Factory councils broke from top-down technocratic knowledge and empowered workers as thinkers.
Evidence
Th e Ordinovista movement proposed a twofold break from the capitalist order, one that was at once institutional and methodological. Rather than being a means to strengthen peoples’ passive consent to the capitalist order, knowledge became critical and empowering. … Th ese foundations broke away from any topdown and technocratic conception of knowledge— a conception of knowledge that the austerity experts would indefatigably strive to reestablish. … Th e factory councils embodied such a methodological revolution. Councils united workers of all ranks as thinkers and producers— to control production, to end private ownership of the means of production and wage relations, and to bridge the divide between economics and politics in order to give true force to economic democracy. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 579
Categorization
- XREF: The contrast between council knowledge (critical, bottom-up) and the technocratic ‘economic necessity’ framing of austerity experts sets up the book’s central opposition — connects directly to the foundational purpose of reading this for austerity-as-class-weapon. — connects to: Austerity experts sought to reimpose a top-down technocratic conception of knowledge — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 580; Factory councils embodied a counterhegemonic worker epistemology threatening capitalist order — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 539; The Institute treated workers as unable to articulate their own decisive factory attitudes — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2068
Broader Connections
- Austerity experts sought to reimpose a top-down technocratic conception of knowledge
#contradicts(0.82) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 580 - Factory councils embodied a counterhegemonic worker epistemology threatening capitalist order
#expands(0.82) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 539 - The Institute treated workers as unable to articulate their own decisive factory attitudes
#contradicts(0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2068