Michael Perelman wrote: > > I believe that a welfare state might be in the long run interests of > capital as a way to manage labor -- that is what Lou Proyect mentioned > earlier.
A welfare state that does not increase educational opportunities (which means stuent subsidies, since a student who has to work in college isn't really astudent) and reduce hours of labor (enforced stringently, whether workers want to work longer or not), is only a pretense. And if a state approaches that situation, it generates what is _really_ a risk to capitalism: a desire for freedom from having the meaning of your activity determined not by its concrete results but by the activity of strangers (as when a rise in productivity 10,000 miles away threatens your job). The '60s were a warning shot acoss the bow of capitalism. Leisure (including leisure of students) did increase in the late '50s and early '60s. Students had time to think and read and talk to each other. And there was _also_ a population not fully served by that and to a great extent not even 'in' the system (the Jim Crow) -- that poulation, looking on what was happening, and having gained _some_ breathing room itself, revolted. The students noticed, and they began to revolt. (This was not a "generation gap," but merely (as has always been the case, younger workers taking the lead in a working-class uprising)) And the Black Revolution spread to the cities of the North in the form of the Panthers, DRKUM, etc, who introduced a wholly new factor in to U.S. politcs: Inmdepnednet Black organizations, rooted in the Black community, who united with the white or mixed movements on their own terms. One can make a list of 1000 stupid things done in that decade, but they are all irrelevant to the tremendous leaps forward in funamental conceptions of forms of resistance. The Capitalists won't risk that again, if they can help it. Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
