Marv, Another factor is what Rudolf Bahro called "compensatory interests" (the myriad ways of pacifying and diverting the workers' "free time" towards activities that reinforce the status quo), which in tandem with the more concentrated forms of ideological reproduction carried out in our colleges/universities and by media, think tanks, and other apparata, have turned into massive industries in our societies/times. I used to be skeptical of the critique of "consumerism" (in the Third World more consumption is a necessary condition for worker survival, let alone political activity), but I am now more inclined to see how harmful and energy diverting it is among US workers. It is a black hole that sucks a lot of subversive potential. This puts the onus on the left's theoretical/propagandistic work, especially with the youth, almost as an activity with ample autonomy from pressing, immediate political concerns.
Plug: we just concluded successfully, on Saturday, our biennial URPE conference, at St Francis College, in Brooklyn. The theme was the political economy of the environmental crisis. We had very interesting debates, among very well informed people. Videos will be up on the URPE web site shortly. On Monday, October 7, 2013, Marv Gandall wrote: > > On 2013-10-07, at 10:29 AM, Carrol Cox wrote: > > > Overwork and penury are both effective forces of repression. The danger > of > > shorter hours for capitalism is that leisure time breeds left political > > activity. > > I don't know that you can say that. The oppressively long hours of highly > exploited workers in the mines, mills, factories, and fields were a major > contributing factor to the unrest which spawned the early trade union and > socialist movement. Though the pressures are mounting, today's office > workers have relatively more leisure time and better conditions, but it has > not translated into left political activity remotely resembling that of > earlier generations. Quite the opposite, as we know. I'd look first to the > combination of severe exploitation, the demand for labour in an expanding > economy, and the concentration of the industrial workforce in factories and > factory towns and neighbourhoods as key factors which produced militant and > often violent protest at the turn of the last century. These conditions are > no longer present. > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] <javascript:;> > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >
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