Who Does No Work, Shall Not Eat

[Randy Steindorf]

I believe that Marx's point was that under capitalism (as under slave-based 
economies) the direct producer of wealth (commodities) is forced to work a 
certain part of the day unpaid for the owner of the means of production.  
The direct producer reproduces this wages (means of subsistence) plus a 
surplus product for which the capitalist has given no value in exchange.  A 
surplus product always has to be produced in order for civilization to 
advance, but there is a difference whether the surplus is appropriated by a 
non-producer (capitalist, taxes for state expenditure, church tithes, 
commissar, etc.) or controlled by the direct producer for benefit of the 
whole society.  First of all it is a question of producing a surplus 
product, and then using the surplus to "promote the general interest," 
rather than special interests (dividend hunters, board directors, state 
officials, clergy, commissars, etc.)


>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Re: Who Does No Work, Shall Not Eat
>Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 16:15:59 -0500
>
>Chuck0 wrote:
>
>>Otherwise, you still have a system where people are forced to work.
>>
>>Capitalist gun to your head or socialist one? Choose neither.
>
>Here's where I have to part company with anarchism, as charming as I
>find a lot of it. Sometimes it just seems like an infantile "No!"
>inflated to the level of a political philosophy. We have to work
>because if we don't we die. People who don't work are living off the
>work of others, one way or another. Of course, human societies have a
>lot of choices about how they arrange the work, and how much
>compulsion is involved, but it's not just a boss, capitalist or
>commissar, who forces us to work.
>
>Doug

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