On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, Justin Schwartz wrote:
> Not everyone works. And not everyone works productively in a socially useful
> and necessary way that contributes to the well-being of others. Isn't that
> the problem with capitalists?
>
> If you try to sell to working people the idea that you should be given a
> decent living because you wash your own dishes and make your own bed, while
> they have to make widgets in a factory, they will laugh at you. Obviosuly
> there is a political struggle to be engaed in about expanding our notion of
> socially necesasry labor. In particular, it has to be expanded to include
> what has been traditioinally regarded as women's work that is unpaid in a
> capitalist market economy. But even there, I don't think that most people,
> including most women, are likely to think that anyone should be excused from
> a role in doing burdensome work that others have to do.
The assumption here is exactly what I'm concerned with: there's "women's work" (the unpaid labor) and "burdensome work that others have to do". If I work hard all day doing child care, and some one else works hard all day framing houses, we're both doing labor that is necessary and crucial to our society. The fact that one looks like "real work" is a distinction created by the commodification of labor under capitalism.
Obviously I completely agree that we need to expand the definition of socially necessary labor. But I can envision a fair distribution of work that might involve some people not doing much of what we call "burdensome labor" in the current regime. And no, this doesn't imply that it's fine for some people to zone out in front of computer games all day while others teach kids how to read.
Miles