tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61290639379675175562023-11-16T05:21:12.994-08:00Manifesto of the 21st. Centurycarlintovarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134998781774084146noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6129063937967517556.post-26947317774153446732016-03-28T10:54:00.003-07:002016-03-28T10:54:24.887-07:00Socialism in four hours<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DE8OSM0">http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DE8OSM0</a><br />
We are closer than ever to that other possible world which has been
spoken of so much. There is, within our hands’ reach, a peaceful,
immediate and free solution to end unemployment, poverty, financial
speculation, overexploitation of labor, social unrest and environmental
degradation that afflict us.
<br />But even so, as close to the solution as we are, it is far from certain that we will use it.
<br />It is highly probably that we will walk past it, without realizing,
and that we will continue on the path that leads to the abyss. Academics
seem to suffer from a curious blindness with regards to this.
Businessmen, pushed by ruthless competition, propel ships towards the
bottom of the pond instead of seeking the surface.
<br />But we have us, everyday citizens, and our numbers are in the
millions. There is no force on the planet capable of stopping us. With
the strike, or the worldwide chain of strikes –absolutely pacific and
democratic, of course– we will pull a formidable lever that will change
things and bestow us, finally, the benefits of free time and a better
quality of life that the technological revolution once promised us and
that, rightfully, we deserve.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZE2Mlok7rNxgc6fjD-mWaCzwH4A8t0ACmrWs5A-q7IdUXJ8Xe2gL_3dwKdhtgOjDnf50eX3EJj9KX79BByp57ITrt_cObgMRQBsVDPu5v2Dqem-1gQ6m9cCZur97_UnNvBr1JYhYnQ0M/s1600/cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZE2Mlok7rNxgc6fjD-mWaCzwH4A8t0ACmrWs5A-q7IdUXJ8Xe2gL_3dwKdhtgOjDnf50eX3EJj9KX79BByp57ITrt_cObgMRQBsVDPu5v2Dqem-1gQ6m9cCZur97_UnNvBr1JYhYnQ0M/s320/cover.jpg" width="209" /></a></div>
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<br />carlintovarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134998781774084146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6129063937967517556.post-9005292598528523352013-02-21T14:34:00.002-08:002013-02-21T14:34:33.158-08:00Marx is more relevant today.<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/25/karl-marx-relevant-21st-century?CMP=twt_gu+Sobre+el+retorno+del+marxismo%2C+ver+Marx+is+Back">http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/25/karl-marx-relevant-21st-century?CMP=twt_gu+Sobre+el+retorno+del+marxismo%2C+ver+Marx+is+Back</a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdom8Ivl1EwmFY2edBfZd_QA-yYCjvqi_G1AwWI8FS9DLIY_adiC1hgypYhLDhMRD7aDvDMV-tS5XrFom9BVswUNfnY941RmZ9aGVT9XWc9N1fEFywGrFJqdGSy_2__gsASxWRNMuVU9g/s1600/German-Political-Philosop-006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdom8Ivl1EwmFY2edBfZd_QA-yYCjvqi_G1AwWI8FS9DLIY_adiC1hgypYhLDhMRD7aDvDMV-tS5XrFom9BVswUNfnY941RmZ9aGVT9XWc9N1fEFywGrFJqdGSy_2__gsASxWRNMuVU9g/s200/German-Political-Philosop-006.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />carlintovarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134998781774084146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6129063937967517556.post-959406405114625722013-01-30T07:53:00.004-08:002013-01-30T07:57:29.997-08:00The Four Hours explained in One.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/qE1BDvedAk4?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
See a complete lecture about how to achieve full employment all over the world, stable profits for enterprises and a better quality of life for all human beings, and at zero cost.carlintovarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134998781774084146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6129063937967517556.post-27837049479270215752012-08-24T12:10:00.001-07:002013-01-30T07:54:22.320-08:00I lost my job<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/1wI2WxR2D5M?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
Excellent video shows the future of robotization, and proposes to short working hours in order to achive full employment and free time for human beings.carlintovarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134998781774084146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6129063937967517556.post-43483075664055198912012-08-21T15:47:00.000-07:002012-08-21T15:47:01.493-07:00Juliet Schor proposes reduction of working hours.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Lvz7t5K6o&feature=related">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Lvz7t5K6o&feature=related</a><span id="goog_73322976"></span><span id="goog_73322977"></span>carlintovarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134998781774084146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6129063937967517556.post-87775271867959782392012-04-18T18:31:00.002-07:002012-04-19T16:43:57.566-07:00The four-hour day. New English video.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzqMqadvDtvTENgApmN5TF5DzDdBwVhcuzXYMZekbYHjsLqm04kIH_Wour-5wmQ9VCjC7Ui_YY5Ajas6fK9tA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
