Marxists desperately need a new vision for the future
by Jehu
Given its ultimate result, this may sound bizarre, but I think Marxists need their own Manhattan Project for the 21st century. Rather than aiming to level cities, this project will openly aim for the complete automation of production and the complete elimination of wage labor.
A global movement that sets this almost inconceivable aim will capture the imagination of humanity and it is likely the only thing that can put communism back on the agenda in the advanced countries.
Here is the problem: Capitalism naturally reduces the need for labor, but in the worse possible way. Under capitalism free time takes the form of unemployment and poverty for the workers. In other words, capitalism creates the material conditions for communism, but in a way that benefits the most wealthy members of society. Communism is free time and nothing else, but under capitalism workers experience this free time in the form of unemployment — free time in the form of unemployment means the working class are utterly cut off from the means of life.
In one way or another, today everybody is trying to figure out how to stop this, with policy proposals ranging from “green investment” to jobs guarantees to basic income to opposition to TPP. People focus on the symptoms of wage labor, unemployment and poverty, while ignoring the thing that is actually creating the unemployment and poverty in the first place, wage labor.
Workers experience free time as poverty and unemployment only because they must sell their labor power to get the means to life. So long as wage labor exists unemployment and poverty will exist. Wage labor turns what should be an exciting future into a dystopian nightmare. The natural impulse of capitalism — abolishing the need for labor and making possible the conditions for a society of freely associated individuals — is turned into a horrific vision of billions cut off from all means to life.
Rather than getting rid of wage labor, people spend time trying to figure out how it can be reformed so as to eliminate poverty and unemployment. They think they can fix it by handing out cash or getting the state to give everyone a job, invest in infrastructure, etc.
Here is the thing: For millennia the wealthiest members of society have lived without labor, and never once complained about not having a job.
A job is not necessary to life, it is a deliberate imposition on the majority of society to extract wealth. Today, we live in a time where it is completely possible to really have a society where, for the first time in human history, no one has to work; where everyone can enjoy what only the wealthy have enjoyed for millennia.
The idea of a society where no one has to work seems delusional to most people, but so was the idea of people walking on the moon or being able to level an entire city simply by splitting a particle so tiny no one could see it.
To create a society without labor, we have to embrace what Marx called capitalism’s tendency “towards an absolute development of the productive forces, which continually come into conflict with the specific conditions of production in which capital moves, and alone can move.”
Marx’s argument here, as odd as it might sound, is that all we have to do to create a society without labor is remove the barriers to capitalism’s own tendency in that direction.
This sounds insanely creepy, I know. Communists calling for removal of all barriers to capitalism’s development? Really? You want more capitalism? How can you call yourself a communist?
However, the barriers to capitalism’s development are nothing more than its increasingly outmoded relations of production. The barrier to capital, says Marx, is capital itself. In practical terms, Marx’s argument suggests the more you reduce wage labor, the more absolute capital’s tendency to develop the productive forces becomes.
The interesting thing is that I have never once read a single Marxist who suggests the capitalist tendency toward absolute development of the productive forces can be harnessed to abolish capitalism. The discourse among communists today is entirely focused on concepts like “resistance to capitalism” or that abysmal term “anti-capitalism”.
In Marx’s theory, however, capitalism is already its own anti-capitalism.
That is what Marx means when he says capital runs into its own specific conditions of production. If you uproot the specific conditions of capitalist production, the tendency toward absolute development of the productive forces becomes a law, not just a mere tendency.
I have said this before, but let me repeat it: among communists only Nick Land gets this. To kill capitalism, you only have to remove the barriers to development of the productive forces that capitalism throws up in its own path. The rest of post-war communism reacts in complete horror at the very idea of doing this, as if Land is saying something terrible. Marxists’ horror with Nick Land extends even to his idea all of humanity will be removed from the productive forces.
As if our aim in social emancipation is to be mere instruments (a ‘substrate’, as Ray Brassier calls it) for production of use values.
