Øystein Gullvåg Holter

“The exchange abstraction”, Alfred Sohn-Rethel wrote, “is not thought, but it has the form of thought” (Manual and Mental Labour,  1975).

The commodity exchange type of generalization, as a socially effective “real abstraction”, plays a major role for how we think about nature and society, according to Sohn-Rethel.

A fairly good, but superficial, summary of Sohn-Rethel’s view has been published here. For further critical discussion see: Slater, Phil, ed.: Outlines To A Critique of Technology. Inks Links, London 1980.

Historically, one might add that, in times of need, “the naked woman learns to spin” as the Norwegian saying goes.

Although Sohn-Rethel with his seriousness about Marx’s commodity form analysis was probably already “a black sheep” of the Frankfurter school before the war, it was he, and not some culture, discourse or ideology analyst (e g Adorno or Horkheimer) of the same school that the conservative Churchill government hired for an economic report on Nazi Germany in the middle of the second w0rld war – at a time when the war needs were most pressing. The Churchill government certainly did not like Marxists, but Sohn-Rethel was probably seen as a comparatively realist researcher with special background knowledge.

In his report, Economy and Class Struggle of German Fascism, Sohn-Rethel tried to analyse German capital formations and how they became so aggressive, with a text that includes important observations on Hitler’s appeal as a “empty abstraction” type of leader. I do not know how the work was evaluated. I read it many years ago. It tells a quite complex story. My impression was that he got clustered by the new deal, trying to think up some greater “logic” of the Nazi empire. The arguments are not always convincing. The interesting thing, for now, is that the report was made. Habermas, Marcus or others could have been chosen, but were not. In times of need.

Sohn-Rethel’s observations of German capitalism has some relevance for the US too, evidence here.

A critique is published here.

My 1997 dr. philos. thesis “Gender, Patriarchy and Capitalism – A Social Forms Analysis” has now been transferred from my old web page.

Due to size, it is published in two parts.

GPC thesis part 1

GPC thesis part 2

Part one includes my research areas and the main analysis of today’s gender system, along with a first version of social forms analysis. Part two contains extensions of this first version, going into patriarchy theory, historical evidence, economic evidence, and others.

Some errors remain. Please note, some figures etc. have not been copied, text is sometimes incorrectly formatted, etc. Also, note the Errata list at the end of part 2.

The excellent researcher, social economist Isaac Illitch Rubin died in Siberia, after many years of persecution from the Stalinist regime, in 1937. He died 48 years old. Why did that happen?

Cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaak_Illich_Rubin

Why did he die? Why was he persecuted?

Rubin were among those who thought one should read Marx, before making a judgement. One should not just be acquainted only with summaries of what Marx was supposed to be saying, like “matter is more important than ideas”.  His ideas should be judged scientifically, not just politically.

As official Marxism developed in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, during the 1920s and 30ies, it became more authoritarian. The usefulness of Marx’s texts became more important than their scientific truth.

Rubin was one of several researchers questioning this attitude. The official Marxism was aligning with the norms of a masculine upper class of industrial social development. The rules of the game were changing. Research debate within Marxism was followed by persecution.

The “masculinistic worker” saw the light of day – in the Sthakanovite worker movement of Stalinism.

Socialist art emphasized masculine musculature. It was a long time since Lenin, debating with Kollontay, had considered sexual reforms in Russia.

Rubin was first arrested in 1930. What followed was a nightmare of persecution.

The air was cold on the Siberian steppes. Isaac may have died, after seven years of persecution including torture, in 1937, just as he drew in the cold air.

Recommended reading:

Rubin,  Isaac Ilyich 1972: Essays on Marx’ Theory of Value. Black and Red Press, Detroit

Rubin, Isaac Ilyich 1978: Abstract Labour and Value in Marx’s System. Capital and Class 5, 107-139

Rubin, Isaac Ilyich 1979: A History of Economic Thought (Orig. 1929) Inks Links, London

See further: Socialist “Herrschaft” – Sosialismens herredømme

More on Stalinist misogyny:

Montefiore, Simon Sebag, 2004: Stalin – the Court of the Red Tsar. Phoenix, Orion Book Ltd. London

Documents the misogyny and contempt of weakness of the Soviet leadership headed by Stalin.

On how Stalinist repercussi0n hit men – persecution never before seen on the left, see further on Weissman, The Course is Set on Hope.

At the night of February 5, I went outside to take some shots of the very special snowfall over the last hours (using a small compact camera). Since the temperature was around zero Celsius, the snow had clung to everything like a kind of glaze.  These pictures are taken from my home, first looking towards the street in front, street lights behind the glazed trees, a pedestrian passing at right.

