AWOL & LDH2BM - Final Assignments of the Semester

The following smaller assignments have been due for a little while. They must be posted by Saturday at 8pm if you want to receive credit for them towards the semester's grade. Additional information on the major assignment (the big paper) is below. And more information about each of the smaller assignments is lower down on this blog.

AWOL -
Winter break and the AWOL
Marxist Analysis HW
Inauguration Analysis

LDH2BM -
Winter Break and the Good & Meaningful Life
Martin Luther King, Jr & the G&ML
Inauguration Day & the G&ML
Online Folk Culture & the G&ML

(both courses) new revised drafts of your Exhibition Style Papers must be posted by Monday 8am. the new drafts should have

• a bold and sharp thesis that works with the material we've already done
  
• major arguments that support the thesis and are supported by evidence from the course and from your own research
  
• include a lot of material from the course
• be well-edited -- I strongly suggest that you make it more readable (and writable) by chunking arguments with subheadings (like a chapter heading in a book such as "Capitalism and the American Way of Life" or "The Corporate Media Wants Us Bewildered", etc)
• around 2000 words or more now - that's the equivalent of about 8 pages in standard format (double spaced, 12 pt, etc.)
• you don't (yet) need to include Connections, OPV, or Significance- your focus should be an insightful thesis well supported by arguments and evidence.
  

LDH2BM - MLK, Jr. Assignment - Belatedly Posted

On Friday of last week I lectured on the distorted and excluded history surrounding Martin Luther King, Jr. Essentially I argued that he had been transformed into a plastic postage stamp saint rather than a complex, radical, and flawed participant in movements. This elite coopation of a radical voice of dissent into self-flattering evidence of the greatness of our culture functions through simplification, distortion, and exclusion of information. Howard Zinn (or was it Jon Kozol? maybe both) used the example of Helen Keller to demonstrate the generic process.

I assigned students to read an article re: this distorted history - and King's advocacy for radical economic change in the U.S. and allowed students to choose a speech to read for further evidence and insight including;
Letter From A Birmingham Jail
Where Do We Go From Here (1967 SCLC Speech)
Beyond Vietnam

The assignment was to consider the lecture, the article, the speech, and the coverage of MLK, Jr on the official holiday to ascertain whether we are being fed a false or distorted image of King and how that false image distorts our understanding of the AWOL or the good and meaningful life.

This assignment was mandatory for LDH2BM but optional for AWOL students.

AWOL - Andy's Evolving Model Paper - Intro

United States soldiers have told me they will kill and die to protect "our way of life". President George Bush I insisted that "the American way of life is not negotiable" (Vig 262). And President Obama has emphasized that "We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense" (Inaugural). Is there such a thing as a coherent and widely shared American Way of Life? What is the American way of life? How did this way of life develop and where is it headed? Does the American way of life offer a joyful, meaningful, and/or stable framework to our individual lives? Is our culture's way of life worth defending?

Important differences exist in how people live in the United States. There are regional variations (Key West, FL versus Detroit, MI), class contrasts (McCain's uncountable houses versus a homeless person), and ethnic heteogeneities (Africans, Europeans, Asians, Latin Americans, and indigenous living in the same country). However, an underlying matrix of a basic life style and culture is dominant and obvious in the U.S. Defining and analyzing that dominant life style is the focus of the first chapter of this text.

To discern and analyze the underlying "way of a life" of a culture proves difficult - particularly when one is a lifelong inhabitant of that culture. As the proverb goes, "A fish in the water doesn't know that it's wet" and a person who grew up "American" just thinks of the surrounding culture as "normal". I began my investigations with interviews of people I live with and with street interviews to get the perspective of some regular people outside my own personal sphere. Afterwards I focused on two of the themes most emphasized in these interviews - a free and democratic government and a prosperous economy - through explorations of the Constitution and of capitalism. Through these investigations and explorations it is possible to show that "the American way of life", as understood in the U.S., is fundamentally a lie. The widely accepted claims about our way of life - that we enjoy freedom under a democratic government, that our economic system provides freedom and widespread opportunity and prosperity through hard work, and that our way of life serves as a model for how others should live - are all false.

