From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Wed Aug 24 2005 - 04:51:24 BST
[Ant had offered]
To see how Platt’s ideal “conservative” world would work in practice, may I
recommend one of my favourite novels which illustrates it absolutely
starkly. This is Robert Tressell’s “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists”
which was written in the early 1900s and is a proto-ZMM in many ways.
[Arlo responds]
Brilliant! Thanks, Ant. I've just gotten in between reads and was looking for
something new. The Penn State Library has one copy, in its Rare Books Room, so
I've ordered it from BN.
I've been working on an essay for quite some time on Marx's views on the
alienating aspects of (what was then) modern labor, and working for some
synthesis between this and the way (what is still mostly) modern labor was
bemoaned by Pirsig in ZMM.
Pirsig: "Getting with it," "digging it," "grooving on it" are all slang
reflections of this identity. It is this identity that is the basis of
craftsmanship in all the technical arts. And it is this identity that modern,
dualistically conceived technology lacks. The creator of it feels no particular
sense of identity with it. The owner of it feels no particular sense of
identity with it. The user of it feels no particular sense of identity with it.
Hence, by Phædrus’ definition, it has no Quality.
Marx: "However, alienation appears not merely in the result but also in the
process of production, within productive activity itself. . . . If the product
of labor is alienation, production itself must be active alienation. . . . The
alienation of the object of labor merely summarizes the alienation in the work
activity itself." Also, "The commodity form and the value relation between the
products of labor which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no
connection with their physical properties and with the material relations
arising therefrom. It is simply a definite relation between men, that assumes
in their eyes the fantastic form of a relation between things."
Pirsig: "But the biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to
explain. Good-natured, friendly, easygoing...and uninvolved. They were like
spectators. You had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and
somebody had handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No
saying, "I am a mechanic." At 5 P.M. or whenever their eight hours were in, you
knew they would cut it off and not have another thought about their work. They
were already trying not to have any thoughts about their work on the job. In
their own way they were achieving the same thing John and Sylvia were, living
with technology without really having anything to do with it. Or rather, they
had something to do with it, but their own selves were outside of it, detached,
removed. They were involved in it but not in such a way as to care."
Marx: "Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings. Each
of us would have in two ways affirmed himself and the other person. 1) In my
production I would have objectified my individuality, its specific character,
and therefore enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during
the activity, but also when looking at the object I would have the individual
pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective, visible to the senses and
hence a power beyond all doubt. 2) In your enjoyment or use of my product I
would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a
human need by my work, that is, of having objectified man’s essential nature,
and of having thus created an object corresponding to the need of another man’s
essential nature. ... Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw
reflected our essential nature."
Pirsig: "Sometime look at a novice workman or a bad workman and compare his
expression with that of a craftsman whose work you know is excellent and you’ll
see the difference. The craftsman isn’t ever following a single line of
instruction. He’s making decisions as he goes along. For that reason he’ll be
absorbed and attentive to what he’s doing even though he doesn’t deliberately
contrive this. His motions and the machine are in a kind of harmony. He isn’t
following any set of written instructions because the nature of the material at
hand determines his thoughts and motions, which simultaneously change the
nature of the material at hand. The material and his thoughts are changing
together in a progression of changes until his mind’s at rest at the same time
the material’s right."
"Sounds like art," the instructor says. "Well, it is art," I say. "This divorce
of art from technology is completely unnatural. It’s just that it’s gone on so
long you have to be an archeologist to find out where the two separated.
Rotisserie assembly is actually a long-lost branch of sculpture, so divorced
from its roots by centuries of intellectual wrong turns that just to associate
the two sounds ludicrous."
Both men were(are) concerned with the "separation" of man from any
identification with his labor activity, and the products of that activity. Both
advance a solution-of-sorts in reunification of activity and Quality.
Pirsig: "People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from
eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that
way. There’s no villain, no "mean guy" who wants them to live meaningless
lives, it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is
willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because
it is meaningless."
Marx asked the same question. Why do people accept and internalize conditions
which they know to be disadvantageous? Why do people end up investing in their
own unhappiness and put up with oppression because of the marginal pleasures
this may bring with it?
Pirsig offers an answer of sorts, continuing: "But to tear down a factory or to
revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a
system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is
upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is
our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and
if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left
standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a
revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of
thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will
repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the
system. And so little understanding."
This captures (I believe) a fundamental problem with any historical attempt to
"force" Marxist ideas. Lenin "tore down" the capitalists factories, but the
rationality that produced them was "left standing". In the absense of a change
in rationality, the system merely produced, in the form of dictatorial regimes,
a "anti-position" with no support, except the brutal use of force to sustain
itself.
We have had no dialogue, no language, to criticize the rationality that built
that factory, or demands 8 hours of meaningless activity a day, or dissociates
ourselves from our labor-activity. Marx made an decent attempt to provide this,
and should be commended for many of his insights, but mired down (I think)
because he was writing within the old rationality. Pirsig makes the attempt,
too, by trying to expand or evolve rationality.
Whether anyone can succeed, is anyone's guess.
Arlo
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