There are hundreds of occupations that would not exist in a society that had no need for money: they range from accountants, bank and insurance staff, salespeople, wages clerks to name only some of the more numerous occupations. Tangible products needed only in a money system include bank notes and coins, account books and invoices, meters, safes and many others. A high proportion of employment in capitalism consists of handling money in some way. They are inextricably bound up with the day to day operation of the market system but not intrinsically useful work.
240,000 private security guards
152,000 police officers to serve and protect the monopoly of private property system
91,000 prisoners the numbers fuelled by squalid social conditions, the absence of hope and the alienation of capitalist society.
44,000 prison staff, equally alienated , to guard the above
90,000 arms trade/manufacture. To see how the weapons industry can be transformed into producing medical equipment see http://libcom.org/history/articles/lucas-aerospace-fight
240,000 in the military forces with all the associated human resources being diverted to the cause of destruction and slaughter, rather than producing useful items such as houses, hospitals or schools.
100,0000 in the finance sector such banking insurance etc. All their work arising from the lending and borrowing of money for investment, purchasing and so on.
14,000 debt collecting
20,000 credit agencies
700,000 Advertising, marketing, pr, and sales managers, all encouraging us to go out and buy buy buy , shop until we drop.
73,000 working in gambling, providing the forlorn hope of quick escape from our mundane dreary lives.
All these functions are serviced by other workers. For example, carried to work by transport, they work in buildings which require maintenance and use equipment such as computers, they appropriate the most advanced technologies.
Finally, we have the industrial reserve army of the unemployed 2,400,000 and the 5,400,000 part timers seeking full time employment .What a cruel waste of human talent and potential.
Inside a socialist societry there will be no need to buy food from anyone—it is common property. There are no rent or mortgages to pay because land and buildings belong to all of us. There is no need to buy anything from any other person.
.
Showing posts with label employment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label employment. Show all posts
Monday, December 20, 2010
Friday, April 09, 2010
dirty work
Work should not really be equated with employment. Employment is wage labour and the ability to work is a commodity the workers are forced to sell . As such it has alienating factors associated with it; e.g. Monday to Friday , 9 -5 , is “their” time, whilst the weekend is "our" time, where we can enjoy working in the garden or painting. Employment is based on the division of labour. The upshot being workers are tied to one job for years on end, instead of being people able to do all kinds of things, which socialist society – run by conscious decisions instead of blind forces – will allow. (Of course it is a moot point as to how far the division of labour can be removed from socialism; not every one can have the steady hand and requisite knowledge of a surgeon.)One of the strangest objections to socialism is “who will do the dirty work?”. Imagine such doom-sayers arguing “I don't want to live in a world without want and hunger , and where my needs are satisfied, if it means I have to do dirty work once a week.”
Who will do the dirty work? Machinery will do it, said Oscar Wilde. (And, of course, machinery is enormously more developed now than it was in Wilde's day and can do many more jobs which people do not wish to do manually.) "All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery". This will release each individual to help the community in his or her own way by doing service or producing things which will satisfy each person's need to be active, to contribute and to help. Wilde summed it up: "The community by means of organization of machinery will supply the useful things, and . . . the beautiful things will be made by the individual". Work will be an essential part of life in socialism; it will be a part of the individual's personal development , a necessary, healthy expenditure of energy and a social bond with co-workers .
The hours needed to work will be considerably reduced as unemployment will no longer exist , and from the additional extra labour being made available from no longer required capitalist occupations which will not exist in the moneyless, free access society of socialism. There will simply be many more hands to do the unpleasant but necessary stuff. Socialism will entail new applications of technology and the abolition of unnecessary routine work.
Socialism can do lots of things, but it can't make shit smell of roses - that is one little fact of life we'll just have to put up with.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Dirty Work
Who will do the dirty work? Socialism will not be a Utopia where all the problems of existence have vanished. Unpleasant work will still have to be done.
Machinery will do it, said Oscar Wilde. “All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery”.This will release each individual to help the community in his or her own way by doing service or producing things which will satisfy each person’s need to be active, to contribute and to help. Wilde summed it up: “The community by means of organization of machinery will supply the useful things, and . . . the beautiful things will be made by the individual”.
Unappealing dirty work can probably be taken care of by utilising labour-saving machines. But where it is impossible and where dirty work will have to be done in socialist society we can be quite sure of two things: Firstly, it will NOT be done by the same people ALL the time . All able members of society will take turns at such work . And also not to be forgotten is that it will be carried out by socially conscious men and women who appreciate that society belongs to them and therefore its less pleasant tasks must be performed by them. In the knowledge that we own and control the earth, and all that is in and on it, it is unlikely i think that human beings will refuse to attend to the dirty work within socialism.
