Declaración de principio sobre el Día del Trabajador

Declaration of Principles on Labor Day by The Zeitgeist Movement Argentina's activists. Remembering the martyrs of Chicago in July, 1889 the Second (Socialist) International declared the International Labor Day. From The Zeitgeist Movement Argentina we consider important to understand the function or role of this social actor. Be its day to the left-wing or ripped concession to the employer sector May 1st aims to be an opportunity for reflecting inside and outside the working class. We produce progressively more goods with fewer people thanks to technology. In a couple of years, far fewer working hours will be required to produce all the goods that might be needed. The historical trend has been to use less and less hours of work per week. Most countries have had a clear progression in terms of reduction of working hours. Broadly speaking, one could say that in the nineteenth century working hours decreased from 16 to 12 hours. In the twentieth century, from 12 to 8 hours. And now the logical estimation would be a decrease from 8 to 5 hours or less. Nowadays, the two countries with fewer working hours are the Netherlands and France. With daily working hours of 5 hours 40 minutes and 6 hours respectively. The current labor paradigm is focused on the service sector employing the majority of the world population. This sector already started to be automated and apparently there is no other that can take the future technological unemployed. The system adjusts its variables such as: reducing hours, trying not to apply technology creating jobs and careers that relate only to money and countries creating state administrative jobs. In turn, it also defends itself with the mechanism of planned obsolescence. The goods are manufactured to have short life cycles. If today, things were manufactured to last and to be easily repairable and upgradeable in a few years, the demand would drop less goods would be produced and a lot of people would have to be laid off. Planned obsolescence is one of the biggest ecological disasters mankind is facing. We are manufacturing many more goods than we need at much lower quality than we can achieve generating pollution and squandering limited natural resources. The current economic model has no solution for this ecocide as it is considered to be necessary in defending jobs and continued growth. The consequences of this situation are already visible in Argentina and, although on the line of technological unemployment third world countries are at the end they are not exempt of this problem. The issue is not about relocating the working sector but what it represents in the current system of goods, above the people. We are still seeing the worker as a production tool which is the very logic of the capitalist system and direct consequence of any monetary system. The wealth and progress currently enjoyed by a few people should be abundance and prosperity for all. The physical subjugation and coercion have been and are the most obvious ways of domination but not the only ones. The economic subjugation has achieved highly effective results when restricting freedoms and guarantees not only individual but also social. Excessive adjustment programs and austerity hit only those who are weaker who in the end, always pay the crisis of this uneven, inefficient and structurally failed monetary system. The Zeitgeist Movement invites you to visit their websites to explore their content, and learn about a model of socio-economic organization which could overcome these problems and many others that today humanity is dealing with. This is known as a Resource Based Economic Model. Thank you very much.