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The Jay

1st October 2011, 02:33

What would be the form (or lack thereof) of welfare systems in a socialistic society?

Â¿Que?

1st October 2011, 02:39

unnecessary.

Tablo

1st October 2011, 02:40

Yeah, welfare wouldn't exist. The whole idea of welfare would be alien to a socialist economy.

The Jay

1st October 2011, 02:43

Â¿Que?

1st October 2011, 02:46

Well, then you have to be clearer. The whole "socialism as a transition to communism" is only one interpretation, and in fact, Marx never made this distinction, using the words interchangeably.

To answer the question, I think there would be welfare in a transition phase, however, it's hard to say how that would happen, specifically.

deLarge

1st October 2011, 02:47

Why would it be unnecessary? I had the impression that money would still be used in a socialist society until a communist one could take it's place. How would the poorest receive healthcare without assistance?

There would be no poor. Those who work would receive the benefits of their economy in full, those who can't work would receive -- I suppose -- welfare, in the form of the same. Ideally, there would be no money, resources would be managed scientifically and allocated where there is material need rather than speculative or capital demand.

Aurora

1st October 2011, 02:52

It depends what you mean by welfare really, unemployment would be eliminated so unemployment benefit would really be unnecessary but of course in the lower phase of communism there would be a fund deducted from the total social labour to provide for those who are unable to work, nursing homes etc etc

This sort of welfare only becomes unnecessary when labour is so productive that all can receive according to need, the higher phase of communism.

edit: also you mentioned socialist state. The only function of the state that exists in socialism is to carry out the distribution of societies products, all other functions of a state that arise from the irreconcilability of class antagonisms no longer exist as classes no longer exist, this is what Engels refers to as the state losing it's political power and becoming merely an administrative organ.

Klaatu

1st October 2011, 03:31

robbo203

1st October 2011, 07:52

In a Socialist economy, there is no unemployment. ZERO.

Unemployment is an intrinsic property of Capitalism.

Sans Capitalism, employment can be always 100%

That is, if you lack a job, the state will employ you. :)

No Worker is Left Behind

In a socialist economy there will be no employment either. Employment - or generalised wage labour - is what is meant by capitalism so what you are deciribibng is some form of capitalist economy - state capitalism - not a socialist economy.

Employment implies that you have someone doing the employing and someone being employed. So it implies a class society, not a classless (and hence stateless) society which is what is traditionally meant by socialism - a synonym of commounism.

The idea that you can have employment without unemployment is reformist nonsense. It implies capitalism's economic rhythms can be controlled by the state. Even in the state capitalist soviet union which claimed to have eliminated unemployment there was plenty of unemployment - not just official unemployment as stated in the official yearbooks up to the 1930s but widespread disguised unemployment in which workers were registered as employees of state enterprises but oten at times had nothing to do. They appeared to be employeed but in reality were unemployed. In fact, the Soviet planning system actively encouraged this sort of built in excess labour capacity and up until the 1940/early 50s workers were forbidden by law to change jobs such was the coercive nature of the Soviet employment system. This particular policy gave rise to massive discontent, abseentism and so on and had to be modified and was eventually abandoned

Blake's Baby

1st October 2011, 17:02

Klaatu

2nd October 2011, 05:04

In a socialist economy there will be no employment either. Employment - or generalised wage labour - is what is meant by capitalism so what you are deciribibng is some form of capitalist economy - state capitalism - not a socialist economy.

Employment implies that you have someone doing the employing and someone being employed. So it implies a class society, not a classless (and hence stateless) society which is what is traditionally meant by socialism - a synonym of commounism.

The idea that you can have employment without unemployment is reformist nonsense. It implies capitalism's economic rhythms can be controlled by the state. Even in the state capitalist soviet union which claimed to have eliminated unemployment there was plenty of unemployment - not just official unemployment as stated in the official yearbooks up to the 1930s but widespread disguised unemployment in which workers were registered as employees of state enterprises but oten at times had nothing to do. They appeared to be employeed but in reality were unemployed. In fact, the Soviet planning system actively encouraged this sort of built in excess labour capacity and up until the 1940/early 50s workers were forbidden by law to change jobs such was the coercive nature of the Soviet employment system. This particular policy gave rise to massive discontent, abseentism and so on and had to be modified and was eventually abandoned

I don't disagree that the term "employment" is along the lines of ownership or slavery. But you can also sometimes think of it as "contracting."

For example, if there are worker-owned factories/services, perhaps at times, an outsider needs to be brought in, as an expert consultant, as a helper during peak times, or just as someone needing temporary work due to travel, needing extra cash, etc. These people would be selling their time to the co-op, hence "contracting," or "employing" themselves (think of semantics here)

Klaatu

2nd October 2011, 05:19

There would be no welfare under socialism. There would probably be rationing in the transitional period before socialism is established, which might be what you mean by socialism, but isn't what many of us mean by it as Que has said.

There would be no 'socialist state'. Socialism is a classless communal society. Without property there are no classes; without classes there is no state. Therefore no classes = no 'socialist state'.

There is no 'socialst economy' either. Socialism is a critique of political economy (ie, 'who gets what in class society') so the idea of socialist 'economy' makes no sense. Socialism is the end of 'economy'. It is the establishment of society in which human needs are met. So, no need for seperate 'welfare'. Everyone, whether they can work or not, is entitled to the benefits of society by virtue of being a member of that society - ie, a human being.

The term "economy" seems to carry capitalistic connotations with it.

But I learned in ECON 101 that the term "economy" really means "efficient usage of natural resources." As an analogy, suppose your car gets good fuel economy. That means that the car uses fuel efficiently. In fact, a Socialist system would probably use natural resources even more efficiently than a capitalist system can, because Socialists care about the land and the people (pollution, conservation, equal rights, etc) while capitalists only care about profit.

That being said, I think we can safely use the term: "Socialist Economy."

kour

2nd October 2011, 05:49

What if you are not employed by choice? People don't need formal employment to contribute to society. Would you still get paid?

Danielle Ni Dhighe

2nd October 2011, 08:38

If the working class has abolished the capitalist class system, and now collectively owns the means of production, distribution, and exchange, then it's simply about directing resources to where they're needed. It's not welfare in the way it's understood under capitalism.

Blake's Baby

2nd October 2011, 18:32

The term "economy" seems to carry capitalistic connotations with it.

But I learned in ECON 101 that the term "economy" really means "efficient usage of natural resources." ...

Well, seems you were mis-informed (probably by Professors of Economics). Actually it means 'household management'. It has been taken to mean 'state monetary management'; it also means 'the money supply and productive capacity of a country'; a related meaning is derived from its application to different methods of organisation of production in general ('the agrarian economy'). It has then acquired a (not its primary) meaning of 'cutting costs' (which is the meaning you're ascribing to it). But no, that's not what it 'means'. It's just one of the several notions it is used to refer to: 'the German economy' doesn't mean 'the German efficient usage of natural resources' any more than 'the black economy' means 'the illegal efficient usage of natural resources'.

The use of 'natural' resources is a bit odd too, I don't know what 'unnatural' resources are. As the primary economic resource is humanity itself (ie labour power), I presume 'human' isn't here being contrasted with 'natural'. What about 'natural' v 'mechanical/technological' resources? Are these not part of the 'economy' under capitalism? So I'm quite unsure as to what 'unnatural' resources are, and therefore not counted as part of the economy.

So then the question is does the OP mean 'how would a Socialist State manage its money supply and production'? Or does the OP mean 'how would a Socialist State cut costs?' Or 'how would the Socialist state use resources?' Or 'how would the Socialist State organise production?'

As an analogy, suppose your car gets good fuel economy. That means that the car uses fuel efficiently. In fact, a Socialist system would probably use natural resources even more efficiently than a capitalist system can, because Socialists care about the land and the people (pollution, conservation, equal rights, etc) while capitalists only care about profit...

