[Marxism] Theorizing Deliverance from the Labor- and Commodity-Centered Society

[Barry Brooks <durable@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is should not be missed or read slowly...

Barry
.

http://www.truthout.org/article/theorizing-deliverance-labor-and-commodity-centered-society

Theorizing Deliverance from the Labor- and 
Commodity-Centered Society

Tuesday 25 September 2007

»

by: André Gorz, Mouvements

Born Gerhard Hirsch in Vienna to a Jewish 
father and a Catholic mother, French 
philosopher André Gorz, also known as Gérard 
Horst and Michel Bosquet, was a cofounder of 
"Le Nouvel Observateur," journalist and 
theorist who above and before all else was a 
committed humanist.
(Photo: Sydney Morning Herald)
Editor's note: After spending a literal month 
of Sundays with this text by André Gorz, I 
have been haunted by his prescience, 
inhabited by his ideas and charmed by his 
engaged humanism.


IDEA FACTORY - Philosopher André Gorz 
returns, in one of the last texts to appear 
before his death, to the dynamic of financial 
capitalism and the reasons why we may see 
guaranteed social income as an opportunity to 
exit capitalism.

     Is the universal allocation of a 
guaranteed social income (RSG [in French]) 
compatible with capitalism? If so, is the RSG 
objective to consolidate capitalist society, 
even save it? If not, can it undermine the 
bases of this society or smooth the 
transition from an economic system based on 
commercial value towards a fundamentally 
different system? I continue to encounter 
these questions since the end of the 1970s. I 
was convinced from the outset that the global 
system based on commodity production could 
not perpetuate itself indefinitely. Since the 
end of Fordism and the beginning of the 
information revolution, the system has been 
working with growing effectiveness towards 
the destruction of the foundations of its 
survival. "Les Chemins du Paradis" ["The 
Roads to Paradise," a 1983 work by Gorz] - a 
paradise in which, according to Leontief's 
prediction, people were going to die of 
hunger because commodity production will 
employ hardly any workers and will distribute 
hardly any more capital - was already 
subtitled, "The Agony of Capital" [1].

     My point of departure was actually the 
fact that the microelectronic revolution 
allows production of growing quantities of 
commodities with decreasing volume of work, 
in such a way that sooner or later the system 
will have to run up against its internal 
limits [2]. This capitalism that automates 
itself to death will have to look for a way 
to survive itself through distribution of 
purchasing power that does not correspond to 
the value of a job. Unconditionally 
distributed purchasing power will, however, 
not be able to take the normal form of money. 
It will not be able to be a transfer payment, 
deducted from taxes on consumption and 
primary incomes. It is effectively impossible 
to increase fiscal deductions on consumption 
and income when production, even though 
growing in volume, distributes less and less 
money to fewer and fewer people. Consequently 
the RSG will have to come in the form of a 
different currency, of a "consumption 
currency," as Jacques Duboin called it. He 
proposed that all commercial production be 
automatically accompanied by the issuance of 
its "monetary equivalent," that is, the 
quantity of consumption currency allowing the 
purchase of the merchandise produced. The 
currency issued in this manner could only be 
used one time: it would be revoked as each 
purchase was made.

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