FWD: Manifesto Against Labour 1

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

The text below is three years old (written 1999), but more and more actual... 
it was now translated into English. The Group "Krisis" has its office in 
Nuremberg und wants to renew the "Marxist Discourse". You can decide for 
yourself if they were successful or not...

Nice Whitsun holidays!


kwp

And here's the text: 

Gruppe Krisis

Manifesto Against Labour


1. The rule of dead labour

A corpse rules society - the corpse of labour. All powers around the 
globe formed an alliance to defend its rule: the Pope and the World 
Bank, Tony Blair and Jörg Haider, trade unions and entrepreneurs, 
German ecologists and French socialists. They don't know but one 
slogan: jobs, jobs, jobs! 

Whoever still has not forgotten what reflection is all about, will 
easily realise the implausibility of such an attitude. The society 
ruled by labour does not experience any temporary crisis; it 
encounters its absolute limit. In the wake of the micro-electronic 
revolution, wealth production increasingly became independent from 
the actual expenditure of human labour power to an extent quite 
recently only imaginable in science fiction. No one can seriously 
maintain any longer that this process can be halted or reversed. 
Selling the commodity labour power in the 21st century is as 
promising as the sale of stagecoaches has proved to be in the 20th 
century. However, whoever is not able to sell his or her labour power 
in this society is considered to be "superfluous" and will be 
disposed of on the social waste dump. 

Those who do not work (labour) shall not eat! This cynical principle 
is still in effect; all the more nowadays when it becomes hopelessly 
obsolete. It is really an absurdity: Never before the society was 
that much a labour society as it is now when labour itself is made 
superfluous. On its deathbed labour turns out to be a totalitarian 
power that does not tolerate any gods besides itself. Seeping through 
the pores of everyday life into the psyche, labour controls both 
thought and action. No expense or pain is spared to artificially 
prolong the lifespan of the "labour idol". The paranoid cry for jobs 
justifies the devastation of natural resources on an intensified 
scale even if the destructive effect for humanity was realised a long 
time ago. The very last obstacles to the full commercialisation of 
any social relationship may be cleared away uncritically, if only 
there is a chance for a few miserable jobs to be created. "Any job is 
better than no job" became a confession of faith, which is exacted 
from everybody nowadays.


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