Not a great advocate of 'efficiency' as criterion for anything. There is always a cost to everytrhing. Is it more 'efficient' to ask people to leave a building or to toss a hand grenade in? One saves time but uses more resources. Which is the most 'efficient'?

Under socialism we will be deciding things on a host of criteria. 'Whether we want to' is a much better criterion for chosing than 'because it'll save us half a bucket of ------ (insert name of 'natural' resource here)'.

That being said, I think we can safely use the term: "Socialist Economy."

Good luck. I want to destroy economy. It has no use a concept outside of class society. It is about who has access to scarce resources. It has no place in discussing a post-capitalist world.

Ocean Seal

2nd October 2011, 18:43

Why would you need welfare. In socialism you have 100% employment. Even the Soviet Union for all its flaws maintained 100% employment for decades.

Lucretia

2nd October 2011, 18:47

So even the crippled and extreme elderly are still working?!

Blake's Baby

2nd October 2011, 19:45

No. 100% employment is a red herring.

Would those unable to work in socialism be on 'welfare'?

Only if today children in the West are on 'welfare' because their parents feed them (I'm aware, obviously, that in a great many places, children do work, but they generally don't in bourgeois democracies). Would you define that as 'welfare'? Because it's the same thing. Families distribute resources internally (from parents who have money, to kids who are given food and shelter); under socialism, that principle would be extended to the whole of society. Yes, those who can work would end up supporting those who can't. That's ultimately called 'civilised behaviour' because we recognise that children and old people and the sick shouldn't starve just because they can't work.

Klaatu

3rd October 2011, 08:14

Blake's Baby (quote)
____________________________________________
"Well, seems you were mis-informed (probably by Professors of Economics)."

I was "misinformed" by "Professors of Economics?" and....YOU sir, are a "Professor of Economics?" (YOUR degree is...?)
What I have considered to be common-sense logic for all of these years does not seem to be merely "misinformation" to me, sorry to say.

______________________________________________
"Actually it means "household management"

Well yes, and a good analogy! Can we possibly expand this paradigm to mean "nation management?"
That is, consider a managed national economy (so unlike the present chaotic 'as-the-wind-blows' Capitalistic Economy)
that is to say: Completely-Unmanaged-Capitalist-Economy, which is not unlike a completely unmanaged group of five-year-olds.

Here is one for you:Capitalism is like a small child: he does what he wants, but he must be kept on a very short leash, lest he get
himself into big trouble. (If you've ever raised a child, you will know what I mean!)
__________________________________________________

"It has been taken to mean 'state monetary management'; it also means 'the money supply and productive capacity of a country'"

So... you don't think "money supply and productive capacity" needs to be carefully managed in a Socialist System?
_______________________________________________
'the German economy' doesn't mean 'the German efficient usage of natural resources' any more than 'the black economy' means
'the illegal efficient usage of natural resources'. The use of 'natural' resources is a bit odd too, I don't know what 'unnatural' resources
are. About 'natural' v 'mechanical/technological' resources? Are these not part of the 'economy' under capitalism? So I'm quite unsure as to what 'unnatural' resources are, and therefore not counted as part of the economy.

¿Que Pasa? If you're "unsure of it," why mention it? I don't know what you mean either. Please ask REAL questions or make real
assessments, not sophic hyperbole.
__________________________________________

So then the question is does the OP mean 'how would a Socialist State manage its money supply and production'? Or does the OP
mean 'how would a Socialist State cut costs?' Or 'how would the Socialist state use resources?' Or 'how would the Socialist State
organize production?'

In a common-sense way?

__________________________________________
Not a great advocate of 'efficiency' as criterion for anything. There is always a cost to everything. Is it more 'efficient' to ask people
to leave a building or to toss a hand grenade in? One saves time but uses more resources. Which is the most 'efficient'?

You got me there! Which macabre scenario WOULD be more efficient?
__________________________________________

Under socialism we will be deciding things on a host of criteria.

So what ARE these criteria?
___________________________________________

Good luck. I want to destroy economy.

Goodgod... it's just a WORD. We don't even have to use "economy." Use another word if it makes you happy. Suggestions?

___________________________________________
It has no use a concept outside of class society. It is about who has access to scarce resources. It has no place in discussing a post-
capitalist world.

"Scarce," thus the NEED for efficiency? (But must we dispense of that word as well, under the Orwellian NewSpeak?)

Get rid of capitalism... YES! I agree whole-heartedly!... but we are still faced with the problem of scarcity... thus we must
economize, or save resources (since capitalists have exploited/wasted most of the low-hanging fruit on this planet....and we
must fix up this extensive damage if we are to survive into the next century)

Blake's Baby

3rd October 2011, 14:30

No, I'm not a Professor of Economics. Economics is in essence a a pseudo-science that the bourgeoisie uses to justify its rule. Why would I want to be an expert in that?

Your definition of 'economy' doesn't even go half-way to describing what 'economy' as a term refers to. It is considerably wider in meaning than 'the efficient use of natural resources'. Or do you think 'the German economy' means 'the efficient use of natural resources in Germany'? 'the knowledge economy' means 'the efficient use of natural resources of knowledge'?

What are the 'unnatural' resources that you imply are not part of the 'natural resources' that comprise the economy? What distinction are you making between 'natural' and ...? Are they human resources? Are they mechanical or technological resources? All of these are part of the economy; what then do you consider to be 'non-natural' (therefore non-economic by your definition) resources?

'Common sense'? The common sense that says that socialism is impossible? The common sense that says we should all be socialists because it's a manifestly superior form of social organisation? You'll have to put more content into your 'common sense' I'm afraid.

'Efficiency' is a concept that I'm not happy dealing with. You are. So you tell me what is more 'efficient', it's not a concept I'm touching with a barge pole.

I don't think we do face the problem of 'scarcity'. Scarcity is a problem of capitalism not of socialism. Socialism is a post-scarcity society. So the problem doesn't exist.

robbo203

3rd October 2011, 15:44

I don't disagree that the term "employment" is along the lines of ownership or slavery. But you can also sometimes think of it as "contracting."

For example, if there are worker-owned factories/services, perhaps at times, an outsider needs to be brought in, as an expert consultant, as a helper during peak times, or just as someone needing temporary work due to travel, needing extra cash, etc. These people would be selling their time to the co-op, hence "contracting," or "employing" themselves (think of semantics here)

What you are describing here is the continuation of capitalism by some other name. "Employment", "contracting", or whatever you want to call it, will cease to exist when capitalism ceases to exist. A contractural arrangement between your "expert consultant" and the enterprise he or she is brought into to help is essentially a quid pro quo set up. You do such and such and, in return, you be be paid such and such. As you admit yourself "These people would be selling their time to the co-op".

The very fact that they have to "sell " their time to the co-op denotes a separation of ownership - as does any form of exchange transaction. What is being exchanged is in reality property entitlement to the things being exchanged. If I exchange my apple for your orange what we are exchanging is the right to own these different commodities. Its precisely the same with an expert consultant selling his or her time to a coop.

Where the means of productioin are commonly owned there can be no such thing as economic exchange. Everyone owns these means and therefore logically has the right to freely avail themselves of the products produced. This is what socialism or communism means. This is why the Communist Manifesto talks of the "communistic abolition of buying and selling". There is not, and cannot logically be, any buying or selling in communuism/socialism and that includes the time we expend on work

Workers coops are simply capitalist enterprises owned and run by workers. While they certainly have advantages over conventional capitalist firms they are much subordinated to the systemic pressures of capitalism as the latter. Look at the way Mondragon has largely sold out on its principles with its appalling treatment of its workforce in Poland. It goes to show that to suceed in a capitalist environment - to become big - you have to become more and more like other capitalist emterrises.

