Who Does No Work, Shall Not Eat

Ted Winslow egwinslow at rogers.com
Sat Jan 19 11:34:32 PST 2002


Gordon Fitch wrote:


> Justin Schwartz:
>> Well,I'm a hedonist, and no puritan. But the points are pretty simple. It's
>> politically necessary because working people will resent supporting those
>> whom they consider shirkers and parasites, and that will undermine the
>> solidarity necessary for a socialist project. It'[s morally right because
>> no one has a right to live off the labor of others without contributing
>> something in return. The Bolsies reappropraited the slogan, Who does no
>> work, will not eat. Leaving aside those who can't wprk, what's wrong with
>> that?
>
> It ensures permanent domination by a minority.

The Hayekian Mrs. Thatcher's demagogic appeal to working class resentment of welfare recipients was motivated by this. It's been used by her and others (my local provincial neo-conservative "commons sense" government, for example) to dismantle the "nanny" state.

"Permanent domination by a minority" is a key and not very well hidden aspect of the Hayek/Thatcher conception of "freedom." The real problem with the "nanny" state was that it placed limits on the exercise of sadistic domination in the workplace. Halfway decent welfare and unemployment benefits, for instance, allow for some capacity to refuse to do work that's alienated beyond the pale (alienation including not just exploitation in an economic sense, i.e. low wages, but also the conditions of work, particularly the nature of authority characteristic of its organization).

Freedom for Hayek is "free enterprise" in the sense that it is freedom to sadistically, obsessively and greedily control and exploit others without constraint.

The "hedonism" of the Austrian position is also a disguise. It appears at the theoretical level as the insatiability of desire for "pleasure." Its other aspect is "freedom" as capricious determination of the objects through which pleasure is obtained, a capriciousness only controlled by forcing its "choices" into consistency with the "iron cage" of the idea of instrumental rationality identified with its "rational" pursuit. One contradictory feature of the scheme is the substitution of these "rational" means for the end - as in Mises' definition of the "human" as "purposiveness" in Keynes's sense. The insatiable sadistic and destructive greed expressed by this "hedonism" (a "vulgar," "deeper and blinder passion" not fully controlled by its containment within the "iron cage") arouses, however, strong unconscious feelings of persecutory and depressive anxiety which find expression, among other ways, in financial "puritanism."

As I mentioned earlier, Keynes points to Hayek and Robbins as among those who value "consistency" above all else, one sign of this being immunity to a reductio ab absurdum argument. Hayek explained the depression as a correction of the mistaken investment decisions produced by the destruction by the inflation of the boom of the ability of prices to provide information about the future ("information" which, as a logical matter, these prices could not possibly contain). This led to mistaken investment decisions. The inflation and the boom were traceable to excessive "money" creation. (Consistency would seem to require that such mistaken policies be explained in accordance with the "logic of the situation" - an implication which, when fully pursued, seems to lead to the final reductio ad absurdum of Pangloss.) Consequently, the depression was really a period in which real wealth was growing faster than it had during the mania of the boom. These conclusions are the "Bedlam" to which Keynes refers in calling Hayek's argument in Prices and Production "an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in Bedlam."

Keynes explained this view psychologically as the product of "sadistic puritanism." In A Treatise on Money (Collected Writings, V, p. 246) he claims:

"the opinion, which I have sometimes heard expressed, that the real wealth of the community increases faster, in spite of appearances to the contrary, during a depression than during a boom, must be erroneous. For it is a high rate of investment which must necessarily by definition be associated with a high rate of investment of accumulated wealth. Thus I am more disposed to sympathise with Mr D.H. Robertson, who thinks that much of the material progress of the nineteenth century might have been impossible without the artificial stimulus to capital accumulation afforded by the successive periods of boom, than with the puritans of finance - sometimes extreme individualists, who are able, perhaps, to placate in this way their suppressed reactions against the distastefulness of capitalism - who draw a gloomy satisfaction from the speculative and business losses, the low prices, and the high real wages, accompanied, however, by unemployment, which characterise the typical depression. Nor is it sufficient justification of the latter state of affairs, that, necessity being the mother of invention, there are certain economies and technical improvements which the business world will only make under the stimulus of distress; for their are other improvements which will only mature in an atmosphere of optimism and abundance."

He repeats this elsewhere:

"it seems an extraordinary imbecility that this wonderful outburst of productive energy [1925-1929] should be the prelude to impoverishment and depression. Some austere and puritanical souls regard it both as an inevitable and a desirable nemesis on so much over-expansion, as they call it; a nemesis on man's speculative spirit. It would, they feel, be a victory of the mammon of unrighteousness if so much prosperity was not subsequently balanced by universal bankruptcy. We need, they say, what they politely call a `prolonged liquidation' to put us right. The liquidation, they tell us, is not yet complete. But in time it will be. And when sufficient time has elapsed for the completion of the liquidation, all will be well with us again." (Collected Writings, XIII, p. 349)

In the original galleys of a reply to Dennis Robertson's Economic Journal review of the Treatise, Keynes explicitly connects the argument to "sadistic puritanism." In the last paragraph of his review, Robertson had expressed some sympathy with the "puritans of finance" and suggested their policy of restraint was not "a relic of sadistic barbarism". In his reply, Keynes claims that the policy is indeed an expression of sadism, though of "sadistic puritanism" rather than barbarism, and that its explanation is best looked for in psycho- rather than economic analysis.

"Mr Robertson's last paragraph of all ­ yes! a mere relic of Sadistic ­ well, not so much barbarism as puritanism. But at this point psycho-analysis must take charge and economic analysis withdraw discreetly. (XIII, p. 238)

Working class resentment of welfare recipients is closely bound up psychologically with working class racism and sexism. Far from providing a foundation for any kind of "socialism" it's a major obstacle to a more humane social form of any kind.

Marx's ideal for work in "realm of necessity," which should presumably guide the organization of work in any "transitional system if it is to be both cloer to the ideal and positively developmental, is that "it must take place in conditions most worthy of their ["the associated producers"] human nature." (Capital, vol. 3, p. 959)

Ted



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