> I'll drink to that--at the Brass Monkey. We can
> invite Grant and have ourselves a commie rant-fest
> well into the wee hours.
Someone mention my name? *nurses hangover consequent from the climax of the football season*
> >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.
(Sorry if I'm going over recent ground or missing the bleeding obvious --- I find myself less and less able to keep up with my mail lists.)
My take on this is that --- thanks to the destruction and swallowing up of other modes of production/labour/life in general --- capitalist industrialisation is now so far advanced, so efficient and so productive (compared e.g. to when Engels cobbled together the almost brilliant _Critique_of_the_Gotha_Program_ from Marx's marginalia) that if the existing means of production were taken over by a post-capitalist society, the "freedom to starve" would be roughly equivalent to the present day ability to become a nun, an S&M slave, or a supporter of the Bulldogs in the Aust. Football League. That is, lifestyles which are rare, unnecessary, and not desirable to most of us.
I mean, I can't cite sources, but I believe left econometrists have already demonstrated that we live in a world of plenty, albeit one thwarted by the market/s and capital's need to accumulate.
> Agreed. Grassroots democracy is the opposite of
> bureaucratic rule from above. Co:ordinators
> welcome--bureaucrats can go hang themselves from the
> guts of the last capitalists as far as I'm concerned.
Drinking partners forced into bureaucratic employment by poverty excepted I hope :-)
> How about working two hours on the reference desk at
> the University of Western Australia each week. The
> rest is his 'spare' or free-time to do with as he
> pleases.
>
> "Sehr gut!", says a muffled voice from Highgate.
As I always say, Highgate is just around the corner (local joke & apologies to Billy Bragg).