There are, in any case, severe structural limits on the cooperative movement which derive from the tendency for capital to become increasingly concentrated in fewer hands. While many workers do indeed possess a little capital, realistically there is not the slightest chance that they could ever muster together enough to buy significant means of production themselves. One reasdon why the status quo continues as it is

A Marxist Historian

3rd October 2011, 17:53

Why would it be unnecessary? I had the impression that money would still be used in a socialist society until a communist one could take it's place. How would the poorest receive healthcare without assistance?

In the Soviet Union, which wasn't a socialist society, but just one in transition between capitalism and socialism, moreover transition going in the wrong direction, all health care was free. So money didn't enter into it. And everybody had a job. Education free too, rent and public transportation dirt cheap, pensions pretty close to what you earned when you were working.

This was true in the rest of Eastern Europe too, some places like the GDR having better setups in fact. Cuba is still that way, though it is starting to fall apart as Cuba is totally broke. Technically true in North Korea, except that the economy is so bad that people are starving to death so it's not too noticeable. And some of that is starting to come back in China, with all the working class unrest and protests there lately, and a regime able to afford it because, not being capitalist, it was immune to the recent disaster of world capitalism.

As for money under socialism, according to Marx you'd likely have to have labor vouchers for bookkeeping, to enforce the principle of from each according to his ability, to each according to his work, but that wouldn't look a lot like money as we know it. And you certainly wouldn't have a separate class of poor people, something you had much less of in the Soviet Union for that matter. Auto workers and coal miners were usually paid better than doctors and lawyers.

-M.H.-

robbo203

3rd October 2011, 18:21

In the Soviet Union, which wasn't a socialist society, but just one in transition between capitalism and socialism, moreover transition going in the wrong direction, all health care was free. So money didn't enter into it. And everybody had a job. Education free too, rent and public transportation dirt cheap, pensions pretty close to what you earned when you were working. .-

The SU was not some kind of transitional society between capitalism and
socialism. It was a form of capitalism that moreover was not going to go anywhere at all - it was a dead end. Its eventual demise was eminently predictable . The privilegd parasites that called the shots in the SU saw they could do better under another form of capitalism and so duly effected their "revolution from above"

As Ive argued on another thread there is no such thing as a free lunch under capitalism. If free health care, education and the like are to be seen as some kind of indicator of socialism, then that reactionary monarchical regime that is Saudi Arabia must count amongst the foremost "socialistic" states. Actually such things have a compensatory benefit for the ruling class who have to foot the bill via general taxation in that they can then hold nominal wages to a level markedly lower than would be the case if workers had to pay for these things directly. There is also the added advantage that such public systems of provision - like the NHS in the UK - tend to be more cost-effective from a ruling perspective (which is primarily why the NHS came to be introduced in the first place after the War) .

As for money under socialism, according to Marx you'd likely have to have labor vouchers for bookkeeping, to enforce the principle of from each according to his ability, to each according to his work, but that wouldn't look a lot like money as we know it. And you certainly wouldn't have a separate class of poor people, something you had much less of in the Soviet Union for that matter. Auto workers and coal miners were usually paid better than doctors and lawyers.

-M.H.-

The Soviet Union was a massively unequal society and this has been well documented

Labour vouchers which Marx somewhat unenthusiastically suggested or communism were seen by him to be a temporary expedient for his lower phase of communism. They would cease to exist in higher communism where there would be free access to goods and services and all labour would be carried out voluntarily

A Marxist Historian

3rd October 2011, 18:28

In a socialist economy there will be no employment either. Employment - or generalised wage labour - is what is meant by capitalism so what you are deciribibng is some form of capitalist economy - state capitalism - not a socialist economy.

Employment implies that you have someone doing the employing and someone being employed. So it implies a class society, not a classless (and hence stateless) society which is what is traditionally meant by socialism - a synonym of commounism.

The idea that you can have employment without unemployment is reformist nonsense. It implies capitalism's economic rhythms can be controlled by the state. Even in the state capitalist soviet union which claimed to have eliminated unemployment there was plenty of unemployment - not just official unemployment as stated in the official yearbooks up to the 1930s but widespread disguised unemployment in which workers were registered as employees of state enterprises but oten at times had nothing to do. They appeared to be employeed but in reality were unemployed. In fact, the Soviet planning system actively encouraged this sort of built in excess labour capacity and up until the 1940/early 50s workers were forbidden by law to change jobs such was the coercive nature of the Soviet employment system. This particular policy gave rise to massive discontent, abseentism and so on and had to be modified and was eventually abandoned

A pretty silly answer, as, from the standpoint of the working people, let's face it, "disguised unemployment" is pretty cool.

I once had a job like that. Spent my time reading Marx and playing board games. At first was bored, but after a while I really got into it.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

3rd October 2011, 18:32

A Marxist Historian

3rd October 2011, 18:53

Well, seems you were mis-informed (probably by Professors of Economics). Actually it means 'household management'. It has been taken to mean 'state monetary management'; it also means 'the money supply and productive capacity of a country'; a related meaning is derived from its application to different methods of organisation of production in general ('the agrarian economy'). It has then acquired a (not its primary) meaning of 'cutting costs' (which is the meaning you're ascribing to it). But no, that's not what it 'means'. It's just one of the several notions it is used to refer to: 'the German economy' doesn't mean 'the German efficient usage of natural resources' any more than 'the black economy' means 'the illegal efficient usage of natural resources'.

The use of 'natural' resources is a bit odd too, I don't know what 'unnatural' resources are. As the primary economic resource is humanity itself (ie labour power), I presume 'human' isn't here being contrasted with 'natural'. What about 'natural' v 'mechanical/technological' resources? Are these not part of the 'economy' under capitalism? So I'm quite unsure as to what 'unnatural' resources are, and therefore not counted as part of the economy.

You might want to check out that famous 19th century economist Karl Marx, who had different views.

As for natural resources, those are the things that exist *without* human labor. Like air, water, things in the ground like coal and oil, etc. Of course it takes human labor to use them. But if there is no air you can't breathe, no matter how hard humans labor at it.

So then the question is does the OP mean 'how would a Socialist State manage its money supply and production'? Or does the OP mean 'how would a Socialist State cut costs?' Or 'how would the Socialist state use resources?' Or 'how would the Socialist State organise production?'

Well, "socialist state" is a bit of contradiction in terms, unless what you really mean is "state trying to build socialism," i.e. dictatorship of the proletariat.

In the 1920s in the USSR there were some great Marxist economists dealing with *all* of the above questions you list, especially Preobrazhensky. Bukharin had his moments too, despite his bad politics. I particularly like his brilliant refutation of all the marginalists, "Economic Theory of the Leisure Class." And no math! A great read. Of course Stalin killed them all.

Not a great advocate of 'efficiency' as criterion for anything. There is always a cost to everytrhing. Is it more 'efficient' to ask people to leave a building or to toss a hand grenade in? One saves time but uses more resources. Which is the most 'efficient'?

I suppose that depends on whether there is a war going on and if the people inside the building are all Nazis or whatever.

Under socialism we will be deciding things on a host of criteria. 'Whether we want to' is a much better criterion for chosing than 'because it'll save us half a bucket of ------ (insert name of 'natural' resource here)'.

Good luck. I want to destroy economy. It has no use a concept outside of class society. It is about who has access to scarce resources. It has no place in discussing a post-capitalist world.

Well, yes, when scarcity is abolished, no need for economics. But we are a *long* way away from that. Even a socialist society will need a variety of socialist economics, albeit *extremely* different from capitalist economics.

Only in a true communist society, from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs, when if somebody wants to fly to the moon next week he just goes out and does it, will there be no need for economics.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

3rd October 2011, 19:23

The SU was not some kind of transitional society between capitalism and
socialism. It was a form of capitalism that moreover was not going to go anywhere at all - it was a dead end. Its eventual demise was eminently predictable . The privilegd parasites that called the shots in the SU saw they could do better under another form of capitalism and so duly effected their "revolution from above"

Calling the Soviet Union capitalist is the left wing equivalent of creationism or saying the earth is flat. It's totally absurd. Ask any capitalist. Or read Marx about capitalism. He's pretty clear on what it is and what it isn't, and whatever the Soviet Union was, capitalism is what it was not.

