Socialism

[SergeNubret]

The easiest way of describing this is "When the workers control the means of production"
but does this mean that there is no boss in the company? Or can there be people that are in charge, just that they won't make any more money?
If the workers manage and control the surplus of the company, do everybody get a vote? Do everybody meet and use direct democracy?
If there is a big surplus in a company, do the workers get some of the surplus? (bigger wages) or does everything go to making the company better (equipment, storage, space etc)

Would you say socialism is nothing more and nothing less?
DO you have to have free healthcare, free education etc for socialism to be complete, or is that just concidered common goods from the country?
Do you think free healthcare and free education will automatically come when workers control the means of production?

[Blake's Baby]

I'm not convinced it is.

No boss, no company, no money, and those 'in charge' are elected.

No company, no surplus. But yes, I think generally direct democracy will be used for decision making.

There's no such thing as a 'socialist surplus'.

No, I wouldn't, I'd say socialism is nothing like that at all.

Yes.

Depends what you mean. Socialist society after the suppression of capitalism, but as capitalism is a world system, it needs to be suppressed everywhere. When it has been, then yes we shuld be able to manage 'free education and free healthcare' - hopefully before that too but what does 'free' mea in this case? Actually free, or just free at the point of delivery and paid for from taxes of some kind?

[ckaihatsu]

The easiest way of describing this is "When the workers control the means of production"


The corollary to this is that 'Workers control their own labor, collectively'.





but does this mean that there is no boss in the company?




Or can there be people that are in charge, just that they won't make any more money?




Do everybody meet and use direct democracy?


There's nothing in the way of material realities that would *require* a 'boss', a 'leader', or even physical-location-based management, as we're familiar with today. (Consider that much production is already automated, that much automated machinery is already controlled remotely through computer interfaces, and that all politics and logistics can be done collectively over the Internet, as through a discussion board like RevLeft.)





If the workers manage and control the surplus of the company, do everybody get a vote?




If there is a big surplus in a company, do the workers get some of the surplus? (bigger wages)


The reality of a surplus emerging would mean that something went wrong in the pre-planning stage, by definition.





or does everything go to making the company better (equipment, storage, space etc)


This would be a perennial issue.





Would you say socialism is nothing more and nothing less?


This isn't that clear -- you may want to elaborate.





DO you have to have free healthcare, free education etc for socialism to be complete, or is that just concidered common goods from the country?




Do you think free healthcare and free education will automatically come when workers control the means of production?


Countries / nations are a bourgeois invention, and they only serve the purposes of those who are currently in ownership and decision-making positions of power. Once the class divide is abolished the workers of the world would be able to decide how best to treat themselves / ourselves.

[Red Enemy]

The easiest way of describing this is "When the workers control the means of production"
but does this mean that there is no boss in the company? Or can there be people that are in charge, just that they won't make any more money?
If the workers manage and control the surplus of the company, do everybody get a vote? Do everybody meet and use direct democracy?
If there is a big surplus in a company, do the workers get some of the surplus? (bigger wages) or does everything go to making the company better (equipment, storage, space etc)What you are trying to describe her is the "dictatorship of the proletariat", the last stage of capitalist society where worker's have taken political power. Decision making is done via democratic vote in workers councils.

Any surplus value extracted from labour under the DOTP, is done so by the workers, and is controlled by the workers (the creators of surplus value) - as opposed to the bourgeoisie in capitalism proper. Surplus value is not the same thing as profit, for it does refer to what also goes into repairing means of production, etc. This surplus value, now under the control of the workers, and can go where it is needed. Perhaps the surplus value is needed to create homes, to purchase equipment for hospitals, build a school, to suppress the bourgeois counter-revolution, etc.

There are no bosses anymore, as the worker's control production now, as I said before, through democratic workers' councils.


Would you say socialism is nothing more and nothing less?
DO you have to have free healthcare, free education etc for socialism to be complete, or is that just concidered common goods from the country?
Do you think free healthcare and free education will automatically come when workers control the means of production?
Socialism is certainly more than the Dictatorship of the proletariat.

