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THE RED CRITIQUE |
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Haven't you realized that workers have it pretty good today?
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In
early May of this year, Cary Nelson, the author of Manifesto of a
Tenured Radical and one of the most vocal faculty advocates of
graduate student unionization in the United States, came to the University
of Washington in Seattle to deliver a lecture ("The Future of the
University, Pt. 2") and participate in informal seminars and
colloquia with students and faculty. This invitation is itself of
significance since Nelson's writings such as Manifesto of a Tenured
Radical (New York University Press, 1997) and Academic Keywords: A
Devil's Dictionary of Higher Education (Routledge, 1999) have carved
out a middle-ground space that is reworking class analysis as a space of
negotiation rather than of social transformation—negotiation over the
effects of "doing class" within capitalism. Much of the space
and analytical energies once devoted to theorizations of pedagogy and its
place in the project of social justice and social transformation are now
absorbed by the kinds of analytical work and local negotiations that
Nelson engages in, all of which center on unionization as the solution to
the crisis of globalization and the crisis of capitalism (see the on-line
journal Workplace; as well as Chalk Lines: The Politics of Work
in the Managed University, ed. R. Martin, Duke UP, 1998). The theory
of class that is constructed in these writings is a theory in which one
class has no necessary relationship to the other class, no necessary
connection to property relations (that is, to whether or not one owns the
means of production and, therefore, has command over the labor of others),
or to the way that labor is deployed, alienated and exploited in
capitalist social relations of production. Class, following this
understanding, is essentially an employment category grounded in the
notion of what Marx called "real wages" as opposed to
"relative wages" (Wage-Labor 35). While the real wage, as
Marx explains, is a measure of wages as an index of consumption ("the
price of labour-power in relation to the price of other commodities"
35) relative wages on the contrary express the wage as a function of
extracted surplus-value: "the share of immediate labour in the value
newly created by it, in relation to the share of it which falls to
accumulated labour, to capital" (35). In the culturalist conception
of class supported by Nelson, "wages" are constructed solely as
an index of consumption (that is, in terms of their relationship to
articles of consumption) but the relationship of wages to exploitation
(the private appropriation of surplus-labor) is completely concealed. As a
result, class is seen as a "class effect" that is created
locally, regulated locally and resisted locally: it is fabricated as an
effect of the terms of the employment market in which one finds oneself at
a given moment. Not only is the origin of wages and class in surplus-value
conveniently erased but in such a theory the lines of class are redrawn so
that they point not towards struggle for a classless society but to a
Foucauldean multiplicity of short-term, low-impact reforms and
negotiations within the existing society of profit. Nelson's
lecture was attended by a large contingent of campus AAUP supporters,
English faculty and grad students, as well as some state employees on
campus (various state employees at the time of his lecture were engaged in
a series of rolling strikes throughout Washington state). The
"conversation" on the following day was mainly attended by
University of Washington T.A. union organizers, as well as two or three
English department faculty members, including Leroy Searle (known for his
work as an anthologizer of critical theory). Through the intimate rhetoric
of their questions and their intimate body language during and after the
"conversation" with Nelson each faculty member present made a
point of making it known to all that they were "good friends" of
"Cary's," meaning that in practical terms the audience of this
"conversation" was the result not so much of the creation of a
safe space manufactured for graduate students and TA union organizers as
suggested by the organizers—but an intellectually and politically
"safe space" manufactured for the benefit of Nelson himself. In
this manufactured safe space (that was more a lovefest than an occasion
for some serious discussions on labor in the knowledge institutions of
capitalism) it would be assured that only those faculty who would have
affirmative and nonconfrontational comments for "Cary" would be
taking part in the conversation. The
centerpiece of Nelsons' visit, his lecture open to the public, lasted only
30 minutes (which itself raises issues about the use of the space of
lecture as an occasion for a form of intellectual "outsourcing":
the re-commodification of commonsensical knowledges already available to
all). In keeping with his usual mode of writing, Nelsons' lecture was part
autobiography, part moral outrage against the encroachment of corporations
into education and part grass-root "lobbying" for the virtues of
unionizing, or what he tellingly called in his lecture, in a reference to
his work with the AAUP, the "loyal opposition" against corporate
forces within the university. The introductory theme of the lecture was
the danger now facing large, state, research-one universities such as the
University of Washington and the State University of New York at Buffalo,
whose "status" as sites of research is now being threatened with
the rise of the "corporate model" of disciplinarity,
subjectivity, careerism, etc. This particular thematization of class was
telling about the ways in which the so-called "bread and butter"
issues of department downsizing, shrinking job market and underpaying of
the part-time workforce that are at the center of Nelson's stress on the
"importance of class" have themselves become a kind of contained
and organized way of articulating underlying career anxieties—career
anxieties over the encroaching "loss of status" of research-one
universities. Of course what is going on in research-one "top
tier" universities cannot be addressed outside what is similarly
occurring in non-research "lower tier" universities in the U.S.
