Under capitalism, a lot of the time, highly dangerous jobs are also highly paid. Kind of a balance that the individual decides to engage with. Same idea behind getting an advanced degree in STEM or law. I think of my job by example, I’m a power plant operator at a large combined cycle plant. No fucking shot I’d be doing this if the pay wasn’t good. I’m around explosive and deadly hot shit all day.
In socialist societies, more dangerous jobs are usually compensated by higher pay or reduced working hours. Such was the practice in the USSR, as an example. The USSR was a top competitor in the field of science, managing to go from semi-feudalism to space in merely half a century, so the idea that socialism stalls progress is faulty.
In communism, when all of production and distribution have been collectivized, and the productive forces themselves have been sufficiently advanced, people still work for their own fulfillment and to obtain personal enrichment for still-scarce non-necessities.
If you want to learn about Marxism-Leninism, I wrote an introductory reading list you can check out.
I don’t think communism means “everyone gets paid the same regardless of work”.
Also capitalism doesn’t mean that people get paid more or less depending on type of work.
Capitalist means that means of productions are privately owned by capital. While in communism means of production are owned by work.
At least that’s the theory.
Alright, so, could you adress my question though? I know that sounds cunty, but, I’m not sure how else to respond.
They did answer your question. Same way in a “capitalist” society: those who take more responsibility or risk earn more benefit. More/better food, more rank, more commission, more salary, better housing, better medical care, etc.
There are plenty of examples of this happening and also not happening under both capitalism and communism. Is there a trend? That’s a very long debate.
So, a cast system…
It’s spelled “caste,” and castes are (critically) hereditary. Leaving a caste you were born into is virtually impossible.
People who do more/harder work can get compensated an appropriate amount. Note that this runs at odds to the current system where a CEO makes 1000x their employees salary despite not working 1000x as hard.
Ayeeee got me. I still don’t see how that doesnt just create the same type of class based system we already have.
There’s definitely motivation outside of pay. People can value doing jobs that are critical for society knowing that they’re helping
For some people they choose these fields out of a sense of duty to the community but this is rare and not likely to fill the required productive capacity. The end goal should be automating these fields and a communist society run by workers would inherently work towards this goal. However in the mean time incentives like an early retirement and reduced working hours would likely boost numbers significantly. This is a sacrifice though as it means more people are required to do the job and these workers stop contributing to society at an earlier age, depending on the material conditions and specific stage of development this could be much harder to accomplish in which case that sense of duty would have to be reinforced by culture. The socialist transition is no paradise, it requires dangerous work and personal sacrifice to create a better world. There are likely other incentives that could be implemented more easily but these are the first two I thought of.
Thats a pretty pragmatic answer, I like it!
This is a good answer and I would just like to mention the democratic / assembly nature of communism. If you have an assembly where the community has to decide “who will do this tough / dangerous job?” and someone steps up to do it, they will get the respect of the community (and probably some sexual interest from the sex(es) of their choice tbh). The human-nature aspect is important, as we are social animals. We already have this going on already, like why do game crackers and pirate groups do what they do, at significant personal danger? Reputation, among other things. That goes back to the warez scene and even to phreakers and whoever else was hacking before them.
It could also be that a certain individual enjoys the danger or difficulty of the job.
Your personal motivations don’t represent any society, at large.
Your premise is that people only choose jobs because of the salary? I reject that premise. All information I’m aware of tells us that most people choose jobs because of aptitude, interest, skills and prestige, not because of financial concerns (given that all jobs compensate equally).
It should also be noted that communism doesn’t mean uniform pay. You need to go back to the drawing board and rephrase your question.
Also it’s absurd to suggest that capitalism rewards dangerous jobs more, when it clearly doesn’t. Your example is terrible because power generation is heavily regulated and very safe. The most dangerous jobs are extraction or harvesting jobs, and they can be high paid…but are not well paid in the most dangerous circumstances.
Gonna sit here and tell me my job is very safe, alright bud. I’m beginning to research communism and other forms of rule aside from capitalism, becayse, shit isn’t working for the majority, even though it is for me. I’m starting the journey by asking questions in a community I know is populated by members of said ideology. Seems like a completely reasonable starting point. Recommend me some literature, I genuinely will read it.
You gave me a very specific job title…one that I happen to know is statistically safe. If you have data that proves otherwise, present it.
My job has statistically low deaths because of the amount of training I have and the procedures in place, though it is still 3x high in fatalities than national average. That doesn’t make the 1800 psi steam lines, natural gas lines, high voltage busses, pipe fitting, climbing ladders/pipes fucking safe. Below is a list of associated dangers, people don’t get hurt extremely often because you need a shit load of training to do this. There are also like 40,000 TOTAL power plant operators in the entire United states. Compare that to being an accountant or computer programmer dude. https://www.osha.gov/power-generation/industry-hazards
Your job remains statistically safe for all the reasons you stated. Yes, your job has a very high proportion of fatalities vs injuries…I accounted for that.
