Is it better to have meaningless toil or should we be paid for living? That is the question, as Hamlet could have said. The big debate on Perlman’s after eight debate this last week concerns a low-key campaign to amend the constitution to include ‘the right to work’ in the Bill of Rights.
On the surface this ‘right to work’ seems to be a sensible suggestion. In a land where millions will never enjoy the experience of being exploited for their labour value the idea of a right to work seems so apple pie essential that its almost de rigeur. It also seems to be a pretty dumb solution to a serious problem.
So one listened to some staggeringly asinine argument put forward in defence of the proposal, some by proponents who were allegedly university professors. Listening to someone make a series of pronouncements; a collection of statements; pronounced, nay declaimed, with dramatic effect to justify an impossible demand. Each statement, was a statement of perception, and a valid statement: for instance: ‘Huge numbers of people are unemployed. Other people have jobs. Huge numbers of people live on five hundred bucks a month. I met a person [from the same previous underclass] who was drinking whiskey that costs a thousand bucks a bottle.’ All these were individually reasonable statements of fact. Then suddenly :’This is wrong!’ [ why it was wrong was unclear] Conclusion: ‘ there must be something wrong with a system that lets some people have vast wealth and others nothing at all.’
Perlman did make a valiant attempt to propose an alternative argument although one was never certain that his heart is in the matter. Nonetheless he chose the popular [and rational] defence that we are a capitalist society and that the whiskey drinker takes huge risks and makes a relatively huge reward. And to a democratic mass intent on pursuing the logic of defining the fruits of anyone else’s energy as ‘ill gotten gains’ available to be snatched as Evo Morales has just done with the Bolivian Oil fields this argument of unfairness is naturally seductive.
And of course all joined together they made a remarkably illogical but nonetheless emotionally rendering plea. How can one possibly deny this plea?
However during this entire presentation not one person, not even Perlman, and we hear it often enough on his programme, ever acknowledged the obvious truth. THAT THE ERA OF JOBS HAS COME AND GONE-the new wealth of the planet seems to emerge from no labour at all or at best from armies of machines overseen by immensely talented and avaricious hordes of dealers, traders and general wheeler dealers functioning in a mysterious world of derivatives, hedge funds, warrants, index linked commodities funds and general arbitrage. In fact the truth is that we live in a ‘real’ world of tertiary sectors services driven added value and that the mystery of the ‘virtual’ money that drives our planet with such fierce determination, is so arcane it simply could not [or perhaps would not] be grasped by the proponents of ‘the right to work’.
It was one of Perlman’s more surreal presidings. It is almost quaint that there are people who believe that there will ever again be work enough to keep all who would be exploited for their labour value in a blessed state of exploitation. So the presentations on behalf of the motion seemed therefore self-serving. The sound of those who beat a drum for the support it garners and the ready source of cash from supporters. In the case of the academic promoter of the campaign it seemed a hack attempt to bolster a sagging career.We were told of country’s that have the “right to work” enshrined in their constiutions but interestingly none of the proponents told us who they were. I gathered subsequently that one of them is Germany and i was told that twenty years ago this right was declared to be unenforcible in that country where the “unemployment rate remains one of the highest in Europe.
This then is the argument that should have been presented in response to the demand to amend the constitution [again for the fifteenth time]. I can assure you that this argument will be as difficult to sell, as the ‘right to work’ argument is impractical. This argument, that all citizens should receicve “BAsic PAY”, will arguably affect the supply of willing labour and will gradually, through the market mechanism improve the condition of those who work while materially impacting on the lifestyles of those who are desperate for support. So if we are going to agitate for a right then the right we should be agitating for should be ‘the right to Basic Pay. Because of the argument’s impact on the labour supply it will be opposed by the Right.
Because the long-term implications of the proposal require that solving the problem of the unemployed and therefore incomeless citizenry leads inexorably to the logic of The Privatised State the Left will oppose it. [The world has already spectacularly failed to solve the problem of ‘work for all’ through the horrors of the late Soviet style nationalised State throughout the equally late 20th century-Thus the left’s darling hypothesis has already been proven a failure and any attempt to reinstitute a failed exp-eriment would be a violation of human rights.]
It is a modern cliché that the world is experiencing so-called ‘jobless growth’-. [Although the great mushroom growth surge of the mid decade period over the past few years has wiped out the losses of the preceding post Y2K [remember Y2K] /9/11 meltdown of the global economy and no one wants to lose more again.] Thus the entire thrust of the past five decades has continued: -downsize downscale; use technology to replace humans, and develop technology that eliminates even those who create technology-[assuming that to be possible.]
In effect the outcome of a century of social engineering is that the worker is being liberated from the requirement to sell labour as the machines take over [again]. -Even the knowledge worker is being released from the purgatory of daily toil: there is a reason why the IT world has become a less desirable area of employment in our new age for assertively ambitious humans. Gradually we are moving to a world which may well leave only those who can juggle and entertain, like soccer players and popstars to earn the big bucks while ordinary folk must learn to subsist on basic pay.
Logically this upsurge in the growth of our planet has created opportunities for employment in our ‘knowledge/services’ economy but it is a truism that these jobs, in IT, tourism, call centres or fast food outlets are numerically fewer and curiously poorly paid relative to say working in a car assembly plant. The commodities and manufacturing environments that underpin and drive this new services economy are also being pruned. A less destructible robot that together with fellow robots controls the entire vehicle manufacturing process has superseded that labourer who a century ago would be crippled for life because a crankcase fell on his foot while he was moving it around. Robots don’t agitate for the right to work in a job that gives them no satisfaction but simply provides access to the ‘bucks’ we all need to survive the day.
The question obviously arises. Why do these proponents of ‘the right to work’ seek to enforce a right that they despise? Their philosophy is founded on the premise all ‘work’ is exploitation because it is subject to the law of supply and demand. Therefore they have successfully agitated for the right to drive up the price of their labour by cornering the market for their labour somehow. The outcome of this game is that labour is less in demand. The problems of labour today are the outcome of the truth that-the market rules.
As an example of how the market rules I offer you -The outcome for instance of this long drawn out security workers strike which has seen more than fifty people murdered in defence of the ‘right to have more money for the same amount of labour’. This outcome will be fewer [albeit ‘smarter’ and better paid] people working in the security industry than there are now
A certain number of so-called marginal ‘security’ businesses will be driven out of business because they cannot squeeze more income from a competitive market to cover the additional costs resulting from the strike. Those workers will become unemployed and will have to start practising for real the trade learned so effectively over the past months of tossing people from trains.
Additionally the public has been horrified that, apparently, murderers are guarding their homes. Cameras will replace workers in strategic environments and fewer people will watch more video screens. This is as inevitable as the sun rising each day. The sheer joy of walking around in camera saturated downtown Jozi today is testimony to the effectiveness of this changed approach to securing a living environment.
The truth is obvious: there are no more jobs. The present government came to power on a claim to ‘create’ a million or more jobs and they are discovering that it is impossible.
What would be more sensible though would be instead to agitate for ‘BASIC PAY’.
Basic Pay-I hear you say
What is ‘Basic PAY’-Aagh that’s the rub-
What indeed is basic pay- ?
To be continued-.