Mass media: the 'propaganda model', Herman and Chomsky

Herman, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky. 1988. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books.

Source: Person in black jacket in selective focus photography, Philipp Wüthrich, Unsplash

Herman and Chomsky

Summary

Claim: a 'propaganda model' of the mass media: "the media serve, and propagandize on behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them" (xi)

Keywords: media, propaganda, US, soviet

In conversation with:

Aim:

Method: comparing leading US media to Pravda in the Soviet Union to prove the out the following key features:

• news is produced by a relatively concentrated industry of several dozen profit-making corporations
• the industry is dependent on advertising for its profits
• it is dependent on government officials for its sources
• it is intimidated by right-wing pressure groups
• it is imbued with anti-communist ideology.

also has media of other countries as case studies (Guatemala)

Why important

To academics: as a different angle for media analysis

To general public: promotes better understanding of how media work in general

Relevance to my research: might give some insights for my thinking about ideology

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Notes:

Herman and Chomsky deny ideological contestation. "What institutional mechanisms or cultural traditions or contradictions of power provide room for debate and revision? The political economy perspective typically does not say" (Schudson, 1989: 270)

"what journalists do, what they see as newsworthy, and what they take for granted as premises of their work are frequently well explained by the incentives, pressures, and constraints incorporated into such a structural analysis" (xi)

Approaches to the sociology of news

Schudson, Michael. n.d. “The Sociology of News Production.” July 1, 1989 11(3):263–82.

Source: Black typewriter, Arlington Research, Unsplash

Michael Schudson, Sociology of news production

Summary

Claim: Journalism is where the news are "made"

Keywords: Journalism, news, ideology,

In conversation with: Molotch and Lester and Tuchman; Herman and Chomsky; Pearce,Freud and Laing; Stuart Hall on 'news values'. Organisational approach (Rothman and the Lichters)

Aim:

Method: Comparative study

Why important

To academics: contributes to contemporary sociological studies of news

To general public:

Relevance to my research:

- - - -

Notes:

There are four approaches to the sociology of news:

1. Political economy approach: For understanding the. broad outlines of the news product. ideological aspect of newswork

2. Organisational approach. Routine (planed and promoted by the same agent); scandal (planned by one and promoted by the other); accident (unplaned and promoted by the other).

3. Culturological approach: while there are events continuosly occuring in the world, they are shaped and curated by the media, which create a discourse around them. Eg what critics say about the work of art, and the publication about on The Guardian is as much part of a work of art, as the artefact or event itself. Eg., in Stuart Hall - "of the millions of events which occur every day in the world, only a tiny portion ever become visible as 'potential news stories'" (277)

Labour question as an identity question - direct and indirect market mediation

Neto, Jeanne and Maya Gonzalez. 2013. The Logic of Gender. Endnotes (3).

Source: Tina Bosse, Three red front-load clothes dryers, Unsplash

Summary

Claim: Marxist feminism categories are no longer enough to understand why humanity is inscribed into one or the other gender, they need clarifying and transformation, because "reproductive" activities no longer occupy the same structural positions within the capitalist totality.

Keywords: feminism, social reproduction theory, value, labour-power

In conversation with: Marx, Capital, chapters on Labour power and social reproduction. Follow Judith Butler in the criticism of the sex/gender binary coming from pre-1990s feminism. seeing value in Silvia Federici's contribution to marxist feminist debate, however opposing the position influential in the commons that reorganisation of reproductive work is not a question of identity but a question of labour. It is argued, on the contrary, that the labour question is an identity question. Julia Kristeva's theorisation of abject in Essay on Abjection, 1982.

Aim: to debunk the established gendered forms of domination under capitalism - productive/reproductive, paid/unpaid, public/private, sex/gender, offering a new social reproduction theory reading to these categories

Method: Establishes two new shperes for theorising gender, IMM and DMM. Then performs comparative analysis of those four traditional categories (listed in the aim) within those two new spheres.

Why important

To academics: contributes to understanding why and how gender is used in today's society

To general public: explains why traditional feminist categories are no longer sufficient to explaining the processes taking place in today's society.

