>Whether one puts in socially necessary labour time in
>or not is up to them in a grassroots democracy. In
>other words, the freedom to starve would not be taken
>away in a communist society.
That's big of you. ;-) Isn't exactly the sort of freedom that many people aspire to though.
>I figure that it wouldn't be too much time out of
>one's life anyway to put in your fair share of skill
>and time, as the productive capacity which has been
>reach already under the dictatorship of the capitalist
>class is quite sufficient and I'm confident that we
>can improve on it and reduce snlt even more.
It isn't the improvement of the *productive* capacity I'm worried about, but the intellectual capacity. Socialism might only be the next step in the career of humanity, rather than the end of history.
>If critiques of political-economy and philosophical
>speculation are your "thangs", then I don't see why
>one couldn't do them either in the academy, teaching
>others or by writing books--both socially necessary.
>And if you're not up to snuff, you can do them in your
>own time, which should be quite sufficient--ah for the
>two hour day.
The two hour day is somewhat dependent, it seems to me, on eliminating all the useless and degrading work, such as the work of determining who should be entitled to exemption from work and enforcing laws which protect society against those who refuse to knuckle under to political rules. If a 'socialist' society (and I put the term in inverted commas deliberately in this context) is going to maintain an army of bureaucrats to enforce the perpetuation of the capitalist work ethic, then this will I believe require us to all work longer hours to compensate for all this wasted effort.
>Poor Marx spent half his life time scrambling around
>for the odd coin or two which Engels didn't generously
>pass along. Nobody paid him to write CAPITAL. I
>suspect that he did make a buck or a pound or two from
>sales later but nothing compared to his efforts.
Mike, I don't know when I'll ever be able to get back over to WA. Just missed being there at the same time as you last time. I'd love to get there again, even if it didn't give me the chance to meet up with you. That would be the icing on the cake though, for sure.
My retort, somewhat drunken I suspect, would be: "What the hell kind of society is it you are suggesting, that someone like Marx should be expected to do his *real* work in his spare time for fuck's sake?"
You can say it was his suggestion, I don't know how true that is. I'm not much of a Marx scholar, but from my point of view it isn't consistent with the logical extension of his work. But maybe you're right about it. I don't care, if you are right then he was wrong.
Incidentally, I might be visiting Adelaide in November to go to a conference on social housing. You ever been there?
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas