Letter: Justification — No ! (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Justification — No !

I heard one of your speakers answer the question of “who would do the more important tasks if within a socialist society there were no wage systems to provide an incentive” by stating that the wage difference between a road sweeper and a skilled technician is justifiable within the present system, etc.

I have got news for that speaker. No socialist will ever take that point of view, simply because if the inequality of wealth and privilege that capitalism produces can be to any extent justifiable then so can the system. Socialism is out to abolish capitalism not compliment it on certain aspects of the wages system — or make such a miserable compromise in order to win a pair of attentive ears.

J. W. Pitt

Worthing

Reply:

The speaker may not have made himself clear, or the listener may have misunderstood what he heard. Either way, the explanation of the point you raise is as follows.

Wage differences exist in capitalism because everything is a commodity — that is, an article produced for sale — including labour-power. There are cheap and dear commodity-versions of all articles: cars, houses, clothes, furniture, whatever you care to name. The price of each is basically the monetary expression of its value; that is, it reflects the amount of labour that went into the commodity. Expensive houses and cars have more in them and are more carefully made than cheap ones. The same applies to labour-power, and this is why a skilled technician’s wages (the price of his labour-power) are higher than a road-sweeper’s.

We may add that the wage represents not only what it took to produce a particular kind of labour- power, but what it takes to reproduce it. The road-sweeper is not expected to be well housed, dress smartly, be equipped for up-to-date technical discourse, and raise his children ambitiously. The technician or manager is: like the road-sweeper he has to go to the limits of his income because that is what his income is for. That is what puts all workers, regardless of their particular wages, in the same boat. Justification does not come into the matter. It is the way capitalism works.

The idea of “important tasks”, as against others winch presumably don’t matter much, belongs to class- divided society and is capitalism’s justification for inequality. All useful jobs matter as much as one another. Socialism, the creation of a world of plenty, will be an incentive in itself.

Editors.