Defining the American Way of Life - Semester 1
Interviews with Family
Interviews on the Street
Dominant Economics
Constitution
Critique of Constitution and Founders
Marxist Analysis and Critique of Capitalism
Miscellania - Holidays, Wal-Mart, MLK Jr., Inauguration

The Past and Future Development of the AWOL - Semester 2
Babies
Food
War
The Spectacle

Inauguration Day Assignment AWOL & LDH2BM

Please write a short (1-3 paragraph) analysis of the Inauguration Day ceremonies. If you didn't watch them at SOF you can see them on Youtube. Consider other aspects than just the speech - but the speech's text can be found here -


AWOL - What seems emphasized as "the American Way of Life"?

LDH2BM - What aspects of our lives were emphasized by the speeches, ceremony, music, song, spectacle? What image of "the good and meaningful life" was strengthened and what sorts of lives were implicitly or explicitly critiqued?

LDH2BM - Folk Culture's Messages on the Good and Meaningful Life - Online advice from regular folks

We've tried to collect various expressions of how the "regular folks" of our culture define and describe "good and meaningful life". We've looked at holiday messages, early childhood socialization, and our own messages to the minor masses.

We're going to approach now a new set of folk message - the dominant messages that can be found on the internet in Wikis, forums, and bulletin boards - in which a poster speaks the Folk Cultural message on a topic of importance to delineating the good and meaningful life.

For instance these seem to be fairly dominant perspectives of teen girls on love and dating and how to be.
Example 1
Example 2

What image of a "good and meaningful" life do the authors reveal? What particularly relevant quotes or paraphrases tip you off to the larger pattern or crucial details? Extrapolotate - what emphases and focuses dominant this outlook? What key themes repeat - authenticity, conformity, acceptance, success, overcoming, sacredness, humor, etc? What doesn't get mentioned? Does this example strike you as a legitimate expression of dominant folk perspectives?

Other examples of "dominant" folk culture -
Avoid Wasting Time on Facebook
Being the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend (heterocentric, but so is dominant folk culture)
Be a smart but not nerdy student

After you've looked at and responding to several of these examples please find 1-2 examples of your own and post them as comments on this post. Your examples should be interesting and revealing examples of dominant folk perspectives related to the good and meaningful life. Write up your responses to my examples and your own as a 2-3 paragraph half essay. Each paragraph should include a 1 sentence summary of text, a couple key quotes, and a few sentences of interesting and perceptive analysis of how those quotes, and the text in general, reveal an identifiable perspective on the living of life. Due Wednesday by 7pm.

LDH2BM - Andy's Evolving Big Paper Draft

Human beings tell stories, make meaning, try to figure out their situations. Most of us want to live a good and meaningful life - but what makes a life good and meaningful and how do we live that way? To answer these existential questions we turn to our culture. But our culture pelts us with a bewildering and contradictory barrage of messages. To begin to clarify the sorts of lives from which we are choosing we can separate these messages into corporate, folk, and major sub-cultural sources. We can further distinguish dominant and marginal messages from each of those sources. Through the process of carefully analyzing these messages, it is possible to assemble a relatively coherent and sturdy sense of how to live our lives.

Dominant Corporate Cultural Messages
- magazines
- music videos
- movies (Bus Stop)

Marginal Corporate Cultural Messages
- movies (foxfire, pump up the volume, fight club, truman show, etc)
- songs (Pink Floyd, Nas, Rage Againsts the Machine, etc)

Dominant Folk Messages
- interviews with family and friends
- interviews with people on the street
- holidays
- regular peoples' dominant messages online
- early childhood and early education

Marginal Folk Messages
- the weird uncle
- the revealer

Marx's Analysis & Critique of Capitalism Handout

Why does capitalism go through cycles of booms and slumps?
excerpted from http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=16008 - 13/1/09

The chaos that we see around us is only the latest crisis of capitalism. The global economy has under-gone a series of recessions over the last 35 years, including in 1973, 1990-93, 1998 and 2001-2.

Profit rates have not recovered to the level they were at before the 1973 crisis. Each time a recession ends, the prophets of the free market tell us that all of the problems in the system have been fixed. But then they are thrown into panic by the next recession.