Socialism means that classes have been abolished, and the state (as we know it - an organ of class oppression) has thus withered away. Production is based on social need, not on profit.

"Free" education or healthcare would obviously coincide with a socialist society, because there is no money. Education and healthcare would be necessities of society in total, and would be accessible to all.

Will free education and healthcare come in a DOTP? Yes, it is most likely it can and will. However, we see "free" healthcare and education becoming a popular theme within bourgeois society.

[SergeNubret]

Does socialism really mean that classes have been abolsihed?

What is the difference between surplus value and profit? I have always thought they ment the exact same.

If I work at a factory and work really fast troughout a day, will I get the profit? Or will I decide what it is used on?
Does it have to be used in THAT factory/company, or any other place as hospital/school as you mentioned?

Sorry for asking so much, and thank you all for the help!

[SergeNubret]

If workers control the means of production, will classes be abolished by itself?
Or does it need to be a revolution?

[Left Voice]

Revolution is a means to an end, but an important means because it's proletariat who need to emancipate themselves (and we only have to look at the state of social democracies today to see where reformism leads).

[Thirsty Crow]

The easiest way of describing this is "When the workers control the means of production"It might be the easiest, but it is not accurate.

It would be more accurate to state that socialism represents a mode of social and economic organization where production is planned for a fulfillment of human needs alongisde workers' control over day to day operations of their workplace (but not of the decisions pertaining to what is produced as this is a social matter and not that of a group of workers), which is in stark contradiction with capitalist production for profit.


but does this mean that there is no boss in the company? Or can there be people that are in charge, just that they won't make any more money?This relates to two distinct problems.

The first is workplace relations. Indeed, I think that it is both possible and necessary to do away with the function of a boss, a manager, in workplaces which are part of the fabric of communist society. The role of supervision and coordination can be rotated so as to eliminate hierarchical relations.

The second problem is broader and concerns renumeration. Here, it is necessary to clarify whether we're talking about a communist society, or a society of the transitional phase, a "period of the revolutionary transformation of society" (dictatorship of the proletariat as a class which abolishes itself). In case of the former, there can be no doubt, it is not necessary to have different renumeration levels in the first place since management is revolutionized and is no longer manifested in functions, jobs, but is based on rotation of tasks.

In the case of the latter, the picture is far more complicated and dependent on very specific, concrete conditions (e.g. shortage of qualified labour which makes it a lot harder to push for a wide education in affairs of organization, management, coordination; also, there is, in this scenarion, a distinct possibility of a privileged position of a certain section of the working class who position themselves as dominant over other workers, thus demanding higher renumeration and special privileges, which again might lead to dubious political developments). Anyway, I think it is necessary to push for workers' control in this stage as well.


If the workers manage and control the surplus of the company, do everybody get a vote? Do everybody meet and use direct democracy?
If there is a big surplus in a company, do the workers get some of the surplus? (bigger wages) or does everything go to making the company better (equipment, storage, space etc)You're still thinking in capitalist terms. Surplus value encapsulated within an isolated economic unit, thus profit.

What I advocate is wholly different - the abolition of the enterprise as a value and profit producing economic unit which is isolated, and thus in competition with, from other such units.


Would you say socialism is nothing more and nothing less?
Definitely not, socialism is way more than you seem to imagine.


DO you have to have free healthcare, free education etc for socialism to be complete, or is that just concidered common goods from the country?
Do you think free healthcare and free education will automatically come when workers control the means of production?Of course I would think that free access to education and healthcare constitutes necessary measures for proletarian self-abolition. I don't think, however, that anything will come automatically, as if it was a gift from above, but through struggle and an elaboration of a common program for workers' self-emancipation, which is the same thing as the abolition of the proletariat as a social class.


