File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-11-09.204, message 23


Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 20:36:47 +1000
From: rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au (Rob Schaap)
Subject: M-I: Re: Mandelson on US elections


Mandelson does not confront the fact that capitalism can not provide the
jobs - whatever the 'welfare-to-work programmes' he may have in mind.  In
so compellingly describing 1996 from his vantage point in 1867, Marx
observed that: 'Since the demand for labour is determined not by the amount
of capital as a whole, but by its variable constituent alone, that demand
falls progressively with the increase of the total capital,' and
'surplus-population becomes ... the lever of capitalistic accumulation,
nay, a condition of existence of the capitalist mode of production'
(Capital: Chapter 25).

And as for matching 'rights and responsibilities' ... well, the worker's
responsibility is, I would have thought, to self and to class, ie. to stop
reproducing his or her self as a commodity, ie. to put an end to the
prevailing ideal by which 'ascetic but productive slave(s)' serve 'ascetic
but extortionate misers' (Marx's 'The Meaning of Human Requirements') and
its current outrageous phase, whereby those slaves serve masters who may be
extortionate, but are not in the slightest ascetic.  That's where we should
be looking to 'match rights and responsibilities'.

Anyway, the word here is that Blair was much inspired by Australia's Labor
Party when he visited here (at Rupert Murdoch's expense) last summer.  That
was while the Labor Party was introducing 'enterprise bargaining', by which
the prospective worker negotiates wages and conditions with the boss,
one-to-one.  An inspired 'liberalisation' indeed, in a country where a
desperate 'surplus-population' of ten per cent had been assured by that
same government.

I may not consider myself a bolshie, but buggered if I have anything more
to do with our Labor Party.  The Yanks know what I'm talking about -
Clinton signed the most obscene bill imaginable a few weeks ago (which is
why only a few old flames and a couple of business acquaintances voted for
him, even after so much Indonesian money had been spent on the campaign). 
I know the ghastly first-past-the-post voting system presents a dilemma,
but Poms beware!

Rob.




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