This is Richard Wolff from Democracy at Work responding to another Ask Prof Wolff
question. And actually today it's two questions: one from 'Ahmad Garan Foley',
a member of our website community and the other one from 'Vidit',
a member of our Patreon community, because their questions overlap and I can handle them together.
'Ahmad''s question is very, very important. He says in a worker co-op based economy
(unlike a capitalist one) how would we handle workers who have different skills?
Would those with more skills be paid more - the way that happens in capitalism - and
so on? This is, really, a wonderful question because it allows me to focus
everyone's attention on key differences between a capitalist system and a worker co-op system.
Here's the basic story. In a capitalist system the only skills that get you a job are the ones
that make a profit for your employer. That's how capitalism works. The skills you have that are not
relevant to the capitalist profit don't count. That is, to be precise, he doesn't count them. He
doesn't care if you're good with children, he doesn't care if you're a wonderful co-worker,
he doesn't really care about what happens to your family. He cares about what you do
in the hours that you're working that enhances his profit.
The worker co-op community would operate completely differently. It would look at all
your skills because it deals with all of you. It wants to be there to handle needs you have;
perhaps physical, perhaps mental. It needs to take into account your family, it needs to take
into account whether you're a leader, whether you're flexible, whether you have intellectual
interests that can open up opportunities for the business in the future that they can't
even imagine at this point. Because it's a community that has to take care of itself.
And let me drive home why this matters so much.
If you have a skill and the employer pays you that's what the employer cares about
but if it's not a skill that's all that valuable to the employer they won't pay you very much.
And you know what that might mean? That might mean you need to take a second job because you're not
paid really very well. And that means you're not going to have much time for your children.
And that means that they're going to be, perhaps, neglected if the same problems affect your husband
or your wife in a relationship etc. All of those things matter. All of those things shape what kind
of lives we all have. They should be taken into account when the time comes to decide
what kind of job you have, what kind of support you get. But that's not how capitalism works.
The capitalist doesn't have to worry about helping you through family crisis, through
difficulty with your children. The capitalist, again, buys whatever skills you have that help
his profit. Everything else is of no concern or so secondary as to basically disappear from view.
And here's where 'Vidit''s question comes in. Then it asks 'look,
I know so many people that it says who have great skills, who have gone to school or have great
ambitions but can't get or find a job that makes use of all that they want to contribute.' Exactly
right. But that's a system problem. That's because capitalism, in a way, holds us all
hostage when it comes to jobs. The only jobs that will be there are the ones that make a profit.
Capitalists will tell you, if they're honest, we're not here to solve social problems, we're not
here to make your life productive, we're not here to build the community. We're here to make money.
That's what we get rewarded for and if we don't do it that's what we get punished for. That's how the
system works. And that's exactly right, everything else is secondary. You only get a job if that
someone makes a profit hiring you. And they want that profit to be maximized. And they
don't care or want you distracted by all the other things that a rich diverse life involves.
That's a problem of the system and, ironically, it undermines capitalism itself. Because here's the
irony: if you treat people so narrowly (I'm only interested in you for this particular
thing you do to enhance my profit) and you ignore everything else, everything else is going to come
back and bite you as a capitalist. The worker who is unhappy because there's no proper fit between
what he or she loves to do on the one hand and the job they have in their life on the other... that's
an unhappy person, whose lack of opportunity to do what he or she studied and hope to be able to do
will eat at them physically and mentally. And they may very well stop being a very
profitable employee because you've neglected all of the other dimensions except that one that led
you to hire the person in the first place. This is a bitter lesson that capitalism teaches so many.
And not the least important reason to go beyond capitalism is that we ought to have
jobs that fit people, not the other way around. And we certainly ought to have the jobs we do
as human beings not held hostage (because we're the majority who do the work)... held hostage to
the profits of a very small subsection of our society. Not a good way to build communities.
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That extends the reach, that gives the impetus, if you like, to people to think about these things,
perhaps in new and different ways. And talk about them, which is a way of bringing change.
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know that that will be appreciated as well. Thank you.