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So you see, I claim that
work in a duly ordered community should be made attractive by the consciousness
of usefulness, by its being carried on with intelligent interest, by
variety, and by its being exercised amidst pleasurable surroundings.
-William Morris
The media industry in the U.S. had a market value as of August 1988 of
about $480 billion. Of that $249.2 billion was in publishing - $175.5billion
for newspapers, $42.6 billion for magazines, and $3 1.1 billion for books. Of the rest, TV and radio broadcasting
accounted for $113.1 billion,
cable $88.2 billion, and movie/video
$29.9 billion.
There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a vagina,
and all other occupations should be
open to everyone.
-Gloria Steinem
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In this chapter
we will compare a few hypothetical participatory workplaces with capitalist
and coordinator alternatives to clarify points made last chapter. In
real participatory workplaces many workers may choose to structure their
work differently than we describe in this chapter. Naturally, future
workers will find countless acceptable ways to meet participatory norms
depending on their circumstances, tastes, and local conditions. The
options presented here are possibilities, not recipes that must be followed.
Book Publishing
How would
workers in a book publishing enterprise define and assign tasks? What
would their worklife be like? Publishing always involves editorial,
production, and accounting work, each including tasks ranging from rote
to conceptual and repetitive to diverse. But workers can organize and
carry out these tasks in different ways.
Capitalist Publishing
The criteria
capitalist publishing uses to determine how to combine diverse tasks
into job complexes are profitability and maintaining hierarchies. Each
book is a commodity to be sold for maximum revenue and produced at minimum
cost. Whether people read the book is incidental. Given the option,
most publishers will limit the range of offerings till the public learns
to accept easily disgested pablum.
Capitalist
budgeting maximizes profits by holding off small creditors, taking advantage
of beginning authors, and setting high prices for few offerings. Will
consumers buy their how -to book or ours, their romance or ours, their
90 -day diet fad or ours? Given society's race, class, political, and
gender biases, what shibboleths must be observed? Given reviewers' attitudes,
which books are likely to be discussed? Which should we give up for
dead'? To be sure, many enter the publishing field committed to promoting
humane values. But the dynamics of the capitalist market require first
one compromise, then another, until any humane values are totally lost
under the bottom line of profits.
Jobs are
defined, behavior patterns enforced, pay scales determined, and pink
slips and promotions dispersed all to preserve hierarchy and best extract
sufficient labor to keep business profitable. Employers "respect"
prior attitudes of new employees so that social hierarchies born outside
the firm reappear inside. Most women do what's considered "women's
work." Most blacks do what's considered "blacks' work."
Cleaning "girls," secretaries, receptionists, typesetters,
and mailroom "boys" do the most deadening work for the lowest
wages. Aside from other oppressive attributes, two bear special comment.
1. The
broader creative powers of most workers steadily erode as most people
work down to their assignments.
2. Everyone's
emotional energies dissipate in efforts to rationalize and defend status
and hierarchy.
The result
is a waste of human resources, an immoral denial of most workers' capacities,
and a reduction of publishing to producing commodities for a quick killing.
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