Oblomov Boblomov wrote:I would expand on the definition of 'hard work' used within a discussion like this in that it does not simply refer to how much effort is being put in during the hours of labour on any given day/shift. Rather, I would consider it the ongoing sum total of effort made throughout both an educational and professional career. This counters the argument of (for example) someone scrubbing toilets all day working harder than someone in a senior professional services position. Anyone could rock up and clean a toilet to a satisfactory level on their very first go. I think through this lens it is a reasonable viewpoint that overall, the senior professional services person is considered a 'harder worker'.
Your idea of a running sum total of effort is interesting because if applied literally it has several really thought-provoking effects and implications: that the mental strain of gaining a qualification is equivalent to several years' effort as a labourer; that, if someone remains in the same role accumulating the same value in effort, their wage should rise linearly year-on-year (such that in the third year they make three times as much as in the first year); that someone upon retirement should continue to collect their present wages forever. If you intended these effects then that's really interesting and I think we can have some fun imagining what that society would look like.
But I suspect what you meant was more along the lines of "I found it very stressful to get a qualification, so now if I earn more than labourers with a less intensive job, I feel I deserve that." In actual fact, I believe a post-revolution work-ethic based society would reject that idea as counter-revolutionary. There is no way the labourers who fought our present bourgeoisie to establish your new order would sanction a return to petty-bourgeois idleness in which a person who 'strained' in a classroom and now sits in an office wields wealth and power over them, working honestly in the factories and fields.
Oblomov Boblomov wrote:Your postulated society relies very heavily on the vast majority of citizens being happy to contribute a net surplus productivity (i.e. more than just enough to provide for them/their families) to the community and unfortunately this is where I think it crumbles. You could reasonably assume many people would enjoy furthering themselves in creative/research/sporting roles (to give very broad examples) but it is those public and professional support roles (that make up the overwhelming majority of required labour) that, in my opinion at least, would collapse almost overnight.
Our present society is predicated on the willingness of the worker to produce surplus: it is this surplus value that the bourgeois capitalist steals, parasitically, to fund their lavish lifestyle. I would agree with you that this isn't
voluntary: wage labour is a contemporary form of bonded labour, robbing the working person of meaningful agency, not so different in its effects or implications than medieval serfdom. But if people are able to produce enough in their eight hours to make their boss' boss a billionaire, and had the option to work less and instead provide plenty to their community, I think they would choose the latter.
(I agree with your other point on UBI. We should do everything we can to reduce poverty. Everyone should be guaranteed food, water, and shelter.)
Moggy wrote: It’s like how communism looks a good idea on paper but human faults will always turn into an authoritarian nightmare.
Leninism (vanguardist communism) will actually inevitably devolve into Stalinism. Anarchic schools of communism don't degenerate that way though. Revolutionary Catalonia is one example of an anarchic society flourishing; alas, briefly, before it was betrayed by Stalinists and crushed by fascists.
Rocsteady wrote:On the first point, i think you’re massively overestimating the social shift this utopian society would have towards crap jobs - absolutely no one's going to look to sewage workers as heroes, and what would this entail anyway? People saying thanks in the street? No one would know you work in sewage. I don’t know about anyone else here but I wouldn’t be willing to work in such a job on the off chance people are going to think “well done”. We would still need people to stack shelves, etc. These are boring, menial jobs that people aren’t going to do without a tangible gain. [...] I’m sure any chefs on here can back me up but I have a few mates who do so and it’s very far removed from being on the grind to cooking a nice meal for people you care about. People won’t be willing to do the time of the gooseberry fool, bottom of the rung jobs without having the future beneficial prospects.
Second: being honest, I would have just dossed about on here more and watched more films and YT videos. It’s that sort of stuff I’ve given up to have more time to study so would just laze about if I wasn’t promised the monetary gain of being better qualified. I strongly suspect many people would be the same, humans are quite lazy in my experience.
Of course lines of work carry social prestige. How do you know what anyone does? It's one of the first things people talk about. There are plenty of what you might call "difficult" jobs that are made worthwhile for the worker by the social prestige and the personal sense that you are doing something important. People aren't usually motivated by riches or pleasant working conditions to be teachers or nurses, typically they want to have a positive impact, and that's reinforced by other people having respect for those roles (I mean, obviously not everyone, but in general).
I think the problem many have with imagining a post-capitalist society is really because they have only worked under the division of labour, a system which makes people feel divorced from the products of their labour and therefore unable to take any pride in those products. This is not the natural state of things but is a bourgeois capitalist invention originally designed to make factory workers function like machine parts. You are right, people probably aren't going to want to be "night shift shelf stacking guy" at the community warehouse in a utopian society. But there will be a "community warehouse team" who will handle it as part of their overall responsibility. People might not want to be pot-washers, but there will surely be kitchens you can go to where people who enjoy cooking will make you a nice meal.
I know a lot of library staff through my partner, and people literally do volunteer to go put books on shelves (and do other odd-jobs) in the library: for all sorts of reasons, but typically because they think it's an important social project.
For what it's worth, I think you should be allowed to play videogames all day if you want to. But I don't think anyone needs capitalism to become their best selves. If you're the kind of person who needs some external structure to get moving on something (as am I!), then you'd actually find more of that in a community focused society, but you'd also ultimately have the freedom to just do nothing if you really insist on it.
