When I do work I want to do, that is the compensation, assuming I otherwise have the means with which to live.
We have the means to feed, clothe, and house everybody. We make everybody work an average of 2 hours a day for socially necessary work: grow food, clean streets, pick up garbage, take care of sick people, teach, etc.
What everybody wants to do with their ample spare time is now up to them. If somebody wants to dance and somebody wants to watch, they'll find each other. If somebody wants to find a cure for cancer, they'll work on it until they do or die.
That's my plan. *************************
Agreed. Commodity production takes up a lot of unecessary labour time e.g. the adverstising industry; finance capitalist operations; the military wing of the industrial complex; a lot of shipping (say raw materials as commodities to China and of cheap commodities from China to everyplace on the planet); the fossil fuel industry, obviously now outdated; inefficient, over polluting means of land transport and the beat goes on.
What's socially necessary is a market choice now and we are mere consumers of decision about needs which are largely programmed into profit making choices made by the owners of the means of production and the commodities which we produce to have sold to ourselves and other workers/consumers in the world market. As a free association of producers, we directly decide what is and what is not necessary AND we stop wasting so much of out potential free-time.
It's "High Noon" now. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044706/usercomments
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has recommended that we humans reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 60% in order to limit global warming to a 2 degree Centrigrade rise.
What would a 2 degree Centigrade rise result in?
"The majority of species on the planet live in less than a three degree temperature band so if we increase the temperature by three degrees we put all those species at risk" University of Western Australia school of earth and geographical sciences researcher Ray Wills said recently to Daniel Hatch, reporter for "The West Australian". (this Saturday's edition)
Are we humans reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 60%?
Look around you. Do you see renewable energy sources being constructed to phase out the ones using fossil fuels?
Do you see renewable energy sources being used to power industry, cities, farming equipment, shipping? Shipping is actually one of the greatest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Ships are powered by fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are carbon based fuels which pour carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, hence global warming, hence the increasing acidification of the world's oceans, hence the dying off of plankton and coral.
Do you notice that people are no longer driving cars, trucks, and trains which use fossil fuels?
Wills also said, "In the recent history of the planet we've never warmed above the temperatures we're at now during the past 40 to 50 million years and most of the species on the planet have evolved in the past 25 million years in the kind of temperatures we live in or lower, but not higher."
How long will it take the planet to reach this 2 degree Centrigade rise in average temperatures, even if we are able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60%? Soon,very, very soon in terms of geological, evolutionary time scales--around 50 years.
So, no worries, right? WE're okay. At least, I'll never see this catastrophe in the making come to its full, tragic consequences. You probably won't either. But your children will and so will theirs and they'll curse you for turning a blind eye to this oncoming, climate tsunami, for keeping your mouths shut like "good Germans" did during World War II.
On the other hand, you could say, "NO!" to all this. You could organize to take, hold and operate the means of production for your own interests as opposed to operating them for the interests of their current, capital-obsessive owners. You could do this AND live in harmony with the Earth. You could step out of your artificially constructed abstractions and step up to the plate.
Batter up!
Mike B)
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
http://www.iww.org/culture/official/preamble.shtml
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