I’m not trying to diminish you or your job. I’m just saying you’re paid well, not because it’s dangerous, but rather because you need a lot of expertise to do it and it’s more difficult for your industry to find people that fit the qualifications.
The most dangerous jobs, like the ones I listed earlier, do not tend to pay very well if “danger” is your only metric.
Getting back to the topic, under communism people who work in dangerous or high skilled jobs would be more likely to make more money…not less.
You’re not addressing any of the information I provided. An accountant makes a mistake, they hit backspace and correct it, I make a mistake, I lose a limb, am permanently disfigured or I lose my life… In rare cases I don’t even have to make a mistake, I just have to walk past an undetected steam leak the size of a pinhead. You know what superheated steam does to a human? These are undeniable hazards I have to navigate that the VAST majority of fields do not. But you’re saying because X amount of people dont die every year, my job is safe, thats an insane take.
I don’t think he’s taking a shitty stance in stating that your job is relatively safe. Just that there are tons of safety regulations and protections that keep your profession off of a list like this
So you’re saying not in top ten most dangerous is equivalent of being safe.
Lol… glad you got a better answer somewhere else in this discussion.
Be safe out there.
I agree with your sentiment but it’s absurd to tell OP that his job is “very safe”. Until you’ve seen what heavy industry is really like, I’d refrain from commenting on it. I’m an industrial electrician and I’ve worked in steel mills, foundries, factories, power plants, etc.
It can truly be the wild west out there. Operators have a tough job in often sketchy situations, heavy machinery, around nasty chemicals and fumes and just the dirtiest grime. Mills fucking suck for example. We’ve been working on the Oswego plant in upstate New York which is the largest supplier of aluminum for Ford. It burned down, twice. There was a giant ass hole in the roof from the fire and like 12 feet of water in the basement from all the fire departments spraying where all the electrical equipment is. Then when they were fixing shit, another fire happened from someone welding on the roof.
This is an extreme example, but it is insane how the world works sometimes. I was 22 working on a solar power plant out west and the maintenance guys told me everything was locked out and off. I do a dead check and find 1000v on the busbar from a row of solar panels on some shit I was just about to work on. “Oh yeah that disconnect box is broke, we don’t shut that one off” was the response.
Safety and regulation can only get you so far unfortunately. Safety is always #1 all these places say but you really gotta be on and alert and conscious of what’s going on around you at all times. Injuries can happen in an instant
The OP didn’t say they were in “heavy industry” they said they were in a specific job. A job I happen to know is safe.
Not sure why you’d make an unforced error and change his job to your job. Especially when I literally said your job was among the most dangerous in my reply.
He already replied to you saying his job is dangerous. He said he’s around hot and explosive shit all day. I’ve been in power plants and that’s the example I gave that some of them are not fucking safe. We built panels for this nuke plant and the guy was telling me you can’t touch some of the handrails because you’ll get shocked .
Really don’t care about how you feel about it because I’ve seen it with my eyes.
Weird hill to die on
Yeah, I tested the logical extreme with him further down and he confirmed that chainsaws (arguably the most risky equipment to use) are not dangerous tools because few people die yearly from them. He also stated you would have to try really hard to injure yourself with a modern chainsaw. I don’t think hes left his room in awhile or has any experience with anything outside of internet arguments. I make posts like this so I can try to learn from people with more/different information from me. That’s evidenced in my post/comment history. If this is how his logic/brain work there is clearly nothing worth trying to learn from him.
Not to pry but what do you consider “good pay” for those conditions?
Around 55 an hour on average in my field but lots of fluctuation based on location.
So you evaluated that 114k a year is worth a chance at your life? What’s the lowest you’d go?
The biggest problem is that’s not really a considerable sum of value compared to what the upper 1% makes. There’s ALOT of wealth to go around that has been systematically stolen from you. I wouldn’t doubt a socialist society could provide you, and most people actually, the same level of luxury you are afforded today.
I don’t care what other people make though, millions of people work significantly more dangerous gigs for significantly less and millions of people work completely safe gigs for way more. I do this because I love it AND it pays well.
Most people who specialize do it just for the love of the game.
They are apathetic wether people pay them or not.
I went to school for four years, obtained 7 separate licenses and accrued a decade of experience. I am absolutely not apathetic as to whether or not I get paid.
Granted, but you are not everyone.
Max Planck definitely was not motivated by greed.
I don’t think developing a skill and wanting to be compensated for it is greed. Its just an equitable exchange of goods/services.
Are you suggesting your skill is more valuable than others? If so by which standard? What determines how valuable a skill is?. Or do you think other people don’t develop their skills as well?
