by GULDEN OZCAN and BORA ERDAGI
Gülden Özcan and Bora Erda??: In some of the interviews you gave, you talked about your own everyday life experiences that led you to discover that Marx’s total critique of capitalism is an unfinished project. In this discovery, you emphasized elsewhere that your class background and political struggle you were involved in have played an important role. Let’s first begin with your book Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class (Palgrave Macmillan, 1992) in which you came to a conclusion that, although Marx wanted to deal more deeply with the subject of “human needs,” it had never been realized as he focused more on his revolutionary project of “demystifying capital” than completing his epistemological project. Before getting into the details of your arguments in Beyond Capital, could you explain once again for your Turkish readers the road that took you to write this book?
Michael A. Lebowitz: First of all, let me stress that demystification of capital is an essential revolutionary project. Marx answered the most important question of all — what is capital, what is this world of wealth that stands opposite and over us? If we don’t understand what Marx revealed, then even when we struggle against capital, we are most likely to be struggling against “unfairness” — unfair wages, unfair working conditions, unfair distribution of income, unfair taxes, etc. And, in the absence of struggle, it’s likely that we will blame the victims — i.e., that we look upon problems as our own fault, the result of our own deficiencies, and that therefore the burden is upon us if we want to do better.
That was certainly the atmosphere in which I grew up. I come from a working-class family. My father was a machinist and my mother was a bookkeeper, and the overwhelming feeling was one of failure. I did not recognize that as such, however. Rather, I was conscious of the desire to put a distance between my life and that of my parents. For many children from the working class, having more money and a better life is a natural goal.
So, I went to the School of Commerce at New York University, which offered night classes. I went initially to study accounting and law but was quickly attracted to economics, marketing, and market research . After a few years, I was fortunate to get a job in market research in the electrical products industry. And, this was a real education because during the day I learned directly and intimately about price fixing and the allocation of market shares among firms in the industry. Then I would go to my classes at night to learn (contrary to everything I could see for myself during the day) that prices are set by the anonymous market. At the same time, I was angered by the closure of the factory where my father worked in New Jersey because the corporation decided to move operations to the South to avoid trade unions. (Many of the angry songs of Bruce Springsteen, who is from New Jersey, are the product of this phenomenon which was occurring during the so-called “capital-labor accord” and “Golden Age.”) The conclusion for me was clear: I am being lied to!
Monthly Review Zine for more