> Why Metallica? Because there'll be no need for pop nihilism once all
> the contradictions are resolved? Or because you think they suck?
>
Matt said it, it's their _whingeing_ over intellectual property. Nothing more repulsive than the blessed whining about how hard done by they are. Metal purists will also resent their unsuitably short locks and frankly embarrassing attempts to co-opt classical music. It's a non-starter. Hint, guys: try techno. It works much better. And stop calling it _art_.
Now, Gar ... Gar Lipow <lipowg at sprintmail.com> wrote:
> Eric Franz Leher posted:
>
>
> >...Under socialism people will have bugger-all work to do (and if
> anyone with other ideas is organizing the revolution, count me out).
>
>
> Under socialism, people will live forever and be eternally young, (and
> if anyone with other ideaas is organizing the revolution, count me out).
>
Seriously, what's Utopian about a massively shortened working week? As an illustration I shall rip off an example concocted by a New Zealand economist named Keith Rankin. He said that in NZ since WWII or thereabouts productivity growth had grown at 2-point-something percent p.a., which implies a doubling of productivity every thirty-something years. So e.g. you can produce twice as much stuff per unit of labour in the mid 90s as in the 60s.
But as KR said, this is functionally equivalent to saying that at the end of the century you can replicate a 60s style of living with a twenty-hour week. Any statist technophiles on the list can presumably take heart from this, as the 60s were not exactly the Paleolithic (napalm, B-52s, TV, rock n'roll, modern sanitation and medicine, etc). And if we take Gordon's point that most work under capitalism is uneccessary replication in the first place, then maybe we could maintain such a standard with considerably less than twenty hours a week.
But as I remember, KR, being a liberal, didn't point out why this isn't going to happen, ie because current relations of production require those of us "lucky" enough to have a job to work for as many hours as can be conveniently squeezed out of us.
Ergo - Utopia? Doable. Now. But only over our employers' headless corpses (and the bloodlust is merited - if someone steals your _life_ from you at 160+ hours per month in the name of some ultimately fictitious economic necessity, what else can you want but to see their head in a wicker basket?)
Eric Leher