This morning I read through the enormously long series of comments you folks have posted to my last blog post. Hidden in that series were several requests, from Jerry Fresia and others, that I make my Marx lectures available to all. Let me explain why I have decided not to do that.
There are now 37 people signed up for the study group, including large numbers of undergraduates, several graduate students, and 10 or 11 members of the faculty. It is going to be hard enough to get the undergraduates to speak up in the presence of the faculty. I plan to make a little joke about it, suggesting that I am so old that they all look the same age to me, but I am sure we all know that the norm would be for the undergraduates to sit quietly and wait to hear what the faculty ask or comment.
I am genuinely fearful that if I make available on the Internet lectures on Karl Marx in which the faces of undergraduates are clearly visible and in which some of them actually ask questions or make objections, it is entirely possible that they will be identified, attacked, have their futures compromised professionally, and so forth. In light of what has been happening in this country lately, I do not think my fears are irrational. My primary commitment is to those students and I simply will not take the chance that some of them may be targeted or harmed, either professionally or personally, by their participation in the study group.
42 comments:
Thanks for providing that explanation, not that you had to.
I just wish that technology had progressed so much that it was able to automatically 'scan' from your brain and extract the deep and profound understanding of Marx that you have and make it available to those who wanted to learn. Oh well... A quick question though: why did you decide to do a video lecture on 'Ideological Critique' by Mannheim and not on 'Capital'?
I did do a seven part YouTube series on the thought of Karl Marx. Check it out
That’s too bad because I was hoping to watch the study group, but I’m afraid your prudence is warranted. May we request a brief summary afterwards? I’m curious as to the attitude towards Marx among the undergraduates, for the following reason.
In a few discussions with my niece, who is exceptionally intelligent, who just turned 30, and who completed her doctorate (Econ.) at Harvard three years ago, I was mildly (but only mildly) shocked to discover that among her cohort Milton-Friedman-esque notions of free market fundamentalism—basically, that the “free market” is the natural order of things—is the norm. And for undergrad she went to the most bien of bien-pensant liberal institutions: Williams College. A fortiori, God only knows what the undergrads at a place like George Mason or Pepperdine think.
I submit that free market ideology has so saturated our culture that nearly everyone, everywhere, has come to accept it as the natural order of the universe, so I’m curious to know what a field report shows.
Maybe some regard free marketism as the unnatural order of the universe, John? By that I mean to suggest in a Karl Polanyi sort of way that even while free marketism is what a great many think is the way of the world reactions against it have been mounting—e.g., right-wing populism, Occupy, etc.
Your concerns about the students (particularly at Harvard, in light of the goings-on about the student groups supporting Palestine) are apt. I use a pseudonym when I post here for similar reasons.
@ John Pillette
It would not be at all the sort of "field report" you appear to want. For that, you would have to do some kind of randomized survey of undergraduates. In the case of this study group, the undergraduates are likely to come, I'd think, disproportionately if not exclusively from the Social Studies program, so it's not going to be a random cross-section.
W.r.t. your niece, it's not too surprising that someone who got a PhD in econ in a U.S. dept would have that basic mindset. I thought Chicago was supposed to be the bastion of Friedmanite economics and Harvard and others more neo-Keynesian. "Freshwater" versus "saltwater" and all that. But that may be a passé thing -- don't know.
Am I being naive: Can't you just have one camera, which focuses only on you and on none of the students?
What am I missing?
@ LFC, when I referenced her “cohort”, I meant her undergrad cohort at Williams, of which she was the only math major. Most of her pals were humanities majors (and anyway she’s a microeconomist).
In any event, the wide spread of free market ideology wouldn’t be so disturbing were it not for the fact that kids today seem inclined to apply the free-market model not just to human relationships in general but to the most intimate kind of human relationship; yes, at least two of these girls (NOT my niece, thank you very much) were financing their education by selling their bodies through “sugar daddy” websites. The attitude seems to be “what’s the big deal?” A mother I know told me that the same attitude courses through the hallways of Tam High, Mill Valley, California’s high school. She attributes it not just to Milton Friedman but to the near-total pornification of teen sexuality (thanks, internet!).
