>snit snat wrote:
> >
> >
> > I always wonder about the DoL thing in thinking about what a socialist
> > future might look like. While I agree that the details must be worked out
> > as move in that directions--nodding to Carrol's "cookshops of the future,"
> > it still seems that there is such a disagreement among those of us on the
> > left on this particular issue, that it's hard to imagine any easy answers.
>
>If you contextualize a bit it becomes a less daunting problem. A few
>observations.
>
>1. Whether or not the division of labor is going to be abolished
>_eventually_ or not, it is certainly not going to be abolished during
>the first generation or two of a socialist world. (And it is certainly
>not going to be abolished in any socialist nations in a still
>predominantly capitalist world.)
>
>2. One can take it for granted that the capitalist conditions
>immediately (10+ years at a minimum) before a socialist victory (by
>whatever means) would be _radically_ different from present conditions.
>We cannot now even imagine usefully _which_ sectors of the working class
>(assuming it to constitute some 90% of the population) would have
>carried out the inauguration of a socialist regime, which would have
>been passive, and which would have been in the camp of the enemy. (Don't
>even assume that we know how evangelicals would respond under quite
>different conditioons.) Hence all the first few decades of the socialist
>period would have to achieve was to make life _slightly_ better for
>whichever sections of the working class provided it with its political
>base.
Hmm. That's interesting. I never think of it in terms of things like commitment to evangelical communities of faith. I tend to think of it more in terms of relationship to the means of production. And, I think of that in pretty concrete terms: specifically, the conditions under which one labors. One of the things that has interested me in that regard is the way that working in the service sector creates conditions where people identity with management/capital.
For instance, in Greta Foff Paules' _Dishing it Out_, she examines how waitresses identity (though not unambiguously so) with their customers, rather than management because of the tipping system. Waitresses consciously defy management's demands control things like how many pats of butter you can serve with a roll or rationalizing "upselling" (demanding that wait staff follow a certain script to encourage customers to have a more expensive meal, order a larger side of fries, or have a glass of wine). Since wait staff depend on tips, they prefer to respond to each customer uniquely or to give them little "extras" -- like a higher pile of whipped cream on their pie or extra rolls without charging.
But, when you read Robin Leidner's _Fast Food, Fast Talk_, where she examines the rationalization process in the lives of fast food workers and door-to-door insurance sales reps, you see people who, while they don't always like being forced to adhere to scripts (the automaton "would you like fries with that?"), she also discovers that fast food workers take refuge in the script to protect their "selves". It's not their self performing such menial labor but, rather, they're taking on a "role".
As some of my students at a non-trad college told me, they stepped out of their 'role" when they wanted to give something extra to a special customer. Sharing who they were and treating the customer as a unique individual was doing something special, taking a risk of giving of themselves knowing that said customer wouldn't treat them as mindless automatons, beneath contempt, faceless servants no different than a coffee dispenser.
In a related piece, Vicki Smith explores how workers at a copy service catering to professionals like lawyers and architects come to identity with management because they come to see their customers as the enemy -- the people who treat them rudely, act as if they are servants at their beck and call, etc. In turn, seeing customers as the enemy encourages them to take on management's demands, enforcing the rules as a way to protect themselves from the demands of overbearing, rude customers.
I examined some of this while working in a factory cafeteria. The customers were unionized factory workers who the cafeteria workers perceived of as spoiled members of the labor aristocracy. They made good money, had great benefits, and worked for that dying breed of corporation where they had swimming pools, on-site daycare, on-site gyms (Kodak comes to mind as a model). For the cafeteria workers, they saw the factory workers as treating them like shit. Always demand bigger portions for what was essentially food provided for just slightly over cost (the cafeteria food service made money only on things like soda and coffee which are typically sold at 10-15 times cost and on the fact that they could use the facility to do outside (as well as internal) catering. It's a typical deal worked out between plants and the food service providers. The plant owns the equipment, pays for electricity/insurance, etc. and contracts with the f.s. provider).
Anyway, the antipathy between workers and customers also played out along gender lines since most workers were women and most of the factory workers were men. The factory workers did see themselves as superior to the food service workers, often referring to them as somehow lower on the social ladder, less skilled, less important, etc. etc. They saw it as labor they wouldn't ever do unless they had to. It was beneath them.
The antipathy between the two groups of workers became so great, with the food service workers enacting management rules against overportioning or staying open later or giving away extra food. The factory workers spied on the food service workers, insisting that the f.s. workers were stealing food and ratting them out to management. They also spied on everything the f.s. workers did while catering and, if they did _anything_ wrong whatsoever, they'd report them to management.
I'm sure Duncan could fill us in on some equally pathological relations on the 'shop floor'.
Anyway, I think of it in terms of the micro-politics that play out on the shop floor, the tiled kitchen floor, and the rubber matted floor of the cashier's desks. Whether people will side with capital will revolve around the conditions of their daily labor.
><...>
>4. Actually, the coming to political power of the working class would
>almost certainly coincide with huge social disruptions, vicious
>repression, great suffering within capitalism, and the preceding
>suggestions probably overestimate how much _immediate_ improvement a
>socialist regime would have to provide.
sounds like a real blast!
k
"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling