LABOR

Labor

Labor

1)

Perception and reinforcement of an equal power relationship is fundamental to any system of peer communications or ethical decisions undertaken by a group of peers and imposed on all by the group. Whether such relationships ever exist is a matter of definition but there are many theories and models that define, impose or assume them at least temporarily, e.g. for dispute resolution. Equal power relationships as defined by R.J. Coombe, 1998, emphasized the requirement for labor specialization as one means to achieve them. "Social actors obviously have diverse capabilities and means to fix and to challenge meaning;" For instance, "intellectual property protections are only one form of power in a larger field, for instance. A democratization process of access to this practice would give all people more equal opportunities to engage in expressive activity rather than granting already powerful actors even further resources and capacities to dominate cultural arenas than they already possess."[1]

The argument for this democratization is similar to the arguments as above in political contexts: the overall system works more smoothly because the powerful are not able to manage resources as effectively as the less powerful (who are used to being frugal and optimizing to make more use of less resources). The extreme version of this view is workplace democracy in which workers elect their own manager.[2]

Other political theories require further measures such as the regular breakup and reformation of the entire group, as a means to ensure that power relationships do not become permanent like a class structure. Many variants of anarchism and feminism emphasize the dangers of relying on any persistent group entity or reliance on permanent control of capital (economics) even by a responsible group of people, due to groupthink and infrastructural biases associated with believing one's own control of the resource is good, and that no one else could possibly make more effective use of it. A key aspect of all such theories is the emphasis of use-value over exchange or commodification.[3]

In the variant of John McMurtry the emphasis is on life-value instead: the ability to preserve life. Thus the use-value of a weapon is very low, a dwelling very high, despite the usefulness of a weapon to destroy a dwelling, and so on. In this way equal power relationships would be reinforced in the basic valuation relationships, which would match ideas of goodness and value theory familiar to living things with economic ideas of value. Marilyn Waring similarly argued that female notions of value were different from male, and more based on equal power relationships and the usefulness of shared items held in common, not unique items traded or created or destroyed. Jo Freeman defined equal power largely in terms of equal access to resources needed by the group to pursue group goals, and was concerned to prevent monopoly over resources. This included instructional capital: Members' skills and information can be equally available only when members are willing to teach what they know to others.[4]

Law is sometimes seen as a process of imposing equal ...