PROPOSED FUTURES PROJECT: PLEASE FORWARD TO RELEVANT LISTS
SEEKING COLLABORATORS WILLING TO GATHER AND DEVELOP ALTERNATIVE IDEA
PACKAGES FOR USE IN FUTURES WORKSHOPS. SPECIFICALLY ON ECONOMIC
POSSIBILITIES FLOWING FROM A REJECTION OF THE WORD 'WORK'. AS FOLLOWS
The initiative was inspired by a posting to Futurework. Eva Durant
wrote:
>It would help if there were alternative
>ideas in circulation - ain't easy in our present "democracy".
Despite the difficulties with extant models of democracy, new ideas
easily circulate among those who seek them. The dearth of alternative
ideas cannot be blamed on current democracy. Being a long-time active
seeker of alternative economic models, I have yet to find coherent,
fundamentally different, practical alternatives to the 2 big spotlit
concepts which have framed the ideas battleground on the futurework
list.
By practical, I mean ideas sufficiently developed so that they can be
game-simulated and practically trialed by those interested without
requiring their imposition on unwilling populations. The ideas of
Andrez Gorz - the 20000 work-hours system, and Albert & Hahnel -
Participatory Economics, while coherent and fundamentally different,
don't seem to me to be sufficiently practical. The idea of pure
communism, ie, stage 2 world communism, as envisioned by Marx, a global
society in which states have withered away, remains to be articulated
and developed as a practical, implementable possibility within a 21st
century technological context.
So mesmerising is the light shining upon the old bogies - free
enterprise capitalism or planned socialism - that what are typically
posited as alternatives are essentially variants and/or mixes of the
two. Democratic socialism, guaranteed income schemes, LETs schemes,
etc. They are confined to a linguistic framework which is common to
both models. Each assumes a system of national taxation to pay for
public servants who, it is assumed, require incentives to 'work'.
Central to both is the use of the word 'work' along with the related
family of words - 'worker', 'workforce', 'employment', 'retirement',
etc. The viability of both systems depends on the perpetuation of an
inherently deceptive and dysfunctional language game. A game? What
game? Differentiate all mental and physical activities into 2
categories - 'work' and 'not work'. Assume that there is a set of
agreed non-problematic rules or criteria for distinguishing between
them. Cooperate in speech acts by using the words, 'as if' such
consensus exists.
Why is the game deceptive? Because there is no inbuilt work/non-work
time zone in the biological mind/body. Our minds 'work' all of the
time, as do our lungs and hearts, even when we are asleep. In order to
say 'now we are working', 'now we are not working' we have to overlook
this biological and ontological reality, and engage each other in a
let's pretend game. An inherently deceptive game, because we cannot
discern whether a person is 'working' or 'not working' by observing
their activity. Moreover, we cannot tell whether they are 'genuinely'
playing a work/non-work game, or merely acting 'as if'. Even if they
are genuinely playing a work/non-work game at the moment of observation,
we cannot tell 'which' game they are playing. As discussions on this
list have revealed there are many possible ways of distinguishing work
from non-work. Games of pretence can be fun of course, but what is
disturbing is that the pretence has enabled some people to have gained
extraordinary wealth at the expense of others and the environment. We
should begin to ask whether we need, or ought, to continue playing along
with the game? Perhaps there are good and strong moral reasons to
persuade us that we 'ought' to continue, but I remain to be persuaded.
There seems little that is ethical about the work ethic.
Galbraith wrote (Culture of Contentment p33): 'There is no greater
illusion, even fraud, than the use of a single term 'work' to cover what
for some is dreary, painful or socially demeaning and what for others is
enjoyable, socially reputable and economically rewarding.'
If we concur that use of the word 'work' is indeed fraudulent, then
we've all been accomplices in the fraud. If we concur with Galbraith,
integrity requires that we should hereafter refuse to use the word along
with the suspect family of words - worker, employment, unemployment,
retirement, and so on. This presents a serious problem only for those
who believe that words have an essential existence beyond human choice,
and 'should' be retained in perpetuity at all costs. Recognising the
word to be deeply problematic, they may persuade us to cling to it
nonetheless, to keep the word, but REDEFINE its meaning. An absurd
strategy. How are the world's people going to reach agreement on a
redefinition? Attempts to do so, involving only a few, such as on this
list, have gotten nowhere. Even if we could reach agreement, such
strategy will merely add yet another meaning to the baggage of meanings
which the already overloaded old word is required to carry. We need to
face the troublesome truth that the word 'work' as a key tool for
communication and social organisation has become dysfunctional. Like a
broken-down contraption it needs finally to be abandoned. Feminism has
successfully persuaded us to trash certain gender-biasing words. The
future of 'work' belongs with those words in the trash can. Where the
1948 UN Human Rights declaration asserts that we have 'the right to
work' (note that work/non-work distinguishing rules are undeclared), we
should want to add, 'the right not to work' - 'the right not participate
in work/nonwork language games, nor to be counted as a statistic within
the terms of such games (eg, as employed, unemployed)'.
We are left with the disorienting question: what would a future economy
without a work/non-work language game look like? To opt out of the
current economic game implies that a better one is conceived. Clearly,
it would be a different, unprecedented game with new words. I just
can't SEE it, I hear you say.
I have conducted several 'futures' workshops following from the above
line of thinking. Shown this doorway 'out of the box', participants are
challenged to exercise freedom of thought, to be inventive. While
democracy bestows the right to freedom of thought, my experience has
been that few are both willing and able to fully exercise it. Blame it
on our schooling perhaps? Perhaps more Edward de Bono style training is
needed. Or is it simply the case that some people are more inventive
than others?
I would be interested to hear from any on this list who have pursued the
above line of inquiry, or are interested to do so, who are prepared to
let go of the word 'work' and explore the transformative system design
implications. PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO OTHER RELEVANT LISTS.
If there is sufficient interest, we may have the makings of a
fascinating project. The proposed project's first objective will be to
gather and develop a range of well-considered, alternative game packages
which could be simulated and eventually implemented on a global scale,
based on, or resonant with a rejection of the work paradigm. The
intention would be to make these available to 'fundamental change'
workshops and Theobald-inspired discussion groups starting up in
Australia and elsewhere. Perhaps a book or series of monographs could
be published. Perhaps the ideas could be packaged onto CD's as
experiential games. If you are aware of any already developed or
partially developed idea packages, published or unpublished, or of
people who you think would be valuable contributors (including potential
funders), please let me know.
Richard Mochelle
