I haven't been following the discussion closely, but on a tangent, the 35 hours week introduced by the socialist in France has had a favourable outcome for the white collor and a not so good outcome for the blue collor. Becuse employers demanded an intensification of the work effort. in short some have the right to be lazy and thers don't.
--- "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I wrote:> > so we need to think critically. so > what's new?<< > > Tom writes: >Commodity fetishism isn't new. Didn't > somebody already write > something about that once? Seriously though, is > fetishism only a danger when > it is eulogistic? I think not.< > > Talking about speed-up (an increasing intensity of > labor, as Marx would call > it) is hardly eulogistic or fetishistic. In fact, > the article was talking > specifically about the "hidden realm" that is > usually masked by commodity > fetishism and the realm of freedom, equality, and > Bentham that NC economists > emphasize. I haven't the slightest idea how the > concept of commodity > fetishism is relevant to the article I posted. > > >> so the folks who slave away producing Nikes for > dollars a day under > poor conditions are engaging in discourse?<< > > >That"s just it, Jim. It ain't the dollars making > them slave away. It's > the social relationship, which are relations between > people disguised as > relations between things. The alarm that I am trying > to sound is about > OUR (and it happens to me, too) tendency to give > theoretical lip service to > a level of analysis, commodity fetishism, that we > then cavalierly dispose of > when engaging "empirical facts". Speed up is the > cause of which > productivity is the effect? Oh yeah? UNDER WHAT > SPECIFIC CONDITIONS? > > >I say NOT THESE! NOT THESE CONDITIONS! We have a > question here, not a > ready made answer. We have a whole suite of urgent > questions that the > proverbial no one wants to ask because the > proverbial everyone thinks the > answer is self evident.< > > I really don't know where this comes from, why > you're on _my_ case. _Of > course_ it's capitalism's version of labor > productivity that is raised when > speed-up occurs (and I never said otherwise). That > is, it's _saleable_ > commodities produced per hour that is raised > (ceteris paribus) when there's > a speed-up. In fact, it's only the existence of > saleable commodities that > allows the aggregation of outputs so we can have > some reasonable estimate of > the numerator. However, we could think of another > way to measure of labor > productivity, which might be measureable, at least > as a second > approximation: > > labor productivity = (saleable output + workers' > gains in pleasure during > time the job - external costs to the environment and > the like)/labor hours > hired. > > If measured this way, labor productivity may fall > with speed-up. > JD > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com
