Richard Wolff and Harriet Fraad on Family and the Capitalist Crisis

Posted by Venu K.M





 കഴിഞ്ഞ സഹസ്രാബ്ദത്തിലെ എഴുപതുകളില്‍ ഫ്രഞ്ച് ചിന്തകന്‍ ആയ ലൂയി ആല്ത്യൂസ്സര്‍,  ഭരണകൂടത്തിന്റെ   പ്രത്യയശാശ്ത്രം തുടര്‍ച്ചയായി പുനരുല്‍പ്പാടിപ്പിക്കുന്ന ചില സ്ഥാപനങ്ങലെക്കുരിച്ചു നടത്തിയ നിരീക്ഷണങ്ങള്‍ ശ്രധ്ധേയമായി ഇപ്പോഴും തുടരുന്നു. പ്രത്യക്ഷത്തില്‍ ബലപ്രയോഗം ഒന്നും നടത്താതെ ആളുകളെ അനുസരിപ്പിക്കുന്ന ഈ സ്ഥാപനങ്ങളെ, നേരിട്ട് മര്‍ദനം നടത്തുന്ന പോലീസ്,ജയില്‍, പട്ടാളം തുടങ്ങിയ ഭരണകൂട ഉപകരണങ്ങളില്‍ നിന്നും ആല്ത്യൂസ്സര്‍ വേര്തിരിച്ച്ച്ചുനിര്ത്തുകയും അവയെ 'പ്രത്യയശാസ്ത്ര ഭരണകൂട ഉപാധികള്‍' (Ideological State Apparatus ) എന്ന് വിളിക്കുകയും ചെയ്തു.
സാമ്പത്തിക അടിത്തരയായായി വര്‍ത്തിക്കുന്ന   മുതലാളിത്തത്തിന്റെ  വിദ്യാഭ്യാസ- കുടുംബ വ്യവസ്ഥകളുമായി ബന്ധപ്പെട്ട മൂല്യങ്ങള്‍,  ആ വ്യവസ്ഥയുടെ ദുരിതങ്ങള്‍ അനുഭവിക്കുന്ന സാധാരണ ജനങ്ങള്‍ പോലും എന്തുകൊണ്ട്   ജീവിതത്തിന്റെ സമസ്ത മേഖലകളിലും ഏറെക്കുറെ   സ്വീകാര്യം ആയി കരുതുന്നു?  ഇത്തരം ഒരു വൈരുദ്ധ്യത്തെ മനസ്സിലാക്കുന്നതിന്  ആള്ത്യൂസ്സരിന്റെ നിരീക്ഷണങ്ങള്‍ സഹായിക്കുന്നു.  അടിത്തറയും ഉപരിഘടനയും ( യഥാക്രമം സാമ്പത്തികവും, സാംസ്കാരികവും ആയ മണ്ഡലങ്ങള്‍) തമ്മില്‍ ഉള്ളതായി സങ്കല്പ്പിക്കപ്പെടുന്ന യാന്ത്രികമായ ബന്ധങ്ങളെ നമുക്ക് പൊളിച്ചു എഴുതേണ്ടിവരുന്നു.  രണ്ടാമത്തേത് ആദ്യത്തേതിന്റെ  ഉല്‍പ്പന്നം, നേര്‍ പ്രതിഫലനം  എന്നൊക്കെ കാണുന്നതിനു പകരം  അവ  രണ്ടും  തമ്മില്‍ ആപേക്ഷികമായി സ്വതന്ത്ര സ്വഭാവത്തോടെ സഹവര്ത്ത്തിക്കുന്നു എന്നത് , പ്രത്യയശാസ്ത്രരംഗത്തെ അധീശവര്‍ഗ്ഗ ആധിപത്യത്തെ കൂടുതല്‍ ഫലപ്രദം ആയി നേരിടാന്‍ പുരോഗമന പ്രസ്ഥാനങ്ങളെ ഒരു വേള സഹായിക്കുന്നു.


 

    

"The family powerfully influences the larger economy and society. We introduce (and apply) Louis Althusser's analysis of the contradictions between family and economy in the US today. On the one hand, families are an "ideological state apparatus" shaping people in ways as important for sustaining capitalism as the police, courts and the military are (Althusser's "repressive state apparatuses"). Yet families also challenge and undermine capitalism. We explore these family-economy tensions."

-Prof Richard Wolff
  


        




        

      




http://rdwolff.com/content/family-and-economy-part-five      

  


  

  

    

      
        
      
      


        
Professor Wolff's Podcasts


      


    


    
Economic and Personal Effects of the Crisis: Part Two
Monday, September 13, 2010 11:50 PM




    Beyond the direct effects of the economic crisis, its impact on government affects us indirectly. Unemployment, home foreclosures, and business cutbacks have reduced tax revenues collected by the federal, state and local governments in the US. They react by cutting government programs and borrowing more. Both actions add indirect costs (immediately and long into the future) to the direct social costs of the crisis considered in Part One of this series.These costs raise major questions about the economic system.


