Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist
18th February 2013, 06:40
As some of you may or may not know, I recently got the position of theoretician and contributor to R/Communism's blog. Anyway I recently uploaded an article that replies to alot of the myths surrounding socialist ideology. The reason why I post it here isn't because it offers anything new but because I think it might help clarify a few socialist concepts for noobies. I'd post it here with the spoiler function but it uses too many quotations for that to be tangible. So I'll post the links here until someone finds out how to post it here without butchering it.
Here is the link on my blog:
http://aroundthepear.blogspot.com/
Here is the link on R/Communism's blog: (my article is a bit glichy but worth checking out the other articles on that site.)
http://rcomrades.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-dangers-of-markets-and-capitalism.html
I'll try to post it here but I doubt it will be pasted very well
The Dangers of Markets and Capitalism, A reply to David Nicholas
Recently the Future Voices of America posted a piece on revolutionary socialism entitled The Dangers of Marxism and Socialism that echos a few of the common myths that circulate in the American ethos. So I thought it would prove productive to refute the article in it's entirety. It would also give me some time to take a break from writing that piece on Pham Binh's recent work over at the Northern star. So without further adieu.
"The evil of socialism, marxism, statism, is not it’s calculable material inefficiency, but it’s INCALCULABLE damage to the soul. Central economic planning has given way to a new type of socialism achieved through a different means."
I'd like to contest this idea. Under capitalism individuals are presented with a massive world around them that they have no control over. Every sphere of activity and the very direction of civilization it's self is manipulated by market forces far beyond our control. Capital removes the human element from all economic acvity and economics it's self becomes the science of perfecting the economy for the well-being of capital rather than perfecting capital for the well being of mankind. Capitalism redefines our entire value system based upon cost and profit; Poverty and unemployment is no longer an unfortunate result but rather becomes desirable insofar that they are necessary for the maintenance of capitalism and our whole body of economics revolves around maintenancing this economic system instead of alleviating it's symptoms. No longer do economists seek to discover the magic formula for the 5 hour work day like they did in Keynes era, instead they preach austerity in Greece, Ireland, and other countries in the name of preserving this system without asking the essential question of if it should be preserved in the first place. The very spirit of austerity, that is the glorification of scarcity in the name of safekeeping the well being of capitalism has become one of the most sacred values of capitalism. It has changed the entire human outlook over how he views his own role within the world, and creates a set of values where the value of human activity is reduced to serving profit and nothing more. As Marx said:
By counting the most meagre form of life (existence) as the standard, indeed, as the general standard – general because it is applicable to the mass of men. He turns the worker into an insensible being lacking all needs, just as he changes his activity into a pure abstraction from all activity. To him, therefore, every luxury of the worker seems to be reprehensible, and everything that goes beyond the most abstract need – be it in the realm of passive enjoyment, or a manifestation of activity – seems to him a luxury. Political economy, this science of wealth, is therefore simultaneously the science of renunciation, of want, of saving and it actually reaches the point where it spares man the need of either fresh air or physical exercise. This science of marvellous industry is simultaneously the science of asceticism, and its true ideal is the ascetic but extortionate miser and the ascetic but productive slave. Its moral ideal is the worker who takes part of his wages to the savings-bank, and it has even found ready-made a servile art which embodies this pet idea: it has been presented, bathed in sentimentality, on the stage. Thus political economy – despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance – is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything ||XVI| which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power – all this it can appropriate for you – it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have that. 1.
Planning then, seves as an economic form where human value systems and human desires impose themselves unto the world rather than the other way around. It is the inverse of Capitalist austerity, where production is produced for the sake of profit. Socialism is the philosophy of production for the sake of production. The idea that the very act of production serves to satisfy essential human needs and does not need to be limited to the scale of profitability, the idea that places the human desire for prosperity over the bourgeois need for scarcity. To put this in more concrete terms, I will quote an except from Joesph Ball's excellent article on Soviet Political economy
"Planning and Human Consciousness
Planning is a rational activity where people’s understanding of their needs is
the ultimate criteria for decision making. Planners use statistics and figures as the
tools they need to work in the objective world. But once the numbers are put in
charge and the needs of humanity become subordinate to price information, then
socialism is lost. Where this takes place, the socialist economic system becomes
blocked in its development and returns to capitalism. This is precisely what happened
to the Soviet economy.
