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    Work as Commitment

    Mara Marin

    University of Chicago

    [email protected]

    DRAFT: This is a VERY ROUGH draft, so I cannot imagine why you would want to cite

    or circulate any part of it. All comments are very welcome.

    Introduction

    The topic of this paper is the social organization of work in contemporary post-

    industrial societies. As the last chapter of my dissertation on the concept of commitment,

    my general interest in this paper is to determine the place of relationships of commitment

    (relationships of open-ended obligations created through open-ended responsive action)

    in supporting the institutions governing the organization of the various productive

    activities.

    My argument in this paper is twofold. First, I will argue that the division of labor,

    a feature of the organization of work in complex societies, is the source of several

    problems. Secondly, I will argue that to overcome these problems work should be

    organized according to a principle commiment.

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    Work between necessity and social organization

    I will start this analysis from a double perspective: work is necessary, but the

    present form of its social organization is not.

    The necessity of work

    Most if not all of us have to work. A life of idleness is not an option. In a world

    like the one we know, in which each of our needs is not satisfied the moment we feel it,

    we have to work in order to survive.

    Russ Muirhead argued that the compulsion at the core of work gives the

    experience of work its distinctive taste. It is done because we have to do it, because we

    are born and remain insufficient. (Muirhead 2004, 5). While other ideas, like that of

    production and contribution, pay and effort play important roles in the meaning of

    work, the idea central to work is that ofcompulsion (Muirhead 2004, 4).

    The social organization of work between necessity and possibility

    What is also necessary about work is that it has a social and institutional

    dimension, that one individuals work is necessarily involved with and dependent on the

    activities of at least some others.

    In complex societies like the ones we live in this means that we have to

    coordinate with others in activities that constitute our work because they are parts of

    larger productive activities. For example, my teaching at the university is only part of a

    larger activity of education, or of providing degrees from the University of Chicago.

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    Without all the other activities academic, administrative, services, etc. - that make up

    the university education, my activity would not provide the same end-results.1

    But work is necessarily social not only because we live in complex societies in

    which most productive activities cannot be done by individuals alone, but are complex

    activities of which most individual activities are onlypart. Work is necessarily social also

    because what counts as productive, what counts as a contribution is socially determined;

    things that are contributions have what Michael Walzer calls social meanings (Walzer

    1983, 9).

    And this is the case in any society, not only in societies in which most productive

    activities are complex. Even in complex societies there are contributing activities that do

    not involve more than a couple of individuals. When a father is teaching his daughter

    how to count he is making a contribution that does not depend on anybody else, yet it is

    social in the second sense I explained above. (If teaching a child how to count does not

    seem work to you, then for the sake of the argument please do one of the following: a) try

    to do it or b) change the example to one cleaning ones own apartment).

    To summarize, work is necessarily social for two reasons. First, because whether

    an activity is work or not is a social, not an empirical fact.2

    Secondly, because most

    activities we think of as work involve complex processes involving a large number of

    indviduals, that require coordination and produce relationships between the persons

    involved. These two feature make the social organization of work necessary.

    1 This is not to say that they would have no value, or they would provide no results whatsoever, just that

    they would not provide these particular results, understood as this particular activity of universityeducation.2 I use social here as refering to the conventions of meaning and evaluative elements shared across a

    society; these include ideas about what counts as work or not, about what is a respectable occupation, etc.

    While I dont think that there is perfect consensus in any society about any such meanings, conventions,

    etc. they are not only held widely enough, but also are assumptions that structure main institutions.

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    But if work is necessarily socially organized, the particular form of its social

    organization is not a matter of necessity. The fact that the organization of work can only

    be a social phenomenon does not mean that any particular organization (including the one

    we happen to live with at the moment) is necessary and unchangeable. There are many

    ways in which we can organize the institutions that coordinate complex activities, and

    there is nothing necessary about the meanings of activities that constitute work.

    One may object that the social organization of work is determined by the

    necessity of work in the first sense I discussed above, in the sense that work creates the

    necessities of life and therefore it is not optional, it is compulsory; we do it because we

    have to do it. Therefore, there is no choice in its organization, we have to organize it in

    the way in which best provides those necessities.

    But there is no reason to believe there is only one such way if organizing work.

