maggie coleman wrote, >Other friends tell me that >progressive places demand a tremendous amount of 'free' time on top of wages >which tend to be very low. In a capitalist organization, this would be >exploitation to increase surplus value. And Max Sawicky added, >I've been hearing stores like this for 25 years. > >I mention this not to air pessimism but because I >think there's a moral: it pays to be cognizant >of the limits of collective political action, >including the capacity of the working class or >their representatives (much less anyone else) >to make virtuous, disinterested decisions when >given the power to do so. In other words, there >are proper limits to government. I agree with both maggie and Max and would like to add my own slant, which is that this issue is not as 'peripheral' as it may seem. Alex Izurieta posted to PEN-L an article by Andre Gorz who, in his _Critique of Economic Reason_, argues for a 'politics of free time'. Gorz's theoretical position was discussed in a recent issue of New Left Review. Perhaps the long losing streak of the left and labour comes from the widespread abandonment of a politics of free time in favour of the politics of the welfare state. My own quirky reading of history (along with a few books I've read) tells me that the welfare state began as a conservative institution to defend the state against revolutionary threats and succeeded in recruiting to its defense the bulk of the radicals whose original argument was for the abolition of the state. This is not to say that there are no 'proper limits' to a politics of free time, either. On the contrary, proper limits are what may make free time a *politics* rather than an beguiling, empty slogan. Regards, Tom Walker, [EMAIL PROTECTED], (604) 669-3286 The TimeWork Web: http://mindlink.net/knowware/worksite.htm
