번역작업:Appendix to Critique of Economic Reason

Andre Gorz, <Appendix : Summary for Trade Unionists and Other Left Activists>

<<Critique of Economic Reason>>(1989), Verso.

• 번역:역할분담
• 번역:용어정리

THE CRISIS OF WORK

1.1. The Ideology of Work

노동이라는 이데올로기

Work for economic ends has not always been the dominant activity of mankind. It has only been dominant across the whole of society since the advent of industrial capitalism, about two hundred years ago. Before capitalism, people in pre-modern societies, in the Middle Ages and the Ancient World, worked far less than they do nowadays, as they do in the precapitalist societies that still exist today. In fact, the difference was such that the first industrialists, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, had great difficulty getting their workforce to do a full day's work, week in week out. The first factory bosses went bankrupt precisely for this reason.

경제적인 목적의 노동/일이 언제나 인간의 지배적인 활동이지는 않았다. 경제적 목적의 노동/일이 전 사회적으로 지배적인 활동이 된 것은 약 200년 전, 산업자본주의의 도래로 시작되었다. 자본주의 시기 이전 즉, 전 근대와 중세, 고대 세계의 사람들은 지금보다 휠씬 노동/일을 적게 했다. 오늘날에도 여전히 전자본주의적 산업 분야에서는 덜 노동/일한다. 실제로 이러한 노동 활동량의 차이는 매우 커서 18세기와 19세기의 초기 산업주의자들은 매주마다 전일 노동을 할 노동력을 확보하기는데 큰 곤란을 겪었다. 초기 공장주는 정확히 이러한 이유로 파산했다.

That is to say that what the British and the Germans call `the work ethic' and the `work-based society' are recent phenomena.

It is a feature of `work-based societies' that they consider work as at one and the same time a moral duty, a social obligation and the route to personal success. The ideology of work assumes that,

- the more each individual works, the better off everyone will be;

- those who work little or not at all are acting against the interests of the community as a whole and do not deserve to be members of it;

- those who work hard achieve social success and those who do not succeed have only themselves to blame.

This ideology is still deeply ingrained and hardly a day passes without some politician, be he Right - or left-wing, urging us to work and insisting that work is the only way to solve the present crisis. If we are to `beat unemployment', they add, we must work more, not less.

다시 말하자면 영국인들과 독일인들이 '노동 윤리'와 '노동 기반 사회'라 부르는 현상은 최근의 일이다. 그들이 노동을 도덕적 의무이자, 사회적 책무이면서 동시에 개인적인 성공에 이르는 길이라고 간주하는 것이 바로 '노동기반 사회'의 특징이다. 노동 이데올로기는 다음을 명확한 증거 없이 사실로 가정한다.

-각 개인이 더 많이 노동할 수록 모두가 풍요로워질 것이다.

-거의 혹은 전혀 노동하지 않은 사람은 전체 공동체의 이익에 반하여 행동하고 있으며 그 사회의 구성원이 될 자격이 없다.

-열심히 노동하는 사람이 사회적으로 성공할 것이며 성공하지 못하는 것은 오직 자신의 책임이다.

이러한 이데올로기는 매우 깊숙히 사회에 뿌리박혀 있다. 거의 매일같이 좌파든 우파든 정치인들은 우리에게 노동하라고 재촉하며 현재의 위기를 극복할 유일한 길은 노동뿐이라고 주장한다. 그리고 다음과 같이 덧붙인다.'실업을 극복하기'를 원한다면 덜 일하는 것이 아니라 더 일해야 한다고.

노동 윤리의 위기

In actual fact the work ethic has become obsolete. It is no longer true that producing more means working more, or that producing more will lead to a better way of life.

The connection between more and better has been broken; our needs for many products and services are already more than adequately met, and many of our as-yet- unsatisfied needs will be met not by producing more, but by producing differently, producing other things, or even producing less. This is especially true as regards our needs for air, water, space, silence, beauty, time and human contact.

Neither is it true any longer that the more each individual works, the better off everyone will be. The present crisis has stimulated technological change of an unprecedented scale and speed: `the micro-chip revolution'. The object and indeed the effect of this revolution has been to make rapidly increasing savings in labour, in the industrial, administrative and service sectors. Increasing production is secured in these sectors by decreasing amounts of labour. As a result, the social process of production no longer needs everyone to work in it on a full-time basis. The work ethic ceases to be viable in such a situation and workbased society is thrown into crisis.

현실적으로 노동 윤리는 쓸모가 없어졌다. 더 많이 생산하려면 더 많이 노동해야 한다거나 더 많은 생산이 더 나은 삶을 가져올 것이라는 것은 더 이상 사실이 아니다.

더 많은 것은 더 좋은 것을 의미한다는 식의 연관은 끊어졌다; 많은 제품과 서비스에 대한 우리의 필요는 이미 충분히 충족되고도 남는다. 그리고 아직 만족되지 않은 소요 중 많은 것은 더 많이 생산함으로써가 아니라 다르게 다른 것을 또는 심지어 더 적게 생산함으로써 충족될 것이다. 이는 특히 공기, 물, 공간, 고요함, 아름다움, 시간과 인간적 접촉에 대한 우리의 소요에 적용된다.
개인들이 더 많이 일하면 더 잘 살게 될 것이라는 것도 더 이상 사실이 아니다. 현재의 위기는 전례없는 규모와 속도의 기술적 변화-'마이크로칩 혁명'- 를 자극했다. 이 혁명의 목적과 실질적인 결과는 산업, 행정 및 서비스 부문에서 노동을 급격히 절약하는 것이었다. 이 부문들에서는 노동량의 감소가 생산의 증가를 가져왔다. 그 결과, 사회적인 생산 과정 때문에 더 이상 모든 사람이 전일 노동을 해야 할 필요가 없게 되었다. 이런 상황에서 노동 윤리는 그 필요성을 상실하게 되며 노동기반 사회는 위기에 처해진다.

1.3. The Neo-conservative Ideology of Hard Work

1.3. 신보수주의 이데올로기

Not everyone is aware of this crisis. Some are aware of it but find it in their interest to deny its existence. This is true, in particular, of a large number of `neo-conservatives', bent on upholding the ideology of work in a context in which paid work is becoming increasingly scarce.

모든 사람이 이 위기를 알고 있는 것은 아니다. 어떤 사람들은 알고는 있지만, 그 존재를 부정하는 것이 그들에게 이익이 된다는 것을 발견한다. 그것은 사실이다. 특히 다수의 신보수주의자들에게 해당된다. 그들은 지불노동이 점차로 희소해지고 있다는 맥락 속에서 노동의 이데올로기를 고수하고 있다.

They thus encourage people looking for paid work to enter into increasingly fierce competition with each other, relying on this competition to bring down the cost of labour (that is, wages) and allow the `strong' to eliminate the `weak'. They look to this neoDarwinian process of the `survival of the fittest' to bring about the rebirth of a dynamic form of capitalism, with all its blemishes removed together with all or part of its social legislation.

그래서 그들은 지불노동을 구하는 사람들을 서로 갈수록 치열해지는 경쟁으로 들어가도록 하고, 이러한 경쟁으로 인해 노동의 비용(즉 임금)이 감소하고 강자가 약자를 사멸시키도록 부추기고 있다.

1.4. Working Less so that Everyone can Work

It is in the common interest of waged workers not to compete with one other, to organize a united response to their employers and collectively negotiate their conditions of employment with the latter. This common interest finds its expression in trade unionism.

In a context in which there is not enough paid full-time work to go round, abandoning the work ethic becomes a condition of survival for the trade-union movement. To do so is no betrayal on the movement's part. The liberation from work and the idea of `working less so everyone can work' were, after all, at the origin of the struggle of the labour movement.

모든 사람들이 노동할 수 있기 위해 더 적게 노동하기

서로 경쟁하지 않고 고용주에게 단결된 대응을 하며 고용 조건에 대해 집단적으로 협상을 하는 것이 임노동장의 공동이익이다. 이 공동 이익은 노동조합주의로 표현되다. 모두에게 돌아갈 수 있을 만큼의 충분한 전일자 임금노동(지불노동)이 부족한 상황에서, 노동윤리를 포기하는 것은 노동 운동의 생존을 위한 조건이 된다. 그것은 노조운동의 입장에서 자신을 배신하는 것이 아니다. 노동으로부터 해방되고 '모든 사람이 노동할 수 있도록 더 적게 노동한다'는 아이디어는 노동 운동 투쟁의 기원에서부터 존재했다.

