On Sun, Jan 4, 2026 at 05:19 PM, Tom Walker wrote: > > the second paper is also interesting to me for what it occludes from > Mészáros's analysis in Beyond Capital.
My assumption here was that Michael Lebowitz simply overlooked Mészáros's point, buried as it was in nearly 1000 pages of recycled academic publications. He may have but if he did, he soon rectified that by refuting Mészáros's (and Marx's) argument by dismissing it as a "prisoner of conceptions that are appropriate to capitalist relations." This is a rather bold manoeuvre that Michael expanded on in a footnote: > > The emphasis on reducing the work necessary to give us free time, for > example, is a demand from within capitalism and tainted by it because it > stems from the horror of the working day under that system. Unlike > Mészáros and others, the time for the full development of the individual > should be understood, however, not as "available time" or "free time" that > self-actualizing people can take advantage of, but as directly social > time. And we should not focus on reducing necessary work, but on > transforming it. A new socialist definition of necessary labor, which > incorporates “time on a daily basis for education for self-management, for > our work at home, and our work in our communities” (Michael A. Lebowitz, “ > The Capitalist Workday, the Socialist Workday, ( > https://mronline.org/2008/04/25/the-capitalist-workday-the-socialist-workday/ > ) ” MRZine, April 2008). > In his MRZine article, Michael made some valid points on behalf of a "socialist workday" that are entirely consistent with Marx's and Meszaros's concepts of disposable time. But he did so within the context of a polemic against a straw man that he portrayed as applicable only to the "capitalist workday." In his Beyond Capital (yes, the same title as Mészáros), he substitutes the word "free time" for "disposable time" in quotations from Marx that use the latter term. He may not have been aware that Marx used disposable time in English in the Grundrisse to allude to the 1821 pamphlet, The Source and Remedy. I could only find one instance where Michael used Marx's term, a 1973 review article in which he wrote, > > Under capitalist relations, the superfluous time takes the form of surplus > labor which brings with it, among other things, the superfluous employment > of labor in the circulation sphere. Yet this superfluous or disposable > time is potentially the basis for free human activity, that activity which > is "not dominated by the pressure of an extraneous purpose which must be > fulfilled, and the fulfillment of which is regarded as a natural necessity > or a social duty." It is this scope for free activity-true human > wealth-which Marx saw as the foundation for real social labor and for the > evolution of the full human potential-intellectual and social-as an end in > itself. > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40027): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40027 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117080199/21656 -=-=- 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]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
