What About Class Structure in Socialism?

[Outinleftfield]

No matter how egalitarian you make the organization informal hierarchies will exist. This is not a criticism against socialism, but a recognition of its limitations.

At first people aren't going to agree to just share without worrying about reciprocity, which is essentially what is theorized to happen in communism after socialism. Marx himself recognized that in socialism it would be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work."

This opens up the question of what the class struggle will be like that takes socialism and brings it to communism.

I think you could see some informal class dynamics between various occupational groups, each trying to assert itself as having the more esteemed and hence more rewarded work. In a way what happened in the Soviet Block and China was still socialism in so far as it represents the extreme of how badly in favor of this new class the society came to be structured, defeating the purpose of the revolution and gradually dooming these societies to slide back into capitalism.

What will people have to do under socialism to make sure that the society moves towards communism and therefore away from even informal inequalities instead of having the situation of the informal inequalities being exaggerated to the point of being formally recognized and deeply entrenched? Is some informal inequality good as long as its distributed evenly when counted over a variety of context? How is the right balance achieved?

[Tim Finnegan]

No matter how egalitarian you make the organization informal hierarchies will exist.
What on earth does that have to do with class? :confused:

[Revolutionair]

What on earth does that have to do with class? :confused:

Informal bourgeoisie, with an informal proletariat, informal lumpen-proletariat, informal labor aristocracy, informal capital and informal peasants. That's what it has to do with class.

[Tim Finnegan]

"Informal bourgeoisie"? How could such a thing possibly exist? Economic class is based on objective socioeconomic relationships, not on "informal hierarchies". Even theories of state capitalism or bureaucratic collectivism in the Eastern Bloc are based on the fact that the Stalinist model formally concentrated real economic control into the hands of a bureaucratic elite.

Edit: nvmd

[Watermelon Man]

Maybe not informal class structures. It just does not seem to make sense that an individual would be informally recognised as belonging to some class or another when there is no economic difference between that individual and others.

But there might be something to be said about the emergence of antagonisms between collectivities that are built upon pre-existing bases of power, legitimacy and identity.