[lbo-talk] To each according to work

[Bill Bartlett]

At 1:07 AM -0700 19/4/08, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>Good questions. The problem is exactly the fair distribution of 
>benefits and burdens. It's unfair, and it undermines social 
>solidarity and stability, for some people to get struck doing 
>drudgery or dirty, dangerous work while others do nothing. It's good 
>if people enjoy their work, and I do not assume that work HAS to be 
>unpleasant, I just observe that some necessary work IS unpleasant. 
>It people enjoy their work, that's a benefits, also to be 
>distributed fairly.
>
>Please note that Bill didges the question John raises and I was 
>discussing, that some able bodied people should be permitted to do 
>_nothing_ -- not good work, not bad work, just goofing off -- while 
>enjoying the benefits created by those who do work. John doesn't 
>believe there are such people. Maybe Bill doesn't either. I don't 
>think they get out and around enough.

Well of course there are such people. We live in a capitalist 
society, where the highest social status is afforded to those who are 
able to enjoy all the benefits and avoid all obligations. Our entire 
system is designed to protect them, the economy is carefully honed so 
as to manufacture scarcity for the rest of us, to highlight and 
enhance the contrast. Thus manufacturing a desire to be one of the 
privileged idlers, as opposed to one of those compelled to work.

But that doesn't prove that in a completely different society, people 
would behave the same way.

And even if a few did, so what? We can afford a sizeable percentage 
of shirkers now, so why wouldn't we be able to afford a few in a 
socialist society? At least they wouldn't be the ruling class, at 
least they wouldn't be afforded any special privileges or the very 
highest status. In fact they would have no status at all, there would 
be no need to envy them. On the contrary, they would have the same 
status as those who were physically or mentally unfit to contribute.

But as soon as you start trying to compel people, you start needing 
the policing systems to enforce it. Huge bureaucracies to count the 
hours everyone works, to make up rules and assess all the exemptions 
for sickness, emotional etc reasons. This corrupts the health system, 
making health workers defacto shirker police, it goes on and on and 
on. Eventually you need a higher level of police to govern the 
police, you need a government and inevitably, you need a ruling class 
to control them.

All these millions of people, all these onerous rules and rulers, 
just so you don't have to think about how to make necessary work less 
unpleasant. Its insanity and I mean that literally.


>In some rough and ready way, people should me made to share the 
>benefits ands burdens of social life on terms they find mutually 
>acceptable. That means that no one who can work gets to goof off at 
>other's expense -- that is exploitation. It means that unpleasant 
>work or qualitatively similar burdens should be distributed fairly.

Unpleasant work should be made pleasant I believe. Work doesn't have 
to be a form of punishment. To each according to work is not 
socialism. It is a mental illness.

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas