Re: Speaking of volatility (Jones)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Doyle writes:

> Greetings Economists,
>
> Tom Walker writes,
> > What strikes me is that Doug, Michael, Yoshie and Mark offered no response
> > to my _programmatic_ reply to Doug. I could be utterly wrong, in which case
> > I would welcome the criticism. But I don't think I'm vague or obtuse. Doug
> > wrote (in a subsequent message) that the left "has no analytical vocabulary
> > for talking about 'good' times." My position is that the left "has" the
> > vocabulary but doesn't use it -- stubbornly refuses to use it, refuses to
> > even see that it is refusing to use it. I talked about how one might talk
> > about good times and Doug, Michael, Yoshie and Mark didn't respond. I talked
> > about the capitalism fun stuff -- leftism hair shirt dialectic and why that
> > is so. No reply. I hinted that maybe secretly leftists prefer the drama of
> > struggling against insurmountable odds, which basically is where I share
> > Doug's view. No answer.
>
> While what Tom wrote above is true to the point that people did not offer
> answers, I think Tom is not really pointing at a failure by any of the
> people above, but instead is indicating a vast area where a listserv is not
> functioning.  Really Tom is indicating to what extent one can expect people
> to collaborate on work toward a common project.  So if somebody doesn't
> reply to one's points then that is just the way lists work, but as Tom says
> one could reasonably ask why not take seriously what he has to say and in
> some kind of framework come up with a programmatic reply.
>
> Afterwards Yoshie replied she agreed with Tom and she felt it went without
> saying, which I think is acknowledging how listservs function.  So I would
> reply to Tom from a different perspective that the real issue Tom raises is
> not so much that in this case people are not responding properly, as much as
> this brings out how listservs don't function within the parameters of what
> social constructing a left requires.

Doyle raised an excellent question.  I think that listserves can
function better to help build up a Left if we post more often to
elaborate on the points we agree on than to expand on those we
disagree on (not that we should never disagree with one another &
have impassioned debates -- it's a matter of proportion).  Tom's post
received few replies, probably because his idea of putting the
question of working time on the front burner (since we may make
lasting gains on this front rather than on others) is one that few
leftists would oppose in theory but at the same time few of us have
any practical suggestion as to how to go about it.

At 8:48 AM -0700 7/13/01, Tom Walker wrote:
> The catch is that the form in which gains have been secured during an
> upswing will have an important bearing on how defensible they will be during
> a downtown. Capital would prefer to "give" something to workers during the
> good times that it can readily take back during the bad times. That is, to
> provide the gains as much as possible in the form of purely economic
> individualistic 'utilities' -- stock options, say, rather than collective
> agreements.
<snip>
> There happens to be a reason why I write and study so much about working
> time. The reason is not that I am a one-trick pony. The reason is that
> historically, reductions in working time -- which, by the way, almost
> invariably include wage gains as a component -- have proven to be more
> defensible than strictly monetary wage gains.

Earlier we had a short thread on nurses' struggle against
under-staffing & mandatory overtime, but the thread got aborted, so
to speak, without getting anywhere.  I think it's worth bringing it
up again in light of Tom's idea.

Yoshie

P.S.  I'm cc'ing this to Doug, because he said he would unsub from
PEN-l until August but might be interested in this thread.