(like CUNY for example). What these comments point to is the way in which
"talking class" for the post-al left translates into developing
effective and pragmatic strategies for immunizing themselves from its
effects in their daily lives, without transforming the conditions of life
for the majority, inside and outside the academy. Perhaps
the most significant moment of the talk was a moment that was clearly
meant to be publicly "self-critical" and yet at the same time
was decidedly "confessional" in its articulation (effectively
deploying a mode of "intimate criticism" to filter out the
historical and the material conditions of knowledge and of ignorance out
of the moment of self-critique). It was a moment in which Nelson obliquely
referenced his own editorial and intellectual effort—in volumes such as Marxism
and the Interpretation of Culture—to "update" Marxism into
a form of post-al "marxism": a code word for moving Marxism out
of the space of the materiality of labor ("economics") into the
matter-ism of language/media/ideology ("culture"). In an
intimate almost apologetic tone that set it off from larger upbeat thrust
of the talk, Nelson explained that while "we attempted to establish a
more 'reflective marxism'" in the very same process he added that
"we participated in the further proletarianization of the academic
workforce." This statement was significant at various intellectual
and political levels. It was not only about the closest that Nelson's
lecture came to addressing even the most basic issues of the status and
role of theory in revolutionary social change (an inquiry that was itself
restricted by Nelson's pragmatic assumption that "we tried theory and
look what happened"). It is also telling evidence of the bankruptcy
of the post-marxist project of "radical democracy," one that is
still the recurring subject of the work of writers from Gayatri Spivak to
Jacques Derrida to Slavoj Zizek to Stanley Aronowitz to Lawrence Grossberg
to J.K. Gibson-Graham.... It is telling that even its most aggressive
defenders have abandoned it not only as irrelevant but as recognizably
damaging to the project of social justice and the abolition of class. Nelson's
newest "solution" however—academic unionization—is not much
different in terms of its effects than the post-marxist "radical
democracy" whose time, according to him, has passed (more because it
has become unprofitable than anything else). Trade unionism has always
basically taught two lessons for workers. When the tide of capitalism has
gone to the right, trade unionists have followed suit and put the emphasis
on class mobility as a means of resolving the conflicts of capital
and wage-labor (something Pat Buchanan and others who give voice to the
enduring truth of the "American Dream," for instance, always
foreground when they talk about the interests of the U.S. workforce); when
the tide of capitalism has gone to the left the lesson of trade unionism
has always been one of fostering class pride
("solidarity"). It was this "class pride"
("solidarity") that was the concluding note of Nelson's talk.