    The fact that we have to do work does not determine how we have to do it; neither it

    determines how we should organize our work relationships with others. There is no rea

    The necessity of work is indeed a constraint on its organization (it has to be

    organization of work, not of leisure), but that does not mean it determines its entire

    structure.

    But what is work? Which activities count as work, and which should? Should the

    social meaning prevalent in a society determine what counts as woork?

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    Care work and the first division of labor

    While it is tempting to think that social meaning alone cannot determine what

    counts as productive work, there is an argument to be made that there are a number of

    activities that are not recognized at work although they should.

    Feminists have argued that the distinction between productive and reproductive

    activities - with the productive being performed in the public sphere, and the reproductive

    refering to the unpaid work performed most often by women in the domestic sphere -

    makes womens activities in the domestic sphere invisible as work, by constructing them

    as expressions of womens natural inclination to raise children and care for the young and

    old. Women equality, feminists argue, requires that womens activities in the home be

    understood as work and recognized as such in the public.

    Susan Okin argued that justice requires that married women who work at home

    while their husbands work for pay should be entitled to half their paycheck (Okin 1989,

    Chapter 7). In her House and Home Iris Young argued that womens activities in the

    domestic sphere create real value, the value that distinguishes a house from a home, a

    hotel room from ones own home (Young 1997b, 149-50). Womens activities in the

    home are not simply housework, they are housemaking, which consists in the

    activities of endowing things with living meaning (Young 1997b, 151).

    Like other feminists, she also argues that this failure to recognize certain activities

    as productive makes those that perform them second-class citizens, by assuming that they

    make no useful social contribution and therefore that marginalizing them and limiting

    their rights is legitimate.

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    She takes issue with W. Galstons idea of independence not only for being

    identified with having a well-paid secure job (Young 1997a, 124), but also for

    conflating the idea of self-sufficiency with that of autonomy. While autonomy is an

    important moral value, the ideal of self-sufficiency makes invisible those dependent on

    others and their caretakers.

    By conflating between self-sufficiency and autonomy, the idea of independence

    can be used to limit the autonomy of the dependents and their caregivers. For self-

    sufficiency, taken for the only meaning of independence, is used as a criterion for

    distinguishing between those that are entitled to autonomy and those that are not, even

    when what they lack is only self-sufficiency (like dependent and their caretakers), but not

    the ability to contribute meaningfully.

    What counts as a socially useful contribution should not be determined, as it

    currently is, by the market, and therefore should not be confused with what receives pay.

    This is the case not only for dependency work, but for good art, literature, philosophy.

    (Young 1997a, 128). Like Joan Tronto (Tronto 1994),3

    she argues that dependency work

    is socially necessary work, and therefore should be recognized as making a socially

    useful contribution even if that contribution is not valued on the market.4

    She agrees with

    Galston that citizens should contribute to the social good and should be given equal

    opportunity to contribute, but she disagrees with the assumption that the only way to

    make a contribution is by having a job (Young 1997a, 127).5

    3 To cite only several examples from the extensive literature on dependency work and care work: Fineman

    2004 and Kittay 1999. For feminist theories of international care see Tronto 2004, Sevenhuijsen 1998. 4 Young addresses some of our deepest assumptions when she says: Capitalism has some virtues, but after

    three hundred years it should be clear that one of them is not employing all able-bodied people at decent

    wages (Young 1997a, 130).5

    One could also argue that even those that have paid jobs are not self-sufficient in any meaningful sense,

    that they are dependent on a whole range of institutions and on the work of others to make those institutions

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    The implication of her argument is twofold. On the one hand, the social worth

    of an activity rather than the pay it receives on the market should be what determines

    whether an activity makes a contribution. That would extend the class of activities that

    are properly thought of as socially useful work. For example, care work would no longer

    be seen as unproductive, but, as answering real needs; similarly, housemaking would be

    recognized as creating real value.

    On the other hand, recognizing that our capacities to contribute are different

    because many of us (in fact all of us at some moment in our lives), do not conform to the

    model of the male able-bodied individual, also requires institutional transformations that

    would enable those that cannot fully participate in the market to make meaningful social

    contributions.

