"Bourgeois right"

[Questionable]

I'm really having trouble grasping the concept of bourgeois right in State and Revolution, even with the help of the study guide.

What does the slogan "equal pay for equal work" mean, exactly? Is everyone in the lower phase of communism going to be doing equal amount of work for equal payment? Or does it mean that you'll be paid depending on how much work you did? If so, is that what Lenin is referring to, the fact that some will be capable of more work than others and thus will receive higher pay from society? Or am I missing something?

[Blake's Baby]

I think the idea is that pay is equalised according to time - "if the work (hours) are equal then the wages paid will be equal".

That's a relatively simple calculation - how much gross work is there (like, 2 billion hours or something) and how much money is there (say, 3 billion roubles) so everyone gets 1.50 roubles per hour, no matter what their work is. One person's time isn't therefore worth more than another's.

Not "everyone will work the same hours and receive the same wage".

Because it's obvious that, because of relative skill shortages, it's not possible to say "all of the doctoring in Russia is so well balanced with all of the train driving that we know inadvance that the number of doctors into the amount of doctoring is the same as the number of engine-drivers into the amount of train driving, and it's 32 hours each" or whatever.

[Aurora]

In the lower phase of communism each receive back from society, after necessary deductions, what they give to it. What they give is the amount of labour expending in a day, their labour-time, and receive a certificate entitling them to take from the common stock the same amount of labour expended in another form, so to give a simplified example if you work 10 hours making tables you can take back from society 10 hours worth of shoes, cigarettes etc etc.

This is the same way commodities are exchanged under capitalism, the exchange of equal values (overall, not in the individual case). What's changed is that everyone must work and the labour given cannot buy means of production only means of subsistence.

This equal right that exists in early communism is therefore a bourgeois right as it's how capitalism works. But people are different one can work longer or harder than another or one has children etc so this equal right is actually an unequal right for unequal pay, the person with children will have less because they have to support their children and the person who can't work hard will receive the same as the hard worker etc
To avoid this, right instead of being equal would have to be unequal, or rather right would have to be gotten rid of, where each can give to society as much as they can and receive as much as they want.

[Questionable]

and the person who can't work hard will receive the same as the hard worker etc

I presume that was a typo, and the person who works harder will receive more? Because if not, that seems out of line with everything else you were saying.

So would this problem of bourgeois right fade away once the productive powers of society strengthened to the point where scarcity wasn't a problem?

[Geiseric]

Well people are able to do "tougher," jobs like doctoring because of how society has cradled and nurtured them at a level higher than an average minimum wage worker. Nobody is a "self made man," unless you're some weird hillbilly or survivalist. Thus it makes sense to pay back society for the labor it's given to you.

[Aurora]

I presume that was a typo, and the person who works harder will receive more? Because if not, that seems out of line with everything else you were saying.

It wasn't a typo but i could have been clearer, if two people one weak one strong both work an hour moving furniture they will both be compensated with an equal certificate. This equal payment is really an unequal payment for unequal work because the stronger person has worked harder.
While if two people work the same job, the first works a hour and the second two hours then the second will be compensated with twice as much as the first.
This isn't ideal or anything it's just left over from capitalist society and will take some time to overcome.


So would this problem of bourgeois right fade away once the productive powers of society strengthened to the point where scarcity wasn't a problem?
Absolutely, Marx has a quote which is so important he says 'Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and the culture conditioned thereby.'

[Blake's Baby]

Or perhaps the stronger person hasn't worked as hard, how do you know?

If two people, one stronger and one weaker, work for an hour, who has worked harder?

If the strong person moved a tonne of bricks and the weak person moved half a tonne of bricks, the strong person has 'delivered more energy' as an output. But does that mean they worked harder?

If the weak person delivered all the effort they could, but the strong person could have moved another half tonne but didn't, then the weak person worked harder even though the end result was not as large.

If the strong person likes moving bricks, and the weak person is only moving bricks because it is socially necessary to move bricks, then the weak person is working harder because the strong person is not 'working' at all, no matter how many bricks they move.

I don't see 'strong people work harder' as a valid argument here.

[Blake's Baby]

I've been worrying at this again, forgive me, but ...


... if two people work the same job, the first works a hour and the second two hours then the second will be compensated with twice as much as the first...

So going back to the strong person and the weak person, if the weak person takes 2 hours to move a tonne of bricks they'll get twice as much compensation as the strong person who moved a tonne of bricks in an hour?

That's just an incentive to do things really inefficiently, isn't it?

"Oh, I'm strong, I could have moved the tonne of bricks in an hour, but I took two hours over it so I got two hours' worth of labour certificates, after all the guy next to me who's a little weed was going to get two hours' worth of certificates for his pile of bricks, I thought I might as well too. Tomorrow I might take five hours to do it, or maybe it'll take me a week... the longer those bricks don't get moved, the more certificates I get."

That seems like a totally stupid system to me.

[Aurora]

Or perhaps the stronger person hasn't worked as hard, how do you know?

Well it was just an example, in reality it's impossible to compare unequal individuals.

if the weak person takes 2 hours to move a tonne of bricks they'll get twice as much compensation as the strong person who moved a tonne of bricks in an hour?

That's just an incentive to do things really inefficiently, isn't it?
Yes they will get twice the compensation, it's the same way things work today, my coworker and i always do different amounts and difficulties of work but we get the same hourly wage. If we worked slower or damaged the machinery we would produce less and still get the same pay. It's a defect of socialism as it's arising out of capitalism but i don't see there being a better way before higher communism.

"Oh, I'm strong, I could have moved the tonne of bricks in an hour, but I took two hours over it so I got two hours' worth of labour certificates, after all the guy next to me who's a little weed was going to get two hours' worth of certificates for his pile of bricks, I thought I might as well too. Tomorrow I might take five hours to do it, or maybe it'll take me a week... the longer those bricks don't get moved, the more certificates I get."

That seems like a totally stupid system to me.
While it's not really knowable how much this occurs in our current society i feel fairly confident in saying that it will occur less when the means of production belong to the whole of society and production is for need, work will start to become a means of enriching yourself and the whole of society rather than the drudge of producing for a capitalist.