Tom Walker wrote:
> Bob McDaniel wrote:
>
> >Never mind just the poor: How will anyone qualify to partake of the
> >fruits of automation? That is one of my favourite areas of speculation.
> >Take it to the reductio ad absurdum - everyone is put out of work!
> >I find it hard to believe that the automated factories will simply
> >continue to churn out stuff when no one can buy it. What kind of
> >allocative system may emerge?
>
> Bob may be surprised to learn that by assuming the answer lies in the
> emergence of a different "allocative system" he places himself squarely in
> the camp that Moishe Postone characterizes as "traditional Marxism".
Actually, no; I'm not surprised. I've been aware for some time that the concept
of "emergence" was consistent with Marxian thought and figured it wouldn't be
long before someone brought this to my attention. I would view the method of
Marxist thought as a useful tool (dialectics) and as such applicable to many
situations and producing different results depending on the sociotechnological
situation being analyzed.
> Postone
> argues that Marx saw the real dilemma of capitalism as not the disjunction
> between the production system and the allocative system but as occurring
> within production itself. Thus under capitalism we could never arrive at the
> "reductio ad absurdum" where everyone is put out of work because capitalism
> requires that people do more and more *superfluous* work as a precondition
> for the necessary:
Well, that would appear to explain the failure of automation to increase
unemployment. But it does strike me as rather tautological to argue that "under
capitalism we could never arrive at the "reductio ad absurdum" where everyone
is put out of work" because it is in the nature of capitalism to employ
people, whether producers or superfluous. Anyway, while a new system may be
emerging dialectically (thru a clash of diametrically-opposed views), it is
probably not something we would want to label "capitalism".
> I have posted the revelant passages of the Grundrisse at:
>
> http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/grundris.htm
Thanks. Look forward to reading them. It would be useful if all list
contributors would post their sources and archive their contributions on
Web-accessible servers. A number already do, of course, and their efforts are
much appreciated.
--
http://publish.uwo.ca/~mcdaniel/