The dead end part is right. Trotsky said that way back in the '30s, and for a long time leftists were saying, hey, look how wrong Trotsky was, with the Soviet Union controlling half the world and fighting it out with the USA for world domination. Well, now everyone can see he was right.

Basically, you can't build socialism in one country, the fundamental Stalinist concept, so one way or another the Soviet system was doomed. When the Stalin generation of bureaucrats went senile, Gorbachev led their kids in a counterrevolution from the top, and dragged the Soviet people into capitalism, which they hated but were too demoralized by sixty years of Stalinism to do anything about.

So now everybody in Russia who isn't filthy rich dreams about the good old days under Brezhnev, and votes for Putin because at least he is an old KGB man who says nice things about Stalin and maybe can restore some law and order.

As Ive argued on another thread there is no such thing as a free lunch under capitalism. If free health care, education and the like are to be seen as some kind of indicator of socialism, then that reactionary monarchical regime that is Saudi Arabia must count amongst the foremost "socialistic" states. Actually such things have a compensatory benefit for the ruling class who have to foot the bill via general taxation in that they can then hold nominal wages to a level markedly lower than would be the case if workers had to pay for these things directly. There is also the added advantage that such public systems of provision - like the NHS in the UK - tend to be more cost-effective from a ruling perspective (which is primarily why the NHS came to be introduced in the first place after the War).

You know nothing about Saudi Arabia if you think the people have any welfare measures. Because the majority of the people of Saudi Arabia *are not Saudi citizens!* All the work in the oil fields is done by immigrant semi slave labor with *zero* benefits of any kind.

Saudi Arabia is almost as bad as Kuwait. If you are a Saudi citizen, you basically are a member of the Saudi feudalo-capitalist ruling class.

And the reason the NHS was introduced in the UK was twofold. Firstly because of the fear that, if not, the Soviet Union would look awful good to a lot of British voters. And second of course was because the British working class voted Churchill out and put Labour into office, with its welfare state social-democratic program, back before Tony Blair. So it was the result of the struggles of the working class *against* capitalism, including the most important working class struggle of all of the times, the struggle of the Soviet people vs. Hitler fascism.

Now that the Soviet Union is gone, all those welfare state measures are going rapidly away too. Ya think that's a coincidence? If so, there's a nice bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

The Soviet Union was a massively unequal society and this has been well documented

Labour vouchers which Marx somewhat unenthusiastically suggested or communism were seen by him to be a temporary expedient for his lower phase of communism. They would cease to exist in higher communism where there would be free access to goods and services and all labour would be carried out voluntarily

Well of course the USSR was *extremely* unequal under Stalin. The Khrushchev reforms changed all that, and under Brezhnev in purely economic terms the Soviet Union was pretty egalitarian, except for the bureaucrats at the top, whose privileges were pretty minor by US standards. Brezhnev himself had a fleet of sports cars, big deal.

And bureaucrats lost their pension the second they were purged, they were no capitalist class. Kaganovich is always complaining in his memoirs about how broke he was, with a pension no better than anyone else's, and no property whatsoever more than his toothbrush and his clothing and furniture. Khrushchev was less of a whiner but basically in the same situation. No wonder the bureaucrats decided they liked capitalism better in the end.

True enough about labor vouchers. But we're a long, long way away from a communist society. The transition to *that* will be a lot harder and a lot longer than the transition from capitalism to socialism.

-M.H.-

Die Neue Zeit

3rd October 2011, 19:25

As for money under socialism, according to Marx you'd likely have to have labor vouchers for bookkeeping, to enforce the principle of from each according to his ability, to each according to his work, but that wouldn't look a lot like money as we know it. And you certainly wouldn't have a separate class of poor people, something you had much less of in the Soviet Union for that matter. Auto workers and coal miners were usually paid better than doctors and lawyers.

You're one of the few Trots who subscribes to labour vouchers and electronic equivalents as opposed to circulating money! :thumbup1:

Blake's Baby

3rd October 2011, 20:28

...

Well, "socialist state" is a bit of contradiction in terms, unless what you really mean is "state trying to build socialism," i.e. dictatorship of the proletariat....

I'm trying to get at what the OP means. The fact that there is no such thing as a 'socialist state' is neither here nor there. Like you seem to, I suspect that they mean 'the society in the transition to socialism'.

robbo203

3rd October 2011, 23:58

A pretty silly answer, as, from the standpoint of the working people, let's face it, "disguised unemployment" is pretty cool.

I once had a job like that. Spent my time reading Marx and playing board games. At first was bored, but after a while I really got into it.

-M.H.-

Big deal. And from the standpoint of the working people one might just as easily spend one's time reading Marx and playing boards games from the comfort of one's own home and with the benefit of a dole cheque.

From an economic standpoint, however, disguised unemployment was an undeniable reality in the former Soviet Union, contradicting the rose tinted view of its sympthisers that there was no unemployment there. What operated there was a bit like the job creation schemes western governments come up with as a ruse to disguise true unemployment except, of course, that it was more comprehensive and compulsory

MustCrushCapitalism

4th October 2011, 00:10

As long as poverty exists, welfare needs to exist, however, the idea behind Socialism is to eliminate poverty, thus, it'd only really be needed during the transition.

Blake's Baby

4th October 2011, 00:15

Very well summed up.

That really is the point - in the transitional period there will be some kind of 'welfare' programme to make sure everybody has enough; after scarcity has been transcended, ie in socialism, there will be no seperate welfare because everyone whether they can work or not will be able to access what they need.

robbo203

4th October 2011, 00:57

Calling the Soviet Union capitalist is the left wing equivalent of creationism or saying the earth is flat. It's totally absurd. Ask any capitalist. Or read Marx about capitalism. He's pretty clear on what it is and what it isn't, and whatever the Soviet Union was, capitalism is what it was not.

Ive read Marx on capitalism. Have you? Had you done so you would not have come out with crackpot statements like the above. Was there not a system of generalised wage labour in the SU, for example, and did not Marx say wage labour presupposes capital and vice versa and that they condition each other? Did not Engels say the more the state takes over the productive forces the more citizens does it exploit, the more does it become the national capitalist? And so on and so forth...

You know nothing about Saudi Arabia if you think the people have any welfare measures. Because the majority of the people of Saudi Arabia *are not Saudi citizens!* All the work in the oil fields is done by immigrant semi slave labor with *zero* benefits of any kind.

Saudi Arabia is almost as bad as Kuwait. If you are a Saudi citizen, you basically are a member of the Saudi feudalo-capitalist ruling class.

Slight exaggeration there I would say. . And here's a random site I selected from the web which suggests otherwise

Saudi Arabia now has a public health service providing free or very low cost health care for its nationals and it’s important to note that these services are also available to expatriates (http://www.justlanded.ru/english/Saudi-Arabia/Saudi-Arabia-Guide/Health/Introduction)

All of which is pretty much subsidiary to my main poiunt which is that there is no such thing as a free lunch under capitalism and which I noticed you conspicuously avoided tackling

And the reason the NHS was introduced in the UK was twofold. Firstly because of the fear that, if not, the Soviet Union would look awful good to a lot of British voters. And second of course was because the British working class voted Churchill out and put Labour into office, with its welfare state social-democratic program, back before Tony Blair. So it was the result of the struggles of the working class *against* capitalism, including the most important working class struggle of all of the times, the struggle of the Soviet people vs. Hitler fascism.

Now that the Soviet Union is gone, all those welfare state measures are going rapidly away too. Ya think that's a coincidence? If so, there's a nice bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

You miss the point about the NHS - that it had cross party support and even the support of Tory millionaires like Courtauld. Why? I dont think it had much to do with the Soviet Unionat all - thats just delusional talk as is the claim that welfare measures are being cut back becuase the Soviet union is gone. As if capitalist crisis has nothing to do with the fact of such cutbacks!!

