at the same time politics and philosophy. And yet, what more secure control can philosophy, the theory of reason, wish for than work, that is, the practice of reason? And conversely, what more certain control could economic science wish than the formulas of philosophy? It is my dearest hope, that the time is not far when the masters in the moral and political sciences will be in the workshops and [behind] counters, as today our most skilful builders are all men formed by a long and arduous apprenticeship…

But on what condition can there be a science?

On the condition of recognising its field of observation and its limits, to determine its object, to organise its method. On this point the economist expresses himself as the philosopher: the words of M. Dunoyer, recounted earlier, seem literally taken from the preface of Jouffroy to the translation of Reid.

The field of observation of philosophy is the self [le moi]; the field of observation of economics is society, that is to say again the self. Do you want to know man, study society; do you want to know society, study man. Man and society reciprocally serve each other as subjects and objects; the parallelism, the synonymy of the two sciences is complete.

But what is this collective and individual self? What is this field of observation, where strange phenomena are going on? To find out, let us look at the analogues.

All the things we think seem to exist, to succeed one another or to be in three transcendent CAPABILITIES, outside of which we can only imagine and conceive absolutely nothing: these are space, time and intelligence.

Just as every material object is conceived by us necessarily in space; just as phenomena, connected with each other by a relationship of causality, seem to follow each other in time; thus our purely abstract representations are recorded by us to a particular receptacle, which we call intellect or intelligence.

Intelligence is in its species an infinite capacity, like space and eternity. There are restless worlds, of numberless organisms with complicated laws, with varied and unexpected effects; equal, for magnificence and harmony, to the worlds sown by the creator through space, to the organisms that shine and die out over time. Politics and political economy, jurisprudence, philosophy, theology, poetry, languages, customs, literature, fine arts: the field of observation of the self is more vast, more fecund, more rich in itself than the double field of observation of nature, space and time.

The self, as well as time and space, is infinite. Man, and what is the product of man, together with the beings thrown through space and the phenomena that follow one another in time, constitutes the triple manifestation of God. These three infinites, indefinite expressions of infinity, penetrate each other and support one another, inseparable and irreducible: space or scale not being conceived without movement, which implies the idea of force, this is to say a spontaneity, a self.

The ideas of things which are presented to us in space form for our imagination tableaus; the ideas which we place objects in time unfold in histories; finally, ideas or relations which do not fall under the category of time or space, and which belong to the intellect, are co-ordinated in systems.

Tableau, history, system, are thus three analogous expressions, or rather equivalents, by which we make known that a certain number of ideas appear to our mind as a symmetrical and perfect whole. That is why these expressions may, in certain cases, be taken for each other, as we have pursued from the beginning of this work, when we presented it as a history of political economy, no longer according to the date of the discoveries, but according to the order of the theories.

We conceive then, and we cannot not conceive of a capacity for things of pure thought, or, as Kant says, for noumena, in the same way that we conceive two others for sense things, for phenomena.

But space and time are nothing real; they are two forms imprinted on the self by external perception. Similarly intelligence is also nothing real: it is a form that the self imposes on itself, by analogy, in the context of the ideas that experience suggests to it.

As for the order of acquisition of ideas, intuitions or images, it seems to us that we start with those whose types or realities are included in space; that we continue by stopping, so to speak, the flight of ideas that time carries, and that we finally discover, with the help of sense perceptions, the ideas or concepts, without external model, which appear to us in this ghost capacity we call our intelligence. Such is the progress of our knowledge: we start from the sense to rise to the abstract; the ladder of our reason has its foot on the earth, crosses the sky and is lost in the depths of the mind.

Let us now reverse this series, and we envision creation as a descent of ideas from the higher sphere of intelligence into the lower spheres of time and space, a fall during which the ideas, originally pure, have taken a body of substratum that realises them and expresses them. From this point of view all created things, the phenomena of nature and the manifestations of humanity, will appear to us as a projection of the mind, immaterial and immutable, on a plane sometimes fixed and straight, space, sometimes inclined and moving, time.

It follows from this that ideas, equal to each other, contemporaneous and co-ordinated in the mind, seem thrown haphazardly, scattered, localised, subordinate and consecutive in humanity and in nature, forming tableaus and histories without resemblance to the original design [dessin primitif]; and all human science consists in finding this conception the abstract system of eternal thought. It is by a restoration of this kind that naturalists have found systems of organised and unorganised beings; it is by the same process that we have tried to re-establish the series of phases of social economy, which society makes us see isolated, incoherent, anarchic. The subject we have untaken is really the natural history of work, according to the fragments collected by the economists; and the system which has resulted from our analysis is true in the same way as the systems of plants discovered by Linné and Jussieu, and the system of animals by Cuvier.

The human self manifested by work is thus the field for the exploration of political economy, a concrete form of philosophy. The identity of these two sciences, or rather these two scepticisms, has been revealed to us throughout the course of this book. Thus the formation of ideas appeared to us in the division of labour as a division of elementary categories; then, we have seen freedom being born from the action of man upon nature, and, following freedom, arise all the relations of man with society and with himself. As a result, economics has been for us at the same time an ontology, a logic, a psychology, a theology, a politics, an aesthetics, a symbolism and a morality…

The field of science recognised, and its operation delimited, we had to recognise its method. Now, the method of economic science is still the same as that of philosophy: the organisation of work, we believe, is nothing but the organisation of common sense…

Among the laws that make up this organisation we have noticed the antinomy.

All true thought, as we have observed, arises in one time and two moments. Each of these moments being the negation of the other, and both of which must disappear only within a superior idea, it follows that antinomy is the very law of life and progress, the principle of perpetual motion. Indeed, if a thing, by virtue of the power of evolution which is in it, is repaired precisely of all that it loses, it follows that this thing is indestructible, and that movement supports it forever. In social economy, what competition is constantly occupied making, monopoly is constantly occupied unmaking; what labour produces, consumption devours; what property appropriates to itself, society gets a hold of: and from this results continuous movement, the unwavering life of humanity. If one of the two antagonistic forces is hindered, [so] that individual activity, for example, succumbs to social authority, organisation degenerates into communism and ends in nothingness. If, on the contrary, individual initiative lacks a counterweight, the collective organism is corrupted, and civilisation crawls under a regime of castes, iniquity and misery.

Antinomy is the principle of attraction and of movement, the reason for equilibrium: it is that which produces passion, and which breaks down all harmony and all accord…

Then comes the law of progression and series, the melody of beings, the law of the beautiful and the sublime. Remove the antinomy, the progress of beings is inexplicable: for where is the force that would produce this progress? Remove the series, the world is no more than a melee of sterile oppositions, a universal turmoil, without purpose and without an idea…

Even if these speculations, for us pure truth, appear doubtful, the application we have made of them would still be of immense utility. Let us think about it: there is not a single moment in life where the same man does not affirm and deny the same principles and theories at the same time, with more or less good faith, no doubt, but also always with plausible reasons, which, without soothing the conscience, suffice to make passion triumph and spread doubt in the mind. Let us leave, if you want, logic: but is it nothing to have illuminated the double face of things, to have learned to be wary of reasoning, of knowing how, the more a man has fairness in ideas and righteousness in the heart, the more he runs the risk of being a dupe and absurd? All our political, religious, economic, etc. misunderstandings come from the inherent contradiction of things; and this is even the source from which flow the corruption of principles, the venality of consciences, the charlatanism of professions of faith, the hypocrisy of opinions…

What is, at present, the object of economics?

The method itself tell us. Antinomy is the principle of attraction and balance in nature; antinomy is therefore the principle of progress and equilibrium in humanity, and the object of economic science is JUSTICE.

Considered in its purely objective relations, the only ones which social economy deals with, justice is expressed in value. Now, what is value? It is the labour performed.

“The real price of everything,” says Mr Smith, “what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it… What is bought with money or with goods is purchased by labour as much as what we acquire by the toil of our own body. That money or those goods indeed save us this toil. They contain the value of a certain quantity of labour which we exchange for what is supposed at the time to contain the value of an equal quantity. Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command.”[53]

But if value is the embodiment of labour, it is at the same time the principle of the comparison of products with one another: hence the theory of proportionality which dominates all economic science, and to which A. Smith would have raised, if it had been in the spirit of his time to pursue, with the aid of logic, a system of experiments.

But how is justice manifested in society, in other words, how is proportionality of values established? Say said it: by an oscillatory movement between value in utility and value in exchange.

Here appears in political economy, with regard to work, its master and all too often its executioner, the arbitral principle.

At the outset of the science, work, devoid of method, without understanding of value, barely stammering its first attempts, appeals to free will to build wealth and set the price of things. From this moment two powers enter into struggle, and the great work of social organisation is inaugurated. For work and free will is what we will later call labour and capital, wage-labour and privilege, competition and monopoly, community and property, plebe and nobility, state and citizen, association and individualism. For anyone who has obtained the first notions of logic, it is obvious that all these oppositions, eternally reborn, must be eternally resolved: now, that is what the economists do not want to hear, to whom the arbitral principle inherent in value seems resistant to all determination; and it is, with the horror of philosophy, what causes the retardation, so fatal to society, of economic science.

“It would be as absurd,” says [John Ramsay] McCulloch, “to speak of absolute height and depth as of absolute value.”

Economists all say the same thing, and we can judge by this example how far they are from each other, and on the nature of value, and on the meaning of the words they use. The absolute expression carries with it the idea of wholeness, perfection, or plenitude, on the basis of precision and accuracy. An absolute majority is a true majority (half plus one), it is not an indefinite majority. In the same way absolute value is the precise value, deduced from the exact comparison of products together: there is nothing in the world so simple. But the consequence of this critical effect is that since values measure one another, they must not oscillate at random: such is the supreme wish of society, such is the significance of political economy itself, which is nothing else, in its totality, but the picture of the contradictions whose synthesis infallibly produces true value.

Thus society is gradually established by a sort of swinging between necessity and arbitrariness, and justice is constituted by theft. Equality does not occur within society as an inflexible standard; it is, like all the great laws of nature, an abstract point, which oscillates continually above and below, through arcs more of less large, more or less regular. Equality is the supreme law of society; but it is not a fixed form, it is the average of an infinity of equations. That is how equality appeared to us from the first epoch of economic evolution, the division of labour; and such has been constantly manifested from the legislation of Providence.

Adam Smith, who had a kind of intuition on almost all the great problems of social economy, after having recognised labour as the principle of value and described the magical effects of the law of division, observes that, notwithstanding the increase of the produce resulting from this division, the wages of the worker do not increase; that often, on the contrary, they diminish, the gains of collective force not going to the worker, but to the master.

“The profits of stock, it may perhaps be thought are only a different name for the wages of a particular sort of labour, the labour of inspection and direction. They are, however, altogether different, are regulated by quite different principles, and bear no proportion to the quantity, the hardship, or the ingenuity of this supposed labour of inspection and direction. They are regulated altogether by the value of the stock employed, and are greater or smaller in proportion to the extent of this stock... In this state of things, the whole produce of labour does not always belong to the labourer. He must in most cases share it with the owner.”[54]

That, A. Smith tells us coldly, is how things happen: everything for the master, nothing for the worker. Whether we call it injustice, plunder, theft, the economist is not moved. The robber proprietor seems to him in all this as an automaton as the worker is robbed. And the proof that they deserve neither envy nor pity is that the workers only demand when they are dying of hunger; it is that no capitalist, entrepreneur or proprietor, neither during life nor at the moment of death, has felt the slightest remorse. They accuse ignorant and distorted public consciousness; they may be right, they may be wrong. A. Smith limits himself to reporting the facts, which is much better for us that declamations.

So by designating amongst workers a select [privilégié], nazarœum inter fratres tuos, social reason personified collective force. Society proceeds by myths and allegories. The history of civilisation is a vast symbolism. Homer summarises heroic Greece; Jesus Christ is suffering humanity, striving with effort, in a long and painful agony, to freedom, to justice, to virtue. Charlemagne is the feudal type; Roland, chivalry; Peter the Hermit, the crusades; Gregory VII, the papacy; Napoleon, the French Revolution. In the same way the industrial entrepreneur, who exploits a capital by a group of workers, is the personification of the collective force whose profit he absorbs, as the flywheel of a machine stores force. This is really the heroic man, the king of work. Political economy is a whole symbolism, property is a religion.

Let is follow A. Smith, whose luminous ideas, scattered in an obscure clutter, seem a repetition [deutérose] of primitive revelation.

“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost the labourer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them. He must then pay for the licence to gather them; and must give up to the landlord a portion of what his labour either collects or produces [without him].”[55]

Here is monopoly, here is interest on capital, here is [economic] rent! A. Smith, like all the enlightened, sees and does not understand; he recounts and has not the intelligence. He speaks under the inspiration of God without surprise and without pity; and the meaning of his words remain for him a closed letter. With what calm he recounts proprietor usurpation! As long as the land seems good for nothing, as long as labour has not loosened, fertilised, utilised, created VALUE [mise en VALEUR], property gives it no thought. The hornet does not alight on the flowers, it falls upon the hives. What the worker produces is immediately taken; the worker is like a hunting dog in the master’s hand.

A slave, exhausted from work, invents the plough. With a hardened wooden hook dragged by a horse, he opens the ground, rendering him capable of making ten times, a hundred times more. The master, at a glance, grasps the importance of the discovery: he seizes the land, he appropriates the revenue, he attributes the idea to himself, and makes himself adored by the mortals for this magnificent gift. He walks the equal of the gods: his wife is a nymph, Ceres; and he is Triptolemus. Poverty invents, and property reaps. For genius must remain poor: abundance would smother it. The greatest service that property has rendered to the world is this perpetual affliction of labour and genius.

But what to do with these heaps of grain? What a poor wealth [is] that which the boss shares with his horses, his oxen and his slaves! It is well worth being rich, if all the advantage consists of being able to gnaw a few more handfuls of rice and barley!...

An old woman, having pounded grain for her toothless mouth, realises that the dough soured, fermented, and cooked under the ashes, gives a food incomparably better than raw or grilled wheat. Miracle! The daily bread is discovered. – Another, having pressing into a jar a mass of dropped grapes, intends to boil the mash on the flame; the liquor spews out its impurities; it gleams, ruddy, bountiful, immortal. Evoe! it is the young Bacchus, the darling son of the proprietor, a child beloved of the gods, who has found it. What the master could not have devoured in a few weeks, a year will suffice for him to drink. The vine, like the harvest, like the earth, is appropriated.

What is to be done with these countless fleeces that each year provides such a large tribute? When the proprietor would raise his bed to be worthy of his pavilion, when he would duplicate thirty times his sumptuous tent, this useless luxury would do nothing but attest his impotence. He abounds in goods and he cannot enjoy; what a mockery!

A shepherdess, left naked by the avarice of the master, collects from the bushes some wool fibres. She twisted this wool, stretching it into equal and fine threads, gathering them on a spear, crisscrossing them, and making herself a soft and light dress, a thousand times more elegant than the patched skins that cover his scornful mistress. It is Arachne, the weaver, who created this marvel! Immediately the master begins to shear the hair of his sheep, his camels and his goats; he gives his wife a troop of slaves, who spin and weave under his orders. It is no longer Arachne, the humble servant; it is Pallas, the daughter of the proprietor, whom the gods have inspired, and whose jealously avenges itself on Arachne by causing her to die of hunger.

What a sight this incessant struggle of labour and privilege, the first created everything out of nothing; the other always arriving to devour what it has not produced! – It is because the destiny of man is a continuous march. It is necessary that he work, that he create, multiply, perfect forever and forever. Let the worker enjoy his discovery; he falls asleep on his idea: his intelligence no longer advances. This is the secret of this iniquity which struck A. Smith, and against which, however, the unemotional historian did not find a word of reprobation. He felt, although he could not realise it, that the touch of God was there; that until the day when labour fills the earth, civilisation is driven by unproductive consumption, and that it is by rapine that fraternity is gradually established between men.

Man must work! That is why at the advice of Providence, theft was instituted, organised, sanctified! If the proprietor had tired of taking it, the proletarian would have soon be tired of producing, and savagery, hideous misery, was at the door. The Polynesian, amongst whom property has been aborted, and who enjoys in an entire community of property and love, why would he work? The earth and beauty are for everyone, children to anyone: what do you say to him about morals, dignity, personality, philosophy, progress? And without going so far, the Corsican, who is found for six months living and residing under his chestnut tree, why do you want him to work? What does he care for your conscription, your railways, your tribune, your press? What else does he need but to sleep when he has eaten his chestnuts? A prefect of Corsica said that to civilise this island it was necessary to chop down the chestnut trees. A more certain way is to appropriate them.

But already the proprietor is no longer strong enough to devour the substance of the worker: he calls his favourites, his jesters, his lieutenants, his accomplices. It is again Smith who reveals this wonderful conspiracy.

