Hi Victor,

I appreciate both your post and your contributions to the field. You should
have intervened earlier and more often.

I deliberately raised the flag, not because the discourse was about the
social nature of design, but because the discourse was going too much
populist. Just for information, my research is in the area of the
sociocultural aspects of design and I will be the last person on the list
to curtail a good discussion on the social basis of design. I will actually
welcome such discussions as long as they are not populist and do not dwell
on street-wise thinking, emotions and ideological bias.

I agree with you on your assessment of Marx. Marx is one of the most
logical and systematic social philosophers. He established a major research
paradigm and a perspective to the social world. However, there are several
Marx(es) (stages). Among them, most important are the "young Marx" and the
"older Marx." We also need to remember that no matter how logical was Marx
in Das Kapital, there he made several foundational mistakes because of his
ideological bias and the vigor of youth emotions. He overestimated the
contribution of the working class for the emergence of added value. In this
way he underestimated the contributions of the intelligentsia, the
management and the capitalists. The tragedy of East Europe is a direct
consequence of this ideological bias. Some opportunist and adventurous
elements like Lenin and Trotsky selectively referred to Marx to develop an
ideology that fitted to their own views and goals. The capitalist social
order was destroyed together with almost all of its social institutions.
The new social order (Bolshevik socialism) was an artificial creation, with
artificial institutions that were incapable to reproduce and died when the
generation of their creators died.

Although many people on the list were astonished by the parallels I made
between Freire and Lenin (I didn't compare Freire to Marx, Marx is much
above Freire), there are aspects in relation to which it is only natural to
see similarities. This is their intelligential populism and ideological
bias. What disguises the similarity is the physical and aggressive approach
of Lenin versus the seemingly pacifist approach of Freire.

Now, about the other Marx. Shortly before Marx died, there is an anecdote
that he had said: If what these people are talking is Marxism, I am not a
Marxist. We also need to remember that Marx' archives are stored in two
main places. One is in Moscow, the other is in the Netherlands. Both of
these places gave the origin of two major interpretations of Marx. One of
them sprung from the ideas of the young Marx and his revolutionary passion
(the revolution of 1848), the other continued the line of thought of the
mature Marx. West European Marxism evolved from that second Marx.

My experience is that all these "empowerment" people use the empowerment
talk to empower themselves. Even Lenin, who donated his salary to the poor
and lived a spartan life in Moscow (not in Switzerland!), actually got much
more -- he obtained the power to rule over 1/6 of the Earth. Just don't
tell me that this is altruism.

My appeal to the list is to be more sociological rather than ideological.
And second, let's make the discourse a bit more scholarly rather than
street-wise. There are too much populism and emotions. Instead, we can
think about a social science apparatus that will really help design
researcher to conceptualize in a productive way the social basis and
factors in design. I can not understand why the discussion list spends
months on empowerment and complaints on big corporations, rather than
working on more productive vehicles of social input in design. I refer to
design research on social factors, design programming/briefing, and product
evaluation/assessment. These are the instruments for making design user
friendly. Not street activism. The red brigades showed that they can hit
and run, but they can not build.

With kind regards,

Lubomir


At 08:32 AM 5/1/2004 -0500, Victor Margolin wrote:
>Dear colleagues:
>Greetings from a lurker. I am usually able to bypass comments on the
>list with which I don't agree and don't feel like responding to but
>Lubomir did (to make a paradoxical metaphor) raise a red flag. What
>is the problem with dealing with the social consequences of design.
>Isn't that a legitimate, in fact, primary, subject of research? To be
>honest, I have waded through endless messages on abstruse subjects on
>this list and therefore, when the discussion finally rolls around to
>the social, I see no need to curtail it. First of all, Karl Marx,
>whether you are an orthodox believer or not, is one of the major
>thinkers of the 19th century. His analysis of the way that surplus
>value is produced on the backs of labor is crucial to all liberal
>economists and describes perfectly what the Wal-Marts of the world
>continue to do to workers. Second, anyone who talks about oppression
>is not necessarily referring to Marx. In the discussions of Paolo
>Freire, I didn't see any reference to Karl Marx. Third, even if
>someone espouses Marx's views strongly, what is the problem?
>Lubomir, are you conflating Marxism with a perverse application in
>Eastern Europe? What the Soviet Union ended up being before the
>collapse of Communism is not textbook Marxism at all. Fourth
>Kari-Hans is, in my opinion, absolutely correct. Many products are
>oppressive and are getting more so. We are being forced to live with
>increasing layers of technological mediation including automated
>phone messages, "oppressive demands" to do more and more of our
>business on the web etc. Who is talking about these things? Frankly,
>it should be us. Several years ago in my book The Politics of the
>Artificial I made the point in an essay on experience that we have no
>social processes to evaluate new products (except for Consumer
>Reports) and assess their value to society. While many are focused on
>"oppressive" politics, and rightly so, companies around the world are
>making technological decisions about new products and these products
>are being adapted by institutions. The result, in my opinion, is that
>the world is changing right under our noses in "oppressive" ways and
>few people are talking about it or offering a critical discourse that
>might foster some modicum of resistance. Thus, we are all being
>oppressed by new technological systems (read Thomas Hughes). It is
>not only poor people in Brazil who need a Paolo Freire. We all do.
>Well, before I call for a revolution and raise too many hackles on
>this list, I will end my comments. But before I sign off, I would
>like to issue a call to the other 6,000 lurkers to speak up about
>issues that concern them. We are a group of people who can make a
>difference, at least in the way that design is discussed and studied.
>I would like to see us become more involved in discussions of
>design's social implications and to work towards formulating programs
>of research. There is no way to prevent anyone from doing research on
>whether pink or green circular shapes do or don't arouse emotion but
>I would not like to see such questions at the center of the design
>research enterprise. Some people in the world are looking to us for
>incisive analyses of how the product world functions and what impact
>it makes on everyone. The call is out and it is up to us to respond.
>Karl Marx is a good resource. So is Paolo Freire. And so are Thomas
>Schutz, Hannah Arendt, Thomas Hughes, Langdon Winner, and even Donald
>Norman (sometimes). Well, Ken, I did what you suggested I do. This is
>an impulsive message. I read it over but hardly changed anything.
>So, let the chips fall where they may.
>Victor Margolin
>University of Illinois, Chicago
>--
>Victor Margolin
>Director of Graduate Studies
>Department of Art History
>University of Illinois at Chicago
>935 W. Harrison St.
>Chicago, IL 60607-7039
>Tel. 1-312-413-2463
>Fax 1-312-413-2460