Work & the ‘Real Economy’

What is work & its trajectory of

evolution?

What is Green Work?

What’s a “Job”?

How are jobs and work remunerated?

What is Green Work?

• Cleanup? • Efficiency?

• Blue-collar? White-collar?

• Should all work be ‘green’?

What’s the ‘Real Economy’?

• simply material production?

• Complicated by the rise of cultural production/consumption

• Raises questions about the purpose of production

Industrialism: The Divided Economy

Invisible Visible Use-value Exchange-value “Consumption” “Production” People Things Unpaid Paid Women Men Informal Formal Private Public

Invisible Economy (1) Total Productive System of an Industrial

Society(layer cake with icing)

GNP-Monetized

½ of CakeTop two layers

Non-Monetized

Productive ½ of Cake

Lower two layers

GNP “Private” SectorRests on

GNP “Public” SectorRests on

Social Cooperative

Love EconomyRests on

Nature’s Layer

“Private” Sector

“Public”Sector

“underground economy

“Love Economy”

Mother Nature

All rights reserved. Copyright© 1982 Hazel Henderson

2

Energy & Production• early manufacturers had to be

energy producers• water wheels, production near rivers

and streams• steam power: allowed

decentralization but was expensive• industrial production: involved

millwork getting power to a range of devices.– pulleys & belts could consume a third of

the power

Energy & Production II• electric power: allowed replacement of millwork

– 1900: 5% of factory power came from electricity

• new developments:– steam turbine, allowing bigger power plants– Tesla: AC allowing transport of power over

distances• From Edison to Insull: rise of central utilities, The

Grid– key factor: load balancing; more customers,

better efficiency• electrification of production: essential to mass

production and industrial cog-labour

The Rise of Information

• Science followed technology: Electricity: 1st science-based development

• Herman Hollerith: punch-card tabulator: 1890 census

– allowed big businesses to process information much quicker

– customers, finances, employees, supply chains, inventories

• Dismantling of power generation: paralleled the creation of departments for data processing

• Rise of bureaucracy and white-collar work

Issues

• Automation of blue-collar work.• Degradation & outsourcing of blue-

collar work: globalization.• Undervaluing of Resources: labour-

vs. resource-productivity• ‘Automation’ of white-collar work• De-marketization of production & the

Commons.• A crisis of “jobs” or a Crisis of

Remuneration?• Is Fordist-era manufacturing the

solution?

Dimensions of ‘Real’ Economic Strategy

• Focus on production for needs; devise means to do this

• Integrate formal / informal economies: home-based production—food, energy, craft, reuse, and community-design to support it

• Target key areas of conventional waste and inefficiency for paid work: retrofit, renovation, deconstruction, reuse centres, local-sustainable food, horticulture.

• Transform conventional work on green principles—every job and sector

• Downsize destructive & parasitic sectors: financial, advertising/propaganda, incarceration

Dimensions of Strategy II

• Transform unionism: based on the purpose of work and nature of wealth--community-based

• Transform business & markets: – new drivers for regeneration (based on real

rather than financial objectives)– new forms of stewardship– new forms of ownership & participation

• disarm the totalitarian power of money scarcity

• end debt-based money system, erode speculative finance

Remuneration & Qualitative Wealth

• Sever work and income?

• Wages: tied to certain kinds of production & markets. Public goods not so well served by markets.

• Economic insecurity: closely related to environmental destruction.