[lbo-talk] Parecon Discussion...

Gar Lipow garlists at comcast.net
Thu Sep 25 09:39:29 PDT 2003


On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 11:19:03 -0400 > From: Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
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> Bill Bartlett:
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>>> ...work. But the surgeon's work does not begin merely when the surgeon clocks on at the operating room the first day and is not even the labour of the surgeon alone. The value of the surgeon's hour of labour is the realisation of much more than the relatively untrained work of the assembly worker.
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> Which is exactly the point I argued - it makes little sense to determine the value of output by the amount of time spend to produce it.
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> Wojtek

Both of you are missing the point. The value of output has little to do with how people are compensate whether in a capitalist or socialist society. When socialist talk about people getting back the value of their labor, they mean as a class, not as individuals. Bill Bartlett at least admits this when he calls for everybody to be paid the same regardless of work.

In a Parecon people are paid (assuming the fairly balanced job complexes) approximately the same per hour of work (including the per hour of training). However work councils (that is firms or enterprizes) are not billed for the actual social value of the labor as determined by supply and demand. That is a hospital will pay for an hour of a surgeons labor based on the scarcity of that labor and demand for it. A surgeon however is not paid on that basis, but for the time spent in surgery. A surgeon is not compensated for training time when performing actual surgery, because she was paid for it at the time she was trained. And it makes no sense to compensate her for the teachers time training her - because the teacher was paid for that. (Remember in a parecon students don't pay for their own education.)

You say surgery is a more onerous task than sweeping floors? I wonder if people who choose to become surgeons really feel that way. But if it really is then it will be paid more than sweeping floors. That is if given education is not only free, but students are paid a salary for training, and sweeping floors is paid the same as surgery, and trained surgeons choose floor sweeping over surgery, than yes surgery is more onerous than floor sweeping, and compensation will be raised until sufficient people are attracted to surgical positions. But I know some surgeons and seriously doubt they choose that profession just for the money. Some of them are dedicated healers, some like the feeling of power surgery gives. (And to be fair those two motivations are not really in conflict.) I suspect given not just free, but paid education you will have no lack of qualified people passing training, and accepting jobs that include performing surgery even if paid the same per hour as for swe eping floors.



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