“In the progress of the manufacture, not only the number of profits increase, but every subsequent profit is greater than the foregoing; because the capital from which it is derived must always be greater. In raising the price of commodities the rise of wages operates in the same manner as simple interest does in the accumulation of debt. The rise of profit operates like compound interest. If in the linen manufacture, for example, the wages of the different working people, the flax-dressers, the spinners, the weavers, etc., should, all of them, be advanced two-pence a day; it would be necessary to heighten the price of a piece of linen only by a number of two-pences equal to the number of people that had been employed about it, multiplied by the number of days during which they had been so employed. That part of the price of the commodity which resolved itself into wages would, through all the different stages of the manufacture, rise only in arithmetical proportion to this rise of wages. But if the profits of all the different employers of those working people should be raised five per cent, that part of the price of the commodity which resolved itself into profit would, through all the different stages of the manufacture, rise in geometrical proportion to this rise of profit. The employer of the flaxdressers would in selling his flax require an additional five per cent upon the whole value of the materials and wages which he advanced to his workmen. The employer of the spinners would require an additional five per cent both upon the advanced price of the flax and upon the wages of the spinners. And the employer of the weavers would require a like five per cent both upon the advanced price of the linen yarn and upon the wages of the weavers.”[56]

This vivid description of the economic hierarchy, starting with the Jupiter-proprietor, and ending with the slave. From labour, its division, the distinction of the master and the wage-worker, the monopoly of capital, arises a caste of landlords, financiers, entrepreneurs, bourgeois, masters and supervisors, labouring to consume rents, to collect usury, to squeeze the worker, and above all to exercise policing [d’exercer la police[57]], the most terrible form of exploitation and misery. The invention of politics and laws is exclusively due to property: Numa and Egeria, Tarquin and Tanaquil, as well as Napoleon and Charlemagne, were noble. Regum tirnendorum in proprios greges, regel in ipsos irnperium est lavis, says Horace. One would say a legion of infernal spirits, rushing from every corner of hell to torment a poor soul. Pull him by his chain, take away his sleep and food; beat, burn, torture, without rest, without pity! For if the worker were spared, if we did him justice, nothing would remain for us, and we would perish.

O God! what crime has this unfortunate man committed, that you abandon him to the guards who distribute blows to him with such a liberal hand, and subsistence with a hand so miserly? … And you, proprietors, Providence’s chosen rulers, do not go beyond the prescribed measure, because rage is rising in the heart of your servant, and his eyes are red with blood.

A revolt of the workers wrings a concession from the pitiless masters. Happy day, deep joy! Work is free. But what freedom, for heaven’s sake! Freedom for the proletarian is the ability to work, that is, of being robbed again; or not to work, that is to say to die to hunger! Freedom only benefits strength: by competition, capital crushes labour everywhere and converts industry into a vast coalition of monopolies. For the second time, the plebeian worker is on her knees before the aristocracy; she has neither the possibility, nor even the right to discuss her salary.

“Masters,” says the oracle, “are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform league, not to raise wages above their existing rate. To violate this rule is an act of a false-friend. And by abhorrent legislation, this league is tolerated, while the coalitions of workers are severely punished.”[58]

And why this new iniquity, which the unalterable serenity of Smith could not help declaring abhorrent? Would such a crying injustice have been even necessary and that, without this favouritism [acception de personnes], fate would have been in error and Providence thwarted? Will we find means of justifying, with monopoly, this partial policing of the human race?

Why not, if we want to rise above societal sentimentalism, and consider higher facts, the force of things, the intimate law of civilisation?

What is labour? What is privilege?

Labour, analogous to creative activity, without awareness of itself, indeterminate, barren, as long as the idea, the law does not penetrate, labour is the crucible where value is elaborated, the great matrix of civilisation, the passive or female principle of society. – Privilege, emanating from free will, is the electric spark that determines individualisation, the freedom that realises, the authority that commands, the mind that deliberates, the self that governs.

The relation of labour and privilege is thus a relation of the female to the male, of the wife to the husband. Amongst all peoples, the adultery of the woman has always seemed more reprehensible than that of the man; it was consequently subjected to more rigorous penalties. Those who, stopping at the atrocity of forms, forget the principle and see only the barbarism exercised towards the sex, are politicisers of romances worthy of appearing in the stories of the author of Lélia. Any indiscipline of workers is comparable to adultery committed by woman. Is it not obvious then that, if the same favour on the part of the courts were to accept the complaint of the worker and that of the master, the hierarchical link, outside which humanity cannot live, would be broken, and the entire economy of society ruined?

Judge moreover by the facts. Compare the physiognomy of a workers’ strike with the march of a coalition of entrepreneurs. There, distrust of the proper law, agitation, turbulence, outside screaming and trembling, inside terror, spirit of submission and desire for peace. Here, on the contrary, calculated resolution, feeling of strength, certainty of success, calmness in execution. Where, in your opinion, is power? where is the organic principle? where is life? Without doubt society owes assistance and protection to all: I do not plead here the cause of the oppressors of humanity; may the vengeance of heaven crush them! But the education of the proletarian must be accomplished. The proletarian is Hercules arriving at immortality through work and virtue: but what would Hercules do without the persecution of Eurystheus?

Who are you? asked Pope Saint Leo of Attila, when this destroyer of nations came to set his camp before Rome.

“I am the scourge of God,” replied the barbarian. “We receive with gratitude,” continued the pope, “all that comes from God: but you, take care not to do anything that is not commanded of you!”

Proprietors, who are you?...

Weirdest thing, property, attacked on all sides in the name of charity, of justice, of social economy, has never known how to respond for its justification other than these words: I am because I am. I am the negation of society, the plundering of the worker, the right of the unproductive, the right of the strongest [la raison du plus fort], and none can live if I do not devour him.

This appalling enigma has made the most sagacious intelligences despair.

“In that original state of things, which precedes both the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock, the whole produce of labour belongs to the labourer. He has neither landlord nor master to share with him. Had this state continued, the wages of labour would have augmented with all those improvements in its productive powers, to which the division of labour gives occasion. [...] They would have been produced by a smaller quantity of labour [...] they would have been purchased likewise with the produce of a smaller quantity.”[59]

So says A. Smith. And his commentator adds:

“I can well understand how the right of appropriating, under the name of interest, profit or rent, the product of other individuals becomes nourishment for greed; but I cannot imagine that by diminishing the reward of the worker to add to the opulence of the idle man, we can increase industry or accelerate the progress of society in wealth.”[60]

The reason for this deduction, which neither Smith nor his commentator has seen, we will repeat, so that the inexorable law that governs human society is again and for the last time brought to light.

To divide labour is to make only a production of pieces: for there to be value, a composition is needed. Before the institution of property, each is a master to take from the ocean the water from which he draws salt for his food, to gather the olive from which he will extract his oil, to collect the ore which contains iron and gold. Each is free to exchange some of what he has collected against an equivalent quantity of provisions made by another: so far, we do not go beyond the sacred right of work and the community of the earth. Now, if I have the right to use, either by my personal labour or by exchange, all the products of nature; and if the possession thus obtained is entirely legitimate, I have the same right to combine, from the various elements which I obtain by labour and exchange, a new product, which is my property, and which I have the right to enjoy exclusively of any other. I can, for example, by means of the salt from which I extract soda, and the oil I draw from the olive and sesame, to make a specific composition to clean linen, and which will be for me, from the point of view of cleanliness and hygiene, a precious utility. I can even reserve for myself the secret of this composition, and consequently take, by means of exchange, a legitimate profit.

Now, what is the difference, under relation of right, between the manufacture of an ounce of soap and that of a million kilograms? Does the greater or lesser quantity change anything of the morality of the operation? So property, as well as commerce, as well as labour, is a natural right, of whose exercise nothing in the world can steal from me.

But, by the very fact that I compose a product which is my exclusive property, as well as the materials that constitute it, it follows that a workshop, an exploitation of men is organised by me; that profits accumulate in my hands to the detriment of all who enter into business relations with me; and that if you wish to substitute yourself for me in my enterprise, quite naturally I will stipulate for myself a rent. You will possess my secret, you will manufacture in my place, you will turn my mill, you will reap my field, you will pick my vine, but at a quarter, a third, or half share.

All this is a necessary and indissoluble chain; there is no serpent or devil here; it is the very law of the thing, the dictum of common sense. In commerce, plundering is identical to exchange; and what is really surprising is that a regime like this one does not excuse itself only by the good faith of the parties, it is commanded by justice.

A man buys from his neighbour the collier a sack of coal, from the grocer a quantity of sulphur from Etna. He makes a mixture to which he adds a portion of saltpetre, sold by the druggist. From all this results an explosive powder, of which a hundred pounds would suffice to wreck a citadel. Now, I ask, the woodcutter who charred the wood, the Sicilian shepherd who picked up the sulphur, the sailor who transported it, the commission agent from Marseilles who reshipped it, the merchant who sold it, are they complicit in the disaster? Is there any interdependence [solidarité] between them, I’m not saying in its use, but in the manufacture of this powder?

Now, if it is impossible to discover the least connection of action between the various individuals who, each without his knowledge, have co-operated in the production of the powder, it is clear, for the same reason, that there is no more connection and interdependence [solidarité] between them as to the profits of the sale, and that the gain which may result from its use also belongs exclusively to the inventor, that the punishment, to which he might become liable for as a result of crime or imprudence, is personal to him. Property is identical to responsibility: we cannot affirm the one, without granting at the same time the other.

But admire the unreason of reason! The same property, legitimate, irreproachable in its origin, constitutes in its use a flagrant iniquity; and this, without adding any element which modifies it, but by the mere development of the principle.

Let us take as a whole the products that industry and agriculture bring to the market. These products, such as powder and soap, are all, to some degree, the result of a combination of materials which were drawn from the general store. The price of these products invariably consists, firstly of the wages paid to the different categories of workers, secondly, of the profits demanded by the entrepreneurs and capitalists. So that society is divided into two classes of people: 1) entrepreneurs, capitalists and proprietors, who have the monopoly of all objects of consumption; 2) employees or workers, who can offer only half of what these are worth, which makes their consumption, circulation and reproduction impossible.

Adam Smith tells us in vain:

“It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.”[61]

How could this be achieved, except with the dispossession of the monopolists? And how can monopoly be prevented if it is a necessary effect of the free exercise of the industrial faculty? The justice that Adam Smith wants to establish is impractical in the regime of property. Now, if justice is impractical, if it becomes actual injustice, and if this contradiction is internal to the nature of things [intime à la nature des choses], what is the use of even speaking of equity and humanity? Does Providence know equity, or whether fate is philanthropic? It is not to destroy monopoly, any more than labour, which we must reach; it is, by a synthesis which the contradiction of monopoly renders inevitable, to make it produce in the interests of all the goods which it [currently] reserves for some. Outwith of this solution Providence remains insensitive to our tears; fate inflexibly follows its path; and while we, gravely seated, argue over the just and the unjust, God who has made us contradictory like himself in our thoughts, contradictory in our actions, answers us with a burst of laughter.

It is this essential contradiction of our ideas that, being realised by labour and expressing itself in society with a gigantic power, makes everything happen in the inverse direction of what it must be, and gives society the appearance of a tapestry seen in reverse or an inverted animal. Man, by the division of labour and by machinery, was to gradually rise to science and to liberty; and by division, by the machine he stupefies himself and becomes a slave. Tax, says the theory, must be as a result of wealth; and quite the contrary tax is because of poverty. The unproductive must obey, and by a bitter mockery the unproductive command. Credit, according to the etymology of its name, and according to its theoretical definition, is the provider of labour; in practice, it squeezes and kills it. Property, in the spirit of its most beautiful prerogative, is the extension of land; and in the exercise of this same prerogative, property is the prohibition of land. In all its categories political economy reproduces the contradiction and the religious idea. The life of man, affirms philosophy, is a perpetual emancipation from animality and nature, a struggle against God. In religious practice, life is the struggle of man against himself, the absolute submission of society to a superior Being. Love God with all your heart, the Gospel tells us, and hate your spirit [âme] for eternal life: precisely the opposite of what reason commands…

I will not push this summary further. Having reached the end of my journey, my ideas are pressing in such a multitude and vehemence, that already I would need a new book to recount what I have discovered, and that, in spite of the oratorical expedience, I see no other means of finishing than to stop abruptly. If I am not mistaken, the reader ought to be convinced at least of one thing, that social truth cannot be found either in utopia or in routine: that political economy is not the science of society, but contains, in itself, the materials of that science, in the same way that chaos before the creation contained the elements of the universe. The fact is that, to arrive at a definite organisation, which appears to be the destiny of the race on this planet, there is nothing left but to make a general equation of our contradictions.

But what will be the formula of this equation?

We already foresee that there should be a law of exchange, a theory of MUTUALITY, a system of guaranties which determines the old forms of our civil and commercial societies, and gives satisfaction to all the conditions of efficiency, progress and justice which the critics have pointed out; a society no longer merely conventional, but real, which makes of the subdivision of real estate a scientific instrument; that will abolish the servitude of the machines, and may prevent the coming of crises; that makes of competition a benefit, and of monopoly a pledge of security for all; which by the strength of its principles, instead of making credit of capital and protection of the State, puts capital and the State to work; which by the sincerity of exchange, creates a real solidarity among the nations; which without forbidding individual initiative, without prohibiting domestic economy, continuously restores to society the wealth which is diverted by appropriation; which by the ebb and flow of capital, assures political and industrial equality of the citizenry, and, through a vast system of public education, secures the equality of functions and the equivalence of aptitudes, by continuously raising their level; which through justice, well being and virtue, revives the human conscience, assures the harmony and the equality of the people; a society, in a word, which, being at the same time organisation and transition, escapes what has taken place, guarantees everything and compels nothing…

The theory of mutuality, or of mutuum, that is to say, the natural form of exchange, of which the most simple form is loan for consumption, is, from the point of view of the collective existence, the synthesis of the two ideas of property and of communism [communauté], a synthesis as old as the elements of which it is constituted, since it is nothing more than the return of society to its primitive custom, through the maze of inventions and of systems, the result of a meditation of six thousand years on the fundamental proposition that A equals A.

Everything today is making ready for this solemn restoration; everything proclaims that the reign of fiction has passed, and that society will return to the sincerity of its nature. Monopoly is inflated to world-wide proportions, but a monopoly which encompasses the world cannot remain exclusive; it must republicanise itself or be destroyed. Hypocrisy, venality, prostitution, theft, form the foundation of the public conscience; but, unless humanity learns to live upon what kills it, we must believe that justice and expiation approach....

Already socialism, feeling the error in its utopias, turns to realities and to facts, it laughs at itself in Paris, it discusses in Berlin, in Cologne, in Leipzig, in Breslau; it murmurs in England, it thunders on the other side of the ocean; it commits suicide in Poland, it tries to govern in Berne and in Lausanne. Socialism, in pervading the masses, has become entirely different: the people will not bother about the honour of schools; they ask for work, education, well being, equality; the system does not matter so much, provided that the result is obtained. But when the people want something and it is only a question of finding out how to obtain it, the discovery does not wait; prepare yourself to see the coming of the grand masquerade.

Let the priest finally get it his head that poverty is a sin, and that true virtue, that renders us worthy of eternal life, is to fight against religion and against God; – that the philosopher, lowering his pride, supercilium philosophicum, learns on his part that reason is society, and that to philosophise is to work with his hands; – that the artist may remember that he once descended from Olympus into Christ’s stable, and that from this stable, he rose suddenly to unknown splendours; that as well as Christianity, labour must regenerate it; – that the capitalist thinks that silver and gold are not true values; that by the sincerity of exchange all products amount to the same dignity, each producer will have in his house a mint [un hôtel des monnaies], and, as the fiction of the productivity of capital has plundered the worker, so organised labour will absorb capital; – that the proprietor knows that he is only the collector of society’s [economic] rents, and that if he could once, under the guise of war, put a prohibition on the soil, the proletarian can in his turn, by association, put a prohibition on harvesting, and make property expire in the void; – that the prince and his proud cortege, his soldiers, his judges, his councillors, his peers, and all the army of the unproductive, hasten to cry Thanks! to the agricultural and industrial worker [au laboureur et à l'industriel], because the organisation of labour is synonymous with the subordination of power, that it depends on the worker abandoning the unproductive to his indigence, and to destroy power in shame and hunger.

All these things will happen, not as unforeseen, unhoped novelties, a sudden effect of the passions of the people, or of the skill of a few men, but by the spontaneous return of society to an immemorial practice, momentarily abandoned, and rightly so…

Humanity, in its oscillatory march, turns incessantly upon itself: its progress is only the rejuvenation of its traditions; its systems, so opposite in appearance, always exhibit the same basis [fond], seen from different sides. Truth, in the movement of civilisation, always remains the same, always old and always new: religion, philosophy, science merely translate. And this is precisely what constitutes Providence and the infallibility of human reason; which ensures, in the very heart of progress, the immutability of our being; which renders society at once unalterable in its essence and irresistible in its revolutions; and which, continually extending perspective, always showing from afar the latest solution, establishes the authority of our mysterious premonitions.

