On Sun, Nov 9, 2025 at 09:21 PM, Barry Brooks wrote: > > Disposable time due to reduced working hours is an inadequate solution to > the extreme reduction in labor cost now possible. The main ingredient in a > complete recipe must be sharing the profits.
I'm not sure you are familiar with Marx's discussion of disposable time. "Profits" come from disposable time. Capital creates disposable time through its drive for increased productivity -- making more of a given commodity using less labour time. Capital claims it is entitled to all of this disposable time created in the form of surplus value. The struggle over disposable time is not about whether it exists or not but who benefits from it. Sharing profits might make sense in a workers' coop but in a capitalist firm, it is simply the capitalist returning a small portion of the surplus value that the workers have created. In the following passage, Marx describes surplus value as the theft of alien labour time and he argues that with the development of the productive forces surplus value ceases to be the basis for general wealth, that is wealth that benefits everyone. The last sentence is a definition of disposable time without mentioning disposable time. But don't worry, at the end of the paragraph this passage is excerpted from Marx made it explicit he was talking about disposable time: > > The theft of alien labour time on which the present wealth is based , > appears a miserable foundation in face of this new one, created by > large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in the direct form has > ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must > cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the > measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the > condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of > the few , for the development of the general powers of the human head. With > that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, > material production process is stripped of the form of penury and > antithesis. The free development of individualities, and hence not the > reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but > rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a > minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. > development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means > created, for all of them. > That last sentence bears repeating because it is the very definition of what Marx meant by disposable time: > > *The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of > necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the > general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which > then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the > individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of > them.* > What profit sharing suggests as an alternative to the above is, let's keep producing surplus labour but let the workers have a bit of it back and let's not bother with "the artistic, scientific, etc. development of the individuals in the time set free." > > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#39209): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39209 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/116212601/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