The specific historical condition of capital is wage labor. The contradiction lying at the heart of capital is that it seeks to abolish wage labor, while retaining value as measure of social wealth. Thus, capital seeks to abolish wage labor, but, at the same time, is forced to expand wage labor because it is the sole source of capitalist social wealth.
To interrupt this process of capitalist social wealth production, you need only prevent the further expansion of the absolute duration of wage labor. Capital inherently responds to a progressive limit on labor time by trying to accelerate the development of the productive forces, as it does in every crisis. The aim of this accelerated development is to increase the relative portion of the labor day during which surplus value is created.
If the absolute labor time of society cannot increase, capital must attempt to increase the relative portion of the labor day devoted to unpaid labor. In the long run capital can only do this by developing the productive forces and reducing still further that amount of living labor used in production of commodities.
Thus, it is possible to force capital toward absolute development of the productive forces simply by reducing absolute labor time available for production of capitalist social wealth.
This, mind you, is not fucking rocket science; Marx already did the rocket science part. All we have to do is the part where we understand what the fuck he wrote.
A Manhattan Project for complete automation of production, therefore, simply consists of progressively reducing the absolute length of the labor time of society; capital does the rest of the heavy lifting by developing the productive forces.
Marx left communists with a clear easily understandable road map for complete abolition of labor in our society. We have instead used his legacy for its exact opposite, to use the state to prevent labor from ever going away. Millions of words and hundreds of books written by Marxists are devoted to saving wage labor, but nothing to abolishing it.
You would think it was impossible to abolish labor, and indeed most Marxists will admit this if asked; yet, they exert an amazing amount of energy trying to prevent labor from going away.
Why?
If labor is not going away because of automation, why do Marxists spend so much time thinking up ways to prevent it going away? Why do they spend so much time talking about how the state can create new investment in “green jobs” and the like? Why do they spend so much time on schemes like jobs guarantees and basic income if labor is not going away?
They spend an inordinate amount of time on ideas to prevent or compensate for jobs going away and then they swear labor is not going away.
We can do better than this.
> labor is not going away because of automation
I am right that there are 2 ethical things a person can do:
1. Help labor to go away because of automation: develop one’s knowledge, especially of science and engineering, and devise wage-employment reducing techniques and technologies, and give them away to everyone (such as developing free/libre/open software like the wordpress publishing system this blog runs on) in a way that is almost suicidal, in a kind of ‘too fast’ capitalist competition
2. Ensure labor does go away despite automation: organize at the city and state level for a 3 day week and possibly higher minimum wages
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Yes, the easiest way to make labor go away, if that is your intention, is to continuously reduce the absolute working day. Capitalism compensates for this by trying to increase unpaid labor through introduction of improved machinery. As long as you keep the pressure on by reducing hours, capitalism is forced to develop the means to eliminate labor from production.
It is a pretty simple mechanism Marx discusses.
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Capitalists won’t develop better means of production that eliminate the amount of labor socially necessary for a given production process unless it is profitable for them to do so. For example, electric cars have much more simple motors, but this cuts profits from spare parts, approved-dealer franchising, etc; it takes a ‘ideologically motivated’ capitalist like Elon Musk to come along and push the capitalist class out of a ‘local maximum’ to a higher level of productivity.
With mass (state) schooling designed to mis-educate people only to the level needed for obedient (and in the middle classes, over-specialised) wage labour, rather then ‘disobedient’ attempts to disrupt existing capitalist firms with more competitive and productive techniques and technologies, I think good people need to promote both continuously reduce the absolute working day _AND_ developing labour-saving faster than capitalism does by itself.
Do you agree?
Or, is it worthless attempting this, because better techniques/technologies are easily absorbed as superfluous labour and don’t make any difference to expanding our free time?
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I am all for it, but I would like some tools, some truths, and valuable information on how to combat the counter argument that Cuba and Venezuela are examples of how Marxists doctrines fail.
