Gordon Fitch writes:
><snip> This is
>one reason the 8-hour day is useful: it gives the workers
>enough time to go buy all the stuff they produce and use it
>up, break it, or get tired of it and throw it out. If
>they're Welfaristic or charitable they can not only buy
>it for themselves, but for others as well, and get rid of
>it that way.
>
>This sort of scarcity production is usually integrated with
>the first, destructive mode of scarcity production, for
>instance, the great suburban sprawl-out which hales people
>into SUVs and the parking lots of endless malls and industrial
>parks, thus creating major environmental problems, infrastructure
>costs, and of course energy needs which can be used to drive
>the occasional war and thus create yet further scarcity.
>
>So I wouldn't say capitalism stifles production at all; what
>it does is run it in circles to ensure that it never produces
>_time_, if you know what I mean -- because time is freedom
>from The Man, and he doesn't want that.
>
>- -- Gordon
>
Yes, "Time is the room of human development." No argument there.
I do have an argument with the rest of what you're saying, though. It seems a little circular. We won the eight hour day only because it gives us time to consume and produce most efficiently, but capitalism keeps us running in circles so we can't have time to think or act.
I also worry that your general explanation for everything is--it benefits capital, so that must be why it exists. Almost Panglossian, in a negative sort of way. Sprawl could also be explained as a combination of cold war civil defense (a reaction to an outside, non-capitalist threat) and racial politics (a reaction to the threat of Blacks demanding equality). The work week (which in the U.S. is now the longest in the industrialized world) must stay at eight hours because it's the pinnacle of capitalist efficiency. Odd, then, that in some capitalist countries they've won 35 hour weeks and an extra six weeks off a year compared to what we have here in the U.S.
You really think capital--unified, internally stable, eternally flexible--is able to put the fix in every time?
And is this why anarchists are always wanting to sabotage things? Since capitalism seems otherwise stable and unassailable.
Jenny Brown
In a message dated 8/29/02 1:48:03 PM, owner-lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com
writes:
Gordon:
>I don't see this; it's just being asserted. _Why_ is a large
>complex material base necessary? billbartlett says it's
>because a certain level of production gives people the
>possibility of security, but we never see this security
>appearing. Instead, the more stuff people have, the more
>insecure they seem to feel -- and probably are -- and the less
>likely they are to be attracted to socialistic or communistic
>modes of social organization.
Huh?! People around here are quite enamoured of our public parks, libraries,
rural electric co-op, fire department, municipally-owned power & water, and
the public university and college. Not so happy about their deregulated
phone co., their health ins. co., or their privatized 401(K) pension plan.
The 'good jobs' are gov't jobs, valued not just for their higher wages but
their stability. Without public jobs in this part of the South, we would
have no effing economic security or stability at all.
>
>The more capitalism, the more wealth, inequality, _and_
>insecurity, therefore, the less likely a move toward socialism.
>Marx theorized at one point that capitalist systems would
>collapse because of the immiseration of the proletariat who
>would be driven to revolt, but the bourgeoisie don't have to
>immiserate the proletariat after all, because they've learned
>how to manufacture as much scarcity as the need to keep the
>system going.
Really, no immiseration? Poverty rates in the capitalist world rose 40%
during the last decade.
>
>But if you could sabotage scarcity production, maybe a lot
>of people would take a walk. And then you'd have the
>beginning of a revolution.
>
>- -- Gordon
>
Sabotage scarcity production? By producing more? Or stealing stuff and giving it out? Or do you mean by sabotaging production?
In a message dated 8/29/02 10:59:59 PM, owner-lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com
writes:
Bill Bartlett writes:
>The problem with capitalism is that it is a system which stifles modern
>technology, preventing it from achieving its potential. Capitalism results
>in a constantly improving technology, but prevents this technology from
>being efficiently utilised to benefit humanity.
>
As any Windows sufferer can attest.
We have a great example here in the U.S. with private health insurance. A respected research cardiologist here, now retired from the university, says that one reason he supports universal health care is that he sees increasingly that the advances he and his team made in the 60s and 70s are warped and wasted in a system in which so many who could benefit simply cannot get the care. Production's stifled indeed--we have plenty of empty hospital beds, emptied because the insurance company says get 'em out of here, sicker and quicker; then empty hospitals, which close. Advances in drug therapy don't work so well when you skip food to pay for medicine, or skip medicine to pay for food. An older couple recently described to the NYT how they deal with drug costs: she takes her medicines for a month then he takes his for a month.
By the way, responding to Gordon, people are pretty mad about this particular scarcity scheme--'having stuff'--in this case I guess it would be some medical care--is no longer sufficient to make people think capitalism works in this case. In poll after poll, referendum after referendum, majorities want the private insurance companies out.
Jenny Brown