    Both types of institutional changes are demanded by the value of independence;

    that is, they are necessary for protecting the autonomy not only of those able-bodied, but

    also of those whose efforts are not compensated on the market. Once care workers work

    is treated as legitimate contribution, the reason legitimizing state institutions to treat them

    as undeserving clients, to invade their privacy and limit their autonomy in exchange for

    its support the reason being that they are not contributing would disappear.

    The first division of labor is then between paid and unplaid, care work. The latteer

    is socially necessary because it answers real needs of those that are not able to satisfy

    their own needs (and can neither pay for it).6

    work. Although Iris Young does not make this claim here, I think her argument is consistent with that view

    about the market. However, neither her argument nor mine at this point depend on that view about themarket. It only depends on the idea that the market is not the only set of institutional arrangements that

    creates value (and coordinates activities to create value).6

    One could argue that there is no real distinction here, because all of us have needs (for food, shelter,

    cleanliness, etc.) that in one form or another are taken care of by somoene else. Thus, the able-body

    professional with a well-paid job depends on a small army of people that make his meals and coffee, clean

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    The problem with the social organization around that distinction seems to be that,

    by devaluing care work, care workers are also devalued, and thus their liberty and the

    conditions of their liberty no longer have the protection that is given to those that are

    considered to make valuable, contributions to society.

    I think this is the first problem about the social organization of work, a problem

    that I will call the problem of recognition:7 that some activites are not recognized as

    real work, and that leads to loss of liberty, equality and autonomy for those performing

    those activities.

    Underlying this problem is the question of the criteria that should determine

    which activities create social value and therefore should be recognized as work. I do not

    aim to offer a philosophical account of the bases of that value. It may not even be the

    case that there is only one such basis for everything of value created by work; that is, it is

    possible that different activities unrecognized as work produce different types of value

    (the value created by philosophy professors, for example, is different from the value

    mothers and other caretakers create).

    I will argue that organizing work according to a principle of commitment enables

    a change in the criteria for the social worth of an activity, and therefore recognizing care

    as work. Central to the idea of commitment is the idea of an open-ended response to the

    other person in its entirety, to its changing circumstances, including ones care needs. A

    his/her apartment and house, walk his dog, repair his car, etc. It just happens that she/he gives money in

    exchange for these services, while those less successful on the market cannot make such an exchange. I

    agree with the general point that most of us are dependent for some of our most basic needs on those Iris

    Young calls menial laborers (Young 1990, 52). But the fact that some of us can buy those services whileothers cannot does not seem to me unimportant. On the contrary, it is precisely that inequality that is

    problematic. I will discuss it shortly.7

    I am not entirely happy with this name, so any suggestions would be more than welcome. By using

    recognition I mean to emphasize that there is real value created by some activities that is nevertheless not

    acknowledged (or not fully acknowledged) by prevalent institutions.

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    change in what we recognize as work is the first step towards changing the organization

    of labor.

    The division of labor and the problems of oppression

    But the division of labor takes other forms as well, and, as I will discuss, leads to

    different problems.

    Ever since Adam Smith has analyzed the nature and causes of the wealth of

    nations, the division of labor has typically refered to the separation of tasks involved in

    the process of production. (Smith 1976, 14-15). Pin-making, to take Smiths example, has

    been divided in several simpler tasks, performed by different people:

    One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it,

    a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three

    distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another;

    (Smith 1976, 15)

    Nothing in the account of the division of labor above requires that it translates

    into class division. In other words, the division of tasks comprising work need not result

    in social hierarchical divisions between the classes of people performing each task.

    However, these are the features of the current division of labor. It represents not

    only the division between tasks and activities, but between classes of people performing

    different activities. And these differences become power inequalities.

    Exploitation explains how that comes to be the case, how the division of labor in

    the first sense (different tasks being performed by different people) leads to a hierarchical

    relation of power between different classes. Following Iris Young, by exploitation I mean

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    the steady process of the transfer of the results of the labor of one social group to benefit

    another (Young 1990, 49). What is important about exploitation is that it is a structural

    relation between social groups. Social rules about what work is, who does what for

    whom, how work is compensated, and the social process by which the results of work are

    appropriated operate to enact relations of power and inequality. (Young 1990, 50).

    One of the rules governing this process of transfer are those determining the

    worth of each activity. The way this process works is apparent in the case of gender

    exploitation. Feminists have argued that womens oppression is a result of their labor

    being transferred to men. Womens care work, physical, emotional and sexual, is

    transferred to men, and enhances mens status and power, and which makes mens

    freedom and self-realization possible.

