Brian:
>It's not simple to bring society into a state of affairs where these
>things are operating as the norm. I could also say, regarding the
>"abolition of the wage system" system I mentioned, that it's "simple" for
>people to exchange labor, or the products of labor, and draw what they need
from public
>depots on an as-needed basis. getting us to that, like getting us to your
>system of wages set with software or other decision making structures,
>is not simple.
Right, I didn't say going from here to there was simple. You asked: "How is the radical and extremely complex system you've described any more attractive or viable than others?" I was addressing that.
The suggestion in the book in question is that a small European country with a strong public sector (over 50% of the economy) first puts its public sector under the job market and then provides various incentives to private firms (low interest loans, etc.) to join it. The details of the transition--for example, in currency--are probably not worth going into here. How that particular country managed to elect a government on the platform of instituting a job market is a slightly different question. But starting with only vague goals and a history of semi-functional socialist models we do need to provide a few more answers if we expect this sort of thing to get rolling again, whether on this model or the next better one that comes along.
>> The question we're trying to answer is, in a complicated industrialized
>> society, how do you arrange work with minimal exploitation and maximal
>> freedom, without losing the organizational and productive capacity which
>> creates many benefits that we want.
>
>Yes, greater outputs with less inputs = good thing.
I don't think of emancipation as an output resulting from less inputs. My point is, how it's organized (compare feudalism to capitalism) is the decisive question. 'Abolition of the wage system' doesn't address the organization of work, or how the productive capacity of a complex society can be developed and maintained. It's a balancing act, there are necessities we must recognize to get along the road to freedom--one of them is division of labor, another is that one of the divisions of labor is the job of coordinating. Once we recognize that then we can argue that coordinating must therefore not be accorded more power or discretion (or pay or longevity) than necessary. (As Kelley says, what's necessary is the debate.)
>Chuck0 and I had an exchange over the aircraft thing last Fall on this
>list, as you may remember. He said no, there should be no aircraft in a
>future society. I said it'd depend on workers' wishes.
I was recalling that example. But, no, the workers are not the only ones who have wishes, the retirees, the kids, the students, those who can't work on aircraft for one reason or another, they have wishes too. They want to visit grandma in Seattle and don't want to spend 4 days driving across the country.
To be democratic about it, their wishes would also be important. (Perhaps you meant to say the working class's wishes--fair enough). In a job market, if the work's unpopular, it'll be well-paid, which is in effect a pact by the rest of the society that if it's a hard job, and we're going to ask people to do it, they should be compensated well, get shorter hours, so on. Right now if it's a hard job you get it cause you don't have a choice, mostly, and you're paid less cause you're one of those people that didn't have options. If you can, you get out, but mostly not because it's a hard job but because of the pay, the disrespect, and in some cases the police-state atmosphere at work. Doing surgery 10 hours a day is also a hard job, but it's well compensated and respected.
>> As for viability, here I'm going to interpret you to mean political
>> viability. I'd say all these "models of intermediate social orders"
>>have one goal right now, and that's educational.
>
>But educating people to do WHAT to get to this system you've described?
>In "gently" suggesting that we need intermediate systems like the one you've
>described before we get to a society where the wage system has been
>abolshed, it's as if you've suggested the plan you're describing is more
>practical. Okay - what are the practical means for getting there as
>opposed to anywhere else?
In the current situation, and with the current model of abolition of the wage system (and the track record in other countries that have had socialist revolutions of one sort or another and haven't abolished wages) I'd say, yes, it's more practical. But I'm not so interested in practicality as I am showing how our current system does not fulfill the roles we claim for it, and showing that there are alternatives that decrease the workweek, give us job choice, remove entirely the fear of unemployment, change the power relation between workers and owners, and give us non-catastrophic ways to deal with economic shrinkage. We can raise people's expectations that there are economic arrangements that can drastically increase the freedom to determine the course of our lives but that don't require us to move into a cave with John Zerzan, or suffer a production system that looks like an LA traffic jam.
>Organize in workplaces? And if so, along what lines and in regard to what
>principles? Organizing housing co-ops? Etc. I could als say "education"
>would help us abolish the wage system, and I'd be right, too.
Yes, it does, has, and will. I meant specifically showing how claims that are made for our economy don't hold up, and further showing that these are possible under another arrangement.
Obviously, the main obstacle to instituting any of these things (parecon, abolition of the wage system, job markets, market socialism, soviet socialism, welfare statism) is not that the plan is so godawfully bad, but that the opposition is so powerful. But at the point where the plans are really in bad shape, yes, they become an organizing obstacle. I think we're at that point.
On organizing, I mean, is 'abolition of the wage system' getting people excited? Can they picture it in their heads? What does it look like to them? (I'm not asking to make a point, I'm asking cause I'd like to know.)
Jenny Brown