On Books — Schor, Kozol, and Marable
The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure by Juliet B. Schor, 1991, New York, Basic Books. 247 pp. $23.00.
Savage Inequalities: Children In America’s Schools by Jonathan Kozol, 1991, New York, Crown Publishing. 262 pp. $10.00, paper.
The Crisis of Color and Democracy: Essays On Race, Class, and Power by Manning Marable, Common Courage Press. 259 pp. $14.95, paper.
In the Fall issue of Pietisten, Penrod showed concern about the abbreviations that stuff our time. Of course, abbreviations are meant to stuff more into available space, as well, giving added dimension to the Space/Time Continuum of Albert Einstein.
Over a century ago, another philosopher was similarly concerned. Karl Marx warned that technology is inevitable in the capitalist system and that, contrary to the expositions of many utopians, technology is continually introduced to increase productivity and to displace workers, not to ease the life of working people. Once displaced, workers join a reserve army of labor — the unemployed — necessary for the continued existence of the system. Technology is one method — a newer, constantly evolving method — of increasing productivity and creating an unemployed labor pool. Longer hours is the other, and older, method of reducing and controlling the workforce.
Juliet B. Schor, who wrote The Overworked American, is an Associate Professor of Economics and Head Tutor of Women’s Studies at Harvard University. In her book, she shows that the captains of capital have not lost the knack of utilizing both of these methods in their assault on the American worker.
At least one cynical reviewer has said that the American worker is well aware of this state. Perhaps that has some truth to it, but Schor speaks with the statistics in hand. “The most visible group has been women, who are coping with a double load — the traditional duties associated with home and children and their growing responsiblity for earning a paycheck” (p. 20). She estimates that “the average employed person is now on the job an additional 163 hours” a year — men 98 more hours and women 305 more hours. (p. 29) Whereas Americans are losing vacation time, for Europeans “minimum allotments are now in the range of four to five weeks in many countries,” beginning in the very first year of employment. (p. 32)
As though in dialogue with Penrod, Schor says: “There is undoubtedly truth in the ideas that technology and aspirations have led to an accelerated sense of time. But both these explanations have missed a much more obvious force operating in our lives. Time has become more precious because people have less of it to call their own . . . ” (p. 24).
Juliet Schor has written in Z Magazine that she no longer is a Progressive. Apparently she has become despondent about real reform, even though her solutions bear unmistakable signs of Progressivism. Has she really given up on the possibility of total social reform? I think not. But, without economic reorganization most of her suggested solutions, however strong, are pipe dreams. They will remain little more than liberal stopgaps. Still, the news is out. And, when the time arrives, that news will be an affordable tool in the reorganization of the workplace. As one who wrote a song championing the six-hour day for eight-hour pay a couple of years ago, I was aware of an overall problem. Nevertheless, Schor’s book has shed more light on the matter.
Jonathan Kozol taught in the Boston Public Schools in the 1960s. Out of that experience came Death at an Early Age. He has since written Free Schools and Rachel’s Children. His latest book, Savage Inequalities, is a trenchant exposé of the awful conditions of some of our public schools as a result of financial disparities. He documents the inequality between inner-city and suburban schools.
In Illinois for example, “Total yearly spending . . . ranges today . . . from $2,100 on a child in the poorest district to above $10,000 in the richest” (p. 57). In 1989, “any high school class of 30 children in Chicago received approximately $90,000 less each year than would have been spent on them if they were pupils of a school such as New Trier High” (p. 54). Given the total social picture, Kozol feels that any skewing of finances should go the other way. “Equity . . . does not mean simply equal funding. Equal funding for unequal needs is not equality. The need is greater in Chicago, and its children, if they are to have approximately equal opportunities, need more than the children who attend New Trier.” (p. 54).
