Re: Mark Jones' excellent quotes and the class struggle for shorter work TIME as a transitional measure......

[Mike Ballard <swillsqueal@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Mark's quotes and analyses stirred me to revisit some
ideas I took from the GRUNDRISSE some time ago.  As we
are in a transitional era, IMO, we should concentrate
much of our activity in the direction of reducing the
work week.  The IWW is actitively involved in this
project and I talk it up whenever I find the
opportunity.

Wobbly greetings,
Mike B)
--- Mark Jones <markjones011@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
quoting Marx's GRUNDRISSE P. 706......... .
The free development of
> individualities and hence not the
> reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit
> surplus labour, but
> rather the
> general reduction of the necessary labour of society
> to a minimum, which then
> corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc.
> development of the individuals
> in the
> time set free, and with the means created, for all
> of them.

After Marx writes about "blowing the foundation sky
high", he quotes from 'The Source and Remedy' as
follows:

"Truly wealthy a nation, when the working day is 6
rather than 12 hours.  WEALTH is not command over
surplus labour time" (real wealth), "but rather,
DISPOSABLE TIME outside that needed in direct
production, for EVERY INDIVIDUAL and the whole
society."

If you return to page 171 of the GRUNDRISSE you find
the following description of a socialist society:

"The exchange which originally takes place in
production--which would not be an exchange of exhange
values but of activities, determined by communal needs
and communal purposes--would from the outset include
the participation of the individual in the communal
world of products.  On the basis of exchange values,
labour is POSITED  as general only through EXCHANGE.
But on this foundation, it would be POSITED as such
before exchange; i.e. the exhange of products would in
not way be the MEDIUM by which the participation of
the individual in general production is mediated.
Meditation must, of course take place.  In the first
case, which proceeds from the independent produciton
of individuals--no matter how much these independent
productions determine and modify each other POST
FESTUM through their interrelations--mediation takes
place through the exchange of commodities, through
exchange value and through money; all these are
expressions of one and the same relation.  In the
second case, the PRESUPPOSITION IS ITSELF MEDIATED;
i.e. a communal production, communality, is
presupposed as the basis of production.  The labour of
the individual is posited from the outset as social
labour.  Thus, whatever the particular material form
of the product he creates or helps to create, what he
has bought with is labour is not a specific and
particular product, but rather a specific share of the
communal production.  He therefore has no particular
product to exchange.  His product is NOT AN EXCHANGE
VALUE.  the product does not first have to be
transposed into a particular form in order to attain a
general character for the individual.  Instead of a
division of labour, such as is necessarily created
with the exchange of values, there would take place an
organization of labour whose consequence would be the
participation of the individual in communal
consumption."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm#p172

=====
"Man first begins to philosophize when the necessitites of life are supplied."  
Aristotle

"determinatio est negatio"  Spinoza

"There are no ordinary cats."  Colette

http://au.profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com

~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.