Relevance to my research:

- the view of the worker as a commodity is important in my analysis of subject and object in both industrial and software production models.

- articulates the difference between IMM and DMM, which is crucial for developing imaginations of same processes that function in and out of capitalist modes of production

Source: Nathan Dumlao, Close-up photo of top hanged on rack, Unsplash

Notes:

1. PRODUCTION/REPRODUCTION

1) On labour-power as a distinctive commodity. There is a sphere dissociated from the value production, where the dead labour of means of subsistence is transformed into the living labour found in the market.

Picks up from the Marx's quote as something to build argument with: "Whatever the form of the process of production in a society, it must be a continuous process, must continue to go periodically through the same phases. A society can no more cease to produce than it can cease to consume. When viewed, therefore, as a connected whole, and as flowing on with incessant renewal, every social process of production is, at the same time, a process of reproduction" (Marx, 1976: 711). They note then the contradictory character of commodity, whereby one the one hand it stands via its use-value, as a particular object different from the next, while on the other it contains an aliquot portion of "total social labour" within society. The latter notion is important, since it umbrellas both productive and reproductive labour.

The labourer confronts the capitalist mode of production as a commodity, at the same time as the subject meeting the object. Further, it is argued that while labour-power is a unique commodity, Marx does not distinguish its production from other commdities, merely claiming that it is valued as the value of production of its means of subsistence. However, to Gonzalez and Neto, means of subsistence on their own do not produce labour-power as a ready made commodity. This is where they see the gap - Marx does not consider labour that transforms raw materials, eg means of subsistence, into labour-power commodity as necessary labour at all. G&N explain the lack of interest in Marx to this labour by the fact that it takes place in "a sphere of the capitalist mode of production which is not directly mediated by the form of value". Using a principle that in order for value to exist, it needs to have an exterior,

2) Separation into two different spheres. In order to understand how labour-power is produced, it is necessary to differentiate not by theorising a "reproductive sphere" but by rather drawing a divide between commodified and non-commodified activities: the directly market-mediated sphere (DMM) and the indirectly market-mediated sphere (IMM).

DMM is characterized by the productivity, efficiency and product uniformity (for software, not necessarily "uniformity" but rather compliance with client/other requirements). The return on investment is paramount to all activities. Outside of DMM, there is no market-determination.

IMM has different temporality, different from capitalist working day (check M. Postone's abstract time).

G&N also define different forms of domination: DMM has impersonal, abstract domination, which organises it via the value-comparison in terms of socially necessary labour time. IMM, on the contrary, is socially determined - including direct domination, violence or hierarchical forms of cooperation.

Source: Filip Mroz, Chores, Unsplash

2. PAID/UNPAID

This is a categorisation used by marxist feminists, which needs to be replaced by a more precise waged/unwaged. Wage here is a price for which the worker sells his labour-power. G&N point out that wagd /unwaged does not map neatly to IMM/DMM scheme - while all of unwaged labour is IMM, some of IMM is in fact waged - those are the activities organised by the state sector. There is also a refrence to social validation that happens through wage, which is seen as social form of value (more on this, Christine Delphy, Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women’s Oppression. Hutchinson, 1984).

What does the wage buy? eg which element of the wage constitutes exchange-value of labour power. It buys commoditiies necessary for the reproduction of labor-power. The non-waged activites located outside of value exchange are necessarily dissociated to make a production of value possible - this sphere for G&N is a gendered sphere. These activites are non-labour and are naturalised. As it says in Grundrisse, "the increase of population is a natural force of labour, for which nothing is paid. From this standpoint, we use the term natural force to refer to the social force. All natural forces of social labour are themselves historical products.)" (Marx, 1973:400).

Labour G&N propose to define broadly in opposition to non-labour as an activity that is socially validated as such, because of its specific function. However seemingly banal, such definition is seen as more productive for understanding the character of unwaged activities rather than exchange between man and nature or expense of energy.