I stand at the top of a snow-glazed veranda staircase.

The snow clings to nearby objects too, like this pine, although with rising temperature the last couple of hours, it has melted a bit, showing only the main part of the the first amazing detail pattern.

The hedge towards our neighbours is glazed.

This night, the temperature is rising, wind blows, and the air remains humid. Misty dots or low level clouds drive through Oslo, with effects like this.

And this.

This is not a fire, in the background – just trees in front of city lights in the snowy night.

Photos (c) Øystein Gullvåg Holter 2013

Camera: Nikon Coolpix s2550

The quote is from Erving Goffman’s pathbreaking book Stigma (1963). Goffman, along with Robert Merton and some others, belong to my top shelf of American sociologists. Goffman deserves to be read “with” the text, not too critically “against”. Of course he was not a grand theorist, e g a social class theorist – that was not his mission.

More on Goffman:

See research blog note (in Norwegian) here.

Also, search in my dr. philos. thesis, here.

Other texts where Goffman is discussed (to come)

Is gender equality an important contributor to other social development?

Is gender equality associated with more well-being? Less violence?

I have created a data base with 116 units – 31 European countries, 35 other countries (a representative global sample) and 50 US states. The base includes several gender equality indexes including the Gender gap index, income level (GDP per capita) and income inequality numbers (Gini index), as well as several potential “effect” variables like violent death, suicide, well-being and fertility.

Here is a preliminary result.

This first analysis is focused on Europe and USA, where the data are best. The possible “effect” areas like violence and health are selected based on what data exist.

A preliminary result is shown below.  A thicker arrow means a stronger correlation.

All connections are positive, except the US fertility connection (at the bottom), which is negative.

These connections are partly “known” in the sense that some of them have been argued and documented in limited samples. Yet these country and  state level statistics are new.

The results indicate that gender equality has a stronger general positive effect on social development than so far acknowledged. The results show that on the country/state level, in Europe and the US, gender equality is associated with lower violence (violent death), with more gender-balanced suicide, with greater well-being, and – in Europe- with higher fertility. Gender equality is strongly positively associated with fertility in Europe, but mildly to moderately negatively associated in the US.

Men’s share of unpaid domestic work, only measured for Europe so far, is very strongly correlated with different gender equality measures, and is therefore seen as part of the cause variable, in this figure.

Most of these associations seem to persist also when exposed to some basic control variables, like income level (GDP per capita) )and income equality (Gini index).

If these results are right, gender equality is a more active agent of welfare and health development, than it is credited for. It is an important underlying factor reducing violence and increasing well-being and health.

A more comprehensive report is on its way. Remember, you saw it first here!

Oppgaver er ting maskinen skal gjøre – mest mulig likt at en bruker gjør det manuelt.

(fra min loggbok for programmering, 7.4.12)

Tasks are things that the machine shall do – as similar as possible to the user doing it manually.

(from my log book for programming, April 7, 2012)

Is gender a form of value, a form of capital? This paper, written in 1984, is not just a critique of superficial and essentialist ideas of gender, but also an attempt to understand gender from the specific viewpoint of value and commodity analysis. Instead of asking what follows from gender and how gender is performed, it asks what causes gender, what is the “stage script”, the way the performances are structured. Today, I might have written it differently, yet it has kept a critical edge that makes it interesting today also. The paper was published in Harriet Holter ed 1984: Patriarchy in a Welfare Society, University Press, Oslo 1984.

Download first part (8mb)

Download last part (6mb)

Stalin’s killings created the first holocaust, destroying a whole generation of revolutionaries, the bloodiest counter-revolution so far in history.

Victor Serge (summary), in Susan Weissman: The Course is Set on Hope,Verso, London, 2001.

Victor Serge (1890-1947) was a democratically oriented French-Russian left-wing intellectual, who was persecuted first in France, and later in the Soviet Union. He criticised power misuses by the Bolsheviks and joined the left opposition trying to stop Stalin from taking over, serving several prison sentences and barely escaping from the Soviet Union.

Serge wrote about Stalin’s repression:

“The average man, who cannot conceive that lying on this scale is possible, is taken unawares (..) Outrageous language intimidates him and goes some way to excuse his deception: reeling under the shock [of the Moscow trials] he is tempted to tell himself that there must, after all, be some justification of a higher order passing his own understanding. (..) In any case, it was not a matter of persuasion: it was, fundamentally, a matter of murder. One of the intentions behind the campaign of drivel initiated in the Moscow Trials was to make any discussion between official and oppositional communists impossible. Totalitarianism has no more dangerous enemy than the spirit of criticism, which it bends every effort to exterminate.” (Quoted by Weissman, p. 209).

