>Chas.: in the sense that important early Marxist parties were social
democratic parties, as in Germany and Russia.
perhaps, if you mean the Gotha programme and the NEP. but I was thinking more recently of postWW2 social democratic programmes, with which there is certainly some continuity.
>What's your program again ?
I don't have one. should I pretend that a series of demands is commensurate with a programme? but, in this context, I suggested focusing instead on the relative proportions between surplus and necessary labour, which could be demands for increases in welfare, shorter hours, basic wage increases, universal basic income, amongst other things.
>Charles: Not really. It is to remember all the fundamentals of Marxism and
to have a maximum and minimum program, which means that Marxists advocate
reform measures as well revolution,else they become ultra-leftists.
well, remind me where I insisted that it was revolution or nought? claiming that a criticism of claims for 'full employment' are 'ultra-leftist' shows a failure of imagination, or in this instance, reading.
but, let's assume that your notion of maximum and minimum is a correct one. the issue then arises as to what would in fact be minimum. would it be founded as an attempt to return to post-war conditions of working class bargaining strength, which was in fact premised on a 'full employment' that consisted of much lower levels of female workforce participation? is this a minimum programme or in fact nostalgia for a time whose conditions are no longer available?
[[>the reserve army is only effective from the perspective of capitalism if
>it is an active reserve army, through either enhancing competition between
>workers or engendering fear amongst workers of poverty. i.e.., it is only
>effective if unemployment equals poverty and marginalisation.]]
>Charles: This doesn't contradict what I said. To deny a significant
correlation between poverty and unemployment seems very strange.
it does contradict what you say because you have argued that the significant variable in working class livelihoods is whether or not people are employed. there is a significant correlation b/n poverty and unemployment, but unemployment is not a cause of poverty. there is a significant section of the workforce, here and I'm sure in the US also, which is worse off working than they would be on unemployment benefits. here it is referred to as the 'poverty trap', made up mostly of single parents (mostly women) and young adults. the latter will undoubtedly increase when employers here manage to introduce their scheme of youth wages as half the amount of adult wages. these are the issues worth fighting around.
>Charles: No. That's Marx I'm following: 'From each according to ability, to
each according to WORK" is not from the bourgeoisie. but Marx, lui-meme. You
are "conflating" Marx's concepts of the role of useful labor in society in
general and the need for a job in a wage-labor system with the Protestant
ethic or work ethic. It is not work as a "virtue", but labor as the source of
use values in society. See _Capital_ Chapter VII, on the labor process.
we've discussed labour 'per se' before, in relation to marx's critique of the Gotha programme. there is no labour 'as such' for marx, only forms of labour. in any case, how can you claim a definition of 'useful labour' outside capitalism in support of a strategy for workers in capitalism?
as for the slogan 'to each according to their work', this has been surpassed by history. from a recent post, I wrote: "the connection between particular work and particular workers has been historically, for some workers, overtaken. the collapse of craft labour, as Rakesh notes. the question then would be I guess whether this is really the second phase of communism or an important aspect of late capitalism. I think perhaps the latter, which makes the injunction 'to each according to their work' about as redundant as the craft labour, which it presupposes."
>Marx's approach on this , as with bourgeois political rights, does have the
clever side-effect of showing that the bourgeois cannot live up to their own
virtues. If the bourgeois say work is a "virtue", Marx says, well the
working class is doing the work , not the bourgeoisie.
again, you are thinking of lassalle, not marx. the distinction between those who work and those who do not is a moralistic one drawn from guild socialism, and it was never clever. this, in the context of late capitalism is an affront, since it makes the unemployed commensurate with the idle rich. a moralism I should add which was at its core is a claim of 'parasitism', and not one which bears repeating within ostensibly marxist programmes.
>Charles: The equation exists in fact, thus, there is a causal link in fact.
You seem to be attributing a kind of futuristic consciousness to most people
that they don't actually have now. Yes, most people living now connect
"socially useful activity" with having a job.
thousands of people involved in the j18 actions don't. since you want to begin from 'the leading sections of the working class and their consciousness' as the formula for drafting demands, the question then would be whether your are in fact beginning from the 'leading sections' or the 'backward layers'. leninists still assume a spontaneous social democratic consciousness, thus suspending any attempt to look around and see what forms of consciousness are about or emerging. here's some news: most people hate work but are terrified of being unemployed, but, under new regimes of work, will increasingly be unemployed for periods of time, given the growing levels of casualisation, temporary work, work intensification, etc. in this context, the demand for full employment is redundant, and its material likelihood is in things like workfare. demands for a welfare system that deprives the new regime of work of its ability to terrorize people into submission is paramount, as is extending the conditions reserved for full time workers to part-time, casual, and temp workers. capitalism can have its flexible workforce, so long as this is underwritten by an appropriate (for us) system of welfare.
>That there is no connection between poverty and unemployment is pretty
obviously false. Of course, there are working poor too. Demanding full
employment does not contradict demanding decent wages . Nor does it
contradict demanding jobs or income, as the Constitutional Amendment I showed
you does.
to repeat: there is a connection bn poverty and unemployment, but unemployment is not a cause of poverty. to claim the latter is to ignore the working poor, who are a growing section of the workforce, in most places around the world.
but no, demanding full employment doesn't contradict demanding decent incomes. but why _begin_ with a demand for full employment when you could begin with a demand for decent incomes, whether they be from welfare or employment? this is the problem in a nutshell. you _begin_ by reproducing the injunction to work when you know that work increasingly consists of surplus labour.
[[>there has been a significant shift, not away from work, but toward forms
>of work which it doesn't take much to see are contraventions of the
conventions
>on forced labour, like prison labour, workfare, and so on.]]
>Charles: Your idea that this is what Marxists mean by full employment is so
out of it it isn't funny.
you didn't notice the first part of the sentence which read "on another point..."? I don't think prison labour is what marxists might mean by full employment, since I don't think marxists would be demanding full employment in the first place.
Angela --- rcollins at netlink.com.au