There was an element of wanting to accomodate the rising expectations of british workers and of wanting to avoid a repeat of what happened after the First World War and the social discontent it gave rise. But more important still was the perception which was clearly enunciated in the Beveridge report that a system of state welfare such as it proposed would prove much more cost effective than the peicemeal system of welfare provision such as existed before the War. In others the NHS would be good for capitalism

Well of course the USSR was *extremely* unequal under Stalin. The Khrushchev reforms changed all that, and under Brezhnev in purely economic terms the Soviet Union was pretty egalitarian, except for the bureaucrats at the top, whose privileges were pretty minor by US standards. Brezhnev himself had a fleet of sports cars, big deal.

And bureaucrats lost their pension the second they were purged, they were no capitalist class. Kaganovich is always complaining in his memoirs about how broke he was, with a pension no better than anyone else's, and no property whatsoever more than his toothbrush and his clothing and furniture. Khrushchev was less of a whiner but basically in the same situation. No wonder the bureaucrats decided they liked capitalism better in the end.-

Youy are talking nonsense and one or two highly dubious comments from someone's memoirs hardly constitutes serious evidence. He would say that wouldnt he?

John Fleming and John Micklewright in their paper "Income Distribution, Economic Systems and Transition" cite the work of researchers like Morrison who, using data from the 1970s, found that countries like Poland and the Soviet Union had relatively high levels of income inequality, registering gini coefficients of 0.31 in both case, which put them on a par with Canada (0.30) and the USA (0.34) ( http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/eps70.pdf). According to Roy Medvedev (Khrushchev: The Years in Power ,Columbia University Press. 1976, 540), taking into account not only their inflated and often multiple "salaries" but also the many privileges and perks enjoyed by the Soviet elite (who even had access to their own retail outlets stocking western goods and various other facilities from which the general public was physically excluded) the ratio between low and high earners was more like 1:100.

Hardly "pretty egalitarian" is it?

Klaatu

4th October 2011, 02:02

What you are describing here is the continuation of capitalism by some other name. "Employment", "contracting", or whatever you want to call it, will cease to exist when capitalism ceases to exist. A contractural arrangement between your "expert consultant" and the enterprise he or she is brought into to help is essentially a quid pro quo set up. You do such and such and, in return, you be be paid such and such. As you admit yourself "These people would be selling their time to the co-op".

The very fact that they have to "sell " their time to the co-op denotes a separation of ownership - as does any form of exchange transaction. What is being exchanged is in reality property entitlement to the things being exchanged. If I exchange my apple for your orange what we are exchanging is the right to own these different commodities. Its precisely the same with an expert consultant selling his or her time to a coop.

Where the means of productioin are commonly owned there can be no such thing as economic exchange. Everyone owns these means and therefore logically has the right to freely avail themselves of the products produced. This is what socialism or communism means. This is why the Communist Manifesto talks of the "communistic abolition of buying and selling". There is not, and cannot logically be, any buying or selling in communuism/socialism and that includes the time we expend on work

Workers coops are simply capitalist enterprises owned and run by workers. While they certainly have advantages over conventional capitalist firms they are much subordinated to the systemic pressures of capitalism as the latter. Look at the way Mondragon has largely sold out on its principles with its appalling treatment of its workforce in Poland. It goes to show that to suceed in a capitalist environment - to become big - you have to become more and more like other capitalist emterrises.

There are, in any case, severe structural limits on the cooperative movement which derive from the tendency for capital to become increasingly concentrated in fewer hands. While many workers do indeed possess a little capital, realistically there is not the slightest chance that they could ever muster together enough to buy significant means of production themselves. One reasdon why the status quo continues as it is

I think you are concerned that what I have described would eventually lead right back to where we started from, that is, you may feel that such a system is the "seed" for big humongous, corrupt capitalism to grow right back like a stubborn weed (the present Western Capitalist system)

This might be so, but can be kept in it's place by powerful laws which restrict top wages (as well as set high minimum wages) and prevent any individual or group from taking power in a co-op. Everyone gets equal pay for equal work. (Doctors get paid as doctors, the top wage, while sweepers and novices get paid the lowest wage) There is no more than about five times multiplicity in wage level.

I did not address that issue yet. The fact is that there is a powerful element called human greed, and this must be controlled by the state.
Only then can any Socilaist/Communist system thrive. NO ONE gets rich, NO ONE is poor. And EVERYONE works.

A Marxist Historian

4th October 2011, 07:28

Big deal. And from the standpoint of the working people one might just as easily spend one's time reading Marx and playing boards games from the comfort of one's own home and with the benefit of a dole cheque.

From an economic standpoint, however, disguised unemployment was an undeniable reality in the former Soviet Union, contradicting the rose tinted view of its sympthisers that there was no unemployment there. What operated there was a bit like the job creation schemes western governments come up with as a ruse to disguise true unemployment except, of course, that it was more comprehensive and compulsory

And, from the standpoint of the working class, just what's so bad about "disguised unemployment" or a dole check if you get paid as much as the "disguised employed"? Which of course never happens under capitalism, but did in the Soviet Union?

Marx's daughter Laura and her husband Paul LaFargue wrote a great pamphlet, "The Right to be Lazy." Check it out some time.

As for capitalist job creation schemes to "disguise true unemployment," like Roosevelt's WPA in the 1930s, the problem with them is that capitalism can't afford them these days, or if they do it's nonunion slave labor for dirt cheap.

As for this allegedly being "compulsory," that's a myth too. It's true that you had to work some job or other, but changing jobs was, except at the very extreme height of Stalinism, a hell of a lot easier than in any capitalist economy. On a day to day basis, the workers usually had the upper hand over the managers on the shop floor, with the party bureaucrats of course balancing in between and having the last word -- usually.

You ever heard the joke from the Brezhnev years, "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work?" That's just about exactly how it was. Maybe not a great situation, but given the demoralization and cynicism of the average worker what with Stalinism, what would you expect? It was a degenerated workers state after all, not a healthy one, and the top wasn't the only place you had corruption.

You're looking at this from the standpoint of a slavedriving bourgeois economist, not from that of the workers. For you, it seems like the problem with the Soviet system was ... featherbedding, with the workers not working hard enough and getting away with too much. And there was a good bit of that of course, but that was the *least* of the problems with the Soviet system.

-M.H.-

robbo203

4th October 2011, 07:41

I think you are concerned that what I have described would eventually lead right back to where we started from, that is, you may feel that such a system is the "seed" for big humongous, corrupt capitalism to grow right back like a stubborn weed (the present Western Capitalist system)

This might be so, but can be kept in it's place by powerful laws which restrict top wages (as well as set high minimum wages) and prevent any individual or group from taking power in a co-op. Everyone gets equal pay for equal work. (Doctors get paid as doctors, the top wage, while sweepers and novices get paid the lowest wage) There is no more than about five times multiplicity in wage level.

I did not address that issue yet. The fact is that there is a powerful element called human greed, and this must be controlled by the state.
Only then can any Socilaist/Communist system thrive. NO ONE gets rich, NO ONE is poor. And EVERYONE works.

This has been attempted in the past and failed miserably. In Russia, for example, around the time of the Bolshevik revolution Lenin enthusiastically promotedthe principle of equal pay for everyone - what was called uravnilovka or income levelling. However, in less than a year later, in an address given in April 1918 (published as "The Soviets at Work") he abjectly recanted: “We were forced now to make use of the old bourgeois method and agreed a very high remuneration for the services of the bourgeois specialists. All those who are acquainted with the facts understand this, but not all give sufficient thought to the significance of such a measure on the part of the proletarian state. It is clear that such a measure is a compromise, that it is a departure from the principles of the Paris Commune and of any proletarian rule." Stalin too recognised the importance of unequal remuneration upon coming to power and having to fashion policy to fit the needs of the developing system of Soviet state capitalism. But Stalin but went a lot further than Lenin in denouncing the "evil of equality" and declaring Marxism to be the "enemy of equalisation". Uravnilovka, was vigrously opposed on the grounds that it undermined incentives and economic performance. And most surreally of all, Foreign Minister Molotov once declared that "Bolshevik policy demands a resolute struggle against equalitarians as accomplices of the class enemy, as elements hostile to socialism." (Tony Cliff, State Capitalism in Russia, p.69 http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1955/statecap/index.htm ).

