Equality? But how?

[Le Pere Duchesne]

Take This Job, and Share It

This article is interesting, because I compare it with my own stance in discussions, and I find it rather similar. This view, to call for a reduction in working hours and abolition of overtime work, is based on two ideas. The first is similar to that in this article: we want to free people from alienating labour, why the ******** would we demand they work more? The other is much more practical: a shorter work week means less produced per shift, therefore in order to maintain current levels of production more shifts would need to be hired. This swells the ranks of the proletariat and provides more people in an objective position to be sympathetic to socialism. However in both cases my understanding of the shorter workweek, no matter the ultimate length, is based on the slogan "40 for 30", that is, forty hours pay, for thirty hours work. A reduction in working hours at no loss in pay. NO loss in pay.

Just the other day, I posted this very brief sketch of 'what communist revolution means'. Being brief, it cannot but be flawed. Nevertheless, compare what follows with the ideas being condemned in this article, that simple equity in distribution, "everyone can have an iPhone" style:

*expropriation of all large industry, transport, infrastructure, and agriculture, placing these into the collective hands of the workers themselves.
*unification of the whole country, and the world, on the basis of local councils made up by instantly recallable representatives from local workplaces, barring any employer of labour from participating in these councils either as elector or representative.
*abolition of wage labour, providing people with housing, food, clothes, in short, the necessities of life, as democratically and rationally determined by the above representatives and councils.
*expansion of automation and technical efficiency to reduce human labour in the direct production process to a minimum, while including all people who are able, while making sure all people to be engaged, at various times, in administrative work, thus abolishing the distinction between brain and hand work.
*with the free time so generated, providing greater education for all, so that all can be meaningfully engaged in cultural, artistic, and scientific work.

Hold that naive 'equalitarian communism' in mind for a moment and read this excerpt.

[edit: a good article to read is Against Jobs, for Full Employment]  

[Aerliniel]

I must say that this article was very interesting, not only because of what it said, but because I had never really thought about this issue in this way. I found the following passage particularly good:

"Gorz was incorrect in arguing that capitalism was creating a jobless future. As we’ve seen, the Great American Jobs Machine has created lots of jobs in the past and will likely do so again when it eventually recovers from its current troubles. The problem is that a large proportion of them will suck. But he was entirely correct in arguing that the Left would remain weak and defensive so long as it remained trapped by the ideology of work and sought mainly to protect the rapidly deteriorating gains made by workers during the golden age of industrial capitalism. Instead, we should challenge the organization of work itself and fight to appropriate the free time made possible by the continuing development of science and technology"

I agree with the main idea posed by the article, that 'if we want to free people from alienating labour why demand that they work more' idea. The natural conclusion that follows, which proves that only by defending a decrease in work hours, shows the error of supporting and protecting the "rapidly deteriorating gains made by workers during the golden age of industrial capitalism" and the importance of challenging these. More specifically, the importance of defending instead "40 for 30" due to the beneficial effects that this can only have in people, not only for the obvious practical beneficial outcomes that this would have, but also for the reasons explained in the penultimate paragraph of the article:

"Earlier this year, the New Economics Foundation in Britain issued a report calling for the normal work week to be reduced from its current level to 21 hours. They find that experiments in working less are often popular with both workers and employers, cut down on environmental pollution because of a reduction in commuting, help to reduce unemployment, encourage a balancing of gender relations at home and at work, and improve workers’ physical and psychological well-being"

These are obvious beneficial things that we strive to achieve (more or less), and that can only be achieved by this scheme of work, by reducing the number of hours worked, rather than striving to maintain the current duration or increase it. The latter method has proven already, as can be obviously seen by how things are currently, is unable to secure these things, and can't be secured under a non-communist system due to the obvious harmful effects that the former method would have for capitalism, or rather, the bourgeois. However, I have one question on one of the points you made:

Le Pere Duchesne

This swells the ranks of the proletariat and provides more people in an objective position to be sympathetic to socialism

What do you mean by "objective position"? and at what point would it exactly make these people be sympathetic to socialism? I assume that you mean that it would be after its implementation and its beneficial effects are seen?  

[Le Pere Duchesne]

Aerlinniel C Robleda

Le Pere Duchesne

This swells the ranks of the proletariat and provides more people in an objective position to be sympathetic to socialism

What do you mean by "objective position"? and at what point would it exactly make these people be sympathetic to socialism? I assume that you mean that it would be after its implementation and its beneficial effects are seen?

The working class, directly exploited by capitalism is in a position to be more sympathetic to socialist propaganda. By increasing the number of workers, we have more people who are potentially sympathetic, and while decreasing the number of unemployed, the 'stay at home mothers', and other similar groups, we reduce the number of people who are in a position, divorced from social production, to be apathetic, or opposed to socialism.  

[Aerliniel]

Le Pere Duchesne

Aerlinniel C Robleda

Le Pere Duchesne

This swells the ranks of the proletariat and provides more people in an objective position to be sympathetic to socialism

What do you mean by "objective position"? and at what point would it exactly make these people be sympathetic to socialism? I assume that you mean that it would be after its implementation and its beneficial effects are seen?

The working class, directly exploited by capitalism is in a position to be more sympathetic to socialist propaganda. By increasing the number of workers, we have more people who are potentially sympathetic, and while decreasing the number of unemployed, the 'stay at home mothers', and other similar groups, we reduce the number of people who are in a position, divorced from social production, to be apathetic, or opposed to socialism.

Oh, ok. I understand what you meant there now. I don't have anything to comment on that, I agree with it completely.