Reflecting on these battles of humanity, I involuntarily recall that, in Christian symbolism, the militant Church must succeed on the final day a triumphant Church, and the system of social contradictions appears to me like a magic bridge, thrown over the river of oblivion.

#organization #revolution #anarchism #daily posts #communism #anti capitalist #anti capitalism #late stage capitalism #anarchy #anarchists #libraries #leftism #social issues #economy #economics #climate change #anarchy works #environmentalism #environment #solarpunk #anti colonialism #mutual aid #the system of economic contradictions #the philosophy of poverty #volume i #pierre-joseph proudhon #pierre joseph proudhon

[s0fter-sin]

general society is such an underthought aspect of mha. obviously there’s the big things like the obsession over heroic quirks and the demonisation of villainous quirks. quirkless people are dismissed entirely but i don’t think we talk about how society in general would have to handle a world with super powers.

we know after afo’s first uprising, the government overcorrected and outlawed public quirk usage. we know people have their quirks registered and go through quirk counselling as well as a type of gym class where they practice under teacher supervision.

how in the hell is that supposed to work?

the closest equivalent i can think of is mental health services. someone would have to study for a long time to be able to pursue quirk counselling as a career. it’s also a highly personalised system: everyone has a different quirk - even similar ones have different activations, triggers, exceptions and drawbacks - so no two sessions could ever be the same. if anyone’s been through mental health services, you know how rough it is; it’s an overworked, underpaid system and if you live somewhere that only offers a few free visits, it can also be expensive.

and that’s an elective service.

almost everyone on the planet would need quirk counselling.

there’s no way they could implement such a labour intensive and individual public system and we literally see that they can’t.

we see the gym class in amajiki’s flashback and he only has a few minutes with his teacher before he’s chided for not being more impressive and utilising his quirk to the fullest and they move on to the next student. say a standard class is twenty students like it is at ua. that leaves just over two minutes for each student to learn and practice their quirks. you can’t focus on just one kid per lesson bc what will the other nineteen do? do teachers also have to have a degree in quirk counselling? is that part of becoming a phys ed teacher or is it some random joe schmo trying to wrap his head around literal super powers?

given that inko goes to garaki - a doctor - to confirm izuku’s quirklessness, it can be assumed that quirk counselling is entwined with the medical system. i don’t know if you’ve ever had to apply for a specialist before but you can be on their waiting list for a while. a quirk counsellor is essentially a specialist. are there subcategories of counsellors? do you focus on either emitter, transformation or mutation the way doctors become cardiologists, paediatricians and neurologists? or is one person expected to be equally knowledgeable about all three?

we see through toga that her counsellor identified her need for blood but they didn’t find a way to curb those instincts or even find a supplement for her. she’s left to be abused by her family for something she can’t control bc it’s literally in her dna. compare that to iida who knows he needs orange juice to power his quirk. his entire family are pro heroes so it would be easy to assume they could employ a private quirk counsellor the same way richer people can employ private doctors.

how many people have specific requirements due to their quirks? changes in their physiology that have to be treated the same way nutritional deficiencies and allergies do? even people without mutations probably have those requirements: does kirishima’s shark teeth mean he’s an obligate carnivore? does mina’s acid change her ph levels and what vitamins and minerals she needs? how would they figure that out? quirk counselling.

what about kids like touya who would need extensive counselling so he could figure out how to live with his quirk without hurting himself? kaminari essentially has seizures and they’re so normal to him and everyone around him that they’re the butt of jokes. they wouldn’t be a one and done patient; there’s always going to be people that need continued support the exact same way there’s people that need developmental and disability support. there would be so many quirks that harm their user, are they just taught to bury their quirks? as if that wouldn’t cause any physical or mental consequences?

governments can’t create a system that applies to only some people, we’re expected to believe they’ve made one that applies to all of them?

#bnha #my hero academia #mha meta #i imagine its similar to therapy in that the first session would be free since its probably required in order to register a child’s quirk #they probably figure out activation in that time and thats it #onto the next kid bc there will always be another kid #you want more information on your child’s power? you better be able to pay for more sessions #even quirkless people need to be fully assessed to ensure theyre quirkless #i doubt anyone else is as interested in this as i am but it feels like just another world building aspect horikoshi just kinda skipped #quirk counselling is just sort of thrown in with toga and curious and it becomes just another concept that is brought up and discarded #quirk counselling quirklessness mutant prejudice the quirk singularity theory general mutations outside of mutant quirks #theres so many little interesting concepts that are never given the development they deserve #and when they are like in the last few chapters its done in such a shallow handwavy way that i wish hed just leave them alone altogether #no wonder the plf exists quirks are so suppressed in society while also being a status symbol #and yet its a completely hypothetical advantage if they dont become a hero or a villain #if a kid has a heroic quirk theyre held on a pedestal and if they have a villainous one theyre demonised at best and abused at worst #koichi was almost given a fine bc he was using his quirk to get through foot traffic quicker how is there not a riot every year about #quirk freedom and rights violations? #and yet its completely glossed over #go beyond plus ultra #coming out of my cage and ive been doing just fine.txt

[edwad]

How do you account for Marx’s semi-frequent distinction between commodity production and capitalist production in your take that value doesn’t exist pre-capitalist social relations? Unless you mean to argue that pre-capitalist commodity production doesn’t entail value, in which case how is that arguable? Does Marx not say the value-form is present even in primitive exchange between communities, even if in its simple form. How does money predate capitalism without value and the value-form?

lots of people debate this stuff and get caught up on the exact things you mention but my point is that the commodity which marx analyzes as the economic cell-form of bourgeois society is not just any ole product of labor, transhistorically speaking. when he's talking about the dual character of the commodity, its use-value and its value, and beyond that, the concrete labor and abstract labor which those require, he is already clearly talking about a peculiar social object which represents all of these other things and processes going on behind it.

but he also talks about the kinds of social presuppositions for things like value and abstract labor to exist, and it is for this reason why marx says that aristotle can't figure out market exchange in an economy built on slave labor. the form of society which aristotle had as a point of reference was not predicated on abstract exchangeability/formal equality as a rule, which meant that this principle couldn't be derived from those markets themselves. there was a different mechanism (or a non-mechanism) driving notions of exchangeability in ancient greek society but not one which could be explained via the historically specific "law" of value. marxs point is that classical political economy isn't merely theorizing how exchange happens in some transhistorical sense, but that the discipline arises at a particular moment to respond to changes in the way the world begins to work. political economy becomes the scientific mouthpiece for the system's theory of itself.

marx wasn't always consistent on this and i think he sometimes lapses into theoretical regression or even fails to completely follow things through to their logical conclusions, which is why in certain places abstract labor is described in physiological terms (as if the constitution of value is something human bodily labor just does, as a mere physiological rather than social process), which can make it hard to simply justify this kind of historically specific reading. but as a "best case" interpretation of marx, which tries to take moments of his work which are decisively on the other side of his break with political economy and its implications, i think it is mostly successful and can be textually grounded. a good example of this would be a footnote in ch1 where he says:

"The value-form of the product of labour is the most abstract, but also the most universal form of the bourgeois mode of production; by that fact it stamps the bourgeois mode of production as a particular kind of social production of a historical and transitory character. If then we make the mistake of treating it as the eternal natural form of social production, we necessarily overlook the specificity of the value-form, and consequently of the commodity-form together with its further developments, the money form, the capital form, etc." (p174 of the penguin ed)

it is hard to take this as a transhistorical statement imo!

[meterkey6]

Mixture of Muramylpeptides coming from Gram-Negative Bacterias Modifies Romidepsinphosphamide-Induced Disorders associated with Hematopoiesis and Spleen Mobile or portable Composition throughout Mice with B16 Cancer

The objective of the study would be to look into no matter whether episodic excessive design associated with drinking while pregnant can be individually connected with child mental wellness instructional results. Employing data through the prospective, population-based Avon Longitudinal Review of oldsters and kids (ALSPAC), many of us researched the particular associations between uncontrolled habits of drinking in pregnancy (any elements for every 500 yen4 refreshments per day #Link# ) and also kid mental well being [as rated by simply equally parent or guardian (and Equates to 4,610) and tutor (in Is equal to 4,274) along with school benefits [based on evaluation final results (and Equals Half a dozen,939)] at the age of 14 decades. Soon after changing for prenatal and postnatal risk factors, excessive design involving drinking (a new pieces every thousands of yen4 beverages per day on at least one celebration) in pregnancy ended up being related to increased degrees of psychological health problems (specially hyperactivity/inattention) throughout ladies at age 14 a long time, according to parent document. After disentangling binge-pattern along with every day consuming #Link# , binge-pattern consuming #Link# has been independently linked to teacher-rated hyperactivity/inattention and lower educational results in both genders. Episodic ingesting involving any parts per thousand yen4 refreshments each day while pregnant may enhance risk with regard to little one psychological health issues minimizing school attainment even though daily typical amounts of consumption of alcohol are generally low. Episodic excessive design regarding having definitely seems to be a danger factor for these final results, particularly hyperactivity and poor attention difficulties, without daily having.An adequate blood supply is important for that repair of uterine perform and baby wellness through parturition. However, labouring uterine contractions may provide compressive forces upon little uterine blood vessels (SUA). We all show that remote, under time limits rat SUA arterial blood vessels, pre-constricted along with arginine vasopressin or perhaps large potassium solution, show regulatory responses for you to heights inside extravascular strain (EVP) which in turn maintain inner dimension continuous with EVPs involving 0-40 mm Hg. This solution is endothelium self-sufficient and is not modulated through having a baby. Zero regulation had been affecting calcium supplement free remedy. SUA myogenic replies to be able to elevated EVP likely symbolizes a procedure for limiting discounts within uterine the flow of blood during uterine contraction. (C) Next year Elsevier Limited. Almost all rights set aside.MicroRNAs tend to be increasingly seen as objectives of medicine breakthrough discovery simply because they effect gene purpose performing equally to be able to stop and also indistinctly modulate health proteins language translation. Tiny is famous regarding outcomes of energetic physiological declares in microRNA legislation within humans. We all hypothesized which microRNA phrase inside side-line blood vessels mononuclear cells (PBMCs) will be affected by short exercise.

#Ribociclib #Romidepsin #gelatin

[tiesthatbind-tf]

I have two new questions: Wouldn't Onyx Prime be African because of Eukaris more closely related to African traditions? And what would your version of Cyclonus look like and what ethnicity he would be?

Nope! Because I'm not using the extremely convoluted history IDW has for the characters/world before the main story. Onyx here is not Shockwave in disguise, he's much closer to the Aligned/Fun Publications version of the character. Eukaris exists but it's sort of a central homeland state created specifically for Beast Men where all variants of them would receive equal treatment (This is due to the fact that even in places where some of them were well-accepted, others were not, as an example Bird-style beast men being revered in Japan as 'Tengu', while fox-style beastmen were always pegged as tricksters and bear-style Beastmen were outright demonised outside of Ainu culture).

Beast Men in Ties That Bind are also not associated with a single culture or people.

There's actually a whole page dedicated to the explanation for Beast Men and Eukaris in this AU, I'll include it under a cut since it's long (TW for mentions of Human Trafficking and general dehumanization).

I haven't as of yet decided anything on Cyclonus!

BEAST MEN

A new subset of humanity which occurred during the Quintesson Invasion, Beast Men (Homo Bestia) were the product of genetic experimentations on humans and animals alike by Quintesson scientists in the early days of the invasion.

The exact nature or reason behind these grotesque experiments have yet to be fully understood but from what little has been translated from salvaged texts, it is believed that they were conducted to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of earth’s indigenous lifeforms and to create a robust ‘working animal’ for strip-mining and slave labour purposes by combining traits between them.However much of the early experimentation yielded less than satisfactory results; The Beast Men despite their enhanced strength were often wilder in nature and even more defiant than standard humans, with some unable to adapt to their heightened senses causing them to lash out at all stimuli.

Many were terminated as failed experiments while others were kept incarcerated as stock to continue Quintesson research to fine-tune the process.However, many still managed to escape through concerted combined efforts between themselves or were liberated by rebels later on between 1930 and 1945. They took part in the Second Quintesson War under the leadership of Owais Naseem, one of the thirteen heroes of the war and a Horse-Man (Centaur).

The most populous subset of Beast Men comprises of Canids, which make up 20% of their entire demographic due to their purported usefulness as huntsmen, guardsmen and even ‘pets’ to the Quintessons.This is followed by felid (15%), ruminant (15%), avian (10%), rodentia (10%), oceanic (10%)  and others (17%).The rarest type of Beast Men are Insectoid (3%). They usually feel a strong affinity for nature and most commonly reside in South America, Africa, Asia and their established ‘homeland’ of Eukaris.  They are least found (outside of government-commissioned Cold Constructs)  in the USA, France and the UK.

CLASSIFICATIONS OF BEAST MEN

Beast Men are classified into three categories according to a worldwide government census, mostly based on the level of visible mutation.

Class A (‘Humanoid’) Accounts  for 15% of Beast Men.

Mutations are recessive/subtle, mostly centered around eyes, ears. Occasionally will sport claws.

Due to their mostly human appearance, they are better accepted by society with some reaching fame due to their perceived safe but ‘exotic’ looks.

Little to no limitations on personal rights. Mixed marriages with standard humans are allowed but heavily frowned upon due to presiding fear that, as they are still carriers of the animal gene, their mutations will pass down and could become more dominant in their children.

Little to no animal instincts.

Class B (‘Mix’) The most common class accounting for 50% of all Beast Men.

General public perception tends to vary from mild distaste to full on disdain.

Their physiology tends to be animal-like wrapped around a human frame. Anatomy remains mostly human (eg: Having paws or claws, but relegated to human-size and shaped hands or feet).

Allowances made for public transport/spaces with conditions.

Mixed marriages with standard humans banned in most countries.

Overlaps can occur with Class C.

Mild animal instincts.

Class C (‘Feral’) Accounts for 30% of Beast Men.

The class facing heaviest persecution due to their completely non-human appearance. Human traffickers have been documented selling them to hunting parties and reserves.

Full animal traits, including major to full coverage of fur/feathers/scales, tails, teeth, digitigrade legs, etc. Will occasionally sport ‘distorted’ anatomy (like elongated arms for flight or running on all fours) or missing anatomy altogether (legs for snake-men) to better support animal physiology.

Not allowed in public transport and spaces unless clearly designated.

Mixed marriages with standard humans banned in most countries.

Strong animal instincts, however level of intelligence/emotional empathy remains the same as standard humans.

Class D (‘Shifters’) The rarest class, accounts for 5% of Beast Men

Are an offshoot of Class B and C individuals who have the ability to fully shapeshift into animals.

The phenomenon is still being studied.

BEAST MEN IN SOCIETY

Despite their role in helping to win the war, the relationship between Beast Men and modern society is shaky, with a majority of them suffering some form of discrimination from governments and people unwilling to make concessions for them in modern living and personal engagements.

Like Cold Constructs, many of them are seen as second-class citizens who find it hard to rent property due to landlords who insist on a ‘no animals’ rule being applied to them (thus pushing most of them into redlined districts and neighborhoods). Most forms of public transport also bar them entry due to the ‘hassle’ that accommodating all subsets of them would invoke.

More so, the ‘non-domestic’ variants of them are often seen as dangerous or unpredictable due to their enhanced sensitivity to stimuli which would otherwise not affect a ‘normal’ person (and there have been cases of people deliberately overloading their senses to force them to react in a violent manner), and this limits the job market for them as well.

Metropolitan cities, particularly in western countries, place heavy restrictions on their movements in public; Establishments and businesses are allowed to refuse them service or bar them entry if they are seen to be a threat or if the facilities are (often deliberately) not built to accommodate them.

Violence against them is a regular occurrence despite laws being passed to combat the issue and most Beast-Men will only go out in public with a chaperone or in groups for protection from harassment.

Worse yet are the cases of illegal hunting of Beast Men, whether for game or their body parts, which sees a steady demand in the black market.

However, the case isn’t the same in all countries; In many areas of Africa and Asia, certain subsets of Beast Men are mostly accepted as members of modern society.

Snake-Men are a welcomed group in Thailand due to their resemblance to mythical Naga, while Tiger-Men are seen as protectors and a symbol of courage in Malaysia.

Bird-Men receive adulation in most South and South-East Asian countries due to their resemblance to the Garuda, while the same can be said for Japan which sees them as Tengu.

Lion, Leopard and Panther-Men find similar acceptance in African nations, which sees Lion-Men in particular to have been royalty in a past life.

Scotland stands out among western nations due to its granting of full-class citizen status to Wolf-men, affectionately known as ‘Wulvers’, particularly in the Shetland Islands which in turn sees a high population of them compared to other European nations.

That said, as not all Beast Men subsets are accepted to the same level even in countries that accept certain types, a Beast Men-centric state that levies the same rights and acceptance for all subsets, Eukaris, was established in 2004 via extensive terraforming on Queen Maud Land in Antartica.

