No it is not 'unconvincing in the extreme', it is just slightly unconvincing, slight enough to my mind to have little relevance. And of course Marx meant more with his concept of alienation than stuff about 'conveyor-belt repetitive work abhorred by the aesthetic soul', and I would think that Keston Sutherland knows that too - those words are yours anyway, he never said it like that. Slightly to the left of this point (or should I say to the right of this point) I have heard before the argument that left leaning middle class people owe their abhorrence of conveyor-belt work to their own delicate sensibilities while hardy working class people with no aesthetic soul to speak of don't give a fig. Do I detect a slight whiff of this idea below? I hope not. As for 'wage labour', well people don't do it for the love of it, they do it to live, to provide, to survive.
On 22 Oct 2015, at 12:09, Peter Riley wrote:
The account of "wage-labour" is surely unconvincing in the extreme. K's example is conveyor-belt repetitive work, abhorred by the aesthetic soul, which is not what Marx meant at all. And anyway what's the good of sitting there saying wage labour is evil? There are people in this country longing for labour at a fair wage