I don’t see much on the internet to help me.
We need to tell the world something about Venezuela and Cuba in order to counter those arguments.
In all sincerity,
Noel
>
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Obviously, I am going to argue they have failed because they have not reduced hours of labor. Did you expect another answer? 🙂
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Noel, I would simply say that they are socialist, not communist; the idea of socialism is to prop up labour, while it is withering away, by ameliorating the worst immiseration that arises in capitalism. It is why the Fabian Society’s original logo was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
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The novel/surprising idea that they are actually just single-employer national-scale firms is pretty simple. Its like if Apple Inc bought Puerto Rico and made anyone living there an Apple employee.
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[…] Marxists desperately need a new vision for the future […]
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Eh… no. But I am too stupefied to sum up all the misconceptions that go into this idea.
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Please do sum it up. I am very patient. Take as long a you need to overcome your stupefaction. I am not married to any idea.
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Jehu…there are Marxists who agree with what you are saying. Check out the League of Revolutionaries for a New America and Rally, Comrades! which is there voice. Their position is that the electronic and robotic revolution is comparable to the discovery of fire when it comes to the future of humanity.
http://rallycomrades.lrna.org
A Future Without Jobs: What is the solution?http://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2012/05/a-future-without-jobs-what-is-the-solution-2/
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Thanks. I will read it.
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What we need to strive for here is an understanding of the objective and subjective stages of the Revolution in real time. As the South African revolutionary Steven Biko once said, “The revolution is not an event but rather a process.” If by aiming “for the complete automation of production and the complete elimination of wage labor” you mean that this is where we are headed independent of my wishes or yours I totally agree. For all practical purposes there is a new class being thrown out of capitalist relations whose only salvation is an communist economic system. This new class is objectively a communist class. The problem is this new class is subjectively anti-communist. For those who have a problem with the concept of a new class they only have to look at the Manifesto where Marx refers to a new class that grew out of feudalism. That new class was the bourgeoisie. I think this is really a great article which I will share with my comrades and social networking friends. Lets keep the discussion going.
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“The rest of post-war communism reacts in complete horror at the very idea of doing this, as if Land is saying something terrible.”
q: what nick land piece are you referring to here?
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You might look at my blog post here: https://therealmovement.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/noumena-defanged-ray-brassiers-toothless-critique-of-nick-land/
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please keep quoting one of our world’s best-known, most influential, most hateful and explicit fascists as a “communist” while telling me you have a great revision of Marx for me. Why not just admit that you too find fascism compelling? it’s all over your work. Not least the way you attack the people you disagree with. Land has been a fascist from day one; it’s absolutely clear in his work, his personal conduct (including that same kind of attack), & his lack of clear commitment to the goals you try to ascribe to him in this piece and the Brassier one. Land loves his own power. You seem to as well. But keep telling me Margaret Thatcher was right and that’s where you find the inspiration for a great new reinterpretation of Marx.
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Fascism was an advance in the development of the productive forces of social labor. It was the recognition, within the limits of bourgeois society, of the social character of production. Whether or not I find it compelling is of no moment.
Margaret Thatcher was right to state the epoch of the Keynesian state was past and there was no alternative but to dismantle the fascist state. However you might want to disagree with her, the Keynesian state has been systematically dismantle in all advanced countries — despite protests to the contrary.
What you think of Land is of no concern to me at all. He is beside the point.
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Land as “Fascist” and Thatcher as “dismantling” the Keynesian state are both diminutive arguments.
Fascism is about techno-control effectuated through embrace of the past. Formation of a caged Gemeinschaft, exclusion of “the other”, a forced combination of civil society and political society by ending them both under the auspices of uniting them.
Neoliberalism is about techno-control (described in the past) effectuated through embrace of an ideal future, which for some reason keeps getting in the way of itself (likely due its realization of its own demise, the demise of value appropration through Capitalist production)…thus its propensity to LEAD TO types of Fascism.
