My dear internet,
How do we uncouple your ability to consumer from your position in a hierarchy?
[ Please note: It seems fairly obvious that capitalism is hierarchical, and the wealth we extract from it has to do with our place in that feudal state, and not with any economic output. ]
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I'm bored. I'll nibble.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me like capitalism is more a "continuum of having". The haves versus the have-nots, as they say. All the graphs of poverty and the 1% are curves, not trees, so I'm going to stick with that notion, even though it's probably not relevant to the question.
So... my "ability to consume". Not my proudest ability, but hey, I'm an American, so it's kind of in my blood.
Certainly seems possible to "spend below your means", so at least for the wealthy, their consumption ability is already decoupled. Yes, the 1%-er could buy a Maserati, but she buys a Honda instead.
However, the corollary is clearly not true. If the consumer is living on minimum wage, supporting a household, there's probably no discretionary income, so consumption is strictly directed to [cheap] essentials.
The first "solution" that comes to mind requires destroying the basis of the question: replace capitalism with socialism. Someone (the government) would have to intervene to ensure consumerism is spread around evenly.
My second thought is awfully speculative. Everything's free! Or at least your essentials are covered, so your minimum wage is all discretionary income. Even here, you're capped though. If I only have to worry about buying things I want (games, bikes, books) because shelter and food is covered by some magical government, I'm still limited by my income. Mike Bloomberg can afford 415 bikes where my boss can afford 5, and I can only afford 3.
I feel like I have some intuition of what you're asking, but you're not actually asking that in the words you've assembled.
ReplyDeleteAt least I assume you're not asking what the words indicate ... it's a tautology that my ability to consume will be coupled with some hierarchy (if only "the hierarchy created by measuring people's ability to consume, and sorting them on that basis").
alright, how do we uncouple your access to resources from your position in a hierarchy?
ReplyDeleteGive me a winning lottery ticket.
ReplyDeleteWilliam, "a hierarchy" is not sufficiently narrow a scope to make your goal here possible. Again, you cannot uncouple access to resources from position in the hierarchy defined by being ordered by access to resources.
ReplyDeleteI have the feeling that when you say "a hierarchy" you're actually talking about some already-existing (though flexible and fluid) hierarchy ... the hierarchy of current power relationships, perhaps?
Like, you're asking what you think is a simple question, with a complex answer, but I think it's actually an insanely complicated question. And the problem is, there are many very simple (but useless) answers to the wrong questions.
I don't think it's a simple question, nor do I think it is finished being asked. I'm not sure we can ask the question.
ReplyDeleteFolks have asked variants on the question any number of times, and gotten really workable answers.
ReplyDeletee.g.: How do we uncouple access to resources from noble titles? With a guillotine!
But yes, Tony, you are much closer to the question that I want to ask than is Todd, which is probably my fault.
ReplyDeleteAnother way to get at this question: How do we dismantle the structures that ensure that my labor is owned by capitalists, my ability to eat and have shelter predicated upon staying in their good graces, and that I have it easier than practically every other human being?
I'm assuming you'd prefer a solution that doesn't involve guillotines?
ReplyDeleteEven Thomas Jefferson thought the price of freedom was worth a few royal necks. Perhaps it is also worth a few plutocratic necks.
ReplyDeleteProbably not, and I for sure don't feel justified to wield the guillotine, nor do I feel morally justified in asking someone else to do what I feel I ought not.
Well, how do you feel about farming out the violence needed to shift power structures to the state monopoly on violence?
ReplyDeletei.e. Organize, vote, and thereafter foment legislation for a system that incrementally flattens the distribution of resources from the bottom, and strengthens support for collective bargaining.
I feel like that's not working; as much as we've gotten the ACA, we don't have universal health care and we've witnessed the destruction of labor as an identity.
ReplyDeleteThat is, I doubt a one of us identifies as labor.
I think that's really fair, but I also think that the collapse of labor-identity (particularly) is a contingent fact of recent history, not a forever-inevitability. There's all manner of stuff, from Reagan and the air traffic controllers to the "lone programmer" myth that have combined to make labor an identity unreasonably tied to factories.
ReplyDeleteI think that if you want to give "people without personal power" the ability to usefully advocate for change against the upper levels of that hierarchy, you're going to need collective power, whether that be a reformulated labor, a political party with a firmer compass pointing toward economic justice, or something else.
Otherwise you're asking the question "how do people without power exercise power?", to which the answer, as George put it, is "When you try to accomplish your goals using your Poverty stat, good luck with that."
Yeah. So, I guess it's: How do we give class identity to office workers that aligns them with other labor and, largely, against capital?
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine a future timeline that dismantles plutocratic power that does not at some point involve pointing guns at plutocrats. Exceptional individuals aside, the entire class is never going to say, "Well that's a great argument, I'll voluntarily abdicate all my unequal power."
ReplyDeleteWill redistribution of wealth eliminate jobs? Jobs seem to be the main form of hierarchy you're talking about. Until we're in a post-scarcity society it's hard to see jobs going away.
ReplyDeleteMost jobs are (probably) unnecessary, Sam Zeitlin. All of mine have been, that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteJosh Roby That's ... problematic. What's the shortest line from here to The Culture?
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols Guillotine.
ReplyDeleteLemme propose the reverse and see if it sits better with you:
ReplyDeleteThe plutocrats will not allow their power to be dismantled, and they can pay people to stop the dismantling with violence.
Interestingly, there is no guillotine involved in Banks' description of the origin of The Culture.
ReplyDeletePlutocrats will not allow anyone to dismantle power that they believe themselves to have ... but society (and society's institutions) have a funny way of drifting people's beliefs such that one generation mostly believes they have the power to (say) consign people to the poor-house at whim, and a future generation mostly believes that's not a thing they can (or should) have the power to do.
ReplyDeleteIOW: If you're a believer in incrementalism, there are paths forward with only incremental violence ... Civil Rights Movement, rather than mass-guillotining. It's frustrating as heck, though, because so much of that social sea change is of the type about which it was truly said "Change seems impossible until it seems inevitable."
I would suggest you already have an answer, William, because you are doing it right now: Talk, listen, engage, argue. Don't reject or avoid people who disagree with you. Listen to them conscientiously and generously, then compassionately explain to them why you think differently.
ReplyDeleteThat seems less effective than the guillotine because it's less dramatic. But the guillotine was the part of the French Revolution that was least effective and caused the most harm. Much more effective: community organizers and pamphleteers.
There are plenty of plutocrats who would like to see a more equitable society in which everyone's needs are met... certainly many of them would like to see America having more of a European-style society with less inequality and more social support. There are several reasons why it's in their best interest--the guillotine is one. Another one: ever increasing inequality threatens their wealth because when people can't afford to buy, and have used up their ability to borrow, they stop buying stuff. That's one of the reasons we have periodic recessions.
The real challenge is convincing workers.
For what it's worth, I've always thought of myself as a working stiff, even though I've worked in a cubicle for a long time, and I've got a decent retirement plan.