File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9801, message 258


Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 00:38:40 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: M-TH: Planning Redux



Carroll raises an issue about socialism that's tangental to the planning
questions were talking about, but which is important. I guess in the
spirit of Marx I'd want to say that reduction of _necesasry_ labor time is
an important goal, but nonetheless I personally go with Marx on work be
the realization of freedom, not necesasry labor, but work that's freely
undertaken because people find it gratifying. When I'm writing a piece of
philosophy I work 120 hour weeks and I would not appreciate being dragged
away from my books and told that I had to enjoy myself in some other way.
Not everyone has work that they feel this way about, more's the pity. But
them as do should not be prohibited indulging themselves.

It's a real puzzle why the struggle for the shortening of the working day
came to a stop with the 8 hour day. ANd of course lately, especially in
America, the pressure is in the reverse direction. This is a real problem
in law, where people are expected to put in ridiculous hours despite its
being demonstrable that outside of short bursts od a few weeks, extended
hours just extend the five or so hours of a day one can actually get out
of people over more hours. 

My parochial concerns aside, though, why is it that we don't have a 35
hour a week movement? From talking to people, granted these days I mainly
talk to law students, but this was also true when I was talking more to
workers, it seems taht people think that of they do less work they are
somehow cheating and certainly shouldn't get as much remuneration. Do you
suppose that if the labor movement took up the slogan or there was some
other effective laedership pressing it--I don't mean a tiny "party" of
three or five hundred people--that it would actch on? I find this puzzling.

The raeson I mention it is that CArroll sats that a democratic society
would make the choice for drastically curtianed work week. I wonder if
that's true, at least as things stand, Obviousa  society that had
socialist democarcy would have undergone some changes. But why think,
apart from the notion that work is wretched, that it would? After all,
under socialism, we can hope that even necesasry labor would be a lot less
wretched,

 I want to propose another one: an absolute limit
> of work time, no greater than a 20 hour week for anyone. Such a limitation
> would seem to me of far greater importance than any conceivable
> innovation, including (to make my point clear) elimination of cancer or
> other such highly desirable bit of progress. Rather than argue abstractly
> for this "proposal" I would prefer to predict than any revolutionary
> struggle which is internally democratic will make this choice,

Carroll bites the bullet on my argument that socialism would be
counter-innovative across the board. It would, and he thinks that's a
good thing. Maybe it is. I don't know. But I do want to insist that this
means a major departure from Marx; among other things it means abadinding
the "fettering" account of the tarnsituion to socialism. We can no longer
say, if Carroll and I are right about this, that the objective undrerlying
explanation for the instability of capitalism and the transition to
socialism is that capitalism fetters productive forces tahtw ould be
unleashed if capitalist social relations were abolished.

 and that
> socialism will very definitely, at least for many generations, severely
> limit desirable as well as undesirable "innovations." I do not see that as
> particularly undesirable. Capitalist "progress" has given the whole earth
> and the human species a bellyache, and we need much time to digest it.


--jks




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