Solidarity without theory however—theory of social change, theory of
history, theory of social justice, theory of praxis—is simply a
sentimentalized form of volitional action-ism. "Solidarity" in
the rhetoric of Nelson is a term used to sentimentally blur the lines
between reformist practices which lessen the degree of disempowerment of
workers—therefore giving a renewed legitimacy to the system as a
whole—and those revolutionary practices and modes of struggle which
empower workers as a whole by working to dis-alienate them from their
labor through the historical expropriation of the expropriators on a
global scale. Before
his arrival at the University of Washington Nelson had solicited questions
from graduate students on campus. I forwarded him the following
non-sentimentalist question: On
one hand, Professor Nelson refers to himself and his work as
"radical" and has positioned himself on the left of the
corporate university and (supposedly) the social forces of which the
university is an effect. On the other hand, what he says from this
"left" position is aimed at strictly reforming and maintaining
the existing social structures. It seems to me that this is the kind of
radicalism that is extremely useful to the ruling groups: it legitimates
their interests with a left rhetoric and therefore gives them a
universality that any ruling ideology needs in order to become part of
commonsense. Professor Nelson has made not only a career but has achieved
celebrity-hood on the U.S. left by saying that the one and only way to
change the situation of academic workers is unionization. But not once has
he actually addressed this question: doesn't unionization accept the
limits that capital sets on labor and simply seeks a bigger piece of the
pie? How is this going to put an end to capitalism, wage labor and the
capitalist university which is really not a place of knowledge but a
training camp for corporations? How could a radical not fight for
overthrowing wage-labor - inside and outside the classroom? If revolution
against capitalism is too unrealistic then what is radical about his
radicality? He is simply doing realpolitik like any other politician. Not
only did Nelson not respond to the question—a rather straightforward and
hardly controversial one—but he did not seem to grasp the terms of the
question itself. The point of soliciting questions, assumedly was to
address them in a public way in the space of the lecture where all could
participate collectively. Since Nelson did not address the question I had
forwarded him during the course of his lecture, I reposed it to him in the
question and answer session afterwards, restating the main points that
unionization (which he obviously has always advocated) has always been a
reformist project. I unpacked the question further by stating that
unionization has always been a reformist project aimed at lessening
certain class privileges yet it has never concerned itself in the
least, as the revolutionary Marxist project has, with the elimination of class
differences themselves. Since he had not responded to the question
posed to him in email, as a pedagogical gesture I asked him in the most
straightforward terms possible to outline some of the theoretical and/or
political differences between the project of reform and the project of
revolution—the differences between his project and between the
revolutionary Marxist critique of capitalism from which he so off-handedly
and aggressively distances himself—as in Academic Keywords. He
responded by simply reiterating the terms of the question itself (as it
turned out in order to violently purge all residue of
"revolution" from the question and the answer) and went on to
offer a glossary definition of "reformism," going on to justify
not only the significance but the urgency of "pragmatic"
solutions as the most appropriate response to the "life and
death" circumstances of those living in the third world. He then went
on to posit trade unionism as the only real alternative in the first world
where revolutionary conditions "are not in place." As he
elaborated on the "virtues" of reformism he added that it was
the most effective way of dealing with the "excesses" of the
system. As a committed empiricist Nelson seemed almost obsessive in his
answer, as in his talk as a whole, about the excess-iveness and
singularity of his own experience proudly declaring that "I am a
reformist." He did not seem to even hear my question to him; I was
not asking about his identity, his self-experience or his beliefs but
about his theoretical position and the implications of that position for
revolutionary change of capitalism today. As he concluded his glossing of
reformism, the moderator ended the question and answer session with the
statement of relief that "this seems a good place to end."
