RE: Harry Braverman (was Re: Labor: Menial vs. Noble )

["Forstater, Mathew" <ForstaterM@xxxxxxxx>]

on "mental" and "manual" labor:

There is no purely "mental" labor; nor is there any purely "manual" (physical)
labor.  All forms of labor are combinations of mental and physical expenditures
of human energy.  Even what might be thought of as the most physical kind of
"brute" labor task entails all kinds of estimations, considerations,
comparisons, etc.  Likewise, there is no intellectual activity that is
independent of physical activity.  I think a lot of the problem here is due to a
dualistic, dichotomous Cartesian mind/body split.  Thinking is also a physical
activity.  Now we can recognize that there are forms of labor that may be
heavily skewed toward the mental or the physical.  But we would do well to
recognize the complementarity of mental and physical activities.

Humans need mental and physical exercise and so there is further support for
switching around labor tasks in the workplace or on the commune, such as
Kropotkin and more recently people like Schumacher have supported.  There may be
people who romanticize "physical labor" and there may be people who romanticize
"intellectual labor" (as well as those who do the opposite in both cases).  What
is more important I think is that whatever the proportion of physical/mental
expenditures of energy of a particular labor task, how alienated and exploited
is the labor?  How repetitive is it?  How disconnected from the final product?
How much opportunity is there for cooperative interaction?  For creativity? And
so on. Or am I missing something?

Mat