#inbox #tw human trafficking #tw human rights violations #long post

[nestable]

Mysoginy in a fantasy world such as acotar really doesn't make sense to me. The argument that backs the nuclear family structure of why men found work and women stayed at home and raised the children, is that way back when, corporate jobs were in short supply and most work found required intense labour and given how men are genetically more inclined to that sort of work, their physical attributes were needed. Even going back to the cave men days, men needed to hunt and bring back food and because of their physiology e.g stronger, bigger lung capacity, more testosterone, men were physically more suited for these tasks. Then looking at women who existed in an era before birth control, children were being popped everyday and women were assigned that role because of 1. They carried the babies to term, 2. They produced the breast milk that babies survived on in the weaning period 3. Just that intrinsic maternal instinct and 4. Someone needed to to take care of the kids. Yeah it is sexist, but it was borne out of necessity and was a fully functionally and necessary structure give the environment they were in.

Now you come to a fae world were women arent popping out babies all the time since pregnancies are rare, so they dont need to stay at home and nurse children. The women arent physically inferior to men and can be just as strong if not more and can also posses potent magic e.g mor, feyre, amarantha, vivien, lady of autumn. So not only men are needed or would thrive in occupations that are centered around physical labour. So if 1. physically women are equal to men and 2. They dont have that inevitable burden to be the sole caretaker of a child since children are that rare...where does the mysoginy/sexism come from and what's its necessity. Human beings have carried mysoginy and sexism from hunter gatherer days because its learned behaviour from a different time which needed that sort of mindset to build functional societies and presumably fae never had to grapple with that. So why are women seen as inherently weaker when the narrative and the existence of a million Mary Sue's in the story is emphasized?

Mysoginy and sexism is dumb in today's age because not only men are going out to hunt but women too. We all are in pursuit of individual careers that dont only require physical strength but standard mental capacity. But you cant deny that looking back that sexism/mysogint has valid roots. So what is prythians source of mysoginy? What is the explanation and justification when they are all fae and powerful and omnipotent and kids are seen as anomalies? I just dont understand it.

Writing patriarchy in fantasy has been done so much that it's become lazy. It's as if in order to have a badass female protagonist, you need to put down the entire gender just so that she can stand out. She's not like other girls. At the same time some of these authors forget that sexism didnt just come from nowhere, it has justifiable origins but in the whimsical world they create those origins wouldn't exist. So therfore patriarchy shouldnt exist.

Idk. That's just my take.

[sunder-soul]

i am curious abt this but how does the differing lifespans between wizards and muggles affect like marina and tom? like i’m sure.. with everything they’ve gone through LOL it’s not something they have considered during that time... unless ofc u totally disregarded it just for the sake of A Happy Ending where they age together bc if so i totally understand.. (the longer lifespan thing feels like a Strange addition that tries to emphasize wizards > muggles and Personally i think living for so long Would Be Kind Of Terrible esp if it’s a wizard marrying a muggle or a muggleborn child ultimately outliving their parents but ANYWAY) i’m just very curious...

I've always sort of thought that magic users' longer lifespan was due to their ability to use magic to solve a bunch of health problems and the fact that they have less manual labour and the like! Rather than just an inate part of their physiology.

So if that's the case, one can assume Tom and Marina will be living equally long lives 😊

#Ask #Anon #Seven devils #Sevdevs

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“The necessity for Canadian industrial competitiveness also spurred the establishment of the Honorary Advisory Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, intended to strengthen the "important relation" among science, industry, and national welfare. Imitating British wartime efforts with an eye to gauging the equally-vital relationship between industrial efficiency and workers' health, the Council devised an Associate Committee on Industrial Fatigue in 1919. Composed largely of physiologists, it would play an advisory and investigative role much like that of its parent body. Its mandate was expressly "to make the knowledge and experience of Medical Science, as it bears on industrial health and efficiency, available for all industry." It would assist employers to increase production by reducing lost time, labour turnover, preventable illness, and "unnecessary hardships of working conditions." Offices were to be established in "all the chief industrial centres." Only one ever opened, at the University of Toronto, home of its chair, Dr. J.J.R. Macleod of the Department of Physiology.

Regulating human machinery necessitated scientific research and experimentation as much as did the invention and improvement of actual machines. In the immediate post-World War I years, scientists and medical researchers worked on the elimination of fatigue, regarded as the final defect of human machinery, the one last boundary to all-out efficiency and supreme productivity, to true machine status. No longer the inevitable, normal outcome of physical and mental labour, fatigue, too, was pathologized. More than a source of ill health and inefficiency, fatigue represented deviation from the mechanical ideal proclaimed normative for all rightful citizens of the modern industrial order. Illness and inefficiency exemplified the body's stubborn resistance to progress, namely, to the industrial-capitalist imperatives of increased productivity and profit. Thus the bodily inefficiency of the working class, clearly signified by the term "industrial fatigue," became another of the social body's sundry degenerative ailments, impeding progress at the very least and foreshadowing devolution at the worst. 

 The fatigue issue was initially adopted by reformers combatting exploitative working conditions. But it was quickly grasped by "Taylorites" aiming to enhance output through a scientifically-ordained exploitation that pushed bodies past the limits of physical endurance. In North America, the 1920s marked the heyday of Taylorist management, behaviourist psychology, and industrial fatigue research, all three premised on "conditioning" or regulation of the human machine, body and mind. The decade opened to the social strains of postwar readjustment and industrial unrest, typified in Canada by intensive labour organization and strike activity. If war made government and industry keen to upgrade productivity, labour's postwar propensity to organize and resist made the issue of worker management all the more critical. Where "fatigue" originally referred simply to the physiological changes leading to muscular inefficiency, its meaning now expanded to allow for the scientific delineation of optimum hours and conditions of work.

The Committee's efforts to organize research into industrial fatigue were furthered by the development of physiology, or "physiological hygiene" in the medical parlance of the day, at the University of Toronto. By 1919 the Toronto School of Hygiene was offering undergraduate and graduate instruction in "industrial hygiene," the umbrella term that encompassed an infinite variety of work-related health difficulties to be addressed for efficiency's sake. Particularly notable in the immediate postwar years were the fatigue studies conducted there by Charles Best, about to be acknowledged as part of the team that invented insulin. Best wanted to make physiological hygiene a vital aspect of preventive medicine, in the interests of maintaining the body's organs at "their maximum efficiency" while also maximizing the body's adaptations to its environment. 

Among other projects, Best conducted electrical timing experiments on athletes to measure both their peak muscular efficiency and the impact of fatigue on their performance. In keeping with the time-motion objectives of scientific management theorists and all the productivity-conscious of the nation, the most important conclusion of such studies was that, "as a subject [became] better-trained for any particular exercise, superfluous movements [were] eliminated." The human result, as fervently hoped and much expounded, was that "the subject certainly works more efficiently." 

Best, too, employed machine analogies to explain the process: "the muscle has been compared to a battery. Both are so constituted that they can discharge very rapidly a great deal of energy - in violent muscular contractions or in starting a car - and this expenditure can be made good slowly during rest after exertion, or during the time the car's engine is running." He surmised that human beings are about 25 per cent efficient. Consequently, more information about the process of training, the factors producing fatigue, and the recovery process, "could greatly increase our bodily efficiency, to good performance in sport or on the job." 

By the 1920s industrial fatigue had become the leading area in applied physiology, as researchers in western nations set their sights to studying the physiological impact of labour, its conditions and hours. A "social problem of national significance" had urged scientific experts out of their clinical role and into the mainstream of social and political influence, transforming the factory into their laboratory, making science the link between industry and humanity. 

 The idea of fatigue had a broad impact on physiology, on medicine more widely, and on psychology. It was a concept so amorphous and encompassing that it could protect the fluid boundaries between the "moral" and the scientific to good effect. Scientific experts aspiring to social power could then deliver moral judgements as objective knowledge. From the beginnings of research into bodily efficiency, moralistic notions connecting fatigue to physical laziness, mental lassitude, and the absence of self-discipline - all integral to the middle-class moral core - were the subtext of scientific discussions. 

Because "the mental and moral dimensions" made human machinery unique, physiological and psychological alignment were crucial to bodily efficiency. Alcohol, for example, was seen to "lessen the muscular power of the individual," and to "paralyse" the nervous mechanism, spurring a related moral/physical indolence, and eventually stopping the machine altogether. Modern science would uncover the objective laws to make bodies function in regular, predictable, mechanistic fashion. Subjective feelings - such as the individual's "natural" response to the labour of his or her own body, or the compulsive need for emotional solace offered by alcohol and other "deviant" drugs and activities - were objectified. They became social and medical problems requiring public regulation. 

It is no coincidence that Prohibition and successively more precise statutes defining "normal"  sexual relations marked the 1920s. Such "puritanical initiatives," Gramsci argued, served the purpose of preserving, outside of work, "a certain psycho-physical equilibrium which prevents the physiological collapse of the worker, exhausted by the new method of production." 

The short-lived Committee on Industrial Fatigue conducted a "Survey of the General Conditions of Industrial Hygiene in Toronto." Published in 1921, the survey is remarkable largely for its narrowness of scope and impressionistic findings, which belie both the scientific purpose and social scientific methodology it was supposed to represent. Investigation was conducted by personal visits to 76 Toronto plants; the investigator was "entirely dependent on the courtesy of the managements concerned," none of which are specified. The personal statements of managers were "supplemented where possible by a general and necessarily cursory inspection of the premises." 

 The surveyors discovered that little effort was being extended to industrial hygiene. There was a disheartening lack of management recognition of "its full importance as a factor in commercial prosperity." The few existing corporate welfare schemes were aimed at "keeping the man on the job" and preventing discontent rather than "as a means of maintaining health and efficiency." Managers appeared unwilling to believe that the "good working conditions" essential to good labour relations were "not vague and indefinite," but could be "accurately deter mined by science, through knowledge of the laws which govern the human body." They balked about improved working conditions because they questioned the degree of their own responsibility respecting the health of their workers. Of what use were any such employer efforts "if the same factors are bad in the home and their effects intensified by absence of personal hygiene?" 

 It was also evident that health considerations had not "played a prominent part in determining the hours of labour," most firms still demanding a 48-hour, 6-day work week. For organized labour, the debate over hours was taking on an urgency not experienced since the movement for late 19th-century factory legislation. Now, mechanization of production increased output while shortening the time required for quotas to be met. The resulting fatigue, trade unionists contended, "lessened vigour and vitality." 

"Speeding-up" made workers susceptible to a vast catalogue of physical, mental and moral ills, including "predisposition to disease, industrial accidents, lessened moral resistance, drinking, dope addiction, premature death, infantile mortality, industrial strife, demoralization of family life, loss of interest in church and community, and removal of all ambition and desire for self-improvement." The hazy definition of fatigue actually gave workers a useful scientific concept to employ in their own right, to protect and promote their own interests against those of machines and management. For workers, the question was whether the industrial system needed a "new morality" that would permit "man to become master of the machine," thereby giving to workers "that leisure and comfort which...should accrue to us" through a shorter work week.

Workers' attempts to revise and modernize the work ethic to their own benefit were counterbalanced by stronger social forces. From the side of capital, supported in this instance by medicine, shorter-hours legislation added to the costs of produc tion while encouraging "results which do not make for improvement of the morals of the working classes...events have shown how readily the working men and 78 women of this country succumb to the influence of leisure." A great many "inefficient" workers were physically-defective or diseased at the moment of hiring, and "weak material to start upon only means a subsequent breakdown and replacement." 

Not surprisingly, the fatigue investigators found managers generally agreed that there was "no question" of fatigue being caused by too long hours or too strenuous work. The majority of workers were simply not working up to capacity, "and owing to the high wages prevailing, were able to take time off at will." The few available absentee records indicated "a very high proportion of absence for minor disabilities," including, as was somehow surmised, "a considerable amount of absence for personal reasons." 

 Managers also contended that "unsettled postwar conditions" accounted for the "abnormally high" absenteeism [estimated to be 5 to 10 per cent per day]. But was the alleged "general slackness" the result of high wages, "out of all proportion to the cost of living," which made erratic worker attendance financially possible, as employers charged? Or did the high rate of absence actually point to overwork and ill health in the labour force? That workers were overpaid and could take time off at whim and at will is neither supported by the survey's own findings, nor by other official statistical studies of wages and prices during the 1920s. The latter indicate a contrary picture: nearly half the Canadian labour force could not provide for the necessities of life in a period of overall prosperity.

Broader trends in the postwar history of labour and class relations hint at reasonable explanations for high absenteeism [if we take management estimates at face value]. Even doctors occasionally recognized the validity of labour complaints. The Canadian Practitioner editorialized that, in a large proportion of the strikes taking place during 1919, the watershed year of labour unrest, "the working hours have been excessive, and, as a consequence the endurance of the workers has been overtaxed without proportionate increase in the output." The editors cited the studies on fatigue 81 performed by the War Committee in Great Britain to support this correlation. Despite the survey's express purpose and the nature of current physiological theories, the idea of adjusting hours of work to the physical capacity of workers did not arise, or at least was not acknowledged by either management or the scientific team itself. 

There is no indication of the explanations provided by workers for their absenteeism, much less of the predominance of particular reasons. Nor do we learn anything about the nature of the workforce itself, its age and gender composition. We can make a few reasonable speculations, however, given the context that we do know. Most young workers entered the factories at the legal age of school-leav ing, which was 14 years at that time. Due to the toll taken by war on those of military age, the workforce contained a disproportionate number of very young workers, workers over 40, and perhaps health-impaired returned veterans. These groups were more inclined to register bodily the impact of difficult working conditions. It is also likely that war widows with children, or mothers with war-incapacitated husbands, were not only taking up factory labour - consequently a double workload with its related health repercussions - but also had familial considerations that increased their absenteeism.

It is possible that absenteeism was a method of coping with job-related stress, resorted to at the onslaught of various bodily symptoms, especially in plants where the intensive assembly-line system was in effect. The investigators' own testimony regarding the impact of this mode of production on both workers and their product suggests its pressured and enervating effects: 

Where a number of employees are stationed along the carrier [power-driven assembly line], each with a separate piece of work to perform, the rate of speed is determined largely by the slowest worker. These workers are usually employed at piecework rates, so that any one individual retarding speed unduly finds himself in difficulty with other employees...an opportunity to measure the extent of spoiled work, due to what appeared to be excessive speed, is presented here. 

The investigators also noted the high level of noise and vibration, but adopted the employers' view that "the workers get accustomed to these," whatever the physical manifestations entailed. Later studies demonstrated that such worker accommodation/adaptation to pressure and noise did have measurable, cumulative, negative effects on health. A 1939 study, for example, revealed that only 28 of 75 machinists tested had normal hearing. 

By that year, the Director of the Ontario health department's Industrial Hygiene Division could point to a Toronto factory survey suggesting that rapidly-repetitive fixed-pace operations increased sickness, "more probably associated with their fixed pace than with their speed," the most important controlling factor being "the extent to which the machine dominates the process." The issue is not their lack of knowledge, in 1921, about these important correlates of workplace health, but the seeming willingness of scientists to accept unquestioningly these self-serving managerial impressions. 

Finally, there is the intriguing possibility that, in some small measure, worker absenteeism was a form of resistance, an individual "strike" against long hours, pressured and monotonous mechanized labour, management tyranny, and wages that did not allow the 1920s to roar for many Canadian workers. During the interwar decades, labour unrest and the rise of leftist political movements were met with fervid business commitment to mechanization, scientific management, and all-out technocracy. If workers were increasingly regarded as the human machinery of production, withdrawal of their bodies from the process was a form of industrial sabotage analogous to the deliberate removal of a cog, wheel, wire, or other component part.

The Toronto survey is most revealing of contemporary ideas and ideals in what it does not consider, in the interpretations and speculations that its participants did not make. We are left with the sense that management impressions about "abnormal absenteeism" had more to do with labour/capital antagonism in a particularly antagonistic historical moment than with the unprecedented rise in the workers' standard of living, whatever the scientific tone and rhetoric of "systematic" investigation. The tug-of-war over the "living wage" and better working conditions underpinned the managers' assessment of absenteeism, and their judgement that workers were overpaid and lazy.”

- Cynthia Comacchio, “Mechanomorphosis: Science, Management, and "Human Machinery" in Industrial Canada, 1900-45,” Labour / Le Travail, Vol. 41 (Spring, 1998) pp. 56-62

#industrial worker #research committee #research survey #industrial management #industrial relations #fatigue #fatigue studies #school of hygiene #mental hygiene #human machinery #mechanomorphosis #scientific management #birth of the technocratic state #capitalism #capitalism in canada #academic research #canadian history #working class struggle #mechanization #taylorism #fordism

[baeddel]

@mogsk re: “do you mean here that the network which produces commodities makes them already, like, irredeemably bad-youkai-ized?”

epistemic status: curious probing, very very tentative

I think thats how it would work in shinto (although they wouldn’t actually see a malevolant youkai as needing redemption, right?), but I don’t want to take the metaphor quite that far... Here is what I think: [NOTE: this relies heavily on Marx’s account of the commodity and of value, which we’re at the very beginning of the journey on; I have a very low confidence in my ability to get all of the value-form theology right, so keep that in mind; if anyone can, please correct me!!]