Indeed! Nelson's passing reference to the "excesses" of the
system was a telling one: by taking the position of one who fights the
"excesses" of capitalism one has already accepted the view that
capitalism is itself a fundamentally "fair" system with a few
faults here and again—not a fundamentally exploitative system. At
the "Conversation with Cary Nelson" the next day I was one of
the first persons to arrive. Nelson obviously had some awareness of the
evasiveness of his response the previous day and immediately came up to me
to make small talk (more it seemed to manage his own anxieties rather than
to engage with or elaborate further on any response to the question I had
posed). He asked if "I was still revolutionary" and I responded
non-cynically "Of course." At one level Nelsons' sidebar comment
is small talk; at another it is the statement of a deeply cynical
politics, a politics that has adapted itself to the flexible
epistemologies and strategic thinking of the left today and that can only
read the other as an inflexible subject who is beyond persuasion. Nelson
went on to raise the issue of one of his previous talks and how his
reception at the University of Washington was unlike some previous
receptions that were not so "friendly." At "Syracuse for
instance" he explained his talk was "boycotted" by
"Morton and Zavarzadeh," two revolutionary Marxist pedagogues,
on the grounds that he was a "false radical" who was not
interested in "organizing workers for the overthrow of the
state." He reiterated his claim from Academic Keywords that
"Zavarzadeh" speaks from a "comfortable position of tenure
and a comfortable salary" and did not himself seem amenable to taking
a "salary cut" etc. (Again, these are the same Marxists he
writes about in Academic Keywords—his almost obsessive-compulsive
infatuation with what they think, do and say is telling about the way in
which their "unpractical" interventions in fact expose the
anxious limits of the kind of the reformism and recycled leftism and trade
unionism he practices). I responded that I did not see why he should be so
surprised at being dismissed "in Syracuse" as a reformer of
capitalism since that was exactly how he had represented himself to me and
to the audience—with pride—the previous night. I added that what he
was suggesting, in his "personal" comments about
"Zavarzadeh" was that only those who are "exploited"
(in fact only the most deeply impoverished of all) have a right to speak
out about "exploitation," which amounted to the argument that
anyone with an interest in social justice should actively seek to
impoverish themselves as much as possible. I went on to explain that he
was not only proposing a mechanical relationship between practices and
ideas but fetishizing poverty itself. How did he account for something so
simple as the fact that the most exploited workers in the U.S. will vote
Republican (something that can only be theorized in terms of ideology and
lack of class consciousness)? Nelson at the exact point in our
"conversation" when his experience was no longer in the
spotlight—that is, beyond critique—seemed to lose interest and
proceeded to meander away conversationally... intellectually...
physically... During
the question and answer session following Nelson's opening comments of the
"conversation" I re-asked my question for a third time. I
explained that I had emailed the question to him and he had not responded
in his talk; I had asked it in the lecture the previous day and he again
had not answered it. Instead he had given what I described as a
"canned response"—"a glossary definition of
reformism." Now I was going to ask it a third time and this time I
would put it in the context of pedagogy so that he could now engage with
it at that level. During his talk he had indicated that while he is
training critical thinkers who can be "critical" about
capitalism, he made a point to say that he is not "training
revolutionaries" in his classroom. Citing this, I pointed out that he
obviously had an idea of what it entailed to "train
revolutionaries" in the classroom and could he indicate what that
entailed exactly and on the basis of that explanation why he did not find
it productive to "train revolutionaries"? Here was someone who
did not even seem (as it was becoming clearer and clearer) to be able to
explain or even gesture towards what it was that he was so fervently
opposing himself to; he only seemed to have a general intuition that it
was academically profitable to do so... This is not surprising given the
way in which red theory has become the object of repeated erasure—the