1.5. Forms of Work

노동의 형태들

By work we have come to understand a paid activity, performed on behalf of a third party (the employer), to achieve goals we have not chosen for ourselves and according to procedures and schedules laid down by the person paying our wages. There is widespread confusion between `work' and `job' or `employment', as there is between the `right to work', the `right to a wage' and the `right to an income'.

Now, in practice, not all activities constitute work, and neither is all work paid or done with payment in mind. We have to distinguish between three types of work.

1.5.1. Work for economic ends

This is work done with payment in mind. Here money, that is, commodity exchange, is the principal goal. One works first of all to `earn a living', and the satisfaction or pleasure one may possibly derive from such work is a subordinate consideration. This may be termed -work for economic ends.

1.5.2. Domestic labour and work-for-oneself

This is work done not with a view to exchange but in order to achieve a result of which one is, directly, the principal beneficiary. `Reproductive' work, that is, domestic labour, which guarantees the basic and immediate necessities of life day after day - preparing food, keeping oneself and one's home clean, giving birth to children and bringing them up, and so on - is an example of this kind of work. It was and still is often the case that women are made to do such work on top of the work they do for economic ends.

Since the domestic community (the nuclear or extended family) is one in which life is based on sharing everything rather than on an accounting calculation and commodity exchange, it is only recently that the idea of wages for housework has arisen. Previously, by contrast, domestic labour was seen as work done by and for the domestic community as a whole. This attitude, it should be stressed, is only justifiable if all the members of the domestic community share the tasks equitably. A number of activists have called for women to be given wages for housework in the form of a public allowance, in recognition of the social utility of such work. But this will not lead to the equitable sharing of household chores and moreover it poses the following problems:

- it transforms domestic labour into work for economic ends, that is, into a domestic (servant's) job; - it places domestic labour in the same category as socially useful work, whereas its aim is - and should be - not social utility but the well-being and personal fulfilment of the members of the community, which is not at all the same thing. The confusion between the fulfilment of individuals and their social utility stems from a totalitarian conception of society in which there is no place for the uniqueness and singularity of the individual or for the specificity of the private sphere. By nature this sphere is - and should be - exempt from social control and the criteria of public utility.

1.5.3. Autonomous activity

Autonomous activities are activities one performs freely and not from necessity, as ends in themselves. This includes all activities which are experienced as fulfilling, enriching, sources of meaning and happiness: artistic, philosophical, scientific, relational, educational, charitable and mutual-aid activities, activities of auto-production, and so on. All these activities require `work' in the sense that they require effort and methodical application but their meaning lies as much in their performance as in their product: activities such as these are the substance of life itself. But this always requires there to be no shortage of time. Indeed, the same activity - bringing up children, preparing a meal or taking care of our surtoundings, for example - can take the form of a chore in which one is subject to what seem like oppressive constraints or of a gratifying activity, depending on whether one is harrassed by lack of time or whether the activity can be performed at leisure, in co-operation with others and through the voluntary sharing of the tasks involved.

1.6. The End of Utopia

The progressive domination of work for economic ends was only made possible by the advent of capitalism and the generalization of commodity exchange. We owe to it in particular the destruction of a great deal of non-commodity services and exchanges and domestic production in which work for economic ends and the pleasure of creating something of beauty were inextricably linked. This explains why the labour movement originally challenged the overriding importance industrial capitalism attached to waged work and economic ends. However, in calling for the abolition of wage labour and for the government or selfgovernment of society by freely associated workers in control of the means of production, the demands of the workers ran directly counter to the developments that were actually taking place. The movement was utopian in so far as the possibility of giving substance to its demands had not emerged.

Yet what was utopian in the early nineteenth century has ceased in part to be so today: the economy and the social process of production require decreasing quantities of wage labour. The subordination of all other human activities and goals to waged work, for economic ends is ceasing to be either necessary or meaningful. Emancipation from economic and commercial rationality is becoming a possibility, but it can only become reality through actions which also demonstrate its feasibility. Cultural action and the development of `alternative activities' take on particular significance in this context. l shall return to this point below.

CRISIS OF WORK, CRISIS OF SOCIETY

2.1. Giving Meaning to the Changes: The Liberation of Time

Trade unionism cannot continue to exist as a movement with a future unless it expands its mission beyond the defence of the particular interests of waged workers. In industry, as in the classical tertiary sector, we are witnessing an increasingly accelerated reduction in the amount of labour required. The German trade-union movement has estimated that, of the new forms of technology which will be available by the year 2000, only 5 per cent are currently being put to use. The reserves of productivity (that is, foreseeable labour savings) in the industrial and classical tertiary sectors are immense.

노동조합주의는 임금노동자만의 이해관계의 방어를 넘어서 자신의 임무를 확장하지 않는다면, 미래를 지닌 운동으로서 존속할 수 없을 것이다. 전례의 분류에 따른 제 3차 산업에서와 같이 산업에 요청되는 노동력의 양이 가속적으로 줄어들고 있는 것을 볼 수 있다. 독일 노조 운동 진영의 추산에 따르면, 2000년까지 이용가능하게 될 신기술의 형태 중 오직 5%만이 지금도 사용되고 있는 중이다. 산업 영역과 전형적인 3차 산업 영역에서는 엄청난 양의 생산력이 사용되지 않고 있다.(마지막 줄 - reserves of productivity...- 은 검토 요청)

The liberation from work for economic ends, through reductions in working hours and the development of other types of activities, self-regulated and self-determined by the individuals involved, is the only way to give positive meaning to the savings in wage labour brought about by the current technological revolution. The project for a society of liberated time, in which everyone will be able to work but will work less and less for economic ends, is the possible meaning of the current historical developments. Such a project is able to give cohesion and a unifying perspective to the different elements that make up the social movement since (1) it is a logical extension of the experiences and struggles of workers in the past; (2) it reaches beyond that experience and those struggles towards objectives which correspond to the interests of both workers and non-workers, and is thus able to cement bonds of solidarity and common political will between them; (3) it corresponds to the aspirations of the ever-growing proportion of men and women who wish to (re)gain control in and of their own lives.

노동 시간 단축과 관련된 개인들이 스스로 조절하고 결정하는 다른 형태의 활동들의 개발을 통해 경제적 목적의 노동으로부터 해방되는 것만이, 현재의 기술적 혁명이 가져온 임금 노동의 절약에 긍정적이고 적극적인 의미를 제공할 수있다. 이러한 (노동에 할당되지 않는) 시간의 사회를 위한 프로젝트는 - 그 사회에서 모든 사람들이 노동을 할 수 있게 될 것이지만, 경제적 목적을 위한 노동은 갈수록 덜 하게 될 것이다 - 현재의 역사적 발전이 가질 수 있는 의미다. 그러한 프로젝트는 다음과 같은 이유로 사회운동을 구성하는 다양한 요인들에 응집력과 하나의 통일적인 관점을 제공할 수 있다: (1)그것은 과거의 노동자 투쟁과 경험의 논리적인 연장선상에 있다 (2)그것은 그러한 경험과 투쟁을 넘어 노동장과 비노동자 모두의 이해관계에 부응하는 목적에 도달하며 그들간의 연대와 공동의 정치적 의지를 공고히할 수 있다. (3)그것은 자신의 삶에서 그리고 자신의 삶의 통재권을 (재)획득하기를 원하는 사람들(이들의 비율은 점점 더 늘어 간다)의 열망에 부응한다.

