Dave Markland wrote:
> regarding the parecon model. It seems to me that Albert and Hahnel have
> simply thought through the process of democratizing an economy; the parecon
> model has several features which, though I suspect they would be
> unnecessary, are simply the logical way to organize a libertarian economy in
> the event of various problems which may arise. eg. parecon proposes that,
> in order for one's job to be deemed worthwhile, it shall need a balance of
> workplace responsibiblity and arduousness of tasks. Thus, in any workplace
> there will be an explicit evaluation of all tasks s to their desirability.
> One will need to perform shitty and glamorous jobs. Now, it seems to me
> that such an explicit feature would only be necesary if all workers agreed
> on what these good and bad tasks are. From my experience there are some
> people in every workplace who like what I would call the shitty tasks for
> whatever reason. Thus this feature of a parecon may rarely be utilized.
I concur with this interpretation of what Mike and I were trying to do,
including the observation that there might be parts of what we proposed
that others might well disagree with -- such as balanced job complexes
-- that do not mean we would disagree about other parts -- such as
participatory planning procedures or payment according to sacrifice or
effort rather than the value of one's contribution.
To briefly clarify the idea behind balancing job complexes: First, we
proposed balancing the tasks grouped into jobs in two different ways for
two different purposes. Balancing for empowerment was suggested to keep
formally equal rights to participate in workplace decision making from
becoming a kind of dead letter. If some go to meetings and evaluate
business alternatives and options all day every day while others sweep
floors all the time they will hardly have effectively equal opportunity
to affect economic decisions in their workplace even if they each have
exactly one vote in the workers council. That's the problem. Our
solution was to suggest that there be a serious attempt to make sure
that all engaged in some tasks we called "empowering" and the tasks that
do little to empower one be shared around. We also proposed balancing
job complexes for desirability. Here the goal was not to advance the
cause of self-management, but the cause of economic justice. Dilemma:
How can it be fair if some people's work lives are much less desirable
than the work lives of others? First of all, this is logically separable
from balancing for empowerment. And one could consider the possibility
of achieving overall economic justice for those with less desirable jobs
by giving them greater consumption rights. We opted for the more direct
approach. As for how they could be balanced for desirability, actually
that is quite simple. A committee makes up the complexes -- imperfectly.
But since everyone is free to bid on any job complexes for which they
technically qualify, if they are not balanced for desirability there
will be long applicant lists for some and short ones for others. That
information tells the job balancing committee how to adjust tasks and
times to get closer to equal desirability.
Of course, what any two people will think is equally desirable will not
be the same. So once the jobs are balanced for desirability -- in that
usual economists' average sense -- you and I will bid on the ones that
meet our own peculiar preferences. I mowed the grass in my family
because I enjoyed the meticulous monotony of the nice even rows and
sense of steady progress. My son opted for dusting. Each to his own.