The fact is that most jobs under capitalism are either completely or partially unnecessary. Many of those that are necessary are performed by people working long hard hours while others suffer poverty of low wages and low status . Elimination of all jobs required only within a capitalist system would reduce necessary tasks to such a trivial level that they could easily be taken care of voluntarily and cooperatively, eliminating the need for the whole apparatus of economic incentives and state enforcement.
As for the lazy greedy shirkers if one who contributes less takes more, why should this be a problem in a society which is based on the satisfaction of needs? Those people living in a socialist society who are too idle to work will not be a drain on society’s resources for very long, for if they lie in bed for long enough they will die—of boredom, if not of inertia.
Unlike Parecon , many socialists caution against the creation of blueprints ( “recipes for the cook-shops of tomorrow” as Marx called them ) . There is no point in drawing up in advance the sort of detailed blueprint of industrial organisation that the old IWW and the Syndicalists or the Guild Socialists used to do and what Parecon now does . For a small group of socialists , as we are now , to do so would be undemocratic. It would also be dumb. Socialists don’t have crystal balls to determine what the conditions will be when socialism is established. As the socialist majority grows, when socialism is within the grasp of the working class, then will be the proper time for making such important decisions. It is imprudent for today’s socialist minority to be telling people how to administer a socialist society. When a majority of people understand what socialism means, the suggestions for socialist administration will solidify into an appropriate plan. It will be based upon the conditions existing at that time, not today.
We also recognise that there may not be one single way of doing things, and precise details and ways of doing things might vary from one part of the world to another, even between neighbouring communities. Of course, we can reach some generalised conclusions based on basic premises – that socialism will be necessarily democratic, for example – and can outline broad principles or options that could be applied. That is, we do not have to draw up a plan for socialism, but simply and broadly demonstrate that it is possible and therefore refute the label of “utopianism” .
We look to the real world to see how it is, and how it could be. Socialist society is not starting from a blank sheet and we are inheriting an already existing economic system . Workers with all their skills and experience of co-operating to run capitalism in the interests of the capitalists could begin to run society in their own interest. We do not need to build the new society in the womb of the old, that is here already.
If people didn’t work then society would obviously fall apart. To establish socialism the vast majority must consciously decide that they want socialism and that they are prepared to work in socialist society. The establishment of socialism presupposes the existence of a mass socialist movement and a profound change in social outlook. It is simply not reasonable to suppose that the desire for socialism on such a large scale, and the conscious understanding of what it entails on the part of all concerned, would not influence the way people behaved in socialism and towards each other. Would they want to jeopardise the new society they had helped create? I think not.
Machinery will do it, said Oscar Wilde. “All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery”.This will release each individual to help the community in his or her own way by doing service or producing things which will satisfy each person’s need to be active, to contribute and to help. Wilde summed it up: “The community by means of organization of machinery will supply the useful things, and . . . the beautiful things will be made by the individual”.
Unappealing dirty work can probably be taken care of by utilising labour-saving machines. But where it is impossible and where dirty work will have to be done in socialist society we can be quite sure of two things: Firstly, it will NOT be done by the same people ALL the time . All able members of society will take turns at such work . And also not to be forgotten is that it will be carried out by socially conscious men and women who appreciate that society belongs to them and therefore its less pleasant tasks must be performed by them. In the knowledge that we own and control the earth, and all that is in and on it, it is unlikely i think that human beings will refuse to attend to the dirty work within socialism.
The fact is that most jobs under capitalism are either completely or partially unnecessary. Many of those that are necessary are performed by people working long hard hours while others suffer poverty of low wages and low status . Elimination of all jobs required only within a capitalist system would reduce necessary tasks to such a trivial level that they could easily be taken care of voluntarily and cooperatively, eliminating the need for the whole apparatus of economic incentives and state enforcement.
As for the lazy greedy shirkers if one who contributes less takes more, why should this be a problem in a society which is based on the satisfaction of needs? Those people living in a socialist society who are too idle to work will not be a drain on society’s resources for very long, for if they lie in bed for long enough they will die—of boredom, if not of inertia.
Unlike Parecon , many socialists caution against the creation of blueprints ( “recipes for the cook-shops of tomorrow” as Marx called them ) . There is no point in drawing up in advance the sort of detailed blueprint of industrial organisation that the old IWW and the Syndicalists or the Guild Socialists used to do and what Parecon now does . For a small group of socialists , as we are now , to do so would be undemocratic. It would also be dumb. Socialists don’t have crystal balls to determine what the conditions will be when socialism is established. As the socialist majority grows, when socialism is within the grasp of the working class, then will be the proper time for making such important decisions. It is imprudent for today’s socialist minority to be telling people how to administer a socialist society. When a majority of people understand what socialism means, the suggestions for socialist administration will solidify into an appropriate plan. It will be based upon the conditions existing at that time, not today.