2.2. Regaining Control Over One's Life

Workplace struggles have not lost any of their significance but the labour movement cannot afford to ignore the fact that other struggles, in other areas, are becoming increasingly important as far as the future of society and our regaining control over our own lives is concerned. In particular, the labour movement's campaign for a reduction in working hours cannot ignore the fact that the unpaid work done by women in the private sphere can be as hard as the labour which men and women have to put up with to earn their living. The campaign for a shortening of working hours must, then, go hand in hand with a new and equitable distribution of paid work amongst all those who wish to work, and for an equitable redistribution of the unpaid tasks of the domestic sphere. The trade-union movement cannot be indifferent to the specific women's movement campaigns on these questions and it must take these into account when determining its own c'ourses of action, especially with respect to the arrangement and self-management of work schedules.

Nor can the trade-union movement be indifferent to people's campaigns against the invasion of their environment by mega-technological systems which upset or destroy the environment and subject vast regions and their populations to unchecked technocratic control, so as to meet logistical or safety requirements.

The right of individuals to sovereign control over their own lives and ways of cooperating with others suffers no exception. It cannot be gained in the field of work and work relations at the expense of struggles going on in other fields, any more than it can be gained in these other fields at the expense of labour struggles.

2.3. Towards 50 per cent Marginalization

A progressive wide-scale reduction in working hours without loss of income is the necessary (though not sufficient, as l will go on to explain) condition for the redistribution of paid work amongst all those who wish to work; and for an equitable redistribution of the unpaid work in the private sphere. Everyone must therefore be able to work less so that everyone can lead a better life and earn their living by working. This is the only way the trend towards an increasingly deep division of society, the segmentation of the labour market and the marginalization of a growing percentage of the population can be checked and then reversed.

According to a study by Wolfgang Lecher, of the WSI (the Institute of Economic and Social Research of the DGB), the continuation of the present trend would lead, within the next ten years or so, to the following segmentation of the active population: - 25 per cent will be skilled workers with permanent jobs in large firms protected by collective wage agreements; - 25 per cent will be peripheral workers with insecure, unskilled and badly-paid jobs, whose work schedules vary according to the wishes of their employers and the fluctuations in the market; - 50 per cent will be semi-unemployed, unemployed, marginalized workers, doing occasional or seasonal work and `odd jobs'. Already 51 per cent of the active population in France aged between 18 and 24 fit into this category (26 per cent unemployed, 25 per cent doing `odd jobs'); and the percentage is even higher in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and (especially) Britain.

2.4. The New Domestic Servants

The Right acknowledges and accepts the direction in which these developments are going. A new employers' ideology, the so-called ideology of `human resources', is seeking to integrate the stable core of permanent skilled workers into modern enterprises which are portrayed as `sites of intellectual and personal fulfilment', whilst advocating `modest jobs' for a `modest wage' in service enterprises, particularly `person to person' services, for the rest.

In the United States, which is often taken as a model, of the thirteen to fifteen million new jobs created in the last ten years, the majority are in the personal-service sector and are very often insecure, badly paid and offer no possibilities of achieving professional qualifications or advancement - jobs as caretakers, nightwatchmen, cleaners, waiters and waitresses, staff in `fast food' restaurants, nursing assistants, deliverymen/women, street sellers, shoeshiners, and so on.

These `person-to-person' services are, in reality, the jobs of domestic or personal servants in their modernized and Socialized guise. A French minister for social affairs acknowledged this fact when he suggested there should be tax incentives to encourage people to employ domestic servants.

This shows a striking parallel with the developments which took place during the last century when the introduction of intensive farming and the mechanization of the textile industry led to millions of unemployed people going into domestic service: `personal and domestic servants' represented 14 per cent of the working population in Britain between 1851 and 1911. It is quite likely that `person-to-person' services - and this includes jobs in massage and relaxation salons, therapy groups and psychological counselling bureaux, for example - today represent more than 14 per cent of the United States' working population.

As in the colonies in the past and many Third World countries today, a growing mass of people in the industrialized countries has been reduced to fighting each other for the `privilege' of selling their personal services to those who still maintain a decent income.

2.5. The Dangers of Trade-Union Neo-corporatism

As a result of all this, a new dividing line is cutting across class barriers, a fact commented on by Wolfgang Lecher in the study quoted above: The opposition between labour and capital is increasingly coming to be overlaid by an antagonism between workers in permanent, wellprotected jobs on the one hand and on the other. . The trade unions run the risk of degenerating into a sort of mutual insurance for the relatively restricted and privileged group of permanent workers. If they see their sole task as that of defending the interests of those with stable jobs, the trade unions run the risk of degenerating into a neocorporatist, conservative force, as has occurred in a number of countries in Latin America.

The task of the trade-union movement, if it wishes to survive and grow as a movement promoting individual and social liberation, must, therefore, be to extend its sphere of action beyond the limited defence of workers as workers, in their workplaces, much more clearly than it has done in the past. Trade unions will only avoid becoming a sectionalist, neo-corporatist force if the segmentation of society and the marginalization of a growing percentage of the population can be prevented. If this is to happen, an ambitious policy for a continual, programmed reduction in working hours is indispensable. Trade unions are incapable of implementing such a policy on their own. But through their campaigns they can ensure that the necessity for such a policy is accepted and, more importantly, they can adopt it as the objective governing their actions and their social project. A project for a society in which each can work less so that all can work better and live more becomes, today, one of the principal binding elements of social cohesion.

It still remains for us to examine: (1) the extent of the reduction in working hours that can be envisaged; (2) the cultural changes and cultural tasks which trade unions will have to tackle as a result; (3) the changes it will bring about in the life of individual people; (4) how it can be programmed, realized and made compatible with an improvement in our standard of living.

WORKING LESS SO THAT ALL CAN WORK

3.1. Towards the 1,000-hour Working Year

The current technological revolution is giving rise to savings in labour, the extent of which are often underestimated. Productivity in industry has risen between 5 per cent and 6 per cent per year since 1978; in the economy as a whole it has risen by between 3 per cent and 4 per cent per year. Production of commercial goods and services has risen by about 2 per cent per year. In other words, though the economy keeps growing, the amount of labour it requires diminishes every year by approximately 2 per cent.

This net saving in labour is set to accelerate between now and the end of the century, thanks, mainly, to the `improvements that can be predicted in robotics and information technology. Yet even without any acceleration, the amount of labour required by the economy will have diminished in the next ten years by about 22 per cent; in the next fifteen years it will have diminished by about a third.

The prospects from now until the beginning of the next century are therefore as follows: either current norms of full-time employment will be maintained and there will be another 35 per cent of the population unemployed on top of the current 10 per cent to 20 per cent; or else the number of hours spent in work for economic ends will be reduced in proportion to foreseeable savings in labour and the number of hours we work will decrease by between 30 per cent and 40 per cent - or even by half if everyone is to be guaranteed paid work. Evidently intermediate solutions can be envisaged, but the optimum solution is obviously the one which allows everyone to work but work less, work better and receive their share of the growing socially produced wealth in the form of an increasing real income. This presupposes a staged, programmed reduction in working hours from approximately 1,000 hours per year at present to approximately 1,000 hours per year in fifteen years' time, without any reduction in people's purchasing power. This calls for a whole series of specific policies, in particular a social policy which will make purchasing power dependent not on the amount of working hours put in but on the amount of social wealth produced. We will return to this later.

3.2. New Values, New Tasks

===새로운 가치들, 새로운 과업들 For the first time in modern history, we will be able to stop spending most of our time and our lives doing paid work. The liberation from work has become, for the first time, a tangible prospect. However, we must not underestimate the implications this has for each of us. The campaign for a continual and substantial reduction in the amount of paid work we do presupposes the latter's gradually ceasing to be the only - or main - occupation in our lives. It must, then, cease to be our principal source of identity and social insertion. Values other than economic values, activities other than the functional, instrumental, waged activities social apparatuses and institutions compel us to perform, will have to become predominant in our lives.

근대 역사에서 최초로, 우리는 우리의 시간과 삶의 대부분을 지불노동을 하면서 보내는 것을 중지할 수 있을 것이다. 노동/일로부터의 해방이 처음으로 현실적인 전망이 되었다. 그러나 이것이 우리 각자에서는 주는 함의들을 과소평가해서는 안된다. 지불노동량의 지속적이고 상당한 감축을 위한 캠페인이 전제하는 것은, 지불노동이 점진적으로 우리 삶의 유일한 -혹은 주요한- 직업(업무)가 아니게 되고 있다는 것이다. 그렇다면, 지불노동은 우리의 정체성과 사회에의 참여의(이 부분 -social insertion- 재검토 요망) 지배적인 원천이기를 중단해야 한다. 경제적 가치가 아닌 가치들, 사회기술과 제도에 의해 우리에게 강제된 기능적이고, 도구적이며 임금이 지불되는 활동이 아닌 활동들이 우리 삶의 지배적인 활동이 되어야 할 것이다.