I don’t know what you do for a living, but realistically unless you are a farmer your job is not actually essential. People can survive decades without doctors, can police themselves, etc, granted it would be a worse life than currently, but it’s survivable (and I don’t think you’re in either of these positions either, if I were to bet I would say you work in something that’s completely irrelevant to society but that earns money to some rich guy). However everyone needs to eat, so why do you think your skill is more important than the skill of the people actually keeping you alive?.
In my post I list my job. I am a power plant operator. I hold an engineering degree and many specific licenses. A big part of why I make the money I do is because in my job, I am required to run at the danger, secure it and get things working again. If i didn’t people would die, indirectly in the hospital and directly because catastrophic failure and inability to contain it means literal explosions. I run at the thing shooting death out and make it stop, without a laps in electric feed. Look into how dangerous steam is, majority of the steam I work with is 1800 PSI. We keep the lights on at a major hospital and several hundred homes. If the rest of the grid collapsed, we can black start, run as an island and provide a safe haven to thousands. I think the risk I assume, expertise I have and sacrifices I make mean I should earn more than someone who stocks shelves at the grocery store. Ironically, I am also technically a farmer too, but I make almost no money doing that because I have a small operation. I produce and sell honey, lamb meat, eggs, chicken meat and dried beans.
Homie, I’m asking this in all honesty. How many people do you run into on a day to day basis that lists their credentials?
You gotta take a step back and reflect.
I’m not trying to be mean. I want you to be a happier person.
The dude asked what I do and why I feel I deserve compensation… How many comments and threads have I created? I’ve brought it up a few times when it was contextually important. I’m an extremely happy person with close to what is a perfect life for me.
Hospitals and other critical locations have generators, so while blackouts are an inconvenience they rarely cause deaths. They might not be common where you live in part thanks to you, but other parts of the world have blackouts and people are fine. I’m not saying your job is not dangerous or important, but you might be overestimating your importance.
Regardless your job is something that would be considered “essential” on a broader scope, therefore would be highly compensated in any form of communism. During a transitional period it would be highly paid, and if ever money gets abolished it would be recompensated in other ways. On the other hand in capitalism your job is not that highly recompensated, because capitalism pays more for what makes more money regardless of how useful or dangerous it is. For example a quick search tells me that the median salary in the US for your position is 88k, whereas the median salary for a programmer is 133k, and I assure you my job is less dangerous and essential than yours.
That being said, dangerous or undesirable jobs should be automated away, if you think no one would want to be a power plant operator if they could do whatever they want to, then the proper solution is to get rid of the job entirely. No one should be forced to do something they don’t like just so they can pay their bills, we have enough technology to automate at least the dangerous parts of the job, it’s just that under capitalism that money it’s better spent elsewhere because your life is worth approximately 88k per year.
In The Dispossed by Ursula Le Guin everyone takes turns at the unfavourable jobs. A character asks whether that’s inefficient having to constantly train people. Well yes, is the answer, but what are you going to do? Force people to do work that kills them?
Good book. Highly recommend
A lot of dangerous jobs require significant training and are safer when done or supervised by people with years of experience.
I saw this a lot in corporate middle management treating software developers as generic assets who could just be shuffled between teams as necessary without acknowledging people have different experiences with different technologies and different competencies.
Under Maoism or Stalinism, aka the dictatorship of the dictator pretending to act for the proletariat? You are ordered to do it, for your own good and the good of the Party. If you don’t follow orders, you just get shot; and your family is put in a prison camp, your children raped and beaten and forced to labor.
Under real stateless, classless communism? Nobody knows, because that hasn’t existed yet. Anyone claiming to know exactly how it might operate is talking out of their hat. Marx is pretty clear on that.
This is a caricature of how socialism has functioned. In socialist states, people were compensated for their labor, and necessities were heavily subsized or otherwise free.
To the contrary of your depiction, the USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.
When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski’s Human Rights in the Soviet Union. This expansion in humanitarianism actually carried onto the judicial system, documented by Mary Stevenson Callcott in Russian Justice, written in 1935.
Reducing the tremendous gains made by socialist countries to the whims of Stalin or Mao is extremely reductive. It means every single victory gained by the working classes, such as free healthcare and education, massive literacy campaigns, huge increases in equality among the sexes, and more were in fact the exclusive whims of their leadership. It also reduces all of their problems, struggles, and flaws to personal failings of their leadership.
This kind of analysis is very flawed, and gets in the way of analyzing what went right and what went wrong in existing socialism. Simply painting a prettier picture of socialism in our heads and rejecting all existing socialist projects for not measuring up to that picture means we will be hopeless when we run into similar problems when we ourselves begin building socialism.
“Dictatorship of the dictator” lol anything’s possible when you make shit up kiddo
I mean, there was a time before states and classes were invented.