Take only a little more than eleven minutes of your time to see why this capitalist sistem is in crisis and how there is an easy and no-cost solution immediatly disposable to fix the economic and social problems of today.carlintovarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134998781774084146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6129063937967517556.post-12742412168662560452011-07-02T14:34:00.000-07:002011-07-02T14:34:24.064-07:00The four-hour day: full employment, a stable economy and a better quality of life.BACKGROUND AND ANALYSIS<br />
After more than twenty years of technological revolution, futurologist’s hopeful promises are far away from being accomplished.<br />
Information technology and automation wonders continue to amaze us with new devices, faster, more compact and easier to handle, all of which have provided a fantastic increase in productivity for human beings.<br />
But that astonishing number of prodigies has not succeeded, as we can see, to improve people’s quality of life.<br />
The market has proved to be a tremendous strength to push for innovation, to develop productivity factors and to create a huge amount of consumer goods.<br />
All that wealth should be far enough to supply largely satisfactory living standards for all citizens of the world, without exception.<br />
However, technological innovations, in a competition system, force the companies to produce an effect exactly opposite to the one that should be expected.<br />
When an enterprise purchases a new generation machine, which allows the firm to be ahead in terms of productivity, it will obviously use that technology to produce more, and with lower costs, than its competitors. Never, not even for a second, the employer will think that, now that he and his workers are all more productive, they could alleviate their daily effort, shortening the working shifts in order to enjoy the benefits of technology. In that case, he would be disabling the advantage he has just obtained. He would be, related to his competitors, in the same position as he was before. He would produce the same amount of merchandises, at the same cost, even with less effort.<br />
It would be nonsense to purchase new machines, if we were not going to get an increase in productivity in order to improve the quality/price ratio and, in that way, to get a bigger slice of the market cake.<br />
No enterprise would do such a stupid thing.<br />
However, that is precisely what society needs that be done.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkWhCZ0Gldo_Q344C5jy7gFpGXBdoxxUIexP19Uk0td2uTjABtAnHz1T4Kv9srIPQoKMbIOqGzlVvsVd2Sb1M-NKcpXX2x_quChRvCVFmLc_Qj3-3eXBcR0h3J9x2PYE2Lxu2O-7tZulI/s1600/working+in+shifts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkWhCZ0Gldo_Q344C5jy7gFpGXBdoxxUIexP19Uk0td2uTjABtAnHz1T4Kv9srIPQoKMbIOqGzlVvsVd2Sb1M-NKcpXX2x_quChRvCVFmLc_Qj3-3eXBcR0h3J9x2PYE2Lxu2O-7tZulI/s200/working+in+shifts.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>What is happening, then, is that this regime, which on the one hand has proved to be amazingly effective in revolutionizing technology, is, on the other hand, unable to do the first and only reasonable thing that should be expected from all that progress: to alleviate the daily effort of human beings, getting them, step by step, free from labour.<br />
The change that companies are incapable to make individually is, precisely, the one Society has to make, for everyone’s welfare.<br />
<br />
KEY AREA FOR CHANGE<br />
<br />
This huge nonsense, of historical proportions (and, however, dismissed by contemporary Economics), has disastrous consequences for human society. We could say that the main economic and social problems that now afflict the world are related to this absurd disconnection between technological progress, on the one hand, and working shifts, on the other. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw0603UsLE7ylYHuevCFeK877UU6A4lbDM_RiTHCT-upT0AJOyrtGn_nvj_WaJ3WVGMhyphenhyphenm9dkKAxB3A0NoOSNcu1yfa91ZPiivXTky-sdFDA1ordDB0tfl_JzGx917A9Xh3yuUBqJ6Ro8/s1600/layoffs-220x165.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw0603UsLE7ylYHuevCFeK877UU6A4lbDM_RiTHCT-upT0AJOyrtGn_nvj_WaJ3WVGMhyphenhyphenm9dkKAxB3A0NoOSNcu1yfa91ZPiivXTky-sdFDA1ordDB0tfl_JzGx917A9Xh3yuUBqJ6Ro8/s200/layoffs-220x165.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>If, as is happening now, we don’t reduce working hours in proportion to productivity increases, the first and more immediate consequence will be massive dismissals.<br />
Information technology revolution, which began, with so optimistic forecasts, two or three decades ago, has led to the greatest wave of lay-offs we have ever seen, increasing the number of unemployed people to hundreds of millions.<br />