The cultural and societal change involved here demands from each of us a change in attitude which no state, government, political party or trade union can bring about on our behalf. We shall have to find a meaning in life other than gainful employment, the work ethic and productivity, and struggles centred on issues other than those implied in wage relations. The extent of these cultural changes is such that it would be futile to propose them were it not for the fact that the changes presently under way are already heading in this direction.

이와 관련된 문화적, 사회적 변화는 우리 각자의 태도의 변화를 필요로 한다. 국가나 정부, 정당 혹은 노조가 우리를 대신하여 이러한 태도 변화를 가져 올 수 있는 것은 아니다. 우리는 유급직과 노동윤리 및 노동 생산성과는 다른 삶의 의미를 발견해야 할 것이다. 그리고 임노동 관계와 관련된 문제외의 다른 문제들을 중점으로 한 투쟁을 찾아야 할 것이다. 이러한 문화적 변화의 범위는 매우 광범위해서 현재 벌어지고 있는 변화들이 이미 이 방향으로 가고 있다는 사실이 아니라면 그 변화들을 제시하는 것은 무용할 정도다.

노동에서의 해방과 노동으로부터의 해방

Disaffection with waged work has been on the increase over the last twenty years or so, as shown by surveys conducted periodically by institutes in Germany and Sweden. Particularly prevalent among young workers, this attitude finds expression not so much in a lack of interest or a refusal to work hard but rather in a desire that work should fit into life instead of life having to fit into or be sacrificed to one's job or career. Workers, particularly young workers, aspire to (re)gain control of their lives and this increases their awareness of and openness to movements which have this specific aim.

독일과 스웨덴에서 주기적으로 수행된 조사에서와 같이, 임노동에 대한 불만은 지난 20년 동안 지속적으로 증가해 왔다. 젊은 노동자들에게 특히 팽배해 있는 이렇나 태도는 열심일 일하기를 거부하거나 일에 대한 관심의 부족을 표현한다기 보다는 삶이 직업이나 커리어에 맞추어지거나 희생되는 대신 일이 삶에 맞추어져야 한다는 바램을 표현하는 것이다. 노동자들 특히 젊은 노동자들은 자신의 삶에 대한 통제권을 (다시) 찾기를 갈망한다. 이러한 갈망은 삶에 대한 통제권의 (재)획득이라는 특정한 목적을 지닌 운동들에 대한 그들의 의식과 개방성을 증가시킨다.

This desire to liberate oneself from, or vis-a-vis, work should not be seen as opposed to the traditional union objectives of achieving liberation in work. On the contrary, past experience has shown that workers become more demanding with regard to their working conditions and work relations when their work leaves them time and energy to have a personal life. Conversely, personal self-development requires that the nature and hours of work should not be damaging to the workers' physical and psychic faculties. The trade-union movement must, therefore, keep campaigning on two levels simultaneously, just as it did in the past: for the `humanization' and enrichment of work and for a reduction in working hours, without loss of income.

이러한 노동으로부터 해방되고자 하는 열망이 노동에서의 해방이라는 전통적인 노조의 목표와 상반되는 것으로 파악되지 말아야 한다. 반대로 과거의 경험에 따르면 노동자는 그들의 노동이 개인적인 삶을 가질 수 있는 시간이 에너지가 남겨질 때, 노동 조건과 노동 관계에 대한여 더 많은 요구를 해오고 있다. 역으로 개인의 자기개발은 노동의 성격과 노동시간이 노동자의 육제적, 정신적 능력에 해로운 영향을 끼치지 않을 것을 요청한다. 따라서 노조 운동은 과거와 같이 두가지 수준의 운동을 동시에 유지해야 한다. 즉, 노동의 '인간화'와 노동의 가치 향상이라는 목표와 소득의 상실이 없는 노동시간의 축소라는 목표.

The traditional task of the trade unions is as relevant now as ever. For although the employers' ideology sets great store by the reskilling and personalizing ofjobs and the policy of giving workers greater responsibility, in practice this revaluation of labour only affects a small and privileged elite.

노조의 전통적인 과업은 언제나처럼 지금도 중요하다. 고용주 이데올로기는 작업의 재숙련과 개인화와 노동자에게 더 큰 책임감을 부여하는 정책을 중시함에도 불구하고 특히 이러한 노동의 재가치화가 실제로는 오직 소규모의 특권 엘리트들에게만 영향을 미치기 때문이다.

For large sectors of industrial and service workers it entails not only redundancies, but the deskilling and standardization of numerous previously skilled jobs and the introduction of a system of constant electronic monitoring of behaviour and productivity. Instead of being liberating, computerization often intensifies labour by eliminating `dead time' and forcing an increase in the pace of work.

많은 부문의 산업, 서비스 노동자에게 노동의 재가치화는 잉여노동력이 된다는 것을 의미할 뿐만 아니라 이전에는 숙련직이었던 다수의 직업의 비숙련화와 규격화 그리고 동작과 생산성에 대한 지속적인 전자 감시 시스템의 도입을 의미한다. 노동을 해방시키는 대신 컴퓨터화는 종종 '부동시간'을 제거하고 노동의 속도를 강제로 증가시킴으로써 노동 강화한다.

Often accompanied by putting workers on short time or the introduction of flexi-time, this intensification of work masks, as if by design, the fact that the intensity of human effort is now just a secondary factor of increased productivity, the main factor being the savings in human labour due to the high technical performance of the equipment employed. This equipment could be used to ease the strain and monotony of work, as well as working hours. This fact makes the arbitrary and oppressive nature of the intensification of labour all the more acutely felt.

조업단축이나 유연 노동시간의 도입을 종종 수반하는 이러한 노동의 강화는, 마치 디자인이 그러한 것처럼, 다음의 사실을 감춘다. 인간 노력의 강화는 현재 생산력 증가의 2차족 요인이며 주 요인은 설비의 높은 기술적 수행능력에 따른 인간 노동의 절감이라는 사실. 이러한 설비는 노동시간뿐 아니라 과로와 노동의 단조로움을 해소하는데 이용될 수 있다. 이러한 사실 때문에 노동의 강화에 내재하는 전제적이고 억압적인 성격은 더욱 더 민감하게 느껴지게 된다.

노동의 새로운 형태, 새로운 책무

In general, labour is tending to become a secondary force of production by comparison with the power, degree of automation and complexity of the equipment involved. Jobs in which the notion of individual effort and output still retain some meaning,in which the quantity or quality of the product depends on the workers' application to their task and in which their pride in producing something well-made is still a source of personal and social identity, are becoming increasingly rare.

전반적으로 장비의 작업률, 자동화 및 복잡도와 비교하여 노동은 2차적인 생산력이 되어가는 경향이 있다. 개인의 노력이나 산출물이 여전히 어떤 의미를 보유하며, 생산물의 양과 품질이 작업에 대한 노동자들의 몰두에 의존하며 우수한 제품의 생산에 대한 노동자들의 자부심이 여전히 개인적, 사회적 정체성의 한 원천이 되는 직업은 점차 그 수가 줄어들고 있다.

In robotized factories and process industries in particular, work consists essentially in monitoring, (re)programming and, should the occasion arise, correcting and repairing the functioning of automatic systems. Workers in this situation are on duty rather than at work. Their work is by nature intermittent. It is as dematerialized and functional to the system whose smooth running it ensures as that of `functionaries' or civil servants and, as in the case of the latter, often requires the worker to respect procedures whose minutest details have been laid down in advance and which preclude all forms of initiative and creativity. The control the workers exercise over their `product' and over the purpose it serves is minimal. Traditional work values and the traditional work ethic thus seem destined to give way to an ethic of service and, possibly, of responsibility towards the community, in so far as one's professional consciousness can now only consist in identifying oneself with the value of the function one fulfils and no longer with the value of the product of one's labour.

