I happened to be reading "The Trinity Formula" (chapter 48 of Capital, vol. 3) last night and was intrigued to see the coincidental citing of a passage from it here in connection with the correspondence between Marcuse and Dunayevskaya.
There are three sentences in the chapter that I think are rather remarkable. One was cited by Rockwell: "The reduction of the working day is the basic prerequisite." The second refers to "The violent struggle over the limits of the working-day demonstrates this strikingly." And the third is the fantastic summary of vulgar economy as: "the bewitched, distorted and upside-down world haunted by Monsieur Ie Capital and Madame la Terre, who are at the same time social characters and mere things." But let's return to number two for a moment because there may be lingering doubts about the "violent struggle" in spite of my research on the spuriousness and persistence of the lump-of-labor claim. Aside from mere intellectual thuggery, where is the violence today? It is in "the war on Terre." The more common expression is ecologically unequal exchange and it has to do with the disparities between industrial production (in the 'developed' countries) and agriculture or extraction (in the 'periphery'). Or perhaps today we need to be more worried about Monsieur le Robot and Madame la Connaissance? I don't think so. Economic growth depends crucially on the extraction and transportation of enormous and ever-expanding quantities of low value-to-volume bulk commodities. By definition, then, so-called "economic growth" imposes an ever increasing burden of ecological destruction precisely upon those who benefit least from that so-called growth. On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 9:19 PM, Eugene Coyle <[email protected]> wrote: > > Carrol, > You forwarded an inquiry from another list. > > -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman)
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