The simple existence of this enormous army of hungry unemployed people puts a formidable pressure over the ones who still have a job. The last ones, yielded by fear of losing their jobs, and by the threat of closure and offshoring of factories, surrender themselves to the pressure of employers to cut off their wages, raise job precarity and lengthen work shifts, configuring what has been called the “race to the bottom”, a sinister worldwide contest that is devastating the whole planet, from the miserable slums of the third world to the most important cities of the United States and Europe, not to mention the vigorous industrial centers of emerging countries.<br />
It is easy to deduce that, in such a scene, crime, juvenile gangs and drug addiction have the best ground to get a sustained increase, seriously threatening public safety and making more somber the future of new generations.<br />
<br />
PROFIT RATE AND FINANCIAL SPECULATION<br />
<br />
As if all we have mentioned was not enough, Capital is developing a frenetic spiral of financial speculation and tax evasion, the results of which we have clearly seen in the stock markets crisis of 2008.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4_fGZFY7vX1XKVUQ8GmmZdYSEKZRYvqgodYVGqKCfeIau-JmRkfpMPKHcECySWOHELlU6Zo0nzIlTyIGTxhsfcdGxfkrDt14ktgF42HaCHE4A55hSuiE7R4TVzllV66Cb53WMoS_wp1Y/s1600/image-96828-panoV9free-ovhz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="95" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4_fGZFY7vX1XKVUQ8GmmZdYSEKZRYvqgodYVGqKCfeIau-JmRkfpMPKHcECySWOHELlU6Zo0nzIlTyIGTxhsfcdGxfkrDt14ktgF42HaCHE4A55hSuiE7R4TVzllV66Cb53WMoS_wp1Y/s200/image-96828-panoV9free-ovhz.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>The spur that is pushing capitals to that speculation eagerness is, curiously, the same disconnection between productivity and work shifts we have been talking about.<br />
Great technological changes bring about a consequence from which Capital cannot escape. More technology means less human work participation in the production process. The huge and growing Capital mass is composed of one part, each time bigger in proportion to the total, which is called constant capital (machinery, raw materials, buildings, etc.), and another part, each time smaller in proportion to the total, which is human work (represented, in Capital, by the value of wages, which is called variable capital).<br />
But this change in Capital’s inside composition has a consequence: the profit rate tends to fall.<br />
The reason is that, considering human work is the only one that gives new value to merchandizes, and considering that, on the other hand, machinery does not produce new value, but only transfers his own value to product, from this relationship we can conclude that, as human work diminishes his share in the production process, creation of new value is also going to diminish (measuring this share in proportion of total Capital, of course). The profit rate, because of that, diminishes also.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdgefdNIO9WB8w6LR2COwQKNaYYIRRogYLurv-1hpgxHg6Z2T6wlHfDRcstqRofbTvWV8XGnn3IkS3lssnA1R2av5PFaxmzRh5gkRCj0JpUKZQENg341imbggsEZXUrpSM36NUBFlnyXY/s1600/karl+marx.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdgefdNIO9WB8w6LR2COwQKNaYYIRRogYLurv-1hpgxHg6Z2T6wlHfDRcstqRofbTvWV8XGnn3IkS3lssnA1R2av5PFaxmzRh5gkRCj0JpUKZQENg341imbggsEZXUrpSM36NUBFlnyXY/s200/karl+marx.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>It was Karl Marx who discovered this profit rate tendency to fall, which becomes, precisely, the main and fundamental cause of economic and social problems in a capitalist world.<br />
When Capital finds itself dragged by that somber force which impeaches it to support its profits, it will try to fight against that with all his means. It appeals then, as we have seen, to lengthening and intensifying work shifts, to precarizing work in order to reduce costs, to making massive dismissals and, finally, to speculating in financial markets. All that, as we have said, in the aim of counteracting to the profit rate’s tendency to fall.<br />
<br />
NEW RULE: WORK SHIFTS IN PROPORTION TO PRODUCTIVITY. <br />
<br />
Good news, in the middle of this apparently no-escape situation, is that there is a way out. Illness is reversible, and the solution is perfectly at arm’s reach.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMvOOdndh4xC9XzP3lBog4wdyKzP9QuUy_6Orc_xUSLzU57zcqwbjJVd38ypuXsAbdtCJfNQxZ-XpcwqJqUHq-c4xKvcQ7Vl3g8rZf7X6VurcZOWH4h076xha7-kJi31R2W-x9OSonpZ4/s1600/logoenglish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMvOOdndh4xC9XzP3lBog4wdyKzP9QuUy_6Orc_xUSLzU57zcqwbjJVd38ypuXsAbdtCJfNQxZ-XpcwqJqUHq-c4xKvcQ7Vl3g8rZf7X6VurcZOWH4h076xha7-kJi31R2W-x9OSonpZ4/s200/logoenglish.jpg" width="197" /></a></div>What we have to do, in order to finish this deranged society’s condition, is to reduce work shifts in proportion to productivity rise, establishing, to begin with, a worldwide four-hour day.<br />