로봇화된 공장과 특히 가공 산업에서, 노동은 본질적으로 모니터링, (재)프로그래밍, 그리고 만약 문제가 발생할시의 자동시스템의 작동에 필요한 수리와 복구 자업을 하는데 있다. 이런 상황에서 노동자들은 일을 하고 있다기 보다는(at work)근무를 한다(on duty). (즉) 그들의 노동은 본질적으로 간헐적으로 이루어진다. 이 노동은 비물질화되며 그것이 원활한 작동을 보증하는 시스템에 기능적이다. 이는 마치 '공무원'의 경우와 유사하다. 공무의 경우, 공무원들은 가장 미세한 부분까지도 사전에 설정된 절차를 존중해야 하며 모든 형태의 주도적 활동이나 창조성을 사전에 배제하기 때문이다. 공무원들이 그들이 '제품'과 그 제품이 봉사하는 목적에 대해 행사하는 통제력은 최소화된다. 따라서 전통적인 노동 가치나 노동 윤리를 서비스 윤리, 그리고고 가능한 공동체에 대한 책무가 그 자리를 대신하게 된다. 직업적 의식이 존재할 수 있는 것이 오직 그들이 수행하는 기능의 가치와 자신을 동일시 하지 더 이상 자신의 노동의 결과물의 가치와 동일시 하지 않는 한 그렇다.

It thus becomes essential to ask ourselves what purpose we serve by the function we fulfil at `work'. Professional consciousness must therefore extend to include an examination of the effects technological, economic and commercial decisions have on society and civilization, and the issues that are at stake. ThiI is especially necessary in the case of technical and scientific workers, whose associations and groups have been known publicly to question the moral and political aims, values and consequences of the programmes they are to implement.

따라서 우리가 '노동'에서(at 'work') 수행하는 기능으로 우리가 봉사하는 목적이 과연 무엇인지를 스스로 반문해야만 한다. 직업의식은 그 범위를 확정하여 기술적, 경제적, 상업적 결정이 사회와 문명에 가져올 영향과 현안을 검토해야 한다. 특히 이는 기술 및 과학 관련 노동자에게 필요하다. 그들의 연합(협회)과 집단은 공적으로 알려지길, 그들이 수행하는 프로그램의 도덕적이며 정치적인 목표와 가치 그리고 그 결과에 대해 의문을 제기하기 때문이다.

This broadening of professional consciousness, this assumption of a reflexive and critical perspective on the implications of one's professional activities can obviously occur in associations and discussion groups, but should also be a central concern of the trade-union movement. In the absence of such developments, we run the risk of seeing the emergence of a technocratic caste which uses its expertise, or allows others to use it, to reinforce the domination of big business and the state over its citizens.

이러한 직업 의식의 확장 즉 직업적 활동의 함의에 대한 반성적이고 비판적인 관점을 가지는 것은 명백히 연합(협회) 및 토의 그룹에서 생겨날 수 있다. 그렇지만 이는 또한 노조 운동에서도 중요한 관심사가 되어야 한다. 이런 발전이 없다면, 우리는 기술관료 계급의 등장이라는 위험을 목도하게 된다. 이 기술관료 계급은 그들의 전문 지식을 직업 사용하거나 혹은 타인으로 하여금 사용하게 하여 대기업과 국가의 시민에 대한 지배를 재강화 하게 된다.

At a time when the economy has less and less need for everyone to be in full-time employment, the question of why we work and what our work consists in doing assumes prime importance. Asking this question is our only way of protecting ourselves from an ethic of `hard work for its own sake' and `producing for the sake of producing' which in the end lead towards an acceptance of the war economy and war itself. 모든 사람이 전일 노동을 할 필요가 점점 줄어드는 경제에서, 우리가 왜 노동을 해야 하면 우리의 노동이란 대체 어떤을 하는 것인가에 대해 질문은 매우 중요하다. 종국에는 전쟁 경제와 전쟁 그 자체를 받아 들이는 것으로 끝나는 '노역을 위한 노역'과 '생산을 위한 생산'이라는 윤리로부터 우리는 보호하는 유일한 길은 이러한 질문을 하는 것이다.

비경제적 목적과 활동의 중요성

The capitalist economy is no longer able to guarantee everyone a right to economically useful and remunerated work. Hence the right to work cannot be guaranteed for everyone unless, first, the number of hours everyone works in the economy is reduced and, second, the possibilities of working outside the economy, in tasks not performed for economic ends, are developed and opened up to all.

자본주의 경제는 더 이상 모든 사람에게 경제적으로 유용하며 보수를 지급받는 노동할 권리(the right to work)는 보증할 수 없다. 따라서 우선 모든 사람의 경제 활동 시간이 축소되고 경제 외적 영역에서에서 일할 수 있는 즉, 경제적 목적이 아닌 작업 영역에서 일 할 수 있는 가능성이 개발되어 모든 사람에게 개방되지 않는다면 노동할 권리가 모든 사람에게 보증될 수 없다.

3.2.3.1. The trade union in everyday life: cultural tasks.

===== 일상 생활에서의 노동 조합 : 문화적 과업 As has been shown, we cannot all be guaranteed the possibility of working within the economy unless working hours are reduced to approximately 1,000 hours per year. Waged work cannot then continue to be the most important element in our lives. Unless people are to become passive consumers of amusements, who are fed on and manipulated by a deluge of programmes, messages and media games, they must be given the possibility of developing interests and autonomous activities, including productive activities. Their socialization, that is, their insertion into society and their sense of belonging to a culture, will derive more from these autonomous activities than from the work an employer or institution defines for them. (The same remarks would also apply, should society prefer to have a mass of reasonably well-compensated people out of work rather than reduce working hours). The labour movement should not forget here that its origins lie in working-class cultural associations. It will not be able to survive as a movement unless it takes an interest in people's self-realization outside their work as well as in it, and helps or participates in the creation of sites and spaces in which people are able to develop their ability to take responsibility for their own lives and self-manage their social relations: open universities, community schools and community centres; service-exchange co-operatives and mutual-aid groups; cooperative repair and self-production workshops; discussion, skills-transfer and art and craft groups, and so on.

이제까지 살펴본 바와 같이 노동시간이 년 당 약 1,000시간으로 축소되지 않는다면 경제 내에서 우리 모두가 노동할 가능성은 보장될 수 없다. 따라서 임금 노동자가 우리 삶의 가장 중요한 요인으로 계속 남아 있을 수는 없다. 무수한 프로그램과 메시지 그리고 미디어 게임이 제공하는 유흥에 빠지거나 조작되는 그러한 수동적인 소비자가 되지 않을려면, 사람들에게 생산적 활동을 포함하여 관심거리(interests)와 자율적 활동을 개발할 수 있는 가능성이 주어져야 한다. 사람들이 사회화되는 것, 즉 그들이 사회로 들어가서 활동하고 하나의 어떤 문화에 포함되어 있다는 느낌을 가지게 되는 것은 고동유자 제도가 정의하고 한정한 그런 노동으로부터가 아니라 이러한 자율적인 활동을 통해 더 강화될 것이다.(사회가 노동시간의 단축보다 노동으로부터 벗어난 사람들에 대해 합리적으로 좀 더 잘 보상하는(금전적인 구매력을 주는) 것을 휠씬 더 선호하는 경우도 이러한 주장이 적용된다). 노동운동 진영은 노동운동의 기원이 노동계급의 문화적 연합(associations)에 있었다는 것을 망각하지 말아야 한다. 노동 운동은, 사람들의 노동 안에서 뿐 아니라 노동 밖에서의 자산 실현에 대해 관심을 가지고, 사람들이 자신들의 삶에 대한 책무를 수행할 능력을 개발하고 그들의 사회적 관계를 자발적으로 관리할 수 있는 그러한 영역과 공간을 창출하는데 일조하거나 참여하지 않는다면 하나의 운동으로서 살아 남을 수 없을 것이다. 이러한 사회적 관계에는 다음과 같은 것들이 포함된다. 개방 대학, 공동체 학교 및 공동체 센터; 서비스 교환 협동 조합과 상호 부조 집단; 협동조합 보수 및 자발 생산 작업장; 토의 및 기술이전 집단 및 기술 집단 등등(아, 빨간 색으로 바꿔야 하는데.. 번역 검토 요망).

