[Milton-L] Re: authorship and the survival of evidence [was:Milton and Marx]

[Carrol Cox]

James Rovira wrote:
> 
> Patrick Scott raises a good point, esp. about our point of view and
> what presents itself as evidence.  I think we need to consider a range
> of possibilities here, some of which include the fact that authors
> like Pope could consider some works written for profit and others as
> an expression of his own interest.  In authors like Blake we also have
> the possibility of a completely unrealistic view of what would sell
> and be popular eventually devolving into understanding writing for
> profit as corrupt.

It's not selling one's product (or producing for that purpose) that is
relevant here. It s whether, in the first instance, one owns one's own
product. Milton did. Pope did. The salaried reporter does not, and she
sells her capacity to write, not the writing itself, and whatever she
produces belongs to her employer from the beginning. Pope retained
ownership of his poems and over the conditions of their further
publication. Screenwriters do not -- though their current labor contract
guarantees them revenue from residuals. But that is a labor contract
(now an issue of dispute in upcoming contract negotiations), and the
studios, not the writers, own the scripts.

> 
> We also have to consider differences in degree.  Marx's comparison was
> to a factory worker whose labor was completely alienated from his
> ideals and everything else you might associate with artistic labor,
> wasn't it?  Even if Milton's intention for PL were exclusively for
> profit (of course they weren't, but even if...) his labor still
> wouldn't be quite the same as the factory worker's.

"Profit" is ambiguous here. In reference to the Marx quotation it means
only profit on capital. Writing a book for money does not make the
writer a capitalist or the money gained a profit. Milton _owned_ PL,
then sold it. In terms of political economy this can be compared to the
fee collected by a physician in independent practice or the 'wages' paid
to a self-employed cleaning woman, It can be contrasted to the wages of
that woman if she is employed by Merry Maids or the salary of that
physician if she works in an ER. Milton, the independent physician, and
the self-employed cleaning woman would be petty producers. They own the
product of their own labor.

Also, the term "alienated" is a mare's nest. In _Capital_ it is strictly
technical, carrying no ethical or psychological load. In reference to
the 1844 mms. debate rages. 

>From the OED: "1962 E. KAMENKA Ethical Foundations Marxism 12 The
philosophico-ethical conceptions that underlie the younger Marx. Chief
among these conceptions is that of ‘alienation’: the notion that in
modern capitalistic society man is estranged or alienated from what are
properly his functions and creations and that instead of controlling
them he is controlled by them."

This suggests that there is some "human essence" to which some functions
are metaphysically proper, some not. Perhaps Marx thought something like
this in 1844, though I am a bit sceptical. In the technical sense,
however, if Brooks's trucker is an employed trucker, then his labor is
alienated regardless of his attitude towards it; if he is a
self-employed trucker, then his labor is _not_ alienated [technically]
however alienating [ethical or psychological sense] he might find it. Of
course, in the case of many nominally "self-employed" truckers, in fact
their 'ownership' of their truck is quite 'nominal,' and their
relationship to those they contract with is in substance if not
juridically that of employee to employer. Similarly, Milton's labor on
PL was unalienated not because he loved it but because he owned the
product of it, which he was able sell (alienate) rather than first
selling (alienating) his capacity for labor (writing) to a publisher,
who then owned the product of that labor from the beginning. A reporter
for a newspaper has _no_ control whatever over the use to which his
product is put, just as a software engineer at Microsoft has no control
over the use of the code she produces. Their labor is alienated labor no
matter how richly rewarding they do or don't find it.

> 
> At any rate, I'm curious too how accurate Marx was in his assessment
> of Milton.

That is a bit difficult to explore, since it isn't clear that Marx made
any "assessment" of Milton. And even if some sort of assessment is
implicit, that would be something like an unintended consequence. In my
first post I referred to class as a relation and a process, not an
identity. Marx is unintelligible unless this focus on _relations_
(rather than, primarily, the 'things' related). In the Economic
Manuscripts of 1855-58 ("Grundrisse" or first rough draft of _Capital_)
he writes: ". . .in general ratios can only be _thought_ if they are to
be fixed, as distinct from the subjects* which are in that ration to
each other." [*"Subject" in the sense of the bearer of predicates,
properties, etc.] The focus, then, is neither on Milton _nor_ his poem,
but in the social _relationship_ reflected in his sale of the poem (not
of his time), in contrast to the salaried reporter's sale of his _time_,
not of his product.

Carrol