This cycle of booms and slumps is down to the competitive and anarchic nature of capitalism. Because there is no centralised plan for the economy, each company tries to grab the biggest share of the market by producing more of one or more goods.

This leads to more goods being produced than are needed and these pile up unsold – hitting profits, forcing companies to the wall and leading to workers being laid off.

Workers then have less money to buy goods, which makes the crisis worse and the system goes into slump.

The failings of some companies then helps with the revival of the system as their competitors buy up their technology and markets.

Underlying all of this is a fundamental problem with the system – the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

Karl Marx identified this tendency over 100 years ago ... the rate of return on their investments, over time, tends to decrease.

This is because real value comes from workers’ labour. The value people create through work is greater than the amount they receive back in wages.

Therefore the capitalist is stealing some of the value workers’ labour has created. This “surplus value” forms the basis of profit.

But the pressure on bosses to compete means that they try to cut the amount that they have to invest in labour.

Instead they invest in new technologies that mean they will spend less on workers. They can produce the same or more with less people because of new technology or machinery. It also means that they will try to increase the level of exploitation of workers – making people work harder for less.

Companies may benefit from investing in new technology in the short term because they can undercut their competitors. But once the other companies catch up, this advantage is lost, and bosses must try and find new ways of increasing their profits.

The falling rate of profit pushes capitalists to try and constantly find new ways of making money.

They may do this by developing new markets or by building up speculative bubbles. This may keep the economy afloat temporarily and mask the problems that exist. But because crisis is built into the way that capitalism works, these same problems are bound to re-emerge in the future.

The Theory of Base & Superstructure excerpted from Das Kapital by Karl Marx
"The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped out of direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and, in turn, reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the production relations themselves, thereby simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers — a relation always naturally corresponding to a definite stage in the development of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity — which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state. This does not prevent the same economic basis — the same from the standpoint of its main conditions — due to innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical influences, etc. from showing infinite variations and gradations in appearance, which can be ascertained only by analysis of the empirically given circumstances."

Harry Bridges by Rancid
Bloody Thursday was July 6th The pigs killed three workersHarry Bridges grabbed the mic
The city shut down July 6th The workers outraged it was a general strike
The media claimed that the commies were taking over and some believed it was true
3 uncomprimising strikes paved the way
Minn SF. & Toledo
Over annd over agian the doors are locked and the windows are broken
Eddie worked for General Motors & he swore that he'd never lose his job again
A union man who owned his own home in beautiful Flint, Mich. Eddie lost his job and Eddie lost his wife
So Eddie lost his self esteem
Last time I saw Eddie he was livin' in the trailor park again
I believe Eddie forgave too much Too soon
I got a letter about Eddie & it was bad news

Banks of Marble
I've traveled round this country
From shore to shining shore.
It really made me wonder
The things I heard and saw.
I saw the weary farmer,
Plowing sod and loam;
I heard the auction hammer
A knocking down his home.
CHORUS:
But the banks are made of marble,
With a guard at every door,
And the vaults are stuffed with silver,
That the farmer sweated for.
I saw the seaman standing
Idly by the shore.
I heard the bosses saying,
Got no work for you no more.
CHORUS
I saw the weary miner, Scrubbing coal dust from his back, I heard his children cryin', Got no coal to heat the shack. CHORUS
I've seen my brothers working Throughout this mighty land; I prayed we'd get together, And together make a stand.
Then we'd own those banks of marble, With a guard at every door; And we'd share those vaults of silver, That we have sweated for.
Words and Music by Les Rice Copyright 1950 by Stormking Music Inc.