Socialist planning is not just an economic means to an end. It is the essential
motive force behind all economic activity in a socialist economy. The purpose of
planning is to exert human conscious control over the economy. Socialist planning
potentially liberates humanity from the impersonal forces that dominate economic life
in a market economy, over which any kind of overall control seems impossible. The
creation of the planned economy thus represents a leap forward in human progress. It
is analogous to humanity’s progressive taming of nature. It can be compared to
humanity’s development from primitive hunter-gatherers, at the mercy of the power
of nature, to dwellers in settled communities sustained by agriculture and then by industry. The next step forward is for humanity to liberate itself from the destructive
power of the market.
At the heart of Marx’s analysis of capitalism is the concept of the alienation of
labor. All capitalist commodities are produced by the workers; however, the workers
have no ownership or control over the product of their labor. It is controlled by an
“alien” structure. In capitalism, the product of labor is transformed into capital. The
laborers have no capital and must work for the capitalists. The capitalists then use
their ownership of capital to exploit the worker and to oppress them, in order ensure
the worker produces the maximum possible surplus value. If the capitalist does not
exploit the worker to the maximum, they face the danger of going out of business due
to competition from more ruthless capitalists. Ultimately, control over economic
decision-making lies in the hands of impersonal market forces. Thus, in capitalism,
an economy that is actually the product of human activity escapes conscious,
collective human control and becomes something analogous to a “force of nature”
controlling human activity as an external force. This can be contrasted to a nonalienated system where the people directly control the production and distribution of
products in a planned, socialist economy.
It is not that the market really is a “force of nature.” Bourgeois economists
and politicians often talk as if it is such a thing in order to spread mystification and
convince the working class there is no alternative to their oppression. In fact
alienation is a social relation between the workers and the capitalists that expropriate
their product. Once the working class understands that this is the case it creates the
possibility that they will unite together to overthrow capitalism and achieve their
liberation.
Socialist planning is the means by which the alienation of labor is overcome.
Socialism, in this sense, is not intended just as a means of raising wages by
expropriating the unearned income of the capitalist and putting it in the pocket of the
worker but as a much more radical transitional phase. Socialism is intended as the
first stage of communism. Communism is a society where all alienation ends.
Human beings are distinguished from animals in that they can consciously
choose the object of their labor, rather than labor being dictated by instinct or
necessity. Humans can labor universally. Human beings are able to perform all sorts
of job tasks; they need not be confined to some narrow job role.In capitalism,
however, workers cannot realise this human potential as their lives are controlled by
the alienated structure that is imposed on them. Rather than living up to their full
potential most working-class people have to spend their lives performing a narrow
range of repetitive tasks. Thus the working lives of free human beings are determined
by necessity in capitalist society.
Human beings have always had the biological potential to labor freely and
universally. However, the backwardness of the productive forces and the nature of
the relations of production, up to now, have prevented this potential being realised. It
can only be fully realised in communism.
Marx envisages that in a communist society workers will consciously choose
what to do and will not be confined to a narrow job role, nor will they work only
because they must do so to survive. The purpose of the laborer’s work will be the
creation of his/her own product for the rest of society. Laborers will no longer simply
work in order to get paid so they can consume the products of others.
How would this be possible? Ending the division between mental and manual
labor is a key goal of communists and a key aspect of the revolutionary
transformative function of socialism. It is also necessary for workers to achieve the
education necessary to perform a variety of different types of tasks before
communism can begin to be truly achieved. However, it does seem fairly utopian to
argue that everyone will ever truly be able to just work at whatever they feel like,
even in a communist society – although it is the case that as a young man Marx did
rather imply this. For example, it might be possible in a person’s life to acquire the
skills necessary to become a carpenter, to tend an orchard and to become a competent
literary critic. But it is hardly the case that this person could also perform a vast range
of other activities from flying an airliner to performing heart surgery. Human beings
are mortal and there is an obvious limit to the number of years they can spend
acquiring advanced work skills. Socialist planning is the means by which the
alienation of labor is overcome. I think the key to developing Marx’s somewhat
romantic early notions should lie in the third adjective Marx tends to use to describe
labor in a communist society, namely, that it should be “social.” To quote Marx:
. . . it is only when man’s object becomes a human object or objective man
that man does not lose himself in that object. This is only possible when it
becomes a social object for him and when he himself becomes a social being
for himself, just as society becomes a being for him in this object.