These are not tasks to be undertaken at some time in the distant future but objectives which should be given urgent priority now, for two reasons.

이것은 먼 미래의 한 때에 수행되어야 할 것이 아니다. 이것은 다음 두 가지 이유로 지금 그것도 시급히 수행되어야 한다.

- The tendency of large-scale enterprises to sub-contract the maximum amount of manufacturing and services out to tiny enterprises employing an unstable, fluctuating workforce, or even people working from home, means it is essential that trade unions should exist in towns and suburbs and that they should be open to all who live in them. They must attract this floating workforce and the population as a whole, independently of their ability to organize waged workers at their workplaces.

- 대기업은 막대한 양의 제조 및 서비스를 소기업에 하청을 주는 경향이다. 이 소기업은 고용조건이 불안정하고 유동적인 노동인구와 심지어 가내 노동자를 고용하고 있다. 이는 노동조합이 도심과 교외지역에 위치하여 그 지역세 사는 모든 이들에게 개방되어야 한다는 것을 의미한다. 노조는 이러한 유동적인 노동인구 및 노동현장에서 임금 노동자를 조직할 수 있는 능력과 독립적으로 이런 주민 전체를 끌어들여 지지를 얻고 (조직해야 한다).

- More than at any other time, the influence of the trade-union movement depends on its ability to contend with the cultural industry and the entertainment or leisure moguls, so as to break the monopoly they are aiming to acquire over consciousness-formation and our conception of future society, life and its priorities. The trade-union movement's cultural task is really a political one, if we give `political' its original meaning of an activity relating to the organization, future and good of the `city'.

- 어느 때보다 노동조합 운동의 영향력은 문화 산업과 오락 레저 대부호들과 싸울 수 있는 능력에 달려 있다. 이 능력에 따라 우리는 그들이 목적하는 독점을 넘어서 의식형성과 미래의 사회와, 삶과 삶의 우선권에 대한 우리의 개념을 형성할 수 있다. '정치적' 이라는 말에 조직과 미래와 '도시'의 미덕(good)과 관련된 행동이라는 그 고유한 의미를 부여한다면, 노동조합 운동의 문화적 과업은 참으로 정치적인 것이다.

3.2.3.2. Trade unionism as one movement among many

The trade union movement should also not ignore the Struggles which have developed in the last fifteen years or so in areas outside work. These campaigns, which are extremely varied in nature, are all characterized by the aspiration of individuals and communities to regain existential sovereignty and the power to determine their own lives. These campaigns have a common target: the dictatorial rule industry and the bureaucracy exercise in alliance with professions whose aim it is to monopolize knowledge in areas as diverse as health, education, energy requirements, town planning, the model and level of consumption, and so on. In all these areas, single-issue movements - the `new social movements' - are attempting to defend our right to self determination from forms of mega-technology and scientism which lead to the concentration of decision-making power in the hands of a technocracy whose expertise generally serves to legitimate the economic and political powers-that-be.

다수의 운동 중 하나의 운동으로서의 노동조합주의

노조 운동은 또한 지난 15년 동안 또는 노동영역 외에서 발전되어 온 투쟁들을 무시하지 말아야 한다. 이 캠페인들은 그 본질에 있어서는 매우 다양하지만, 모두 존재론적인 주관과 자신의 삶을 결정할 수 있는 능력을 되찾기 위한 개인들과 공동체의 열망이라는 특징을 가진다. 이러한 캠페인은 다음과 같은 공동의 공격 목표를 가진다 : 건강과 교육, 에너지, 지역 계획, 소비 모델과 수준 등등의 다양한 영역에서의 지식의 독점을 목적으로 하는 전문가들과 동맹하여 산업과 관료제가 행사하는 독재적인 규칙. 이 모든 영역에서 단일 이슈의 운동들-신사회운동-이 거대 기술 및 과학주의로부터 우리의 자기결정 권한을 보호하려고 노력하고 있다. 거대 기술 및 과학주의는 의사 결정 능력의 기술관료로의 집중을 가져오며, 기술관료의 전문 지식은 통상 경제적 및 정치적인 현행의 권력(powers-that-be)을 정당화하는 데 봉사한다. These campaigns of resistance to the professionalization, technocratization and monetarization of our lives are specific forms of a wider, more fundamental struggle for emancipation. They contain a radical potential which has repercussions on workplace struggles and they mould the consciousness of a growing number of people. It is essential for the trade-union movement to be receptive to the aspirations contained within these movements and to adopt them as part of its struggle. It is equally essential that it should see itself as an integral part of a wider, many-sided movement of individual and social emancipation. The fact that the trade-union movement is - and will remain - the best-organized force in this broader movement confers on it a particular responsibility: on it will largely depend the success or failure of all the other elements in this social movement. According to whether the trade-union movement opposes them or whether it seeks a common alliance and a common course of action with them,these other elements will be part of the left or will break with it, will engage with it in collective action or will remain minorities tempted to resort to violence.

삶의 전문가화, 기술관료한 및 금전화에 대한 이러한 저항 캠페인은 해방을 위한 더 광범위하고 더 근본적인 투쟁의 특정한 형태다. 이 캠페인들은 작업장 투쟁에 영향을 미치는 급진적인 잠재력을 가지고 있으며 증가하는더 많은 사람들의 의식을 형성한다. 노동조합운동이 이러한 운동들에 포함된 열망을 수용하고 자신의 투쟁의 일부로 채택하는 것은 필수적이다. 노조운동이 자신을 개인과 사회의 해방을 위한 더 광범위하고 다양한 운동들에 통합된 일부로 인식하는 것 또한 필수적이다. 노조운동이 여전히 그리고 앞으로도 이 광범위한 운동에서 가장 잘 조직된 힘으로 남을 것이라는 사실 때문에 그것은 특수한 책무를 부여받는다 : 이 사회운동에서의 모든 다른 구성 요인들의 성공과 실패가 노조운동에 상당부분 의존하게 될 것이다. 노동운동이 다른 운동 영역들에 반대하는지 아니면 공동의 행동 방침과 동맹을 추구하는지에 따라, 이 다른 요인들은 좌파의 일부가 되든지 혹은 단절하든지 할 것이며, 좌파와 더불어 공동 행동을 하든가 폭력적 행동 방식에 끌리는 소수로 남게 될 것이다.

The attitude of the trade-union movement towards the other social movements and their objectives will also determine its own evolution. If it divorces itself from them, if it refuses to be part of a wider movement, if it sees its mission as being limited to the defence of waged workers as such, it will inevitably degenerate into a conservative, neo-corporatist force.

다를 사회운동들과 그 목적들에 대한 노조운동의 태도는 또한 자신의 진화경로를 결정할 것이다. 노조운동이 여타 사회운동과 단절된 태도를 보이면서 (하나의) 더 광범위한 운동의 일부이기를 거절하고 자신의 사명을 임금 노동자의 방어에 제한되어 있는 것으로 본다면, 필연적으로 보수적이고 신조합주의적인 세력으로 퇴화할 것이다.

3.3. Working Less, Living Better

3.3.1. The field of autonomous activities

A progressive reduction in working time to 1,000 hours or less per year gives completely new dimensions to disposable time. Non-working time is no longer necessarily time for the rest, recuperation, amusement and consumption; it no longer serves to compensate for the strain, constraints and frustrations of working time. Free time is no longer merely the always insufficient `time left over' we have to make the most of while we can and which is never long enough for embarking on a project of any kind.

