andré gorz

intro’d to André while reading Pat Kane‘s the play ethic.

just on the heals of :

ulrich beck – brave new world of work:

beck –  ‘civil labour” – a state-approved exit from the market.. space is opened here for democratic society , as citizens give their own chosen form to themselves.  […] by no means be confused with the pressure being put everywhere on benefit claimants to undertake work in the community.. civil labour is also a kind of ‘organized, creative disobedience’ and social ‘experimentation’. [..] civic money (beck’s terms for the citizens’ income)..

– – –

Kane wrote of Gorz’ reclaiming work

3 main justifications for a social age:

1. imagination, intelligence and emotional commitment are becoming the very ‘means of production’, it is very difficult to say when people are ‘at work’ or not ‘at work’.

2. a guaranteed sufficient income grants people their full voluntary freedom to make their own kind of ‘exit’ from market society, rather than being redirected into ‘thrid-sector’jobs that ony pay support for ‘socially useful’activies. Gorz says that what we should be recognizing is the value in ‘activieis which derive from being done fo rtheir own sake’

3. what the combination of free time and social income does is to ‘enable individuals to develop capacities (of invention, creation, coneption and intellection) which give them a virtually unlimited productivity‘.

luxury ness via neil and neil

Gorz’s three justifications provoke a vision of experimental, multi-disciplinary, unalienated ‘work’, engaging a multiplicity of intelligences and skills.58 They are so close to this book’s understanding of play that the difference seems almost neglible.59

ha. fitting – and reaffirming perhaps.. that i made Gorz’ page before reading the above sentences. nice.

____________

Deeply affected by May ’68, Gorz saw in these events a confirmation of his existential-Marxist posture, which joined the students’ criticisms towards institutional and state organization (State, School, Family, Firm, etc.). Thereafter, Ivan Illich‘s thesis on education, medicine or the abolition of wage labour became the focus of his attention. He published one of Illich’s speech in Les Temps Modernes in 1961, before meeting him in 1971 in Le Nouvel Observateur at the occasion of his publication of Deschooling Society (Une Société sans école). He later published a resume of Illich’s Tools for Conviviality (1973) under the title Libérer l’avenir(Free Future). His links with Illich were strengthened after a trip to California in 1974, where he wrote several articles for Le Nouvel Observateur discussing Illich’s thesis.

illich

[..]

Gorz was also critical of the Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism of thinkers such as Antonio Negri. His point of view was rooted in early Marxist humanist thinking. Liberation from wage-slavery and social alienation was still one of his goals, even in his later works. He never became an abstract theorist; his reasoning usually concluded with proposals for how to act to make changes. In Métamorphoses du travail (Galilée, 1988 – Metamorphosis of Labour), Gorz argued that capitalism used personal investments from the worker which were not paid back. As such, he became an advocate of Guaranteed basic income, independent from “labour.“

thinking we need ubi as temp placebo.. even independent from labour .. it’s still measuring/validating us

He made such a proposal in his book, Critique of Economic Reason, 1989, and argued:

“From the point where it takes only 1,000 hours per year or 20,000 to 30,000 hours per lifetime to create an amount of wealth equal to or greater than the amount we create at the present time in 1,600 hours per year or 40,000 to 50,000 hours in a working life, we must all be able to obtain a real income equal to or higher than our current salaries in exchange for a greatly reduced quantity of work. In practice, this means that in the future we must receive our full monthly income every month even if we work full-time only one month in every two or six months in a year or even two years out of four, so as to complete a personal, family or community project, or experiment with different lifestyles, just as we now receive our full salaries during paid holidays, training courses, possibly during periods of sabbatical leave, and so forth….”

basic income

work ethic

earn a living

negri/hardt

_______________

Andre Gorz – movie by Marian Handwerker. published 2010:

part 2

part 1

_______________

Published on Feb 6, 2013

__________

murray bookchin bashes gorz (and schumacher and illich et al) .. esp in toward an eco society.. esp last ch

_________

_________

_________