The four-hour day should come to counterbalance the huge gap, accumulated in the last decades, when, as we have seen, productivity has more than doubled, while work shifts, instead of being shortened, have lengthened more and more.<br />
Worldwide introduction of the four-hour day should mean almost immediate achievement of full employment, which is, by the way, the first and definitive step toward disappearing poverty from the face of earth.<br />
<br />
NEW ECONOMIC STABILITY<br />
<br />
Besides the previously mentioned benefits, the reduction of work shifts has the advantage of disallowing what, as we said, is the main cause of economic problems: the decrease in profit rates.<br />
When a company introduces technological advances in its production process, this causes, as we have seen, a raise in constant capital (machinery, royalties, buildings and raw materials). If we could, together with that raise, generate a decrease, in exact proportion, of work shifts, and we compensate this decrease with a raise, again in proportion, in the number of workers, we should obtain, then, an increase in variable capital (as variable capital is composed of wages).<br />
In figures, the process is as follows:<br />
If we have a constant capital (C) of 400, and we make an investment in new machinery, in order to raise productivity, and, as a result of this investment, constant capital (C) increases to 500, then we should cut work shifts in the same proportion. That work-shift decrease will mean, automatically, an increase in the number of workers, because the company will need to hire more people to compensate for the shortened working hours. If we had 100 workers, now there will be 125 (and, if variable capital (V) was 100, now it will be 125).<br />
If constant capital (C) has risen by 25% (from 400 to 500), and variable capital (V) has also risen by 25% (from 100 to 125), then we have supported the proportion between both parts of Capital. In other words, we have reversed the cause of the decrease in the profits rate. <br />
Table I shows profit-rate stabilization at 20%, when raises in constant capital come together with simultaneous raises in variable capital.<br />
<br />
<b>Table I</b><br />
C V p g<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(constant capital) </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">(variable capital)</span> (<span style="font-size: x-small;">added value)</span> <span style="font-size: x-small;">(profit rate)</span><br />
400 100 100 20%<br />
500 125 125 20%<br />
600 150 150 20%<br />
700 175 175 20%<br />
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ZERO COST<br />
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There is still another advantage, in the middle of this fortunate chain of positive effects, and it is that we can get all of them at zero cost.<br />
In order to establish the four-hour day we don‘t need to provide huge amounts of money to help the poor, or to elaborate complicated and expensive feasibility studies, or to design sophisticated projects, or to make budgets, or to recruit and train brigades of volunteers who are going to the field, and all that to find out, when help finally arrives to the target groups, that half of the money has been spent in the way.<br />
Some could say that our proposal really has a cost for enterprises, because they will have to increase their payment rolls. But logic and historical experience have proved that fear is unfounded.<br />
Each new worker hired by any company is, at the same time, a new consumer. By hiring more people, companies are increasing the market for their own products.<br />
Each new worker comes, therefore, with his own bread in hands.<br />
<br />
A VIRTUOUS CYCLE<br />
<br />
In other words, what we are going to establish with the reduction of work shifts will be a compensation system between factors of production; a virtuous mechanism that allows all technological advance (which, as we know, produces a productivity increase), to also lead, in exact proportion, to shorter work shifts (which means more leisure for all the people), more employment (new workers will be hired, as we said), and a stable profits rate for enterprises.<br />
It will be enough to establish, as a worldwide order, the reduction of work shifts to four hours, to have all the demented present state of things finally reverted, and to start moving towards this virtuous cycle. Then we will have, as a chain-effect reaction, all the benefits that are the exact reverse of the ills today are distressing us: we are talking about full employment, stable profits for enterprises, leisure time and a better quality of life for all citizens. And as a result of all that, a decrease in anxiety and insecurity that are pushing great population sectors, especially young people, to gangs, crime and also terrorism.<br />
<br />
PROGRESSIVE REDUCTION<br />
<br />
