[lbo-talk] Re: plagarism watch

JBrown72073 at cs.com JBrown72073 at cs.com
Fri Dec 24 07:58:47 PST 2004


jks writes,
> Of course playwrites deserve to be paid. The question
>is why. The idea that they create stuff all by
>themselves is not a plausible explanation. No one
>creates stuff all by himself, except Robinson Crusoe.
>who doesn't need to be paid.

Given that we don't have a guaranteed universal income, we should want the playwright (or Doug) to be paid because we want that work produced--not just now but in the future. We don't want to deter writers from writing by promising them poverty and desperation for their efforts. We don't want the next book never to come cause Doug's out driving a cab.

It might be bourgeois ideology (created by conditions under bourgeois supremacy), but there is a political economy to the struggle, too, and if we want working-class writers to write we must contribute to making that possible. Otherwise they end up paid by Soros, not by us.

Jenny Brown



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