BLUE COLLAR, WHITE COLLAR?
And IQ Nonsense
In an egalitarian society manual workers are no longer wrongly treated as if they contributed less to society than mental workers. Furthermore the distinction between manual and mental work, and the division of people into exclusively manual workers and exclusively mental workers, is greatly reduced.
Virtually all manual work naturally involves both mental and manual aspects simultaneously. Carpenters and cooks think about how to build or cook more efficiently and creatively. An American slave invented the first cotton scraper. Another American slave taught Jack Daniels how to make whiskey. The most regulated assembly line workers today invent ways to make their work safer.
Here's what the most famous pro-capitalist, Adam Smith, wrote about this, in 1776:
“A great part of the machines made use of in those manufactures in which labour is most subdivided, were originally the invention of common workmen, who, being each of them employed in some very simple operation, naturally turned their thoughts towards finding out easier and readier methods of performing it. Whoever has been much accustomed to visit such manufactures, must frequently have been shewn very pretty machines, which were the inventions of such workmen, in order to facilitate and quicken their own particular part of the work. In the first fire engines {this was the current designation for steam engines}, a boy was constantly employed to open and shut alternately the communication between the boiler and the cylinder, according as the piston either ascended or descended. One of those boys, who loved to play with his companions, observed that, by tying a string from the handle of the valve which opened this communication to another part of the machine, the valve would open and shut without his assistance, and leave him at liberty to divert himself with his play-fellows. One of the greatest improvements that has been made upon this machine, since it was first invented, was in this manner the discovery of a boy who wanted to save his own labour.”
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
The idea that white collar workers (or people with higher IQ test scores) are more intelligent than blue collar workers (or people with lower IQ test scores) is false, as pointed out here and here and here and here. What IQ tests consider to be the correct answer is, in some cultures, considered to be the stupid answer.* This video by an expert on IQ testing is about how different cultural modes of thinking (between older versus younger generations or between traditional versus modern cultures), not differences in "innate intelligence," lead people to answer IQ test questions differently so that one group gets a higher score than the other.
In an egalitarian society there will no longer be capitalists trying to separate the mental and manual aspects of work as a way of controlling people. People will be free to study every aspect of their work and apply their creativity to it. No longer will they fear losing their job because somebody figured out how to make the work more efficient by automating it; instead people will make work be the way theyt want it to be: easier and more enjoyable for all.
The mental aspects of manual work, involving the theory behind it and its relation to the larger society, will no longer be the concern only of exclusively mental workers. At the same time, when mental workers are no longer considered “better” than manual workers, they will be called upon to share equally in manual work that nobody wants to do.
Here's a true story about IQ:
From Your Quora Digest
How do people with IQs of 60-80 think?
Peter Brown
Peter Brown, former President at Oak Brook Technical (1998-2013)
Written Dec 29, 2016
When I was 7 years old, my grade school in Chicago tested all second graders with a so-called IQ test, in order to identify those who should be put into advanced placement classes. I tested at 60. My parents were horrified. Happily they didn't tell me about the test until many years later.
As I grew older, I had mediocre grades in school, but I was able to get into a small college and graduate. I drifted from job to job until I discovered that I had a real passion for computer application development and that I was good at it. I went back to school and took Computer Science classes and Aced them all. I became a project manager, then an IT manager, then an IT consultant and finally the president of my own consulting company.
After 15 successful years with my company, I retired.
So, how do I think?
IQ tests don't mean shit.
What about people who really are cognitively very impaired?
There are some individuals who are evidently very cognitively impaired, who cannot, for example, figure out how to fold a single letter-sized piece of paper to make it fit properly in a letter envelope. And sure, such people will very likely score very low on an IQ test. Such people are included in the category of people that I describe as "children and adults with child-like mentality," the rights of whom I discuss here, where I write:
The principles of equality and mutual aid mean that all children and adults lacking adult mental ability or sanity must in all cases be treated with kindness and dignity and never abused. Such people are always members in good standing of the sharing economy because the amount of work required of them that is "reasonable according to ability" is zero.
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* "Cole et al (1971) studied a tribe in Africa called the 'Kpelle' in which culture was shown to have a rather humorous effect on interpretations of intelligence. In this study adult participants were asked to sort items into categories. However, rather than producing the kind of taxonomic categories (e.g., "fruit" for apple) typically done in the west, the Kpelle participants sorted items into functional groups (e.g., "eat" for apple). After trying and 'failing' to teach them to categorize items taxonomically, the Kpelle were asked as a last resort how a “stupid” person would do the task. At that point, according to the researchers, without any hesitation, the Kpelle sorted items into taxonomic categories! (Cole et al., 1971) Demonstrating that not only where these individuals able to do the presented tasks, but in their own culture, what was considered intelligent by western views was thought to be 'stupid.' "