reparations & exploitation

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Sun Mar 11 06:38:13 PST 2001


Justin Schwartz:
> I disagree, Kelly. I think differential pay is fine, as long as everyone has
> enough. This view is virtually universally shared among working people, as
> far as I knwo, and I _don't_ think this is bourgeois ideology. Moreover,
> it's important that we be able to give people incentives to do kinds of work
> we want done that they might not otherwise do, that we do reward effort and
> acheivement, and that we get some sense of what it costs us to have people
> do the various things they do. I don't say the labor market in capitalsim
> does this very well. But I don't think everyone should receive the same
> income regardless of the value of their work (or lack of it) to society.

The problem with management giving people different levels of pay is that in most if not all cases the differences will be motivated not by productivity, which is a mystery not well understood by managers, but by power, influence and prejudice. That being the case, the pay differentials are one more resonance of the existing class system, both receiving and transmitting its fundamental violence.



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