"should people organising a struggle for one of these limited and unsustainable-under-capitalism reforms, e.g. radically reduced working hours, be open and frank about the fact that achieving said demand in any long-term way isn't consistent with the current economic system, and hence would if insisted upon lead to a major crisis?"
I wouldn't at all jump to the conclusion that the reforms are "unsustainable under capitalism." Mitterrand's France is not a convincing example. A reduction in work hours from 40 to 39 hours is insignificant. There's more noise than signal there. Neoliberal policies can "fail" for years without being abandoned. Witness "austerity." So Kliman's evidence against the social democratic zombie is both anecdotal and selective. Have a look instead at the evidence presented by Dean Baker, et al. in "Labor market institutions and unemployment" (2004) or Richard Freeman's 2005 summary of "the debate over flexibility and labor market performance." The politically-favored policies of capital are not necessarily the economically superior ones EVEN IN TERMS OF THE CURRENT SYSTEM. Capitalism does not necessarily make capitalists rational and omniscient. Once you get that bugaboo out of the way, the nature of the question changes dramatically. Radical reforms *are* feasible from a purely technocratic standpoint. But such reforms won't come off the drawing boards of the politicians and their technocratic lever pullers. The question then is how does a movement arise that will not only demand such reforms but somehow, through direct action, compel officials to implement them. On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 1:06 PM, Jamie Stern-Weiner <[email protected]>wrote: > Have I got Kliman's plan/program correctly? > > 1. Overthrow capitalism. > > followed by: > > 2. Reduce working hours. > > > I don't know what his political program is. But I don't think it's an > unimportant question whether or not significant reductions of working > hours, and social democratic policies more broadly, are compatible with > capitalism over the medium- to long-run. One can try to answer that > question in its own right, in isolation from (related) questions of > political strategy. > > That said, since you raise it, I've a question regarding the political > strategic implications of Kliman's economic argument. If it's the case that > post-work and many other social democratic aspirations are unsustainable > under capitalism, some here have said that they should be struggled for > nonetheless, as a process by which workers (and others involved) may come > to feel their power and perceive, by pushing up against them, the limits of > what capitalism as a system can accommodate. > > OK. My question is, should people organising a struggle for one of these > limited and unsustainable-under-capitalism reforms, e.g. radically reduced > working hours, be open and frank about the fact that achieving said demand > in any long-term way isn't consistent with the current economic system, and > hence would if insisted upon lead to a major crisis? > > If the answer is 'yes', the problem is that I doubt many would sign up to > measures sold as having the potential to induce economic crisis, at any > rate in the absence of a confidently-held vision of a comprehensive > alternative political-economic model. If the answer is 'no', that would be > dishonest (and, in time, exposed as such). > > > -- > Jamie Stern-Weiner > http://www.newleftproject.org/ > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman)
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