The Political Thought of Andre Gorz by Adrian Little

Author:Adrian Little [Little, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781135103514
Google: U6kWPsl6z2EC
Goodreads: 17509518
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1996-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

Kellner ignores the communitarian ethos which is prevalent in Gorz's theory. Gorz believes that this ethos constitutes the means by which satisfaction can be generated for workers who perform in convivial conditions and consume the goods which they produce. What Gorz and Kellner both realise is that work within the relations of the technical division of labour precludes the self-realisation of individual workers. Nevertheless this does not mean that Gorz's prioritisation of autonomy necessarily indicates that community and self-production will not satisfy the workers involved. Indeed small-scale, communitarian production increases the likelihood that workers will be able to exercise a degree of self-determination in their work.

In the Critique, Gorz attempts to give historical justification to his call for the abolition of capitalist labour and full employment. Thus he seeks to demonstrate that work performed in the private sphere was the social norm in pre-capitalist societies, and, consequently, that the public sphere was the arena of social, political and cultural debate and action. He believes that even during the early industrial period, labour was primarily conducted in the private sphere. He uses the example of the early textile industry in the form of cottage industry which, although beginning to undergo the changes dictated by economic rationality, was still small-scale and personal. It was in the interests of individuals involved to minimise production costs and make their product as cost efficiently as possible. For Gorz, change came about when merchants began to dictate the productive spending patterns of small-scale industry:

the interest for the capitalist merchants in rationalising weaving, controlling its cost and making it possible to calculate and predict this cost with precision, was by no means a new development. What was new was that at a particular point in time the merchants attempted to impose it on their suppliers, whereas they had previously refrained from doing so.

(Gorz 1989a: 18)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.