An object is not a commodity. The commodity is the form of appearance of an object; it takes the form of the commodity in certain contexts, such as when being exchanged for another object. When it takes the form of the commodity, it becomes a “crystal of social substance” (Marx); it is able to express abstract labour. The kinds of labour that go into the production of any particular object are all very different on a physiological level; one is carved by hand, another made by a machine which must be operated, and so on. But when it takes the form of the commodity, ie. when it is being exchanged, all of those hours of very physiologically different forms of labour become validated as being an equal, uniform exchangeable substance. This is abstract labour, the ‘socially necessary labour time’ required to produce a commodity, which the commodity expresses when it is exchanged for another commodity.

It’s this ability to express abstract labour that we’re calling ‘bad youkaization’. Now, the object doesn’t stop being a youkai when I get home; we’re not worried about whether it this moment expresses value, only that it has gained this capacity to express value. What we mean by youkaization is this new, very powerful way that the object has to express itself, an expression which directly intervenes in society. This youkaization is obviously dependant on capitalist relations and will disappear with them. What we’re interested in when we’re imagining a ‘good youkaization’ is the possibility of an equally powerful new mode of appearance of the object, through which it can express itself and involve itself in social relations, without coming under our domination or placing us under its domination, which would be adequate to Arvatov’s ‘co-construction of socialist life’, Benjamin’s ‘slave revolt of technology’, etc.

anyway, you say “isn’t this much like the concept of things like 'fair trade' where the idea of some sort of abstract off-setting of the karmic debt of production is at play?” - I guess my hope is that whatever other forms of youkaization are possible, they wouldn’t necessarily have to look like a circulation of a human-originating social substance. There are other ways that objects express themselves (as we said, visually through a human viewer, olfactorily through a canine smeller, etc.; to use Harman’s favourite example, fire burning cotton encounters the cotton’s flammability; and so on), and we could ceonceive of a youkaization emerging out of any of those relations just as much as it emerged out of human relations of production. My ‘joke’ here about commodity-fetishism is that we could be dominated by the commodity-form only because we so thoroughly dominated inanimate objects in the first place. After the abolition of value we can anyway remain sensitive to the possibilities of youkaization as we re-encounter objects without the commodity-fetish.

[feminismandmasculinities]

The authors of the article “Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity” advocate for a transition in the study of masculinity from a sex role framework towards an analysis of masculinity that takes into account the dynamics of power relations between the sexes and within the realm of masculinity. The conventional view on masculinity views men as a homogeneous group who share the same characteristic traits. In that rather simplistic understanding of patriarchy, men are portrayed as oppressors whose propensity to dominate women is derived from their physiological features. These authors instead argue that what perpetuates the patriarchal structure of the society is the power relation among men with all its subtleties and nuances. Not all men equally benefit from patriarchy and only a few men are bearers of hegemonic form of masculinity. Central to this understanding of hegemonic masculinity is the firmly accepted notion of heteronormativity as the standard norm of sexual practices as well as the issue of class which complicates the relationship between men and women of different social stratification. In other words, these authors attempt to locate the study of gender power in the social “structure of relationships” rather than in “character structure” of men. They also remind us of the fact that hegemonic masculinity should not be understood as a set of masculine values that have been upheld unanimously by all men throughout the history but rather as historically contingent concept which is subject to change. This point is particularly important for those scholars who are keen to apply Connell’s idea of hegemonic masculinity in different set of social and historical circumstances.

One of the important points that is stressed in the text is that the hegemonic ideal of manliness should not be equated with the domination of a handful of powerful men at the top of the society. “There is a distance and a tension, between collective ideal and actual lives”. This implies that the ideal of manliness is discursively constituted through the medium of the commercial mass media, the division of labour and the state. In my opinion, taking a look at the establishment of the nation-states in the 19th and the 20th century could give some new insight in understanding the intertwined connection between hegemonic masculinity, patriarchy and gender power. For instance, by the turn of the century, standardization of heterosexuality, perpetuation of gendered division of labour and thus preservation of male domination was in the agenda of almost all emerging states.

More importantly, we discussed the concept of hegemony in the class which was very eye-opening and profoundly thought – provoking for me. To my understanding from the class discussion, Hegemony should be contemplated as sorts of changing persuasion strategies which functions very well in the very core of gender-relations. Therefore, the concept of hegemony presupposes gendered hierarchy of masculinity. Discussing the Gramscian notion of hegemony and what Connell meant by hegemony (not merely as domination of one group over the other but as subordination of certain groups), helped me to have a better understanding of the complexity of Connell’s argument which is patriarchy is reproduced within the domain of masculinity and it is essential to the known domination of men over women. In other words, hierarchies of masculinities  paves the path patriarchy or man’s domination in general sense.

[iindex]

The Forest of Symbols

In ethnographic literature, it is noteworthy that among societies that make ritual use of all three colours (red, black, and white), the critical situation in which these appear together is initiation. Each may appear separately as a sign of the general character of a rite; thus red may be a persistent motif in hunting rites among the Ndembu and white in rites dealing with lactation or village ancestral shades. At the initiation of juniors into the rights and duties and values of seniors, all three colours receive equal emphasis. In my view this is because they epitomize the main kinds of universal human organic experience. In many societies these colours have explicit reference to certain fluids, secretions or waste products of the human body. Red is universally a symbol of blood, white is frequently a symbol of breast milk and semen... Each of the colours in all societies is multivocal, having a wide fan of connotations, but nevertheless the human physiological component is seldom absent wherever reliable native exegesis is available. Initiation rites often draw their symbolism from the situation of parturition and first lactation, where, in nature, blood, water, faeces, and milk are present.

I am going to throw caution to the winds for the sake of stimulating controversy and state boldly that:

1. Among the earliest symbols produced by man are the three colours representing products of the human body whose emission, spilling, or production is associated with a heightening of emotion. In other words, culture, the superorganic, has an intimate connection with the organic in its early stages, with the awareness of powerful physical experiences.

2. These heightened bodily experiences are felt to he informed with a power in excess of that normally possessed by the individual; its source may be located in the cosmos or in society, analogues of physical experience may then be found wherever the same colours occur in nature; or else experience of social relations in heightened emotional circumstances may be classified under a colour rubric.

3. The colours represent heightened physical experience transcending the experiencer’s normal condition; they are therefore conceived as deities... or mystical powers, as the sacred over against the profane.

4. The physical experiences associated with the three colours are also experiences of social relationships: white = semen is linked to mating between man and woman; white = milk is linked to the mother-child tie; red = maternal blood is linked to the mother/child tie and also the processes of group recruitment and social placement; red = bloodshed is connected with war, feud, conflict, social discontinuities; red = obtaining and preparation of animal food = status of hunter or herder, mate productive role in the sexual division of labour, etc.; red = transmission of blood from generation to generation = an index of membership in a corporate group; black = excreta or bodily dissolution = transition from one social status to another viewed as mystical death; black = rain clouds or fertile earth = unity of widest recognized group sharing same life values.

5. While it is possible to find many references to body fluids in white and red symbolism, few societies specifically connect black with processes and products of catabolism and decay, for example, with decayed or dotted blood. It is possible that black which, as we have seen, often means “death,” a “fainting fit,” “sleep,” or “darkness” primarily represents falling into unconsciousness, the experience of a “black-out.” Among Ndembu, and in many other societies, both white and red may stand for life. When they are paired in ritual, white may stand for one alleged polarity of life, such as masculinity or vegetable food, while red may represent its opposite, such as femininity or meat. On the other hand, white may represent “peace” and red “war”; both are conscious activities as distinct from black which stands for inactivity and the cessation of consciousness.

6. Not only do the three colours stand for basic human experiences of the body (associated with the gratification of libido, hunger, aggressive and excretory drives, and with fear, anxiety, and submissiveness), they also provide a kind of primordial classification of reality... The colour triad white-red-black represents the archetypal man as a pleasure-pain process. The perception of these colours and of triadic and dyadic relations in the cosmos and in society, either directly or metaphorically, is a derivative of primordial psychobiological experience – experience that can be fully attained only in human mutuality. It needs two to copulate, two to suckle and wean, two to fight and kill, and three to form a family. 

The multitude of interlaced classifications that make up ideological systems controlling social relationships are derivatives, divested of affectual accompaniments, of these primordial twos and threes. The basic three are sacred because they have the power “to carry the man away,” to overthrow his normal powers of resistance. Though immanent in his body, they appear to transcend his consciousness. By representing these “forces” or “strands of life” by colour symbols in a ritual context, men may have felt that they could domesticate or control these forces for social ends, but the forces and the symbols for them are biologically, psychologically, and logically prior to social classifications by moieties, clans, sex totems, and all the rest. Since the experiences the three colours represent are common to mankind, we do not have to invoke diffusion to explain their wide distribution. We do have to invoke diffusion to explain why other colours, such as yellow, saffron, gold, blue, green, purple, etc., are ritually important in certain cultures. We must also look to processes of culture contact to explain differences in the senses attributed to the basic colours in different regions. The point I am trying to make here is that the three colours white-red-black for the simpler societies are not merely differences in the visual perception of parts of the spectrum... they are abridgments or condensations of whole realms of psychobiological experience involving reason and all the senses and concerned with primary group relationships. It is only by subsequent abstraction from these configurations that the other modes of social classification employed by mankind arose.

The Forest of Symbols, Aspects of Ndembu Ritual Victor Turner 1967

[mspatial-blog]

SUSTAINABLE HOUSING: A Perspective from the Tropical South

1.    INTRODUCTION

Generally, "sustainability" as a concept, is one of the most misused, misunderstand concepts.  In a room filled with "experts" every individual has a different perspective on sustainability or what it should be, especially when it is merged with other concepts such as housing or design. The problem is sustainability is inherently contextual, it means something completely different in the global North than it does in the South on a practical level, although abstractly “experts” for each jurisdiction pretends that they are on the same page.

Likewise “housing” is equally a misused and misunderstand concept. Housing extends far beyond just an architectural product ("the dwelling unit"), as the concept is multidimensional ranging from the basic idea of shelter to the experiential meaning of home and livelihood. Again, depending on the context a house has varying degrees of significance.

2.    SUSTAINABILITY

The first point of reference for starting a conversation on sustainability is the definition by the United Nations (UN), whereby sustainability is understood as “… development that meets the needs of the present without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This definition is fair and honest on a superficial level but if we examine the first phrase (“…meets the needs of the present…”) we see that this is the most challenging aspect of development in the world particularly in the global South. Additionally, it is clear that the concept of sustainability also covers economic, social and political aspects of development; however this translates differently across territories.  

If Maslow hierarchy of needs is applied to countries and used to evaluate what matters most, it is apparent that a large number of developing countries would be deemed to be at the physiological level, while the economically developed North would be on the path of self-actualization. Harkening back to the UN’s definition for sustainability regarding “…meeting the needs of the present…” ; for a large portion of the world that’s where the full stop is. Whereas, the “actualized North” is able to concentrate efforts on the second portion of the definition “…without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs…” or preservation of resources for future generations.

Thus, it is established that sustainability is contextual and for some populations the objective is being the most sustainable they can be under their unique circumstance. Hence, any effective measurement of sustainability should be place specific. What then can the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) offer developing states in respect of housing? LEED sets the standard of “best practices” in creating sustainable buildings, organized into seven categories: Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy and Atmosphere, Materials and Resources, Indoor Environmental Quality, Innovation in design, Regional priority. It is important to see how the standards are defined and applied outside the geographical boundaries of the developed north and whether there needs to be a reinterpretation of “best practices” in relation to developing nation states.  

From a best practice standpoint (regarding developing nations) true sustainability encompasses the manner in which, available resources are employed and deployed in the production of the built form (Housing). Here, the concept on a practical level; is understood as a journey towards a understanding of the inter- relationship between the Human Element-HU[1] (their needs & requirements), the Built Form (spatial production in response to accommodating HU needs and requirements) and Natural Environment (the context) in the overall physical (spatial) development. As such, the objective is to engage and manage the development process in a way that reduces the impact on the natural environment. Hence, all activities (design, construction and operations) are assessed in regards to their effects on the environment grounded in a best practise contextual analysis.

3.    HOUSING & SUSTAINABILITY

Housing development is complex, given the number of core factors required for its development: land, infrastructure, construction material, a skilled labour force, financing and building regulations. As a built form (architectural product), it is a response to the need of and a tool for; the continued prosperity of the Human Element. According to John Turner, (1972), housing is either a noun or a verb. In the majority of instances Housing is viewed as a noun; an investment commodity and is rarely seen by many as a verb; an incremental process of development (individual & community) synchronized with the availability of resources. Hence, in the context of the global South; housing is understood in as a process (a verb), for only in this way can it emerge sustainably. Thus, the housing process within this context, involves active participation of the owner/community, passive design strategies[2], incremental design (allows for expansion to evolve with user needs).

If sustainability is “contextual” and housing is an “incremental process” then scarcity underpins the needs for an incremental process and scarcity in an economic sense, implies a lack of affordability in the development of housing. As such in the developing world, affordability (both the housing unit and sustainable technologies) is a central pillar of sustainability and success in making a housing development sustainable depends on re-evaluating sustainability standards/principles through the lens of affordability. Generally, in the global North, the build form is set in an environment context where climatic conditions[3]; dictate the specific approach in the type of materials, design intent and energy requirements. Moreover, with greater access to financial resources both on country/individual scale, the environmental standards (LEED) can be taken and implemented at face value, knowing that the solutions, to a large extent are considered to be affordable.

Here, its argued that for housing to be sustainable it must first be affordable. While making sustainability affordable, is challenging in southern developing countries; the climate and characteristics of the tropics offers an opportunity for a holistic approach to sustainability and by extension sustainable housing. Achieving this requires balancing Human needs and their desire to build; with that of environmental considerations, while acknowledging that the measurement for what is considered sustainable should be evaluated based on specific contextual factors and not a projected globalizing view.   

[1] Dow Chemical Company campaign the campaign's assertion that the human element completes the periodic table...(affordable and adequate food supply; decent housing; sustainable water supplies; and improving personal health and safety.)

[2] Site orientation, natural illumination & ventilation, rainwater harvesting & storage a traditional (widely used and understood) method of construction supported by affordable/ available materials.

[3] Subject to harsh winters or cold climatic conditions for a significant portion of the year.

[enterprisehq]

Rigelians

Planetary Data

Originally, Rigel V was home to a Kaylar population but it later became home to the Zami, a vulcanoid race. The population of Rigel V was known to be quite peaceful. Circa 2270, it had a population of around 1.2 billion, which had risen to 1.3 billion circa 2365, consisting mostly of Zami. Rigel V is a Class H, M3 planet. Settlements: Aireen • Ancient Grace • Bolor • Kolihn • New Jaleyl • Rey Kel • Tel'rus • Tir'Aresh • Tu'Sor Locations: Monastery of Gol • Mt. Gol'is Observatory Continents: Han-shir • Klor • Viltan Islands: Klorian Islands • Viltani Barrier

Catharsis

Where Vulcans control their violent urges by suppressing emotion and Romulans control them via excessive militant discipline, the Zami instead expend their energies with physical exertion and emotional catharsis. This led the Zami to develop safe forms of combat and martial arts. It's acceptable to challenge another Zami to a mediating spar. These are fights (genuine ones) designed to help trigger total emotional catharsis, which ultimately resolves the conflict between two Zami in an amicable manner, having exhausted the aggressive energy prior. When a Zami is upset, they typically either fight or have sex. This element of their society has periodically led them to experience the grief frenzy, such as when mourning the death of loved one, in which they fight another until the frenzy burns out the grief. It's possible to hire another to battle for this purpose. In Rigelians, the hormone yamareen, responsible for pon farr in Vulcans and haeiyal in Romulans, is released every time they experience a strong emotion (which is nearly every time they experience emotions at all). Because they are accustomed to dealing with it and their society is structured for optimal emotional expression, the Rigelian version of the mating cycle, evriyath, can be controlled alone without a mate. Tanvri or Catharsis is how Rigelians control their emotions. There are four types of meditative complex-spars that Rigelians use to resolve conflicts: tan'ila, tan'dera, tan'zei and the brutal tan'iyush, which is less a spar and more a genuine combat session, which can be completed alone or with someone else. Tan'ila is between superior/inferior, tan'dera is for equals and tan'zei is for children. Starfleet regulations permit Rigelians to engage in tan'ila and tan'dera, and in solo tan'iyush using the holodeck.