So in communism, the object a worker produces is no longer just an individual
commodity. It is no longer just something workers manufacture so they can afford to
buy the commodities they need to sustain themselves. In communism, it becomes
part of an overall human, social product and is identified by the worker as such. The
people develop an awareness of their collective identity. They come to identify with
each other’s needs, they do not place their own individual interests before the interests
of others. Therefore when they work to meet the needs of others, they identify with
their work and their product.
This is where the key role of planning comes in. In both socialism and
communism the people consciously direct the economic life of society. They
collectively decide who will do what and how. Thus, as a collective entity, the
people in a socialist society begin to enjoy actual economic freedom. As a collective
entity, the people start to act freely, albeit with the constraints imposed by nature and
inherited from the history of capitalism. This means that when the people make
collective decisions, the people themselves are potentially free. Their consciousness
and activity are also potentially universal. When they participate in planning, the
people will be developing a need and interest to concern themselves with all forms of
economic activity, not just their narrow job role. The object of their work will begin
to be the total global product, not just their small part within it.
However, we can see how the liberation of the worker can only be fully
realised in communism. In socialism, workers are rewarded for the quality and
quantity of their work, which leads to some inequality. This system implies that some
workers, at least, are partially motivated by self-interest and are not fully identifying
with society as a whole when they are working.
Many people might feel that the idea of the people forming a collective entity
is somewhat frightening. But if Marx’s work is examined closely, it can be seen he is
trying to find a way of reconciling the individual with the collective. It is not a matter
of simply subordinating each individual to the collective or general will of the
planners. Marx is concerned with finding a way that the different potentialities of
individuals can be realised in a collective framework. He is not saying that every
individual must become part of a brain-washed, undifferentiated multitude with no
capacity for individual thought. Marx tries to use dialectics to overcome the
contradiction between the individual and society. Marx does not believe the
individual should be completely subordinated by external forces. The fact is that
human beings are social animals and they must live and work together in order to
survive and prosper. There really should be no problem with people being
encouraged to develop a collective identity and a concern for others. Of course, in
capitalist society people are encouraged to put themselves first and only think of
others afterwards. This is something that must be struggled against in socialism but
not at the cost of crushing all forms of difference or choice. People will be
encouraged to see their own needs as equal to the needs of others, not superior. This
struggle will create the conditions for the transition to communism where the
enjoyment of collective freedom can reach its highest level.
Capitalist society celebrates “individual freedom” but ignores the fact that in
vast areas of our lives, the concept is redundant or starkly contradicted in practice.
When we go to work, we generally work in a team with others. In the whole
economic sphere, we are quite unable to exercise the individual freedom, to do as we
please. We cannot simply arrive at work when we feel like and then do whatever we
want. Even in a socialist society, we would have to subordinate our individual
inclinations to the achievement of the common goal of the work-team. Ideologists of
individual freedom ignore the possibility of the kind of collective freedom that
socialist planning could create. In so doing they condemn the worker to outright
despotism. After all, the alienation of labor is not only a problem in the hours that we
are at work. Our whole life is dominated by the system of capitalist commodity
production and consumption and it is a system we have no control over. Of course the
same is true of other aspects of life in capitalist society. For instance, those who are
made responsible for domestic labor are subordinate to patriarchy in capitalism. In a
socialist society domestic labor could be collectivised and planned in a way that
would not lead to the slavery of women.
A socialist system is a system where human beings control production in a
conscious manner. The people’s labor is no longer controlled by market forces. The
edifice that labor has created no longer exists as an impersonal, alienated, external
force controlling, exploiting and oppressing the worker. Rather the people themselves
consciously and directly control global economic life.".2
On to the Author's next point
"How? Through the extensive redistribution of incomes through taxation and the introduction of the welfare state. The “effects” of this type of socialism are brought about more slowly, indirectly, imperfectly, but are very much the same as if there were a direct government takeover. It is not revolutionary socialism, but socialism where freedom is lost by an almost imperceptible increases in degrees of servitude to the state."
