Disposable time as a common-pool resource II — Labour is not a commodity Labour was conventionally regarded as a private good by both classical political economists and conservative thinkers such as Edmund Burke, who argued, “labour is a commodity like every other, and rises and falls according to the demand.” The counterpoint to that view, […]
Disposable time as a common-pool resource III — Labour power as a common pool resource Human mental and physical capacities to work have elastic but definite natural limits. Those capacities must be continuously restored and enhanced through nourishment, rest and social interaction. Over the longer term that capacity for labour also has to be replenished […]
Disposable time as a common-pool resource I — Introduction About a decade ago, I wrote a short piece about “labour power as a common-pool resource” that got picked up by Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation and led to me being invited to a conference on the commons in Berlin put on by the Heinrich […]
And now what Sandwichman calls a frivilous post. The right-wing War on Wokeness has won over Seattle progressive Democrats . . . “because we can’t afford to give the GOP any ammunition for the 2022 election.” Democrats, who are famous for “keeping our powder dry,” are now concerned that their opponents may use the specter […]
Cheap trips to the lakes We are experiencing climate change with a vengeance in British Columbia. For the past four summers, we have had horrific wildfires that send smoke all the way from the interior to the west coast of Vancouver Island. Last summer, we had a record-breaking “heat dome” that killed over 600 people […]
Disposable time, surplus population, and the limitation of the hours of labour I’m on at 5:35 of the video. A little hoarse at 4 a.m.!
Disposable time, disposable population, disposable products DISPOSABLE TIME, DISPOSABLE TIME, DISPOSABLE TIME, DISPOSABLE TIME, DISPOSABLE TIME, DISPOSABLE TIME, DISPOSABLE TIME… Did I mention “disposable time”? Marx repeated disposable time seven time in paragraph (three paragraphs in the complete works) I’ve taken the above excerpt from. In English. In capital letters. That, and the fact that his theory […]
Infrastructure week: organs of the human brain, created by the human hand Who owns general social knowledge? Who owns the general intellect? Alf Hornborg pointed out that without the fuel to run it, a tractor is simply a piece of sculpture. It is not even a sculpture, though, if there is no one to design it […]
Capital itself is the moving contradiction The phrase quoted in the title is probably the most well-known in the Grundrisse. It has been cited in books and journal articles at least a hundred times, an order of magnitude more frequently than the alternative translation found in the collected works, “capital itself is a contradiction-in-process,” It is […]
Theft of alien labour time is a miserable foundation In the early 1980s, I was riding home from work on a bus and looked out the window at a Toyota pickup truck alongside. I was overwhelmed by the realization that I could never in my life make such an object by hand, even if I […]