No. I was arguing with the Parecon stuff, actually. I'm referring to Brown, "The Job Market of the Future" (M.E. Sharpe, 2001).
>That's what this or any other system hinges on - its institution in the
>public sphere. When I earlier asked how this system you were describing
>was viable, this is what I meant. Sooner or later, writing about the
>future, analyzing current trends, isn't enough - steps have to be taken
>to turn social ideas into social facts.
Right. But a lot of our critiques fall down when we're asked, well, how would YOU organize it? My employer may not pay me for the full value of my labor power, but he organizes the work and without someone doing that, how is all this stuff going to get done? We do plenty of organizing without answering that question, but a few good answers would help--not just for those we're organizing but for ourselves. I think we'd agree that without those answers it becomes about higher wages, not, why the hell does my employer hold this power over my life?
As in: "... mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation......"
(Yoshie ID'd me as a Marxist so, since I'm a piss-poor one, I guess I have to shore up my membership on that list by quoting the guy.)
>Therefore, I wonder why people should
>be convinced to agitate for legislation that would institute the job
>market idea, as opposed to, for example, simply abolishing wages, or
>anything else.
Good question, which I take to mean if we're going to accomplish the difficult and dangerous task of abolishing the power of private capital, why keep wages? I think this should first be asked of those who abolished the power of private capital and yet did keep some form of compensation for effort (wages).
>You've already
>indicated you think wages should ultimately abolished, but that, for some
>reason, this job market system must come before that. I'm trying to
>understand why you think this must be the case. In other words, if one
>is going to agitate for any system that is not likely to come about without
>a broad sea change in public sentiment, why the one you're describing and
>not the abolition fo the wage system, which you've also posited is
>desirable, but for some reason must be put off.
Fair compensation for effort (as opposed to universal compensation, not linked to effort) allows us to see what cost particular work is inflicting on us. In a job market system, prices would directly reflect the human cost (as judged by the workers themselves) of particular work. To get to a system where this kind of assessment is unnecessary, I think it makes sense to first go through a system in which the assessment is made more accurately, since we'd be transforming a system in which wages are supressed for difficult work and in which prices have little to do with the human (or environmental) costs of production.
I should ask, though, when you say 'abolition of the wage system' do you mean getting rid of the wage system of exploitation, or abolition of any form of compensation based on effort? You could have a job market that simply paid everyone equally (allotments not based on effort) and the more unpopular the job, the shorter the hours. That was Edward Bellamy's original conception in Looking Backward (1888). You'd still need to organize work, though--people would need to either choose or be assigned jobs. The job market is a mechanism allowing job choice rather than assignment.
A job market system that uses wages as well as work hours to compensate for difficult work just means the society has decided that some work should be rewarded extra with more pay. And it has the advantage of the price feature I mentioned earlier, allows adjusment of work hours throughout an economy so that the mandate to provide full employment doesn't lead to make-work or enforced idleness, a manageable macroeconomy with a nonspeculative currency, a chance at fair trade among nations--as you can see I could go on, but I'll spare you.
>> I don't think of emancipation as an output resulting from less inputs.
>
>I don't either. I was referring to not "losing the productive capacity
>which creates many benefits that we want" - like, ideally, increased
>prductive outputs with less inputs, one of the major innovations of
>capitalism that should be preserved or expanded upon in a post-capitalist
>world. That is, if this is at all congruent with non-exploitative or
>non-coercive social relations.
The question is how to *make* it congruent. We know it's possible to so arrange it that it isn't congruent. What we'd debate is whether various suggestions make it more or less congruent. I'm saying this suggestion does better than parecon.
>> '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.
>
>Of course the slogan by itself doesn't address something that complex.
>I was using the slogan as a way to denote a system, different from yours,
>where wages were abolished, not set by software or other structures. Much of
the >industrial democracy movement of the 1910s -1930s, for example, held the
abolition
>of the wage system as a guiding precept, but there was of course a very
>lively debate about how work should be organized so that wages were
>abolished. And that debate continues to this day.
Right. I'd say the job market abolishes the wages system as we understand it--if employers can't set your wages or determine your work hours, or even have a choice whether you stay or whether you go, that's not the wage system.
There is, however, still compensation for effort. People are expected to work, and rewarded when they do.
>> 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
>> 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.)
>
>In my experience, it gets punk rockers and bohemian/artist-types excited,
>but not many mainstream Americans. But I don't think "wage-setting
>software legislated into existence in a small European country" would get
>any camp excited. (I could be wrong.)
You asked me the practical transition question, now you quote my answer as a less-than-inspiring slogan. That's fair, since I accused your inspiring IWW slogan of being a less-than-adequate program. : )
You posted that Bob Herbert article about unemployed youth in Chicago, but it could be nearly anywhere in the urban world, worse of course in Chicago or Manila than Milan or Berlin, but still enraging, to tell people that they have no place, no role, no contribution to make. In job markets, "Young people will no longer be obliged to confront the famous Catch-22 of modern life, the no-experience-no-work rule by which modern employers operate so cruelly, and by which we as societies convey to our young how little we value them. [In job markets] literally everybody—which means anyone of any age, sex, color or number of functioning limbs—is guaranteed a job of equal value on the job market... [compare this] to the soul-destroying work with which we now so frequently demean or insult our young people... or to finding no work available, or to the work we do not even count as work because we define it as criminal activity..." (Brown, the Job Market of the Future, 312.)
Jenny Brown