sign of pedagogical fraudulence and non-knowledge—in the bourgeois
knowledge industries. Yet could one ask for a more lucid instance of the
workings of ideology-as-false consciousness? Nelson basically reiterated
the cliché—the apotheosis of false consciousness, which is always a
reification of knowledge and its enabling material conditions—that the
conditions of revolution here "do not exist"; therefore what he
does is to teach, publish and "recover" the writings of the
communist poets of the thirties. Even if we accept at face-value what he
referred to as "revolutionary writing" I asked him, what was the
"difference" between those conditions and ours that allowed such
a writing to emerge in that time and that prevents it from emerging in
ours I asked? What made it the "then" moment "ripe for
revolution" and what makes the moment of "now" a time for
putting "revolution" to the side? Are you saying, I asked, that
we need to wait for another depression before it becomes possible to talk
of building a revolutionary movement against capital? I added that even if
he was "giving voice," to use his terms, to revolutionary
writings of the thirties, in his current writings he was in the same
gesture "taking that voice away." Nelson did not seem able to
provide an answer for any of these questions, nor did he even seem to be
able to engage with them. More to the point, he was reluctant to provide
the answer for a "good" reason. The reason is that Nelson's
position embraces the "theory" of "depression" of the
bosses—the theory of depression which states that as long as profits are
not immediately and directly threatened there is no such thing as
"depression" and that there is consequently no objective
existence to class. "Class" only exists in moments of perceived
"crisis"—again at moment of "excesses" of the system
and not as a precondition of the system itself. Here is someone ostensibly
committed to the view, as articulated in his writings, that academic
part-time and graduate student labor are both exploited today more than
ever as evidenced by depressed wages, depressed working conditions,
depressed benefits. Yet when he is pressed about the historical conditions
for developing a revolutionary movement of wage-labor against capital,
Nelson is only able to reply in effect: "Haven't you realized that
workers have it pretty good today? So good, in fact—so much 'better'
than they had it in the depression—that the 'conditions' for a
revolutionary movement 'do not exist' today!" This
"slippage," far from being a lapse in logic, is a symptom of a
politics, a politics that, as it became lucidly clear in both Nelson's
planned lecture and his improvised conversation-al comments, is such a
cynical politics that it allows its adherents to pretty much reverse their
position whenever it suits the locality of the analytical and political
context. Nelsons' conversations were post-al performances in the
non-objectivity of our knowledge, hence the ease and frequency with which
he reversed his views when one of them ran into even the least bit of
opposition. For instance in defending unionization against the charge of
"uncollegiality" in his lecture the previous evening Nelson
argued the fallacy of this claim, concluding that, in his words,
"there is no evidence that power relations on campus are changed
through unionization." Nelson made this statement without a hint of
awareness of the contradictions involved in it. This is someone who has
made a career—in fact has achieved celebrityhood as indicated
above—through positing unionization as the one and only road to worker
empowerment. Yet if there is "no evidence" that any worker
derives power from such changes why should anyone continue to advocate the
trade-unionist "solution"? The reason that Nelson practices
trade unionism and reformism in his pedagogy is not that they are the most
"effective" and "strategic" at blunting the effects of
capitalism, but because they are the most "effective' and
"strategic" at forestalling more radical interventions in the
existing social relations and the antagonism between wage-labor and
capital. Nelson's economistic treatment of class, to borrow Lenin's term,
has led him and the reformist left he writes for to a theory of class that
takes its theoretical coordinates more from Heidegger than anyone else.
This is the view of class as "thrown-ness"—a view that treats
class as a concrete "effect" without a "cause" in the
expropriation of the "labor" of the other—and that therefore
cuts it off from any necessary relationship to the material relations of
property, labor, and surplus-labor that make class class to begin with.
