

Marx's important error - quoderat
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2009/04/marxs-important-error-.html

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dkarl
If you tried to achieve a 19th-century standard of living on twenty hours of
work per week, you would face three problems. First, many aspects of the 19th-
century standard of living would be quite cheap nowadays, but are illegal.
19th-century-quality housing, sanitation, food, and medical care can't be
legally provided today. Second, if you did manage to live a 19th-century
lifestyle, you would probably be psychologically unable to cope with having a
lifestyle so materially inferior to the people around you. Being denied
comfort and medical care enjoyed by other people when you were in distress
would offend your dignity. Third, even if you did manage to cope
psychologically, you would be unable to participate meaningfully in society,
because other people would draw conclusions about your strength of character
or mental stability.

The only way to achieve Marx's dream would be to make a society-wide decision
to apply productivity gains toward leisure instead of towards the material
standard of living. But guess what: most people _like_ to work, and everyone
_needs_ to feel productive to be psychologically healthy. I'm sure that was
easy for someone like Marx to overlook when pondering the plight of people who
were brutally overworked, but it changes the equation quite a bit. Plus,
productivity translates into power, and everyone has a certain appetite for
power.

~~~
davidmathers
_But guess what: most people like to work, and everyone needs to feel
productive to be psychologically healthy. I'm sure that was easy for someone
like Marx to overlook..._

Actually that is Marx's point. That when people are free of labour they will
fill their lives with productive work that they enjoy. The conservative anti-
Marx viewpoint is that no, people are by nature bad and lazy and need to be
forced to be good and productive.

work != labour

labour: doing something you don't want to do

leisure: doing something you want to do

work: being productive (orthogonal to labour/leisure)

~~~
dkarl
Liking or enjoying something does not mean it cannot be labor. It is labor as
long as I would rather be doing something else.

Anyway, look at the picture Marx painted: "to hunt in the morning, fish in the
afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have
a mind." This is dilettantism, a reaction _against_ work. Not many people
would find this satisfactory as a life's occupation. This is the image of life
a person finds appealing when he is overworked. Marx himself would have found
such a life intolerable.

~~~
windsurfer
I find that, personally, if I like something, but then get paid for it, I like
that activity significantly less while I'm getting paid. I think it has
something to do with the obligation and lack of free-will.

------
ibsulon
The problem with this question is that there is a significant gap between pay
rates for part time and full time work.

I am a contract worker for a big company right now. They expect me to work 40
hours or more a week. If I could convert this contract to 20 or 24 hours a
week for the same pay, I'd do it quickly. The problem is that those contracts
or jobs are hard to find, and they usually pay significantly less per hour.
(We'll ignore health care for now.)

I'd love to run or work at a company where most people work 20 hours a week,
with spikes only as necessary. It would mean a completely different attitude
toward working.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Counter-example: I used to do contract development work at $65 - 85 / hr. At
40 hours per week, this would equate to $130k to $170k / year. But if I was to
get a full-time job as a developer at my skill level, I'd probably make half
of that.

~~~
ibsulon
I agree. However, it's more difficult to find gigs that are looking for
consistent 20 hours a week, especially contracting for larger companies. If
this is untrue, would you mind sharing your secrets for finding them?

------
davidmathers
_This, though, raises a question. Why is it that the rise in productivity
hasn’t had the effects predicted by Marx and Keynes? Why have our “needs”
risen as our productive powers have, with the result that the hours we devote
to employment haven’t fallen as much as Marx or Keynes forecast? Why is it
that so many of us - I count myself fortunate to be a partial exception -
haven’t used wealth to free ourselves from alienating labour?_

There's no deep question here. Only a language game. Like "does a tree falling
in the forest make a sound if there's no one around to hear it?"

Step one: replace loaded words like "needs", "wants", "labour", and
"employment" with just "utility".

EDIT: side note. I used to participate in an alternative money forum and the
funny thing about it was the neat division between 2 kinds of people:

1\. Those who had a fear/loathing/suspicion of productivity growth. (left)

2\. Those who had a fear/loathing/suspicion of macro-economics and the fed.
(right)

This post is a typical #1 post.

~~~
gabrielroth
If I'm correctly interpreting your rather elliptical response, it begs the
question (in the proper sense): you subsume anything that might be considered
valuable into the catch-all category of 'utility,' and then suggest that the
present arrangement maximizes 'utility.'

The question raised by the original author -- does our economy properly value
leisure? -- remains. You can answer 'Yes it does, and the problems you're
pointing to aren't problems at all,' but that doesn't make the question a
language game.

~~~
davidmathers
_you subsume anything that might be considered valuable into the catch-all
category of 'utility,'_

Sort of. There's two issues:

1\. Can you draw a distinction between things you "need" and things that are
useful to you? "Needs" is just a rough quantification of utility. The problem
is that it isn't as useful. What's the opposite of needs? The opposite of
utility is disutility. Labour is disutility.

2\. It's key when thinking about this kind of stuff to distinguish
"employment" or "producing value" from labour. Labour is something you don't
want to do. It's disutility. If you want to do it then it isn't labour. Even
if you're getting paid. So it clears things up to just say "disutility"
instead.

 _and then suggest that the present arrangement maximizes 'utility.'_

I didn't do that.

 _does our economy properly value leisure?_

That question is completely meaningless to me. First you have to explain to me
how something can have a "proper" value (there's no such concept in my
understanding). Second you have to explain how an "economy" can value things
and what that means. I only know what it means for people to value things.

EDIT: note that my critique is only for the blogger's interpretation of
Marx/Keynes. I didn't read the linked Keynes essay but I suspect I doesn't
have this kind of error.

"Needs" can't rise because they are infinite. They have always been infinite
and they will always be infinite.

------
DannoHung
_Why have our “needs” risen as our productive powers have, with the result
that the hours we devote to employment haven’t fallen as much as Marx or
Keynes forecast? Why is it that so many of us - I count myself fortunate to be
a partial exception - haven’t used wealth to free ourselves from alienating
labour?_

Because we're accelerating.

------
joe_the_user
_This, though, raises a question. Why is it that the rise in productivity
hasn’t had the effects predicted by Marx and Keynes?_

For Marx, the part about fishing in the morning was after the end of
capitalism. In the interim, I think he said something about the capitalists
keeping most of the fruits of all the increased productivity. Is that part
looking terribly far wrong?

~~~
eru
Yes. Statistically the percentage values that wage takes of the national
income seems to be fairly stable. I.e. capitalists take/get a roughly constant
share. Productivity increases do not seem to change the proportions.

~~~
joe_the_user
Hmm,

What's your source for this statistic? I believe you and this is something
that I would be very interested in having a good source for.