First of all, I am assuming this misconception that Socialists want to redistribute incomes through taxation is completly false. While Marx did call for this in the manifesto this demand was a transitional demand in a minume/maximum programme. Or in Non-Marxist speak, you can't just go around telling everyone how awesome your utopian scheme is. To win people over to your side you need to give them concrete ways in which you intend to benefit their well being. While demands such as progressive taxation have nothing to do with socialism they can afford welfare benefits that do improve the lot of the working class and for that reason historically socialists have called for this. However taxation is antithetical to socialism because it implies that there will still remain profits under socialism to be taxed. Which in an economic system based on the abolition of profit is logically absurd. Despite what conservatives and liberals might think, the abolition of taxation is a fundamental component of the socialist programme, and Socialist states such as Albania under Hoxha even abolished taxation completely, something libertarians can only dream of.
Secondly I'd like to contest the idea that freedom is lost. Freedom in capitalist societies is defined by how much capital one is capable of expending, and how much capital one is capable of expending is dependent on how much time one neglects to spend time in pursuit of one's desires. Democracy is reduced to regulating one's affairs (whether not one should smoke, engage in gay marriage) where it has no place, while the economic affairs that govern how we live our lives are ruled by the dictatorship of market forces.Lenin puts it like this:
In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favourable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that "they cannot be bothered with democracy", "cannot be bothered with politics"; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life..3
Socialist liberty then is the freedom from democracy in terms of one's pursuits, and the freedom to democracy in ruling over the material affairs that truly govern what kind of world we live in. To use Mao's expression, Politics is in command of economics and Revolution is in command of production.
The rest of the article, sadly, is of no interest to us or to any secular minded person. The article goes on to make claims like this:
"The Bible regularly assumes and reinforces a system in which property belongs to individuals, not government."
"The assumption of private ownership of property, found in the Bible, puts the Bible in direct opposition to the communist system advocated by Karl Marx."
It is true that I could spend time refuting these claims and disputing the theology as I am personally a man (transwoman) of faith. However this would miss the point. Yes the theology is flawed, but even if the theology is correct, then the simple reply ought to be so what? Why should secular minded people, atheists, and other religions care whether the Christian god upholds private property or not? To argue over this point is to miss the entire goal of the socialist project, the point is not to serve a master or a god or a profit margin, the point is to make economic activity serve humanity it's self, and it is that point that we ought to be advancing.
Sylvia Esposito
Source
1. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscipts. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs.htm
2. Joesph Ball, The Need for Planning, the Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR http://clogic.eserver.org/2010/Ball.pdf
3. Vladmir Lenin, State and Revolution
Edit, spoiler seems to work just fine
Here is the link on my blog:
http://aroundthepear.blogspot.com/
Here is the link on R/Communism's blog: (my article is a bit glichy but worth checking out the other articles on that site.)
http://rcomrades.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-dangers-of-markets-and-capitalism.html
I'll try to post it here but I doubt it will be pasted very well
The Dangers of Markets and Capitalism, A reply to David Nicholas
Recently the Future Voices of America posted a piece on revolutionary socialism entitled The Dangers of Marxism and Socialism that echos a few of the common myths that circulate in the American ethos. So I thought it would prove productive to refute the article in it's entirety. It would also give me some time to take a break from writing that piece on Pham Binh's recent work over at the Northern star. So without further adieu.
"The evil of socialism, marxism, statism, is not it’s calculable material inefficiency, but it’s INCALCULABLE damage to the soul. Central economic planning has given way to a new type of socialism achieved through a different means."