The fact that one of these Williams girls (a Fine Arts major, I believe) later had a complete nervous breakdown indicates that old squares like me, who think that somethings should be insulated from the market, may have a point.
John Pillette,
The Pinochet dictatorship privatized the pension system in Chile a bit over 40 years ago.
Each person had their own pension account administered by a private company and when you retired, they paid out what you had saved.
With time, democratic government, after the dictatorship ended in 1990, established certain minimum pensions to assure that retired people who for one reason or another, including earning low wages, didn't have much money in their private fund, had enough to survive, but the minimum pensions were paid out of general tax revenues, not out of a social security system.
The current Chilean president, Gabriel Boric, who might be described as "Bernie Sanders faced with political realities", has proposed that there be mixed system, partially private pension funds and partially a general social security fund, administered by the state, which will obviously benefit retired people who have not paid much into their private accounts.
However, polls show that the majority of Chileans want pension funds to be entirely a question of private funds without a general social security fund. That includes low income people who obviously would benefit from a general social security fund. People in general, except those of us who identify as being on the left, according to polls, want their pension money to be "theirs".
Does that mean that free market economics are the "natural order of things"?
No, but it does indicate that free market mentality touches a selfish note in most of us and once it's gotten into people's heads, it's hard to convince them of the virtues of solidarity.
There’s a distinction to be made between the “natural order of the UNIVERSE” and what we can call the “natural” order of the social world at its present stage of development. These two things tend to be conflated. Those natural scientists who fail to distinguish the brute natural world from the social world (e.g., Robert Sapolsky) don’t help, nor do the media.
At our present stage of development, capitalism (whether lightly or heavily regulated) is the only game in town, so if you are ignorant of history (which most people are) or lack imagination (ditto), or are a paid lackey, then yes it certainly looks like it is the natural order of things.
John, this seems relevant to your discomfort (I’d put the emphasis on “the marketisation of all areas of human life,” which may even have something to do with RPW’s discomfort—even casual images aren’t safe from exploitative misuse):
“Feminists have rightly pointed out that a resignification of the meaning of freedom or
choice has occurred in the neoliberal popular culture. This is because instead of the traditional humanist definition of unlimited, universalised and absolute freedom, neoliberal choice refers to one’s ability to choose maximum material gain and profit in order to construct one’s own self, and agency now means the ability to be active in this materialistic, profitable self-actualising project. Rather than viewing freedom as an ultimate and yet-to-be-reached goal, neoliberalism posits a new type of subject as already free and rational, a homo economicus who freely deliberates every action based on a rational cost–benefit calculation. Reflecting the marketisation of all areas of human life, including the construction of the human subject, this new form of governance dispenses with morality or ethics in the traditional sense, and places them squarely in the responsibility which the individual must shoulder for their own marketised choices.”
[Eva Chen, “Neoliberalism and popular women’s culture: Rethinking choice, freedom and agency,” European J. Cultural Stud. 16 (4) 2013.]
Wrt your other concern, re what is now socially natural, I still find it problematic that in terming capitalism "the only game in town" you don't seem to wish to acknowledge that it has aroused and continues to arouse opposition, though not necessarily of a sort we might appreciate. E.g., Trumpism is a very mixed bag, but shouldn't we attend to the ever more pundit-advertised notion that his Republican Party is an increasingly working class party?
At Harvard I believe the dominant figure in economics is Mankiw. A colleague of mine in our PPE programme did a survey of economics texts and found that Mankiw's Introduction to Economics was the most neo-liberal text on the market.
Large numbers of undergraduates? A mistake somewhere, I think - 37 people have signed up and 11 are faculty.
If the Republicans are a “working-class party”, then a feedlot is a “bovine R&R facility”. The R’s are a party for the economic elite, with a (thus far, surprisingly effective) trompe l’oeil curtain hanging out front. I don’t see the dupes who’ve signed up to this programme (the Reagan Dems, if you like) as being actually “opposed” to capitalism—or to much of anything, for that matter. How can they be, when they are brainwashed by Fox News and the rest of the culture industry?
As for “Occupy”, since it’s come up a few times—and I know this is going to cause people to “lose their shit*—but a bunch of downwardly-mobile middle-class college kids jerking themselves off in a public-private space for a few weeks was never going to serve as the womb of socialism. But I’ll give you that it is a haunting spectre of a sort, that of your barista who wants to bend you ear before you’ve had your morning coffee. (Now bring it, haters!)
W/r/t feminism, I recall reading an interesting piece in the New Yorker about 5 years ago about the porn industry, wherein she noticed how this part of the culture industry (mis?) employs all sorts of vulgar girl-boss feminist guff about “empowerment”, “owning your sexuality”, and so on.
It will come as no surprise that I’m done with this line of discussion, John. But I have to say I’m a bit surprised by the fact that you don’t seem at all interested in why a significantly large group of people respond to all the things you rightfully excoriate. I’m also surprised by your rather venomous views on Occupy—they certainly don’t match with what I encountered. Ditto for your depiction of feminism. I'm truly disappointed. G’by.
some semi-relevant goings-on at Harvard
On further reflection, “anonymous” (if that really IS your name), maybe I have been a bit unfair. As noted by JJ Rousseau and others, wanking is a harmless, fun, and inexpensive way to satisfy a core human need. I know you’re out there, mes freres, mes soers, mes lecteurs hypocrites, my fellow self-abusers!
What I should have said was that they (and the press) were wanking *each other* off, which is a very different thing. My apologies. As for my alleged excoriation of feminism, read closely and you will learn that I was discussing “vulgar girl-boss feminist guff”—that is, what appears to be feminist, but is in fact not …
Kind of like the way “occupy” was not in fact actually occupying anything. Zucchini Park was not a 1937 General Motors assembly line—it’s not even a real PARK, as any New Yorker can tell you. It’s what’s called a private-public space where, in exchange for tax credits, office drones are suffered by landlords to scarf their midday sandwiches.
@ John Pillette
I really think you should leave Rousseau out of this -- where by "this" I mean the context in which you invoke him, above.
@ DDA
Thanks for that link.
@ Anonymous 5:44 p.m.
No one made any reference to "large numbers" of undergraduates, so I don't know what you're responding to.
Further to DDA's link:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/22/johnson-frank-levitsky-penslar-task-force/
Apropos of nothing...
From a 2017 interview of Theda Skocpol:
"Well, you know, one of the first things that happened when I got to Harvard was that I found out that Barrington Moore, who I thought was a young radical (I had read Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy), well, I found out that he was a crotchety, 18th-century-style, fairly old-fashioned authoritarian in the classroom. But he held a competition to get into his seminar. It was a seminar on theory. So the first weekend in graduate school at Harvard, you had to write an essay to get into his seminar! And it was an essay of "What are the testable propositions in the Communist Manifesto and how would you go about testing them?" (Marxism as in vogue at that point.)
I wrote my essay; I got in. He ran the thing with what he called "the Socratic totalitarian method," which is he would throw out a question about these readings, which were almost impossible to do. (We had to read Althusser in French, for example [laughs]. He doesn't make sense in English, and in French it's even worse, if it's your second language.) So, he would go around the table until somebody said what he wanted. And then he would accept that answer. But, you know, I came back for more. After that first year, I applied for the seminar that was basically a Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy-type seminar and I loved that. And that's where I learned to do the kinds of things that led to my thesis and book on revolutions."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUZrOV85gk0
full transcript here
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-polisci-030816-105449
LFC - it’s in the actual main post for crying aloud…
I appreciate that you are concerned for your students, but think perhaps you are missing the way college students relate to technology and to the controversialness of philosophy. Young people tend to post all sorts of things, much of which would be much more embarassing or controversial than whatever they might ask or comment about about capitalism or marx. The issues students more reflexively avoid these days are much more concrete positions around politics and social norms that challenge or offend current PC social norms, not economics or marxist views. It would be a shame not to be able to learn from these lectures
Anonymous @ 1:04 p.m.
