---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 16:59:44 -0500 (EST)
From: "Duncan K. Foley" <dkf2@columbia.edu>
This kind of think doesn't move the discussion along very fast. It is true
that modern labor is extremely productive, though I don't believe their
estimate of the rate of exploitation--in U.S. manufacturing, using
production labor as a proxy for productive labor, you get a rate of
exploitation more like 3--3.5 rather than 15.
But the Critique of the Gotha Programme is way ahead of this in terms of
trying to come to grips with the problem of organizing a post-capitalist
society, and it is pretty weak on the whole question of politics and
governance. How can one tell the difference between a hierarchy and a
bureaucracy and an apparatus for the popular control of production?
Duncan
>In the essay by the Kamunist Kranti group on "Reflections on Marx's
>Critique of Political Economy", the authors put forward the following
>"startling findings" in the section on "What is Useful Social Labour?":
>
>
> "1. Ninety-four percent of [the] total produce of humanity is
> used for the maintenance and perpetuation of hierarchies.
>...
>How they came to the figures of 94% and 6%, I wasn't able to determine.
>The above strikes me as being hopelessly optimistic and utopian with only
>a marginal connection to reality. What do others think?
>
>In solidarity, Jerry
Duncan K. Foley
Department of Economics
Barnard College
New York, NY 10027
(212)-854-3790
fax: (212)-854-8947
e-mail: dkf2@columbia.edu