This item came drifting by on one of my lefty mailing lists:
The myth of the “lazy Greek workers”The writers go on to argue that Greeks do in fact work as hard as other people -- other people in Europe, that is; quite rightly, there's no comparison to China or the US or other depraved sweatshop societies.
Written by Editorial Board of “Marxistiki Foni” Tuesday, 04 May 2010Since the crisis in Greece has hit the headlines there have appeared in the bourgeois media many stories about how Greece has too many civil servants, how the working week is very short, how people retire early on fat pensions, and so on, as if this were the cause of the crisis. Facts and figures, however, can be very stubborn things and they tell a completely different story.
The Greek comrades are making a mistake here. They're allowing the enemy to set the terms of the debate, by accepting that the bourgeois virtues of diligence and industry are things to be prized for their own sake.
It's time to assert the right to be lazy -- indeed, to proclaim the virtue of laziness. A short work week, early retirement, fat pensions -- these are unquestionably enhancements to human life. What's wrong with that? Don't we wish we had these things, here in Pharaonic America?
("Too many civil servants" is of course a little more problematic. But if they're actually serving the cives, then that's got to go in the plus column too.)
It's a case of the negation of the negation. The brutal forced-draft labor regime made possible (and necessary, perhaps?) by the process of industrialization has raised the productivity of labor to the point that that we can practically revert en masse to the lordly leisure of the hunter-gatherer world, if only we choose to do so -- and we should. It actually doesn't take a whole lot of labor, per capita, to maintain the level of physical comfort and amenity that we enjoy these days.
Unfortunately, a lot of us still have the brain-bug of middle-class morality gnawing away in our heads, and demanding the right to slack seems morally abhorrent. But it's a genuinely subversive and expropriative demand -- in the sense of "expropriating the expropriators" -- if we take the fruits of our increased productivity in God-given time, to be used as we see fit for our own delight, rather than in more or less cheesy "stuff"(*), which we buy from a capitalist. That's the real takeback. The capitalist can't get any of our gains back from us if we take those gains in the form of a nap, say, or a stroll in the park, or a long lazy dalliance with the SO.
Of course, if you're the restless type and determined to be busy, then it's Liberty Hall. I don't insist on the nap. I just insist that you use the time to do something that doesn't pay, and preferably needn't be paid for -- writing a book, say, or blogging. Singing, however badly. Practicing card tricks.
You get the idea.
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(*) V. George Carlin:
Comments (27)
Nice post
This Greek thing is a real PR disaster for those of us on the left. It's difficult to explain that the anal-retentive calvinist Germans are really in the wrong here, and not the southern spendthrifts (who were basically forced into that behavior by the eurozone setup). Explaining the relationship between optimal currency areas and productivity differences to the average joe is not an easy task, although Krugman has been pretty good on this stuff.
re: Carlin
I'm surprised that he hasn't shown up here before. I enjoyed this clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q
Posted by FB | May 5, 2010 1:36 PM
Posted on May 5, 2010 13:36
grand echos here:
" An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage"
"if the labourers could live on air they could not be bought at any price"
there's a far better passage in the moors opus
about bread fruit eaters or eaters anyway
of some such sap based bread like product
staff of life for certain indonesian savage souls a weeks supply
"produce" in a few hours
but i can't locate it
Posted by op | May 5, 2010 7:40 PM
Posted on May 5, 2010 19:40
Bertrand Russell made a very similar argument a few years ago...but something tells me he's not a well respected figure around these parts!
Posted by Peter Ward | May 5, 2010 7:54 PM
Posted on May 5, 2010 19:54
An anarchist called Bob Black seems to had a similar idea to you and Russell in this regard.
Posted by Save the Oocytes | May 5, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted on May 5, 2010 20:00
I think there's a modest handful of us who see things as Bob Black does. Most of us seem to have an even lower profile than Bob Black, which means that compared to the nearly invisible Bertrand Russell, we are totally unseen, unheard, unread, unknown. And probably will remain so, given our political, fiscal, social powerlessness in this grand America.
Posted by CF Oxtrot | May 5, 2010 9:17 PM
Posted on May 5, 2010 21:17
i love dead bertie
he embodies second best philosophy
Posted by op | May 5, 2010 9:57 PM
Posted on May 5, 2010 21:57
Bertie's an odd duck. Never my favorite, and a bit of a Brit Silly Ass in the grand Baconian blockhead tradition. But an interesting character, with a lively prose style, and he found himself on the side of the angels at least as often as not. I wasn't aware that he'd ever written anything on this particular topic.
Posted by MJS | May 5, 2010 10:14 PM
Posted on May 5, 2010 22:14
Trägheit Macht Frei!
Sounds like a plan to me. Think I'll go lay down and sleep on it.
Posted by Sean | May 6, 2010 1:22 AM
Posted on May 6, 2010 01:22
"The totality is the organization of all against each and each against all. "
utterly self contradicting bramble
black is a yellowy tattered french cuff
peaking out the end
of a moth eaten
coarsely woven teutonic sleeve
a directing brain??
hell no
not even an arm inside
to make the cuff move
Posted by op | May 6, 2010 8:17 AM
Posted on May 6, 2010 08:17
" "Comrades" are not my comrades -- nor am I, at my worst, my own comrade "
i'd add at his best
he's not his own comrade either
he's not even a lonely erect dick
without a helping hand
he's a plastic replica of a fossil dick
a cheap dildo
max stirner in porta potty
just to continue the disassembled body part from above
self exploding egoists
are walter mitty dreamers
never bent on self assasination
as they claim
---that might really hurt..leave a mark even--
nope they're nothing
but a series of bomb threats
sent to themselves
they got one thing big dead on right
the self being the essential social product
of the human comedy
trying to dis corporate it
is a certain type of fool's holy grail
Posted by op | May 6, 2010 8:32 AM
Posted on May 6, 2010 08:32
bertie as " baconian block head "
he is a specimen of one of the more enduring
"almost but not quite right" schools
at least he admires the best of folks
like that great polar bear
of empiric anti empirics
my skipper in the boudoir
davey hume
and of course the limitless limit
spinoza
Posted by op | May 6, 2010 8:41 AM
Posted on May 6, 2010 08:41
All power to the hodo hodo zoku!