Though Kozol is as strong as Schor in pointing out the problems, he seems weaker in formulating particular solutions. This may be because he knows that no solution, however good, will be effective without grassroots support. In his books, he seems to be reaching for America’s sense of “fair play.” Like Schor, Kozol seems to be trying to stir up feelings to the point at which grassroots action might begin.
“The Crisis of Color and Democracy is largely a compilation of essays written over a three-year period since the presidential primaries in the spring of 1988. Most of these essays originally were published in my commentary series, ‘Along the Color Line,’ which appears in over 200 newspapers throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and India,” writes the author in the introduction. The author, Dr. Manning Marable, is Professor of Political Science and History at the University of Colorado’s Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America.
The book contains a plethora of grim statistics and social facts, most of which many of us are at least dimly aware. If that were the whole of it, there would be scant reason to read this book. The newspapers glut us with nasties — from the particulars of the “news” to the generalities of such columnists as George Will. Few solutions to the problems we face are offered by the likes of Will, Buchanan, Safire, and others — beyond the rabid right-wing agenda of low-paying jobs and/or jail.
Marable’s book is not a dirge for a dying society. Even as he warns us of inevitable consequences if we allow things to continue as they have been going, he also provides a basis for solutions. For example, in discussing the meanness of the minimum wage, he admits that a higher minimum wage would destroy some jobs, “but by increasing the wages of nearly four million low-income workers, it would put more money into the economy through consumer spending. This in turn would create new jobs. Moreover, by lifting millions a small step away from poverty, a higher wage could reduce welfare rolls and government expenditures for social services.” He pictures an economic osmosis, if you will, in contrast to the “Chinese water torture” of Reaganism.
“A job or guaranteed income for those who cannot work should be considered a human right,” writes Marable, and he thinks the “mimimum wage should be increased well above $5.00 per hour.” Without national health care, though, even that is not enough. With respect to health care, he asserts that it is biased against blacks (it is biased against women and the elderly, too).
One thing seems obvious. Schor and Kozol, tell Marable nothing new. He is painfully aware of the inequalities and, even though unemployment among blacks is astronomical, he is also painfully aware of the overwork of the ethnic minorities. Anyone who has been through the welfare system will attest to the strain and humiliation that goes with it, even in such an enlightened state as Minnesota. Many mothers stay on AFDC for the benefits they can get nowhere else and moonlight when they can get away with it. Stress is hard work, and the stress these persons endure is the hardest work of all.
In the last chapter of The Crisis of Color and Democracy, Marable’s essay, entitled “Why American Democracy Has Failed,” partially sums up his complaints:
American democracy has failed because it is motivated by the notion of the zero-sum game, that there are winners and losers only . . . .
American democracy has failed because of its institutionalized tendency to ignore the long-term sufferings of millions of American people, the homeless, the poor, people of color, and working people . . . .
He doesn’t say it there, but he might have continued that American democracy has failed primarily because of its economic base — capitalism. In another article not in this book, “Remaking American Socialism: Building Progressive Unity Within the Left,” Marable wrote:
Liberalism, by whatever term, seeks to humanize an inherently irrational, wasteful and inhumane social system. Liberalism tries to reduce, but not eradicate, great concentrations of poverty and homelessness. Liberalism attempts to bring representatives of women and people of color into positions of representation, but it does not speak to the transfer of power to oppressed social classes victimized by capitalism. Liberalism wants to interpret the problems of the world, and to create an environment of greater fairness; the point, however, is not to interpret but to change the world. In this “post-modern” period it is no longer popular to relate the truth, but the real name of the game under American capitalism is class struggle. It always has been, and so long as corporate capitalism dominates our economic and social system it always must be. Our challenge is not to liberalize the existing system but to radically transform it, building a democratic and humane society.
The Common Courage Press paperback The Crisis of Color and Democracy is strikingly designed. On its back cover is the only picture of Dr. Manning Marable I have ever seen. It bears a striking resemblance to one of my favorite teachers, Dr. J. Melburn Soneson.