Work as Commitment Mara Marin University of Chicago mara@uchicago.

edu

DRAFT: This is a VERY ROUGH draft, so I cannot imagine why you would want to cite or circulate any part of it. All comments are very welcome.

Introduction The topic of this paper is the social organization of work in contemporary postindustrial societies. As the last chapter of my dissertation on the concept of commitment, my general interest in this paper is to determine the place of relationships of commitment (relationships of open-ended obligations created through open-ended responsive action) in supporting the institutions governing the organization of the various productive activities. My argument in this paper is twofold. First, I will argue that the division of labor, a feature of the organization of work in complex societies, is the source of several problems. Secondly, I will argue that to overcome these problems work should be organized according to a principle commiment.

Work between necessity and social organization I will start this analysis from a double perspective: work is necessary, but the present form of its social organization is not.

The necessity of work Most if not all of us have to work. A life of idleness is not an option. In a world like the one we know, in which each of our needs is not satisfied the moment we feel it, we have to work in order to survive. Russ Muirhead argued that the compulsion at the core of work gives the experience of work its distinctive taste. It is done because we have to do it, because we are born and remain insufficient. (Muirhead 2004, 5). While other ideas, like that of production and contribution, pay and effort play important roles in the meaning of work, the idea central to work is that of compulsion (Muirhead 2004, 4).

The social organization of work between necessity and possibility What is also necessary about work is that it has a social and institutional dimension, that one individuals work is necessarily involved with and dependent on the activities of at least some others. In complex societies like the ones we live in this means that we have to coordinate with others in activities that constitute our work because they are parts of larger productive activities. For example, my teaching at the university is only part of a larger activity of education, or of providing degrees from the University of Chicago.

Without all the other activities academic, administrative, services, etc. - that make up the university education, my activity would not provide the same end-results.1 But work is necessarily social not only because we live in complex societies in which most productive activities cannot be done by individuals alone, but are complex activities of which most individual activities are only part. Work is necessarily social also because what counts as productive, what counts as a contribution is socially determined; things that are contributions have what Michael Walzer calls social meanings (Walzer 1983, 9). And this is the case in any society, not only in societies in which most productive activities are complex. Even in complex societies there are contributing activities that do not involve more than a couple of individuals. When a father is teaching his daughter how to count he is making a contribution that does not depend on anybody else, yet it is social in the second sense I explained above. (If teaching a child how to count does not seem work to you, then for the sake of the argument please do one of the following: a) try to do it or b) change the example to one cleaning ones own apartment). To summarize, work is necessarily social for two reasons. First, because whether an activity is work or not is a social, not an empirical fact.2 Secondly, because most activities we think of as work involve complex processes involving a large number of indviduals, that require coordination and produce relationships between the persons involved. These two feature make the social organization of work necessary.
1

This is not to say that they would have no value, or they would provide no results whatsoever, just that they would not provide these particular results, understood as this particular activity of university education. 2 I use social here as refering to the conventions of meaning and evaluative elements shared across a society; these include ideas about what counts as work or not, about what is a respectable occupation, etc. While I dont think that there is perfect consensus in any society about any such meanings, conventions, etc. they are not only held widely enough, but also are assumptions that structure main institutions.

But if work is necessarily socially organized, the particular form of its social organization is not a matter of necessity. The fact that the organization of work can only be a social phenomenon does not mean that any particular organization (including the one we happen to live with at the moment) is necessary and unchangeable. There are many ways in which we can organize the institutions that coordinate complex activities, and there is nothing necessary about the meanings of activities that constitute work. One may object that the social organization of work is determined by the necessity of work in the first sense I discussed above, in the sense that work creates the necessities of life and therefore it is not optional, it is compulsory; we do it because we have to do it. Therefore, there is no choice in its organization, we have to organize it in the way in which best provides those necessities. But there is no reason to believe there is only one such way if organizing work. The fact that we have to do work does not determine how we have to do it; neither it determines how we should organize our work relationships with others. There is no rea The necessity of work is indeed a constraint on its organization (it has to be organization of work, not of leisure), but that does not mean it determines its entire structure. But what is work? Which activities count as work, and which should? Should the social meaning prevalent in a society determine what counts as woork?

