Bill Mitchell put up a post today that covers a lot of ground and focuses on the concept of work as it has evolved over time to the contemporary neoliberal concept of productive as equable with work from which management can profit from wages.
...the dominant elites, which are increasingly being dominated, in turn, by large financial interests, which themselves are inherently unproductive, have developed a narrative to convince us that it is better to have millions of people doing nothing than advancing societies commonwealth.
If a person is not advancing private profit-seeking behaviour then the work is unproductive. We have bought that narrative from the elites. We have also bought the narrative that the unemployed are in some way letting themselves down – they are lazy, unskilled, lacking in something or other.
What I found most interesting in the post is Bill's observation:
Bill Mitchell — billy blog
Sport and doping – the spreading tentacles of capital
Bill Mitchell
See also Matias Vernengo, Sraffa and Marxism or the Labor Theory of Value, what is it good for?
I note that not all of my MMT colleagues would agree with me that Marx is an important part of understanding the basis of MMT. I am not suggesting that MMT is part of Marxist doctrine – it could be but it doesn’t have to be. But I think you cannot understand the capitalist monetary system unless you understand class dynamics.That is certain to raise eyebrows but it is consistent with the growing interest in Marx lately. A lot of people are beginning to figure out that workers are not getting fair shake and are questioning the prevailing narrative. Marxist and Marxian analysis has not only been marginalized in the United States, but demonized. Therefore, most people have no knowledge of it and no interest, since they have been inculcated with the idea that any association with Marx involves sure descent into totalitarianism. That's unfortunate since Marx makes many observations that are still relevant wrt to the prevailing narrative about work.
Bill Mitchell — billy blog
Sport and doping – the spreading tentacles of capital
Bill Mitchell
See also Matias Vernengo, Sraffa and Marxism or the Labor Theory of Value, what is it good for?
9 comments:
Isnt the corporate sponsorship of professional sports an effort to advertise to the amateurs who end up buying the portion of the gear that actually provides the corporate profits?
So the best thing that the corporate sponsors can do is to make sure that the amateur levels are being supported by public facilities which host the amateur events...
This gets back to Dan's view of appropriate PUBLIC and PRIVATE enterprise....
Nike wouldnt make a dime if they only could sell to the professionals...
How much money would Rawlings make selling gloves/bats/balls/uniforms if there were no public little league fields for the kids to play on? Answer: zero.
The best thing these corporate sports entities could do would be to get on Dan's Public Enterprise bandwagon...
rsp,
Great article by Bill. Fallen out of love with a lot of professional sports over the last few years. Curiously not cycling though.
Amazing thing to me is that he founded cyclingnews and i didnt know, I even comment in the forum now and again...should teach me to read the about section on a website
Marxian analysis reminded me of this from Duck Soup. ;)
Prosecutor: Something must be done! War would mean a prohibitive increase in our taxes.
Chicolini: Hey, I got an uncle lives in Taxes.
Prosecutor: No, I'm talking about taxes - money, dollars!
Chicolini: Dollars! There's-a where my uncle lives! Dollars, Taxes!
Actually Tom, Veblen is just as relevant if not more relevant for talking about "inculcated" prevalent habits of thoughts, or institutions, having to be the real focus of all economists at the end of the day. Of course to this day we still don't really do this, and instead you and others continue to make this an old battle between Marx and everything else. Marx is as important to heterodox economics as Bill mitchell and yourself say he is, but I argue that we're not doing ourselves any favors by forgetting to mention Veblen's awesome analysis.
BTW, if one reads Veblen and in particular his theory of the leisure class, he views sports as the extension of the barbarian impulse increasingly becoming more prevalent in the development of capitalism. It is synonymous with it.
Deus,
Can you expand on this connection between sports and barbarian impulses and relation to capitalism? Rspl
@Deus-DJ
I agree about Veblen and I consider myself an institutionalist. The reason I emphasize Marx is due to the fact that is off-limits.
Moreover, his contribution wrt to the role that class plays socioeconomically is huge. In the US, the pretense is that there is only one class, which couldn't be further from the truth. This just ensures that the class struggle only runs top down.
Later sociologists and institutionalists carried Marx's analysis forward, but mainstream economics demonized it. Look at what happened to Lorie Tarshis i the US just for writing a textbook incorporating the economics of Keynes. As result Samuelson bastardized Keynes and it's been downhill from there.
Deus, Tom: Anent MMT & Institutional Economics, there is this interesting paper: Explorations in Institutional Economics: The Kansas City Approach. Answers the question of why UMKC has the best econ department in the world. Answer - it's the only one that has required study of Institutional econ for all undergraduate and graduate degrees since WWII. Provides the sturdy native roots of the Modern Money Tree. :-)
"Mainstream"?: Backwater is more like it.
@ Calgacus
Exactly.
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