Gordon:
> >It ensures permanent domination by a minority.
Justin Schwartz:
> I must be stupid. Why's that?
Because most work is unnecessary. This can be easily demonstrated by observing that the Gross National Product and average productivity have increased many times over since the time when the work week was set at 40 hours per week, yet the work week is still about 40 hours per week. Therefore it is clear that most of the work done today is not necessary. The 40 hour week has probably been settled upon because it maximizes production consumption by giving the workers more time to consume the stuff they produce.
If most work is not necessary, how can people be made to do it? Under capitalism, partly through force and the threat of force, and partly through fraud (unlike classical slavery, where surplus work is produced through force alone). Both the force and the fraud are fairly complex and different elements of them are connected in complex ways, so a detailed explanation would probably be too lengthy for this venue. We may call the fact of apparent necessity "scarcity".
In general, the elite who manage the system seek to produce scarcity by various means, including war, imperialism, waste and consumerism. Some of the payment (extraction of money and therefore labor from the working people) is taken overtly through taxes and fees, but sometimes the method is indirect: for instance, many workers have to drive to work; therefore they must work to pay for the car, roads and sometimes parking spaces, as well as pay interest, insurance, taxes, fines, and other fees because of driving a car, all of which are in effect paying the rich for being rich. Similar observations may be made of real estate, education, medical expenses and so forth.
This same scarcity which makes work "necessary" also makes capital accumulation "necessary", hence the "need" for two elite classes spring into existence: managers and investors, or capitalists. Because there can never be enough product, the managers and capitalists are critically necessary to the community, which rewards them by giving them a highly unequal share of the social product, high social status, and political control of the community. Enjoying this position, the elites do their best to replicate the conditions which brought it about, that is, reproduce scarcity and along with it, work.
> Whereas allowing the lazy and idle to surf at Malibu and hang out in cafes
> in the Village at the expense of the rest of us who build buildings and
> file papers and such avoids the domination of a minority?
If there are enough buildings, then building more is no more virtuous than surfing or sitting in cafés. In fact, it is often far less virtuous, as when the general environment or truly valuable older buildings are destroyed for the sake of profit. Surfers and café loungers seldom do so much damage.
> Sheesh, no wonder the left is fucked sideways. You just try, just _try_,
> selling this view to ordinary working people. They will not give you the
> time of day.
Some will, some won't, at least, in my experience. Work fetishism is distributed fairly evenly in the population. I've gotten harangues on the sanctity of labor even from veteran winos. However, many people, especially younger ones, seem to agree with these ideas, or at least find them understandable.
-- Gordon