Care work and the first division of labor While it is tempting to think that social meaning alone cannot determine what counts as productive work, there is an argument to be made that there are a number of activities that are not recognized at work although they should. Feminists have argued that the distinction between productive and reproductive activities - with the productive being performed in the public sphere, and the reproductive refering to the unpaid work performed most often by women in the domestic sphere makes womens activities in the domestic sphere invisible as work, by constructing them as expressions of womens natural inclination to raise children and care for the young and old. Women equality, feminists argue, requires that womens activities in the home be understood as work and recognized as such in the public. Susan Okin argued that justice requires that married women who work at home while their husbands work for pay should be entitled to half their paycheck (Okin 1989, Chapter 7). In her House and Home Iris Young argued that womens activities in the domestic sphere create real value, the value that distinguishes a house from a home, a hotel room from ones own home (Young 1997b, 149-50). Womens activities in the home are not simply housework, they are housemaking, which consists in the activities of endowing things with living meaning (Young 1997b, 151). Like other feminists, she also argues that this failure to recognize certain activities as productive makes those that perform them second-class citizens, by assuming that they make no useful social contribution and therefore that marginalizing them and limiting their rights is legitimate.

She takes issue with W. Galstons idea of independence not only for being identified with having a well-paid secure job (Young 1997a, 124), but also for conflating the idea of self-sufficiency with that of autonomy. While autonomy is an important moral value, the ideal of self-sufficiency makes invisible those dependent on others and their caretakers. By conflating between self-sufficiency and autonomy, the idea of independence can be used to limit the autonomy of the dependents and their caregivers. For selfsufficiency, taken for the only meaning of independence, is used as a criterion for distinguishing between those that are entitled to autonomy and those that are not, even when what they lack is only self-sufficiency (like dependent and their caretakers), but not the ability to contribute meaningfully. What counts as a socially useful contribution should not be determined, as it currently is, by the market, and therefore should not be confused with what receives pay. This is the case not only for dependency work, but for good art, literature, philosophy. (Young 1997a, 128). Like Joan Tronto (Tronto 1994),3 she argues that dependency work is socially necessary work, and therefore should be recognized as making a socially useful contribution even if that contribution is not valued on the market.4 She agrees with Galston that citizens should contribute to the social good and should be given equal opportunity to contribute, but she disagrees with the assumption that the only way to make a contribution is by having a job (Young 1997a, 127).5
3

To cite only several examples from the extensive literature on dependency work and care work: Fineman 2004 and Kittay 1999. For feminist theories of international care see Tronto 2004, Sevenhuijsen 1998. 4 Young addresses some of our deepest assumptions when she says: Capitalism has some virtues, but after three hundred years it should be clear that one of them is not employing all able-bodied people at decent wages (Young 1997a, 130). 5 One could also argue that even those that have paid jobs are not self-sufficient in any meaningful sense, that they are dependent on a whole range of institutions and on the work of others to make those institutions

