The Coming Revolution: Capitalism in the 21st Century
by Jehu
Ben Reynolds has produced a book, The Coming Revolution: Capitalism in the 21st Century, published by Verso, that is welcome antidote to the meaningless scribblings of writers like Piketty, Mason and Harvey. Basing his work on the labor theory of value, Reynolds provides an overview of the problems facing capitalist accumulation in 2018.
Among other measures, Reynolds calls for a radical reduction of hours of labor:
“Labor is dying. As a system of distribution and a way of life, wage labor is being steadily eroded by today’s technological developments. Capitalist society is so dependent on the social construct of labor that panic is the normal response to this trend. Virtually every day we see frantic new schemes for creating jobs: offering wages for housework or Facebook posts, paying citizens to perform community service and so on. Watching these attempts to save labor is like watching a child on the beach trying to save his sandcastle by stopping the tide. It is time to stop clinging to the past and start adapting to reality. We can adapt to this process with a simple but powerful tool: reducing the amount of time that workers are required to work without a reduction in pay.”
This passage alone is enough to recommend it, but the book goes well beyond this to examine the forces driving capitalism to collapse within this century.
I will be reviewing the book. I am excited to begin.
Please let us know if he lists actual real world examples of the solutions he listed in the excerpt.
Aside from brain storming by local community activists and internet feminists (pay for street cleaning, pay for housework, pay for emotional labor), that is, marginalized groups trying to figure out how to get out of applying to a job cleaning toilets or working as a night watch or in a hospital, I don’t see ANY evidence that ANY governments or capitalist enterprises are discussing such solutions to the disappearance of employment opportunities. Seems like fake news that economists made up.
Literally the only time I hear about job creation, is when a company announces they will open a factory and this will create real wage jobs at the plant as well as secondary service jobs for business around the plant.
The idea that women deserve to be paid for housework has been a staple of feminism for decades, by the way. Hardly anything specific to 2018.
Even workfare under Clinton, forcing welfare recipients to replace garbage men, was more a punitive right wing religious policy to force lazy people to “earn their keep” rather than an effort to create cheaper labor supply.
I understand and share your enthusiasm at his evocation of reducing labor hours, but the disappearance of labor as more severe now than it has been for decades, remains undemonstrated.
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I haven’t read the book but what is missing in your argument is the analysis of superfluous labour.
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You are a featured player in the book, Jehu.
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I would rather Reynolds write what he thinks, not what he thinks I think.
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Will yo ever do an article dismantling Thomas Sowell and why his views on capitalism and Marx are bullshit?
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Not likely, but I definitely would read your book on the subject.
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I am curious what is your opinion on anarchism?
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I consider anarchism a variant of communism, along with both Marxism and libertarian socialism. I think none of these variants have a monopoly on the term and all have their particular defects. Most of all, I fail to see how any of these variants tell us what to do next. This is a much bigger problem than their real or imagined differences.
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What are your favorite anarchist thinkers/figures?
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I think Rubel’s take on Marx is quite fascinating.
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