3. PUBLIC/PRIVATE

Public/private as the way of distingusihing between economic and political, civil society and the state (these two categories are also held as opposites in Marx). G&N argue that it is only in the pre-modern relations that private was limited to the household. From the advent of capitalism, "the scope of private spans the entire social landscape".

Public, in Marx, is the abstraction from society in the form of the state. Public in this shape is required for the capitalists to accumulate the capital in an independent way, rather than being controlled by the state - and abstract community of "equal citizens". Thereby, the relation of public/private to DMM/IMM is as follows: in DMM citizens defined by the state manage their labour-power directly, while in IMM through those with formal equality.

How does sex/gender map to these spheres? When in the capitalist mode of production the abstract formulation of the "citizen" and "other" came about, these categories were mapped on "white male"/"non-white non-male" positions.

G&N argue that what constitutes the citizen/other binary though is not slavery, but "free" labour - which to Marx is a technical definition of freedom for the wage labourer. Free labourer is the one who has their labour-power for sale, but is short of anything else in order to realise it (Marx, 1976:272-273).

Please revisit the section on Public/private later, because it is quitedense and some bits, like the idea of freedom and the mapping sex/gender on IMM/DMM is not entirely clear

Women here occupy the position of someone who were free fro the means of production, but were not free from selling their labour-power as their own. Only recently they became the owners of their labour-power (a "double freedom", political and "public"). G&N note here, however that a new form of analysis of proletarian identity is also required. Such an identity as an abstraction based upon the common form of unfreedom, was never going to account for everyone.

Women in their fight for freedom were caught between, using G&N own terms, the freedom as "citizen" and freedom as "other", fighting for human and civil rights on one side and for reproductive rights on the other. But the gender distinction has persisted even when the "differential" freedom of women was abolished. However, if that differential freedom was what anchored women to the IMM sphere, why didn't this abolishion also free them from category of "women"?

DOUBLE-FREEDOM AND THE SEX-BLIND MARKET

G&N see the reason for that in that the mechanism of unfreedom in the "private sphere of the economic", the labour-market was inscribed so deeply that it appeared as a mysterious "natural law". Market, it is argued, have to be "sex-blind" because it functions via the comparison of abstract values.

It doesm, on the other hand, reinforce a concrete attribute, such as gender difference, because women, defined as those who bear children, are seen as coming to the market with a potential disadvantage. This anchors them to the IMM sphere. In other words, the contradiction here is that abstract capital punishes women for their concrete sex attribute, even though this sex difference is necessary for the reproduction of capitalism itself. Female labour-power thus has a higher social cost, and, contradictory, cheaper market price.

In the addendum on women, biology and children, conflation of three definitive factors of child-bearing agent (particular body biology, fact of bearing a child and specific relation to the result of this bearing) obscures two things. On one side, the mechanisms that regulate childbirth - marriage, contraceptives, shame of non-child bearing forms of sex activity. On the other, the changing definition of what a child is.

Source: Capturing the human heart., Group of toddlers on the school with teacher teaching, Unsplash

4. SEX/GENDER

Sex is defined as anchoring a specific group of individuals to specific spheres of activity. As well as the process of anchoring, it is the process of reproduction of two separate genders.

Going back to Butler for the critique of gender/sex binary, G&N observe that "gender" is socially tethered to culture, and sex is driven equally towards nature. Butler's counter proposition to this dynamic that G&N align with is that "sex is the naturalisation of gender’s dual projection upon bodies, aggregating biological differences into discrete naturalised semblances" (not sure I get that fully at this point, need to study Butler's critique of Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘uncritical reproduction of the Cartesian distinction between freedom and the body.’ Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (Routledge 1990), chapter 1: ‘Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire.’ ) G&N however, arrive to this notion not via the critique of the existentialist ontology of the body, as Butler, but via the alternative route, through value. They draw the analogy between the sex/gender relation (of the social body) and the value/fetishism dualism of the commodity.

Sex is then the use-value that attaches itself to gender as (exchange-) value. Gender is the abstraction that determines the body to which it is attached, in the same way as real abstraction of value transforms the material body of the commodity.

