Re: Beef and revolution in Central America

[briand@xxxxxxxxxxx (Brian Carnell)]

On Wed, 24 Apr 1996 21:48:32 -0400, dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx (Doug Henwood)
wrote:


>You're such a bonehead, Brian. 1) Work is an essential part of being human;
>abolishing it is both impossible and undesirable.

Ah, so now you're not just a Marxist, but you're an essentialist as
well?  Odd, since I thought most Marxists were into post-modernist
interpretations...anyway, if indeed work is an "essential" part of
being human simply give me a good reason to believe it is.  I see
nothing about work that makes it an essential part of being human.



 >2) Despite the massive
>gains in productivity, people work longer now than they did hundreds of
>years ago; early capitalism *lengthened* the workday, and recent gains at
>shortening it have been reversed.

First, I'd like you to provide some evidence for the claim that
several hundred years ago people worked shorter hours.  Once you get
that I'd like you to also examine the average life span in these
societies several hundred years ago.

Hell, hunter-gatherers 4,000 years ago worked a lot less than we
do...of course not many of them reached their 30s, but what's 30 or 40
years of your lifespan more or less?


> 3) People have no option but to work to
>live under capitalism, and downsizing removes their means of support,
>rather than liberating them into self-development and leisure.

Are you implying that people do have an option not to work under a
Marxist economy?

Downsizing is not a method to abolish work, obviously.  Downsizing
makes individual economic units more productive, free those people to
engage in other forms of work.  I am not arguing that *today* we have
the productivity capable to abolish work.  But someday we might, and
it ain't gonna happen with a Marxist economy.

4) There is
>no way that capitalism can translate productivity gains into more leisure;
>it will require a social revolution for that to happen.

Really.  Here I disagree with you.

>In the U.S. over the last 20 years, only 20% of the gains in productivity
>have been translated into higher wages for ordinary workers; the other 80%
>have gone to managers, creditors, and stockholders.

This is what I find most amusing about Marxist rhetoric.  Of course
how much productivity increase relative to the U.S. did we see in
Communist countries?  And of course ordinary workers hold an awful lot
of that stock.  Plus the productivity increase benefitted everyone via
lowered prices.

But assume that 80 percent benefitted only the rich, and 20%
benefitted the workers.  So what.  We've seen the lack of productivity
under Communist systems, and if one has to reward stockholders,
managers and creditors to get 20% of the gain of a large productivity
increase, I'll take it.  Even with all of this exploitation, the
average U.S. worker still has a much higher standard of living than
any of these workers in the Communist countries (would *you* like to
be a worker in China?)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Brian Carnell                   http://www.net-link.net/~briand/
briand@xxxxxxxxxxx


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