Accelerationist Land as an anti-vitalist, anti-humanist wants none of this. Society IS the network as its rhizomic structure unfolds, lives or dies. Let it do so and be free. In Fascism the concept of Marx’s truly free individual born of, and itself giving birth, to an evolving and changing society is completely nullified.
As far as Thatcher is concerned, I only have to refer you to your own statements:
“Thatcher’s statement that there is no alternative, when examined in its full context, was not a rejection of Keynesian policies but their expansion on a hitherto unprecedented scale.”
https://therealmovement.wordpress.com/2016/04/07/why-thatchers-neoliberalism-was-the-continuation-of-keynesianism/
Perhaps you now believe the “Keynesian State” and “Keynesian policies” are different concepts entirely. However this belies the necessity of the State to again effectuate, maintain, and expand the “free” reign of the market/property couple. This not only requires State spending on Military Keynesianism to maintain economic reproduction (absorb surplus value that cannot be profitably reinvested) but requires projection of force to integrate “the other” into the world market as producer/consumer but maintaining the differences, even using the differences, to limit the flow that it is creating.
This is the (somewhat) misguided point of Accelerationism. Why does modernity as resurgent neoliberalism limit the flow? Unleash it to its own demise, no matter what. “It” will all work out in the end. This doesn’t have a human character, which is why it is not Marxian and why for someone who is true to Marx (whatever that means), it is misguided. Marx saw humanity and Community evolving together toward their mutual development and thus freedom to reach whatever potential exists in both.
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Automation and high tech are going to save us from wage labour? This western pretentious navel gazing is becoming truly pathetic.
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Who said that? Where did you read that?
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Comrades,
I think that the immediate goal of communism is not the elimination of work but the elimination of wage-labor, i.e. work performed for a wage (as the author indicates in his first paragraph below).
Under capitalism, survival necessitates for an overwhelming majority not just work but waged-work (where the wage implies the existence of value being added by the worker above the value of her wage and this surplus being appropriated by another, i.e. the owner). This kind of ‘work’ needs be eliminated.
But if ‘work’ is understood to mean purposefully directed human activity then we have only began. The purpose of work, at this moment in human history under capitalism, is nothing else but the creation of a profit. A profit created by the worker but seized, without compensation, by the capitalist. The purposes of work under a transitional (socialist) economy will be
1.) Expansion of the productive factors to the point where all human needs and desires are producible;
2.) Export of technologies and know-how to lesser developed areas of the world such that the state of all the necessities of life, e.g.clean water, medicine, agriculture, industry, etc converge with the more advanced areas;
3): reclamation of the environment, repair and upgrading of the human-created infrastructure, massive increase in housing, schools, parks, etc. New horizons, new vistas.
4.) eliminations of barriers and walls (borders) to human movement;
5.) the decommissioning of (especially, nuclear) weaponry, the standing down armies and the integration of former military personnel into the (now totally) civilian workforce.
6.) the construction of political machinery such that the voices of all can be heard. Computers promise the solution to this.
6/) the reclamation of the ‘Lazarus’ layers of society: the workers: the exo-industrial former workers: On this Marx writes in Capital Vol 1:
“The greater the social wealth…the greater is the relative surplus-population, or industrial-reserve-army. But the greater this reserve-army in proportion to the active (regularly employed) labour-army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated (permanent) surplus-population, or strata of workers, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labour. The more extensive, finally, the lazarus-layers of the working class, and the industrial reserve-army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation.”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm
All of this will take work (the active engagement of the entire population in production, technology development and reclamation schemes). So to eliminate work, ironically, we must create work and set the entirety of the human population able to work with a mission to not only a.) reclaim the environment hat we have damaged; b) not only to expand the production such that all of the above propositions can come to fruition; but just as important, c.) accomplish these things in manners such that the distinction between ‘boss’ and ‘bossed’ becomes eliminated; and the same for that between races and nationalities and religions and language groups and sexualities;
In spite of this difference, I salute the article for it is exactly the kind of thinking that revolutionaries need engage in: d.) what does the new society we want look like? e.) What are its aims. How does it work? What roles do people play? How is incentive to work maintained until we are able to eliminate work? Etc. Etc. Etc
JAI
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In principle, I would not disagree with your task list, but I think you are going at it from the wrong end.
