Stoller:
Does superior ability in some specific area (such as basketball) determine general superiority? Such as: the man who jumps high hoops gets a fortune, the woman who takes care of children professionally doesn't merit health care?
: -----The above paragraph is completely nonsensical.
You are the one defending the social division of labor.
As I believe, hierarchy, class divisions, and the ensuing social and material inequities of class divisions result from the social division of labor.
In short, I'm associating your defense for the social division of labor with all of its attendent evils.
Since you defend the social division of labor (and capitalist relations in general), then comments bringing attention to basketball players with millions of dollars and health care workers who make only $7 an hour, no benefits, falls fairly upon your shoulders.
: I was merely indicating that we are all not equal. You have not refuted this.
If you look at this post you will see that I follow Lenin's Maxian analysis of skill, acknowledging that there is not absolute equality of ability between people. I would never be so utopian as to assert otherwise.
However!
This is NOT a defense of UNEQUAL access to the means of production and control over the state---which is something every procapitalist does in the name of differing levels of ability.
Returning to the basketball player and the health care worker, 'ability'---as in differing abilities---is subjective. The basketball might not be a good child care worker. The health care worker might not be a good basketball player.
It is only MARKET RELATIONS that decides that basketball is 'worth more' than quality child care.
Marx: 'The use of products is determined by the social conditions in which the consumers find themselves placed, and these conditions themselves are based on class antagnonism'(The Poverty of Philosophy, International n.d., p. 54).
Furthermore: 'Production precedes consumption, supply compels demand' (ibid., p. 59, emphasis added).
So if capitalists decide what workers want (and they have this control because they control wages), then it is capitalists---NOT consumers---who choose to make basketball players millionaires and health care workers wage slaves.
Yet these decisions are made FOR workers, justified ideologically by the evidence that some people are more skilled than others AND the arbitrary determinations of WHICH skills are 'better' than others.
Get it?
More details here.
: I just said job sharing wasn't practical as not everyone was equal.
Although I believe job rotation is essential to democracy at a production level, I do not assert that all people should do all jobs. I merely believe that all people should share equally skilled and unskilled work. Likewise, although I believe some people will have certain talents others do not, that does not entitle anyone to usurp all the skilled work in society. This is premised upon my central belief that no one is unable to perform some type of skilled work---especially in running the state (their own life).
Please see this post after you've seen this post.
Warning: there WILL be quotes (and reasoning that you probably won't like).