The implication of her argument is twofold. On the one hand, the social worth of an activity rather than the pay it receives on the market should be what determines whether an activity makes a contribution. That would extend the class of activities that are properly thought of as socially useful work. For example, care work would no longer be seen as unproductive, but, as answering real needs; similarly, housemaking would be recognized as creating real value. On the other hand, recognizing that our capacities to contribute are different because many of us (in fact all of us at some moment in our lives), do not conform to the model of the male able-bodied individual, also requires institutional transformations that would enable those that cannot fully participate in the market to make meaningful social contributions. Both types of institutional changes are demanded by the value of independence; that is, they are necessary for protecting the autonomy not only of those able-bodied, but also of those whose efforts are not compensated on the market. Once care workers work is treated as legitimate contribution, the reason legitimizing state institutions to treat them as undeserving clients, to invade their privacy and limit their autonomy in exchange for its support the reason being that they are not contributing would disappear. The first division of labor is then between paid and unplaid, care work. The latteer is socially necessary because it answers real needs of those that are not able to satisfy their own needs (and can neither pay for it).6
work. Although Iris Young does not make this claim here, I think her argument is consistent with that view about the market. However, neither her argument nor mine at this point depend on that view about the market. It only depends on the idea that the market is not the only set of institutional arrangements that creates value (and coordinates activities to create value). 6 One could argue that there is no real distinction here, because all of us have needs (for food, shelter, cleanliness, etc.) that in one form or another are taken care of by somoene else. Thus, the able-body professional with a well-paid job depends on a small army of people that make his meals and coffee, clean

The problem with the social organization around that distinction seems to be that, by devaluing care work, care workers are also devalued, and thus their liberty and the conditions of their liberty no longer have the protection that is given to those that are considered to make valuable, contributions to society. I think this is the first problem about the social organization of work, a problem that I will call the problem of recognition:7 that some activites are not recognized as real work, and that leads to loss of liberty, equality and autonomy for those performing those activities. Underlying this problem is the question of the criteria that should determine which activities create social value and therefore should be recognized as work. I do not aim to offer a philosophical account of the bases of that value. It may not even be the case that there is only one such basis for everything of value created by work; that is, it is possible that different activities unrecognized as work produce different types of value (the value created by philosophy professors, for example, is different from the value mothers and other caretakers create). I will argue that organizing work according to a principle of commitment enables a change in the criteria for the social worth of an activity, and therefore recognizing care as work. Central to the idea of commitment is the idea of an open-ended response to the other person in its entirety, to its changing circumstances, including ones care needs. A

his/her apartment and house, walk his dog, repair his car, etc. It just happens that she/he gives money in exchange for these services, while those less successful on the market cannot make such an exchange. I agree with the general point that most of us are dependent for some of our most basic needs on those Iris Young calls menial laborers (Young 1990, 52). But the fact that some of us can buy those services while others cannot does not seem to me unimportant. On the contrary, it is precisely that inequality that is problematic. I will discuss it shortly. 7 I am not entirely happy with this name, so any suggestions would be more than welcome. By using recognition I mean to emphasize that there is real value created by some activities that is nevertheless not acknowledged (or not fully acknowledged) by prevalent institutions.

change in what we recognize as work is the first step towards changing the organization of labor.

The division of labor and the problems of oppression But the division of labor takes other forms as well, and, as I will discuss, leads to different problems. Ever since Adam Smith has analyzed the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, the division of labor has typically refered to the separation of tasks involved in the process of production. (Smith 1976, 14-15). Pin-making, to take Smiths example, has been divided in several simpler tasks, performed by different people: One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; (Smith 1976, 15) Nothing in the account of the division of labor above requires that it translates into class division. In other words, the division of tasks comprising work need not result in social hierarchical divisions between the classes of people performing each task. However, these are the features of the current division of labor. It represents not only the division between tasks and activities, but between classes of people performing different activities. And these differences become power inequalities. Exploitation explains how that comes to be the case, how the division of labor in the first sense (different tasks being performed by different people) leads to a hierarchical relation of power between different classes. Following Iris Young, by exploitation I mean

