> >What happened to the argument that marriage itself is a demeaning
> >institution and who wants any of it?
> >
> >Joel
>
> Twenty-first-century wage slavery is, more often than not, a more
> demeaning institution than twenty-first-century marriage, but I have
> yet to hear any leftist say that we should not struggle for the equal
> right to employment because employment is just wage slavery.
> --
> Yoshie
These kind of arguments are fine in themselves, but IMO they reflect the sadly diminished expectations of the western left in the early 21st C and --- due to their abstraction from capitalist social relations --- they are easily satirised by reductio_ad_absurda, e.g. "lesbians should be allowed to crew combat aircraft and kill innocent civilians in the same way that straight men do", or "gay men should be able to commit domestic violence in exactly the same way that heterosexual men do", etc.
Similarly, the de_jure "right to work" already exists in some developed countries --- I believe it is enshrined in the Italian constitution --- it doesn't mean that it de_facto exists, or that the work provided (e.g. the cartoon sub-Keynesianism instituted in Australia in the early 1970s whereby unemployed people were paid to "dig holes and fill them in again") is desirable or rewarding. As much as I hate to agree with Bill Bartlett :-), I think the right _not_ to work should be the main objective. (I'm hoping this is not the cue for a 1,000 diatribe from Bill...)
regards,
Grant.