I had a comment on a recent post that was so wonderful I had
to pause and acknowledge it. Here is the
comment in full, originally appended to my post entitled “Whew”:
“Anonymous said...
I am a non-white woman from India and I have been reading
your blog for more than two years. As a mother pursuing PhD in her early 40s, I
could perhaps be the least noteworthy of all your readers. I decided to post a
comment because in your previous post you mentioned that your blogs have very
low female/non-white readership. Let me point out, I have finished watching
your Youtube lecture series on Kant, ideological critique and Marx. Currently,
I am on the third part of the Freud series. I can’t thank you enough for taking
the effort and putting those videos out in the public domain. As a person,
without any training or knowledge of philosophy and with very limited resources
at hand, your lecture series, blogs and even the discussions on comments
section have helped me immensely. In fact, I have recommended your lecture
series to some of my friends and fellow students. So, I hope you will soon see
a spurt in your non-white readership.
Also, I can’t help but mention one point. Maybe it is cultural. I know capitalism is not the most rational form of production. But sometimes, in a caste-ridden society like India, where some people (due to their birth status) are condemned to do certain jobs like picking up garbage and cleaning sewage (with no escape at all for generations), money can help transcend barriers. In that case, a man making millions from trash (as you mentioned in your Marx series) is something to be celebrated. For millions of people out there, it gives hope and a modicum of dignity – the dignity of labour, which is hard to come by. Just a thought.”
I am thrilled beyond description by this, and I thank the
anonymous writer most warmly. No writer
could ever hope for a better audience!
Google counts do not really matter, not when Rosanne Barr gets twenty
million viewers for her latest TV show.
What matters is that miraculously, I have somehow reached out across
half the world and found a reader.
I am of course completely aware of the existence of hundreds
of thousands, if not millions, of men, women, and children around the world whose
only way of surviving is by picking over or collecting or sweeping up the
garbage left by the more fortunate. For
those of you who have not watched the video, I was trying to illustrate the
fact that capitalists are motivated solely by a search for the largest
available rate of return on invested capital, regardless of the social status
of the investment. I mentioned Louis
Wolfson, an American who made a fortune after WW II in the garbage collection
industry. My failure to point out the
existence of people who have no other choice was sheer thoughtlessness and
insensitivity, for which the writer of the comment, in the gentlest possible fashion,
quite properly chastised me.
I trust that my hardy band of the usual suspects will not be
affronted that I have devoted such attention to this comment, coming from an
unexpected source. I love you all!
Anonymous, if I may address you thus, dare I ask the subject
of your dissertation? I am delighted to
be able to acknowledge your presence in the circle of readers of this blog.
What a wonderful experience/comment this must be for you. The miracle of the internet reaching around the world and into places and minds that good old and standard higher educations institutions could never reach. And the youtube videos! posterity plus.
ReplyDeleteSo there must be two "Anonymous" commentators, then, given that one Anonymous has identified himself as David. I liked that
Charles Pigeon provided a bio. More important for you, perhaps, but as a reader/commentator, I like it when the rather sterile name metamorphoses into flesh and blood.
From yet another anonymous commenter:
ReplyDeleteCongrats are in order to Prof. Wolff for his video lectures. These are invaluable even for seasoned university students with resources, not to mention people from across the globe who do not have the same access to high-quality education once-in-lifetime professor like Wolff.
As for the specific comment from a viewer from India, I was struck by the often repeated mythical example of captialism working in India and the use of "...a man making millions from trash..."
Experience shows that there is no such success due to capitalism in India. Whatever gains one might notice, is entirely due to clever exploitation and not capitalism of the labor theory that Marx is talking about. Many political economists more well-versed in Indian conditions, including some recent Nobel Laureates, have better explanations. Such exploitation-based successes (aided no doubt by the caste system) in India can be traced to a long history going back several centuries, under different political and economic regimes, and is not unique to the economic regime in place since India's independence in 1947.
The exploitation in recent years became so acute that the excess profits in a system with no legal way to accumulate turned to hording of currency notes. In fact the evidence on the ground is that exploitation has magnified the problem of the poor in this new global economy of call centers and backoffice operations for the world's businesses. The western businesses they serve may operate in capitalist economies, but the labor and conditions supporting those 24x7 call centers do not. According to one UN study, India is well on track to housing 90% of world's poor in 50 years.
A couple of years ago, the TV program, 60 minutes, did a story in an Indian call center. That segment would be very instructive for this discussion. One sound bite that was quite memorable was when they asked an American executive in India why he's there? He said something about how he does not have to deal with employees leaving in the middle of the day to care for a sick child. How about that, a quote that could've come directly from Das Kapital.
What a lovely comment! Best wishes on your studies, anonympus from India!
ReplyDelete