(Revolution, if it occurs, will catch everyone by surprise.) In the meantime, the working people of the world in general and the U.S. in particular need some breathing room. That is the 'message; of Chap. 14 of Wages, Price and Profit. I believe I recited that point often enough in the past that some pen-l posters began to mock it in kindergarten-level sarcasm. But unless ideas (such as shorter hours; such as solidarity) began to grip the masses those ideas are pretty fucking empty. That doesn't happen by magic, though when it does happen it almost appears as if by magic. In the meantime, the "ideas" have been developed and articulated more than adequately (by Tom Walere and Gene Coyle among others). But somehow the masses have never grasped them -- AND THAT IS WHAT CONFRONTS US NOW: What is to be done to trigger the Masses' grasp of those ideas.
Carrol -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tom Walker Sent: Sunday, January 10, 2016 3:36 PM To: PEN-L list Subject: [Pen-l] Shorter working time on PEN-L "Ok, but what then? " At the risk of totally alienating the hipsters on this list with my "certain lack of imagination", I will take the liberty of mentioning that I wrote a BOOK on this topic, the unpublished manuscript of which has been available on SCRIBD for about five years, excerpts and adaptations from which have been presented at conferences and published on various blogs as well as in a chapter in a published anthology. At every step along the way I shared the analysis, strategies, rationales and concrete proposals on PEN-L. Most of my posts to PEN-L on the topic have gone without reply. When there have been replies, as with so many mailing list conversations, discussions often quickly veered off-topic. I have come to the conclusion that PEN-L isn't a place that I can expect much of an engaged discussion of the issue. So I don't keep beating my head against that brick wall. One of the obstacles to thinking about the issue is the utterly unfounded and untheorized dichotomous notion that "revolution" consists of seizing state power and that "reform" consists of policy actions urged to be taken by the existing bourgeois state authorities. My proposals consist of neither strategies for seizing state power nor electoral campaign platform demands. What I have proposed instead is the formation of new kinds of collective institutions that have ample precedent in existing institutions. These new institutions would be based on a reconceptualization of "work" and "property" along lines that SHOULD be comprehendible to those who have read Marx but that are not exclusively or orthodoxly "Marxist" -- namely the reconceptualization of labor power as a common-pool resource. How does wage labor differ from labor power? How do common-pool resources differ from private goods or public goods? How are they similar? My proposals only make sense in the context of answers to these questions. I have no objection to policy proposals like paid family leave. They may even open space for more in depth discussion of the issue of working time. But such policy proposals do not begin to address the fundamental problem of the ecological unsustainability of wage labor, capital accumulation and industrial-scale conversion of habitat to toxic waste. -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman) _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
