| This question <60|64> overall <62|64> Fred: <698|124>. |
| Question 90: Is it a character flaw to be lazy in an exploitive system? |
| [63] Fred: I say that being lazy in an exploitive system is a more a system flaw than character, even though the argument could be made that an exploitive system breeds laziness because of the inability of the laborer to break out and achieve more than wages. I think Marx would say that labor is not able to break out, as the power is held by a few, and profit motive keeps labor from receiving what it is worth in the product produced. The division of labor allows greater efficiency in production and as labor becomes specialized, profits can be maximized and a lazy worker will be seen by the profit motive as in-efficient, counter productive, and will eventually reap negative rewards, even replacement. |
| Although I am new to Marx's ideas, it seems that Marx is criticizing capitalism's view that labor is a commodity so to speak, that labor has other rewards and incentives that speak to society as a whole. It is labor that is the engine in economy, and that is where the wealth is produced. Society does better when labor does better. Pride in one's work is in more than just the paycheck. Being lazy is not tolerated, not because one can do as little as necessary to get by, but because not doing an honest day's work for pay is bad for production and society. |
| This attitude exists in reality. I have a son who spent 2 years in Russia, a country long on a system more removed from capitalism. Here he is on a bus, and a drunken individual gets on the bus and steals a lady's ticket. At the next stop, an individual behind the drunk takes the ticket back and as the doors open, literally does a round house kick knocking the person out the open bus doors and on their back. The bus doors close and the bus pulls away. The lady got her ticket back. Laziness is not a positive attribute in society, and Russians do not like it, period. |
| Being lazy in this view is indeed a character flaw. Being lazy is not only bad for efficiency, but for society as a whole. Perhaps that is part of what Marx is pointing out, that in an exploitive system, laziness would tend to breed on the heals of profit motivated few, as a flaw of the system more than character. |
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