the steady process of the transfer of the results of the labor of one social group to benefit another (Young 1990, 49). What is important about exploitation is that it is a structural relation between social groups. Social rules about what work is, who does what for whom, how work is compensated, and the social process by which the results of work are appropriated operate to enact relations of power and inequality. (Young 1990, 50). One of the rules governing this process of transfer are those determining the worth of each activity. The way this process works is apparent in the case of gender exploitation. Feminists have argued that womens oppression is a result of their labor being transferred to men. Womens care work, physical, emotional and sexual, is transferred to men, and enhances mens status and power, and which makes mens freedom and self-realization possible. The process is made possible by norms that determine the worth of womens traditional occupations, like those of nurse of teacher, as less valuable than that of mens, and thus entitled to little or no recognition. Their invisibility justifies their undercompensation, which enables the process of exploitative transfer. The mechanism is perpetuated in the paid workforce. David Alexanders (1987) argues that womens jobs involved gendered tasks of caring for others bodies, nurturing, sexual labor, or smoothing over workplace tensions (Alexander 1987, in Young 1990, 51), thus answering others needs and ultimately enhancing their power and status. In the last section of this paper I will argue that organizing work according to a principle of commitment limits the extent of its exploitation by disabling this process. For now I want to point out that exploitation is made possible by social norms about what is socially beneficial and therefore real, legitimate work as opposed to worthless activities.

These are activities typically done by women and other subordinate groups, activities fulfilling bodily needs, and, by the normative logic structuring the organization of labor, outside the realm of legitimate work. According to that logic, they represent simple extensions of womens natural inclinations to care. Exploitation is thus not only about the processes and social rules that structure and organize recognized work. It is not only about the transfer of the results of labor from one class involved in the working process to another class. Exploitation is rooted in the practices that determine what is legitimate work and what is left outside the sphere of legitimate work, and it is supported by the norms that determine that certain activities deserve to be considered work while others do not. Or, to put it differently, the structure of work does not organize only relationships between types of work and between classes of people doing work, but also between what is work and what is not considered work. If exploitation is the transfer of the results of labor from one group, the privileged, to the other, the unprivileged, group, the relationship between groups is also characterized by powerlessness. While both professional and nonprofessional workers experience exploitation (at least part of the results of their labor is transferred to the capitalist class), non-professional workers also experience powerlesness. As the workplace is not organized democratically, workers professional and non-professional do not, if they are not also members of the capitalist class, participate in making decisions about the rules and policies of their workplace. However, professional workers exercise power over non-professional workers, who rarely find themselves in the position to give orders, but typically take them, and who are therefore lacking any power (Young 1990, 56).

In the remaining of this paper I will argue that commitment as an organzing principle of work is a solution for the two problems of exploitation and powerlessness sketched above.

Commitment and the organization of labor There are two seemingly contradictory ideas in the division of labor. On the one hand, the idea behind the division of labor is that of separation: tasks are separated, a complex process is broken down in its simple parts, which are defined independently of each other. Consequently, people are divided according to the type of work they are doing, and with the power they have in the system. On the other hand, the purpose of the division of labor is to be more efficient in achieving the end of the overall process. The implication then is that each taks is part of a larger process of production with one common end. and, More importantly, each part, each task is necessary for achieving the end of the process. Therefore, as I argued above, there is no necessary connection between the division of labor and the hierarchical organization of its positions. Moreover, if we take seriously the idea that each task is necessary to achieving the overall end, that the end cannot be achieved unless each task is performed, then equality is required. Each task is necessary means each task is equally necessary, hence hierarchical organization is contrary to the achieving the common end. My project is to reintroduce this idea of common purpose back in the division of labor and to determine what it requires. I will argue that understanding properly

organized relations of work as relationships of commitment achieves that purpose. Let me start by first explaining what I mean by commitment relationships.

