20 Hour Work Week

[Liberté]

An employer would rather fire what he considers to be extraneous employs as productivity rises than give all of his employees fewer hours at the same pay, ostensibly for the purpose of remaining competitive. It's crap, but not a whole lot can be done about it.

[Liberté]

An employer would rather fire what he considers to be extraneous employs as productivity rises than give all of his employees fewer hours at the same pay, ostensibly for the purpose of remaining competitive. It's crap, but not a whole lot can be done about it.

Well, obviously eliminating the 'employer' or strictly controlling his actions (his power over workers) is the only way workers could ever hope to stop being exploited. 

Right, because governments founded by the owning class and governing chiefly in the interests of the owning class have proven to be so good at controlling their power over their employees.

[Liberté]

The only way to remedy that would be through government regulations.

I have absolutely no faith in a capitalist State within a capitalist framework to actively work against the interests of industry. If the business of the American people is business, the business of the American State is to ensure that the business of the American people remains business. If there exists a solution at all for our economic problems, it lies far beyond the government.

[Liberté]

...If there exists a solution at all ... it lies far beyond the government.

I suppose you think that a 'State' is be nature inevitably capitalist, but I'm not so convinced.  It seems to me the State is exactly like a gun, and whoever has it (at present the capitalist class) points it at the others and makes them their slaves.  Whether this gun can only be utilized by the few to oppress the many, or whether there might be a way for the many to wield it is I agree questionable.  But to fantasize that the gun and the power to kill that ultimately delineates all human relationships within society will go away and be replaced by anything else is, I fear, unrealistic.

That was Vladimir Lenin's philosophy: the vanguard could take over the apparatus of the State left behind by the old feudal order, usher it through capitalism into Communism, and dissolve it. Leaving aside the fact that Communism is not precisely what I'm after, that philosophy has been tried and it has failed. One day, long after I've departed this mortal vale, the fundamental social relationships of our society will change. Why I do not know, but I can tell you how: it will not come through a centralized government with a monopoly of force.

[Liberté]

And that would be?  Magical fairy dust?  People acting alone as individuals?

Quite honestly? Yes. Self-sufficiency has got to be the principle upon which the Left founds itself. You are never going to eradicate these broad social problems constantly relying on other people from classes other than your own to do it for you, when they do it at all, that is to say half-assedly and haphazardly. 

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I don't disagree with you. This is the model I endorse. But it's not going to come down from on high at the hand of any liberal legislation. It's going to come when workers in some industry or another, and probably at some small, barely-competitive business within that industry, are able to purchase that business and operate it co-operatively.