On Dec 6, 2007 4:19 PM, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "No, as far as I can tell, he's arguing that _even though_ the now-defunct Soviet Union did not involve significant (real) democratic participation in production decisions (not to mention in government decision-making), even though the application of Taylorism reduced the craft content of work, even though the patriotic burst of volunteerism faded as 1917 fell far into hazy memories, a reserve army of unemployed labor and the like was not needed to motivate labor."
The motivation that kept people showing up was being able to watch 2 other people do what you were supposed to be doing and still get paid as if you were constantly producing. The upside is that it was most likely a much more socially egalitarian arrangement than in U.S. society and everyone got to slack at some point or another.. In the U.S., only the bosses get to slack. "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth. We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers. These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all. Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system." It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
