- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Ditto (correct link)

Posted by: Stoller on January 21, 19100 at 12:13:44:

In Reply to: as always Barry, a pleasure hammering out our differences posted by Krasny on January 20, 19100 at 11:32:19:

Stoller: Well, job rotation would end private property.

: That just has the ring to it of putting the cart before the horse. The dialectic is undoubtably at work here, but really. Do you honestly believe you cannot have job rotation in a private property setting? Many companies subscribe to the concept of self-directed work teams already wherein workers are multiskilled and interchangeable... and before you haul off (I know I would if someone as tauntingly annoying as me were needling an idea *I* held dear...) and say it's not the same thing, I would argue that it is in most practical day to day essentials... including in the matter of its practicability in the work place.

Workers may 'rotate' jobs in certain companies, but bosses and workers don't rotate jobs (in capitalist society).

Nevertheless, job rotation is not my SOLE issue. (Democratic production is another issue; the argument for equal pay yet another.) I do not assert that job rotation alone will 'create' communism. I just think it will help it succeed.

: Now it will be that once private property is abolished, you have to find a new way for people to relate to things - as producers and as consumers... and job rotation may be one of those new ways. You still have many obstacles as I see them. Not the least of which is who rotates through the brain surgeon's job when the brain surgeon is making widgets... doesn't fairness and equality demand an answer?

Not every surgeon has to be on widget duty at the same time.

:... as Lenin said, we should 'experiment in everything.' This implies a scientific approach of trial and error with these issues.

He was unequivocal on some points, however.

And 'abolishing... the distinction between manual workers and brain workers' was one of his primary definitions of abolishing classes ('A Great Beginning,' Collected Works volume 29, Progress1965, p. 421).




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