Workers of the world...relax

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Tue Oct 1 13:59:16 PDT 2002



>On Tue, 1 Oct 2002, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>> I've always thought that Arendt's distinction between work and labor has
>> a lot to recommend it. (Actually, Engels made the distinction when he
>> noted that in English there is always a tendency to give the concrete
>> thing a germanic name and the abstraction a latin name.) It's also
>> implicit in both the labor theory of value and in Marx's comparison of
>> bee and architect.
>>
>> Carrol
>
>The problem with the distinction is that everyday discourse
>tends to valorize "work". Yeah, it's a cliche, but every mom's
>a working mom. To label wage labor "real work" is an effective
>strategy for trivializing a lot of the human activity that makes
>even a supposedly capitalist society function.
>
>--I think a general nonwage labor strike would be very interesting:
>our supposedly capitalist society would grind to a halt without the
>diligent, unpaid work--yes, work!--that we do in our homes and
>communities.
>
>Miles

If all moms and dads stop changing diapers for a day, the only ones who get sore are babies, whereas strikes, even slowdowns, at several strategically important industries (like cargo transportation) for a day will indeed wreak havoc on profits. Wage labor and unpaid work for social reproduction have very different relations to capital. -- Yoshie

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