Has Modern Professionalism been Captured by Statism and Privatism?
I feel the need to post a caveat to anyone
feeling that they might just be able to glance through this and pick up the
gist: the thinking behind it is rather condensed and may require some
familiarity with the conceptual framework that informs Rudolf Steiner’s
economic thinking (though I believe the ideas stand by themselves). I have kept the short title ‘spiritual remuneration’ because
I couldn’t think of a better one, but it may be misleading … a more clunky
title might be more descriptive ‘how to pay for people whose work is not
focused on physical production’. Oh ... and it is rather long!
Intro
In the previous post I described the need to
make a distinction between goods, rights and ideas. When one does this, it
becomes apparent that if one were to describe things accurately one would see
that it is only goods that are actually sold. In what follows, the description
is ‘as if’, which is to say it looks counterfactual, but the phenomenon
observed is the same one, thus prompting the question “which description is
truer? The conventional consensus or the ‘counterfactual’ explanation”. Can
human labour (or anything other than a good) really be sold, notwithstanding
our certainty that we do that constantly? And if not, where does that leave
current explanations and the arrangements built on them?
Goods Are for Sale
Let us for now accept that only goods are
actually sold. Only those who produce tangible goods receive the remuneration
by which they can live, which is to say, in this scenario, they receive in
exchange the goods which they need. Everyone else will need to persuade the
producers of goods to share the proceeds of their work. Of course this is what
actually happens in as much as we all live from the tangible produce of the
world, not just those who actually produce it. How does this happen?
Background: an agricultural scenario
Let us begin with an archetypal self-contained
agricultural community and then see whether the underlying economic dynamic, as
it can be seen working there, is in fact any different from the circumstances
of today’s economic life.
Rights for Goods
The normal thing will be for people to expend
their labour agriculturally in order for the goods by which they live to be
produced. Anyone who is part of that community who is not spending his time
labouring and is therefore not engaged in production will need to live by what
the others produce. What he offers to the community will need to be recognised
as of value, for them to be willing to support him in this way. Priests,
doctors, educators, accountants, lawyers all fall into this category - they are
not directly productive, but work indirectly by developing the cultural life of
the population at large. They win ‘the right’ to share in the harvest by
virtue of the fact that there is recognition for the contribution they bring.
By their work, which involves not expending labour on land, but using their
intelligence to ‘improve’ labour, they gain rights which can be seen as
a form of token that can be used to claim goods.
Class and Category
This may begin to look like a class analysis -
manual workers and cultural workers - but this is not meant, even if there is
some correspondence (as also exists, for example, in the distinction between
trades and professions). A category analysis is intended, focusing not on the
person but the category of work, and with the added caveat that no work is
exclusively manual or intellectual, but each is a blend of both. In the same
way one can see that today trades and professions are no longer distinct. A tradesman
can work professionally and a professional can know the tricks of his trade.
There is an element of manual and intellectual application in every task.
Right and Might
To this crude picture could be added the fact
the governance arrangements may involve the deployment of force, or that those
who are primarily concerned with cultural production may, through their
spiritual psychological and physical aptitudes, dominate the manual workers,
whether benignly or malignly. The weakness or ignorance of the population, by
which it can be oppressed, might in itself be a sign that it lacks real
cultural development.
Rights Allocate Goods
In the foregoing scenario there was a transfer
of goods from those who directly produce them to those who, while they are not
themselves productive, play a role which is recognised by their community and
for this they receive the right to partake of the available harvest,
whether by gifts, tokens, or forceful commandeering. Before we go into detail, it should be
emphasised that though this description of labour (being expended on nature or
improved by intelligence) might appear like an artificial construct, it is in
fact the underlying reality upon which our economic relationships are based.
The same question today
The situation today may look quite different,
but the essential point remains: there are those who produce things and those
who do not; or work that is directly productive and work that is not directly
productive. When one grasps this simple though incontestable truth and sees
that a transfer must always occur between the two, then the question arises “
by what mechanism is this transfer made?”
How are resources (meaning goods in particular) transferred from those
who produce to those who do not (or at least not directly).
