: I was suggesting you should stick to simple tasks because if your capacity for free thought etc. are anything to go by your not exactly a genious are you?If 'free thought,' i.e. libertarian and anarchist clichès, are the criteria, I suppose then you are a 'genious.'
It is therefore the law of the division of labor which lies at the root of the division of classes.(3)
: I dont think so.
Because?
Lark: My idea of a socialist republic is one in which people who really dont want to work dont have to, as I've advocated before a citizens wage/allowance, Basic Income Scheme (BIS), Basic Income Guaranteed (BIG) scheme or the like would allow for this, I would link the payment of such 'wages' to National (or eventually international) community and environmental service until a psychology of honesty had developed and work had been transformed through empowerment, to something really preferable to idleness.
Stoller: This is consistent with your principle that you’d rather be 'gainfully unemployed / unemployable.' Tell me, you clever shirker, how your proposed welfare 'wages' are to be produced if work was optional? If everyone shared your 'principle' to be 'gainfully unemployed / unemployable,' where in god's name will all the food, heat, shelter, and MTV come from?
: Well, as the capitalists are fond of telling us, people will want to acquire more wealth and status, that's alright if that's your thing, it's not mine, that's not socialism I hear you cry, maybe not, I mean maybe it's not perfect but it would be preferable to the present order, besides I'm not insisting on this, that no 'true' socialism can exclude this element, if it didnt work we could try something different but in the end we are going to have to deal with the people removed from the labour market through technological displacement, the capitalists wont be dealing with them.
Was that an answer to the question? If so, please try again in language that a non-'genious' like myself may understand. The question was: if work was optional as you propose and everyone decided not to work, where would the 'Basic Income Guaranteed (BIG)' come from?
Lark: 'Liberty in the workplace' incorporates a number of basic demands that would differentiate the socialist workplace form the capitalist one, including changes in social relations and empowerment of the working people engaged in production. If you oppose this then there really is no difference between the workplace under capitalism and your 'socialist' workplace, hence what you advocate is not socialism or socialist social relations but a hyper efficient system of production and exchange.
Stoller: A 'number of basic demands.' Great. WHAT are those demands?
: I cant outline them Barry, your bound to know they're going to vary between workplaces, broadly the same rights in the workplace as the individual is guaranteed as a citizen against the state.
You can't outline them but you can vociferously defend them. Great. I'm debating principles that shape-shift each time you get into an intellectual jam.
: Can you get anti-duhring anywhere? Can you get Durhing's 'Course of National and Social Economy' or 'Course of Philosophy' anywhere?
Skip the Engels book (it's full of brutalistic murder ballads and utopian blueprints) and go straight to Dühring himself. A petty bourgeois philistine through and through, he really is your sort of chap.
None.
