- cross-posted to:
- antiwork
- cross-posted to:
- antiwork
This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in circumstances totally unlike those in which it arose. No wonder the result has been disastrous. Let us take an illustration. Suppose that at a given moment a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins as before. But the world does not need twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world everybody concerned in the manufacture of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?
Ensuring that people have good working conditions and they’re not exploited is actually the opposite of tyranny.
Absolutely. But is working a half-day for full wages a decent working condition that should be provided to all workers? And again, who is going to enforce that rule?
It’s ensured by the workers owning the means of production and holding the power of the state in their hands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat
Is that achievable in the real world? The problem with any system is that power tends to be wielded by “representatives”
It’s not like it’s some sort of a hypothetical. China lifted 800 million people out of poverty just over the past few decades. You can also read up on USSR and what it managed to accomplish while it was around.
And did the oppressive state “wither away” into a Dictatorship of the Proletariat as hypothesized by Marx in both instances? Or was the tyranny of the bourgeoisie simply replaced by the tyranny of the state?
That’s completely wrong I’m afraid. If you actually read Marx, you’ll see that a transitional state is absolutely necessary. This is the state that withers, and it’s not something that happens overnight. Furthermore, it’s quite obviously impossible for a socialist state to wither when the world is dominated by a capitalist hegemon that actively works to undermine any socialist experiments. Only after capitalism has been defeated globally can there be any talk of the state withering.
Furthermore, it makes no sense to treat everything Marx said as dogma. A socialist state is objectively a better scenario than the tyranny of the bourgeoisie regardless of what flaws it may have. Improving things in practical terms is always more valuable than pining for utopian solutions that are unreachable.
Right, we have never seen the state wither away, only a series of hegemonies replacing the previous ones. This is the issue Orwell identified in his criticism of totalitarian Leninism.
Coming back to Russell’s scenario, how exactly would you implement an obligation to keep workers on full payroll for half-duty? And would you apply it only in the pin industry or expand it to all industries? What hand would force the tide back from the natural business tendency towards efficiency?
Orwell wrote infantile fiction, and it’s frankly silly to call that a critique of Leninism. Once again, the reality is that socialist states, whatever faults they may have, are a tangible improvement on capitalism.
Coming back to Russell’s scenario, here’s the plan USSR had for reducing the work week. And what business tendency are you talking about in a socialist state such as USSR exactly? The industry is owned by the state, the purpose of the industry is to produce things for people living in the state. Work isn’t done to create wealth for people who own businesses, there is no inherent incentive to exploit the workers.