white mule's formal luddhism

7/30/2019 White Mule's Formal Luddhism

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Ben Totushek

Close Reading Essay

Wen Jin, The Novel and Global CapitalismWord Count: 2381

Nothing characterizes the works of the popular front so much as the inability toimagine a completed narrative (Denning 118).

The cultural front of the early 20 th century was characterized by a different kind of

strategy on the part of the American labor movement. Borrowing from Gramscis idea of

the social bloc, Michael Denning suggests looking at the popular front as a historical bloc

that had both a base (the labor movement) and a superstructure (political thought

currents, unique cultural works and values, etc) (6). This particular period in American

Labor, although never gaining true hegemony, nevertheless had far reaching influence,

argues Denning, particularly with regards to one main school of its cultural works which

he terms the proletarian grotesque (many of which are still popular today). The Novel

White Mule by William Carlos Williams is a perfect example of one such work that

made important contributions to both the popular fronts evolving aesthetic ideology, as

well as to modernism as a whole. The purpose of this paper is to closely analyze one

passage of White Mule in detail, with the aim of decoding Williams complex system of

revolutionary symbolism (118). In doing so, we will shed light on two major issues that

Williams raises in the text. The first is Williams own view of the nature of the capitalist

mode of production. The other is what, if any, alternatives does Williams offer?

Though foremost among Williams formal decisions seems to be an obsession with

obscurity, there is a symbolic logic to his formal style, albeit an obscure one. In fact,

there is much to be learned from studying the basic formal devices of the novel, from the

conscious omission of quotation marks and new paragraphs for each speaker to the

unambiguous lack of a well-developed plot, in addition to, say, the allegorical meaning of

its basic characters and events. Williams creation of the variable foot in poetry was a

radical formal statement in its own right, aimed at the literary elites and dripping in the

vernacular of the American working class. In this same vein, White Mule is an attempt by

Williams to open up new channels of communication through radical formal deviance

and, using these channels, to say something totally new and unique about the nature of

American life under a capitalist mode of production. In a historical sense, he was


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probably a modernist, although his ideas remain current in the context of a postmodern

world and beyond, which testifies to their strength. As a basic rule, each chapter of the

book is set up as its own little documentary, offering a very honest, often ugly, but

always clinical look at the culture that pervaded working class life in the late 18 th- early

19th centuries.

In applying the two-fold level analysis described above (both of form and of content)

the most revealing passage of the novel for decoding White Mules revolutionary

symbolism involves the breaking of a printing press on a shop floor, and the situations

handling by the manager, Joe. In terms of content, the machines malfunctioning due to a

blockage, specifically the blockage of a foreign object, suggests an allegorical reference

to the all-too-famous barriers or limits to capital, which both David Ricardo and Thomas

Malthus conceded were relevant economic considerations, though they mainly focused

on population and the environment. David Harvey, combining a Marxist method of

inquiry with a modern geographical framework, describes several other barriers to

capitalism, including the surplus production problem, the problem of adequate labor, the

problem of limited quantities of natural resources, the problem of technology as a

commodity (resulting in less dynamic labor-saving innovation), the question of limited

market demand, and finally, the question of control on the shop floor. A chief theme

amongst these blockages is of course the potential barrier of an unruly workforce.

Secondary but related themes include the origins of capital, namely capital as constructed

the credit system, and the monetary system as a whole. In terms of form, however, this

blockage is also an allegory for the blocking of the readers knowledge that Williams so

deliberately employs. The chapter strike has only vague references to the general strike

that happens at the plant, for example. By looking at the context and the situation that

bring about this literal blockage and the consequences it brings about, we gain valuable

insight into the central riddle of the novel which is the question of why Williams chose

not to depict the strike, and why he jams the readers viewpoint so consistently

throughout the novel.

What exactly happens in the passage at hand? Leading in to it, the chapter Men

begins at a union print shop, where Joe Stecher, the main character, is the foreman. The

specific commodity the shop produces appears to be postal money orders, although this,


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like many other things in the novel, is kept somewhat obscure by Williams. And at this

particular moment in the story, the bosss son has been sent to find Joe to tell him that the

government has placed another order that exceeds the shops capacity due to a classic

barrier to capital: labor law. So just as the shop has malfunctioned by tripping over the

classic labor problem, Joe is inspecting a press that has malfunctioned due to its own

barrier: the handle of a screwdriver.

If youll let me get where you are Ill see where it is, said

the mechanic. All right, said Joe, and he crawled out

backwards. The mechanic moved over, lifted himself up

and took hold of the object Joe had pointed out. What is it?

I cant move it, said the mechanic. It looks like part of the

gear. Get it out, said Joe.

The mechanic moved awkward and slow.

Mr. Stecher. Wanted in the office. (Williams 90)

What Williams is doing here is emphasizing, as he always tries so hard to do, the

cramped, stressful, difficult living and working conditions of the characters in the novel.

But he is also quietly posing the question of how those issues relate to the blocked

machine. The mechanics intentional attempt to conceal the blockage from Joe is a very

subtle act of rebellion, both to Joe as foreman and to the capitalist running the operation.

Meanwhile, the fact that Joe is being called to his bosss office to help deal with another

limit to capital, in the form of a labor shortfall, suggests a reading of Joe as a particularly

important cog in the capitalist machine that is the print shop.

