Andre Gorz writes " the demand to 'work less' does not mean or imply the right to 'rest more.'" Paul Abberley points out that is precisely what some disabled bodies need, is to rest more. The body not working is inferior to the body at work it seems.
I would like to find some strains in Marxism which do not encapsulate work as Utopia -- for how can the impaired body be equally valued?
Marta
>Re-reading Nietzsche's "Birth of Tragedy" last night,
>it occured to me how little some marxisms treat the
>question of the body (instincts, etc) and the
>liberation of the body. Why is this? Could it be
>that
>some marxisms emphasize teleology in which the body
>figures only as a means to an end and de-emphasize
>ontology? Is this the root of the problem? If not,
>what is?
>
>In such marxisms, the body is referred to in passing
>rather negatively. At best it should be "free from"
>starvation, war, etc....but no mention of "free to",
>no affirmation.Apart from that the body seems not to
>exist or only abstractly as the "v" in variable
>capital. Very often any attempts to speak of a
>liberation of body is cast off as "petit bourgeois
>individualism" and the persecution of homosexuality by
>certain tendancies of the left (especially in the
>past) is one of the terrible outcomes of such an
>orientation. Then, too, there were the adoptions of
>the taylorist methods and enclosure of bodies inside
>factories and inside States.
>
>But which threads of marxism AFFIRM the body and argue
>for its liberation? What is their vision of the body?
>Since there seem to be many different points of view
>on LBO, I would like to hear about that.
>
>Thomas
>
>=====
>"Nothing is true, everything is permitted."
>
>"Money eats quality and shits out quantity"
>-William Burroughs
>
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-- Marta Russell Los Angeles, CA http://www.disweb.org