Philosophy and the problems of work : a reader

404 Pages·2001·2.06 MB·English

by  Kory P. Schaff

Philosophy and the
Problems of Work
Philosophy and the
Problems of Work
A Reader
Edited by
Kory Schaff
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Published in the United States of America
by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ, England Copyright © 2001 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data
Philosophy and the problems of work : a reader / edited by Kory Schaff.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-0-7425-0795-1
1. Work. I. Schaff, Kory, 1974-BJ1498.P495 2001
174—dc21
00-054435
Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
To the memory of my sister and friend,
Krista Kay Schaff Brown
2 June 1970–3 July 1997
who understood the problems of work.
“Living in a constant chase after gain compels people to expend their spirit to
the point of exhaustion in continual pretence and overreaching and anticipating
others.”
—Nietzsche, The Gay Science
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Philosophy and the Problems of Work, by Kory Schaff
Part 1 Modern Society, Technology, and “Work”
1 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
2 Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization
3 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
4 Mark Okrent, “Work, Play, and Technology”
5 Gregory Pence, “Towards a Theory of Work”
Part 2 Meaningful Work and Exploitation
6 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia
7 David Schweickart, Against Capitalism
8 Allen Wood, “Exploitation”
9 Gary Dymski, “Racial Inequality and Capitalist Exploitation”
Part 3 Justice and Equality
10 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
11 Richard Arneson, “Is Work Special? Justice and the Distribution of
Employment”
12 G. A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality
13 Ann Ferguson, “Sex and Work”
14 Gregory Kavka, “Disability and the Right to Work”
Part 4 The Welfare State and Democratic Rights
15 Mary Hawkesworth, “Workfare and the Imposition of Discipline”
16 Jon Elster, “Is There (or Should There Be) a Right to Work?”
17 Phillipe van Parijs, “Basic Income Capitalism”
18 Andrew Levine, “Fairness to Idleness: Is There a Right Not to Work?”
Part 5 After Capitalism?
19 John Roemer, “The Morality and Efficiency of Market Socialism”
20 David Schweickart, “What’s Labor Got to Do with It? Capitalism and the
Counterproject”
Index
About the Editor
Preface
This project has a long and protracted history. It first began to germinate when I
was an undergraduate, when I wrote a senior honors thesis on Marx’s theory of
exploitation and its normative dimensions. After graduating, I took one year off
before going to graduate school, working at a job in which I had little interest.
The job provided a wage, but it had little potential to develop my personal and
professional talents. I began to think about the philosophical significance of
work from the “inside,” so to speak. Even in the modern developed world, work
remains the central activity for individuals. It was unfortunate, then, that so
many of my coworkers thought little about the implications of the life of work,
instead simply assuming that work was something one had to do. Getting people
to reflect on the conditions of the possibility in their daily lives is a hard task,
made all that much harder by work conditions in which one is asked not to think
critically for oneself and where the institutional design of work forecloses asking
certain questions about the relative importance of work to, say, leisure or the
development of personal talents outside the workplace. In the world of work, no
one understood my fascination with and philosophical interest in the subject of
work: why we do it, how we go about it, and what it means that those things
change.
Subsequently, I began to trace the historical discussions of work in
philosophy, beginning with Plato’s Republic and working up to the great
nineteenth-century philosophers of work, Hegel and Marx. This project was
originally intended to capture the long-standing interest of philosophers on the
subject of work. By organizing the contemporary discussions of these subjects,
however, I hope to build upon this history and promote economic philosophy as
an important and crucially overlooked area of investigation, in political and
social theory specifically and philosophy generally. To this end, a reader on the
philosophy of work fills a crucial gap in the present literature, already saturated
with readers on justice, political theory, and ethics. No single anthology has been