If the working week were reduced to under twenty-five or thirty hours, we could fill our disposable time with activities which have no economic objective and which enrich the life of both individual and group: cultural and aesthetic activities whose aim is to give and create pleasure and enhance and `cultivate' our immediate environment; assistance, caring and mutual-aid activities which create a network of social relations and forms of solidarity throughout the neighbourhood or locality; the development of friendships and affective relationships; educational and artistic activities; the repairing and production of objects and growing food for our own use, `for the pleasure' of making something ourselves, of preserving things we can cherish and hand down to our children; service-exchange cooperatives, and so on. In this way it will be possible for an appreciable proportion of the services currently provided by professionals, commercial enterprises or public institutions to be provided on a voluntary basis by individuals themselves, as members of grassroots communities, according to needs they themselves have defined. I shall return to this later.

These activities, taken as a whole, should not be viewed as an alternative economic sector which forms part of a 'dual economy'. These activities are characterized by an absence of economic rationality and have no place in the economic sphere. The act of performing them, is not the means to achieve an end, to achieve satisfaction. It produces that satisfaction itself; it is an end in itself. The time we devote, for example, to music, love, education, exchanging of ideas, to creative activities, to looking after the sick, is time for living, and cannot be bought or sold at any price. Extending this time for living and reducing the amount of time devoted to necessary tasks or work for economic ends has been one of humanity's constant aims.

3.3.2. From the self-management of time to the self-management of life

There is no reason why we should make this reduction of the amount of paid work a reduction in daily or weekly working hours. Computerization and the greater flexibility of decentralized units of production increase the scope for individual and/or collective self-management of work schedules. This is already happening in Quebec, where public employees are able to arrange their monthly quota of 140 hours as best suits them individually. Factories and administrative bodies have been reorganized so that employees are no longer obliged to put in a set number of hours per day, with work stations functioning independently of one another. Such possibilities for workers themselves to manage their own time should be mobilized against schemes which introduce flexi-time on the employers' terms.

One thousand hours per year could, for example, be divided into twenty per week, done in two and a half days, or ten days per month, or twenty-five weeks per year, or ten months spread out over two years - without any loss of real income of course (I shall return to this). Working hours could also be defined as the amount of work performed over a lifetime: for example, a person could do 20,000 to 30,000 hours over a lifetime, which would be completed within the fifty years of their potential active working life and guarantee them - throughout their lifetime - the full income which their 1,600 hours per year provides at the present time.

A form of self-management such as this which spans an entire lifetime presents a number of advantages and has been the subject of much debate in Sweden. By allowing people to work more or less during certain periods in their lives, this arrangement allows them to be ahead or behind in the amount of work they have to do per year; to interrupt their professional activity over a number of months or years without loss of income in order, for example, to learn a new trade, set up a business, bring up children, build a house, or undertake an artistic, scientific, humanitarian or co-operative project.

The possibility of alternating between waged work and autonomous activities, or doing the two simultaneously, should not be interpreted as a devaluation of waged work. Personal development through autonomous activities always has repercussions on one's professional work. It enriches it and makes it more fruitful. The notion that one must devote oneself and one's time entirely and exclusively to a single job if one is to succeed or be creative is erroneous. The creator and the pioneer are generally jacks-of-all-trades with extremely diverse and changing interests and occupations. Einstein's theory of relativity came to him during the free time he had while working full-time job in the patent office in Berne.

In general, innovation and creativity are the result not of continuous, regular work but of a period of spasmodic effort (for example, twenty hours or more at a stretch in computer programming; three hundred to five hundred hours a month, over a period of several months, to set up a business or perfect a new type of technology or piece of equipment), followed by periods of reading, thinking, pottering about, travelling and emotional and intellectual interaction.

Continual hard slog does not make work more creative or more efficient; it only serves the will to power of those who defend the rank and the position of strength their work affords them. It is rare for pioneers, creators or high-level researchers to be at work for more than 1,000 hours per year on average. Experience has shown that two people, sharing a single position of responsibility (for example, as a dean of a university, a personnel manager, a legal adviser, a municipal architect or a doctor) and doing two and a half days each, do the job better more efficiently than one person doing the same job full-time.

3.3.3 The democratization of areas of competence

A policy for the reduction of working time limited solely to unskilled jobs will not avoid the division and segmentation of society it is designed precisely to prevent. All it will do is displace the split. It will give rise on one side to professional elites who monopolize the positions of responsibility and power and on the other to a mass of powerless deskilled, peripheral workers on short time. If the maximum number of people are to have access to creative, responsible, skilled jobs, then it is just as essential for the amount of working hours to be reduced here as elsewhere. The current scarcity of jobs such as these can be explained less by a lack of talents and will to develop a career than by the fact that creative, responsible, skilled jobs are monopolized by professional elites intent on defending their corporate and class privileges and powers. Reducing the amount of time work takes up will enable these jobs to be `democratized' and allow a larger percentage of the working population to have access to them, since it will create scope for people to acquire new skills and to study regardless of age.

AN INCOME UNCOUPLED FROM THE QUANTITY OF LABOUR PERFORMED

When the economy requires a decreasing amount of labour and distributes less and less in the way of wages for an increasing volume of production, `the purchasing power of the population and their right to an income can no longer be made to depend on the amount of labour they supply. The purchasing power distributed must increase despite the reduction in the amount of labour required. The level of real income distributed and the quantity of labour supplied must become independent of each other, otherwise he demand for production will be insufficient and economic depression will deepen. The key question for all the industrial nations is not the principle of uncoupling the level a- income from the amount of labour the economy requires, but the way in which to implement this dissociation. Three formulas can be envisaged.

4.1. The Social-Democratic Logic

The creation of jobs outside the economy proper is often advocated, especially by the left, on the grounds that `There is no shortage of work, since there is virtually no limit to the needs we have to satisfy.' The question remains, however, as to whether these needs will be best satisfied through the waged labour of people employed to that end. Two categories of inherently non-commercializable needs can be distinguished.

- The first group relates to the environment on which our quality of life depends, and includes our need for space, clean air, silence and styles of architecture and urban planning which make it easy for us to meet and interact. These needs cannot be expressed on the market in terms of effective individual `demand' giving rise to a corresponding supply. The resources to which these needs relate cannot in fact be produced and sold, whatever the price offered for them. These needs will be satisfied not by working and producing more but by working and producing differently. To this end, a policy of selective public incentives and subsidies is required so as to express a collective level of demand which would make it possible to furnish the corresponding supply (especially in the case of re-afforestation, pollution control, energy conservation, urban development or the prevention of illnesses, for example). This will create a limited number of jobs. But part of the jobs thus created will be lost elsewhere because the consumption of energy, medical services and pharmaceutical products will diminish, as will the demand for goods and services, since jobs created by public demand are financed from public, fiscal resources drawn from the economy.

- The second category of non-economic needs which cannot be expressed in cash terms concerns helping and caring activities (for the aged, the disturbed, children, the sick, and so on). Industrialization has resulted in a shortage of time and autonomy, and its growth has been based on compensating for this by turning activities which were traditionally part of the private, family or community sphere into professional, commercialized ones. This has resulted in the impoverishment and depersonalization of human relations, the disintegration of grassroots communities and the standardization and technicization of caring and helping services - all things which the new social movements' are reacting against at different levels. We must consequently ask ourselves to what extent our need for the care and help provided for by these services, whether public or private, is generated by our lack of time; to what extent, therefore, that need would not be better met if we increased the time we had available rather than employing people to take care of our children, ageing parents, mixed-up adolescents and distressed friends in our stead. A reduction in working hours without loss of income could allow the repatriation to grassroots communities, through voluntary cooperation and mutual aid on the level of the neighbourhocd or block, of a growing number of services which will better satisfy our needs, and be better adapted to them, if we provide them for ourselves than they are when professionals are paid to administer them according to norms and procedures laid down by the state. It is not a question of dismantling the welfare state but of relieving it, as the amount of work we do for economic ends diminishes, of certain tasks which, apart from being expensive, also bring the tutelag'e of the state to bear on the beneficiaries.

4.2. The Liberal Logic

The second formula for uncoupling the level of income from the amount of labour supplied is the institution of a `social minimum' or `social income' unconditionally guaranteed to all citizens. This formula has its supporters on the left as well as on the Right. In general, its objective is to protect an increasing mass of unemployed people from extreme forms of poverty. In the most generous variants of this scheme, the social income guaranteed to all citizens is to be fixed above the poverty line.

