I’m pretty much in agreement with you Jason, “… for not using the term Effort Rating as a formal way to communicate about income from work in a PE.” Considering that many anarchists, and those with strong anarchist sympathies like Chomsky, and others, some within the p2p community, have trouble with remuneration for work in principle, it’s almost an over step. But it is kind of ironic that some anarchists in their critique of PE use the effort rating aspect to bring up the possibility of manipulating the system, when they themselves don’t present any kind of accounting system when it comes to fulfilling the maxim from each to each, as if manipulating that system consciously, and even unconsciously, would never be an issue.
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I’ve made all the “points” I want to already. I’m just trying to explore: Jason doesn’t like using the word effort, and doesn’t like co-workers to “rate” one another w.r.t. to efforts, and says:
“With any issues of co-workers lacking motivation and dropping below a minimum level of effort/intensity expected, I would want to find out why, how they are feeling, what needs of theirs are not being met, and explore solutions together. There could be a range of reasons. Perhaps the job isn’t a good match for them. I’d favour this approach over having different grades of effort linked to pay.”
Why assume that everyone WANTS to achieve the same level of effort/intensity in work? Why not leave that choice up to people to decide for themselves? I don’t think it is “dishonorable” if a someone wants to work at a lower level of intensity than others in their workplace… as long as they are willing to accept less compensation because they chose to make less of a sacrifice. If a workplace does not reward people somewhat differently when people exert different effort they end up forcing everyone to make the same choice w.r.t. the tradeoff between intensity and income. I don’t know why we should do that if it is not necessary.
I wouldn’t assume the same intensity, I would expect a minimum intensity over time. That’s not the same thing, but that’s just my preference.
I agree with you though. I do think that it should be a choice for each workplace to decide themselves, which is really the point I was trying to make. If a workplace wanted to allow people to get paid less per hour for working at a lower intensity as you suggest, then I think they should be able to do so if they choose, even if it’s not my preferred method and I think that could only work in certain contexts and would be problematic in a lot of settings, especially in the service sector.
So really, my argument is why have a blanket position about the method workplaces choose to implement income? Mostly, I am not keen on the word ‘rating’ as an official term, and I wanted to question whether it is the best choice to say that everyone receives an effort ‘rating’ in a participatory economy, given that we all seem to agree, in this discussion at least, that workers in Workers’ Councils have the autonomy to decide on how they go about sharing income between themselves.
So to clarify, it’s really the word ‘rating’ that I am proposing could be omitted. From my own experience, it puts people off and do we gain anything by using it?
What do you think?
Robin emailed me some further thoughts on this which I am sharing on his behalf below:
Robin:
These are just more thoughts about what Jason has written on a subject that will continue to be debated.I think Jason and I are in TOTAL agreement, and we are both ENTIRELY HAPPY with leaving this to each individual WC to decide. And that is really the important point.
Just to clarify, that also means that if a WC decided it wanted to reward its members according to some measure of how valuable each member’s contribution was to the enterprise output, i.e. they wanted to try to implement maxim 2 and not maxim 3, we would not prevent them from doing so. We would simply encourage and support the minority of members in the WC who continued to argue against implementing maxim 2 instead of maxim 3. And we would expect different political organizations and movements in a participatory society to continue to argue that maxim 3 was fair while maxim 2 is not, and therefore why this WC was doing something that is not fair. Specifically not fair to their members who are less able. And I should also point out that there is a danger in this. Will there be an incentive for those who are more able to flock to WCs which use maxim 2 instead of maxim 3? There will be! So the policy of allowing WCs to go about internal rating as they choose does have a cost. And there are some advocates for a participatory economy who are understandably very uncomfortable with that! So in my view we accept that because the alternative – outsiders dictating to a WC how they must rate one another – is even worse.
Compensation according to sacrifice is also something I think we agree on in principle as what is fair. We can argue over to what extent there are differences in sacrifices people make in a workplace. I suspect Jason thinks there really won’t be much difference after jobs have been balanced for desirability. However, I’m not so sure about how successfully we either can always balance for desirability, OR if we should always strive to do so. The only reason we should have to balance for desirability is if we do NOT compensate members whose work is less desirable. And I think there may sometimes be good reasons NOT to do that, i.e. not to balance for desirability, but instead to compensate those who do the less desirable jobs.