Such a theory is of great utility to the owners since the elimination of
"causes" of class (which originates in the exploitation and
expropriation of the surplus-labor of the other) also eliminates the need
for a revolutionary "solution" to class. Struggle against the
owners of the means of production and the founding of a movement founded
on the goal of expropriation of the expropriators is replaced with the
semiotic "solution," namely the reformist management and
minimalization of "class effects" through local policy
adjustments. Of course, one does not need to look at the writings of trade
unionists or labor activists to see the celebration and reification of
this ruling class epistemology of the "thrown" and the
"rootless" (which are ultimately allegories of the impossibility
of historical knowledge of the social and its objective material
contradictions). This same epistemological ruse runs through the Kantian
"thing-in-itself" to post-marxist clichés about "overdetermination"
(the impossibility of relating "effects" to any certain
"cause" since "cause" is ultimately a search for
"origins") to the Zizekian "real" (as an
unsymbolizable trauma that is in excess of our knowledge but nonetheless
at the source of it). It is this "thrown" logic through which
politics is erased by epistemology and through which the possibility of
objective knowledge of class is replaced by subjective knowledge of class,
through which knowledge of "structures" is replaced by
annotations of events, experiences, effects... This denial of material
objectivity of the conditions of our knowledge is the dogma that has made
this reformist left—past and present—the most reliable ally of
capitalism then and now. The
struggle that confronts workers under capitalism today—from sex-workers
to graduate students to airline pilots—is not a trade unionist struggle
for "equity," which is a code word under capitalism for equity
and fairness in the terms of sale of one's labor-power to capitalism. The
struggle that confronts workers today is not one for equity but for
equality: equality of working conditions for all. Such equality is
not possible under capitalism. It can only come about through the
construction of a society in which people are not forced to sell their
labor-power; in which the few are not enabled to profit and live from the
labor of the many; a society constructed on the basis of "need"
instead of "profit"; a society guided by the revolutionary
principle: "From each according to his ability, to each according to
his needs." NOTES 1
Mas'ud Zavarzadeh is the author of "The Dead Center" (The
Alternative Orange: http://www.geocities.com/redtheory/AO/AOVol5-2.html).
The essay is a critique of Nelson's labor theory of academic work. 2
In a forthcoming essay on the U.S. left, Mas'ud Zavarzadeh writes: This
[volunteeristic-distributionist] absurdity is not Rorty's invention. Nor
is his diagnosis [of the problems of social security] caused by some
personal oversight or intellectual shortcoming. Rather, it is the effect
of his class position, which is not determined by his personal ideas and
lifestyle choices (no matter how passionate he might be about his
independent thinking and autonomy). His choices and his ideas are
determined by his class position. More
generally, the idea that the problem of capitalism is a
"distribution" problem—that can be solved by volunteeristic
measures such as philanthropy—and not a "production"
matter—that requires revolutionary actions to put an end to wage
labor—is the very core of the activism of tears and has its origin in
the theocratic practices of tithes. Tears for the oppressed. This
affective activism of tears has been made popular by the seditiously
seductive “tears” writings of Derrida, Bataille, Blanchot, Jabes,
Kierkegaard, Hegel, Heidegger, Ricoeur, Gadamer, Tillich, Barth, Altizer,
Barthes, Cixous, and Levinas and formulated in such books as Mark Taylor's
Tears and John Caputo's The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion
Without Religion. Tears left shares its belief in social change through
philanthropy (“tears”) with the right-wing projects of social
adjustment by means of faith-based charity. They both have their roots in
religion—whose main purpose is the management of class antagonism on
behalf of the ruling class. The
tears left represents itself as opposed to capitalism. But, it opposes it
with measures that leave wage labor intact and thus, in actuality,
legitimate the rule of capital. For instance, tears left supports
institutions such as "trade unionism," which, in the guise of
left activism, is complicit with capital against labor. Trade unionism is
the institutionalization of wage labor by the tears left. Like religion,
trade unionism is an agency of capital for bringing about class détente:
a relaxation of the antagonism between labor and capital so the
accumulation of profit can go on without serious disruptions. The tears
left serves to reduce the excesses of capital (such as moderating overt
exploitation—by establishing the minimum wage—or mitigating racism,
homophobia, sexism, violence to the environment...) and thus actually
helps to strengthen capitalism through reforms. Trade unionism is not
against capitalism. It simply wants a bigger piece of the pie: it wants to
share in more of the profits from the exploited surplus labor of workers.
It has no interest in terminating wage labor and ending exploitation. I
have raised some of these issues in relation to the activities and
writings of Cary Nelson—who regards inequalities in academic labor
practices to not be consequences of the system of wage labor and thus
easily solved by the philanthropic distributionist acts of "yuppies
with heart” (The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 19, 1997, A-10)—in
my essay, "The Dead Center." His response was not to engage the
issues theoretically or politically but rather to attack me personally.