I do see how sex and gender are historically determined, but it is unclear how is it that both are "purely social". Likewise, this is arguable that both use-value can be abolished in the process of communisation together with exchange-value - since, supposedly, people will still need things for something, even after communisation?

Sex and gender are seen as two side of the same coin, and the more the abstraction of gender becomes denaturalised, the more natural and biological sex appears. Female gender in essence signifies a lower price tag. Extending the gender/sex/use value/exhange value allegory, gender relations are constantly renegotiated, reimposed and re-naturalised in a dialectical process.

5. THE HISTORY OF GENDER WITHIN CAPITALISM

The section offers a periodisation in order to break down this dialectical movement, on the example of the family.

1) Primitive accumulation (18th-19thc). The two genders and the IMM/DMM spheres de facto did not map to one another, even though women were responsible for the IMM and wage was the responsibility of men.

2) Nuclear family and Fordism (19thc). Fordism introduced new standards for production and consumption, and the crisis of reproduction of labour force at the beginning of this period has necessitated a more rigid gender coding, strictly confining women to the IMM. House work became doable by one woman alone because of the home appliances.

3) The 70s: real subsumption and commodification of IMM activities. While many IMM activites becoming rationalised, the time spent on childcare could not be reduced (still 24 hours a day), and instead redistributed to poor immigrants and women of colour. Thus, there is an abject - something which either cannot or not worth subsuming.

Source: Danurwendho Adyakusuma, Tea collector, Unsplash

6. CRISIS AND AUSTERITY MEASURES: THE RISE OF THE ABJECT

Why do G&N propose to differentiate abject and the IMM activities conceptually, even though in practice the two can be one and the same? Abject, comgin from Julia Kristeva's theorisation in Essay on Abjection, is defined as activities that were waged but becoming unwaged because they are too costly for the state or capital. IMM is a "purely structural category, independent of any dynamic".

In conclusion, G&N argue that if gender, through the process of denaturalisaion, is becoming an external constraint, it is, if not necessairily less powerful, but does present a possibility to abolish. Can this externality be seen as purely accidental?

Against the hard systems thinking: lean and agile

Kidd, Paul. 1994. Agile Manufacturing: Forging New Frontiers. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1118795.Agile_Manufacturing?from_search=true.

Source: Brown squirrel on brown post. Dušan Smetana, Unsplash

Summary

Claim: Mass production paradigm which is used in US and Europe cannot compete with new models because of its inflexibility and high amounts of waste (2).

Keywords: mass production, lean manufacture, agile manufacture

In conversation with: the Japanese lean manufacturing, which is seen as something 'we' should catch up with and overtake. Taylorist model, against which the critique is built (109). Hard systems thinking (182), as a belief that requirements can be defined upfront, is rejected in favour of incremental delivery.

Aim: to delineate agile from lean and to explain how the two differ.

Method: develops the methodology of agile in comparison with lean system used in Japan. The reason for Japan/the West is not explained and brings about further doubts as to whether cultural differences also have any impact on the capitalist modes of production in globalized market. The shortcoming of existing mass production model is seen in its division of organisation, people and technology independently, where agile improves by addressing those three components in their unity (3).

The book follows a narrative method and looks at three broad themes: (a) conceptual framework of agile; (b) cultural and methodological challenges in switching to agile; (c) designing a methodology for agile enterprise.

Why important

To CEO's, manufacturing strategists and engineers. Manufacturing researchers and policymakers: to gain a broad picture of the whole agile enterprise (viii).

To general public: the new way of manufacturing is something that both the workers, and the environment will benefit from.

Relevance to my research: Kidd's theory is an example of an early attempt to theorize agile, thus rejecting the difference between digital vs other types of production, which would allow me to spot any pitfalls in this kind of analysis. Also, I need to know how agile works is non-digital sphere, for the purposes of my comparative study.

- - - -

Notes:

Agile manufacturing is defined as a business concept that is able to respond to changes in the market environment by using knowledge as its fundamental resource (2).

Lean manufacturing is explained as having several interacting sub-systems: product design and production, supply chain and sales (141).

