raghu wrote: > That's an interesting answer. But I don't think it works. > > The problem is that every individual working person is in a Prisoner's > Dilemma-type situation: what is rational for each person individually is to > collaborate with the capitalist and screw your working brothers and sisters.
The prisoner's dilemma game (the PD to its friends) assumes that the two "prisoners" can't communicate with each other and make decisions simultaneously. Also, the standard textbook PD isn't a repeated game, so that the prisoners can't learn from their mistakes. Naturally enough, the real world often refuses to obey the PD assumptions. Under an employer-imposed piece-rate system, for example, the prisoners will learn how to communicate with each other to restrict output (and punish rate breakers), since they know that if they succumb to the PD's mutual defection, the boss will cut the amount of pay per unit produced. By the way, this happens in the real world. The PD story works better to the extent that the world approximates a perfect market, with many competitors. Even in market competition, the existence of labor unions, communities, and shared culture help avoid the self-destructive competition that the PD implies. > So class solidarity does not make sense from a purely self-interested > perspective. You can just as well say that purely self-interested behavior does not make sense from a class solidarity perspective. After all, the PD game tells us that mutual defection is mutual destruction. Each worker has an individual interest and a collective interest. Sometimes they conflict. However, if they can create institutions promoiting class solidarity (culture, unions, political parties), they can create conditions underwhich self- and collective interest are in synch. This involves abolishing the conditions described by PD assumptions. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
