Significant changes do not drop from the sky, and a consideration of a given change in abstraction from the processes (struggles) that, were it to be secured, would bring it about often tells us very little. Eugene Coyle asked why "the left" did not demand shorter hours. But "the left" is not a given; scattered leftists and left groups (even in large numbers) do not constitute "a left" which can be seen as an agent capable of 'demanding' this or that. Actual lefts emerge under particular conditions, and usually (as Andre Gorz noted) must achieve whatever they are to achieve in periods of not much more than five years. Then capitalist normality reasserts itself and the achievements come under increasing attack from capital. Edward Morgan's _What Really Happened in the 1960s: How Mass Media Culture Failed* American Democracy_ (*"failed" the publisher's word, imposed on the author) is a carefully documented account of how such a corporate backlash emerged in the late 60s -- how, in effect, we got from there to here.
Were a demand for shorter hours actually to emerge in a mass movement, it would not be an isolated demand, nor would the struggle for it be an isolated struggle. Abstract questions such as "Would it reduce income?" tend to become irrelevant in such a context. The rule over which the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks split perhaps can be generalized to fit even situations in which no Party exists: there do exists thousands of local groups around various issues: participating in such a group, feeling some personal responsibility for its growth and practice, provides a different perspective -- one more in harmony with Marx's Eleventh Thesis, which I see as primarily an epistemological claim. Carrol . On 7/20/2011 10:03 PM, Sandwichman wrote: > I've done a lot of work over the last 16 years on this question, Jim. And > I've developed a spreadsheet model based on Sydney Chapman's theory of the > hours of labor that demonstrates the plausibility of a scenario where > current overwork actually depresses productivity and wages to the extent > that total income for given hours may be LESS than it could be if people > worked average annual hours more in line with the long term trend that > prevailed up to the 1950s or even up to the 1980s. > > Frankly, I've answered your question, Jim, unless it is a rhetorical one. I > presented a Power Point of it an an URPE summer conference just about a year > ago and I discuss it in narrative form in chapter four of my manuscript, > Jobs, Liberty and the Bottom Line, which was featured today at the P2P > foundation blog. > > http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/towards-a-labor-commons-considering-employment-as-a-common-pool-resource-through-social-accounting/2011/07/20 > > I would welcome a substantive critique of the arguments I've presented. It > is not a question that can be answered with a sound bite. The answer has to > swim upstream against a gaggle of implicit assumptions that are hardwired > into conventional thinking about the issue but have absolutely no substance. > > On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Jim Devine<[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 11:57 AM, Eugene Coyle<[email protected]> wrote: >>> When I read the discussion on Pen-l on the stimulus, frustration >> overwhelms >>> me and I respond with a question asking why the left is not pushing a cut >> in >>> the work week. >>> And generally the response is the way you did recently. >> >> Okay, so how are you going to push for shortening the work-week (or >> better, the work-year) without hurting worker yearly incomes? >> >> Or is shortening the work-year of some workers supposed to cut their >> incomes but that's okay because it raises other workers' work-years? >> In the latter case, the idea is one of burden-sharing, a form of >> unemployment insurance (in which employed workers are helping the >> unemployed). >> -- >> Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own >> way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. >> _______________________________________________ >> pen-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >> > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