Modalities of transfer
Below I briefly describe various modalities of
transfer (perhaps overlapping) before asking what is appropriate in our time:
Forced Transfer
There is a gradation here between tribute,
protection and tax levies. In essence the transfer is involuntary and there may
not be anything offered in return, such as scutage (a kind of feudal
protection). The recognition of the right of the collector is that they have
the might to enforce their demand.
Customary Transfer
Where pure tradition operates, handing over
some of the proceeds of ones work is simply an aspect of normal practice.
Tithing often falls into this category.
Patronage
Although it is most often associated with the
wealthy benefactor (who has already accumulated the right of disposal of the
proceeds of the work of others), the principle is simply that one person
further the endeavours of another (normally artistic) by providing their means.
Whether there is a quid pro quo (such as ‘glorify me in your poems’) is
secondary.
Recognition of Mutual Advantage
When everyone in the community pays for the
doctor or the fire service, it is because they see that it is in their direct
interests to do so. It does not mean, however, that they expect to get sick or
have their house burned down - indeed the measure of the effectiveness of the
doctor might be that people do not get sick, or that their house does not burn
down.
Moral Obligation
The fact that one shares with those who cannot
produce may encompass everything from feeding elderly relatives to giving alms
to the poor.
State Allocation
The primary means by which all of the
reallocation described above is achieved today is through the state.
Independent from the State?
One might argue that there are plenty of people
whose work is almost entirely spiritual (meaning not expending labour on nature
toward producing a physical good) but who are completely independent from the
state. For example lawyers, doctors, bankers etc and everyone else today who
does not depend on monetary transfers from the state, but is nevertheless
engaged in intangible production.
The Ideal Independent
A person who works independently can either
sell what he produces (in which case he falls economically into the category of
a manual worker) or sustain himself by virtue of the fact that he is
pre-funded. We could either say that he receives unconditional donations or that
his work is pre-paid by a third party.
So if we look at those cultural workers who do
not fall into the above category but who are also not dependent on the state
for their direct income then the question still arises: by what means do they
receive their income? For the sake of clarity lets call this category ‘modern
professionals’
One-at-a-time private versus forever public
To provide some background to answering this
question, let us first of all look at the person on the furthest pole from the
agricultural worker, namely the researcher (aka scientist, thinker, inventor).
The point is to clarify what the essential feature of this kind of work is (it
is of course obvious that a farmer produces food and a builder produces
houses). Whereas the result of the
agriculturalist’s work is tangible
goods which are consumed ‘one at a time’ by ‘one-person-at-a-time’,
the result of the researcher’s work is new understanding and ideas. As should
be clear from the previous post, an idea is rather different from a good: it
cannot be sold, it can be shared by many people at once and it is enduring.
It can be seen from this that it is in the essential nature of cultural work to
create a public benefit, which is enduring (unlike bread) and not limited to
one person’s benefit (unlike bread).
Professional = Public
The better educated person (in the broad rather
than the narrow sense of education obviously) creates a benefit to society at
large through his enhanced capacities. Put another way, one can choose to use
one’s capacities for more or less societal benefit. I would make the further
argument that anyone who is part of a profession has entered a societal
compact, that is what being in a profession means: one undertakes a
responsibility to something higher than oneself, one professes this
responsibility (the origin of the word ‘professio’ indicates an avowal or
public declaration). In the religious context this is clear when one joins an
order, and the original professions were the church, law and medicine.
Two Compromises
In
most people’s minds modern professionals, as a group of people, far from having
the problem of having to wonder where their income is to come from, are faring
well. They do not have to scratch around for grant funding as a means of
acquiring rights to the proceeds of production. Why is this so?
In what follows I make the argument that they
have compromised in one (or perhaps both) of two ways: firstly by privatising
their activity (which is essentially a form of self-seeking) and secondly
by making a compact with the state which enables them to operate a
vested interest.
1) Privatising the Ideal
The argument I make is that the true profession
works in the the way described above, for humanity. In the modern context
however (and perhaps it was ever so), professionals are likely to see their
work not so much in terms of their professional ethos and mission but in terms
of how they provide a private benefit to their clients. Their expertise is for
sale. By providing a private benefit rather than a public benefit, they reveal
that the primary intended beneficiary of their work is themselves and they
tailor their work to suit the will of the person who funds it, rather than
remaining independent from the funding.