If workers control the means of production, will classes be abolished by itself?
Workers can control the means of production and still engage in capitalist production. The existence of capital is not wholly antagonistic in relation to the question of who manages workplace affairs.


Or does it need to be a revolution?I would say that world revolution is absolutely necessary.



What is the difference between surplus value and profit? I have always thought they ment the exact same.

Profit cannot exist without the production of value, which necessarily occurs in capitalism as exploitation of labour and subsequently the existence of surplus value.

But the two terms are not synonyms as profit is dependent on the realization of surplus value (when actual commodities are sold; it is not necessary that they are actually sold, they may rot in warehouses), while surplus value is the product of labour which occurs in every productive operation in capitalism (when I say productive, this relates only to the production of value; the so called non-productive sector, for instance babysitters, does not produce new value but merely redistributes the already existent value)


I
No company, no surplus....
There's no such thing as a 'socialist surplus'.

This is not true.

Every society which has advanced from the situation of the hunter gatherer societies will produce a surplus, which only means that at a given standard of life, there will be more than what is necessary for a simple reproduction of society. Communism is no different in this respect. What is different is the social form which this surplus takes, and by implication, how it is allocated and how this is decided on. So, the notion of a social surplus is common to all social formations which operate on the basis of agriculture and sedentary lifestyle.

[Narodnik]

The easiest way of describing this is "When the workers control the means of production"
but does this mean that there is no boss in the company?
Basically. My view goes like this:

Socialism is the emancipation of the workers.

The basic idea that workers should recieve the full product of their labor, and that capitalism is theft because we don't, being that the bosses always take a part of what we make.

Being that workers should recieve the full product of their labor, that means that all unearned incomes should be abolished, which the first socialists (the Ricardian socialists) called "the trinity of usury", meaning the income that the bosses take, the income that the lender of money takes (interest), and the income that the rentier of something takes. A fourth type of unearned income is the income that a holder of patent/intellectual right takes.

That means that socialism must institute a classless society where workers will self-manage.

And we have different types of socialism:

- state Socialisms like Democratic Socialism, Guild Socialism and Luxemburgism; and

- libertarian Socialisms like Mutualism, Anarcho-Collectivism and Libertarian Communism.

[Red Enemy]

Does socialism really mean that classes have been abolsihed?Yep!


What is the difference between surplus value and profit? I have always thought they ment the exact same.Surplus value is everything that isn't paid to the worker, and includes profit, and what it costs to replace materials, repair machinery, etc.

Profit is what the Bourgeoisie takes home, what is his to do with as he pleases. Buy a mansion, a yacht, a Rolls Royce, spend on political lobbying, or whatever.


If I work at a factory and work really fast troughout a day, will I get the profit? Or will I decide what it is used on?Fast doesn't mean you do better work.

However, suppose you did work in a factory, in the lower/first phase of communism (called Socialism by Leninists) you will get more than someone who worked less. A suggestion on "payment" Marx put forward was "Labour Vouchers". There's no money anymore, so one can say there is no longer a "surplus value" - as Blake's Baby said. Distribution can be considered as "To each according to his contribution".

In The higher/final stage of communism, there is distribution based on "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need".

Does it have to be used in THAT factory/company, or any other place as hospital/school as you mentioned?


Sorry for asking so much, and thank you all for the help!Keep asking comrade, it's how you learn and develop your own views!


If workers control the means of production, will classes be abolished by itself?
Or does it need to be a revolution?
Revolution is how the workers come to control the means of production.

Revolution is absolutely necessary.

When the workers take political power, and become the ruling class in society (Dictatorship of the proletariat), they prepare society for socialism by expropriating the bourgeoisie, defending against counter revolution, and organizing society and the economy.

Classes are abolished when the world bourgeoisie has been expropriated and the working class has seized political power world wide.

They will either die fighting, or submit and enter into the working class. When that happens, classes cease to exist.