I'd like to contest this idea. Under capitalism individuals are presented with a massive world around them that they have no control over. Every sphere of activity and the very direction of civilization it's self is manipulated by market forces far beyond our control. Capital removes the human element from all economic acvity and economics it's self becomes the science of perfecting the economy for the well-being of capital rather than perfecting capital for the well being of mankind. Capitalism redefines our entire value system based upon cost and profit; Poverty and unemployment is no longer an unfortunate result but rather becomes desirable insofar that they are necessary for the maintenance of capitalism and our whole body of economics revolves around maintenancing this economic system instead of alleviating it's symptoms. No longer do economists seek to discover the magic formula for the 5 hour work day like they did in Keynes era, instead they preach austerity in Greece, Ireland, and other countries in the name of preserving this system without asking the essential question of if it should be preserved in the first place. The very spirit of austerity, that is the glorification of scarcity in the name of safekeeping the well being of capitalism has become one of the most sacred values of capitalism. It has changed the entire human outlook over how he views his own role within the world, and creates a set of values where the value of human activity is reduced to serving profit and nothing more. As Marx said:
By counting the most meagre form of life (existence) as the standard, indeed, as the general standard – general because it is applicable to the mass of men. He turns the worker into an insensible being lacking all needs, just as he changes his activity into a pure abstraction from all activity. To him, therefore, every luxury of the worker seems to be reprehensible, and everything that goes beyond the most abstract need – be it in the realm of passive enjoyment, or a manifestation of activity – seems to him a luxury. Political economy, this science of wealth, is therefore simultaneously the science of renunciation, of want, of saving and it actually reaches the point where it spares man the need of either fresh air or physical exercise. This science of marvellous industry is simultaneously the science of asceticism, and its true ideal is the ascetic but extortionate miser and the ascetic but productive slave. Its moral ideal is the worker who takes part of his wages to the savings-bank, and it has even found ready-made a servile art which embodies this pet idea: it has been presented, bathed in sentimentality, on the stage. Thus political economy – despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance – is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything ||XVI| which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power – all this it can appropriate for you – it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have that. 1.
Planning then, seves as an economic form where human value systems and human desires impose themselves unto the world rather than the other way around. It is the inverse of Capitalist austerity, where production is produced for the sake of profit. Socialism is the philosophy of production for the sake of production. The idea that the very act of production serves to satisfy essential human needs and does not need to be limited to the scale of profitability, the idea that places the human desire for prosperity over the bourgeois need for scarcity. To put this in more concrete terms, I will quote an except from Joesph Ball's excellent article on Soviet Political economy
"Planning and Human Consciousness
Planning is a rational activity where people’s understanding of their needs is
the ultimate criteria for decision making. Planners use statistics and figures as the
tools they need to work in the objective world. But once the numbers are put in
charge and the needs of humanity become subordinate to price information, then
socialism is lost. Where this takes place, the socialist economic system becomes
blocked in its development and returns to capitalism. This is precisely what happened
to the Soviet economy.
Socialist planning is not just an economic means to an end. It is the essential
motive force behind all economic activity in a socialist economy. The purpose of
planning is to exert human conscious control over the economy. Socialist planning
potentially liberates humanity from the impersonal forces that dominate economic life
in a market economy, over which any kind of overall control seems impossible. The
creation of the planned economy thus represents a leap forward in human progress. It
is analogous to humanity’s progressive taming of nature. It can be compared to
humanity’s development from primitive hunter-gatherers, at the mercy of the power
of nature, to dwellers in settled communities sustained by agriculture and then by industry. The next step forward is for humanity to liberate itself from the destructive
power of the market.
At the heart of Marx’s analysis of capitalism is the concept of the alienation of
labor. All capitalist commodities are produced by the workers; however, the workers
have no ownership or control over the product of their labor. It is controlled by an
“alien” structure. In capitalism, the product of labor is transformed into capital. The
laborers have no capital and must work for the capitalists. The capitalists then use
their ownership of capital to exploit the worker and to oppress them, in order ensure
the worker produces the maximum possible surplus value. If the capitalist does not
exploit the worker to the maximum, they face the danger of going out of business due
to competition from more ruthless capitalists. Ultimately, control over economic
decision-making lies in the hands of impersonal market forces. Thus, in capitalism,
an economy that is actually the product of human activity escapes conscious,
collective human control and becomes something analogous to a “force of nature”
controlling human activity as an external force. This can be contrasted to a nonalienated system where the people directly control the production and distribution of
products in a planned, socialist economy.
It is not that the market really is a “force of nature.” Bourgeois economists
and politicians often talk as if it is such a thing in order to spread mystification and
convince the working class there is no alternative to their oppression. In fact
alienation is a social relation between the workers and the capitalists that expropriate
their product. Once the working class understands that this is the case it creates the
possibility that they will unite together to overthrow capitalism and achieve their
liberation.
Socialist planning is the means by which the alienation of labor is overcome.
Socialism, in this sense, is not intended just as a means of raising wages by
expropriating the unearned income of the capitalist and putting it in the pocket of the
worker but as a much more radical transitional phase. Socialism is intended as the
first stage of communism. Communism is a society where all alienation ends.
