> "The dignity of Labor" was an important core for the Rousseauan rather
> than Marxists struggles of the last 2000 years. But the Indignity of
> labor, The Right to Laziness, must be the slogans of the struggle for
> freedom.
>
> Labor -- any laboar at all -- is slavery. It must be reduced to an
> absolute minimium, approaching zero. This is not in the least utopian or
> unrnealistic. In paleolithic culture no labor or work existec because
> what came to be isolated as labor was simply intermixed with the rhythms
> of daily life. There was no visible or theoretical division between work
> and play.
>
> Tha tis our goal, and we have to embody it in our shorterm reform
> slogans as well as in our understandibng of our ultiamte goals.
This doesn't distinguish the self-estranged labour of capitalism from the labour of the fully "free individuality" Marx identifies with communism where it becomes "the individual's self-realization," the most complete form of which, "really free working," is the end in itself activity that defines "the true realm of freedom."
"In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou labour! was Jehovah's curse on Adam.[34] And this is labour for Smith, a curse. 'Tranquillity' appears as the adequate state, as identical with 'freedom' and 'happiness'. It seems quite far from Smith's mind that the individual, 'in his normal state of health, strength, activity, skill, facility', also needs a normal portion of work, and of the suspension of tranquillity. Certainly, labour obtains its measure from the outside, through the aim to be attained and the obstacles to be overcome in attaining it. But Smith has no inkling whatever that this overcoming of obstacles is in itself a liberating activity — and that, further, the external aims become stripped of the semblance of merely external natural urgencies, and become posited as aims which the individual himself posits — hence as self-realization, objectification of the subject, hence real freedom, whose action is, precisely, labour. He is right, of course, that, in its historic forms as slave-labour, serf-labour, and wage-labour, labour always appears as repulsive, always as external forced labour; and not-labour, by contrast, as 'freedom, and happiness'. This holds doubly: for this contradictory labour; and, relatedly, for labour which has not yet created the subjective and objective conditions for itself (or also, in contrast to the pastoral etc. state, which it has lost), in which labour becomes attractive work, the individual's self-realization, which in no way means that it becomes mere fun, mere amusement, as Fourier, with grisette-like [35] naivete, conceives it. [36] Really free working, e.g. composing, is at the same time precisely the most damned seriousness, the most intense exertion. The work of material production can achieve this character only (1) when its social character is posited, (2) when it is of a scientific and at the same time general character, net merely human exertion as a specifically harnessed natural force, but exertion as subject, which appears in the production process not in a merely natural, spontaneous form, but as an activity regulating all the forces of nature." https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch12.htm
It is, he claims, one of the positive developmental consequences of wage labour in capitalism that it creates "general industriousness." This contrasts with the labour of "self-sustaining peasants working for their own consumption" who "regard loafing (indulgence and idleness) as the real luxury good."
"Capital's ceaseless striving towards the general form of wealth drives labour beyond the limits of its natural paltriness [Naturbedürftigkeit], and thus creates the material elements for the development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption, and whose labour also therefore appears no longer as labour, but as the full development of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form has disappeared; because a historically created need has taken the place of the natural one. This is why capital is productive; i.e. an essential relation for the development of the social productive forces. It ceases to exist as such only where the development of these productive forces themselves encounters its barrier in capital itself.
"The Times of November 1857 contains an utterly delightful cry of outrage on the part of a West-Indian plantation owner. This advocate analyses with great moral indignation—as a plea for the re-introduction of Negro slavery—how the Quashees (the free blacks of Jamaica) content themselves with producing only what is strictly necessary for their own consumption, and, alongside this 'use value', regard loafing (indulgence and idleness) as the real luxury good; how they do not care a damn for the sugar and the fixed capital invested in the plantations, but rather observe the planters' impending bankruptcy with an ironic grin of malicious pleasure, and even exploit their acquired Christianity as an embellishment for this mood of malicious glee and indolence. [39] They have ceased to be slaves, but not in order to become wage labourers, but, instead, self-sustaining peasants working for their own consumption. As far as they are concerned, capital does not exist as capital, because autonomous wealth as such can exist only either on the basis ofdirect forced labour, slavery, or indirect forced labour, wage labour. Wealth confronts direct forced labour not as capital, but rather as relation of domination [Herrschaftsverhältnis]; thus, the relation of domination is the only thing which is reproduced on this basis, for which wealth itself has value only as gratification, not as wealth itself, and which can therefore never create general industriousness." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch06.htm
Ted