Some strange thoughts on equality and inequality

[T]hought that occurred when trying to teach rats to escape, on the role of power inequality.

in Nietzsche we see a valoriztion of inequality in power, the Master if you will, as something generative of values and difference. inequality is necessary to create. this is tied to his fervent disregard of socialists and his outright hatred of anarchists.

we see this dilemma played out throughout contemporary francophone philosophy and its watered-down advocacy in the States. this of course creates something of a problem, a question, regarding socialist values. if creation is engendered by a differential of force, then shouldn't we allow major power inequality to cultivate significant changes and flexibility in the society?

this seems absurd though it is of course the (generally unconscious) logic of all bourgeois values that dominate America. it also legitimates the very concrete wage and salary differentials across society. peole get paid more because they create more, and high-paid professions are such because they involve the most creativity and autonomy, etc etc. so in one sense I'm talking about something nebulous, raw power in a social field, but in another sense I'm talking about something very concrete, major wage stratifications based upon that raw power.

so thinking back to my little parable of the rats. we exercised power over them to train them how to escape from the larger system in which they were enmeshed. (sorry that this thought came from some silly drunk activity) a teacher, any teacher, exercises power over a student. the intent is to show the student a connection quickly so that they need not discover it for themselves. it in theory expands the student's power of action.

there is no way to eliminate inequality from society at the base level. at the very least there will be differentials of skill and understanding, and rough layers of engagement and focus with tasks of greater and lesser necessity. and this translates into rough inequality. this problem become significant in the revolutionary situation of the Hot Autumn in Italy, when semi-skilled factory workers successfully reduced the wage scales between them and skilled laborers to the point that the skilled laborers quit in large numbers and set up their own firms.

if we're actually talking with people and not thinking through an ideology, why do they accept power differentials between themselves and management? they perceive managers as earning that power by taking on greater responsibility and having greater skill and understanding of the business. this is not false. leftist thought is also not well-suited to accept this fact that occurs naturally to most people in the American workforce.**

as long as there is a differential of intensity of knowledge and understanding between people related to a task or project, there will be inequality. and there must be this variation, this variability and difference, to allow creation to occur at all.

now, this needn't cripple our thinking or our beliefs. worker cooperatives generally operate with wage differentials based on skill that resemble those in standard firms (thought generally not to the same degree). however, they differ in two ways:
*every member has an equal share to the aggregate surplus, regardless of rank
*every member is encouraged to participate in day-to-day management of the firm, through a union or some other body; even though there is a differential, every point in that differential is encouraged to "speak at the table"

this is a bit of an internal split, but it is also a wonderful mechanism of macroeconomic regulation embedded into the microlevel. the sharing of surplus means that you don't shunt that surplus away from the (consuming) working class, generating excessive market imbalances that must be corrected by government action to prevent recessions, crises of "overproduction," etc.

the managerial participation means that even though there are differentials of force, power is exercised on the less-powerful towards their own empowerment.

people are trained but they are trained with the skills that increase their powers of action. power is directed towards escape from power; or in another sense, power is direted towards its own immanent "self-transcendence."

for an image I can only think to offer a kombucha shooting off babies. although perhaps any natural reproduction offers a good example.

and perhaps this idea does fit well enough with American ideology. after all, it posits the base of society as dynamic and creative, willful.

perhaps such an overall construction of values has an inherent advantage over an imperial model based on stasis, regimentation and stratification. it encourages the overall system to exceed its own limits, to grow and innovate.

if even the leaders in a society want that society to increase its powers of action, its internal differentiation and economic strength*, then they must orient that society towards escape, invention through secession.

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*Economic strength is only equal to the range and intensity of embodied knowledge present in a society; and the rough stability of means of transmission of that knowledge. The knowledge is embodied int hat it is dependent upon engaged skills and craft ability, artisanship, the actual bodily knowledge of how to perform tasks.

**Now of course we must separate between managerialism based on a perception of skill oriented to the task and managerialism based on the skilled deployment of Power-values, signs and aesthetics. we need a language in american politics and left economics that might allow us to easily describe this difference.