reparations & exploitation

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Sun Mar 11 11:15:10 PST 2001


My comments on Dennis' thoughts are interlineated below


>Justin Schwartz wrote:
> >
> > I disagree, Kelly. I think differential pay is fine, as long as everyone
>has
> > enough. . . . we ought to socialize people into thinking of differential
>compensation as
> > incentives, social engineering. . . . It hasn't to
> > do with in intrinsic worth of the actitivies, but just how many lawyers
>vs.
> > teachers we need, given how many capable people there are to do these
> > things. Of course this would take a big socio-psychological change.
>
>Justin, here's another view of things from the bleachers.
>
>I haven't seen such heresy since Herb Gintis got booted off pen-l for
>nonchalantly (well, thats probably not quite the right word) suggesting
>that all the talk about exploitative production and unequal distribution
>was so much hogwash in the absence of an economic blueprint that might
>could sustain both a high standard of living and an equitable
>distribution.

I agree with Gintis here, but I think we have an economic blueprint that would do that: David Schweickart's Economic Democracy or market socialism.


>>you propose: meritocracy with a conscience.

Sort of: part of my point is not to give merit its deserts but to promote social welfare by putting people where they can do what we need.

You are no doubt corrrect
>that
>there's a real consensus over the virtues of differential rewards . . .
>But it takes no
>education,. . . for them to issue forth the rationale for
>their favored form of distributive justice: just rewards for effort,
>incentives to do the effort, both of which culiminate in an undying
>faith in the workings of competition.

I have a moderate, qualified faith in the workings of competition.

And this ethical theory always
>sits atop a slipper slope that ends in claims about how things work now
>(and not just what the alternatives might be). So these notions exist
>very much in context and that context is very much ideological.

Sure. This is why Gintis' point is important. We need to combine critique with discussion of the alternatives. But are you saying that even if some competition would be desirable in a future society, we can't say that now because in our circumstances that would give aid and comfort to the enemy?


>
>In any event, what we don't need more of is socialization along these
>lines. This is a key ideological support for capitalism, as I'm
>sure you'd agree, and it is one that manifests itself with even
>greater intensity among Americans.

The socialization I advocate is to downplay the idea that greater competionsation is reward for individual merit, and is instead a a reflection of a social judgment about where we need people to work and what we want them to do. I would have thought taht was a deeply non- and maybe anti-capitalist idea.

>I honestly don't know how much the value of people's work, especially
>as expressed in their wages, reflects _productivity_ (which I thought
>was a settled matter referring to how much - how much more - workers
>produce of whatever it is management wants them to produce which might
>be widgets and wazoos or an enthusiastic attitude that whatever the
>boss says is God's truth), some _functional contribution_ to either
>everyone's well-being or upper-class twits ability to replace their
>hot tubs yearly, some _economic return_ on human capital investment,
>merit, hard work, skill acquisition, educational attainment, the
>prestige (or lackof) of the means to educational attainment,
>credentials, the relative privileged or not so of one's social
>networks connections, or physiological/psychological grounded
>abilities. Or supply and demand.

Right. It's a rough and ready judgment. We probably cannot make it to precise. I was talking with Dave Schweickart about the labor theory of value. He was saying that what he liked about it was that it provided a way of attacking the idea that capital was productive, and generally that the market precisely rewards marginal contribution. I pointed out that he himself has a nice way of making the point without the LTV (see chapter 1 of Against Capitalism), but I agree that the LTV is a useful heuristic for taht point. But Dave agreed with me that as a roug way of encouraging people to do what we want them to do, and to reward and encourage harder work, differential pay is desirablea nd even necesasry in his own proposal for self-managed socialism.


>
>But there's also a no small element of capitalist exploitation at
>work, fashioning the kind of work available, the numbers of jobs
>available to do the work, and the sorting of who can or will do
>what jobs.

Sure, in capitalism.

So differential rewards may not necessarily entail
>exploitation and oppression, but then again I shy away from too
>much universalizing in my theoretical preferences and prefer to
>fixate on particular contexts.

I am not sure what this means.

--jks _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com



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