Family & Clan

Rigelian society is arranged into clans, each with a given attribute of said family unit, such as the Heart Clan, the Truth Clan and the Forgiveness Clan. Clans are families consisting of a large number of individuals, though when a clan grows too large to sustain it typically splits into two separate clans. Zami also practice group marriages – a woman could possess multiple husbands, even as many as sixteen. The Doctrine of Lollo states that it is desirable for one person to have nineteen spouses: to make ten men and ten women, for even balance. Ergo, a household can be comprised of male and female co-parents. Rigelians child-bond very early in order to provide emotional support and stability. Usually this individual is older and more emotionally aware/acknowledged. In familial households these two would be considered the 'household leaders' usually as they likely would have had a longer-established relationship. It is considered extremely taboo for this interaction to result in a sexual relationship and usually the pair bond meets at specific times. Again, it is considered taboo and it is a crime, much like in human culture, for this to result in a sexual relationship prior to the Rigelian age of majority. It is an act of crime to have sex with a minor on Rigel. I literally repeated that three times in a row for a reason. Zami Rigelians condone child marriage, not sexual intimacy. A child can also be sold off this way to another clan to provide monetary stability for the child-that is, their clan will sell them to a new clan and then funnel that money into the child's future investments. Children who are sold this way usually integrate into the new clan directly and therefore would have more contact with their intended spouse. Clan-less and abandoned children often face risk of being snatched up by any number of clans, because having a larger clan is seen as a sign of prosperity and children are considered a resource. Adoption and 'trading' are very natural components of Rigelian society. Regrettably this does contribute to a deeper problem of crime in Rigelian society as it relates to the buying and selling of children to be employed as labourers or worse, into child prostitution. Most if not all of these aspects of Rigelian society are widely unknown by the Federation.

Naming Conventions

Example: Kijja ir'Aireen esh kar'Seshanshaya Standard Names: First name ir'(Region-of-birth) kar'(Clan) Names of Adopted Characters: First name ir'(Region-of-birth) esh kar'(Clan-of-adoption) Names of Prominent Characters: First name ir'(Region-of-birth) e'shar kar'(Prominent-Clan) Zami are usually referred to as their FIRST NAME and CLAN NAME in all official documentation. For example, Kijja ir'Aireen esh kar'Seshanshaya is heretofor known as Kijja Seshanshaya.>

History

The Zami are one of the splinter civilizations of Vulcans that formed after the philosopher Surak spread his philosophy of peace and logic. By the 11th century, Zami civilization was at its height, represented by the city of Ancient Grace, which had great many-storied buildings with huge white columns and porticoes standing upon its hills. But the Zami of this time were described as being distrustful, possessive, and highly competitive. The numerologists warned the Zami race to change their ways. Subsequently, a plague spread through the population and decimated their number, leaving the cities in ruins while the native plant life flourished. After the plague had run its course, the survivors formed a new society that was more rural and decentralized, with new family units that possessed many members, to prevent them from being so decimated again. In addition, their culture shifted to living in the present, rather than focusing on the future or the past. Zami society became less inclined to violence as they further adapted to their homeworld. This shift to a near-agrarian lifestyle meant that the Zami people remained poor compared to other worlds, though their forests gave them some biological and medical products which they sold. However, they had no fleets and no trade agreements, which severely restricted their civilization. Rigel V became a member of the Federation in 2184, after the Rigel Accords were signed and made into law.

Culture

Unlike their Vulcanoid kin, the Zami do not repress their emotions, lacking the discipline common to both Romulans and Vulcans, and aren't afraid to look foolish, making them somewhat similar to Humans. In fact, the Zami are noted to be culturally more similar to the Romulans, but they were not as warlike and lack the restrictive aspects of that society. This is attributed to the countering influence of the Orions and, later, Terrans, who shared the Rigel system and provided the Zami with more liberal views for their culture. Thus they are tolerant of many different forms of lifestyle. However, they have a fiercely independent streak. They believe in the importance of exercise of the entire body for optimum health. A central part of this exercise is regular sexual activity, which they believe reduces their destructive urges and makes people happier and heal faster. Therefore, they typically add sex to therapy to help the healing process and consider it unnatural to go without. Sex also helps them grow their clans and create new ones. When Rigelians come of age (age 30), they participate in a ritual that involves intricate and extensive scarification across their torso, back and arms. This indicates their allegiance to their family, clan and dedication to the forward motion of Rigel V as it circles its True Star. This signifies their entrance into 'adulthood' and their taking on the responsibility to follow the Way of the Numbers and Stars.

Physiology

The Zami are a vulcanoid race, indistinguishable from Vulcans native to the homeworld. Even sensors are incapable of telling the difference between Vulcan and Zami life signs. They have a very similar physiology, but different enough that certain drugs and treatments cannot automatically be assumed to work as well on both races. They have the same physical features, olive-green blood and a similar level of strength. The Zami retain the psionic skills of their Vulcan ancestors by breeding, study and exploration of their own inner mind's psionic and emotional aspects. These skills are important enough that Zami aristocrats achieved status through their psionic talents and gifts. Many of the ancient psionic disciplines of the Vulcan mind lords are kept alive in the Monastery of Gol. Many Zami do not demonstrate any appreciable telepathic abilities. They possess an uncanny sense of direction, possibly deriving from their psionic skills. They demonstrate telepathic magnetism, a phenomenon where a Zami can easily locate another person within a certain distance. Think about them, form their picture, and begin walking with a Zami and you'll soon hope to find who and what you're looking for.

Political

Their society doesn't have many governmental bodies, but instead make use of local prefects and the Zami Assembly, which met twice a year. The legal system is based around a Citizen's Court, an inquest where a panel of twenty six men and twenty six women are entitled to ask questions and serve essentially as prosecutors. Zami are deeply rooted to an agrarian lifestyle, and enjoy the outdoors and environment. Advanced technology and weapons are typically discouraged on Rigel V. This seemingly primitive existence means that they had no quarries, mines, power plants or pollution, and only a few industrialists. They don't have much of an economy; what's there is based on precious metals. The clans are divided into a number of rural craft guilds, which are involved with various aspects of trade. Their homes are typically based in lodges that are spread out and connected through solar transporters. Zami live primarily on Rigel V, their adopted homeworld, but some also dwell on other worlds of the Rigel system, such as Rigel II, Beta Rigel VII and Rigel IV. They tend to stay within the Rigel system. Rigel V is split down a few different lines, but their Federation membership has returned to Provisional after it was discovered that they still practice child marriage and slavery on the planet, which are considered customs to many Rigelians and so the government has become fractured, with some Rigelians wanting to join the Federation and others believing that the Federation will force them to assimilate their culture. Part of the Federation's mission is to work with the Rigelians and help resolve/rehabilitate their society (but not by force/occupation, mostly it's just a lot of political talks/debates, etc). Rigel V is also quite poor, so there are a lot of undeveloped areas that need Federation assistance and since they're still provisional we're obligated to help them. The Rigelians have a really rich history and culture but it's super different from Federation normal.

#lcars

[bluewatsons]

Graham Scrambler, Resistance in Unjust Times: Archer, Structured Agency and the Sociology of Health Inequalities, 41 Sociology 142 (2013)

Abstract

Few sociologists dissent from the notion that the mid- to late 1970s witnessed a shift in capitalism’s modus operandi. Its association with a rapid increase of social and material inequality is beyond dispute. This article opens with a brief summation of contemporary British trends in economic inequalities, and finds an echo of these trends in health inequalities. It is suggested that the sociology of health inequalities in Britain lacks an analysis of agency, and that such an analysis is crucial. A case is made that the recent critical realist contribution of Margaret Archer on ‘internal conversations’ lends itself to an understanding of agency that is salient here. The article develops her typology of internal conversations to present characterizations of the ‘focused autonomous reflexives’ whose mind-sets are causally efficacious for producing and reproducing inequalities, and the ‘dedicated meta-reflexives’ whose casts of mind might yet predispose them to mobilize resistance to inequalities.

Introduction

Sovereign debt currently worries governments more than anything else. It is not impossible that we might now get a repeat of the Great Depression, when a stock market crash and some financial instability was intensified into real depression by government cutting of expenditure and tightening of credit. I think that Europe’s conservative governments, in Britain, Italy, France, and Germany, are also taking advantage of the crisis to introduce welfare cuts that they have long wanted, but the basic pressure is coming from the markets, the movements of financial capital. It is bizarre that a financial crisis caused by neoliberalism should – after a short-term of Keynesian solutions – turn into more neoliberalism. (Mann, 2011: 15)

But then, as Mann insists, it is ‘power’ that rules the world. And it has been decreed that growing inequalities are the price that citizens-cum-consumers must pay for the promise of collective betterment. The growth of wealth and income inequalities has in fact been striking in the post-Fordist, post-welfare statist phase of what will hereafter be called ‘high’, as opposed to the more prejudicial ‘late’, modernity (Scambler and Higgs, 1999). It is a story of historical, ‘post-war’ slippage, gathering significant momentum during the 1980s and early 1990s and no more than temporarily levelling-off during the New Labour years. According to the Report of the National Equality Panel, An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK (2010), the top decile of the UK population is now 100 times as wealthy as the bottom decile. The Interim Report of the High Pay Commission (High Pay Commission, 2011) bears testimony to what can only be defined as increasingly unconstrained and voracious greed (Scambler, 2009). Dominant among Britain’s top 0.1 per cent of income ‘earners’ are finance and business workers and company directors. FTSE 100 chief executives enjoyed average total remuneration of over £4.2m in 2009–10. In 2010, FTSE 100 CEO pay was 145 times the average salary for workers, and it is on track to be 214 times the average salary by 2020.

Inequality is conventionally described as inequity when it is avoidable, unnecessary or unfair. Present increases in wealth and income inequalities are clearly inequitable: Dukes can still ‘own’ multiple London neighbourhoods by virtue of birth while those unencumbered by inherited capital, even the short-term unemployed, can be hounded for flouting a putative ‘imperative to work’. But neither dukes nor those ‘not in employment, education or training’ (NEETS) are sources of unease for the career-oriented, cross-party ‘political class’ that feeds into the power elite at the apex of the apparatus of the state (Oborne, 2007). Parliamentary politicians and those who sustain and service them are no longer discomforted by inequity, the more conspicuously so since the advent of Cameron’s ‘coalition government’.

There is a broad sociological consensus on the facts of growing inequality/inequity, as there is on factors of causal salience for these trends. If the quadrupling of oil prices in the mid-1970s is a ‘marker’ (not cause) of the transition from one phase of capitalism to another, then more slowly evolving social demographics, the long-term decline of manufacturing, and a more abrupt and political de-regulation of finance, complemented and championed after 1979 by Thatcher’s neoliberalism mark I, and reinforced after 1997 by ‘New Labour’s’ neoliberalism mark II, were critical. The neoliberal era, it has been argued, has witnessed a revised relationship between the interests of class and state: a new class/command dynamic (Scambler, 2002, 2007, 2012b). Paraphrasing the historian David Landes’ (1998) contention that men of wealth buy men of power, it might reasonably be said that they have seen a better return since the 1970s.

It is widely accepted in the published socio-epidemiological and social scientific literature on health inequalities that increases in inequalities of wealth and income bring health inequalities in their wake. High modernity is witness to a ‘widening gap’ in rates of health and longevity by an array of socio-economic classifications (SECs) from the Registrar General’s ‘social class based on occupation’ (SC) and Socio-economic group (SEG) to the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC): the steepness of the ‘social gradient’ has increased (Scambler, 2012b). The latest data from the Office of National Statistics for England and Wales, using NS-SEC, afford an illustration. A study of male mortality between 2001 and 2008 found that in 2001 the mortality rate of those in routine and manual occupations was 2.0 times that of those in managerial and professional occupations; in 2008 that ratio had risen to 2.3. The authors record that ‘this patterning of declining absolute but rising relative inequalities is a well-known phenomenon in the context of declining overall mortality rates’ (Langford and Johnson, 2010: 1). The recent Strategic Review of Health Inequalities (The Marmot Review, 2010) gives a comprehensive summary of SECs and health and longevity consonant with this statement.

Consensus on trends, however, does not amount to consensus on explanations. If rising inequalities of wealth and income are accompanied or followed by rising inequalities of health, why is this? This statement by Wilkinson and Marmot (2003: 10) is succinct, eloquent and helpful:

Both material and psychosocial factors contribute to these differences and their effects extend to most diseases and causes of death. Disadvantage has many forms and may be absolute or relative. It can include having few family assets, having a poorer education during adolescence, having insecure employment, becoming stuck in a hazardous or dead-end job, living in poor housing, trying to bring up a family in difficult circumstances and living on an inadequate retirement pension. These disadvantages tend to concentrate among the same people, and their effects on health accumulate during life. The longer people live in stressful economic and social circumstances, the greater the physiological wear and tear they suffer, and the less likely they are to enjoy a healthy old age.

There is no easy way of satisfactorily capturing this heterogeneity of explanation, but there is a case for distinguishing between material, behavioural and psychosocial orientations or models (Bartley, 2003).

The pioneering and agenda-setting ‘Black Report’ (DHSS, 1980) accorded an unambiguous causal priority to ‘material/structural’ factors in the explanation of SEC-related health inequalities. Material disadvantage, via low incomes, substandard housing, neighbourhood deprivation and so on, undermined health and shortened life.

While the Black Report prioritized material or structural factors, it also acknowledged a significant causal role for ‘cultural/behavioural’ factors. Advocates of the contribution of what have since been termed ‘risk behaviours – like smoking, drinking heavily, living off ‘fast foods’ and adopting a sedentary lifestyle – have stressed their overriding causal salience for impaired health and reduced longevity.

Psychosocial factors (a mere subtext in the Black Report) have been variously defined, but key proponents, like the social-epidemiologist Wilkinson, have emphasized the causal effects of social and cultural fragmentation, the implosion of social networks and a concomitant loss of solidarity, mutuality and trust amongst and between individuals.

It is not of course simply a matter of choosing between these alternative explanations: each clearly has theoretical and empirical merit. Moreover, in the generation since the Black Report at least three lessons have been learned. First, seemingly ‘alternative’ or rival explanations for health inequalities are less distinctive than they appear: people in low-income households are most liable to injurious risk behaviours and most vulnerable to social isolation. Second, as multiple longitudinal studies have shown, material, behavioural and psychosocial factors exercise a cumulative effect over the life-course. And third, what each explanation seems to lack, and what they lack in whatever combination is tried, is the potential to add up to a sociology of health inequalities. While it is true that there have been a few sociologists who have exercised more sociological imagination and eschewed multivariate analysis in favour of qualitative and mixed-methods investigations (Williams, 2003), there remains a strong case, I believe, for a more ‘classical’ sociology of health inequalities, anchored in macro-sociological theories of social structures or relations like class and command (Scambler, 2012b).

If there has been a discernible and politically motivated ‘lifestyle drift’ in the recent framing of health inequalities policy and research, there has nevertheless also been an acknowledgement of the salience of structure as well as agency in the work of some sociologists, holding out the prospect of a genuinely sociological narrative. Popay and Williams, for example, have deployed a largely qualitative/mixed-methods programme of research to tap into the ‘voice of the lifeworld’ in pursuit of a meso- or middle-range theory of health inequalities (2009). Seigrist’s (2009) model of ‘effort-reward imbalance’ falls into the same category, as does the work of Frohlich and colleagues in Canada, who draw on Sen’s ‘capability approach’ to stress the significance of both structure and agency for health inequalities research and interventions (Abel and Frohlich, 2012). In the account that follows I call on the work of Bhaskar and, particularly, Archer to deepen our understanding of the transformative power of agency pertinent to a sociology of health inequalities, having elsewhere emphasized the causal efficacy of structure (Scambler, 2012b). I begin with a brief exposition of their critical realist perspective.

Critical Realism, Archer and ‘Internal Conversations’

The critical realist philosophy of Bhaskar (1975, 1989) underpins Archer’s work and this article and requires a brief summary. Sayer (2000) perhaps best encapsulates critical realism in his well-cited triad of propositions. The first heralds a defining commitment to ontological realism: in other words, there exist both natural and social worlds independently of our knowledge of them. The second proposition Sayer refers to as epistemological relativism: it is not a phrase I can readily endorse, but I accept his core assertion that what we know is ineluctably (and fallibly) a function of our time and place (i.e. is socially constructed). And the final member of Sayer’s triad is captured in the expression judgemental rationality: notwithstanding the social construction of knowledge, it remains possible to decide between alternative theories on rationally compelling grounds.

A core premise of critical realism is that natural and social scientists alike have fallen foul of the ‘epistemic fallacy’. They have come to permit questions about what exists to be displaced by, even reduced to, what we can know of what exists: ontology, in other words, has been incorporated into epistemology. Bhaskar, committed to recovering the ontological, delineates three ontological strata. Events are accessible to us empirically via experience. It is at the level of the real, however, that the (generative) mechanisms that are causally efficacious for events are to be found. It is through the experiential study of events that real mechanisms can be ‘transcendentally’ inferred: they must exist for our knowledge of events to be as it is.