Human beings are distinguished from animals in that they can consciously
choose the object of their labor, rather than labor being dictated by instinct or
necessity. Humans can labor universally. Human beings are able to perform all sorts
of job tasks; they need not be confined to some narrow job role.In capitalism,
however, workers cannot realise this human potential as their lives are controlled by
the alienated structure that is imposed on them. Rather than living up to their full
potential most working-class people have to spend their lives performing a narrow
range of repetitive tasks. Thus the working lives of free human beings are determined
by necessity in capitalist society.
Human beings have always had the biological potential to labor freely and
universally. However, the backwardness of the productive forces and the nature of
the relations of production, up to now, have prevented this potential being realised. It
can only be fully realised in communism.
Marx envisages that in a communist society workers will consciously choose
what to do and will not be confined to a narrow job role, nor will they work only
because they must do so to survive. The purpose of the laborer’s work will be the
creation of his/her own product for the rest of society. Laborers will no longer simply
work in order to get paid so they can consume the products of others.
How would this be possible? Ending the division between mental and manual
labor is a key goal of communists and a key aspect of the revolutionary
transformative function of socialism. It is also necessary for workers to achieve the
education necessary to perform a variety of different types of tasks before
communism can begin to be truly achieved. However, it does seem fairly utopian to
argue that everyone will ever truly be able to just work at whatever they feel like,
even in a communist society – although it is the case that as a young man Marx did
rather imply this. For example, it might be possible in a person’s life to acquire the
skills necessary to become a carpenter, to tend an orchard and to become a competent
literary critic. But it is hardly the case that this person could also perform a vast range
of other activities from flying an airliner to performing heart surgery. Human beings
are mortal and there is an obvious limit to the number of years they can spend
acquiring advanced work skills. Socialist planning is the means by which the
alienation of labor is overcome. I think the key to developing Marx’s somewhat
romantic early notions should lie in the third adjective Marx tends to use to describe
labor in a communist society, namely, that it should be “social.” To quote Marx:
. . . it is only when man’s object becomes a human object or objective man
that man does not lose himself in that object. This is only possible when it
becomes a social object for him and when he himself becomes a social being
for himself, just as society becomes a being for him in this object.
So in communism, the object a worker produces is no longer just an individual
commodity. It is no longer just something workers manufacture so they can afford to
buy the commodities they need to sustain themselves. In communism, it becomes
part of an overall human, social product and is identified by the worker as such. The
people develop an awareness of their collective identity. They come to identify with
each other’s needs, they do not place their own individual interests before the interests
of others. Therefore when they work to meet the needs of others, they identify with
their work and their product.
This is where the key role of planning comes in. In both socialism and
communism the people consciously direct the economic life of society. They
collectively decide who will do what and how. Thus, as a collective entity, the
people in a socialist society begin to enjoy actual economic freedom. As a collective
entity, the people start to act freely, albeit with the constraints imposed by nature and
inherited from the history of capitalism. This means that when the people make
collective decisions, the people themselves are potentially free. Their consciousness
and activity are also potentially universal. When they participate in planning, the
people will be developing a need and interest to concern themselves with all forms of
economic activity, not just their narrow job role. The object of their work will begin
to be the total global product, not just their small part within it.
However, we can see how the liberation of the worker can only be fully
realised in communism. In socialism, workers are rewarded for the quality and
quantity of their work, which leads to some inequality. This system implies that some
workers, at least, are partially motivated by self-interest and are not fully identifying
with society as a whole when they are working.
Many people might feel that the idea of the people forming a collective entity
is somewhat frightening. But if Marx’s work is examined closely, it can be seen he is
trying to find a way of reconciling the individual with the collective. It is not a matter
of simply subordinating each individual to the collective or general will of the
planners. Marx is concerned with finding a way that the different potentialities of
individuals can be realised in a collective framework. He is not saying that every
individual must become part of a brain-washed, undifferentiated multitude with no
capacity for individual thought. Marx tries to use dialectics to overcome the
contradiction between the individual and society. Marx does not believe the
individual should be completely subordinated by external forces. The fact is that
human beings are social animals and they must live and work together in order to
survive and prosper. There really should be no problem with people being
encouraged to develop a collective identity and a concern for others. Of course, in
capitalist society people are encouraged to put themselves first and only think of
others afterwards. This is something that must be struggled against in socialism but
not at the cost of crushing all forms of difference or choice. People will be
encouraged to see their own needs as equal to the needs of others, not superior. This
struggle will create the conditions for the transition to communism where the
enjoyment of collective freedom can reach its highest level.