First, I would reclaim both the industrial reserve army and the Lazarus layer, and to bring them into productive employment. This can only be done by reducing hours to such a minimum that everyone is drawn into production. To accomplish this may take the legal reduction of labor hours to as little as four hours per week.
After the entire population has been engaged in production, contributing at least this minimum, we will have a huge population of self-directed individuals who can tackle all of the remaining issues.
Beyond this minimum, we will have 164 hours per week (minus rest, of course) where individuals are free to be productive or not productive as they see fit.
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Comrade,
I think that this is the same flawed thinking that produced the “30 for 40” movement. Even before that the Townsendite movement (precursor to Social Security that would have retired all workers over the age of 60 with a stipend of $200 that they had to spend in a month). Both of these, along with your statement, assume that there is only x amount of work to go around and y amount of people to do it and that both x and y are given.
No. We will create jobs for all members of our population by repairing the damage that has been done to this planet by capitalism; and by creating all of the things that the human being could reasonably want. There is almost an infinite amount of work that could be done to make this Earth a better place to live. The great transition will take place when such work is no longer done for wages but for the very love of it.
JAI
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I make no such assumption. Don’t impute to me something I have not explicitly stated. I simply said you can get people in the labor force first, by reducing hours, and then tackle the tasks you listed.
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From the below:
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Comrade,
I think that this is the same flawed thinking that produced the “30 for 40” movement. Even before that the 1930’s Townsendite movement (precursor to Social Security that would have retired all workers over the age of 60 with a stipend of $200 that they had to spend in a month). Both of these, along with your statement, assume that there is only x amount of work to go around and that both x is a given, i.e. unchangeable.
No. We will create jobs for all members of our population by repairing the damage that has been done to this planet by capitalism; and by creating all of the things that the human being could reasonably want. There is almost an infinite amount of work that could be done to make this Earth a better place to live. The great transition will take place when such work is no longer done for wages but for the very love of it.
JAI
On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 2:55 PM, The Real Movement wrote:
> Jehu commented: “In principle, I would not disagree with your task list, > but I think you are going at it from the wrong end. First, I would reclaim > both the industrial reserve army and the Lazarus layer, and to bring them > into productive employment. This can only be don” >
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Again, I simply said you can get people in the labor force first, by reducing hours, and then tackle the tasks you listed above. Generally speaking, more people, working shorter periods of time, can accomplish any list of tasks you can produce in less time than fewer people working longer periods of time. This has been demonstrated in one after another empirical studies — most recently in Sweden.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/business/international/in-sweden-an-experiment-turns-shorter-workdays-into-bigger-gains.html
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Fascism as defined by Benito Mussolini (credited with being it’s father) is the merger of the corporations and the state and government. He also used the term corporatism. That process has pretty much been completed in the U.S. Citizens united legislation is the nail in the coffin. Corporations are afforded the same rights as individuals. What is missing is a fascist culture and movement. Donald Trump has stepped into that vacuum of history in developing fascism as a solution to the problems brought on by the electronic and robotic revolution. A revolution which could provide the necessaries of life for every human on the planet if not for the private ownership of the means of production by the small ruling capitalist class. Capitalism as an economic system based on the buying and selling of labor power is imploding and coming to an end. Even sections of the capitalist class understand this and are now figuring out how to hold on to their privilege and control of their private property. Fascism is their solution. Doing away with Bourgeois democracy and instituting Bourgeois fascism. They are being forced to remove the velvet glove and use the iron fist. This is not a show of strength but rather their weakness. Instead of ruling with the consent of the ruled they have to use outright force.The only solution is to abolish private property.