It was perhaps not surprising, therefore, that in Russia, the ratio between the lowest and highest wages steadily increased from 1:1.8 just after the Bolshevik Revolution to 1:40 in 1950 (Ossowski S, Patterson S, Class Structure in the Social Consciousness, Free Press of Glencoe, New York 1963, 116).. In fact even this underestimates the true extent of inequality that existed in Soviet state capitalism because it overlooks 1) many in the ruling receive multiple salaries, bloated salaries being the form in which part of the surplus value was siphoned off by the Soviet capitalist class and 2) the differential impact of non-monetary payments-in-kind (free dachas, free holidays, chauffeur driven limos etc etc) which disproportionately benefitted the elite.

Even if you could attain the state of affairs you describe where "NO ONE gets rich, NO ONE is poor. And EVERYONE works" this would not be socialism but an idealised form of capitalism. You expect the state which is the tool of the ruling class par excellence to enforce this state of affairs against the interests of the ruling class itself - rather than abpoish the need to maintain such enforced - and unrealisable - equality by making the means of living freely available to all (communism). As Marx pointed out in Wages, Price and Profit:

"The cry for an equality of wages rests, therefore, upon a mistake, is an insane wish never to be fulfilled... To clamour for equal or even equitable [distribution] on the basis of the wages system is the same as to clamour for freedom on the basis of the slavery system (http://www.marx2mao.com/M&E/WPP65.html)

A Marxist Historian

4th October 2011, 08:19

Ive read Marx on capitalism. Have you? Had you done so you would not have come out with crackpot statements like the above. Was there not a system of generalised wage labour in the SU, for example, and did not Marx say wage labour presupposes capital and vice versa and that they condition each other? Did not Engels say the more the state takes over the productive forces the more citizens does it exploit, the more does it become the national capitalist? And so on and so forth...

Yes, I've read the first three volumes of capitalism, didn't get far in the fourth I admit. And a bunch of other stuff he wrote.

You're just twisting his words rather absurdly and dragging them way out of context rather in the Stalinist fashion, actually, in their attempts to turn black into white by misqouting and interpreting lines here and there.

Yes, when you go from feudalism to generalised wage labor, that automatically generates capitalism and a capitalist class. That's what Marx was talking about. Horse of another color.

To take your quote literally, that would mean that *any* society where people go to work in the morning and get a paycheck at the end of the week, no matter how democratic, no matter how socialist the values are, in fact no matter anything if somebody gets a paycheck for work, it's capitalism and whoever signs the paycheck, no matter whatever his *real* relationship to the means of production are, is a capitalist?

That is simply demented Mormon dogmatism in Marxist disguise, and is contradicted by *everything* Marx wrote in Capital. Especially in volumes II and III, where he gets down to the nitty gritty of how it actually works, which I suspect you've never even looked at.

Amd as for Engels, yes indeed, he said that the more the *capitalist* state takes over the productive forces, the more it becomes the collective exploiter, and right he was. He was *not* talking about a workers' state, about the dictatorship of the proletariat, a fundamental Marx-Engels concept that is obviously missing from your worldview.[/QUOTE]

Slight exaggeration there I would say. . And here's a random site I selected from the web which suggests otherwise

Saudi Arabia now has a public health service providing free or very low cost health care for its nationals and it’s important to note that these services are also available to expatriates (http://www.justlanded.ru/english/Saudi-Arabia/Saudi-Arabia-Guide/Health/Introduction)

All of which is pretty much subsidiary to my main poiunt which is that there is no such thing as a free lunch under capitalism and which I noticed you conspicuously avoided tackling

Expatriates? And just what do you think an expatriate is? The workers? You really are a member of the Saudi fan club, aren't you?

An expat is a tech from the US or England or some other imperialist country, a highly paid engineer living off the fat of the land and treating the actual workers as bad or worse as the Saudis do.

The Filipinos and whatnot toiling away in the oilfields have just about as many "social benefits" as the young girls from Ukraine lured by offers of "maid service" into Saudi brothels, which that Russian website of yours is probably a come on for. Or maybe for Russian engineers, now that Russia is once against a capitalist-imperialist country.

Precisely why you are quoting old right wing libertarian Robert Heinlein I am not clear about. No free lunch? Damn right there is, if the workers extract it from the capitalists. Not free from their point of view, but who cares?

In a socialist society, or rather a society on the way to socialism, then yes there are no free lunches, as the workers are in charge and we have to come up with a way to pay for them.

But under capitalism there is, as we can force the capitalists to spring for the bill.

And sure enough, poor children do get free lunches in many school cafeterias in America, because of the struggles of the working class in the 1930s.

You miss the point about the NHS - that it had cross party support and even the support of Tory millionaires like Courtauld. Why? I dont think it had much to do with the Soviet Unionat all - thats just delusional talk as is the claim that welfare measures are being cut back becuase the Soviet union is gone. As if capitalist crisis has nothing to do with the fact of such cutbacks!!

You think the rollback of social services started in fall 2008? Just what are you smoking?

It started, very dramatically, in the early-mid '90s right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The stock market was climbing to the stratosphere and the capitalist system seemed to most of the world to be the big winner, the "end of history." Not exactly a period of capitalism in crisis.

Don't know exactly how it went down in England, but that was when Clinton abolished welfare in America, and the social safety network was being shredded all over Western Europe. I visited Denmark at the time, and got lectures from the landlord of my B&B about how all the old social measures Denmark used to have were going down the toilet.

Maybe Tony Blair was a last bastion defender of the welfare state and Labour Party socialism, but somehow I don't think so.

There was an element of wanting to accomodate the rising expectations of british workers and of wanting to avoid a repeat of what happened after the First World War and the social discontent it gave rise. But more important still was the perception which was clearly enunciated in the Beveridge report that a system of state welfare such as it proposed would prove much more cost effective than the peicemeal system of welfare provision such as existed before the War. In others the NHS would be good for capitalism.

Of course the NHS had support among Tories and whatnot. Accepting it was a conscious decision by the British ruling class, and they are a big part of it, aren't they? Fact remains it was pretty much forced down their throats, which is why you had it in England and not in the USA. You think American capitalists aren't bright enough to figure out it's more efficient? Of course they know that, but it would hurt too many economic interests of various capitalist sectors, which is why Obama doesn't go that route, and Truman, though he suggested it, was never too serious about it.

Serious *bourgeois* reform only takes place under working class pressure, no matter how beneficial it may be to the bourgeoisie in the long term. Why? Because the bourgeoisie is no longer capable of bringing society forward in the era of imperialism, this is not the 19th Century any more.

Youy are talking nonsense and one or two highly dubious comments from someone's memoirs hardly constitutes serious evidence. He would say that wouldnt he?

John Fleming and John Micklewright in their paper "Income Distribution, Economic Systems and Transition" cite the work of researchers like Morrison who, using data from the 1970s, found that countries like Poland and the Soviet Union had relatively high levels of income inequality, registering gini coefficients of 0.31 in both case, which put them on a par with Canada (0.30) and the USA (0.34) ( http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/eps70.pdf). According to Roy Medvedev (Khrushchev: The Years in Power ,Columbia University Press. 1976, 540), taking into account not only their inflated and often multiple "salaries" but also the many privileges and perks enjoyed by the Soviet elite (who even had access to their own retail outlets stocking western goods and various other facilities from which the general public was physically excluded) the ratio between low and high earners was more like 1:100.

