[lbo-talk] Parecon Discussion...

Michael Albert sysop at ZMAG.ORG
Wed Sep 24 08:38:34 PDT 2003



> It is not surprising that this would work in a catering or
> retail business, because there is relative little job
> specialization in those industries, and the risk associated
> with error/malpractice is rather low. But can you imagine a
> hospital where surgeons and janitors rotate between jobs? Or
> an airline where a baggage handler gets into the pilot's seat
> after he is done with loading your luggage on the plane?
> Or, for that matter, a sales clerk replacing the brakes or
> the steering system on your car?

It isn't rotation between jobs.

It is that the surgeon or the pilot does more than surgery or flying.

This should not be very hard to imagne at all. I am told pilots actually have a very short work scheduel, spend a lot of time off. I think we can be confident that during that time off they sometimes are doing very rote things. Doesn't interfere.

The notion that a surgeon can do surgery and play golf -- or administer the dept, or hassle nurses, etc. etc. but that a surgeon cannot do surgery but also do other tasks so the sum total is a balanced job complex, eludes me.

The people who do task x must, you are correct, be able to do a good job at task x. Whatever we may be talking about.

Instead of people doing a homogenous combination of tasks all of comparable quality of life and empowerment implications -- higher or lower on the scale -- coordinator class or working class -- we have, in parecon, people doing a combination of tasks that have roughly average empowerment and quality of life implications.

This not only does not imply that you do things which you are inequipped to do -- it says that 80% of the population, rather than going through class division producing socialization and education dumbing them down to have neither expectations nor confidence, nor skills to participate in empowering tasks -- have, instead, their fullest capacities addressed and developed.

The gain is enormous -- unless one thinks, of course, that the reason why working those who do rote and obedient tedious labor (and even why work is de-skilled intentionally to have those attribtues for most people) is because most people, regardless of upbring, education, and on the job conditions, could do not do anything more empowering.

But I would say that would be a horrendously racist, sexist, and classist view ...



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