7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
1/36
Recalling Marcuse, Supporting Occupy Wall Street
Proposals for Classrooms and Community Discussions:
Labor, Power, Decommodification
Human Rights, and EducationA 90 minute panel, four presenters 15 minutes each, with 30 minutes comments and questions
Charles Reitz, Marcuse and the Workforce as Resource
Stephen Spartan, The Great Refusal:Decommodification
David Brodsky, Charter 2000:A Transitional Program for Labor
Patricia Brodsky, Reclaiming Public Higher Education for
the Public:A Case Study
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
2/36
Workforce:A Resource! With Programmatic Power!
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
3/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
4/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
5/36
We are recalling Marcuse's
strengths, most radical elements,undeterred
by our former criticisms
his theories of play and art.
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
6/36
Laboroccurs in social relationships:
Communal project of social beings
to meet human needs;promote human flourishing.
Marcuse 1933: Labor is ontologically significant
human mode of being in the world:
Artists, researchers, intellectuals do work.
As Kellner points out citing Marcuse:
the qualitative difference between the free and unfree society,is that of letting the realm of freedom appear within the realm of necessity
in labor and not only beyond labor.
-- The End of Utopia Marcuse, 1970
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
7/36
labor as the key activity
by which humanity exteriorizes and expresses itselfand also humanizes the world.
Marcuse re-thinks a critical philosophicalanalysis of labor and the human condition
and builds an alternativeVision for Labor!
Marcuses Labor Theory of Humanism
-- Humanist Theory ofLabor
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
8/36
What is the future for labor?What is labor's vision?
What makes critical theory critical?
What makes radical pedagogy radical?
Thesis #2:No critical theory or radical pedagogy without
labor theory of social action and social ownership!
Social Labor,
Social Wealth:
Only labor forceas a group
has legitimate
ownership
Just because
they stole it
doesn't mean
they own it!
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
9/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
10/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
11/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
12/36
Class War: Transferring Wealth Upwards, 1984-2007Prelude to 2008 crash
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
13/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
14/36
1991
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
15/36
2006
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
16/36
2007
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
17/36
2007
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
18/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
19/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
20/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
21/36
Though it is an often underestimated dimension
of his work, Marcuse early on addressed
the deep roots of the capitalist systems functioningand its crisis:
the commodificationof labor.
The production apparatus developed under capitalism,
propelled by wage laborwithin
the existing form of the division of labor,
perpetuates the existing forms of consciousness and needs. . . .
the revolutionary working class . . . alone has the real powerto abolish existing relations of production
and the entire apparatus that goes with it.
-- 33 Theses Marcuse, 1947 (emphasis added)
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
22/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
23/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
24/36
Manufacturing sector produced $2,274,367 million in value added.
Workforce income: $607,447 m. Income to capital: $1,666,920 m.
(36.4%) (63.6%)
Financial and Insurance sector (2005) produced $1,029 billion
Workforce Income (2007): $494.5 b. Remainder income to capital
(roughly 50%) estimated proportions (roughly 50%)http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/11statab/banking.pdf
(Discontinuing
publication
2013)
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
25/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
26/36
U.S. cut and sew apparel workers:
Added value produced $7,385 million
Workforce income: $3,075 m.
Income to capital: $4,310 m.
California garment factory
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
27/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
28/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
29/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
30/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
31/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
32/36
To create the subjective conditions for a free society
. . . [we must] . . . educate men and women who are
incapable of tolerating what is going on,
who have really learned what is going on,
has always been going on, and why,and who are educated to resist and
to fight for a new way of life.-- Brooklyn College Lecture, Marcuse 1968
Refusing
the Counterrevolution's
Intensifying Inequalities / Terror War
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
33/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
34/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
35/36
7/31/2019 Marcuse Conference 2011 Rev10
36/36
Recommended