The neo-liberal variant, however, fixes the guaranteed social income at or below subsistence level, with the result that the recipients are practically forced to earn a top-up income by doing `odd jobs', which will not prevent them receiving the guaranteed minimum income as long as their earned income does not exceed a certain amount. In this conception of the scheme, the guaranteed minimum is to allow the price of labour to change in keeping with the laws of supply and demand and, if necessary, to fall below subsistence level.

In all of the above cases,the guaranteed social income is essentially an unemployment allowance adapted to a situation in which a high percentage of the unemployed have never worked and have little chance of finding a regular paid job. It amounts to a form of social assistance provided by the state, which neither stems the tide of unemployment nor arrests the division of society into a class of active workers in full-time employment on the one hand and a marginalized mass of the unemployed and semi-employed on the other.

4.3. The Trade-Union Logic

The third formula for making the level of income independent of the amount of labour supplied is the reduction of working hours without loss of income. This proposal reconciles the right of everyone to have a paid job and the possibility for everyone to have a greater degree of existential autonomy and for individuals to exercise more control over their private, family and community lives. This proposal is most closely in keeping with the trade-union tradition. While the demand for a guaranteed social income is a social policy demand addressed to the state, and one which trade unions can neither carry through by direct mass action nor implement themselves through workers' control, the demand for a reduction in the working week to thirty-two, twenty-eight, twenty-four or twenty hours, without loss of real income, can be campaigned for through collective action and, more importantly, can create solidarity between workers, the unemployed and those people - a significant number of whom are women and young people - who wish their jobs to fit into their personal lives instead of requiring the sacrifice of the latter.

Contrary to the social income, which is a more or less inadequate compensation for social and economic exclusion, a reduction in working hours meets three basic requisites of justice:

- the savings in labour which technological development has created must benefit everyone; - everyone must be able to work less so that everyone can work; - the decrease in working hours must not entail a decrease in real income, since more wealth is being created by less labour. These are not new aims. There is no shortage of collective agreements, and sectoral or company agreements which have, in the past, made provision for a progressive reduction in working hours accompanied by guarantees of purchasing power and a stabilization, if not indeed an increase, in the size of the workforce.

What is new is the fact that the technological revolution is now affecting all fields of activity and bringing about highly differentiated savings in labour. This will continue over a long period. Trade-union action is indispensable if we are to achieve reductions in working hours which correspond to the predictable rise in productivity: indispensable, in particular, if the reductions in working hours are to lead to employees being able to self-manage their time and not merely to more flexible-time on the employers' terms. But trade-union activity is not enough to effect a planned reduction in working hours by stages across the whole of society. This calls for specific policies which very much concern the trade-union movement but which cannot be conducted and implemented by it. These specific policies must focus on four areas: forecasting and programming; employment; training; and financing.

4.4. Complementary Policies

4.4.1. Productivity contracts

Increases in productivity are neither unpredictable nor unforeseen. Enterprises, industrial sectors and administrative bodies generally plan investment programmes spanning several years which are intended to produce predictable productivity gains. Social control over the technological revolution consists in translating these productivity forecasts into for example, company, sectoral or public-service contracts, which can serve as a framework for ongoing negotiations e necessary adjustments and means of implementation.

4.4.2. Employment policy

Increases in available productivity are obviously not the same in all companies, sectors and institutions. Social control over the technological revolution consists in avoiding a situation in which there are redundancies and a surplus of labour power in some sectors of the economy, while there is plenty of overtime and a shortage of labour in others.

It thus becomes essential for labour to be transferred from enterprises and industrial sectors in which there is rapid growth in available productivity to those where there is little or no growth. Such transfers are the condition for an approximately equal reduction in working hours for everyone, proportionate to the average growth in productivity of the economy as a whole, in conditions as close as possible to full employment. An employment policy which offers incentives for professional mobility is therefore necessary. This evidently presupposes the possibility of learning or relearning a trade at any age, without loss of income.

4.4.3. Educational reform

Current training methods are often inappropriate and not particularly stimulating. There is an urgent need at all levels of the education system for a reform which will focus on the individual's ability to learn by her or himself, on the acquisition of a range of related skills which will enable individuals to become polyvalent and develop their capacity to carry out a range of occupations. Schools also need to reverse their priorities: instead of giving priority to training `human computers' whose memory capacity, abilities of analysis and calculation and so on, are surpassed and largely made redundant by electronic computers, they need to give priority to developing irreplaceable human capabilities such as manual, artistic, emotional, relational and moral capabilities, and the ability to ask unforeseen questions, to search for a meaning, to reject non-sense even when it is logically coherent.

4.4.4. Fiscal reform

From the point where it takes only 1,000 hours per year or 20,000 to 30,000 hours per lifetime to create an amount of wealth equal to or greater than the amount we create at the present time in 1,600 hours per year or 40,000 to 50,000 hours in a working life, we must all be able to obtain a real income equal to or higher than our current salaries in exchange for a greatly reduced quantity of work. In practice, this means that in the future we must receive our full monthly income every month even if we work full-time only one month in every two or six months in a year or even two years out of four, so as to complete a personal, family or community project, or experiment with different lifestyles, just as we now receive our full salaries during paid holidays, training courses, possibly during periods of sabbatical leave, and so forth.

In contrast to the guaranteed social minimum granted by the state to those unable to find regular paid work, our regular monthly income will be the normal remuneration we have earned by performing the normal amount of labour the economy requires each individual to supply. The fact that the amount of labour required is so low that work can become intermittent and constitute an activity amongst a number of others, should not be an obstacle to its being remunerated by a full monthly income throughout one's life. This income corresponds to the portion of socially produced wealth to which each individual is entitled by virtue to their participation in the social process of production. It is, however, no longer a true salary, since it is not dependent on the amount of labour supplied (in the month or year) and is not intended to remunerate individuals as workers. It is therefore practically impossible for this income to be paid and guaranteed by economic units or enterprises, either in the form of increases in salary per hour of work or through contributions paid into a social fund. In both cases, the reduction by half of working hours, without loss of real income, would raise the hourly cost of labour to double the present level.

Leaving aside problems of competitiveness, the result would be a prohibitive rise in the relative price of highly labour-intensive services and forms of production such as building, agriculture, maintenance and repair work, and cultural and educational activities. This difficulty could be overcome by implementing the following solution: enterprises would only pay for the hours of work completed, on a negotiated wage-scale, which would thus ensure that the real costs of production were known. The loss of salary resulting from a reduction in working hours would be compensated from a guarantee fund which would pay for the working hours saved due to advances in technology, at the rate set for hours of work actually completed. This guarantee fund would be paid for out of a tax on automated production, comparable to VAT or the duty on alcohol, cigarettes, fuel or cars, for example. The rate of taxation of products would rise as their production costs decreased. The less socially desirable or useful that production, the higher this tax would be. As these taxes would be deductible from export costs, competitiveness would not be affected. The real income individuals receive would be made up of a direct salary and a social income which, in non-working periods in particular, would itself be sufficient to guarantee their normal standard of living.

The implementation of a system of political prices, reflecting the choices society has made, and the creation of a social income indepen ent of the amount of labour supplied, will in any case become necessary as the cost of bour in increasingly widespread robotized production is reduced to a negligible amount. The value of salaries distributed and the price of automated forms of production can o y be prevented from falling through the floor by a price-and-incomes policy by means f which society can assert its priorities and give direction and meaning to the advance of technology. Nevertheless, there is nothing to guarantee that society will choose the emancipation and autonomy of individuals as its priority or its intended direction, rather than seeking to dominate and exert even greater control over them. What direction the present social changes will take is still an open question; it is today and wil, for the foreseeable future remain, the central issue in social conflicts and the key question for social movements.

CONCLUSION

I have attempted to identify the meaning history could have, and to show what humanity and the trade-union movement could derive from the technological revolution we are witnessing at present. I have tried to indicate the direction in which we should advance, the policies we should follow if we are to bring this about. Events could nevertheless take a course which would miss the possible meaning of the current technological revolution. If this happens, I can see no other meaning in that revolution: our societies will continue to disintegrate, to become segmented, to sink into violence, injustice and fear Back to the top