[lbo-talk] Reading Capital II: Quantum mutatus ab illo!

[Tom Walker]

Wouldn't this be putting the theoretical cart before the class struggle 
horse? Although some might quarrel with my interpretation and most might 
simply say "huh?", what Marx sought to do in Capital was to give 
theoretical articulation to a historically present form of class 
struggle. And that form was precisely the struggle for the limitation  
and reduction of the working day. Every thing else in the book (and 
attached to it) is subordinate to that purpose.

"The limitation of the working-day is a preliminary condition without 
which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove 
abortive."

"In place of the pompous catalogue of the 'inalienable rights of man' 
come the modest Magna Charta of a legally limited working-day, which 
shall make clear 'when the time which the worker sells is ended, and 
when his own begins.' Quantum mutatus ab illo!"

The Sandwichman

Yoshie wrote,

 >If Capital is on few American workers' reading list, the chief reason

 >may be its length rather than difficulty, or rather American workers'

 >inability to win leisure.