The Division of Labour, Revisited

[MSalter1@aol.com]

In a message dated 03/08/97 19:53:27 GMT, you write:

<< 
 KEN:
 ....adorno also knew that the moment to realize a world 
 without the division of labour was missed, so we, of the 
 divided labour, are obliged ruthlessly to criticize it from within.
 ken
    
 SCOTT:
   Yes, criticize it forever and ever and ever and ever, because this
 utopian bullshit can never be realized. It comes down to this, Ken: you
 either think the material for a better world is here now or you don't.
 That is, either you are utopian or not. I have asked you before "What
 are you holding out for?". 

MICHAEL: what dialecticians, including adorno and marx, reject for good
reasons is the implicit metaphysics contained in either/or dualism, and the
pseudo-"choices" that these only pretend to offer whilst covering over the
truth that lies in their mutual presuppositions. 

SCOTT Abolish the division of labor? And in the
 blink of an eye the world is transformed? Puh-leeze. Can this
 transformation be so radical that the whole current situation, with its
 necessary division of labor, disappears? Where is this transformation
 supposed to come from, if not from the present? If a truly critical
 consciousness is impossible (or has no epistemological basis, as you
 seem wont to argue) how is this supposed to happen? The mysterious
 appearance of THE OTHER (the breakthorough of auratic art, a release of
 inarticulate libido...)? 

MICHAEL: another example of either/rismsfrom Scott?

You, like Horkheimer, Adorno, Heidegger, and
 Derrida, will be sitting by the roadside waiting for Godot forever until
 you find that not only has the time to realize philosophy passed, but so
 also has your time to wait. But at least you were "critical" (or at
 least whiny)...
    The appeal of all this to Ken doesn't seem hard to find. Marx wrote:
 "For as soon as labor is distributed, each man has a particular,
 exclusive sphere of activity which is forced upon him and from which he
 cannot escape." Ken, we know, holds with Adorno that ALL categorizations
 are inadequate, a "positive" imposition from without. Ken, the romantic
 individual, must always be something more than what he seems; nay, he is
 _essentially_ other than what he is -- he is infinitely free. The world
 must become friendly to such beings, must reform its institutions to
 accomodate these (noumenal) libidinal strivings which escape concrete
 expressions. D'oh! -- but those institutions would be confining too!
 What we really need is a world without institutions!
    To borrow an expression from Ralph:
 
 ....PIFFLE!
     >>
MICHAEL; a number people on this list including myself have complained of
personally abusive and dismissive responses to the postings of others. From
earlier postings Ken's relation to Adorno is far from uncritical, same
regarding Derrida et al. To borrow one of Ralph's better complaints, we all
need to attend carefully to what others say, assume and imply, and not set
them in such a way that become vulnerable to a ready-made put down. The kind
of immanent criticisms practised by Adorno, Ken and others (including myself
regarding Adorno, Ken and others (excluding myself) is being caricatured by
the very mode of external critique that Marx dismissed as "mere criticism",
or am I missing something?

Michael Salter