    The process is made possible by norms that determine the worth of womens

    traditional occupations, like those of nurse of teacher, as less valuable than that of mens,

    and thus entitled to little or no recognition. Their invisibility justifies their under-

    compensation, which enables the process of exploitative transfer.

    The mechanism is perpetuated in the paid workforce. David Alexanders (1987)

    argues that womens jobs involved gendered tasks of caring for others bodies, nurturing,

    sexual labor, or smoothing over workplace tensions (Alexander 1987, in Young 1990,

    51), thus answering others needs and ultimately enhancing their power and status.

    In the last section of this paper I will argue that organizing work according to a

    principle of commitment limits the extent of its exploitation by disabling this process. For

    now I want to point out that exploitation is made possible by social norms about what is

    socially beneficial and therefore real, legitimate work as opposed to worthless activities.

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    These are activities typically done by women and other subordinate groups, activities

    fulfilling bodily needs, and, by the normative logic structuring the organization of labor,

    outside the realm of legitimate work. According to that logic, they represent simple

    extensions of womens natural inclinations to care. Exploitation is thus not only about

    the processes and social rules that structure and organize recognized work. It is not only

    about the transfer of the results of labor from one class involved in the working process to

    another class. Exploitation is rooted in the practices that determine what is legitimate

    work and what is left outside the sphere of legitimate work, and it is supported by the

    norms that determine that certain activities deserve to be considered work while others do

    not. Or, to put it differently, the structure of work does not organize only relationships

    between types of work and between classes of people doing work, but also between what

    is work and what is not considered work.

    If exploitation is the transfer of the results of labor from one group, the privileged,

    to the other, the unprivileged, group, the relationship between groups is also

    characterized by powerlessness. While both professional and nonprofessional workers

    experience exploitation (at least part of the results of their labor is transferred to the

    capitalist class), non-professional workers also experience powerlesness. As the

    workplace is not organized democratically, workers professional and non-professional

    do not, if they are not also members of the capitalist class, participate in making

    decisions about the rules and policies of their workplace. However, professional workers

    exercise power over non-professional workers, who rarely find themselves in the position

    to give orders, but typically take them, and who are therefore lacking any power (Young

    1990, 56).

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    In the remaining of this paper I will argue that commitment as an organzing

    principle of work is a solution for the two problems of exploitation and powerlessness

    sketched above.

    Commitment and the organization of labor

    There are two seemingly contradictory ideas in the division of labor. On the one

    hand, the idea behind the division of labor is that of separation: tasks are separated, a

    complex process is broken down in its simple parts, which are defined independently of

    each other. Consequently, people are divided according to the type of work they are

    doing, and with the power they have in the system. On the other hand, the purpose of the

    division of labor is to be more efficient in achieving the end of the overall process. The

    implication then is that each taks is part of a larger process of production with one

    common end. and, More importantly, each part, each task is necessary for achieving the

    end of the process.

    Therefore, as I argued above, there is no necessary connection between the

    division of labor and the hierarchical organization of its positions. Moreover, if we take

    seriously the idea that each task is necessary to achieving the overall end, that the end

    cannot be achieved unless each task is performed, then equality is required. Each task is

    necessary means each task is equally necessary, hence hierarchical organization is

    contrary to the achieving the common end.

    My project is to reintroduce this idea of common purpose back in the division of

    labor and to determine what it requires. I will argue that understanding properly

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    organized relations of work as relationships of commitment achieves that purpose. Let

    me start by first explaining what I mean by commitment relationships.

    What are commitments?

    In the sense in which I am interested, commitments are relationships. They have

    five features. 8

    First, although they are made, not given, commitments are not made by design;

    that is, a committed relationship is not the result solely of the intention to bring about a

    commitment. In other words, intending to make a commitment is not enough to making

    one. However, commitments are results of the actions of the subject. But not any type of

    action can result in a commitment. Only open-ended responses can do so.

    So the second feature of commitments is that they are made by open-ended

    responsive action.