To allow this new and positive welfare impulse to endure, it will be necessary to institutionalize work-shift reduction as something periodical and progressive.<br />
After a certain amount of time (it could be each decade), the productivity increase that has occurred during that time will be measured, and then, it will automatically be established an equivalent, and exactly proportional, reduction in work shifts.<br />
That will be done in order to prevent the benefits of work-shift reduction to be erased by new productivity increases, something that could happen, obviously, as a result of constant technological progress.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaobdea3mMpHr5Uu6315Run6oEj1nTqrrzLPSVA8huKQVpTlIjnS8-MdnWnyGlIoB-YKPT4Je1gBa1YW-NlfAV-T4nkujeajafjO0u1ftDgP1CsqKcdJtDMLcWHRZP0PfEs5enT3S95Cs/s1600/leisure-india-time-460x250.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaobdea3mMpHr5Uu6315Run6oEj1nTqrrzLPSVA8huKQVpTlIjnS8-MdnWnyGlIoB-YKPT4Je1gBa1YW-NlfAV-T4nkujeajafjO0u1ftDgP1CsqKcdJtDMLcWHRZP0PfEs5enT3S95Cs/s320/leisure-india-time-460x250.png" width="320" /></a></div>But those consecutive readjustments will mean, by the way, new benefits to human beings, the main of which is that we will have more and more leisure time. In this way, if we find a two percent annual productivity increase, for example, thirty years after the conquest of the four hour-day, work shifts could be… two hours long!.<br />
Besides solving the world crisis –which, by the way, is not a small thing– work-shift reduction would become, finally, the entry door to a totally new age of human progress. What we are talking about is, no more no less, the beginning of our true liberation. We will not live any more to work, but to be free citizens, masters of our time and, because of that, of our destiny.<br />
<br />
POTENTIAL ACTORS AND IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES.<br />
<br />
Potential actors of this change are the workers of the world, simple citizens, all human beings who live from selling their labour force, that is, the biggest and most powerful strength that exists in the whole planet, the sleeping giant, the only one capable of reverting the present state of things.<br />
In order to achieve it, we have to organize a worldwide movement oriented to finally make a worldwide strike –totally pacific and democratic, of course– through which, in a few days or weeks, we should obtain the four-hour day, together with an agreement of additional periodical reductions, adjusted to future productivity increases.<br />
Work-shift reduction has the virtue of being a specific request, tangible, comprehensible and easy to obtain. To get that should mean to put the economy at the service of human beings, instead of continuing to be its slaves.<br />
It is the key request to bring together, surrounding it, the whole diversity of cultural, environmental, gender, minorities and alternative globalization movements, if we take into account that its realization should be such a big victory, enough to completely change the forces of correlation in the world, establishing a new citizen power, upon which we could obtain a chain on new victories, all of them oriented to the attainment of a more democratic and free society.carlintovarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134998781774084146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6129063937967517556.post-15897727875357698572010-08-30T15:26:00.000-07:002010-08-30T15:26:37.171-07:00English video of Manifesto<object style="background-image:url(http://i4.ytimg.com/vi/gQWPOMYLDLE/hqdefault.jpg)" width="480" height="295"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/gQWPOMYLDLE?fs=1&hl=es_ES"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gQWPOMYLDLE?fs=1&hl=es_ES" width="480" height="295" allowScriptAccess="never" allowFullScreen="true" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object>carlintovarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134998781774084146noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6129063937967517556.post-24963732742220961822008-05-08T16:54:00.000-07:002008-05-10T12:02:52.071-07:00Paul Lafarge: The Right to be Lazy<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicEfPM2z-v4NXzyyPZbbMgx_8LzLKzu3evkRwS98WqnhdsA4gdNnkVFEqqsiNeuDajxTWIpN0EHPwV6gy7kQKajnrNIp9-8vDR7dRbtc10hDLyHGs-rL5spqKt3jv3T64seFcOiFC62Cw/s1600-h/343px-Lagargue_1871.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicEfPM2z-v4NXzyyPZbbMgx_8LzLKzu3evkRwS98WqnhdsA4gdNnkVFEqqsiNeuDajxTWIpN0EHPwV6gy7kQKajnrNIp9-8vDR7dRbtc10hDLyHGs-rL5spqKt3jv3T64seFcOiFC62Cw/s320/343px-Lagargue_1871.