What are commitments? In the sense in which I am interested, commitments are relationships. They have five features. 8 First, although they are made, not given, commitments are not made by design; that is, a committed relationship is not the result solely of the intention to bring about a commitment. In other words, intending to make a commitment is not enough to making one. However, commitments are results of the actions of the subject. But not any type of action can result in a commitment. Only open-ended responses can do so. So the second feature of commitments is that they are made by open-ended responsive action. What I mean by an open-ended response is something like this: suppose that I buy Adria a cup of coffee. She has two options. She can try to pay me back immediately, maybe in cash; in this case she responded in a tit for tat way. Alternatively she can say next time is on me and follow-up on that in some way; then she has responded openendedly. In the first case she were trying to discharge a duty, something she owes in such a way that would put her in a position free from any obligations, to return her, that is, to

I do not mean to suggest that this concept of commitment exhausts the senses in which commitment is used in common or philosophical usage. Examples of two concepts of commitment different from my own are Michael Sandels constitutive commitments and Margaret Gilberts commitments of the will. Sandels constitutive commitments are bound up with the identity of their subject, who cannot understand herself without them (Sandel 1982, 62, 179). I want to thank Charles Larmore and Patchen Markell for suggesting this idea to me. Gilberts commitment of the will is a commitment resulting solely from an act or state of a will or wills (Gilbert 2006, 128, emphasis in original). She is particularly interested in joint commitments, which are commitments of the will that the wills of two or more people create it, and two or more people are committed by it. (Gilbert 2006, 134).

the situation before our interaction. In the second case she invited a relationship of obligations, possibly of open-ended obligations. What is open-ended about it is that when she incurred the obligation, that is, when she says next time is on me, she does not know exactly what the next time will bring about, whether it will be a coffee and the forty-five minutes coming with it or something else. That will be determined at a later date, depending on the future circumstances and our future interaction. To be open-ended means that we allow these changing circumstances to make claims upon us; in contrast, the tit for tat response closes off that possibility. What makes the action above a response is that it is performed and understood as directed in some way at the previous action, as in some sense of the same type. But one such open-ended response is obviously not enough to create a relationship of commitment. Rather, and this is the third feature of commitments, a commitment is created only when the subject has endorsed the commitment. However, endorsement is not given through an act of a different sort, for example a decision, than the other actions that constitute the commitment. Rather, endorsement is offered by performing enough open-ended responses to show ones willingness to create a committed relationship. What counts as enough depends on the type of commitment and the context of interaction. By the time the relationship has been thus endorsed it has developed along particular expectations, for instance that we go to movies together, share (some) of our joys and worries, but do not spend holidays together. This is the fourth feature of commitments: each commitment has its own set of expectations, but all commitments

share the expectation to continue the relationship in an open-ended way, to continue to respond to each others actions open-endedly. For this reason there is no perfect fit between expectations and actions in commitments. Fifthly and finally, commitments are relationships of obligations. These arise only with the passage of time, when the relationship has been endorsed by a series of openended responsive action. All commitments involve an obligation of concern for the object of ones commitment, to be expressed through such open-ended responses, and this includes the obligation to continue the relationship. Obligations of commitment are therefore open-ended as well. This however does not exclude the possibility of ending a commitment, for obligations are not absolute moral constraints, and other considerations may come into play when determining whether to end a commitment.

Commitment as a solution to the problems of exploitation and powerlesness In this final section I argue that organizing labor according to a principle of commitment would avoid the problems of exploitation and powerlesness that the division of labor otherwise leads to, without necessarily abandoning the division of labor. To organize productive labor relations according to a principle of commitment requires that their development is understood to have a certain open-endedness, that they develop and are required to develop from open-ended responses to the actions of each individual.

Commitment as a solution to the problem of exploitation If work relations are understood as relationships of commitment and therefore of open-ended obligations, then each participant in work relationships is required to respond open-endedly to the needs of the others. This addresses the two aspects of exploitation I discussed above. First, it addresses the exploitation of domestic workers, of those that make the traditional womens work, work of caring for our bodily and emotional needs, work often not recognized as such, and always considered of very little value. If work relationships contain the requirement to respond open-endedly to the changing circumstances of the others, then they require responding to a person in its entirety. The reason for this is that responding open-endedly to others actions means allowing contingent circumstances to make claims upon us. As circumstances change, the actions of the others make different demands on us, and we have responded open-endedly when we have responded by fulfilling these demands. But by responding in this way we have also related to the other person (the person whose actions demanded our response) herself, independently of changing circumstances. For this reason, open-ended response represents giving the others central moral significance, taking their persons in their entirety as source of claims on our action. But then the working persons body is as legitimate a source of concern as anything else about that person. Because in commitments the whole person is a legitimate source of claims, they forbid the privatization of domestic work, its relegation to a sphere separate from that of work relations.

