>Now Bill Bartlett painted a picture of how toilets get cleaned in his society. Leave the cleaning supplies next to the shared workplace or public toilet, someone will clean it. Uh-huh. That someone will be whoever has the least tolerance for filth, or who has the cleaning habit most strongly imbedded. Given the way men and women are currently soicalized what gender do you think that person will be most of the time?
The assumption you make is that the way men and women are socialised now, is the way they would continue to be socialised. But the way men and women are socialised now is mot unrelated to to the power structures of class society. Change those structures and the way men and women are socialised will change accordingly. For example, since the triumph of capitalism there have been massive changes in attitudes and behaviour and that process is continuing.
>Now the thing about fighting fires, or planting food, or cleaing toilets is that the need is pretty damn obvious. if that was all there was to be done it could be done by people just spontaneously volunteering. No bean counting required.
Not exactly, there is bean counting required, in the sense that the infrastructure for fighting fire consists of more than personnel. The equipment and materials have to be designed and manufactured, they have to be distributed, extensive planning and precautions are necessary and of course priorities have to be set. One can't just wait for the fires to start.
>The bean counting required for balanced job complexes is trivial compared to the bean counting required for an industrial society. This applies in any of the examples we have discussed. Market socialism , Parecon, Bellamy's setup, Bartlett's proposal, capitalism.
Yes. Management and administration is a vital part of a complex industrial society. But perhaps you can't conceive of any way of co-ordinating people in a workforce that does not necessitate the manager having coercive power over subordinates.)
I've seen it work in practice, on a small scale. Successful management of a staff of volunteers, by volunteers, is not at all uncommon. Its been going on for thousands of years. Perhaps millions of years.
> In a just society, if someone wants to, do you think they should be able to idle on the beach all and let the more socially concious volunteer to do the work?
Yes. The alternative is even worse, you see - a society in which people's contribution to social production is monitored and policed and all the petty authority and dangers that go with that. Not to mention the inefficiencies of just having all those authorities and bureaucrats who would also need to be supported by productive workers.
> Do you think someone should be able to lie on the couch all day and let someone else do the housework?
What? Now you want housework police to monitor every home? Yes, I think a few couch potatoes is a small price to pay for avoiding a police state.
> "After all , you are doing all this vaccuming voluntarily m'dear. It is not my fault you are more bothered by a little dust than I am." I have some gender assumptions about who is lying on the couch speaking, and who is vaccuming the carpet in the above example, In how many cases out of ten do you think my assumption is wrong?
How very chivalrous of you to be concerned about the weaker sex. Your gender assumptions are interesting, but on an equal playing field I think they can look after for themselves. They wouldn't have to put up with the dust, they could just go to the beach, remember? Maybe permanently, the natural state of affairs is that men have to compete for the attention of women. Removing the economic chains that bind women to men would dramatically change your gender assumptions. In fact they already have, even under capitalism.
Social conditioning about who gets to lie on the sofa and who will do the vacuuming is not unconnected to material conditions in society. All power relations have an economic base and the particular economic base that sustains that particular social condition is one where men are the "breadwinners", that is to say they control the purse-strings. While women are dependant on men and hence subject to the whims of men.
It is a material condition which has already been substantially eroded in industrial societies and the social condition that depends on it is disappearing accordingly. It won't completely disappear until all of us who were inculcated with its mores die out and women enjoy economic security on a par with men, but such attitudes are already an anachronism.
These days, the fellow who takes that attitude to his female partner is also taking a big risk. He might get away with it if his female partner was also inculcated with those attitudes, but even if she can't quite shake off the patriarchal indoctrination, she will probably find another, more ideologically satisfying justification, for kicking him out.
If she can afford to that is. Obviously any economic system which unconditionally guaranteed economic security to all would settle that question to the advantage of women. If you want to be truly chivalrous, you could support it on those grounds alone.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas