Showing papers on "Deskilling published in 1978"

Hindess and Hirst: A Critical Review

Abstract: Readers of Socialist Register cannot fail to have noted a steady flow of texts by a group of writers in England which has attempted nothing less than the cleansing of marxism of all its impurities. From this vast stream, we have chosen to examine one particular current-the work associated with Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst, especially their four book length statements: Pre-capitalist modes of production (hereafter PCICIP), Mode of production and social formation (an autocritique of PCMP, hereafter MPSF), and the two volume work Marx's "capital" and capitalism today (MCCT I, II). The latter, in particular, "intervenes" politically and may be taken to condense the socialism of their project. Despite our authors' bans and proscriptions, we happen to believe that we are living in a material world which has a history. It is thus, for us, of some moment briefly to stress the location of their work within one wider tradition which has entailed an extraordinary intellectualisation of both marxist theory and the socialist project. The work we are criticising represents perhaps the most notorious example of this. There is thus a similarity in the styles and practices of this kind of work and its basic division between mental and manual labour-contributing to the deskilling of the working class that has accompanied the restructuring of capitalism since the 1950s. These two bases have important implications for the notions of socialism within the texts we are examining.