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Work as it is,work as it could be.
"That would
never work!"
A typical response, I imagine, to the description of a
society where people work because they want to, on a voluntary basis.
Such a society would not work,
we are told, because no one in it would do any work.
However, that view of work as, well, work--rather than something
enjoyable--tells us more about today's society, where our motivation to
work is primarily the need to pay rent and put food on the table.
Immersed as we are in this reality, it is not surprising that it shapes
our view of labour in general (past, present and future), so the idea
of a society based on labour performed willingly, without any form of
coercion, seems ludicrous to most people.
Given that typical outlook, it is not easy to convince someone of the
necessity and feasibility of a fundamentally new mode of labour by
simply elaborating the
description of work in the future (which can never be an exact
blueprint).
No matter how appealing that future society might appear, compared to
present-day reality, it will probably still seem to be a figment of the
imagination.
A better approach, I think, is to start with the present, looking at
the work-related problems we face and considering their root cause. On
that basis it should
become clearer that socialism is not an idle dream but the real
solution to undeniably real problems, and that the workplace problems
we experience today
can also be solved by, or will cease to exist in, that new form of
society.
Work problems
Most of us have first-hand experience of bad jobs,
so
there is no need to present concrete examples here. But if we consider
why a particular job is unpleasant it generally comes down to one or a
combination of the following factors: long hours, low pay, high
intensity, monotony, and (for lack of a more precise category) the
boss.
We know all of this--perhaps too well--but here I want to consider the
reason why these problems occur.
That answer is not hard to find if we reflect, just for a moment, on
the essential nature of capitalism as a society where production is a
means of generating profit for a minority ruling class that owns and
controls the means of production. It is no exaggeration to say that
those two closely intertwined facts (i.e., the profit motive and class
ownership) are at the root of most of the problems we face at the
workplace.
The hunger for profit is insatiable; no capitalist will settle for a
five percent profit if there is a chance to get six. This is not merely
a question of individual
greed, but the systematic pressures of competition that capitalists
ignore at the risk of ceasing to be capitalists. This drives them--not
unwillingly--to
squeeze as much surplus value out of workers as possible, whether by
prolonging the working day, lowering wages, or
increasing the intensity of labour.
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