For example, in some workplaces there are tasks which are more dangerous even after we implement all the appropriate safety rules we should. Think about construction work on skyscrapers. Some workers are walking on beams thousands of feet in the air while others are not. SCARY! Or mining coal: Some workers are planting explosives in mine shafts while others are not. DANGEROUS! We could do one of two things in these situations: (1) We could try to organize jobs so everyone did some walking on high beams, and everyone did some planting of explosives. But I’m not sure that is the best idea. There is another option. If a member spends more time doing those tasks we can simply compensate them more. Or, what I’m saying is that the members of the WC could decide they would rather handle it that way.
The words “effort” and “rate.”
Effort : Here is my problem:
(1) I KNOW FOR A FACT that sometimes I am exerting more effort and sometimes I am exerting less effort. When my future wife took me to meet her parents I was making some effort to be pleasant, both for her sake and for the sake of my future relationship with some people who would be important new people in my own life. At the end of the visit when we were driving home I told my future wife that I had made some effort, but the truth was I could have done better. I don’t mean I could have been more successful in my interaction with them, I meant I just could have put more effort into it. And I apologized for that, and promised to make a greater effort in the future… which I did in subsequent visits. I know there were years when I put more effort into my teaching and research, and years in which I put less effort into my teaching job.
(2) I also DON’T WANT TO ALWAYS BE EXERTING MAXIMUM EFFORT… or any particular level of “effort” even if it is not maximum effort… all the time. And I suspect that is true of many others. So why should we try to achieve some level of expected effort on everyone’s part in a WC? If there was no way to make things fair when people during a month, or year have chosen to exert different levels of effort, then to achieve fair outcomes we would have to try to arrange for everyone over a month or year to put in the same amount of effort. But there IS a way to allow people to choose how much effort they want to exert and still have outcomes be fair if we compensate people who chose to exert more effort.
(3) It seems to me that in Jason’s view anyone who puts in less effort than his or her workmates is doing something wrong… is being a slacker. And if all are compensated equally I would agree they are doing something wrong. But if they are happy to accept less compensation in exchange for less effort, in my view they would not be doing anything that merits reproach. In other words, there is no shame in exerting less effort if one is happy to accept lower compensation than those who choose to exert more effort.
Rate : Here is my problem:
(1) Nobody likes to be rated. And most people don’t like rating others. Drawing “invidious” distinctions is unpleasant and can easily lead to bad feelings. But what is the alternative? Anarchists are so averse to “rating” one another that they argue for “to each according to need.” And I might add that when they say “need” they mean what each person says their own “need” is.
(2) If those who exert less effort and make less sacrifices receive less compensation there is no shame in their lower rating. It is understood as a personal choice, rather than a criticism.
(3) But that leaves the question of whether we trust everyone to rate themselves, or we do not.
(4) I used to make two grades for every student. My estimate of the quality of their performance compared to other students. And my estimate of their effort compared to other students. And I used to ask them to give themselves two grades as well. Our grades did not always coincide. And there was a greater disparity in our “effort” grades than in our “performance” grades. Hence my reluctance to accept “self-effort rating.”
(5) Rating means evaluation by someone else. There is no denying this is unpleasant. But can we dispense with it? Are there just some parts of life that are unpleasant, but trying to avoid them is being like the proverbial ostrich who sticks its head in the ground when danger approaches, and is therefore not the best answer?
This reminds me of when I worked on some joint projects with a larger digital tech worker cooperative some years ago. They had a 3:1 maximum pay ratio. Lowest daily income was £100 and highest was £300. They aspired to have a flat equal pay policy, but haven’t come closer to achieving that because they had to keep the higher salaries to attract hiring highly sought after senior software developers who could get bigger salaries elsewhere. A perfect example of the desire for maxim 3 clashing with maxim 2 in a market setting.
In the context of a Participatory Economy though, where every workplace in the economy is governed by its self-managing workers’ council, and each workplace gets an equal pot of income (assuming the same total hours, number of workers and SB>SC), which they are free to distribute between themselves as they see fit, which is separate to the opportunity cost for hiring labour that they are charged, and in the context of participatory planning, does any pressure towards rewarding for maxim 2 still remain, and if so, to what degree? Could you expand on that Robin?
