unemployment, pov., prisons/"social production controlled by social foresight"

Charles Brown CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Tue Jun 22 09:12:18 PDT 1999



>>> "rc-am" <rcollins at netlink.com.au> 06/19/99 02:37AM >>>

Chaz: > The solution is both full-employment and shorter workweek with not cut in pay. They complement each other. Giving jobs to the unemployed would allow those already employed to have less onerous workdays. I have never heard of a Marxist or even left (maybe DSA dropped full employment) program that didn't call for both full employment (More Jobs) and a shorter workweek ( May Day !).<

Angela: this is a social democratic programme chaz.

((((((((

Charles:

The initial communist program provided in _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_ includes "Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture."

That sounds like jobs for all to me.

I agree with Michael and Chris on Marx's advocacy of a shorter work day/week with no cut in pay. Engels' and Lenin's support of May Day demands was consistent with Marx's position.

Charles Brown


>>> "Michael Hoover" <hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us> 06/21/99 05:05PM >>>
> In article <3.0.2.32.19990617015517.00c07240 at pop.gn.apc.org>, Chris
> Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> writes
> >But if Marx
> >himself did not campaign for the 10 Hour Bill he certainly writes as if the
> >English working classes did!
>
> There is no actual evidence for working class involvement. In Marx's
> defence it can be said that all this happened before he settled in
> Britain. His speech was written nearly 20 years later, probably based on
> the unreliable testimony of trade union leaders.
> Lew

Chris B. makes a fetish of reforms but the suggestion that M's comment in his 1864 inaugural address to the 1st Int'l was based on 'unreliable testimony from trade union leaders' is erroneous...

Engels writes favorably about Chartism in his 1844 review essay Carlyle _The Past and Present_ entitled *The Condition of England*...Chartism, often relegated to having been a movement (and an unsuccessful one at that) for universal manhood suffrage and parliamentary reform also involved various kinds of agitation about other issues, including factory reform...

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