[lbo-talk] Liberal Intellectuals and the Coordinator Class

[Miles Jackson]

Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> On 7/12/07, Bill Bartlett <billbartlett at aapt.net.au> wrote:
>   
>> I'm not reassured. The link between what you consume and how many
>> hours of approved work you do is still essentially a wages system.
>>     
>
> If you let me nitpick, it's not just hours -- intensity too. If you've
> ever just wanted to sprint through your work, or had a
> dangerous/exhausting job, clearly time can be a terrible measure of
> effort and sacrifice. People often approach the same job with
> different intensity.
>
> Anyway, if you happen to have an alternative in mind, how would you
> prefer remuneration to work? If it's clearly more fair, just and
> equitable, I'd like to hear it.
>   
Try this: the bean-counting notion of equity implied in Parecon is just 
a manifestation of the accounting practices that must exist in a 
capitalist society.  There is nothing that compels us to define "equity" 
in terms of some individual level hours/intensity matrix; that's just 
the kind of thinking we're used to in a capitalist society with wage 
labor.  I think it would be more useful to recognize and celebrate the 
fact that for one person to do any kind of useful work it requires (a) a 
lot of hard work from people in the past who created prerequisite 
technologies, skills, and knowledge, and (b) the coordination of people 
right now to make some particular work useful (e.g., what good would a 
network admin be without others working on computer hardware and 
apps?).  --I'll go so far as to say that it is a pernicious capitalist 
fantasy to argue that anyone does any work "on their own".  (Work is a 
social relation, not an individual attribute!)  And thus: any accounting 
of the amount of discrete work done by one person is a silly exercise, 
unless you're a capitalist trying to exploit workers.

Miles