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I don’t consider Mussolini a competent source for the definition of fascism.
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I think I found a comment on a 2014 entry that pretty much shows the direction of my critisism. https://therealmovement.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/noumena-defanged-ray-brassiers-toothless-critique-of-nick-land/#comment-2512
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An interesting exchange. If I understand Jehu, he seems to be interpreting the final stage of full communism as the total elimination of work/labor (not just of wage labor) and its replacement by complete free time. This would be a strange goal for Marx, whose concept of humanity was essentially that of activity, creativity, and productivity. While Marx could not foresee the full possibilities of modern automation and cybernationI think Marx saw a minimum amount of labor (interacting with Nature) as always necessary. He also saw labor as necessary for human growth and development. He believed that under communism there would not longer be a distinction between work and play as such. We would all be craftspeople and productive artists.
In the Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx wrote that “In a more advanced layer of communist society…the antithesis between intellectual and physical labor [would] have disappeared’; when labor is no longer just a means of keeping alive but has itself become a vital need; when the all-round development of individuals has also increased their productive powers…only then can society…inscribe on its banner: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!” (my emphasis)
In Anti-During (Part III, chapter on Production), Engels wrote, “…Society cannot free itself unless every individual is freed. The old mode of production must therefore be revolutionized from top to bottom, and in particular, the former division of labor must disappear. … Productive labor, instead of being a means of subjugating men, will become a means of their emancipation, by offering each individual the opportunity to develop all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions and exercise them to the full–in which, therefore, productive labor will become a pleasure instead of being a burden. Today this is no longer a fantasy….With everybody doing his share of work [it will suffice] to reduce the time required for labor to a point which…will be small indeed.” (my emphasis)
In such a society, we could decide what tasks to be done by complete automation, which should use only some automation, what should be done with small machines, what should be done only by hand, and what should not be done at all.
May I suggest reading News from Nowhere by William Morris–probably the first of the “libertarian Marxists,” who was a friend to both Engels and Kropotkin.
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Where in those quotes by Marx and Engels do you find any basis for opposing a radical and dramatic reduction of hours of labor? Stop changing the subject Wayne. It is beneath you.
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I did not deny that Marx and Engels were “opposing a radical and dramatic reduction of hours of labor.” In fact, I directly quoted Engels as writing that under communism it will be possible “to reduce the time required for labor to a point which…will be small indeed.”
What I was opposing was your perspective of the complete abolition of any kind of labor, through the use of automation. You propose the goal ” to create a society without labor,” or “a society where no one has to work.” It was this which idea which I was rejecting, and which I quoted Marx and Engels as having rejected.
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Let me see if I get this right: A society based on “each according to his needs”, where labor is not required of anyone, is not a “society without labor”, nor a “society where no one has to work”?
If that is true, can you explain to me what definition of labor you are using?
(Asking for a friend)
ADDED: Or let me put this another way. Do you think the owners of capital perform labor?
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Jehu asks if I believe (or how I could believe) that, ‘A society based on “each according to his needs”, where labor is not required of anyone, is not a “society without labor”.’ And, if so, what do I mean by labor?
But Marx does not say that there would be no more labor (work) under full communism. He does say that people would no longer work due to the whip, or wages, or hunger. Everyone would be given what they “needed” by the standards of the new society. Yet my quotations demonstrate that Marx and Engels did expect people to labor in a certain sense.
Marx writes that under communism, ‘labor is no longer just a means of keeping alive but has itself become a vital need’ Labor produces “the all-round development of individuals.’ Engels writes that ‘labor…will become a means of [people’s] emancipation, by offering each individual the opportunity to develop all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions and exercise them to the full–in which, therefore, productive labor will become a pleasure instead of being a burden.’