    What I mean by an open-ended response is something like this: suppose that I buy

    Adria a cup of coffee. She has two options. She can try to pay me back immediately,

    maybe in cash; in this case she responded in a tit for tat way. Alternatively she can say

    next time is on me and follow-up on that in some way; then she has responded open-

    endedly. In the first case she were trying to discharge a duty, something she owes in such

    a way that would put her in a position free from any obligations, to return her, that is, to

    8 I do not mean to suggest that this concept of commitment exhausts the senses in which commitment is

    used in common or philosophical usage. Examples of two concepts of commitment different from my own

    are Michael Sandels constitutive commitments and Margaret Gilberts commitments of the will.

    Sandels constitutive commitments are bound up with the identity of their subject, who cannotunderstand herself without them (Sandel 1982, 62, 179). I want to thank Charles Larmore and Patchen

    Markell for suggesting this idea to me. Gilberts commitment of the will is a commitment resulting

    solely from an act or state of a will or wills (Gilbert 2006, 128, emphasis in original). She is particularly

    interested in joint commitments, which are commitments of the will that the wills of two or more people

    create it, and two or more people are committed by it. (Gilbert 2006, 134).

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    the situation before our interaction. In the second case she invited a relationship of

    obligations, possibly of open-ended obligations.

    What is open-endedabout it is that when she incurred the obligation, that is, when

    she says next time is on me, she does not know exactly what the next time will bring

    about, whether it will be a coffee and the forty-five minutes coming with it or something

    else. That will be determined at a later date, depending on the future circumstances and

    our future interaction. To be open-ended means that we allow these changing

    circumstances to make claims upon us; in contrast, the tit for tat response closes off that

    possibility.

    What makes the action above a response is that it is performed and understood as

    directed in some way at the previous action, as in some sense of the same type.

    But one such open-ended response is obviously not enough to create a

    relationship of commitment. Rather, and this is the third feature of commitments, a

    commitment is created only when the subject has endorsed the commitment. However,

    endorsement is not given through an act of a different sort, for example a decision, than

    the other actions that constitute the commitment. Rather, endorsement is offered by

    performing enough open-ended responses to show ones willingness to create a

    committed relationship. What counts as enough depends on the type of commitment

    and the context of interaction.

    By the time the relationship has been thus endorsed it has developed along

    particular expectations, for instance that we go to movies together, share (some) of our

    joys and worries, but do not spend holidays together. This is the fourth feature of

    commitments: each commitment has its own set of expectations, but all commitments

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    share the expectation to continue the relationship in an open-ended way, to continue to

    respond to each others actions open-endedly. For this reason there is no perfect fit

    between expectations and actions in commitments.

    Fifthly and finally, commitments are relationships of obligations. These arise only

    with the passage of time, when the relationship has been endorsed by a series of open-

    ended responsive action. All commitments involve an obligation of concern for the object

    of ones commitment, to be expressed through such open-ended responses, and this

    includes the obligation to continue the relationship. Obligations of commitment are

    therefore open-ended as well. This however does not exclude the possibility of ending a

    commitment, for obligations are not absolute moral constraints, and other considerations

    may come into play when determining whether to end a commitment.

    Commitment as a solution to the problems of exploitation and powerlesness

    In this final section I argue that organizing labor according to a principle of

    commitment would avoid the problems of exploitation and powerlesness that the division

    of labor otherwise leads to, without necessarily abandoning the division of labor.

    To organize productive labor relations according to a principle of commitment

    requires that their development is understood to have a certain open-endedness, that they

    develop and are required to develop from open-ended responses to the actions of each

    individual.

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    Commitment as a solution to the problem of exploitation

    If work relations are understood as relationships of commitment and therefore of

    open-ended obligations, then each participant in work relationships is required to respond

    open-endedly to the needs of the others. This addresses the two aspects of exploitation I

    discussed above.

    First, it addresses the exploitation of domestic workers, of those that make the

    traditional womens work, work of caring for our bodily and emotional needs, work often

    not recognized as such, and always considered of very little value.

    If work relationships contain the requirement to respond open-endedly to the

    changing circumstances of the others, then they require responding to a person in its

    entirety.

    The reason for this is that responding open-endedly to others actions means

    allowing contingent circumstances to make claims upon us. As circumstances change, the

    actions of the others make differentdemands on us, and we have responded open-endedly

    when we have responded by fulfilling these demands. But by responding in this way we

    have also related to the other person (the person whose actions demanded our response)

    herself, independently of changing circumstances. For this reason, open-ended response

    represents giving the others central moral significance, taking their persons in their

    entirety as source of claims on our action.

