Marv,
I'm chagrined to learn (and not for the first time) that I;m such a
poor communicator. You do misunderstand me and the blame is mine. I should
make up a signature block that says "NO CUT IN PAY" several times.
Many workers do want more hours of work, so they can maintain or
improve or even have a standard of living, as you say. But I'm talking about
something else. Cutting hours, WITH NO CUT IN PAY, to open the opportunity to
develop a different vision of what a better life could be, is what I hope for.
Developing that vision with one's current living standards threatened, with
becoming worse off, ties workers (and those out of work) to wanting more work,
not less.
Let me quote from a book I'm reading just now which will make better
sense that I have.
"With utopian demands, the immediate goal is not deferred ... . To
make a demand is to affirm the present desires of existing subjects: this is
what we want now. At the same time, the utopian demand also points in the
direction of a different future and the possibility of desires and subjects yet
to come. The paradox of the utopian demand is that it is at once a goal and a
bridge; it seeks an end that is open-ended, one that could have a
transformative effect greater than a minor policy reform. Thus, the small
measures of freedom from work that the demands for basic income and shorter
hours might enable could also make possible the material and imaginative
resources to live differently." (page 222 in The Problem With Work, by Kathi
Weeks.)
Later on the same page she says:
"The demands for basic income and shorter hours offer neither
full-blown critiques of the work society or maps of a postwork alternative;
they prescribe neither a vision of a revolutionary alternative nor a call for
revolution, serving rather to enlist participants in the practice of inventing
broader visions and methods of change."
The two demands that she puts forth in the book, adopted from a 1998 manifesto
by Stanley Aronowitz, Dawn Esposito, William DiFazio and Margaret Yard, are for
a 30 hour work week and a Basic Income Guarantee.
That path to visualizing a different future is what I hope we can find and
follow.
Gene
On Jan 21, 2014, at 12:50 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
>
> On 2014-01-21, at 1:38 PM, Eugene Coyle wrote:
>
>> What progressive economists must provide is a path to Visualizing a
>> different future. I see that as happening through a repeated shortening of
>> working hours, till wants and aspirations can include something beyond
>> consumption that can never deliver a better life.
>
> There has been a repeated shortening of working hours expressed in a steady
> increase in part-time, term, and casual employment over recent decades at the
> expense of full time employment - all accompanied by a corresponding loss of
> income. Most workers who have been forced to accept these precarious forms of
> employment are living near or below the poverty line. That's why the once
> powerful working class trade union and socialist movement insisted on shorter
> hours at no loss in pay. If, as is increasingly feared, the pace of jobs lost
> to automation will this time far outstrip new job creation, a dramatic
> reduction in work time accompanied by at least the maintenance of current
> living standards will become a pressing political issue. Most workers are
> currently scrambling to meet their basic needs, and they will not want to
> visualize a different future which threatens to erode their conditions still
> further. Unless I'm misunderstanding, your reference to moving "beyond
> consumption" suggests this is what you have in mind.
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