[ckaihatsu]

Any surplus value extracted from labour under the DOTP, is done so by the workers, and is controlled by the workers (the creators of surplus value) - as opposed to the bourgeoisie in capitalism proper. Surplus value is not the same thing as profit, for it does refer to what also goes into repairing means of production, etc. This surplus value, now under the control of the workers, and can go where it is needed. Perhaps the surplus value is needed to create homes, to purchase equipment for hospitals, build a school, to suppress the bourgeois counter-revolution, etc.


In the interests of being precise, I'd like to refine a definition here: Any labor power that goes into propagating labor itself -- the upkeep and reproduction of the working class -- is 'necessary labor', and would include such things as those mentioned above -- the creation of homes, the purchase of equipment for hospitals, the building of schools, political activities, infrastructure, etc.

Surplus value is any value (currently) realized from the exploitation of the labor commodity by the capitalist, above the expenses associated with reproducing the labor force, as just described.

The tricky aspect of these definitions is when we attempt to translate them into the 'socialism' transitional phase (DOTP). With the workers nominally in control, what exactly would it take materially for them to fully assert their best interests against the flagging bourgeoisie -- ? Obviously this would depend on actual conditions, and it might very well be difficult for *exacting planning* to take place during that phase, as we could more easily conceive of once the class enemy is decisively undone.

So, in the rapidly fluctuating conditions of proactive class warfare, there could still be an unplanned surplus produced, with all of the attendant complications of post-planning involved. Would a class-in-the-midst-of-class-battles want to spread that surplus around to increase living standards a little bit -- ? Would it go towards active organizing efforts -- ? Or would it be easier to just ignore it for the time being -- ?


A Business Perspective on the Declining Rate of Profit

http://s6.postimage.org/c0b0m6i25/23_A_Business_Perspective_on_the_Declining_Rat.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/c0b0m6i25/)

[Dave B]

The narrow or precise definition of surplus labour and surplus value is the amount of work done and what it produces that the workers do not ‘immediately’ consume to reproduce their labour power.

In capitalism that ‘surplus value’ includes stuff produced for the accumulation of capital eg machinery, factories and roads etc as well as the consumables of the capitalist parasitic capitalist class itself.

The old pre-existent factories and roads etc is the ‘dead labour’ or past expended surplus labour/value of the workers which is continually being augmented or added to etc.

The repairing or replacement of used up machines or fixed capital isn’t actually or contributes to surplus value. Eg Karl with his spindles etc.

It is ok as a generalisation to equate profit with surplus value I think.

Surplus value and surplus labour, and in fact ‘value’, is something as a ‘rudimentary concept’ that ‘first’ drops out specifically of an analysis of capitalism.

Which means it is possible to take it and use it to analyse other ‘economic’ systems, and Karl did.

Thus in socialism or communism the actual ‘able bodied, mature and capacitated’ workers, taken collectively may produce more stuff than they consume.

Thus the 'concrete excess' or 'surplus' may be more advanced labour saving machinery or machinery and technology to produce new types of use values.

That would be ‘rudimentary’ surplus value in the sense that the workers wouldn’t directly and immediately consume it to reproduce their labour power and it would not be part of the workers consumption fund ie it would not be something that they would eat drink or wear etc.

Also in socialism some of the labour, value and products produced by the ‘able bodied, mature and capacitated’ would go towards the upkeep of the ‘unable bodied, immature and incapacitated’ workers presumably out of a sense of love, compassion and sympathy or something.

You might want to include in that a rainy day and Christmas hamper reserve fund as Karl does.

So from Karl;


………..if, furthermore, we reduce the surplus-labour and surplus-product to that measure which is required under prevailing conditions of production of society, on the one side to create an insurance and reserve fund, and on the other to constantly expand reproduction to the extent dictated by social needs; finally, if we include in No. 1 the necessary labour, and in No. 2 the surplus-labour, the quantity of labour which must always be performed by the able-bodied in behalf of the immature or incapacitated members of society, i.e., if we strip both wages and surplus-value, both necessary and surplus labour, of their specifically capitalist character, then certainly there remain not these forms, but merely their rudiments, which are common to all social modes of production.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch50.htm

For the amoral and rational self serving egotists amongst us;


we could of course just look after immature workers so they will look after us when we are put out to grass and the incapacitated in case there is a Stephen Hawkins lurking within that community.