You're right. My mistake.
Eric,
Yes, that is apropos of nothing. (However, it's an interesting interview. I've stumbled across it before.)
Someone who graduated from the UMASS econ dep't. in the 1970' and on would would be highly unlikely to think that the 'free' market is 'natural.' One more reason that perhaps the Harvard experience ain't what it's cracked up to be.
Dear Professor Wolff,
I have followed up on your reference to your youtube lectures and am going through them now.
Thank you so much for the clear and engaging presentation.
Even if, and that is by no means true, their sole value was the exploration of the historical connections between old and current times, they would be worth listening to.
They go beyond that, you do not show a thumbnail sketch of important ideas, but a solid description of their genesis, evolution and true meaning.
Thank you for being a one man antidote to simplistic BS.
Fare well (if shortly as stoics would say).
Regards,
Laurent from Canada.
Laurent, you have blown your cover of anonymity!
Regards,
David from Canada
Well, for what it is worth, I don't agree. Anyway, why not have some interested party record your lecture, skip over or erase anything having to do with questions or vulnerable students, and publish the transcript as a book, PDF or whatever, unless as you seem to be suggesting these lectures will be pretty much the same as your tutorial on Marx.
Interesting to me is your implicit critique of the US as a quasi-police state. At the nation's premier university students who ask questions about an academic treatment of Marx risk bodily harm and or worse (for those who would never risk one's almighty career), might just risk their career. Looks like the fate of good students at Harvard is not much different than union organizers at Amazon. Sigh, there was, wasn't there, an SDS not so long ago?
I used to travel from W.Mass to NYC to watch the Yankees play in Yankee Stadium back when. My idol was "the Mic." I was lucky enough to see him hit his tape measure shots. Thrilling. So much so that I would do all that traveling as often as was possible just for the odd chance that I might just see the phenomenon again. Meh! Okay, I'll re-read the tutorial.
I second Jerry Fresia’s motion. I believe that the new transcription programs can now do this sort of thing reliably, in real time, and for next to nothing. Redaction would be a simple matter of removing comments from (or identification of) whoever is scared of speaking up.
I’ll acknowledge that I’m also in agreement with his sentiments as to the core issue; can’t they just put on their big boy (and girl) pants? But maybe I’m simply old “AF” as the kids say. O mores! O tempora!
My expert opinion (as someone who’s done a few Title IX cases) is that the student body and the administrative caste have both lost their FN minds and are busy making college a miserable experience for everybody. But then again I didn’t go to school anyplace fancy, so whadda I know?
@ John Pillette
You went to St. John's College, which actually is quite "fancy."
Ha ha! Ha Ha! Ha ha! SJC’s (informal) motto was “Great Books, No Gymnasium” so not fancy in the usual sense, but yes, we were all natural aristocrats. Or at least my pals and I were.
But the place was a real throwback even then. Prompted by Jerry Fresia’s comment regarding snow-flakery, I tried to count the number of administrators and came up with … two! There was the Registrar, and a guy I’m not sure what he did.
The Dean and the President were Tutors and Dean-ed and President-ed part-time. Which, come to think of it, explains why we had no gymnasium. But at least we were allowed to say and do whatever—run wild in the sagebrush, you name it. The dead hand of school bureaucracy was mostly felt when it told me to slow down on my motorcycle (an RD400, for those who care about such things).
I'm told that in the early 2000's they tried to take the place upmarket and cracked down on the fun. The extra administrative cost nearly drove it out of business.
Sigh, those were the days … I suppose it was closer in spirit to the middle ages, when you could shank someone in a bar fight, a la Francois Villon, and not get expelled, maybe just rusticated for a term!
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would it not be possible to upload the lectures as a pure audio file? failing that, perhaps you could make an automated transcript.
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