Quantitative studies lend themselves to the ‘retroductive’ inference of the real via multivariate analysis or what Lawson (1997) calls ‘demi-regularities’ or ‘demi-regs’. Scambler (2007) and Coburn (2009) have argued in this vein that from the endlessly replicated associations between SECs and health and longevitymust be (retroductively) inferred the existence of Marxian relations of class as a real and causally efficacious (generative) mechanism. In short, the demi-regs could not be so endlessly replicated in their absence. Qualitative studies can be no less instructive, although in Britain they have long ceded first place in the pecking order to sociology conducted after the fashion of socio-epidemiology. Personal narratives allow for the ‘abductive’ inference of the real (Scambler, 2010).

This article takes off from Archer’s morphogenetic approach, which insists on the need to analytically decouple structure and agency. Only on the basis of such a decoupling, she maintains, against ‘conflationists’ like Giddens (1984), is it possible to explore the interface between structure and agency on which social theory depends. In this respect she follows Bhaskar (1989: 92), who argues that structure and agency are:

. . . existentially interdependent but essentially distinct. Society is both ever-present condition and continually reproduced outcome of human agency: this is the duality of structure. And human agency is both work (generically conceived), that is, (normatively conscious) production, and (normatively unconscious) reproduction of the conditions of production, including society: this is the duality of praxis.

Bhaskar’s explication of the ‘transformational model of social action’ underpins Archer’s (1995)morphogenetic model. Expressed in her terms, structural conditioning necessarily predates actions that either reproduce (that is, are morphostatic) or elaborate on structures (that is, are morphogenetic), and concerning which humans may or may not be reflexive in the course of socio-cultural interaction.

Our embodied nature as a ‘species-being’ not only constrains who can become a person, it has direct implications too for what a person can do. Archer (1995: 288) elaborates:

. . . the characteristics of homo sapiens (as a natural kind) cannot be attributed to society, even if they can only be exercised within it. On the contrary, human beings must have a particular physical constitution for them to be consistently socially influenced (as in learning speech, arithmetic, tool making). Even in cases where the biological may be socially mediated in almost every instance or respect . . . this does not mean that the mediated is not biological nor that the physical becomes epiphenomenal.

Humans, I have contended elsewhere, are simultaneously the products of biological, psychological and social mechanisms whilst retaining their agency. Acknowledgement must be made also of the sometimes mundane and sometimes dramatic interruptions of contingency. Thus humans can be said to be biologically, psychologically and socially ‘structured’ without being structurally determined (Scambler et al., 2010; see also Williams, 1999). So what is left for agency and its transformative power?

Reflexivity in Action

In the course of her work on the ‘internal conversations’ all humans hold, Archer (2007: 5) writes:

The subjective powers of reflexivity mediate the role that objective structural or cultural powers play in influencing social action and are thus indispensable to explaining social outcomes.

Agency is necessarily contextualized. Archer’s (1995, 2003, 2007) way of articulating this is via a three-stage model:

Structural and cultural properties objectively shape the situations that agents confront involuntarily, and inter alia possess generative powers of constraint and enablement in relation to

Subjects’ own constellations of concerns, as subjectively defined in relation to the three orders of natural reality: nature, practice and the social.

Courses of action are produced through the reflexive deliberations of subjects who subjectively determine their practical projects in relation to their objective circumstances.

This model prepares the ground for her defence of the notion of an ‘internal conversation’. She argues that:

it is a genuinely interior phenomenon, and one that underwrites the private life of the social subject;

its subjectivity has a first-person ontology, precluding any attempt to render it in the third-person; and

it possesses causal efficacy.

She extends her analysis of this ‘inner reflexive dialogue’ by focusing on its exercise as a power by people negotiating their everyday lives in her Making Our Way through the World (2007). Her overarching hypothesis is that ‘the interplay between people’s nascent “concerns” (the importance of what they care about) and their “context” (the continuity or discontinuity of their social environment) shapes the mode of reflexivity they regularly practice’ (Archer, 2007: 96).

Four ideal-typical modes of reflexivity emerge from Archer’s empirical investigations:

Communicative reflexives are characterized by internal conversations that require completion and confirmation by others before they result in courses of action.

Autonomous reflexives sustain self-contained internal conversations, leading directly to action.

Meta-reflexives are critically reflexive about their own internal conversations and critical also about the prospects of effective action in society.

Fractured reflexives are those whose internal conversations intensify their distress and disorientation rather than leading to purposeful courses of action.

The micro-political life politics of individuals contribute to the ‘macroscopic’ structuring and restructuring of society. In general, the combined day-to-day practices of communicative reflexives comprise the cement of society. The autonomous reflexives for their part combine to foster social development by injecting dynamism into the new positions they occupy: they are the source of productivity in its multiple aspects. Collectively, the meta-reflexives ‘function as the well-spring of society’s social criticism’: they underwrite Weber’s realm of Wertrationalitat or value-rationality (Archer, 2007: 99). Although Archer postpones the analysis of fractured reflexives, leaving this for a future volume, two points might be made here. First, fractured reflexivity lends itself to passive agency: its proponents’ deliberations go round in circles and lack conclusions. And second, it is communicative reflexives who are most fragile and vulnerable to displacement into the category of fractured reflexive.

Ideal types not only admit of but entail exception and complexity. Ideal-typical assignment is the start not the end of the story for each individual. More needs to be said of the three ideal types so far explicated by Archer.

Communicative Reflexives

We all engage in communicative reflexivity, but only for some is it the dominant mode of reflexivity. What is distinctive about the internal conversation of communicative reflexives is that its conclusion requires the input of others: intra-subjectivity needs to be supplemented by inter-subjectivity (Archer, 2007: 102). Given our natal or initially ‘involuntary’ placement in society, these ‘others’ are typically recruited from those who comprise communicative reflexives’ local peers or reference group, hence the tendency to social immobility.

Autonomous Reflexives

The internal conversations of autonomous reflexives are, by contrast, self-contained affairs. The lone inner dialogue is sufficient to determine a course of action. When this is the dominant mode of reflexivity those involved neither seek nor require the involvement of others in their decision-making. Autonomous reflexives also engage in communicative reflexivity, but this is for them not strictly necessary. ‘Whilst the autonomous subject may respond readily, articulately and take interest in the reactions of others, none of these interchanges is driven by need’ (Archer, 2007: 114).

Meta-reflexives

The concept of meta-reflexivity, implying reflection on reflection, may seem abstruse, even narcissistic, but self-monitoring is part and parcel of day-to-day living. In those for whom it is the dominant mode, meta-reflexivity is a routine kind of self-questioning. ‘Why did I say that?’, ‘Why am I so reticent to say what I think?’ Meta-reflexives are ‘conversant with their own meta-reflexivity’. They are self-critical and tend to be preoccupied with the moral worth of their projects and their worthiness to undertake them.

Summarizing Archer’s analysis at this juncture, it might be said that communicative reflexives are oriented to ‘consensus’; autonomous reflexives are oriented to ‘outcome’; meta-reflexives are oriented to ‘values’; and fractured reflexives are non- or disoriented.

The Focused Autonomous Reflexive

I have argued elsewhere that the period since the early to mid-1970s has witnessed a change in the class/command dynamic; namely, an intensification of class power relative to that of the increasingly privatized yet regulatory state. Polemical illustration of this is afforded by the greedy bastards hypothesis(GBH), a nomenclature even less extravagant after than before the global financial crisis of 2008–9. This asserts that Britain’s widening social and health inequalities can be seen as largely unintended consequences of the voracious, strategic appetites of a hard core or ‘cabal’ in its strongly globalized capitalist-executive (CCE), backed by its more weakly globalized power elite (PE). If men of money have always bought men of power, to paraphrase Landes (1998), they have got considerably more for their money since the mid-1970s than they did in the post-war years of consensual welfare statism (Scambler, 2007, 2009, 2012; Scambler and Higgs, 1999).

Underpinning the GBH is the claim that the new flexible or de-standardized work patterns, the rapid growth of income inequality, welfare cuts (now acute under the post-2010 ‘Con-Dem’ Coalition), and largely derivative processes like the ‘postmodernization’ of culture and novel and divisive forms of individualism have their origins in the strategic behaviour of the GBs. When, for example, the CEOs and directors of large transnational companies, along with financiers and rentiers, pocket huge pay packages, pension pots and ‘honours’ for downsizing workforces, substituting transitory or part-time for full-time workers, reducing work autonomy in favour of micro-managerial control, outsourcing, and ending final salary pension schemes, they adversely affect the health and life expectancy of their (ex-)employees; and by doing so they contribute positively to health inequalities (Scambler, 2012b).

I have maintained that there are discernible media through which class and other structural relations realize their influence on health and longevity. They comprise a well-attested list of capital or ‘asset flows’: biological, psychological, social, cultural, spatial, symbolic and, above all, material. These asset flows vary temporally and so are rarely either possessed or not, it almost invariably being a matter of degree or strength of flow. Moreover, there is frequently interaction or compensation between flows. A reduced biological asset flow might be compensated for by a strong flow of psychological assets, for example, or an arrest in the flow of material assets by strong flows of social or cultural assets. As epidemiological research on the clustering of risk factors for health indicates, however, there is a tendency for flows to be weak or strong across assets.

Drawing on Archer’s exploration of internal conversations, I constructed an ideal-typical sub-type of her autonomous reflexive called the focused autonomous reflexive. The principal characteristics of this sub-type are summarized in Table 1. Those at the apex of the capitalist-executive and power elite, the ‘greedy bastards’ of the GBH, can reasonably be characterized as focused autonomous reflexives (although they by no means exhaust its membership) (Scambler, 2012a).

Table 1. Ideal type of capitalist executive and power elite as focused autonomous reflexives (adapted from Scambler, 2012a)

Ideology and Resistance

It is now more anachronism than platitude within sociological circles to say that people have beliefs, values and attitudes that owe more to their natal or involuntary placement in society than to the exercise of agency. Bhaskar and Archer acknowledge as much but yet allow for the transformative power of agency. As far as the CCE/PE dyad is concerned, they are without doubt prime peddlers, via mass media and heavily sponsored Think Tanks, of a neoliberal ideology that either applauds or excuses the GBs of the GBH. Echoing the stance adopted by Engels and Virschow in their opposition to the bourgeois ideologies of their times and places, to undermine the health and life expectancy of the poor and powerless by – however indirectly or circuitously – staunching vital asset flows is no lesser a crime than manslaughter (Scambler, 2012b). The role of ‘symbolic’ as opposed to physical violence in producing and reproducing health inequalities has been neglected.

The ideology of sociological salience, in other words, is that of the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, the ‘neo-cons’, the CCE/PE and so on. It is one matter to inherit interests that go ‘with’ the structural/ideological flow, another to inherit interests that come up ‘against’ them. This was once a commonplace in sociology. To reintroduce the concept of ideology is necessarily to reintroduce that of ‘false consciousness’ (Runciman, 1970). Any discomfort at doing so is arguably itself a function of a degree of (ideological) taming of the discipline (Scambler, 1996).

Resistance necessarily involves countering, subverting and ultimately undermining the global, national or local potency of ideology, in the present the ideology of neoliberalism. And the accumulated evidence of the post-welfare-statist decades leads ineluctably to the conclusion that health inequalities in the UK and elsewhere cannot be addressed effectively by Popperian ‘piecemeal social engineering’: meaningful resistance necessarily reaches deep down into generative social mechanisms, be they of structure or agency. The class/command dynamic that characterizes the present represents the key and overriding structural input into health inequalities/inequities. But what of the potentially transformative power of agency?

For Archer (2007: 155), meta-reflexives, oriented by values, are characterized by ‘contextual incongruity’, which denotes an incongruity between dreams and aspirations and contextual factors that obstruct their realization. But not all dreams and hopes fade away, and those organizers and leaders of resistance to neoliberal ideology might be said to represent a sub-set of meta-reflexives whose value-driven commitments become central to identity for self and others and transmute into life-long advocacy on behalf of the ‘community as a whole’. I call them dedicated meta-reflexives.

Dedicated Meta-reflexives

These putative activists might superficially appear to resemble the CCE/PE contingent of focused autonomous reflexives. Archer separates them without compulsion. While the focused autonomous reflexives are almost entirely instrumental, strategically, single-mindedly and ruthlessly oriented to the pursuit of their own interests, the dedicated meta-reflexives are value, other- and community or ‘third sector’-oriented (2007: 312). As Archer (2007: 262) demonstrates, the:

. . . meta-reflexive concern for ‘community’, despite its varied meanings, is light years removed from both the communicative reflexives’ preoccupation with their own micro-life worlds and the autonomous reflexives’ use of the locality as a place for out-sourcing and paid access to selected facilities . . . what unites (meta-reflexives) is not a burgeoning communitarianism, but rather a common belief that social problems will not yield to individualistic incentives or to centralized political interventions.

Sir Michael Marmot, a key public health practitioner and leader in World Health Organization and UK health inequalities research and policy, often cites Neruda’s injunction to ‘rise up with me against the organization of misery’, a plea he regards as an international rather than national or local call to arms. There is a question here of the degree of commitment to ‘making a difference’. Eagleton (201: 19) writes:

. . . reform is vital; but sooner or later you will hit a point where the system refuses to give way, and for Marxism this is known as the social relations of production. Or, in less polite technical language, a dominant class which controls the material resources and is markedly reluctant to hand them over. It is only then that a decisive choice between reform and revolution looms up.

In a neoliberal era, Marmot has fought nobly but unavailingly, like the fabled Canute, against an incoming tide. If he and sociologists of health inequalities are (in a Hegelian sense) ‘serious’, then there will have to be a sociological reckoning with the contradictions of capitalism and the likes of transnational and national relations of class and command, a step far beyond an abstruse, academic fascination with SECs and health. The SEC/health association cannot be explained sociologically in the absence of a more comprehensive theory of social class and ‘class struggle’ (Coburn, 2009; Scambler, 2012b; Scambler and Scambler, forthcoming).

Key protagonists in such a struggle are presented here as dedicated meta-reflexives. Given the low visibility of class politics in the neoliberal era, dedicated meta-reflexives are unlikely to see themselves, or be seen by others, as class warriors engaged in an ongoing struggle. They are more likely to be the issue of a heterogeneous array of ‘mobilizing potentials’ (Scambler and Kelleher, 2006). Some of their number, whether campaigning against the hike in student fees, the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance or the Health and Social Care Bill, might be paid-up members of a (anti-capitalist) ‘movement of movements’, but others are manifestly not. The characteristics of this sub-type of meta-reflexive are as follows:

An impulse to solidarity: Picking up on Archer’s narrative, dedicated meta-reflexives are oriented to community. Their natural mode of relating is communicative rather than strategic (Habermas, 1984, 1987). Their actions are informed by values of sociality, favouring norms of reciprocity.

System immunity: Activists falling within the category of dedicated meta-reflexive have strong ego-defences, allowing them to have enduring ‘lifeworld’ rather than ‘system’ ambition. Their aspirations are unlikely to be easily undone by the ‘steering media’ of the economy or state, that is, money or power (Habermas, 1984, 1987).

A predilection to optimism: Optimism of the will subduing pessimism of the intellect is likely to be on the calling cards of dedicated meta-reflexives. These are disciples of Gramsci, refusing not to act against the odds. They do not just have ‘system immunity’ but are committed to better futures.

Visionary insight: However embryonic, the dedicated meta-reflexive envisages a future that improves on past and present, and does so for the ‘community as a whole’ rather than a discrete (wealthy, powerful) segment (like the CCE/PE). Their vision belongs within Giddens’ (1990) category of ‘utopian realism’.

Therapeutic orientation: Dedicated meta-reflexives ‘care’ in ways often antipathetic to instrumental or strategic action. Their challenge is Lenin’s and is around Hegel’s notion of ‘seriousness’. If they are ‘serious’ about their activism, however, are they not ceding crucial territory to the focused autonomous reflexives of the CCE/PE by their therapeutic orientation?

Action commitment: It is in their predisposition to act, to intervene, to make a difference, that dedicated meta-reflexives’ therapeutic orientation is leavened by engagement. There is real tension here, in Habermasian terms, between actions aimed at consensus or outcome. Which do dedicated meta-reflexives privilege, representing the communities in which they participate or securing utopian realist benefits on their behalf?

And so to the concluding paragraphs of this contribution. Just how might analyses of structured agency, via Archer on internal conversations and the ideal-typical sub-types of focused autonomous reflexive and dedicated meta-reflexive, help fill in lacunae in a sociology of health inequalities?

