[lbo-talk] To each according to work

John Thornton jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net
Tue Apr 22 13:49:15 PDT 2008


andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> Did I say anything about human nature?
>

My reply was to both you and Charles. Charles did make a claim concerning human nature. I though that was clear but apparently not.


> The unfairness that many people, enough to undermine a solidaristic system, will feel, is that some benefit at the expense of others without returning anything.
>
> It doesn't make any difference if I'm responsible and fair and don't take advantage of my ability to exploit my fellows as they exploit me. I will still resent their exploiting me.
>

Again I'd suggest you use another word. You cannot be exploited if you can choose to do nothing as well and receive the same remuneration. If you feel exploited that is an individual pathology. I won't deny some will feel resentment, a few will, but as I said we cannot cater to such harmful tastes. Some people will never be satisfied unless they have power and authority over large numbers of people. We shouldn't cater to those tastes either. In the end I believe that people taught to believe that equal remuneration, after compensation for unequal needs, is everyone's birthright will not have the problems you envision they will. My own small scale experiment with this reinforces that belief. If people raised in todays capitalist society can come to appreciate this idea then when children are raised with this belief I see no compelling evidence to suggest resentment of free-riders will undermine solidarity to a point that it creates problems on a large scale. I think the free-rider problem will be small and I think people will come to the conclusion that dealing with some small number of free-riders is worth the freedoms gained by universal equal remuneration.


> I think the key is, you think that's not a problem because on your conception of human nature, you think the problem just won't arise very much, most people will want to pitch in. I think that is overoptimistic. You worked on Habitat, that is commendable. I never said there weren't good people who go the extra mile. Did you notice that most of us didn't work on Habitat? Why does that fact that some people are willing to volunteer a refutation of the fact that there's going to be a problem if most people won't?
>
> As for differential pay, you recite Marx's objections. They have force, and I'm not attached to it, if someone can think of another way to reward effort and contribution, encourage productivity, and discourage free-riding and laziness -- a way that also isn't unacceptably authoritarian. I presume that none of us want equal pay but labor discipline enforced by the police. AS it is, pay according to work, with all the worries that raises about rewarding undeserved natural endowments, is the best method I can think of.
>

That is better than the current arrangement but we can do better. I've never before been called an optimist. I'm not sure my viewpoint should rightly be labeled optimistic but I won't argue the point. It is odd since I have never been called anything but pessimistic throughout my entire life. My self-image is not of an optimist. You do feel a need to concentrate more emphasis on free-rider avoidance than I do but I'm not sure the terms optimism or pessimism captures that emphasis differential. I don't care if 3% or 15% of the population are free-riders. Equal remuneration is the best route to leximin welfare opportunities. That is my ideal goal. If your ideal goal differs it makes sense your desired path to that outcome would differ.


> Incidentally, Rawls, who supports differential pay as an incentive, rejects the idea that anyone deserves anything because of natural or even developed talents and capacities that he did nothing to create. ("And if you are very strong, that is a gift of the gods," Agamemnon to Achilles, I can't seem to get away from those Greeks.) Rawls thinks you can have a right to unequal earning you ultimately don't deserve because it would be socially beneficial for you to have those incentives (so you would agree to them if you had all and only the morally relevant information). That is one way to get around the issue of desert.
>

I don't argue there are no benefits to unequal remuneration only that the problems it creates are less desirable and do not justify it.


> I believe in desert, myself, but I think it's only one factor in a determination about remuneration. I'd approach the matter by saying that the fruits of the earth belong to all but the earth to no one (Rousseau), I do not have any initial entitlement to the stuff I work _on_, so my claim to deserve something in virtue of having exercised by talents and capacities on that stuff gives me no claim to any specific reward that antedates any democratic decision we make about just distributions. It does factor in to what counts as a just distribution, though -- it's not right to ignore the work that I did or the contribution I made, and my claim is stronger the greater those are. However since the stuff I work on is ours collectively, we have to decide collectively how to divide it up, what values we wish to promote by specific principles or mechanism for distribution.
>
> This answers the more detailed questions you=u made in the spirit I suggested earlier: don't write recipes for the cookshops of the future. Don't get too detailed about hypothetical institutional arrangements. Thinking about them has a value -- it show that alternative models are possible and reveals possible problems and solutions in various alternatives. Get too detailed in the manner of Owen or Albert and Hahnel and you'll go blind. In the end, the specific decisions about remuneration are ideally democratic and political, which means rough and ready, among other things.
>

My post was a gross generalization, not a recipe for the future. Equal remuneration, when compensated for different needs, for all people regardless of input is no more 'recipe like' than from each according to ability, to each according to need. I'm uncertain why this simple maxim is considered detailed in the same manner of Parecon. It isn't detailed at all. Some level of explanation is necessary if you wish to argue the benefits of one over another. I have attempted to provide that but nothing more.

I like some aspects of Parecon and I find it interesting. How useful it is is debatable but it is interesting. I don't approach it any more seriously than I do a chess game. Chess is a wonderful game and playing chess can help you exercise your brain as it were. Parecon is similar to me. I'm sure Albert and Hahnel think of it as much more important than that and I won't argue against them vigorously. Some debate is necessary but right now only at the most basic level. It's more than a little premature to plan to the Parecon level. That doesn't make the work uninteresting however.

John Thornton



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