"To each according to his contribution" is part of the bourgeois ideology.

So much so that the capitalist class attempted to fully embrace and reconcile capitalism to it.

Equating their level of remuneration, with an equitable and fair return for their own allegedly super productive and elite value enhancing work or the ‘wages of supervision’ of super human intellectuals.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch23.htm#r5


Karl and Fred’s predictions on the development of capitalism have come true.

Capitalists are no longer involved in the production process; they have been carved out, everything is done by waged labour.



The true parasitic capitalists today are increasingly located in the finance sector and Wall Street ‘Stock Exchange’ .

Thus;


If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies and state property shows how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose.

All the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees. The capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital.

At first the capitalist mode of production forces out the workers. Now it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm

I work in a modern factory with a modern ‘capitalist’ perspective.

The people who run the place basically are ‘production planners’ who read the daily tabloids and watch Coronation Street, ie proletarian workers.

Responding to computer generated re-order levels generated by stock control systems written by computer workers.

And shop floor mangers are ‘facilitators’.

As long as the bean counting rate of profit is ok, they leave us alone to get on with it and without them.







.

[Thirsty Crow]

Surplus value is everything that isn't paid to the worker, and includes profit, and what it costs to replace materials, repair machinery, etc.

Profit is what the Bourgeoisie takes home, what is his to do with as he pleases. Buy a mansion, a yacht, a Rolls Royce, spend on political lobbying, or whatever.

This isn't true.

As I've explained, profit is dependent on the successful sale of commodities. Once this occurs, profit serves to replenish stock, to hire new labor, to buy new raw materials and so on, and this also includes the upkeep of the owner of capital.

The difference between surplus value and profit is explained the easiest when stating that the production of surplus value is not dependent on exchange, sale, but profit is wholly dependent on it.

[subcp]

The idea is fairly simple, but simplicity is often one of the most difficult goals to achieve. It means that a revolution is only communist if it changes all social relationships into communist relationships, and this can only be done if the process starts in the very early days of the revolutionary upheaval. Money, wage-labour, the enterprise as a separate unit and a value-accumulating pole, work-time as cut off from the rest of our life, production for value, private property, State agencies as mediators of social life and conflicts, the separation between learning and doing, the quest for maximum and fastest circulation of everything, all of these have to be done away with, and not just be run by collectives or turned over to public ownership: they have to be replaced by communal, moneyless, profitless, Stateless, forms of life. The process will take time to be completed, but it will start at the beginning of the revolution, which will not create the preconditions of communism: it will create communism.
"Those who developed the theory of communisation rejected this posing of revolution in terms of forms of organisation, and instead aimed to grasp the revolution in terms of its content. Communisation implied a rejection of the view of revolution as an event where workers take power followed by a period of transition: instead it was to be seen as a movement characterised by immediate communist measures (such as the free distribution of goods) both for their own merit, and as a way of destroying the material basis of the counter-revolution. If, after a revolution, the bourgeoisie is expropriated but workers remain workers, producing in separate enterprises, dependent on their relation to that workplace for their subsistence, and exchanging with other enterprises, then whether that exchange is self-organised by the workers or given central direction by a "workers' state" means very little: the capitalist content remains, and sooner or later the distinct role or function of the capitalist will reassert itself. By contrast, the revolution as a communising movement would destroy - by ceasing to constitute and reproduce them - all capitalist categories: exchange, money, commodities, the existence of separate enterprises, the State and - most fundamentally - wage labour and the working class itself." (Endnotes, # 2, 2010)


-Troploin's website.


http://www.troploin.fr/textes/60-communisation-uk

[ckaihatsu]

If, after a revolution, the bourgeoisie is expropriated but workers remain workers, producing in separate enterprises, dependent on their relation to that workplace for their subsistence, and exchanging with other enterprises, then whether that exchange is self-organised by the workers or given central direction by a "workers' state" means very little: the capitalist content remains, and sooner or later the distinct role or function of the capitalist will reassert itself.


I consider this to be the definition of (left-wing) syndicalism, or a federated anarchism.


Centralization-Abstraction Diagram of Political Forms

http://s6.postimage.org/xxj3liay5/2374201420046342459e_NEwo_V_fs.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/xxj3liay5/)

[Narodnik]

The difference between surplus value and profit is explained the easiest when stating that the production of surplus value is not dependent on exchange, sale, but profit is wholly dependent on it.

Marx was inspired by classical economics, and thereby by labor theory of property, so he talkes about theoretical differences between value and price, value being intristic and based on usefulness of the product, and the price being partical result of an exchange.

If surplus-value is understood as a part of exchange-value, then it's similar to profits, if as a part of use-value, it's a meaningless concept.

Being that use-value of something can never be determined so that a product can be given a "correct" price (exchange-value), talking about it purely theoretical, and IMO there's no much point in talking about it.

So, if the suplus-value is to be understood as a part of exchange-value, let's see what we're talking about.

Profit is defined as revenue minus costs.

Basically, firm sells it's products and makes money, and that money is called revenue, which belongs de jure to the capitalist. He divides the firm's (R)evenue in three parts going to three sides: R = (W)ages, that go to the workers + (E)xpenses for materials and such, that go to some third parties + (P)rofit, which he, the capitalist, takes as his income.

Suprlus value is defined as the value that workers create but do not get in his wage (R - W) meaning: E + P.

[Ostrinski]

This isn't true.

As I've explained, profit is dependent on the successful sale of commodities. Once this occurs, profit serves to replenish stock, to hire new labor, to buy new raw materials and so on, and this also includes the upkeep of the owner of capital.

The difference between surplus value and profit is explained the easiest when stating that the production of surplus value is not dependent on exchange, sale, but profit is wholly dependent on it.I don't see how you can disconnect surplus value from the successful sale of commodities. Surplus value is only surplus value insofar as it is the value of uncompensated productive labor, or labor that goes into producing exchangeable things. You can't just have your neighbor dig eight useless ten-foot holes in your backyard, throw him a dime and a nickel and then call it surplus value extraction.

[ckaihatsu]

I don't see how you can disconnect surplus value from the successful sale of commodities. Surplus value is only surplus value insofar as it is the value of uncompensated productive labor, or labor that goes into producing exchangeable things. You can't just have your neighbor dig eight useless ten-foot holes in your backyard, throw him a dime and a nickel and then call it surplus value extraction.


Let's say someone is in the business of house-flipping -- they hire some undocumented laborers to come in and do extensive renovations to the house, for which they're paid a pittance.

However, it happens to be late '08 and the market tanks. While the flipper is unable to sell the property for the time being, they get the benefits of a fixed-up domestic environment that is far more improved than what they paid for it in labor costs -- that's surplus labor value.

Undoubtedly, anyway, the market will pick up, partly due to government backing of that non-productive financial industry, and once the property is sold the flipper will monetize the value of the surplus labor.

[Thirsty Crow]

I don't see how you can disconnect surplus value from the successful sale of commodities. I can do so because workers are exploited - which is synonymous with value production and by implication, with surplus value in capitalist production - even if the enterprise isn't profitable, or better yet, if the commodities they produce do not sell all that well. The owner of commodities, the capitalist, appropriates this surplus even though she can't sell it and thus if capitalist expanded reproduction is threatened.