We also recognise that there may not be one single way of doing things, and precise details and ways of doing things might vary from one part of the world to another, even between neighbouring communities. Of course, we can reach some generalised conclusions based on basic premises – that socialism will be necessarily democratic, for example – and can outline broad principles or options that could be applied. That is, we do not have to draw up a plan for socialism, but simply and broadly demonstrate that it is possible and therefore refute the label of “utopianism” .
We look to the real world to see how it is, and how it could be. Socialist society is not starting from a blank sheet and we are inheriting an already existing economic system . Workers with all their skills and experience of co-operating to run capitalism in the interests of the capitalists could begin to run society in their own interest. We do not need to build the new society in the womb of the old, that is here already.
If people didn’t work then society would obviously fall apart. To establish socialism the vast majority must consciously decide that they want socialism and that they are prepared to work in socialist society. The establishment of socialism presupposes the existence of a mass socialist movement and a profound change in social outlook. It is simply not reasonable to suppose that the desire for socialism on such a large scale, and the conscious understanding of what it entails on the part of all concerned, would not influence the way people behaved in socialism and towards each other. Would they want to jeopardise the new society they had helped create? I think not.
Work
Posted in the comments here
Socialism is almost globally misunderstood and misrepresented.Socialism will be a basic structural change to society, and many of the things that most people take for granted, as “just the way things have to be”, can and must be changed to establish socialism. People tend to accept as true the things they hear over and over again. But repetition doesn’t make things true. Because the truth and the facts often contradict “common knowledge”, socialists have to show that “common knowledge” is wrong. The task of capitalist ideology is to maintain the veil which keeps people from seeing that their own activities reproduce the form of their daily life , the task of socialism is to unveil the activities of daily life, to render them transparent.
Capitalist ideology treats land, capital , and the products of labor, as things which have the power to produce, to create value, to work for their owners, to transform the world. This is what Marx called the fetishism which characterizes people’s everyday conceptions, and which is raised to the level of dogma by Economics. For the economist, living people are things – factors of production -, and things live money – works, Capital – produces .When men refuse to sell their labour, money cannot perform even the simplest tasks, because money does not ” work “. The notion of the “productivity of capital,” are inventions of the “science” of Economics.
The majority of the population is not engaged in productive work. The greater part of the non-producers is employed in the buying and selling plus all the related occupations . Any system by which the buying and selling system is retained means the employment of vast sections of the population in unproductive work. It leaves the productive work to be done by one portion of the people whilst the other portion is spending its energies in keeping shop, banking, and all the other various developments of commerce which employ probably more than two-thirds of the people today. It is the elimination of such activities and institutions , essential though they may be to a functioning market economy but unproductive in themselves from the standpoint of producing use values or meeting human needs, that constitutes perhaps the most important productive advantage that a socialist economy would have over a capitalist economy. The elimination of this structural waste intrinsic to capitalism will free up a vast amount of labour and materials for socially useful production in socialism.
In socialist society productive activity would take the form of freely chosen activity undertaken by human beings with a view to producing the things they needed to live and enjoy life. The necessary productive work of society would not be done by a class of hired wage workers but by all members of society, each according to their particular skills and abilities, cooperating to produce the things required to satisfy their needs both as individuals and as communities. Work in socialist society could only be voluntary since there would be no group or organ in a position to force people to work against their will.
“… in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.” -Marx ,
And it was Marx who said in communism it will be society’s free (disposable) time and no longer labor time that becomes the true measure of society’s wealth.
Nor should we forget his son-in-law Larfargue who wrote “The Right to be Lazy” . Lafargue’s approach to work in a socialist society – that it should be minimised , reducing the working day to 2 or 3 hours.- is only one of two possible socialist approaches to the question.
William Morris was in contrast arguing that what workers should be demanding was what might be called the “Right to Attractive Work”. The two different approaches suggest two different policies that might be pursued in a socialist society: maximum automatisation so as to minimise working time or making as much work as possible attractive and personally rewarding.
Morris regarded work as a basic, natural human need. His main criticism of capitalism was that it denied the vast majority of humans satisfying and enjoyable work. Under capitalism work, instead of being the enjoyable activity of creating or doing something useful, became a boring and often unhealthy and dangerous burden imposed on those who were forced to get a living by selling their mental and physical energies for a wage Morris’s concept of “art”. Which he defined, not as some specialised activity engaged in by some fringe group of “artists”, but as ”the expression of a person’s joy in their work”; people who enjoyed their work would produce beautiful things. And when he realised that the nature of capitalism meant that most producers were denied any enjoyment in their work – or, put another way, that it meant the “death of art”
Work should not really be equated with employment. Work will be an essential part of life in socialism; it will be a part of the individual’s development and a necessary, healthy expenditure of energy. Employment is wage labour . As such it has alienating factors associated with it; e.g. Monday to Fridays ,9 to 5 is “their” time, whilst the weekend is “our” time, where we can enjoy working in the garden or painting. Employment is based on the division of labour. The upshot being that workers are tied to one job for years on end, instead of being people able to do all kinds of things, which socialist society will allow. In a socialist society the distinction between work and leisure will diminish—perhaps even disappear. People will have an opportunity to use their hobbies and enthusiasms for the social good: to enjoy being useful.