If the value of an activity as work is determined by the extent to which it fulfills a commitment, the extent to which it is an open-ended response, then domestic labor becomes valuable labor it answers such needs. But then the reason that now enables its transfer to those occupying the superior positions in the hierarchy its alleged lesser value would disappear, and with it the main reason for its exploitation.

Secondly, commitment would also address the problem of exploitation within the relationships recognized as work. Let me illustrate with an example what I mean by a principle of commitment organizing a working place. Lets take a grocery store, but organize it such that whoever works there participates in all the tasks done in the store. There is still a division of labor in the sense that tasks are defined as separate (restocking shelves, ordering new products, working at the deli counter, etc.) but every worker is involved in each task at some point during her/his day. Job descriptions are not limited to one or a limited number of tasks, and while there may be more unpleasant tasks than others, that does not result in a hierarchy between the persons performing them. Moreover, there is an understanding for those working in this store that they are engaged in a common enterprise with an aim, and each of them is as necessary to achieving the aim as anybody else. Achieving an aim requires discretion, for circumstances can change and therefore it cannot be determined in advance what will be required for achieving the aim.9

I explain this argument in more detail in the third chapter, in reference to Lockes idea of trust to the government which requires prerogative.

There are two ways we can deal with the necessity of having discretion in achieving an aim. There can be a boss, a final judge that makes all the decisions. The problem with that is that whoever the boss is will be given most of the credit for achieving the end and the power coming with that. That will lead to the problems of exploitation and powerlessness I discussed above. The alternative is to organize work relations according to commitment, which means understanding that the enterprise we are engaged in is a relationship whose precise terms cannot be known or specified at the outset, but rather than each one will be undean equal obligation to pitch in as the need arises. This understanding does not exclude collectively making some rules about how to organize work, but suggests that the rules will be only provisional. Because the common aim always requires discretion, the alternative to investing some workers with all the power of making decisions is to transfer some of that open-endedness inside the relationships between workers. That is, it requires that rather than having our work defined by very clearly specified job descriptions, we agree that sometimes, we will have obligations whose specific content we did not know in advance. Moreover, commitment ensures that the burden of the unforeseen circumstances are born equally and are taken upon by the workers themselves. For when a new need arises, each worker has the freedom to assist with that or not. And as such, nobody is forced to do more than her fair share. However, one does not have the option of never doing her share of the additional burden, and that, while may represent a less than free condition, ensures as all the equality of the burden.

If the relationship between workers is such a commitment, then the relationship between different persons work is a mutually supportive one, as each responds openendedly to the the work needs of the other. Thus, if I respond open-endedly to the needs of your work, my work supports yours now with the expectation that your work will support mine later, and thus at the end of this process there is no transfer of power and status from one person to the other. From a process of transfer of products of labor and status from one worker to another, the process of work becomes one in which different persons participate equally through their work to the process that achieves the end that cannot be achieved without the work of each and every one of them. It is also a process in which the benefits and burdens of the need for open-endedness are distributed equally. Exploitation thus disappears. Moreover, it is also a process of shared power. Because it is not concentrated in one place, power, the counterpart of obligations, is created through each open-ended action and response, which belongs to each worker involved in this relationship. Nobody is in the powerless condition of always taking orders, never giving them.

Conclusion The idea of the division of labor, I argued in this paper, can be separated from the hierarchical class distinctions and the problems of exploitation and powerlessness that create class distinctions. To make that separation, work relations should be organized as commitment relationships, voluntary relationships created through open-ended responses.

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