Carrol Cox wrote:
If necessary labor (in Hannah Arendt's sense of _merely_ necessary labor
in contrast to work or action) is to be reduced to the absolute minimum,
and men/women are to be fishers in the morning and critics in the
afternoon, that necessary labor needs to be rationalized and divided
into such minute parts that it becomes a trivial part (in terms of time
& skill) of human activity, which then can become fully human (work &
action in contrast to labor). One of Engels's footnotes in Capital I is
also a useful gloss: "The English language has the advantage of
possessing different words for the two aspects of labour here
considered. The labour which creates Use-Value, and counts
qualitatively, is Work, as distinguished from Labour, that which creates
Value and counts quantitatively, is Labour as distinguished from Work."
The ultimate goal of socialism is to eliminate Labor and replace it with
Work -- electricity and taylorism are means to that end. In this light,
Lenin's perspective on taylorism might also evoke that passage in
_Capital_ where Marx compares the ancient and modern perspective on
labor-saving technology, quoting an ancient poet on how the water-wheel
could reduce the labor of the servant and contrasting it with the
capitalist use of machinery to extend the working day.
Marx also identifies free time in this sense with time for individual development. This development is required for the activities that constitute life in the realm of freedom. Marx also claims it's required for activity in the realm of necessity, however. Taylorism is inconsistent with this. Moreover, the claim is that the most productive - i.e. the most "efficient"
- form of relations and forces of production in this realm are those that presuppose and require this development on the part of individuals, i.e. "conditions most worthy and appropriate to their human nature."
"Just as the savage must wrestle with nature to satisfy his needs, to maintain and reproduce his life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all forms of society and under all possible modes of production. This realm of natural necessity expands with his development, because his needs do too; but the productive forces to satisfy these expand at the same time. Freedom, in this sphere, can only consist in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate to their human nature. But this always remains a realm of necessity. The true realm of freedom, the development of human powers as an end in itself, begins beyond it, though it can only flourish with this realm of necessity as its basis. The reduction of the working day is the basic prerequisite." (Marx, Capital vol. III [Penguin ed.], p. 959)
"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." Grundrisse pp. 705-6
"Real economy -- saving -- consists of the saving of labour time (minimum (and minimization) of production costs); but this saving identical with development of the productive force. Hence in no way abstinence from consumption, but rather the development of power, of capabilities of production, and hence both of the capabilities as well as the means of consumption. The capability to consume is a condition of consumption, hence its primary means, and this capability is the development of an individual potential, a force of production. The saving of labour time [is] equal to an increase of free time, i.e. time for the full development of the individual, which in turn reacts back upon the productive power of labour as itself the greatest productive power. From the standpoint of the direct production process it can be regarded as the production of fixed capital, this fixed capital being man himself. It goes without saying, by the way, that direct labour time itself cannot remain in the abstract antithesis to free time in which it appears from the perspective of bourgeois economy. Labour cannot become play, as Fourier would like, [5] although it remains his great contribution to have expressed the suspension not of distribution, but of the mode of production itself, in a higher form, as the ultimate object. Free time -- which is both idle time and time for higher activity -- has naturally transformed its possessor into a different subject, and he then enters into the direct production process as this different subject." Grundrisse pp. 711-2
"Time of labour, even if exchange value is eliminated, always remains the creative substance of wealth and the measure of the cost of its production. But free time, disposable time, is wealth itself, partly for the enjoyment of the product, partly for free activity which - unlike labour - is not determined by a compelling extraneous purpose which must be fulfilled, and the fulfilment of which is regarded as a natural necessity or a social duty, according to one's inclination.
"It is self-evident that if time of labour is reduced to a normal length and, furthermore, labour is no longer performed for someone else, but for myself, and, at the same time, the social contradictions between master and men, etc., being abolished, it acquires a quite different, a free character, it becomes real social labour, and finally the basis of disposable time -- the time of labour of a man who has also disposable time, must be of a much higher quality than that of the beast of burden." Theories of Surplus Value Collected Writings, vol. 32, pp. 301-2
Ted
