On 8/13/2011 8:00 PM, Sandwichman wrote:
Funny. You could go off on just about any other tangent without rebuke
from Mr. Rowe, but to mention reducing the hours of work (I said nothing
about "work-sharing") induced sheer panic. I wish more people on the
left would pay a little more attention to what really pushes the buttons
of those on the right.
-----
I have nothing to contribute to the economic debate on this, but I
wonder if it is the "free" that induces the panic, and the panic is as
much political as economic, or perhaps mostly political. In discussions
of the student activists of the '60s there is rarely if ever any
recognition of the fact that in the late '50s and '60s the _time_ (=
living activity) of both students and faculty was much freer. (Fewer
students worked, and those who worked worked fewer hours, but I suspect
there were other factors as well.) I believe there is a proverb
connecting "idle hands" with the devil. Postone's chapter on the history
of time is relevant here. Few people seem to know that prior to the
last few centuries activity measured time, not time activity. Hence only
at the fall & sprig solstices was the medfieval hour 60 minutes long. In
the winter night hours were always longer than 60 minyutesd, day hours
shorter; reversal in summer. (Newton needed absolute time and absolute
space -- and he was conscious that he was inventing these strange
entities.) And hence my central point here: Only when workers begin to
struggle for shorter hours do they seriously threaten the capitalism as
a system, because the demand for shorter hours, that is, for more "free"
time is in fact a demand for freedom as I have define it: free time free
from any necessary link to the future. For that to be the case society
must offer its members generous retirement programs, thus eliminating
the need for savings -- savings by workers being merely postponed
consumption and therefore emblematic of time subordinate to the future,
not free. Whitman knew this ("I loaf and invite my soul"), and I believe
there is in the New Testament something about "take not thought for the
morrow. The fable of the grasshopper and the ant embodies capitalist
ideology.
Carrol
P.S. I haven't gotten back to Ted's post on this and I think for once
he and Imay have been in agreement.
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