Discrediting me as a person, he seems to think, will discredit the
critique of his complicity with capitalism. In
his best-seller Academic Keywords, he wrote that I was a
"pseudo"—a fraud, a hypocrite and an imposter—because, while
I was advocating what I was advocating, I was not willing to take a cut in
my salary. I was not a “yuppie with a heart”: I had no tears. I
put aside the conceptual naiveté that underlies his understanding of the
world-historical system of wage labor and also bracket the fact my salary
is so small that it cannot stand any cut. My salary is so little (less
than half of what a faculty of my rank—full professor—at Syracuse
University makes and perhaps one third of Nelson's own salary from the
endowed chair he has at the University of Illinois) because of my
relentless critique of the administration at Syracuse University and
resistance to its corporate practices. I receive a ridiculously small
salary in spite of the fact that I have published 7-8 books (and written
several more that are blacklisted by the very presses that publish and
publicize Nelson’s books) and also have written maybe over 100 essays
and articles; have a record of high rigor and pedagogical innovation in my
teaching, and have been highly active in intellectual matters in my
department. Even though I work in a department in which it is not unusual
for its members to receive annual increases of about $7,000.000 (seven
thousand dollars) from the Dean, my "activities" have earned me,
in the last several years, an annual increase of $1.00 (one dollar) from
the Dean. (The $1.00 is, of course, a "message" because he could
easily just have given me zero dollars). There
is, in short, not much in my salary to be cut. But Nelson wants it cut
anyway because his demand proves the authenticity of his “tears” and
is a good applause line in his lecture tours. He does not seem to realize
that it also reveals his political vacuousness since social inequality is
created at the point of production and, therefore, cannot be changed by
therapeutic and distributionist alms, donations and benefaction. But what
he lacks by way of rigorous political analysis of the social issues,
Nelson makes up by his demagogy of tears. Nelson's
practices of tears are protective of capitalism because they are based on
changing the behavior of individuals (“yuppies with heart”) and not on
the structural transformation of capitalism into socialism. His acts of
legitimizing capital are doubly valuable in capitalist propaganda because
they are wrapped up in a left rhetoric. They provide capitalist publicists
in the academy, publishing houses, media and government with the
opportunity to claim a universal rightfulness for capital because such
left support (in the guise of criticism) allows the clerks of capital to
claim that its support is universal: right, left, center. Capitalism in
this narrative is not a historical mode of production: it is a universal
way of life. Nelson’s
main strategies of tears—substituting affect and empathy for a
historical materialist grasping of wage labor—have made him the
establishment’s favorite “radical.” His books are best-sellers; he
has an endowed chair, and he is now an academic celebrity on lecture
tours. His spontaneism (“tears”) has the extra benefit for capital of
marginalizing any rigorous theoretical analysis of capitalism—theory is
the other of tears. But as Lenin writes in his own critique of spontaneity
(tears activism): “Without revolutionary theory there can be no
revolutionary movement" (What is to be Done?). After
reading Nelson's "analysis" in his Academic Keywords, Robert
Wilkie wrote me the note that I reproduce here because it teases out from
Nelson's text the other side of his class politics: "It
is telling that Nelson—who claims to write in the name of
"unionization" and "de-corporatizing" the
university—speaks in the language of the corporate consultant. Like
CEO-for-hire "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap, when he calls for
"re-distribution," he means "cutting salaries," and
when he declares it is time to "come together," he means it is
time for "eliminating troublemakers" who threaten the profits of
his corporate bosses. He is nothing but a comprador intellectual who
trades on the lives of university employees in order to advance the
interests of transnational capital."
Marx,
Karl. "Preface." A Contribution to a Critique of Political
Economy. New York: International Publishers, 1981. _____.
Wage-Labour and Capital / Value, Price and Profit. New York:
International Publishers, 1990. Nelson,
Cary and Stephen Watt. Academic Keywords: A Devil's Dictionary of
Higher Education. New York and London: Routledge, 1999.
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