Who Does No Work, Shall Not Eat

Chuck0 chuck at tao.ca
Sat Jan 19 13:40:42 PST 2002


Doug Henwood wrote:


> >Of course, there is always Bob Black's "The Abolition of Work," which
> >sums up my feelings and thinking about work. I've also found that
> >Wendell Berry's writings on work to be valuable. There is work of the
> >"wage slavery' variety and work of the variety that meets basic needs
> >and/or is personally satisfying.
>
> So no more computers, Chuck?

That would be fine with me. I only do this computer stuff because I see it as using the master's tools to burn down the master's house.

Obviously in any transition to another way of living there will be lots tech lying around. The question becomes which tech do we want to keep around? I've had this argument many times with my anarchist friends who think we can maintain a high tech society "after the revolution." I typically challenge them to explain to me how they intend to run a semiconductor plant in a post-statist non-capitalist society. I don't think that leftists ever bother to think about these things. Obviously, creating a do-it-yourself semiconductor plant is not quite on the same level as a DIY kiln or bakery. If building a semiconductor plant didn't require the existence of a massive military-oriented capitalist economy, they would be ubiquitous around the world. If its the case that having high tech requires an organized First World capitalist economy, it ain't going to be very easy to make new computer chips after the revolution.

<< Chuck0 >>

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INTERNATIONALISM IN PRACTICE

An American soldier in a hospital explained how he was wounded: He said, "I was told that the way to tell a hostile Vietnamese from a friendly Vietnamese was to shout ‘To hell with Ho Chi Minh!’ If he shoots, he’s unfriendly. So I saw this dude and yelled ‘To hell with Ho Chi Minh!’ and he yelled back, ‘To hell with President Johnson!’ We were shaking hands when a truck hit us."

(from 1,001 Ways to Beat the Draft, by Tuli Kupferburg).



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