[lbo-talk] In the American Grain

[wrobert at uci.edu]

Carrol, There is an alternative formulation for thinking through these
problems, most notably expressed by William Morris, but a similar strain
of thought can be found in Bloch and others, which tries to radically
reimagine the laboring process by deinstrumentalizing it.  Morris'
expresses this through the concept of craft, but you can see a similar
approach in the Bauhaus approach to craft and art as well.  Perhaps to put
it crudely, it entails a rejection of the separation of intellectual and
physical labor.  I'd be curious to your thoughts on that.  Is it falling
into the Rousseau trap?  Inpractical? etc.  I'm not sure on this question,
which should be obvious by the somewhat crude formulation, so I would like
to hear your thoughts or others.... robert wood


> "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.
>
> Carrol
>
>
>
> James Heartfield wrote:
>>
>> The signifying phrase 'hard working people and their families'
>> (shorthanded to 'hardworking families) features a lot in Labour Party
>> election material here.
>>
>>  Of course, the 'dignity of labour' was a theme of English socialism
>> since the Chartists. Communist Joe Jacobs, in his autobiography Out of
>> the Ghetto says it was basic sense for agitators that if you wanted to
>> be taken seriously by your workmates you would have to make sure that
>> not only were you the most radical in the workshop, but also the most
>> hardworking. In miner Dave Douglass' memoir The Wheel's Still in Spin
>> he also talks about the need to prove his mettle in a team of company
>> men, who take pride in working extra hard.
>>
>> In the 1970s and 1980s, when 'speed up' and then lay-offs became a part
>> of the employers' offensive, there were some radical leftists and
>> anarchists who argued Lafargue's case for 'the right to be lazy', and
>> for the secret strike of taking days off sick. For them the proper
>> attitude at work was rather the opposite of Jacobs', one of skiving at
>> every opportunity, and 'sabotage'. Those attitudes are alive in the
>> 'slow' movement (whose intellectual roots are in Andre Gorz). I always
>> thought that that was appealing to the inactive side of people, and not
>> likely to be a call that would engage a positive change. And as Shag
>> says, late capitalism seems to be very good at enforced idleness.
>>
>> But today asserting the rights of labour against capital is not
>> something the British Labour Party dares get caught out at, Jacobs'
>> style, still less Lafargue-like. So it prefers the (still
>> American-sounding, to my ears) 'hardworking families', which signifies
>> both working class identity in opposition both to welfare 'scroungers'
>> and parasitical toffs.
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