LINGUIST List 8.350

Tue Mar 11 1997

Review: Z. Harris book on Politics

Editor for this issue: Andrew Carnie <carnielinguistlist.org>



What follows is another discussion note contributed to our Book Discussion Forum. We expect these discussions to be informal and interactive; and the author of the book discussed is cordially invited to join in. If you are interested in leading a book discussion, look for books announced on LINGUIST as "available for discussion." (This means that the publisher has sent us a review copy.) Then contact Andrew Carnie at carnielinguistlist.org

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  • Bruce Nevin, Zellig Harris, _The Transformation of Capitalist Society_

    Message 1: Zellig Harris, _The Transformation of Capitalist Society_

     Date: Wed, 05 Mar 1997 14:23:35 +0000
    From: Bruce Nevin <bnevincisco.com>
    Subject: Zellig Harris, _The Transformation of Capitalist Society_


    _The Transformation of Capitalist Society_. Zellig S. Harris. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. March 1997.

    Six to ten centuries ago, probably no one saw the seeds of revolution in the transactions of burghers, merchants, and moneylenders. Their niche roles within feudal society were construed as supports for the status quo: useful, even necessary, but ancillary. It could scarcely then be imagined, however self-evident it may seem to us in hindsight, that maximization of profit would supplant inherited privilege and obligation as the center pole in the tent of social relations. The transformation of society from feudalism to capitalism was mostly invisible to its participants.

    The ability to step aside from the way things "naturally" are, to perceive that their basis is in conventional expectations, and to recognize the seeds of a successor "social reality," is a rare gift indeed. This is the gift that Zellig Harris presents to us in this posthumous book, due out in mid-March 1997.

    Several of his friends collaborated in preparing the 1992 manuscript for publication, among them Bill Evan (the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania), who asked me to prepare a brief description for linguists in this venue. Although this book is not about linguistics or language, it is of interest to linguists (aside from its intrinsic interest to anyone) because of its author's role in the development of a science of language. Harris was a president of the LSA, founded the first linguistics department in the United States, and made many original contributions to linguistics, among them phonemic long components (independently with partly similar work by Firth and others), discontinuous morphemes, string analysis (basis of important computational work, and leading to tree-adjoining grammars), transformational syntax, operator grammar, and analysis of information structures in discourse and in sublanguages, and of course he was instrumental in fostering the work and early career of his most famous student, Noam Chomsky. Some, perhaps recalling Chomsky's comment that he was first attracted to Harris because of his political views, may be curious to learn what those views were.

    Harris had a profound understanding of history, economics, sociology, and anthropology. In this, he had much in common with Sapir, who it is said regarded him as his intellectual heir; in particular in his sensitivity to the inadequacies of established social arrangements (inadequacies made especially obvious in the Great Depression) and in his interest in the possible shapes of alternatives. Before undertaking this book, he read and re-read widely, because he did not want to re-do what someone else had already adequately done.

    Harris does not decry the worth of capitalism, as far as it goes, nor deny the great benefits that it has brought. It is obvious that there have been great advances in culture and in the material standard of living of most people, even in the last 100 or 50 years. Rather, he asks "whether, in spite of its success, the capitalist system will end or change substantially in the foreseeable future. If so, what are the possibilities that the change will foster more equitable socio-economic conditions?" (p. 2).

    The ascendancy of capitalism over communism and socialism is commonly seen as a rising tide, but Harris shows us how it is rather more "an advancing wave-front which leaves increasing areas of non-capitalist decision-making behind it" (p. 41). Capitalist endeavors must maximize profit. Yet some of the requirements for its practitioners and their social institutions to survive cannot be met without conflict with (short-term) profit--among them the education, health, and economic viability of the labor force, and indeed of the ecosystems in which enterprises are carried out. And an inherent contradiction (seen most blatently in pyramid schemes, and somewhat less so in socalled multi-level marketing) is the requirement for an ever expanding domain of operation, which clearly cannot be maintained forever. (This is the reason markets increasingly must be manufactured in late capitalism.) Because of these conflicts, certain decisions and decision-making mechanisms, increasingly over time, are either delegated to governments or relinquished to employees.

    The most important presently visible precursors to a successor to capitalism are seen in increased employee control and even outright ownership, as in employee stock ownership plans (ESOP). For example, the Reagan-era restructuring of the United States Post Office has not succeeded in making it a viable for-profit enterprise, and Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R California) has now proposed an ESOP for postal workers (Wall Street Journal, "Make Every Mailman a Shareholder," March 3 1997). As areas of the economy become less viable for profit maximization, they become more likely candidates for this relinquishment of control. With employee ownership comes a shift of the central motivation of the enterprise from profit maximization to the long-term sustenance of the enterprise itself, and of those who make their livelihoods with it. Interestingly, "it is more likely that the humdrum essentials of life are what will become the less profitable" (p. 4), the staples of existence rather than the "hot" products for which markets must first be created.

    "Thus we arrive at a possible basis for non-capitalist production growing inside capitalist society, the more easily because (at least in its early stages) it is not in confrontation with the pure capitalist production, but rather a special-case complement to it. Although employee-owned companies fit into the capitalist economy in that they buy and sell in the market, and have to make a profit, they may not share the capitalist fate in several respects: they do not have to maximize profit; they do not have to accumulate wealth beyond the needs of reinvestment; they have no necessary conflict of interest between owners and workers (so long as they do not employ non-owning workers); their business decisions remain close to their production decisions; and they may be less susceptible to the vagaries of the stock market, depressions, and other features of capitalist conditions" (p. 5).

    For a more egalitarian system to emerge, rather than the superimposition of a new elite as in various revolutionary movements, systems of cooperative production governed from below must already be established, in these niches neglected by capitalism, in sufficient measure that they may be extended to the point of becoming the main form of making production decisions. It is in just this way, and not by revolutionary overthrow, that capitalism succeeded feudalism. Some capitalist institutions will survive, just as vestiges of feudalism remain today (hardly startling news to people involved with academic institutions).

    Another essential characteristic of capitalism is the indirect relation between decisions based on profit and their implementation in actual production. This is one source of its tremendous flexibility, but also a weakness. In particular, one might say that fixation on the bottom line is a kind of tunnel vision or selective blindness under which alternative social arrangements may flourish as supports for the status quo: useful, even necessary, but ancillary.

    The foreseen transformation is sociological and economic more than political, amenable to piecemeal and scattered advances, not all of them permanent at first. "[W]hat is most important is to develop social structures -- organizations or ways of interacting -- enabling people to initiate and control activities relevant to their own life and work. Such structures would have to avoid leaving room for some individuals or groups to control the life and work of others, even via a back door" (p. 229). Conspiratorial methods are not effective, nor are confrontational tactics practicable for those who would build the infrastructure of control-from-below, however useful they may seem for those who effect top-down controlling social structures. "Every cooperative attempt or method needs to be initiated by its participants, upon whom the risk of failure would fall" (p. 232).

    The book is well reasoned and its generalizations, methods, and conclusions are supported throughout by evidence, much of it familiar but perhaps cast in a somewhat new light by Harris's treatment. Pervading it is what Wolf Heydebrand in the Foreword calls a "cautious optimism." "[T]he door for change is not closed. Only inaction -- apathy, indecision, unreadiness to act -- can keep the door shut" (p. 233).

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