Larry Shute wrote,
>Limiting the working day is all right, but does that really deal with the
>issues facing workers today? Isn't job security and freedom from Orwellian
>"downsizing" and "outsourcing" more of an issue? Don't we need to ask some
>of the basic questions: Is production of goods more important in society (=
>"efficiency" ), or are the workers, the people more important -- in the
>sense of making sure they have jobs and income?
The short answer is yes, limiting the working day really deals with the
issues facing workers today. Period.
The long answer has to rely on volumes of documentation and analysis. At the
risk of invoking metaphysics, I would add that the long answer also has to
rely on a profound understanding of both historical tradition and of
personal experience (Weltanschauung).
Larry correctly identifies 'downsizing' and 'outsourcing' as Orwellian
terms. What "more" needs to be done, though, than to point out that these
terms obfuscate capital's insatiable demand for an OVERSUPPLY of labour,
it's need for an industrial reserve army of the unemployed. It's a little
like the Peggy Lee song, "Is that all there is?" Yep, that's all there is --
so let's start dancing.
Do I mean to say that Karl Marx wrote three volumes of Capital for the sole
purpose of demonstrating conclusively the total dependence of the capitalist
system on an OVERSUPPLY of labour? I do.
Do we need to ask the "basic question" of whether goods or people are more
important in society? No, because we know the answer. From the perspective
of people (excepting socio-paths), people are more important. From the
perspective of capital, in the short term, goods are more important. In the
long term, capital has no perspective. And I'll repeat the last sentence
because it is crucial to my argument, "In the long term, capital has no
perspective."
Capital is outside of and against human history. Capital is _dead labour_
and as such can only have meaning to the extent that it contributes to the
regeneration of _living labour_. Beyond that precise limit capital ceases to
be dead labour "as such"; it becomes merely death "in general" -- a
meaningless abyss.
Moral relativism does have its limits. We don't need to ask, for example,
whether sociopathy is a valid point of view "in its own terms" or whether
Hell might be o.k. for a holiday.
Regards,
Tom Walker
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