Weissman’s book is very highly recommended.

As regards “lying on this scale” it is useful to consult Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels, who had the same conviction that if your lie is great enough, you will succeed.

Weissman’s book includes photos and affectionate drawings by Victor Serge’s son, Vlady. A few are reproduced here, in the interest of further research.

Below, at left, Victor is pictured with his family, and at right, painted by his son, in exile, in the early 1930s, He does not look famished or depressed. This may have been made when the democratic alternatives still seemed to have a chance in the new Soviet Union.

However the Serge family were shocked by the news of increasing persecution. Here is Vlady’s impression of Stalin’s killings:

This is an utterly amazing and horrendous portrait, made by a young artist. Later research has shown that Vlady Serge’s “premonitions” were true. Millions of people lost their lives in Stalin’s death camps.

In the photos below, shown in Weissman’s book, the young artist is shown at top; next are his sketches of Victor having escaped Soviet persecution:

Vlady pictures his father troubled, and somewhat impatient, bottom right, hand in pocket. This is much like Victor emerges, in the photo below, in France. The men are perhaps discussing potentials for anti-nazi resistance. They seem to be filled with action, quite optimistic. Despite much persecution, Victor Serge did not hang his head.

 As the Stalinist repercussion hardened, all opponents were lumped into one case – enemies of the Soviet Union. Leon Trotsky, below, in a sense “profited” on this treatment, becoming “enemy number one”. Here is a picture of Trotsky, close to Serge’s visit.

This position of Trotsky and Trotskyism as the number one alternate to Stalinism was effectuated not least by Stalin himself – after one of his many hit-man gangs managed to kill the arch-enemy in August 1940.

Serge was symphathetic to many points made by Trotsky but he was not a Troskyite, as Weissman’s book documents. Serge did not live to write down a history or greater theory of what happened. Yet his independent viewpoints are very valuable and important.

See further

Holter, Ø. G. 2004e: “A theory of gendericide”,  In Jones, Adam, ed.: Gendercide and genocide. Vanderbilt University Press, Norman

Holter, Ø. G 1984d: ”Sosialismens herredømme: kvinner og menn i Sovjetøkonomien” (Socialist Patriarchy: Women and Men in the Soviet Economy”), Materialisten 4, 1984, 41-62. See text.

Are stereo and sound equipment companies, and magazines that review their equipment, out to maximize music – or money?

What is their primary interest, the product or the profit?

This debate has flared up again, related to Stereophile‘s 50 years anniversary, cf

http://www.stereophile.com/content/50-years-stereophile

The accusation from the critics is that Stereophile has turned out to become exactly what its founder J. Gordon Holt  did not want – a commercially driven magazine.

“Fifty years ago this month, Vol.1 No.1, Issue No.1 of The Stereophile, published, edited, and mostly written by J. Gordon Holt out of Wallingford, Pennsylvania, hit the newsstands. Gordon had worked for two major audio magazines, High Fidelity and HiFi/Stereo Review (later renamed Stereo Review), and had been disgusted by those magazines’ pandering to advertisers. Not only was The Stereophile going to tell it like it was, it was going to judge audio components by listening to them—a heretical idea in those days of meters and measurements. “Dammit,” said Gordon, who died in 2009, “if nobody else will report what an audio component sounds like, I’ll do it myself!“, writes editor John Atkinson who took over from Holt in 1986.

In my view, the critique has some truth, the magazine is some of both. Readers have to learn to notice cue phrases like “in its price class” and read between the lines. Yet in my own experience, the advice has mainly been good: the product has had the main say, not the profit. Sometimes there is “snake oil” (profit-making, empty claims) involved, but then again, learning to use the magazine goes together with using other sources also, like Audiogon (and in Norway, hifisentralen).

In  my case, I have followed advice from others, including Stereophile, whenever I could not listen myself. I have made some buying decisions mainly relying on the magazine reviews, and although I have found better alternatives later, in some cases, I do not regret making those decisions.

I would like the magazine to sharpen its critical edge, to be more clearly “with” the listener with limited means – not just those with big wallets. Besides keeping a sharp critical eye, there are some areas where Stereophile needs improvement. One is mid-level equipment (in terms of price), not just top level plus a bit entry level.  Lower mid-level is probably the level of most readers. Secondly, top level equipment gradually drifts down to mid-level as time goes by, and the magazine should give more space to second hand options. Thirdly, it should give more space to how systems sound as a whole, not just this or that component, but its synergy with the rest.