I think “rating” and “effort” are negative buzz words for leftists and that’s why you don’t like them. We’re all nice people doing our best and trying to cooperate. We don’t like others sitting in judgement over us, and we don’t like sitting in judgement of others. We would all like to be mutually trusting… which is why anarchists like the idea of “to each according to need” by which they mean people’s self-declared needs… which the rest of us also do not question.
I share that vision of what would be nice. I also believe that people CAN treat each other in that way successfully. But I think that is only possible after people have learned they can trust one another. And I think that requires a shared experience in which people have been treated fairly so they can trust that others will continue to do so on their own accord.
BUT, unfortunately that is certainly NOT the experience people have lived in capitalism. So that trust is not there initially… it has to be earned, so to speak, and not simply assumed. In my view many will not trust their workmates to self-monitor fairly on their own in the early years of a participatory economy. Many will look at their fellow workers with an eye to whether they are “putting in as much effort as I am,” whether they are “making as much of a sacrifice as I am w.r.t. the tasks we are each performing.”
This term seems to have fallen out of vogue, but the phrase “gold bricking” used to mean that someone was just going through the motions while others were working hard. And during labor strife one tactic of workers before resorting to strike has traditionally been to “work to rules” which means putting in no more effort than necessary to avoid committing an offense you could be fired for under the terms of your employment contract.
IN ANY CASE… in my view there is no getting around the fact that many will find it necessary to do those unpleasant things that none of us like – sitting in judgement of others and having them judge us as well – even if we all aspire not to any longer have to do this at some point in the future. So for me the “sitting in judgement” is an unfortunate necessity at least initially, and the only question is what the nasty “invidious comparisons” are based on. Should workmates be sitting in judgment of one another’s efforts and sacrifices? Or should they be sitting in judgment over how much their labor contributes to the social value of their WC’s output? We agree on what should be the basis for any invidious comparisons – any differences in efforts and sacrifices, rather than any differences in contributions to the social value of WC output. Where we seem to disagree is if ANY invidious comparisons are necessary. I don’t think many will accept the anarchist maxim, at least initially. And I don’t think that is unreasonable on their part.
All of which is independent of whether we leave it up to individual WCs to decide how they want to handle this… including deciding they want to go “full anarchist” from the get-go! I’m sure there will be WCs which opt for the anarchist maxim in the first year of a participatory economy… since a not insignificant percentage of those who help give birth to a post-capitalist economic system will be committed anarchists! But I will be very surprised if there are not many WCs which do NOT feel they are ready to do that in the early years of a participatory economy. And even when committed anarchists find themselves working in a WC with many who are not committed anarchists, they may discover that avoiding all invidious comparisons among workmates is something that can only be achieved over time.
Regarding the word “rating.” Whatever word you want to use, the bottom line is that every WC must assign every member an income which is the income that individual has when they are making consumption requests through their household and neighborhood consumption council. What word would you use to describe how that income is being assigned? I use the word “rating,” and believe that what is being “rated” are people’s efforts and sacrifices in work.
In educational institutions we have “grades” we give out… even if we give every student the same “grade.” But I don’t think you would find the word “grade” anymore pleasant than the word “rating” – even if a WC decided to give all its members the same “grade.” I think what you find distasteful is what Thorstein Veblen called “invidious comparisons” of any kind. And the issue is whether this unpleasant aspect of life can be avoided (1) in the early years of a participatory economy, or (2) ever. I’m hopeful, but agnostic on #2. But I do not believe invidious comparisons can be avoided in the early of a participatory economy before trust in our fellow humans has increased substantially.
I would avoid using a word to describe the ‘how’. I would say something like: a person gets income for their sacrifice at work as decided by the democratically agreed upon norms of their workplace.
Or, what what do you think about using the word salary? (= Fixed compensation for services, paid to a person on a regular basis.), i.e A person gets a salary based on their sacrifice at work as decided by the democratically agreed upon norms of their workplace. People know what a salary is. Or does the term have a too capitalistic connotation?