Taylorism (107) - a traditional manufacturing strategy, system aimed at maximising control, where people are used in a narrow mechanistic way.

Kidd characterises key trends of Taylorist doctrine as follows: reductionism (dealing with issues in isolation), optimisation of components, one best way, absence of goal definition (problems and goals are not questioned), mechanistic model of people. hierarchical and centralising style, value free design (no political, moral, ethical or other bias), separation of thinking and doing, individual reward for individual effort (prioritising individual over the team) (108).

To Kidd, the danger of Taylor model is that it has been around for so long, it has been assimilated into the cultural practices of labour and is largely taken for granted. Yet, as production environment were growing more chaotic and competitive from the early 2000s, the model was rapidly becoming obsolete. Technological determinism aside, the most dangerous attribute of Taylorist model is the legacy of which is still haunting much of the theory around today’s management is the stark antagonism implied in the worker-manager relationship - something the Kidd calls “separation of thinking and doing”. The initiative is removed from the teams, encouraging a counterproductive ‘us and them’ attitude to work, that has become synonymous with poor industrial relations (Kidd, 1994:111). My thesis takes the critique one step further by placing the managerial fuction outside of capitalist mode production all together - a blind spot of not only Kidd’s project, but much of other research done in professional sphere (see also Rubin, 2012 and Wang and Koh, 2010).

On interviews: producing the cultural experience

Rapley, Tim. “Interviews.” In Qualitative Research Practice, by Clive Seale, Giampietro Gobo, Jaber Gubrium, and David Silverman. SAGE Publications Ltd, 2004. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781848608191.d5.

Source: Andrew Lozovyi. Cropped image of handsome businessman giving interview to journalist with voice recorder and looking at camera in office. Deposit photos

Summary

Claim: Firstly, the interview (in its many forms) pervades and produces our contemporary cultural experiences and knowledges of authentic personal, private selves (3). Secondly, interviewing is currently the central resource through which contemporary social science engages with issues that concern it (4).

Keywords: qualitative interview, qualitative, research, practice

Supports/opposes who: Grounds in Atkinson and Silverman, 1997. Seale (1998) for the dual notion of data-as-resource (only belongs ot interviewee) vs data-as-topic (jointly produced between interviewee and interviewer) (5).

Method: A step-by-step instruction of how to do an interview. Firstly discusses epistemology, how the knowledges are produced in interviews. Secondly, goes through the stages such as recruiting, compiling list of questions, beginning the interview, interactions with interviewees, avoiding bias. Second part consists of tips on how to interact during the interview, how to analyse them and to think with interview data.

Among the limitations of the method it is pointed out that no interview can stand for observational data (Strong (1980), 35).

In conducting interviews, ‘engaged, active or collaborative’ interviewing approach is advocated (introducing a topic, listening and asking follow-up questions, interjecting to share personal experience or opinion), against a "everything goes" policy (28). The idea is to be there as a figure of focus for the interviewer, and a mediator of the interview process (calling for breaks if need be, taking hand written notes) (9). Important introductory moves are "taking out the tape-recorder, re-asking their permission to record and re-explaining issues of confidentiality and anonymity" (10). Rapport, that is establishing relaxed and encouraging relationship, as well as neutrality are seen as the two important attitudes throughout the interview process (12). In the latter, while avoiding bias is essential, not being neutral is beneficial when it means seeing other as "a human being" (13), going as far as mutual self-disclosure (26). Some ideas are given about the interview as "rules":

• you should ask some questions;
• selectively follow up on specific themes or topics;
• allow interviewees the space to talk at length (18)

In analysing interviews, a 'broadly discursive approach' is discussed (29), mentioning such methods as conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, discourse analysis, membership catergorization
analysis and narrative analysis (39). The aim of this approach is not to establish the truth, but rather find out how specific truths are established (29). Constant comparison method (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) as the technique where codes are continuously refined. In terms of broader framework, a more "layered" approach is offered. This consists of, independently of interview, exploring the context, finding sources, and through that locating key analytic themes, which are then discussed with the interviewees. During the recruiting phase the interviewer decides which voices should be heard with regards to the research topic (30).

