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. --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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