Posted by Rose | May 6, 2010 9:23 AM
Posted on May 6, 2010 09:23
Another brace of insular jargon laden cryptograms that require a secret OP decoder ring to translate. Oh the joys of reading OP's posts!
Posted by CF Oxtrot | May 6, 2010 10:22 AM
Posted on May 6, 2010 10:22
Reminds me of McKay's Temple of Industrial Leisure.
Posted by davidly | May 6, 2010 12:46 PM
Posted on May 6, 2010 12:46
oxy
try reading old bill blake in prophetic mode
some time
really what is it u can't gather in here
hows this paraphrase
black is firing blanks
loud blanks even one's that make festive sounds like fire crackers and sky rockets
but there are no bullets no sky rockets
the ludic is maybe antifuddic
but it ain't worth shit in a dog fight
to define work as forced labor is a word con
if he called it forced labor every time he used work his yexy would show at the surface
the vacuity at it's core
the history of civilization
is all about sustainable
forms of forced labor
is he trying to tell us after 5 thousand years of it
we have yet found out
what he knows till him ???
Posted by op | May 6, 2010 4:43 PM
Posted on May 6, 2010 16:43
rene clair's
"À nous la liberté"
ends with a fully automated factor
and the form wage slaves all by a lake
picnicing
ala renoir
Posted by op | May 6, 2010 4:49 PM
Posted on May 6, 2010 16:49
rose
has it
Posted by op | May 6, 2010 4:52 PM
Posted on May 6, 2010 16:52
ps
oxy
at least i'm not posting here anymore
think of the hair pulling
that saves father smiff
though i must say i expected more of you all
to start posting
bethune blew a fuse after one post
and you oxy one
where's your worthwhile postal initiative ???
Posted by op | May 6, 2010 4:56 PM
Posted on May 6, 2010 16:56
Michael Hudson had some enlightening comments on the Greek debt issue in a wide ranging interview last month:
http://michael-hudson.com/2010/05/trouble-in-europe-china/
Posted by Coldtype | May 7, 2010 1:26 AM
Posted on May 7, 2010 01:26
What is second best about Russell? As a political player he was against nuclear testing and the nuclear arms race. He opposed the Vietnam War. He opposed WW I. He wasn't favorably impressed with Bolshevism. Is that his flaw? Or are you talking about the theory of types, etc?
"silly ass Brit"?! Is this ethnic animosity?
Posted by Boink | May 7, 2010 11:33 AM
Posted on May 7, 2010 11:33
bertie never got anything
right enough to matter much
but he threw some wicked nice punches now and again
no knock outs unfortunately
in boxing he'd be called
"a good opponent"
for an up and coming contender
Posted by op | May 7, 2010 3:11 PM
Posted on May 7, 2010 15:11
Russell's 'In Praise of Idleness', I of IV:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vceIV4Arpmg&feature=PlayList&p=5C94343E682E8CA7&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=25
Read by a voice somewhat like the male voices used on 'Progressive Reports Now'.
Posted by Boink | May 7, 2010 6:57 PM
Posted on May 7, 2010 18:57
"It actually doesn't take a whole lot of labor, per capita, to maintain the level of physical comfort and amenity that we enjoy these days."
Please show me how this is the case.
That does not mean write one of those not-poems mocking me, OP. This is an earnest request for explanation.
Posted by HenHen | May 7, 2010 8:53 PM
Posted on May 7, 2010 20:53
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
This is better read for oneself. It may be of use to HenHen.
Posted by Boink | May 7, 2010 9:34 PM
Posted on May 7, 2010 21:34
That's a tough one. I could manage a comfortable subsistence, for myself, on 4 hours a day. I suppose that could be scaled easily enough. It'd be a lot of work scaling it, but there's some real productive efficiency to cooperative enterprise -- up to a certain size, which varies depending on what's being produced. It entails non-coercive association, a good model for production and labor aristocracy for management. It also entails some hand waving, e.g. the military/industrial, prison/industrial, medical/industrial complexes and Carmageddon Culture would have to vanish. Also, pwogs and wingnuts would need to unclench. But, sure, it's within the human capacity. As a goal, it looks pretty good.
Be Reasonable Demand The Impossible!
Posted by Al Schumann | May 8, 2010 7:06 AM
Posted on May 8, 2010 07:06
I saw a study years ago that said everyone in the US could live at a 1948 middle class level with approx. an 18 hour work week. Wish I could remember where I saw it.
Of course it didn't take peak oil into consideration.
Posted by Rose | May 8, 2010 9:13 AM
Posted on May 8, 2010 09:13
It's not directly related, but I want to give a plug to our Leninist Gardening Insurrection friends at Corrente.
Posted by Al Schumann | May 8, 2010 9:29 AM
Posted on May 8, 2010 09:29