[OPE-L:2621] Re: End of labour

From: C. J. Arthur (cjarthur@pavilion.co.uk)
Date: Tue Mar 28 2000 - 11:00:21 EST


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Paul C [2609]
>At 23:48 22/03/00 +0000, ope-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu wrote:
>Chris A:
>
>
>>It is indeed pretty enigmatic, especially how a presentation of the system
>>can at the same time be a critique of it. The answer is that if the system
>>is an ' upside-down reality' then characterising it so is to criticise it.
>>Incidentally where you have the 'work' as 'a critique of political economy'
>>both translations I hav to hand put 'critique of economic categories'.
>>In Capital Marx says the standpoint of his critique is that of the working
>>class (p.98) insofar as its destiny is to abolish calss! So two things
>>follow: to find a standpoint from which to criticise an inverted reality
>>one must think beyod it but for this to be a practical standpoint it must
>>be one produced within the system. This standpoint is that of the
>>critically adopted standpoint of labour (as a moment of capital) since it
>>does not look to making everyone a labourer but to the abolition of labour.
>
>The idea of a future in which nobody has to labour is not communism
>but a rentier fantasy.
>
>
>Paul Cockshott (clyder@gn.apc.org)

I was overbrief. By labour I meant productive activity under the domination
of capital. Productive activty taken differently from labour would be free
activty in one sense, albeit that I accept Marx's Vol. 3 point about the
permanence of 'necessarylabour'. I went into all the details in my book
*Dialectics of Labour* (Blackwell 1986)
Chris A

P. S. Please note that I have a new Email address,
<cjarthur@waitrose.com>
but the old one will also run until the summer. (To be doubly sure load both!)



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