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<p>There's a lot about division of labor in RM near the indexed portion "man </p>
<p>under communism."</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>"Dialectically, the Marxist analysis would apparently begin with a principle of </p>
<p>division where idealism begins with a principle of merger. And, as regards the</p>
<p>purposes of rhetoric, it admonishes us to look for its 'mystification' at any </p>
<p>point where the social divisiveness caused by property and the division of </p>
<p>labor is obscured by unitary terms (as with terms whereby a state, designed</p>
<p>to protect a certain structure of ownership, is made to seem equally </p>
<p>representative of both propertied and propertyless classes). Indeed, we</p>
<p>find the stress upon private property as a rhetorical motive so convincing,</p>
<p>that we question whether communism is possible under the conditions</p>
<p>of extreme specialization (division of labor) required by modern industry.</p>
<p>_The German Ideology_ explicitly pictures man under communism, shifting</p>
<p>from job to job like a Jack-of-all-trades, as the mood strikes him (hunting in</p>
<p>the morning, fishing in the afternoon, rearing cattle in the evening, and</p>
<p>criticizing after dinner, "without ever becoming hunter, fisherman shepherd</p>
<p>or critic"). Given the highly specialized nature of modern technology, which</p>
<p>requires of its operators an almost Puritanic severity of application, if so</p>
<p>dilettantelike a way of life as Marx describes is the sign of a true communist</p>
<p>society, then every step in the evolution of Soviet Russian industry would </p>
<p>seem likely to take it farther from a world free of the cleavage that arises</p>
<p>with the division of labor (and with the separation of property that goes </p>
<p>with it, and the disparate states of consciousness that go with that)."</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>A Rhetoric of Motives p. 108-109</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Jim</p>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> KB <kb-bounces@kbjournal.org> on behalf of David Erland Isaksen <daviderland@gmail.com><br>
<b>Sent:</b> September 12, 2016 9:46:11 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> wessr@oregonstate.edu<br>
<b>Cc:</b> kb@kbjournal.org<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [KB] Burke & the Division of Labor</font>
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<p dir="ltr">He does state though, as Cox mentioned, that there will always be some division of labor. Even in a Communist utopia. That quote is from A Rhetoric of Motives.</p>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sep 13, 2016 3:17 AM, <<a href="mailto:wessr@oregonstate.edu">wessr@oregonstate.edu</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
I don't think Burke ever "rejected" Marxism. Instead, I think he tended to see himself incorporating Marxism into his own system (Marxists would no doubt object to the incorporation but that is a different story).<br>
<br>
At the end of his response to Jameson, for example, Burke insists on starting with symbol-using rather than class struggle, but adds that the study of the symbol-using animal "can welcome the topic of class struggle as a notable contribution" (Critical Inquiry
5.2 [1978]: 416).<br>
<br>
An example would be the argument in Rhetoric of Motives that symbol-using animals are "classifying" animals before they are "class" animals (282-83). "Class" in the Marxist sense is one mode of classifying but not the only one. "Classifying" is prior.<br>
<br>
The things he took from Marx were things he thought could be applied to a critique of the current state of things. I don't think he limited Marx to a prediction about the future.<br>
<br>
That being said, he did see the Marxist narrative of history as a particularly good example of how an "ultimate" terminology works as persuasion (RM 189-97). The Marxist "ultimate" terminology turns a mere worker into the proletariat, an agent of history. He
is not defending this narrative in this section, but he is using it as a model.<br>
<br>
Bob<br>
<br>
Quoting Carrol Cox <<a href="mailto:cbcox@ilstu.edu" target="_blank">cbcox@ilstu.edu</a>>:<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
It's been over 50 years since I did most of my intensive study of Burke,<br>
though I continued frequently to browse in the Grammar & the ...Literary<br>
Form until my eyes failed me nearly 10 years ago. I also read carefully his<br>
exchange in CI with Jameson at the time of its publication.<br>
<br>
If I remember correctly, the core of Burke's rejection of Marx was his<br>
(Burke's) belief of the inevitability of the division of labor. If that is<br>
so, his objection to Marx was grounded in his premise that "Marxism" was<br>
essentially a recipe for a future society rather than a critique of<br>
contemporary society. Again, if I remember correctly, Burke in the Grammar<br>
did speculate on making a worker the _owner_ of his job. That had to be<br>
premised on the permanence of capitalist social relations, combined with at<br>
least a speculative belief that either (a) wage workers could achieve the<br>
political and social power to seize possession of their jobs (permanent<br>
tenure for all employees, public & private) _or_ (b) that capitalists could<br>
be persuaded (through a correct rhetoric) to grant wage workers such tenure<br>
voluntarily. His use of the trope "the human barnyard" might point to the<br>
latter hope.<br>
<br>
Carrol<br>
<br>
<br>
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