Not to put myself on the same level, I wrote that ‘under communism there would no longer be a distinction between work and play as such. We would all be craftspeople and productive artists.’
I think this is clear enough.
Um, do capitalists perform labor? Jehu asks. Well, under capitalism “work” (“productive labor” ) is defined as labor which adds value to a commodity
(an object or a service). Since physical or mental effort by a capitalist does not add value, their efforts, however strenuous, is not “work.” (But to the extent that capitalists or their managers do necessary work, such as coordination, they are part of the “collective worker” and, Marx says, add value and are therefore preforming “work.”) Obviously, under communism, no one will be adding “value” to any “commodities” and there will be no more “work” in a capitalist sense.
I assumed that the issue was not whether capitalist (or feudal or slave) work would continue under communism but whether goal-directed physical or mental effort (that is, work in general) would continue. It will.
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Wayne, you are just being silly.
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More on 30 for 40, the Townsend Plan and all such make-work, i.e. waged work schemes:
“Wages, as we have seen, by their very nature, always imply the performance of a certain quantity of unpaid labour on the part of the labourer.”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm#S2
There is a theory that there is only so much work to go around. Bullshit. But assume it is so.
What a 30hr week would mean is that–again assuming the same amt of work–one could now employ 4/3 as many workers are are employed in a 40 hour workweek. I.e. the workforce could be increase 33 1/3%.
Say we have 100million working and 33 1/3 million unemployed. That gives a potential workforce of 133 1/3 million that could now be employed. But the output would still be the same. Now, if at first we assume that the output would be given to those who produced it (after the owner’s requisite surplus-value has been deducted) each worker would now get 3/4 of the amount of sustenance that (s)he had gotten before.
No. The idea is not to share work (waged-work) because there are only so many jobs to go around; the idea is to employ all where the output would belong to the workers ourselves.
A different way of looking at this–but amounts to the same thing (that there is only so much work to go around) took place in the 1930’s and directly led to the establishment of social security in 1935.(1) That was the Townsendite Movement, more properly the Old Age Revolving Pension Plan.
Dr Townsend, who at one time had 50 Democratic Congressmen backing his plan, proposed that all citizens above the age of 60 should immediately be retired and given $200 a month that they had to spend in a month. The money could not be saved. This is the same thing as the 30 for 40 thing only dealing in work-years and not work-weeks.
We will reduce the workweek as we change society and, especially so, the economy. However such a reduction would in no way be the same as the above schemes. For our purpose would be to free us from work not redistribute it cause ‘there ain’t enough work to go around). But prior to that reduction we will definitely increase work as we bring in all who can into the workforce to build, repair, grow, mine, acquire skills, manufacture and, most importantly, invent. And teach all who have not skills. And repair the damage that centuries of capitalism–an economic system that passes the costs of the damages caused by industry to the environment on to the public at large.
And to ensure that all around the world have the tools to solve local problems. We can build with them and/or grow for them and/or trade with them or aid to them–that they need to ensure clean water, medicines, foodstuffs and food seed. In short, all the things that are necessary and, then, desirable.
There are other things that are bad about 30 for 40 (and the Townsendite prescription of early mandatory but funded retirements) as there are a few things also good about them. But the important thing is that we understand that there is no need to share jobs. There is work for everybody right now. Its just that this economic system does not–and now cannot–provide employment for all of us who are caught in its clench. It will not and cannot house the homeless; it will not and cannot properly treat the ill; it will not and cannot properly educate us so we need to do it–as we will do it and we must do it–ourselves.
Footnote
(1)” In 1935, partly in response to the continued growth of the Townsend Plan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed his own old-age policy, which was less generous than Townsend and Clements’s proposal. The president’s policy included a program for poor older people with matching payments from the federal government, known as Old Age Assistance, and a national old-age annuity program that later was called by all Social Security.” Wikipedia at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Townsend#Promoting_the_plan
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John, what do you have against leisure for the working class?
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