Why important

To academics: as a learning resource, to recognize the value of an interview broadly as per the two claims above, and to be able to analyse the interview process, analyse what actually happened (5).

To general public: we all, as parts of "interview society" "just know ‘at a glance’ what it takes to be an interviewer or an interviewee" (4) - however it's not as clear cut as it seems.

Relevance to my research:

- - - -

Notes:

It is important to see the interviewee in the broader context and link to that context in the process of interview itself, as well as when analysing it (36).

Stories we tell to ourselves, our life-histories

Byrne, Bridget. “Reciting the Self: Narrative Representations of the Self in Qualitative Interviews.” Feminist Theory 4, no. 1 (April 1, 2003): 29–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700103004001002.

Source: Sebastian Herrmann. Two men facing each other while shake hands and smiling. Unsplash

Summary

Claim: a person's view of self is dependent on categories of race, class and gender.

Keywords: life-history, narrative, qualitative interviewing, subjectivity, whiteness

Questions: What is involved in asking people to produce stories of their lives in interviews? How might this enable some, but also silence other accounts that are not so readily produced with this genre? (47)

Supports/opposes who: Foucault's idea that narratives help to point to "techniques" or "practices" of the self, but also argues some of his notions, such as failure to problematize "the mastery of the self" (35). Gestalt principle (32). Feminist research. Carolyn Steedman on historical accounts of self and the writing/telling techniques. Martin McQuillan on 'narrative' vs 'story'. Donald E. Polkinghorne on 'self-narrative'. Byrne on raced, classed and gendered narratives. bell hooks on racial difference (38). Marie-François Chanfrault-Duchet (40)

Method: observes how people see themselves through three interviews, which are reported on in a narrative way. Adopts Foucauldian method where the subject is understood as "outcome of processes of production and self-production through the interplay of discourse and practice" (31). Comparing the differences between the interviewees via their narratives.

Why important

To feminist researchers: as a way to explore women's experiences as "hidden from history", and a way to access female voices (33). Raises questions "not only about processes of subjection, but about the use of storied narratives as a means of accessing them" (47).

To general public: idea that we are essentially stories we tell to ourselves throughout our lives - but these stories are not independent, but instructed by our context.

Relevance to my research: demonstrates how interviews can be included in the text as an illustration and vehicle for theory

- - - -

Notes:

One thing that interview shows is that women, contrary to men, do not insist on their life being as a series of self-conscious choices they made, eg living their life as their own, their narratives include narratives of other people (35) - which is seen as an opposition to Foucauldian notion of "Self-mastery' of the self. In other words, it puts much more stress on intersubjectivity (36).

Alienation as a link between politics and economy

Harvey, David, Anti-Capitalist Chronicles: Alienation, Democracy at Work

Source: Spencer Davis, Man working on tools. Unsplash

Anti-Capitalist Chronicles: Alienation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01A0prJud-A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKAeER1WOuE

Democracy At Work

Claim: The failure of satisfaction from capitalism results in discontented populations, which raises questions whether the capitalist model is the best way to go. We need to create a new political economy.

Why relevant: Anger produced by alienation makes politics instable and is captured by politician to redirect to issues other than capitalism (immigration, white suprematism, drug addiction etc.). Ultimately, capitalism is the reason why we feel abandoned, neglected and also the reason for decline in life expectancy.

Notes: Alineation helps to uncover the links between politics and economy.

In the Marxian time alientation was different - capital obscures humans as species-beings from what they are capable of. Thus, it was grounded in the humanist ideal, however problematic for Marx too. He later reworked this concept in the more scientific, capitalism-grounded form.

In Grundrisse, alienation means that we are alienated from something that have no control of. Eg in the act of exchange, a rather technical meaning. The workers have no right of the value of the commodities they produce.

Alienation happens in the free market situation, where "coercive laws of competition" - eg capitalist is constrained by what the market demands, or abstractions (this is common with Adam Smith). Alienation is thus embedded in the capitalist system, with both workers and capital are unfree. Legislation here is designed to mitigate the capitalist tendencies such as making the working longer. Alienation also exists between capital and nature, where the latter seen as whereupon the extraction happens.

