(P/B) CRITIQUE OF ECONOMIC REASON

Παρουσίαση

Andre Gorz's earlier books-from Ecology as Politics to Farewell to the Working Class and Paths to Paradise-have informed and inspired the most radical currents in Green movements in Europe and America over the last two decades. In Critique of Economic Reason, he offers his fullest account to date of the terminal crisis of a system where every activity and aspiration has been subjected to the rule of the market. By carefully delineating the existential and cultural limits of economic rationality, he emphasizes the urgent need to create a society which rejects the work ethic in favor of an emancipatory ethic of free time. At the heart of his alternative is an advocacy not of "full employment," but of an equal distribution of the diminishing amount of necessary paid work. He presents a practical strategy for reducing the working week, and develops a radical version of a guaranteed wage for all. Above all, he argues that a utopian vision is now the only realistic proposal, and that "economic reason must be returned to its true-that is subordinate-place." (From the publisher)

Περιεχόμενα

Introduction
PART I. METAMORPHOSES OF WORK
1 The invention of Work
2 The Utopia of Work in Marx
3 Functional Integration or the Divorce between Working and Living
4 From Functional Integration to Social Disintegration
5 The End of Working-Class Humanism
6 The Ultimate Ideology of Work
7 The Latest Forms of Work - Search for Meaning (1)
8 The Condition of Post-Marxist Man - Search for Meaning (2)
PART II. CRITIQUE OF ECONOMIC REASON
Introduction
9 From 'Enough is Enough' to 'The More the Better'
10 Market and Society, Capitalism and Socialism
11 The Limits of Economic Rationality - Search for Meaning (3)
Economically Rational Work
A. Commodity Activities
1 Work in the Economic Sense as Emancipation
2 Servants' Work
3 Functions, Care, Assistance
4 Prostitution
4a Maternity, the Maternal Function, Surrogate Mothers
B. Non-Commodity Activities
1 Work-for-oneself
2 Autonomous Activities
12 The Limits of Sociology and Socialization: A Digression on the Notion of 'Lifeworld'
PART III. ORIENTATIONS AND PROPOSALS - Search for Meaning (4)
The Reduction in Working Time: Issues and Policies
1 The Target-dates Strategy
2 Less, Better, Differently
3 Intermittent Work, Self-managed Working Time
4 With or Without Loss of Income?
5 The Right to an Income and the Right to Work
APPENDIX: SUMMARY FOR TRADE UNIONISTS AND OTHER LEFT ACTIVISTS
1 The Crisis of Work
2 Crisis of Work, Crisis of Society
3 Working Less so that All Can Work
4 An Income Uncoupled from the Quantity of Labour Performed
Conclusion
Index