Most of us want to work. What we hate is employment. We want to work for ourselves, our families and friends, our community, not some thieving parasite !
Socialism is almost globally misunderstood and misrepresented.Socialism will be a basic structural change to society, and many of the things that most people take for granted, as “just the way things have to be”, can and must be changed to establish socialism. People tend to accept as true the things they hear over and over again. But repetition doesn’t make things true. Because the truth and the facts often contradict “common knowledge”, socialists have to show that “common knowledge” is wrong. The task of capitalist ideology is to maintain the veil which keeps people from seeing that their own activities reproduce the form of their daily life , the task of socialism is to unveil the activities of daily life, to render them transparent.
Capitalist ideology treats land, capital , and the products of labor, as things which have the power to produce, to create value, to work for their owners, to transform the world. This is what Marx called the fetishism which characterizes people’s everyday conceptions, and which is raised to the level of dogma by Economics. For the economist, living people are things – factors of production -, and things live money – works, Capital – produces .When men refuse to sell their labour, money cannot perform even the simplest tasks, because money does not ” work “. The notion of the “productivity of capital,” are inventions of the “science” of Economics.
The majority of the population is not engaged in productive work. The greater part of the non-producers is employed in the buying and selling plus all the related occupations . Any system by which the buying and selling system is retained means the employment of vast sections of the population in unproductive work. It leaves the productive work to be done by one portion of the people whilst the other portion is spending its energies in keeping shop, banking, and all the other various developments of commerce which employ probably more than two-thirds of the people today. It is the elimination of such activities and institutions , essential though they may be to a functioning market economy but unproductive in themselves from the standpoint of producing use values or meeting human needs, that constitutes perhaps the most important productive advantage that a socialist economy would have over a capitalist economy. The elimination of this structural waste intrinsic to capitalism will free up a vast amount of labour and materials for socially useful production in socialism.
In socialist society productive activity would take the form of freely chosen activity undertaken by human beings with a view to producing the things they needed to live and enjoy life. The necessary productive work of society would not be done by a class of hired wage workers but by all members of society, each according to their particular skills and abilities, cooperating to produce the things required to satisfy their needs both as individuals and as communities. Work in socialist society could only be voluntary since there would be no group or organ in a position to force people to work against their will.
“… in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.” -Marx ,
And it was Marx who said in communism it will be society’s free (disposable) time and no longer labor time that becomes the true measure of society’s wealth.
Nor should we forget his son-in-law Larfargue who wrote “The Right to be Lazy” . Lafargue’s approach to work in a socialist society – that it should be minimised , reducing the working day to 2 or 3 hours.- is only one of two possible socialist approaches to the question.
William Morris was in contrast arguing that what workers should be demanding was what might be called the “Right to Attractive Work”. The two different approaches suggest two different policies that might be pursued in a socialist society: maximum automatisation so as to minimise working time or making as much work as possible attractive and personally rewarding.
Morris regarded work as a basic, natural human need. His main criticism of capitalism was that it denied the vast majority of humans satisfying and enjoyable work. Under capitalism work, instead of being the enjoyable activity of creating or doing something useful, became a boring and often unhealthy and dangerous burden imposed on those who were forced to get a living by selling their mental and physical energies for a wage Morris’s concept of “art”. Which he defined, not as some specialised activity engaged in by some fringe group of “artists”, but as ”the expression of a person’s joy in their work”; people who enjoyed their work would produce beautiful things. And when he realised that the nature of capitalism meant that most producers were denied any enjoyment in their work – or, put another way, that it meant the “death of art”
Work should not really be equated with employment. Work will be an essential part of life in socialism; it will be a part of the individual’s development and a necessary, healthy expenditure of energy. Employment is wage labour . As such it has alienating factors associated with it; e.g. Monday to Fridays ,9 to 5 is “their” time, whilst the weekend is “our” time, where we can enjoy working in the garden or painting. Employment is based on the division of labour. The upshot being that workers are tied to one job for years on end, instead of being people able to do all kinds of things, which socialist society will allow. In a socialist society the distinction between work and leisure will diminish—perhaps even disappear. People will have an opportunity to use their hobbies and enthusiasms for the social good: to enjoy being useful.
Most of us want to work. What we hate is employment. We want to work for ourselves, our families and friends, our community, not some thieving parasite !
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)