Due to alienation it is not usual for worker not to like or care about their work. However, it is possible for workers to be satisfied by their labour processes, - the laternative is presented with the case where the work process is organised by workers. I cannot agree to the claim that, in connection to the aboe, introducing machinery and other technical improvements into the workflow increases alienation because workers' role is reduce to a less exciting role of machine operator. In software engineering - and in all kinds of contemporary occupations beyond it - humans are operating one technical tool or the other, some of which are indeed exciting, particularly in software.

Andre Gorz, in response to uprisings of 1968 attempts to rethink the labour process that would be less alienating. A compensatory consumerism idea came as the way to mitigate the miserable work conditions. In result many consumer niches and identity politics of lifestyles (including sexuallity) emerged in 1970s and 80s. While wages remained stagnant, the prices of consumer goods weer steadily declining and the "affluent worker" figure emerged. Why doesn't consumer capitalism doesn't work? Planned obsolensence leads to frustration. Role of new technologies is, to Marx, to increase the level of exploitation.

Changing form of consumtion: making spectacle: non-exlusionary goods, which are consumed instantaneously (meaning that if one person consumes doesn't stop others from consuming), such as TV series.

Discontent with capitalism gives renewed interest of population with religion (evangelical, certain brands of islam, etc.) and raises environmental concerns. In other words, such alienated populations accumulate anger, which leads to mobilisation and political instability. At the same time, capitalism is the last to be blame

On Marx' theory of value

Harvey, David. Marx’s Refusal of the Labour Theory of Value, March 1, 2018

Claim: "Marx’s value form is not a still and stable fulcrum in capital’s churning world but a constantly changing and unstable metric", influenced by markets, changes in technology, social reproduction and other factors.

Marx never aligned with labour theory of value and instead proposed his own "value theory".

Who deals with: Ricardo, labour theory of value.

Method: Picks up the main points of labour theory of value that add little to Ricardo's theory, but then claims that few Marxists notice that Marx went further, and shows where.

Notes:

Marx's theory of value is, in contrast to Ricardo's, who is looking only at production and circulation, argues that value is rather an outcome of negotiaton between competitive market processes, surplus value production and social reproduction. The latter is something that Marx devises after his comparative studies of living conditions and rationing among workers and prisoners.

On dinosaurs, continued

Brooks, Frederick P. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1975.

Fan Yang. Dinosaurs skeleton inside museum. Source: Unsplash

Summary of essays 1-3

1. The Tar Pit

Opposes: general public's belief that enthusiasts building software in a garage can surpass the efforts of large teams.

Claim: The difficulty of managing software production is...

Method: Narrative. Looks at key definitions: program, programming product, programming system, programming systems product. Compares joys (making useful things, learning) of programming to its woes (maldesign, poor implementation, incomplete delivery, bugs, product rapid obsolescence).

Notes:

“the program construct .. is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms” (7)

2. The Mythical Man-Month

Opposes: Optimism about tractability of software production process.

Claim: Lack of calendar time for delivery of software projects can be tackled via improvement of managerial techniques (estimation)

Method: A matrix of five reasons of delivery failures, then explanation for each in more detail.

Notes:

Reasons for late deliveries in softEn:

• Techniques of estimating are based on the assumption that everything will go well.
• They confuse effort with progress (man-month as a dangerous myth, because only works for perfectly partitionable tasks, such as cotton-picking or reaping wheat (16))
• Software managers are uncertain of those estimates.
• Schedule progress is poorly monitored.
• Adding manpower does not help to solve late deliveries - but effective management would (Brook's Law: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" (25))

3. The Surgical Team

Opposes: A view that small sharp team is more effective than a large team of medium-skilled engineers. Also opposes the "conventional team"

Supports: Harlan Mills and centralized workflow organisation.

Claim: the problem with the small team concept is that it's too slow for really big systems (31).