"...And We Thought That Nation-States Were A Bad Idea" PROPAGANDHI
"Publicly subsidized! Privately profitable!" That's the anthem of the upper-tier (the puppeteer untouchable).
We focus a moment, nod in approval and bury our head back in the bar-codes of these neo-colonials while our former nemesis
(ah, the romance!): the nation-state, now plays fund-raiser for a new brand of power-concentrate.
Try again, but now we're confused- what is "class-war"? Is this class war? Yes, this is class war.
And I'm just a kid- I can't believe that I gotta worry about this kind of s---!
What a stupid world! Yeah, this is just beautiful... absolutely no regard for principle.
What a stupid world. (We're): 1) born 2) hired 3) disposed!
Where that job lands, everybody knows and you can tell by the smile on the CEO's that the environmental restraints are about to go. You can bet that laws will be set to ensure the benefit of unrestricted labor-laws
(all kept in place by displaced government death squads).
They own us. They produce us. They consume us. Can you believe this? What a stupid world.
F-- this bullshit display of class-loyalties. The media and "our" leaders wrap it all up in a flag- their s---rag. Hooray!

Marxism Review Major Theories
1. The Dialectic
2. Primitive accumulation of capital
3. Labor Theory of Value
4. Vampirization
5. Alienation of Labor
6. Immiseration
7. Base & Superstructure
8. Capitalism Crashing

Key Vocab:
1. Capital
2. Expropriate
3. Rate of Return
4. General Strike
5. Union
6. Labor Power
7. Dialectic
8. Proleterian
9. Humanist
10. Alienation
11. Reserve Army of Labor
12. Pittance

LDH2BM - Folk Culture Holiday Analysis

Taking a brief and broken break from our immersion in corporate culture we have recently begun examining our "folk culture" to understand the sources of our ideas about how to live a good and meaningful life.

The holidays - a particularly accessible target of analysis since they keep happening each year - emphasize certain values and qualities to our culture. A deeper understanding of what our culture advpcates as the good and meaningful life can be assembled from the various mixed messages of our motley holiday seasons. For this assignment you have been asked to;
1. Pick a holiday that you find particularly interesting that is practiced by the majority of people in the U.S.
2. Analyze the messages of the holiday in regards to the valuable and meaningful aspects of life.
3. Consider dress codes, participants, music, activities, food, etc to offer a deeper analysis than merely the "official message" of the holiday.
4. Explore contradictory messages within the holiday.
5. Identify aspects of our culture's emphases on "the good and meaningful life" that receive support or challenge from the holiday you've selected.

Post the above as an insightful mini-essay on your blog. For better results print it out, read it out loud, correct and clarify writing, and add some more ideas - then post it again. Please consider taking a second line of attack by contrasting this holiday with what it is not - with a holiday from another culture, earlier versions of the holiday, or an imaginary revisioning of the holiday. Consider "feast" or "fast" and whether the holiday encourages reflection, theorizing, or merely distraction. Enjoy.

AWOL -- Resources to Supplement Sessions on Marx's Critique of Capitalism

To supplement your learning of Marx's critique of capitalism I list here several resources. The first helpful secondary sources (people simplifying and presenting in easier-to-understand prose) precede several more challenging primary texts from Marx himself which precede critical texts that attempt to draw on Marx's theories for contemporary analysis.

Clarifying Basic Ideas:

• Mark Ruppert - A leftist professor of political science at Syracuse University has posted these helpful lecture notes regarding Marx's theory of how capital expands.
• The introduction, "theory", and "definition" section of this Wikipedia article might also help you understand Marx's labor theory of value.

Primary Texts:

• I have already recommended "Wage Labor & Capital" as a relatively accessible simplification (as a pamphlet) of Marx's analysis of capitalism. The accessible and relevant concluding chapter from that text can be found here.
• The first chapter of the Communist Manifesto advocates a workers movement to overthrow capitalism. It argues many of the theories we've been examining but with a more fist-in-the-air rhetorical style. The dialectic underlies the argument but not explicitly (see especially the final paragraph of the chapter for a good example of thesis --> antithesis --> aufhebung/synthesis). The interest of this chapter emanates not only from its analysis of our historical situation but also from its attempt to build a grand theory of the past, present, and future.
  

Modern Marxist Analysis:

• This pamphlet - The Reproduction of Daily Life - emphasizes that basic capitalist processes - commodification, capital accumulation, alienation - dominate our daily lives.
• This pamphlet extends the analysis of capitalism's domination of all that we can see - all that we feel.

Optional HW Assignment: Read one or more of the above (or another Marxist text you've found), connect it to the lectures, and weave it together with your own experiences and insights on the topic in a 1-2 page essay to post on your blog.