    But then the working persons body is as legitimate a source of concern as

    anything else about that person. Because in commitments the whole person is a legitimate

    source of claims, they forbid the privatization of domestic work, its relegation to a sphere

    separate from that of work relations.

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    If the value of an activity as work is determined by the extent to which it fulfills a

    commitment, the extent to which it is an open-ended response, then domestic labor

    becomes valuable labor it answers such needs. But then the reason that now enables its

    transfer to those occupying the superior positions in the hierarchy its alleged lesser

    value would disappear, and with it the main reason for its exploitation.

    Secondly, commitment would also address the problem of exploitation within the

    relationships recognized as work.

    Let me illustrate with an example what I mean by a principle of commitment

    organizing a working place.

    Lets take a grocery store, but organize it such that whoever works there

    participates in all the tasks done in the store. There is still a division of labor in the sense

    that tasks are defined as separate (restocking shelves, ordering new products, working at

    the deli counter, etc.) but every worker is involved in each task at some point during

    her/his day. Job descriptions are not limited to one or a limited number of tasks, and

    while there may be more unpleasant tasks than others, that does not result in a hierarchy

    between the persons performing them.

    Moreover, there is an understanding for those working in this store that they are

    engaged in a common enterprise with an aim, and each of them is as necessary to

    achieving the aim as anybody else. Achieving an aim requires discretion, for

    circumstances can change and therefore it cannot be determined in advance what will be

    required for achieving the aim.9

    9I explain this argument in more detail in the third chapter, in reference to Lockes idea of trust to the

    government which requires prerogative.

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    There are two ways we can deal with the necessity of having discretion in

    achieving an aim. There can be a boss, a final judge that makes all the decisions. The

    problem with that is that whoever the boss is will be given most of the credit for

    achieving the end and the power coming with that. That will lead to the problems of

    exploitation and powerlessness I discussed above.

    The alternative is to organize work relations according to commitment, which

    means understanding that the enterprise we are engaged in is a relationship whose precise

    terms cannot be known or specified at the outset, but rather than each one will be undean

    equal obligation to pitch in as the need arises. This understanding does not exclude

    collectively making some rules about how to organize work, but suggests that the rules

    will be only provisional. Because the common aim always requires discretion, the

    alternative to investing some workers with all the power of making decisions is to

    transfer some of that open-endedness inside the relationships between workers. That is, it

    requires that rather than having our work defined by very clearly specified job

    descriptions, we agree that sometimes, we will have obligations whose specific content

    we did not know in advance.

    Moreover, commitment ensures that the burden of the unforeseen circumstances

    are born equally and are taken upon by the workers themselves. For when a new need

    arises, each worker has the freedom to assist with that or not. And as such, nobody is

    forced to do more than her fair share. However, one does not have the option of never

    doing her share of the additional burden, and that, while may represent a less than free

    condition, ensures as all the equality of the burden.

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    If the relationship between workers is such a commitment, then the relationship

    between different persons work is a mutually supportive one, as each responds open-

    endedly to the the work needs of the other. Thus, if I respond open-endedly to the needs

    of your work, my work supports yours now with the expectation that your work will

    support mine later, and thus at the end of this process there is no transfer of power and

    status from one person to the other.

    From a process of transfer of products of labor and status from one worker to

    another, the process of work becomes one in which different persons participate equally

    through their work to the process that achieves the end that cannot be achieved without

    the work of each and every one of them. It is also a process in which the benefits and

    burdens of the need for open-endedness are distributed equally. Exploitation thus

    disappears.

    Moreover, it is also a process of shared power. Because it is not concentrated in

    one place, power, the counterpart of obligations, is created through each open-ended

    action and response, which belongs to each worker involved in this relationship. Nobody

    is in the powerless condition of always taking orders, never giving them.

    Conclusion

    The idea of the division of labor, I argued in this paper, can be separated from the

    hierarchical class distinctions and the problems of exploitation and powerlessness that

    create class distinctions. To make that separation, work relations should be organized as

    commitment relationships, voluntary relationships created through open-ended responses.

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