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5198826658238676626" /></a><br />Paul Lafargue's spirit is free-floating and carries with it a bracing whiff of disrepute. Born in Cuba on January 15, 1842, Lafargue was a child of the New World, although he was a citizen of France. Educated and trained as a physician, he found his true calling as a revolutionary, a speaker, writer, agitator, and organizer on behalf of French working people. He took an active part in the Paris Commune and was one of the founders of the party of revolutionary socialists in France. He held public office and represented the French workers at international congresses. He also spent time in French jails. He is best remembered as the author of The Right To Be Lazy, a subterranean classic that has remained all but constantly in print in numerous languages since it was first published in 1880. He was fond of pointing out that the blood of three oppressed peoples-African, Carib-Indian, and Jewish-ran in his veins. He told Daniel DeLeon, one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World, that he was proudest of his "Negro extraction." DeLeon thought this statement characteristic of him and went on to say, "Paul Lafargue had a constitutional affinity with the oppressed. His being was a harp the strings of which responded melodiously to the sighs of man. The poetic nature of Lafargue is the dominant key in his life's work." The poetic nature of Lafargue's polemics helps to keep them alive when the writings of his more solemn contemporaries have sunk without a trace. He was a free man, or longed to be, rather than an ideological hair-splitter, an ironist as much as a Marxist. He was aware of the liberating power of laughter and was far closer to the revolutionary philosophes of the 18th Century-particularly Diderot-than to the plodding Stalinoid propagandists of the 20th Century. "Socialism" was to his quick and bright mind what "Reason" had been to the thinkers of the 18th Century, in the United States as well as in France. "Everything," he said to students in Paris during a speech in 1900 that is reissued in this volume, "everything, religion, philosophy, science, politics, privileges of classes, of the State, of municipalities, was submitted to its [Reason's] pitiless criticism. Never in history had there been such a fermentation of ideas and such a revolutionary preparation of men's minds." Lafargue's poetic nature found its natural outlet as a fermenter of ideas, as a preparer of minds for a happier, healthier, freer future. His masterpiece, The Right To Be Lazy, at once funny and serious, witty and profound, elegant and forceful, is a logical expansion of The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness announced by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. It was not only extremely popular but also brought about pragmatic results, inspiring the movement for the eight-hour day and equal pay for men and women who perform equal work. It survives as one of the very few pieces of writing to come out of the international socialist movement of the 19th Century that is not only readable-even enjoyable-but pertinent. Much of the suffering and confusion caused by today's obsolete social system-"downsizing," the "exportation of jobs," the increasing number of careers that amount to little more than wasting time for pay (making decent people cynical, bored, or ashamed-or all three at once), despair and the addiction to anodynes it breeds, yuppification with its daft pride in the sixty-hour week, the use of technology to enslave rather than free, terrorism and counter-terrorism, gangs of unemployed youth roaming our cities and gangs of unemployed intelligence agents roaming our world-springs directly from the continuing worship of the false god Work that Lafargue set out to smash with his iconoclastic zeal. If his argument is dated, it is mostly because our rulers now are more concerned with maintaining and extending their power than with increasing their wealth. The social purpose of work is now primarily to keep people occupied rather than to produce wealth. Time was money. Now it's power. <br />Lafargue and his wife, Laura Marx, one of the daughters of Karl Marx, took their own lives on November 27, 1911. He had become too old and ill to enjoy life or care for himself; and he hated to be a burden to others. She had no wish to continue without him. They did not live to face the test of the war much less the Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of Fascism, the Stalinist murder of anarchists and other independent-minded radicals in Spain, the death camps, the bomb, the gangsterization of the American labor movement, the growth of the International Brotherhood of Secret Police, and the rise of the global televisionary state. In The Right To Be Lazy, Lafargue's witty voice continues to speak to us from the other side of that great divide. It is a pleasure and an inspiration to listen to him now, when the world has been turned so completely upside down that "leisure" has become an industry. Lafargue's spirit is likely to make its presence felt again in the future. Republication of his little masterpiece in a fresh, complete translation might help ensure that it will.carlintovarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134998781774084146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6129063937967517556.post-23375350054250204472008-05-08T16:08:00.000-07:002008-05-08T16:09:50.410-07:00The four-hour day<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEy8mvGVD04tf9m9fSxXW-8sRsvzEyvbwPkKx2fI7R6dDgYD26lcka4tmFmUrwgf1oVJEvp441GxvFhvh7xkV9uOtU1fP78nc7ZVA8YX4fMxapN7svS5p_NllzE4VWJzVastVXHeY6pGU/s1600-h/logoenglish.