Hardly "pretty egalitarian" is it?

I've been to the ex-Soviet Union and talked to people, and they all say the same thing. Sure, things were unequal in the USSR, but hardly at all by comparison with the USA. As for your bourgeois researchers, no doubt they manipulated statistics quite adroitly to come up with the results they wanted.

Now, at the height of Stalinism in the '30s, when the US was relatively egalitarian due to the leveling effect of the Great Depression with bankers jumping out of windows, and Stalin getting all the ex-revolutionaries on his side by bribing them with extreme bureaucratic privilege, figures like that could have been accurate.

But in the 1970s? With multibillionaires all over America, and not a single millionaire in the whole USSR? The only way they could have come up with those figures is through conscious fraud. I mean, please, special stores where only bureaucrats get to go. You honestly think that is even the same order of magnitude as the economic differences between rich and poor in *any* capitalist country?

Let me clue you in. Here in America, yes, they let anybody go in to any store they like, no matter how high the prices are. But they can't take anything out unless they pay for it, and they don't have the money to, say, eat in those $300 a plate restaurants in New York. Or buy yachts and private planes. The big thing about those Soviet special stores they talk about is that not only was the quality higher, but the prices were cheaper! That was very very important because Soviet bureaucrats just were not capitalists. Most of 'em not only had far lower incomes than capitalists, but lower than a lot of US trade union bureaucrats!

Now of course you have more billionaires in Moscow than in New York. Things have changed. Now it's capitalist, then it wasn't.

And why are you talking about "income inequality" anyway? Capitalism is about *capital,* not income. Strictly speaking, income equality or inequality is utterly irrelevant to the question of whether a society is capitalist or not.

It is quite relevant to the question of whether a society can be considered socialist, but that is a completely different question, unless you are a Stalinist who thinks that the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. to him at any rate of a Stalin, is the same thing as socialism.

-M.H.-

Blake's Baby

4th October 2011, 09:45

Err, yes.

Capitalism is generalised wage labour and commodity production. No matter who owns the means of production, private capitalist or 'state' (class state, because you can't have one without the other); and the class that controls the state is... the ruling class. The ruling class in capitalism is the bourgeoisie, and as we have already determined that the SU was capitalist because of the wage labour and commodity production, then the ruling class of the SU was a bourgeoisie. Just a one that couldn't legally inherit property.

Engels discusses all of this in the 1880s. The rise of the 'joint stock company' does away with classic top-hatted capitalists. The capitalist class from the late 19th century was increasingly organised as national competing units; the Russian national (state) capitalists competed with the British and French national capitalists. This, as Bukharin began to see, as did Trotsky and Luxemburg, is imperialism in the period of capitalism's obsolescence. The Rusian revolution changed this situation only marginally. By 1923, the revolution was dead in Russia and the Bolsheviks had fused themselves with the state. They had become the managers of Russian national (state) capitalism. Your demented rantings about Mormons notwithstanding, you obviously haven't grasped the fact that capitalism can fly a red flag as easily as white one.

robbo203

7th October 2011, 09:28

Yes, I've read the first three volumes of capitalism, didn't get far in the fourth I admit. And a bunch of other stuff he wrote.
You're just twisting his words rather absurdly and dragging them way out of context rather in the Stalinist fashion, actually, in their attempts to turn black into white by misqouting and interpreting lines here and there.
Yes, when you go from feudalism to generalised wage labor, that automatically generates capitalism and a capitalist class. That's what Marx was talking about. Horse of another color.
To take your quote literally, that would mean that *any* society where people go to work in the morning and get a paycheck at the end of the week, no matter how democratic, no matter how socialist the values are, in fact no matter anything if somebody gets a paycheck for work, it's capitalism and whoever signs the paycheck, no matter whatever his *real* relationship to the means of production are, is a capitalist?
That is simply demented Mormon dogmatism in Marxist disguise, and is contradicted by *everything* Marx wrote in Capital. Especially in volumes II and III, where he gets down to the nitty gritty of how it actually works, which I suspect you've never even looked at.
Amd as for Engels, yes indeed, he said that the more the *capitalist* state takes over the productive forces, the more it becomes the collective exploiter, and right he was. He was *not* talking about a workers' state, about the dictatorship of the proletariat, a fundamental Marx-Engels concept that is obviously missing from your worldview.
Amusing. How exactly am I twisting words "Stalinist fashion" when the words - and the Marxian analysis - speaks for itself. It is you, Im afraid, who is doing all the twisting and turning - and the ducking and diving - in your efforts to evade the point. We dont need an extended tour of your reading list. Just keep to the point. What is capitalism? Marx and Marxism is pretty clear about that and you can hardly dispute this: capitalism is a system of generalised wage labour where goods and services take the form of commodities. That you can think is contradicted by everything Marx wrote in Capital is, well, simply breathtaking. (though typically, you provide no evidence for this outlandish claim). Seems you have absorbed nothing of substance in all those long hours of wading through Capital vol 1-3.

Actually the existence of an employing class alongside an employed class which is logically implicit in the very system of employment itself does indeed signify an assymmetry of power derived from class ownership of the means of production for all your wishy washy talk of how democratic the enterprise or how infused with ..ahem... "socialist values". As for the dotty theory of degenerated workers state, the less said about that the better. This embarrasing and deluded theory beloved of Trots such as yourself seeks to to cultivate the myth that the Russian revolution established a society in which the workers prevailed and not the class that controlled the state and imposed their decisions downwards on the working class. It was a dictatrorship over the proletariat and not of the proletariat from the word go and your Mr Trotsky was an accomplice in all this with his own anti democratic and anti socialist "militarisation" of labour policies

Expatriates? And just what do you think an expatriate is? The workers? You really are a member of the Saudi fan club, aren't you?
An expat is a tech from the US or England or some other imperialist country, a highly paid engineer living off the fat of the land and treating the actual workers as bad or worse as the Saudis do.
The Filipinos and whatnot toiling away in the oilfields have just about as many "social benefits" as the young girls from Ukraine lured by offers of "maid service" into Saudi brothels, which that Russian website of yours is probably a come on for. Or maybe for Russian engineers, now that Russia is once against a capitalist-imperialist country.

Dont be stupid . Im not a member of the Saudi fan club. I cited the example of Saudi Arabia - there are severeal other examples I could have chosen instead - merely to illustrate the point that the provision of so called "free services" is by no means simply the province of so called progressive leftist regimes . It is also pomething done by deeply conservative and reactionary regimes - like Saudi Arabia
According to you "If you are a Saudi citizen, you basically are a member of the Saudi feudalo-capitalist ruling class. Not only that you then have the barefaced cheek to say You know nothing about Saudi Arabia if you think the people have any welfare measures. Because the majority of the people of Saudi Arabia *are not Saudi citizens!* Actually if you bothered to check the facts you would have discovered that Saudi Arabia has an estimated population of 25.7 million of which only 5.5 million are non-citizens according to Wikipedia

Precisely why you are quoting old right wing libertarian Robert Heinlein I am not clear about. No free lunch? Damn right there is, if the workers extract it from the capitalists. Not free from their point of view, but who cares?
In a socialist society, or rather a society on the way to socialism, then yes there are no free lunches, as the workers are in charge and we have to come up with a way to pay for them.
But under capitalism there is, as we can force the capitalists to spring for the bill.
And sure enough, poor children do get free lunches in many school cafeterias in America, because of the struggles of the working class in the 1930s.

