la revolution

James Devine jdevine at popmail.lmu.edu
Sat Aug 22 20:34:26 PDT 1998


At 11:33 AM 8/22/98 -0700, Brad wrote:
>Well, speaking as an elite technocrat...
>
>How many meetings would I (or the average worker) have to go to? If
>"controlling the conditions of [your] labor" means that you have to give up
>any pretense at having a life because of the extra meetings you have to go
>to, it would seem to be a mixed blessing at best...

actually, a lot of capitalist employers impose meetings on employees that are totally unnecessary and/or bogus (e.g., quality circle meetings). Those could be dropped or rather transformed into meetings where workers actually have a real say in what's going on. (Even as a prof, which is a pretty elite job, I've been to too many meetings where we did the dreck-work for the Trustees but if we did something they didn't like they would simply ignore it.)


>Can't I just wish for a high-pressure economy in which unemployment is low,
>businesses are eager to train, educate, and cosset their workers, and I can
>vote with my feet for the most pleasant employer?

sure, you can wish for it.

But that would increase worker bargaining power, encourage strikes, squeeze profits and/or encourage inflation, and in the end spur a recession. (This is Marx's vol. I cycle story dropping his assumption there that money = gold.) Something like this is happening now in the US, even though profits are very high. Mainstreamers would say that the actual unemployment rate is below the NAIRU; I say the reserve army of labor is too small to cow workers for long.

Jim Devine jdevine at popmail.lmu.edu & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html



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