dedicated exclusively to the category of work, and I see this as an especially
problematic absence on the part of current philosophical work in the area of
social and political thought.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
So many people have contributed to this project over the last few years that they
must be acknowledged accordingly. First among these are my parents, Ronald
and Terrie Schaff, who have supported unconditionally my educational pursuits,
despite the relative absence of economic rewards. Without their unfailing
generosity and patience, my ongoing education would not have been and still
would not be possible.
In addition, many friends and interlocutors deserve my gratitude for
discussing these ideas and more with me over the years. I am fortunate to have
had such fine teachers and good friends. Tim Morris, David Frolick, Dan Lloyd,
Fran Navakas, Pierre Lebeau, and George Karnezis; Allen Vander Meulen (for a
course on the history of economic thought) of North Central College; and Jeffrey
Reiman of American University deserve special mention as a set of superior
undergraduate teachers with whom I made first contact, discovering a world of
thought that is always exceeding its own limits. Much of this project was
completed at Loyola University Chicago in the Department of Philosophy. It was
there that I met many individuals whose concerns and research interests
encouraged the development of my own. Special thanks go to David Ingram,
Femi Taiwo, and Andrew Cutrofello for advice and assistance at all stages of the
project, and especially to David Schweickart, who encouraged and commented
upon the manuscript from its inception. Additional thanks are due to my close
friends and fellow critics, Kristi Sweet, Jason Barrett, and Abe Schwab, for
helping me “push” or “pull.” Thanks to Kristi and Jason for helping prepare the
final manuscript, even when it meant ignoring their own work. Also, thanks to
Tom Wren for correcting computer problems and helping with the scanning
process for preparing the manuscipt. Finally, my heartfelt gratitude goes to
Jeanne Hutchausen and Leslie Brisette, Loyola Philosophy’s administrators,
whose daily work provides the real institutional support that makes scholarship
possible.
I was the fortunate lone philosopher to receive a fellowship from the Social
Science Research Council and German-American Academic Council to
participate in a two-summer institute, “The Economics and Politics of Labor in
Advanced Societies,” at MIT and the Wissenschaftzentrum für Sozial-forschung
in Berlin in 1999–2000. The institute brought together a small group of diverse
social scientists from Germany and the United States to discuss and collaborate
on the problems and prospects of contemporary labor markets. My thinking on
the matters addressed in this volume have benefitted immensely as a result. I
must thank these scholars, especially Toby Moore and Christina Stecker, with
whom I worked closely on a project entitled “Work and Citizenship,” for
allowing me the opportunity to make relevant many philosophical concerns for
social research. In addition, I gratefully acknowledge Claus Offe of Humboldt
Universität and Martin Rein of MIT for conducting the seminars and providing
enormous intellectual stimulation and encouragement in our work.
Thanks to Mary Carpenter, Steve Wrinn, Erica DeCosta, Christa Davis
Acampora, and Dorothy Bradley of Rowman & Littlefield, as well as my
anonymous reviewers, for bringing this project to completion.
This volume suffered many transitions, especially in the move from Chicago
to San Diego, and several individuals contributed their time and attention to
make that transition much smoother. Catherine Asmann of the UCSD
Department of Philosophy deserves special thanks for her logistical help, Dick
Arneson for encouragement and advice, and Chris Bignell and Stephen Yosifon
for their help in preparing the index.
Thanks to those who helped to cover expenses; they deserve more, of course,
than my praise can provide: Ron and Terrie Schaff, Shirley Blakeley, Nick
Brunick, Tim Morris, and others.
An open-ended thanks to close friends who do it all. Jennifer Wright, Bill
Becker, Nick Brunick, Anjenette Carroll, Adam Schafer, Katie Crossley-Frolick,
and Maud Adenis have all helped me, in one way or another, to think more
clearly and be a better person. Although I am poor in my work, I am rich in my
friends.
The labor that went into this project was made possible by the mutual
recognition, support, and love that surrounds it on all sides. I dedicate this
project, then, to my sister and friend, Krista Kay Schaff Brown, whose absence
has in too many ways made my life that much poorer. Peace.