Your grasp of Marxian economics is about as convincing as your knowlege of Suadi Arabian population data. Amusingly, in capitalism we workers have free lunches but in socialism we dont because "we" have to find ways to pay for them. You almost make it sound like it would better for workers to stick with capitalism!
Where is the understanding of Marxian economics in all this, I wonder? . You do not grasp what underlies the labour theory of value - that the wage that a worker receives represents the costs of producing and reproducing his or her labour power. If some element of those costs is shifted over to the capitalists who pay for it via general taxation then inevitably this will exert a downward compensatory pressure on nominal wages. To put it another way if workers did not have access to free health care, the nominal wage would tend to rise to enable them to pay for the costs involved in the production and reproduction of their labour power. Of course this does not happen automatically or mechanically but through a process opf struggle but neverthless in the long run this is precisely how things pan out. The capitalist state does not advance to the workers an array of free serviceses out of the goodness of its heart but on a quid pro quo basis. What it gives on the one hand it takes on the other. In the case of the NHS there were very clear self-serving pragmatic reasons why the Bristish state set it up - above all becuase it was a relatively cost effective way of running a patch-'em-and-send-them- back-to-work healthcare system

You think the rollback of social services started in fall 2008? Just what are you smoking?
It started, very dramatically, in the early-mid '90s right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The stock market was climbing to the stratosphere and the capitalist system seemed to most of the world to be the big winner, the "end of history." Not exactly a period of capitalism in crisis.
Don't know exactly how it went down in England, but that was when Clinton abolished welfare in America, and the social safety network was being shredded all over Western Europe. I visited Denmark at the time, and got lectures from the landlord of my B&B about how all the old social measures Denmark used to have were going down the toilet.
Maybe Tony Blair was a last bastion defender of the welfare state and Labour Party socialism, but somehow I don't think so

Actually a more pertinent question might be - what exactly are you smoking? Your completely fantasist and delusional argument is that the social services provided by the welfare state were maintained and upheld by virtue of the existence of the Soviet Union and when that fell apart, the rollback pof social services commenced "very dramatically". I dont know excatly what it is you think western policy makers were thinking in your fantasy make-believe world. Perhaps you imagine they were obsessively apprehensive about of the immient prospect of the Britsih or American proletariat succumbing to Mosacow propaganda and setting up a British or American soviet state?
Problem is that there are one or two little awkward facts that dont quite fit in with your balmy theory. Heard of Mrs Thatcher and Ronald Reagan for instance? Well now they came to power before the collapse of the Soviet Union - even though, according to you, it was only after that collapse that the rollback of social services. commenced. Nor true. In both cases they commenced well before. Being a yank you might know something of this in the case of Reagan and the deep cuts his regime inflicted on welfare programmes targeted to support low income familieis and the like

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Of course the NHS had support among Tories and whatnot. Accepting it was a conscious decision by the British ruling class, and they are a big part of it, aren't they? Fact remains it was pretty much forced down their throats, which is why you had it in England and not in the USA. You think American capitalists aren't bright enough to figure out it's more efficient? Of course they know that, but it would hurt too many economic interests of various capitalist sectors, which is why Obama doesn't go that route, and Truman, though he suggested it, was never too serious about it.
Serious *bourgeois* reform only takes place under working class pressure, no matter how beneficial it may be to the bourgeoisie in the long term. Why? Because the bourgeoisie is no longer capable of bringing society forward in the era of imperialism, this is not the 19th Century any more.

Have you read anything at all about the Beveridge Report that led to the setting ip the Welfare state in the UK?. There were several reasons explicitly cited as to why it would be a good thing for UK ltd. The most prominant of these was the fact that it would be cost effective. It is quite false to suppose that the welfare state was simply forced on the British capitalist class; it was also embraced by them willingly and knowingly. There was an element of it being forced too - I dont deny this - insofar as the state had to address the expectations of workers in the immediate post war era. But that is far from being the whole picture

The rollback in social sercives that commenced in later yeatrs had virtually nothing to do with the Soviet Union - thats a complete red herring.- and had an awful lot to do with the economic crises that capitalism began to run into from 70s onwards. You contend that "Serious *bourgeois* reform only takes place under working class pressure, no matter how beneficial it may be to the bourgeoisie in the long term. Why? Because the bourgeoisie is no longer capable of bringing society forward in the era of imperialism, this is not the 19th Century any more." That is a dumb argument by any standard. Firstly because it was precisely in the very midst of the "era of imperialism "- in the 2oth century - that you go on about that the "serious refroms" like the setting up the welfare state were implemented. Secondly becuase you completely ignore the fact that if "Serious *bourgeois* reform only takes place under working class pressure", working class pressure is itself conditioned by the objective economic conditions that capitalism experiences. In a recession the bargaining power of workers is significantly reduced and therefore their ability to extract significant refroms from the state. Your analysis which effectively pooh poohs the importance of recession as an explanation for the rollback in social services boils down to a frankly idealist one - that workers are no longer as determined as they once were to fight their own corner
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I've been to the ex-Soviet Union and talked to people, and they all say the same thing. Sure, things were unequal in the USSR, but hardly at all by comparison with the USA. As for your bourgeois researchers, no doubt they manipulated statistics quite adroitly to come up with the results they wanted.
Now, at the height of Stalinism in the '30s, when the US was relatively egalitarian due to the leveling effect of the Great Depression with bankers jumping out of windows, and Stalin getting all the ex-revolutionaries on his side by bribing them with extreme bureaucratic privilege, figures like that could have been accurate.
But in the 1970s? With multibillionaires all over America, and not a single millionaire in the whole USSR? The only way they could have come up with those figures is through conscious fraud. I mean, please, special stores where only bureaucrats get to go. You honestly think that is even the same order of magnitude as the economic differences between rich and poor in *any* capitalist country?
Let me clue you in. Here in America, yes, they let anybody go in to any store they like, no matter how high the prices are. But they can't take anything out unless they pay for it, and they don't have the money to, say, eat in those $300 a plate restaurants in New York. Or buy yachts and private planes. The big thing about those Soviet special stores they talk about is that not only was the quality higher, but the prices were cheaper! That was very very important because Soviet bureaucrats just were not capitalists. Most of 'em not only had far lower incomes than capitalists, but lower than a lot of US trade union bureaucrats!
Now of course you have more billionaires in Moscow than in New York. Things have changed. Now it's capitalist, then it wasn't.
And why are you talking about "income inequality" anyway? Capitalism is about *capital,* not income. Strictly speaking, income equality or inequality is utterly irrelevant to the question of whether a society is capitalist or not.
It is quite relevant to the question of whether a society can be considered socialist, but that is a completely different question, unless you are a Stalinist who thinks that the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. to him at any rate of a Stalin, is the same thing as socialism.
-M.H.-

Come off it - this is nbot a serious factually -based argument. You dismiss the statistics presented in serious acadmeic studies of Soviet studies as just the manipulatioins of bourgeois researchers (many of whom incidentallty are quite left wing in outlook) adroitly seeking to come up with the results they wanted. What sort of srgument is that? Are we expected to just accept your ex cathedra statements on the nod.
You talk abvout soviet bureaucrats in general. Some no doubt had a lower income than US trade unon bureaucrats. An administrative clerk toiling away in some GOSPLAN office for instance. But this is not what we are talking about. We are talking about the upper echeolons of the decisionmaking apparatus and here you completely ignore some inconvenient facts, A common practice through the Soviet bloc was for high ranking individuals to have not just one income but multiple incones corresponding to the multiple roles they supposedly performed. Not only that you ignore the hugely important element of non monetary benefits - free daches, free hoilidays and the like. And this is not to take into account income derived from widcespread corription within the soviet system and the links between high ranking offocials and elements in the black economy who provided backhanders and the like. When you started to take all these factors in consideration you can see why it is Soviet state capitalism registered levels pof inequality not that disimmilar to that found in many western countries and all the serious research backs this up.

Certainly capitalism is about capital and not strictly income. However, income inequality is a pointer to the assymetrical power relations that characterise capitalism, It is because the nomenklatura exercised de facto control over the means of production that they weere effectively owners of the means of prpduiction - the Soviet capitalist class. It is an idealist and nonsensical intepretation of history to say that in order for capitalism to exist, individual capitalist must have some legally enshrined right to own capital in their own right. What counts is what happens on the ground in economic reality not what exists in some statute book