Method: Comparative analysis of the two models, the "conventional one", where several features of the product are developed simultaneousy and the centralized one supported by Brooks, where "one does the cutting and the others give him every support that will enhance his effectiveness and productivity". While acknowledging that the latter approach supported by Brooks was a step ahead of the other model, both of them lacked the flexibility required for building a more effective workflow.

Notes:

It is easy to notice that the model described here has an abundance of roles that have nothing to do with neither production nor decisions, which could be explained by the absence of powerful enough documentation, issue tracking or project management tools. For example, the "program clerk" is now replaced by Jira and Confluence, the "toolsmith" is outsourced to IT department, and the "language lawyer" is now embedded into back-end developer role. The lack of computational resources also means that front-end development is completely absent, since the visual side of software and other functionality it covers today was not there yet.

Setting aside the tendency of using "he" when detailing the roles in the model, it presents interest as a showcase of which methodological approaches to software engineering existed prior to agile. I would argue that scrum is improving this model at least in one major way - the whole of decision making is not any longer concentrated in one role. In Brook's model, "the surgeon", has the final say on all things software product. This role is quite mixed and complex and includes responsibilities for not only for designing the product, but also for coding, testing and documentation. The "copilot" is a product owner limited to only making suggestions and in any other way being secondary to the "surgeon", with the rest of the team hardly having any weight in decision making at all. Additionaly, the "administrator" role is overloaded with elements of different other roles, handling both communication between the team leader and the team together with office logistics. "The system, - Brooks says - is the product of one mind", in other words, it doesn't account - or accounts only externally - for the client and the user. This is crucial for understanding in which ways the view on software production has changed just a decade later.

My problem with this system is twofold. Firstly, the client is not represented in any way at all - perhaps because at the time of writing the concept of external agency was not fully formed so the company's product was fully ingrained into the work that the team does. In other words, everyone on the team was so familiar with the product that the product owner is not required. I would still suggest such close familiarity is not achievable, since it is clear that the product is quite complex. Secondly, as mentioned previously, the team is not involved in decision making on the practical level. This impedes the team's performance because it's harder for them to feed back on solutions which are seen as something external - and also leaves those people who are carrying out the tasks out of having their say in them, even though they are more qualified to make decisions.

This model leads Brooks to make a further claim, an importance of the divide between architecture and implementation, which to him means making decisions and creating the product. Would that suggest creation of a new working class though? The following essays promise to give further insights.

On dinosaurs

Brooks, Frederick P. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1975.

Overall book summary

Black and white engraving from a 1898-1904 French Encyclopedia. Source: pinterest

Claim: Preservation of the conceptual integrity of the product is critical. Large programming projects suffer management problems different in kind from small ones, due to division of labor (viii). The book works towards the way how conceptual unity can be achieved.

Supports/opposes who: the author is in conversation with a variety of his contemporaries, software engineering managers (IBM, MIT, Bell Labs, Computational Laboratory of Siberian Division, USSR).

Method: To answer Tom Watson's question why programming is hard to manage, compares the different management experiences in hardware and software development.

Why important: To managers, programmers and managers of programmers, helps them achieve higher productivity when producing software.

To general public: [tbc]

Relevance to my research: explores the methodological difficulties in software engineering.

Paradoxically, the book presents a negation to applying methods of industrial production management to software practice, but does not offer the new solution (which would be scrum, that one emerged a decade later). In other words, the critique of industrial methods is developed, while still viewing the software as a branch of this sphere, which has its own specificity, but the requirement for agile or other way of incremental delivery had still not been recognized. As it says in Wikipedia: "During the 1990s, a number of lightweight software development methods evolved in reaction to the prevailing heavyweight methods that critics described as overly regulated, planned, and micro-managed. These included: rapid application development (RAD), from 1991;^[14][15] the unified process (UP) and dynamic systems development method (DSDM), both from 1994; Scrum, from 1995; Crystal Clear and extreme programming (XP), both from 1996; and feature-driven development, from 1997. Although these all originated before the publication of the Agile Manifesto, they are now collectively referred to as agile software development methods"