If we didn't make this distinction, then we'd be forced to locate the notion of exploitation in the sphere of exchange, which would mean that nonsense such as "workers aren't exploited if their boss can't sell shit" would be valid statements, and you could even argue that unprofitable production, bankrupt companies do not engage in capitalist production (because profit is the same as surplus value; if profit lacks, so does surplus value, and if the production of value and implicitly of surplus value is the cornerstone of capitalist production, there is no capitalist production).



Surplus value is only surplus value insofar as it is the value of uncompensated productive labor, or labor that goes into producing exchangeable things. You can't just have your neighbor dig eight useless ten-foot holes in your backyard, throw him a dime and a nickel and then call it surplus value extraction.

Yes, I agree. Though, I can't see how this relates to the distinction between profit and surplus value. You can think about surplus value as an absolute precondition for profit, but the relationship is not mutual since the former is produced, is existent, without profit (unprofitable businesses being an obvious point of reference).

You seem to be mistaking exchangability, the comensurability of different exchange values, with profit. This does not guarantee that there will actually be a successful exchange. But this is not the point since, as I stated, it is wrong to claim that profit is only that which the capitalist appropriates for personal consumption, and we've seen that this distinction is useful in other instances as well. In short, there can be huge quantities of surplus value due to the rate of exploitation and at the same time very low profits.


value being intristic and based on usefulness of the product, and the price being partical result of an exchange.This isn't true.
Value isn't based on usefulness, that is, if we speak of value as exchange value, and prices depend on something more specific than your vague notion of a "result of an exchange" suggests (which is misleading in that it proposes that exchange can take place prior to the existence of fixed prices)

[Blake's Baby]

...

This is not true.

Every society which has advanced from the situation of the hunter gatherer societies will produce a surplus, which only means that at a given standard of life, there will be more than what is necessary for a simple reproduction of society. Communism is no different in this respect. What is different is the social form which this surplus takes, and by implication, how it is allocated and how this is decided on. So, the notion of a social surplus is common to all social formations which operate on the basis of agriculture and sedentary lifestyle.

I said 'socialist surplus' not 'social surplus'. What I meant was that in socialist society we'll be producing what we decide we need to produce; there won't be any 'surplus' because production is for need (we need x-million cans of beans to eat this year and y-million to put in storage in case of emergencies - so in this sense we'll have a 'surplus' ie a contingency fund/emergency stash) but we won't be 'overproducing'. we won't just work as hard as possible producing more than we need just because that makes things 'better' somehow.

[Luís Henrique]

Does socialism really mean that classes have been abolsihed?

Communism means classes have been abolished. Socialism should at least mean classes are being abolished.


What is the difference between surplus value and profit? I have always thought they ment the exact same.

No, they are quite different things. Surplus value is what workers produce in excess of the necessities of the reproduction of economy. Its first form is an amount of commodities in the hands of capitalists. If they are sold, then profits can be produced: they are the result of the sales of these commodities, minus taxes, rents, interests, etc. But profits are individual: the profits of a given company, or a given entrepreneur; surplus value is collective.


If I work at a factory and work really fast troughout a day, will I get the profit? Or will I decide what it is used on?

Even nowadays, if you work really fast in a factory, you will tire yourself a lot and quite probably disturb the rhytm of production. Working really fast won't produce a profit, though. At best, and if your work is still artesanal, you will get some moments to rest. At worse, as it is today, your employer will get more commodities to sell, and you will get nothing in exchange.


Does it have to be used in THAT factory/company, or any other place as hospital/school as you mentioned?

In a capitalist society, you produce first, and see where it is going to be used, if at all, later. That being the cause of market gluts. In a socialist society, you decide where things are going to be used first, and produce them according to such necessity later. So when you are producing something in a socialist factory, you already know (or at least could know if you bother to participate in the discussions or read the documents) where it is going to be used. It can be anywhere, either to replace/repair the very machine you are using in your work, or to serve a completely different purpose in a very far away place, to people who don't understand your language.


Sorry for asking so much, and thank you all for the help!

You are welcome, hope these attempts at answers are helpful.

Luís Henrique