Media files
 Economy and Psychology - 8 - Economic and Personal Effects of the Crisis Pt 2.mp3 (MP3 Audio, 72.7 MB)
Economic and Personal Effects of the Crisis: Part One
Monday, August 30, 2010 12:44 PM




    An economic crisis so deep and long-lasting as this one has profound impacts on society now and into the future. Capitalism’s crises impose massive social costs. Unemployment, home foreclosures, job insecurity and falling wages and benefits change the economy, politics, and culture, but they also transform our personal lives. This podcast – the first of three - explores these interacting direct effects of today’s global economic meltdown


Media files
 Economy and Psychology - 7 - Economic and Personal Effects of the Crisis Pt 1.mp3 (MP3 Audio, 87.8 MB)
Family and Economy: Part Five
Monday, July 26, 2010 8:28 PM




    The family powerfully influences the larger economy and society. We introduce (and apply) Louis Althusser's analysis of the contradictions between family and economy in the US today. On the one hand, families are an "ideological state apparatus" shaping people in ways as important for sustaining capitalism as the police, courts and the military are (Althusser's "repressive state apparatuses"). Yet families also challenge and undermine capitalism. We explore these family-economy tensions.


Media files
 Economy and Psychology - 6 - Family and Economy Pt 5.mp3 (MP3 Audio, 75.7 MB)
Family and Economy:  Part Four
Friday, May 07, 2010 3:07 AM






A kind of labor goes largely unrecognized and unrewarded in our society. It is emotional labor: using our brains and muscles to support or improve the emotional well-being of ourselves and/or others. We examine its differences from and similarities to the labor that produces physical goods and services. Tragic social consequences flow from denying or minimizing the importance of emotional labor at home and on the job. We challenge the lack of attention to emotional labor and analyze why that lack exists. Respect for emotional labor is a profound political issue.






Media files
 Economy and Psychology - 5 - Family and Economy Pt 4.mp3 (MP3 Audio, 55.8 MB)
Family and Economy:  Part Three
Wednesday, March 24, 2010 11:41 PM


The current forms of organization of both households and workplaces in the US are very particular; they are neither natural, inevitable, or the only kinds of organization. Human beings have organized their family lives, for example, in social ways very differently from the small, isolated, nuclear family organization typical in the US. The same applies to workplaces. The capitalist organization that pits employers against employees is neither inevitable nor natural nor all that exists today. Here we explore the very different possible forms of organizing our lives at home and at work.


Media files
 Economy and Psychology - 4 - Family and Economy Pt 3.mp3 (MP3 Audio, 49.6 MB)
Family and Economy:  Part Two
Monday, March 01, 2010 4:13 AM


Today’s discussion focuses on class and class struggles in the two places where we live most of our lives: in the larger wage economy and inside the family economy. By class we mean the particular ways in which the work process (production) is organized wherever it occurs. Class issues concern who does the work, whether workers produce more - a "surplus" - than they themselves get to consume, who gets such surpluses and what they do with them. We explore how production and class organizations of production occur in both the wage economy and the household economy. We then begin to ask and answer questions about what happens to people's lives as a result of participating in two different class structures at work and at home.


Media files
 Economy and Psychology - 3 - Family and Economy Pt 2.mp3 (MP3 Audio, 54.0 MB)
Family and Economy:  Part One
Monday, February 15, 2010 4:35 AM


Introduction: This series of podcasts explores the two economic systems we all live in and with: the family or household economy and the larger wage economy. Each of them shapes and is shaped by the other. Their interaction influences us deeply but also in a contradictory way. Families both support yet also undermine the larger wage economy and vice versa. Today, that contradictory relationship provokes acute tensions and conflicts in both economic systems. The results are transforming everything from our world’s political struggles to the intimacies of our personal lives


Media files
 Economy and Psychology - 2 - Family and Economy Pt 1.mp3 (MP3 Audio, 61.3 MB)
US Working Class Passivity?
Sunday, January 31, 2010 1:29 AM


The US working classes have suffered extraordinary economic reverses for the last thirty years: stagnant real wages, increasing individual work loads, rising household debt levels before 2008 and then record levels of unemployment and home foreclosures since. Yet, unlike workers in other advanced industrial economies, they have shown remarkable passivity in terms of social or collective efforts to end these conditions. We begin a conversation about why this is the case, whether it will continue, and what its social and individual effects may be.


Media files
 Economy and Psychology - 1 - Introduction.mp3 (MP3 Audio, 45.2 MB)