On Sat, Nov 22, 2025 at 10:41 AM, Marv Gandall wrote: > > Gorz’s views from the 60’s are good in theory but where in practice has > so-called "non-reformist reformism” won " immediate gains that shift power > away from elites” to “clear the way for more radical transformations”, as > the Jacobin article would have it?
This is a fair criticism. It is also a criticism that could be made of Marx's theory. In an earlier thread I mentioned and linked to Peter Osborne's conclusion to his essay on "Marx and the Philosophy of Time." Oborne wrote that "the main problem with Marx's account... lies in his assumption about the use of disposable time within capitalism": > > ...in its antithesis to labour-time: namely, that everyone’s time is freed > ‘for their own development’; that ‘free time’ is ‘time for the full > development of the individual’, and that it thereby ‘ naturally transform[s] > its possessor into a different subject’. These are now utterly untenable, > nineteenth-century assumptions. For there is nothing ‘natural’, and little > that is ‘free’, about current processes of the transformation of the > individual into a ‘different subject’ during disposable time. Existing > society has turned free or disposable time into the site for the > realization of value (consumption and the culture industry) in a manner > that was unimaginable in the nineteenth century. This is the terrain of > Negri’s and Virno’s concepts of social capital, the socialized worker and > the real subsumption of the social. Yet the ensuing ‘development of the > individual’ is a far more profoundly contradictory process than Negri, > Virno or indeed Marx himself envisaged. For example, Virno’s claim that > there is no longer any qualitative difference between labour-time and > non-labour-time, in its simple reversal of Marx’s position, is no more > credible than its opposite – other than as a rhetorical exaggeration > directed towards highlighting one among a contradictory unity of > tendencies. Current developments of the individual into a ‘different > subject’ require a far more differentiated historical-ontological analysis > of their own. > One might object that Marx moved beyond his Grundrisse antithesis in Capital. But what he moved beyond it to was the "normal working-day." A more "non-reformist reform" than the earlier antithesis between surplus labour appropriated by capital and the appropriation by the mass of workers of their own surplus labour as freely disposable time. In 1867 -- a little over a century and a half ago -- the proposed length of that normal day was eight hours. Presumably that prescribed normal length should have progressively decreased with the development of the productive forces. Well? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#39426): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39426 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/116415357/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