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEy8mvGVD04tf9m9fSxXW-8sRsvzEyvbwPkKx2fI7R6dDgYD26lcka4tmFmUrwgf1oVJEvp441GxvFhvh7xkV9uOtU1fP78nc7ZVA8YX4fMxapN7svS5p_NllzE4VWJzVastVXHeY6pGU/s320/logoenglish.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197411393911133842" /></a><br />Almost a century after the eight-hour day was established, productivity of the human beings has increased four or five times, as a result of the technology progress. In the last 20 years, informatic revolution has allowed to duplicate productivity. That means you, me and all workers of the world are producing more each time. But that fabulous productivity increase has not been provided for the benefit of the human being, but only for Capital’s, who search to obtain more profits. To us, all who live from our work, the only reward for producing more and more is... the lengthening of our working time.<br />By means of a worldwide offensive, Capital has succeeded in backtracking the labour standards to the nineteenth century.<br />Programs for restructuring enterprises, wich enclose lay offs, pressures and threats, outsourcing, moving out, short-term contracts and every kind of tricks, are forcing people to work almost as slaves, for about twelve, fourteen or sixteen hours each day. In some places, real slavery is reappearing (I am talking about real slaves, I mean, people locked up in sheds from wich they never get out, people who sleep and take his scarcy meals in that same places), for the shame of humanity.<br />In the middle of this gloomy landscape, however, there is a possible response, wich would allow to correct the history’s course, conquering for human beings the free time that we already are worth, after so much effort. And that response is the worldwide strike for the four-hour day.<br />Does it sound utopic, hard, too much optimistic?. It is not, because it was already done in the nineteenth century, when, by the means of worker’s struggle, labour hours were shorted from 16 to 10. And, in 1919, the eight-hour day was conquered. So, why could not we make a worldwide movement to obtain the most sensible thing which could ever have been desired, the same that would eliminate, with a stroke of one’s pen, unemployment (named the century’s plage by the WHO)?<br />If in nineteenth century people could form the backbone of a worldwide movement, how could it not be possible to us, today, when we have the most powerfull, extense and horizontal communication network never been (that is, internet)?<br />The worlwide strike for the four-hour day is the only way out from the universal madness of capitalism.carlintovarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134998781774084146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6129063937967517556.post-81764537852639446972008-05-08T16:01:00.000-07:002008-05-08T16:46:06.979-07:00Pietro Basso: Modern Times, Ancient Hours<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoXpfI19tJTu8putsDSFGOi1Uc01ywD3FfZ98cUaXrtqHmAMbnP5S07-M73gcQvF5ehAtoKsMSz-C7DM6v-Dj1rz1BIszWWgDqU1_NkLH0N-nfEEdypOQY2h1oBd3FMHydZ3D4ZKzM_AY/s1600-h/basso.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoXpfI19tJTu8putsDSFGOi1Uc01ywD3FfZ98cUaXrtqHmAMbnP5S07-M73gcQvF5ehAtoKsMSz-C7DM6v-Dj1rz1BIszWWgDqU1_NkLH0N-nfEEdypOQY2h1oBd3FMHydZ3D4ZKzM_AY/s200/basso.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197399505441658482" /></a><br /><a href="http://bad.eserver.org/reviews/2003/2003-9-22-11.06PM.html">Reviewed by Jonathan Stern</a><br /><br />To call economics a dismal science is perhaps an understatement. Pietro Basso's Modern Times/Ancient Hours is filled with lengthy, dry discussions of statistics on the working day. But that does not make it boring. No, Modern Times/Ancient Hours is a work of horror. Basso's book will terrify anybody who is concerned the quality of life in modern capitalist societies.<br /><br />Basso's main concern is the length of the working day in modern industrial and post-industrial societies. His thesis: "in Western society, for at least the past twenty-five years, the average working time of wage laborers has become increasingly burdensome and invasive -- more intense, fast-paced, 'flexible' and long." Basso means that people work more and harder, and have less and less control over when and where they work. This is true in both industry and the service sector.<br /><br />The working day was a major political concern in 1867, when Marx argued (in Capital Volume I) that most of a worker's day was spent manufacturing profit for his or her employer -- very little of that work time was required to generate the equivalent value of the worker's wage. Since the advent of the eight-hour day and forty-hour week as U.S. and European norms after World War II, the length of the working day has stagnated. Although it has been on the agenda of labor activists in Germany, France, and Italy, it has gotten less attention in the United States.