Capitalist society celebrates “individual freedom” but ignores the fact that in
vast areas of our lives, the concept is redundant or starkly contradicted in practice.
When we go to work, we generally work in a team with others. In the whole
economic sphere, we are quite unable to exercise the individual freedom, to do as we
please. We cannot simply arrive at work when we feel like and then do whatever we
want. Even in a socialist society, we would have to subordinate our individual
inclinations to the achievement of the common goal of the work-team. Ideologists of
individual freedom ignore the possibility of the kind of collective freedom that
socialist planning could create. In so doing they condemn the worker to outright
despotism. After all, the alienation of labor is not only a problem in the hours that we
are at work. Our whole life is dominated by the system of capitalist commodity
production and consumption and it is a system we have no control over. Of course the
same is true of other aspects of life in capitalist society. For instance, those who are
made responsible for domestic labor are subordinate to patriarchy in capitalism. In a
socialist society domestic labor could be collectivised and planned in a way that
would not lead to the slavery of women.
A socialist system is a system where human beings control production in a
conscious manner. The people’s labor is no longer controlled by market forces. The
edifice that labor has created no longer exists as an impersonal, alienated, external
force controlling, exploiting and oppressing the worker. Rather the people themselves
consciously and directly control global economic life.".2
On to the Author's next point
"How? Through the extensive redistribution of incomes through taxation and the introduction of the welfare state. The “effects” of this type of socialism are brought about more slowly, indirectly, imperfectly, but are very much the same as if there were a direct government takeover. It is not revolutionary socialism, but socialism where freedom is lost by an almost imperceptible increases in degrees of servitude to the state."
First of all, I am assuming this misconception that Socialists want to redistribute incomes through taxation is completly false. While Marx did call for this in the manifesto this demand was a transitional demand in a minume/maximum programme. Or in Non-Marxist speak, you can't just go around telling everyone how awesome your utopian scheme is. To win people over to your side you need to give them concrete ways in which you intend to benefit their well being. While demands such as progressive taxation have nothing to do with socialism they can afford welfare benefits that do improve the lot of the working class and for that reason historically socialists have called for this. However taxation is antithetical to socialism because it implies that there will still remain profits under socialism to be taxed. Which in an economic system based on the abolition of profit is logically absurd. Despite what conservatives and liberals might think, the abolition of taxation is a fundamental component of the socialist programme, and Socialist states such as Albania under Hoxha even abolished taxation completely, something libertarians can only dream of.
Secondly I'd like to contest the idea that freedom is lost. Freedom in capitalist societies is defined by how much capital one is capable of expending, and how much capital one is capable of expending is dependent on how much time one neglects to spend time in pursuit of one's desires. Democracy is reduced to regulating one's affairs (whether not one should smoke, engage in gay marriage) where it has no place, while the economic affairs that govern how we live our lives are ruled by the dictatorship of market forces.Lenin puts it like this:
In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favourable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that "they cannot be bothered with democracy", "cannot be bothered with politics"; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life..3
Socialist liberty then is the freedom from democracy in terms of one's pursuits, and the freedom to democracy in ruling over the material affairs that truly govern what kind of world we live in. To use Mao's expression, Politics is in command of economics and Revolution is in command of production.
The rest of the article, sadly, is of no interest to us or to any secular minded person. The article goes on to make claims like this:
"The Bible regularly assumes and reinforces a system in which property belongs to individuals, not government."
"The assumption of private ownership of property, found in the Bible, puts the Bible in direct opposition to the communist system advocated by Karl Marx."
It is true that I could spend time refuting these claims and disputing the theology as I am personally a man (transwoman) of faith. However this would miss the point. Yes the theology is flawed, but even if the theology is correct, then the simple reply ought to be so what? Why should secular minded people, atheists, and other religions care whether the Christian god upholds private property or not? To argue over this point is to miss the entire goal of the socialist project, the point is not to serve a master or a god or a profit margin, the point is to make economic activity serve humanity it's self, and it is that point that we ought to be advancing.
Sylvia Esposito
Source
1. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscipts. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs.htm
2. Joesph Ball, The Need for Planning, the Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR http://clogic.eserver.org/2010/Ball.pdf
3. Vladmir Lenin, State and Revolution
Edit, spoiler seems to work just fine