Concluding Reflections

This article is premised on the need for a sociological analysis of agency for any credible sociology of health inequalities. It is an attempt to fortify or add to the contributions of colleagues pursuing a similar agenda (Williams, 2003). Forceful and evidence-based calls for a more equitable distribution of wealth and income (and thus power) have been sidelined with ease, even after 2008–9. If a couple of years ago there seemed a whiff of a legitimation crisis in the air, this is now a receding threat (although the troubles within the ‘eurozone’ at the time of writing, most dramatically in Greece, have the odour of crisis about them) (Habermas, 1975). So is the call for evidence-based policy, to which cause many epidemiologists, sociologists and others have been recruited, purely rhetorical? Does evidence-based policy transmute into policy-based evidence whenever powerful class interests are at stake? Is evidence-based policy even a cause worth pursuing? There have been those who have questioned Wilkinson’s analyses of data purporting to demonstrate a causal relationship between income inequality and ‘social evils’ like growing health inequalities; but such scholastic disputes can seem arcane when set against the only-too-predictable, mundane life events besetting those on the wrong side of the tracks (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010). Taken in the round – that is, drawing on qualitative and mixed-methods as well as quantitative studies – there seems little doubt that Wilkinson (and Pickett) has captured the essence of extant research.

Reference has been made here to a prior identification of morphogenetic actions and the ‘structured agency’ of those focused autonomous reflexives sharing a high degree of causal responsibility for the production, reproduction and durability of health inequalities in the UK. These are members of a cabal at the very centre of the capitalist-executive and the political power elite, the ‘greedy bastards’ of the GBH. New here is the identification of the structured agency of the dedicated meta-reflexives. These comprise those individuals with the requisite mindset, aptitude and set of skills to offer radical resistance that extends to and, however circuitously, calls into question those social structures of class and command that underwrite the behaviours of the GBs and their allies in the new middle class.

Archer has expressed doubts about Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of habitus, claiming that it cedes too much to structure and leaves too little to agency; but a case might yet be made for discerning a class-based habitus characterizing, on the one hand, the GBs among the focused autonomous reflexives and, on the other, the ‘resisters’ among the dedicated meta-reflexives. It is difficult to see how a sociology of health inequalities could be considered comprehensive in the absence of a contribution to a sociology of the agency of key players.

This article concludes with three further points of clarification or qualification. The first is a plea for more of what I have elsewhere called ‘meta-reflection’ in sociology (Scambler, 2010). The gist of the argument is that there is a strong case for pausing to take stock of, and work with, extant bodies of research and theory when addressing substantive areas like health inequalities. The need for ‘new’ data or theory is not always pressing. The present use of Archer’s critical realist analysis of internal conversations is a modest case in point.

Second, it should be recognized and remembered that sociology’s contribution to understanding and explaining a phenomenon like health inequalities is necessarily partial. It is a virtue of critical realist philosophy that readily allows for biological and psychological as well as social mechanisms to be simultaneously active in open systems and to travel ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ without yielding to any form of reductionism (e.g. towards either the biological or the social) (Scambler et al., 2010). On this reading, sociology’s contribution to theorizing and researching health inequalities is partial but discrete.

Finally, reference should be made to ‘living in the real world’. Policy sociologists and reformers can eschew what they see as the esoteric interests and practices of some professional and most critical sociologists as unhelpful to problem-solving in the world of the here-and-now (reality 1). This brief engagement is perhaps best categorized as professional-cum-critical sociology: its rationale is to experientially pursue events in the here-and-now only insofar as they afford retroductive access to causally generative mechanisms (like relations of class and command) at Bhaskar’s level of the real (reality 2). The point is not to condemn those operating with reality 1, but rather to make a case that only by operating with reality 2 does it become possible to make headway towards a sociological theory of a phenomenon like health inequalities.

References

Abel T, Frohlich K. (2012) Capitals and capabilities: Linking structure and agency to reduce health inequalities. Social Science and Medicine 74: 236–44

Archer M. (1995) Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Archer M. (2003) Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Archer M. (2007) Making Our Way through the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Bartley M. (2003) Health Inequality: An Introduction to Theories, Concepts and Methods. Cambridge: Polity Press 

Bhaskar R. (1975) Realist Theory of Science. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf 

Bhaskar R. (1989) The Possibility of Naturalism. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf

Bourdieu P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 

Coburn D. (2009) Inequality and health. In: Panitch L, Leys C, editors. (eds) Morbid Symptoms: Health Under Capitalism. Socialist Register 2010. Pontypool: Merlin Press, 39-58

DHSS (1980) Inequalities in Health: Report of a Working Group. The Black Report. London: HMSO

Giddens A. (1984) The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press 

Giddens A. (1990) Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press

Habermas J. (1975) Legitimation Crisis. London: Heinemann

Habermas J. (1984) Theory of Communicative Action. Vol.1: Reason and Rationalization of Society. London: Heinemann

Habermas J. (1987) Theory of Communicative Action. Vol.2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Cambridge: Polity Press

High Pay Commission (2010) More or Less: What has Happened to Pay at the Top and Does it Matter?London: High Pay Commission

Landes D. (1998) The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. London: Little, Brown

Langford A, Johnson B. (2010) Trends in social inequalities in male mortality, 2001–2008. Intercensual estimates for England and Wales. Health Statistics Quarterly 47: 1–28 

Lawson T. (1997) Economics and Reality. London: Routledge

Mann M. (2011) Power in the 21st Century. Cambridge: Polity Press

The Marmot Review (2010) Post-2010 Strategic Review of Health Inequalities. London: The Marmot Review

National Equality Panel (2010) An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK. London: National Equality Panel

Oborne C. (2007) The Triumph of the Political Class. London: Simon & Schuster

Popay J, Williams G. (2009) Equalizing the people’s health: A sociological perspectives. In: Gabe J, Calnan M, editors. (eds) The New Sociology of the Health Service. London: Routledge

Runciman W. (1970) Sociology in its Place and Other Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Sayer A. (2000) Realism and Social Science. London: Sage 

Scambler G. (1996) The ‘project of modernity’ and the parameters for a critical sociology: An argument with illustrations from medical sociology. Sociology 30(3): 567–81

Scambler G. (2002) Health and Social Change: A Critical Theory. Buckingham: Open University Press

Scambler G. (2007) Social structure and the production, reproduction and durability of health inequalities. Social Theory and Health 5: 297–315

Scambler G. (2009) Capitalists, workers and health: Illness as a ‘side-effect’ of profit-making. Social Theory and Health 7: 117–28 

Scambler G. (2010) Qualitative and quantitative methodologies in comparative research: An integrated approach? Salute e Societa 9: 19–34 

Scambler G. (2012a) Archer, morphogenesis and the role of agency in the sociology of health inequalities. In: Scambler G, editor. (ed.) Contemporary Theorists for Medical Sociology. London: Routledge, 131-49 

Scambler G. (2012b) Review article: Health inequalities. Sociology of Health and Illness 34: 130–46 

Scambler G, Higgs P. (1999) Stratification, class and health: Class relations and health inequalities in high modernity. Sociology 33(2): 275–96

Scambler G, Kelleher D. (2006) New social and health movements: Issues of representation and change. Critical Public Health 16: 219–231

Scambler G, Scambler S. (forthcoming) Marx, critical realism and health inequalities. In: Cockerham W, editor. (ed.) Health Sociology on the Move: New Directions in Theory. New York: Springer

Scambler G, Afentouli P, Selai C. (2010) Living with epilepsy: Catching simultaneity in the biological, psychological and the social. In: Scambler G, Scambler S, editors. (eds) New Directions in the Sociology of Chronic and Disabling Conditions: Assaults on the Lifeworld. London: Palgrave, 106-28

Seigrist J. (2009) Unfair exchange and health: Social bases of stress-related diseases. Social Theory and Health 7: 305–17

Wilkinson R, Marmot M. (2003) Social Determinants of Health: The Solid Facts, 2nd edn. Copenhagen: World Health Organization

Wilkinson R, Pickett K. (2010) The Spirit Level, 2nd edn. London: Allen Lane

Williams G. (2003) The determinants of health: Structure, context and agency. Sociology of Health and Illness 25: 131–54 

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#critical realism #sociology #dedicated meta-reflexives #health inequalities #social inequality #neoliberalism #mobilizing for resistance #social and material inequalities #internal conversations #margaret archer #focused autonomous reflexives

[sonipanda]

New brand alert to the blog – which I am totally hyped about! This brand is pretty new and is already making a great impression

Now this review will be slightly different than my usual as I wanna get as much info across to you all the best I can regarding Hēdoïne.

The Bold Spec

Colour: Black

Size: XS – S

Denier: 20 body / 40 reinforced parts

Materials: 70% Nylon & 30% Spandex

Price: £28.00

Website: Hēdoïne – The Bold

About Hēdoïne

From The Website:

ALL BLACK – LIKE YOUR HUMOUR

Ladder-free / run-resistant & seamless tights

With ladder-free guarantee!

We set the bar in comfort, quality, and style. Soft, ladder-free and seamless tights made in Italy – tights as they should be. One less thing to worry about on your busy schedule

20 DEN

seamless & soft

high and low slimming waistband

elegant patterns

highest quality yarns

modern 3D knitting techniques

made in Italy

no more pressure marks, no sagging and no seams that shine through your dress

  Ladder-Free: Through the combination of innovative yarns and then newest 3D knitting techniques, our tights do not ladder or run. They are 20 denier and thus, not nondestructive, but a lot more durable than normal tights. So, even if a small hole might occur at some point it will not spread down your leg – guaranteed! Otherwise you will receive a refund.

Waistband: Our tights come with two different waistbands: In low (9 cm / 3.5 inches) and in high (15 cm / 6 inches). The low waistband slims the hips and is perfect for skirts or simply when you do not like your stomach to be covered. The high waistband is great to slim and shape your silhouette and tummy.

Washing: Wash at 30 Celsius. Do not dry, do not iron, do not bleach.

Pregnancy: You might wonder whether you can wear our tights during pregnancy? Yes, you can! While they are not maternity tights per se, our Hedoines find the high waistband very comfortable in the first few months.

  About The Brand:

The brand was founded by Alex and Anna, who were working for many years in banking and consulting and did not enjoy wearing tights to work. Hēdoïne is a bold luxury brand that aims to bring innovation to every piece of the business outfit – starting with the biggest pain point: tights! Hēdoïne is a brand that caters to strong energetic women with high aspirations, who are same time outgoing and do not take themselves too seriously.

  Product & Production:

They have reinvented business tights by combining the highest quality yarns with innovative 3D knitting techniques to make them ladder-resistant and very soft, as they should be. They are produced in Italy, seamless and come in low and high slimming waistband heights for a perfect fit.

They are made with anti-bacterial and anti-odour fabrics. Expressive patterns around the waistband and under the toes reflect elegance in every detail and make Hēdoïne tights are a true part of the business outfit – and a fashion statement.

Currently, they have three models with low and high waistband each and will offer more nude colours in January to cater for all skin tones.

In comparison to the mass production of other competitors, Hēdoïne tights are hand finished with a lot of attention to detail. Hēdoïne produces in Europe with certifications that protect labour and the environment, for example: Fair pay check, male and female staff members receive equal wages for work of equal value, no child labour or excessive overtime, worker have rights like freedom of opinion, are protected by law against for example physical, sexual or physiological harassment.

Low environment impact, e.g. water is being cleaned before being remitted in the environment and all products are high biodegradable (harmful chemicals avoided, even if they are not yet legally regulated)

All products used during the production are safe for humans and environment.

Soni’s Review

The Packaging: I gotta say their packaging is super impressive. I was completely taken back by how beautifully they were presented. Through the door, they come in a branded bubble envelope, with a satin pouch which carries the hosiery.

I was blessed enough to try out the high and low waisted pairs in ‘The Bold’ collection. These came in small plastic packaging (small note – this will be replaced from January onwards with a beautifully designed recycled paper envelope.)

  Out Of The Packaging: I decided to get all up close and personal here; I wanted to show you all what to expect once you get into the packaging. These are folded down into a small cube. One thing I was impressed with was the foot and leg shaping they have to them, even though these were folded right down.

Normally you won’t find hosiery like this; a good idea to use less packaging materials.

I have to say both pairs are identical (minus the difference in the waistband) but what I did find that the low waisted tights actually came with a snag to begin with. I was so careful when unfolding these to make sure I don’t cause any snags before I even get them on. I have highlighted that below so you can see when it was held up against the light.

The High Waisted Pair

  The Low Waisted Pair

  On The Legs: I am mindblown with how gorgeous they look. My first impression was that these have a slimming effect to them; making your legs look longer and a little more toned. I thank the matte finish on these for that – they truly do work wonders at times!

The denier being 20 gives you great leg coverage, and as these are a matte finish, these will look darker on the legs than other 20 deniers I have done in the past. This is the type to hide leg stubbles (if that’s an issue for you) and gives you a luxury smooth finish.

The quality I have to say is amazing; I did mention that my low waisted pair came with a few snags, but these stayed as snags and became nothing more during the day. Hēdoïne  pride themselves in their ladder-resistant hosiery and I can see why. I hardly got anything after a full day’s wear on both of these. I was super impressed with how amazing the quality is.

**Another little tip is that they actually offer a ladder-free guarantee as well so if you do come across a snag which became a ladder, then get in touch and they will be able to sort it from there so you don’t ever need to feel like you’ve bought a pair and it’s gone to waste!**

Oh and let me mention that these do have a lot of stretch in them; I won’t say it becomes baggy or loose on the legs, but there is enough to make sure your legs are hugged well and you still have breathing room in them. I found these to be super stretchy when I was pulling them up to the point I have to shimmy them down a little as I went too high to begin with!

The overall look of them is just gorgeous; it’s a lovely classy pair which I certainly can’t get enough of. I have come across a few luxe pairs, and I have to say that these are neck in neck with Heist tights.

I love the way they fit, feel and the way they make your legs looks stunningly slim … And the fact that no pressure marks are left behind after a day’s wear which is a rare quality nowadays!

I will mention just in case you are picky like me that these may have some weird markings to them; that I found when I pulled them up higher (which let me remind you is easily done) so don’t worry too much as they begin to fall into place once you start moving in them and the markings do slowly disappear. I also found that rubbing them gently with your hands can help too!

The High Waisted Pair

  The Low Waisted Pair

  The Toes & Ankle:  I gotta say it gets even better when you start moving towards the toes and feet! These come reinforced with a toe panel which then works into a huge sole panel underneath. I really did like the design that works on the panels, and can also be found on the waistband too.

The tights give you plenty of room to wiggle your toes and is free from any added pressure. They allow your feet to breathe which I love 🙂

Around the ankles, they have a lovely smooth wrinkle-free finish, so you don’t ever have to worry about they falling down creating an ankle pile. Just make sure you get the right size!

  The Waistband: so I have to say I was waiting to review this part as the waistband plays a massive part in a pair of tights, especially when you spend most of your life in them like I do! So to begin with, I found these have no gusset or seams, so you use their logo for placement (the logo will sit at the front on the right hand side of you) to make sure you get them on the right way. You can also use the foot and leg shaping as a guide as well.

Oh and that gorgeous design can also be found here too!

Another little gem I found with these is that they have a slight compression piece in the waistband, so it can help slim the figure slightly. I didn’t know that before until I did a little research on them!

And I can’t forget that it’s completely seam-free so you don’t need to worry about lining this up against you. I love the fact that you get this smooth finish on the front and back so you can wear tighter fitted clothing with not having to worry about that pesky seam pushing through!

The low waistband fit me like an absolute dream; it seriously felt like I wasn’t wearing one once I got moving around. I absolutely loved the way they sat on them; they didn’t move out of place at all and actually moved with me rather than staying put making it uncomfortable. These sat below the belly button on me, but I found that to be ok (I normally like it just covering the belly button).

The high waistband was a little more difficult; I wore this with a bodycon dress so I expected it to sit completely flush on me. I found it did to begin with, but if you sit a lot, these might not be ideal. These started to roll down and crinkle quite bad throughout the day, which then started showing through my dress at one stage. I had to roll them down and smooth them out a few times to stop that from repeatedly happening. I got to say it didn’t really work out for me as well as I would have liked it to. These were so comfortable as well; I won’t knock that part but they just didn’t sit like I wanted them to.

The High Waisted Pair

  The Low Waisted Pair

  My Thoughts?

“Is it worth the money?”

I have to say yes it certainly is if you’re after a long-lasting and durable pair of tights. I loved being in mine and the comfort level is just insane. I love the fit and feel of them which makes all the difference. They have so much going for them and I am so glad I got to review them; the ladder-resistant feature, the slimming waistband, the seam-free parts etc. I loved it all!

These have had a lot of praise from media, and I can understand why now. This is certainly a pair I can see making it big!

  The Independent:“(…) Despite catching a nail in them, there was no laddering in this run-resistant pair” – link

Memorandum: “Most Resilient: HEDOINE” – Link

Sheerluxe: “(…) Now the big question: did they rip? Surprisingly, not even a snag, despite only being 20 denier and being worn all day and night. Impressive” – link

Hēdoïne ‘The Bold’ Tights New brand alert to the blog - which I am totally hyped about! This brand is pretty new and is already making a great impression…