2. The States Handmaiden
The kind of work that modern professionals do
tends to mean that they operate ‘under licence’ from the state, whether as
doctors, lawyers or bankers etc. Banking is a good example of this - banking
services can only be offered under the jurisdiction of the state. The consequence
of this is that the money system (which is really a banking / bookkeeping
system) becomes a thing of the state. Given that these essential services are
licensed (directly or indirectly from the state), this creates a guaranteed
source of income for those working in this area.
Another aspect of this is that the services
offered by modern professionals tend to be required by the state in various
forms. When a house is built the state requires certain certificates and
regulatory compliance with its building practises. This creates a guaranteed
source of income for those working in this area.
Another aspect is that the training in these
areas is commonly not only prescribed by the state (in terms of standards) but
funded by it. The result is that there is a form of cultural closed shop. For
those who adopt the culture which the state furthers, they have better access
to the positions that they will then go on to occupy. A trivial example might
be a museum curator.
Jobs for the boys
While the modern professional economy is
nominally independent, all of these factors operating together create a jobs
for the boys culture which avails itself both of the self-seeking aspects of
human nature which is epitomised in selling private benefits and of the kings’
shilling phenomenon whereby would-be, or should-be, independent professionals
are actually in hoc at some level to the state. The more willing we are
to sell our own ethos for an income the less we can see that the necessary (but
intangible) things we all have to bring could be funded otherwise. When
everybody is ‘at it’ then nobody gets a choice in the matter!
Independent and Mutual Economy
Instead of an economy powered by the logic of
privatisation (self-seeking) and external authority (the state) we need an
economy of mutuality and independence. This can occur when we realise that
applying the tangible model to the intangible realm does not work. So when
musicians could sell records piece by piece, that was fine. But when their
music becomes separable from the medium in which sell it (by digitisation etc)
a problem arises which never arises with a loaf of bread. The problem stems
from the fact that the intangible operates differently to the tangible. The
logic of the intangible virtually forces us to see that the economics of bread
is not the same as that of music.
In the former case the benefit goes to the
individual consumer (and the producer receives a direct token in recompense per
item). In the latter case the benefit is not restricted to one person and
because the value cannot be tied down in a tangible item, the producer cannot
secure recompense on a piece by piece basis.
The solution we have adopted to date is to
attempt to shoe horn the economics of the intangible into the tangible. This
has not worked (or is only working to the extent that we have massive licensing
operations). The fact that we treat the intangible realm as if it were a
version of the tangible may go some way to explaining the reason why we do
things the way we do them today (thinking we are paying people for their
labour, to name but one example) but it does not mean that the intangible world
thereby becomes a version of the tangible, adopting its logic and so forth.
At some point the penny needs to drop or better
said the light needs to come on … we pay for bread by buying it (typically after
it has been produced), we pay for everything that makes bread possible (which
is to say our broader cultural life) by pre-paying the people whose work
is concerned with cultural development whether artists, researchers, thinkers,
priests, accountants etc … Then they will find their true vocations and realise
that their work is for humanity and we will realise that we are the
beneficiaries of what they do. Our age has reached the acme of individualism,
now we need to remember that we are societal creatures too and for our
continued development must look to what we owe.
In Summary
- Professionals (aka spiritual workers) are all those who do not produce physical goods
- By its nature their work is humanity wide.
- Because they cannot finance their life from free donations, allowing them to do their work independently, they end up doing the bidding of either the state or whoever pays them (which of course is different from working where they see the needs are).
- The professional ethos is thereby compromised by the role of the state and the role of private money (which is proxy for the will of the funder).
- Anyone wishing to undertake a form of work that does not result in tangible goods for sale will be challenged to institute a form of remuneration that leaves them free to follow the intuition of their calling.
The degree to which society at large is able to create
such ‘free’ arrangements is perhaps a measure of something, as too is the
degree to which they are absent. I am convinced that a recognition of this phenomenon would go some way toward unravelling the muddled thinking that is behind the current crisis.