<br /><br />This should not be so. Presumably, technology and overall efficiency have improved in most industries and service professions, which means that people could work shorter hours and their employers would make just as much money. In fact, this is central myth of modern capitalism. Basso quotes economist John Maynard Keynes, who predicted that advances in machinery and other elements of production efficiency would reduce the number of required working hours for people to levels as low as three hours a day by the 21st century.<br /><br />Basso argues that the problem is the demand for growth in capitalism, the demand for continual increases in profit. This pushes capitalists to see increases of efficiency as opportunities for increased profit. Again, this is an old argument, one that can be found in Marx.<br /><br />By the end of Modern Times/Ancient Hours , you will be convinced that the working day is not only a central issue for labor organizing, but also a crucial site for cultural politics. For someone who works for a living, free time is a precious commodity, and if you work all the time and come home exhausted, you have no energy left to enjoy life, much less to participate in politics.<br /><br />As it was in Marx's time, so it is today. There is a basic conflict of interests between employers and employees over working time. It doesn't matter if we're talking about the widget business or the digit business. Capitalists know that more hours means more profit. It took a militant labor movement to get the working day down to the fictional "eight hour" length, and that's why it will take a powerful movement to improve things today. Shorter hours for all working people ought to be at the center of any progressive social or political agenda. There is no humane alternative.carlintovarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134998781774084146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6129063937967517556.post-10335221834476639382008-05-08T15:54:00.000-07:002008-05-08T16:01:31.929-07:00Barbara Ehrenreich: On (not) getting by in U.S.A.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjTdKbWvwhTgBrQAvQFLqv-fGvjUpX4fI_eeXX22T1LBXPmjotJNquUeLK9MHB-7AoOb1CeXkzG0Du1zQM9JSiyYWWmm33SELe3EA4Wbsfv2Lujy7f39QRvMjcBEf6rkqLz17566K4-EI/s1600-h/ehrenreich.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjTdKbWvwhTgBrQAvQFLqv-fGvjUpX4fI_eeXX22T1LBXPmjotJNquUeLK9MHB-7AoOb1CeXkzG0Du1zQM9JSiyYWWmm33SELe3EA4Wbsfv2Lujy7f39QRvMjcBEf6rkqLz17566K4-EI/s320/ehrenreich.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197404268560389762" /></a><br /><strong><a href="http://www.pbs.org/now/commentary/ehrenreich.html">Nickel and Dimed</a> ,on (not) Getting By in the U.S.A.</strong><br />Between 1998 and 2000, I went to three different cities, and tried to support myself on the wages I could earn as an entry-level worker. I waited tables, I cleaned the toilets of the rich, I fed Alzheimers patients in a nursing home, I sorted stock at Wal-Mart. All these were difficult, exhausting jobs, and it made me understand what a serious mistake our nation made with welfare reform.<br /><br />The theory behind welfare reform was that there was something really wrong with welfare: They were psychologically damaged —lazy, demoralized · and they are that way because of welfare, that welfare causes poverty, some people said.<br /><br />Never mind that most people on welfare of course, were busy raising children and working on and off whenever they could, the new law just says everybody has to get off of welfare and into the workforce, to sink or swim. This hasn't worked out too well.<br /><br />The math just doesn't work. The average woman coming off of welfare since 1996 earns $7/hour, that's $280/week before taxes, and you can't support children on that, or even one person.<br /><br />I know because I tried it. And no matter how carefully I pinched pennies I couldn't get my wages to cover basic expenses..Like rent, at least $500/month plus utilities, like transportation to and from work, at least $60/month, and then if you are a working parent, you have hundreds of dollars a month in childcare expenses. Now if there's one thing that's really demoralizing, it's working hard and not making enough to live on.<br /><br />Here's a simple theory of poverty: It's not a psychological condition. It is, above all — a consequence of shamefully low wages and lack of opportunity for anything else.<br /><br />In one poll, 94% of Americans said that they believe, if you work, you should make enough to live on. This is a notion that is basic to American values, I'd even say it's part of our social contract. Now we have to make it a reality.carlintovarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17134998781774084146noreply@blogger.com0