This human mechanization is further suggested in Joes wooden response to the

blockage. He says to the mechanic:

How long will it take? It all depends whether I can get a

part in the city. Well, get on your clothes and go out and

get it, said Joe. But dont you think I better start? Can you

fix it without the part? No but couldnt you send one of the

boys while I Then do what I tell you. Get what you

need, wherever it is made. Get on the train. Go where they


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make them. But get it. Work all night if you have to, but

this press has got to be running by tomorrow morning. (92)

Although the mechanic here makes a reasonable suggestion, Joe ignores it due to what he

sees as the bottom line. He must be able to tell the boss that the machine will be back

tomorrow, or its his ass on the line. But despite this mechanization, Joe displays

noteworthy humanity in the situation by merely suspending Carmody, who some of his

coworkers believe should have been fired.

So it is not a willing transformation to capitalist machine-part on the part of Joe, but

rather one of necessity given his job as middle manager. And Joe is indeed a crucial cog

in the machine, as Williams reveals on the following page. As the old man (his boss)

rants and raves about the broken machine, it makes no impression on Joe. He knew

and knew that the old man knew he knew there was no one that could take his place

(92). First of all, this sentence alone bears similarities to the repetitive monotony of

manual machine labor, made all the more salient because it is precisely the type of

calculation that an employee must make about their boss on many an occasion on the job.

Just as Joe is a critical cog, Carmody is an integral screw in the capitalist machine as

well, and makes similar calculations about his own value: He didnt have the guts to fire

me. I know they need the press. Theyre up against it and dont want to start a night shift

(94). Except that Joe was at that very moment asking to start a night shift to meet the

excess demand on the shop. So Joe wasnt such a gutless coward after all. Gutlessness

would suggest the dominance of some kind of human emotion. Instead, it is the very fact

that he was irrationally opposed to labor unions (This business of holding up the game

to get a rake off from it affronted his philosophy, it was something foreign to him that he

did not understand) which caused Joe to miscalculate on the implications of the night

shift and incite the strike (14). But capitalism itself has been called, to paraphrase the

economist Duncan Foley, an inherently irrational system that is constantly insisting on its

own rationality.

There is in fact a very close parallel between the machine blockage via foreign object

and the blockage of Joes nature via foreign philosophy. And its not that the blockages

are both foreign, although thats another problem, perhaps for a different paper

indeed the blaming of the Irish for the ills of society harkens back to the tendency of


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unemployment to breed fascism in 18th-19th century New York and everywhere else, for

that matter. But thats not the significance of the parallel to which Im referring. His very

next thought on page 14 acknowledges that there is a flip side to his philosophy: I work

and they get the money (14). Its important to remember, however, that this tender

moment is one of the only ones in the novel for Joe. Minutes later hes picking a flower

for his wife. Its understandable for him to behave so mushy, of course. Hed just had a

baby. Nevertheless, it seems clear that this human side is whats lacking throughout this

novel, and that the capitalist mode of production is both the source of this dearth and the

main beneficiary of it, except when it reaches its limits, such as the blockage of organized

labor.

Immediately following the blocked machine that started this whole domino effect,

Williams pushes his narrative jamming device to its full extent in the very faint

description of the events of the strike. For those readers still hoping for a traditional

plotline, this is probably the moment when they give up reading White Mule, for there is

frustrating little told about the actual events of the strike, and none of it firsthand. This

doubling down on the disruptive narration is coupled with more domestic descriptions of

the sickly baby being abused, the mundane chores of its mother Gurlie, etc. The message

from Williams here seems to be that we need to wrest back our humanity from the

capitalist machine, but that can not happen from simply holding up the game.

We are ready, then to summarize Williams answers to the two questions I posed at

the beginning of this essay: 1. what is the nature of the capitalist mode of production, and

2. what alternatives does Williams offer? The nature of the capitalist mode of production,

simply stated, is a dehumanizing, homogenizing, machine-like process that has a life of

its own, including many limits and threats to that life which it is obsessed with

overcoming. As far as what alternatives or solutions Williams may pose, he seems to

imply that dehumanization is a two way street, and that perhaps the only solution is to

first rehumanize the proletariat. If Joe had seen both sides of the labor issue as the

machine was breaking, he wouldnt have been so brash as to order a night shift, and a

major limit to capital (the strike) could have been avoided. The babys birth, as grotesque

as it may have been, gave Joe that temporary moment of insight, and so an emphasis on

family life as a tonic is implicit. Williams seems to disagree with the common criticism


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of capitalism that it is a spontaneous and unalterable thing. Although capitalism has

corroded the family and the social fabric of the proletariat in his novel, people like Joe

are often in positions to change it for the better.

Joe is thus the best hope for his shop and by extension society. Ironically, however, he

must first stop behaving like the machine he is a part of. Its not entirely clear whether

Williams thinks this is very reasonable. But he does clearly think its at leastpossible,

and that may mean its our best hope. As far as how we are to get there from here, again

the formal devices of the novel make more concrete suggestions of a different path than

any of the outright statements. The implication of this is, to my reading, that through

creativity and new, more honest forms of communication we can begin to reverse the

effects that the capitalist system is having upon us. The White Mule is a very peculiar, at

times painful and disorienting read, but such was life at the time it depicted. There is in

fact something dishonest and nauseating about the idea of a typical plot structure

depicting something like a story of urban 1890 New York, and yet it took Williams doing

it the other way for us to see that.

white mule's formal luddhism

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