S&R- First Phase of Communism

[RedGuevara]

I have been reading State and Revolution by Lenin. It's a great piece and I have learned alot from it but somethings I still find difficult to understand or maybe I just don't understand the rhetoric.

Lenin describes the first phase of Communism simplified as What you contribute to Society you get back. But how would this factor in people with mental and physical disorders or say single parents who take care of children and may not have ALL the time to work in said areas of the society? Are these factors considered in the first phase?

I'm sorry if this comes off ignorant but I figure RL is the best place to ask questions. Thank you in advance.

[Blake's Baby]

It's just rhetoric. There's no way that it would be possible to organise society on such a basis; Marx, in discussing the 'first phase' of communist society says that there would be a 'certain portion' of the social product put aside (a kind of 'tax' I suppose that would be used to renew the machinery, and/or for those members of society who can't work, and/or for social development) and that after that workers would get their social product back; but I think it's a non-starter personally.

Practicality aside, it's there to contrast with the notion that a class of parasites is exploiting the worker; the worker gets back his contribution to society without the mediation of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy living the high-life off his labour.

[Five Year Plan]

I have been reading State and Revolution by Lenin. It's a great piece and I have learned alot from it but somethings I still find difficult to understand or maybe I just don't understand the rhetoric.

Lenin describes the first phase of Communism simplified as What you contribute to Society you get back. But how would this factor in people with mental and physical disorders or say single parents who take care of children and may not have ALL the time to work in said areas of the society? Are these factors considered in the first phase?

I'm sorry if this comes off ignorant but I figure RL is the best place to ask questions. Thank you in advance.

He is drawing off Marx's discussion in Critique of the Gotha Program. Marx's entire point was that people would receive what society deemed fair through a process of planning before production, meaning that production and remuneration would be directly social from the start. The result would be that value and hence commidified labor power would be abolished. The point was not to draw up detailed recipes for cooks of the future (as he said in other contexts) regarding how remuneration for labor would actually work, except in the most general of terms. His point is that some kind of formal criteria, not the "need of the individual" described as applicable to the higher phase of communism, would ultimately determine who gets what in terms of the distribution of what is produced. Yes, I am sure Marx would agree that a fund would be used to provide for people with serious disabilities. As far as the specifics of Marx's labor voucher scheme go, there's no reason why one hour of concrete labor would necessarily have to exchange for one hour of concrete labor. Society might think it best for really intense labor or labor requiring a rare skill or unpleasant labor might very well count for two hours of far easier labor. The point really is that society will collectively and democratically determine what counts as what. It will not be a process that occurs behind their backs through commodity production and exchange and all the competition that ensues from that.

Lenin is just echoing this basic blueprint in the context of talking about how formal abstractions still governing the remuneration for labor would still require a kind of state to uphold said "rights" of producers to some portion of the social product.

[RedGuevara]

Thank you both. That does help clarify things.

[reb]

Thank you both. That does help clarify things.

You might find this interesting about labor vouchers.

http://libcom.org/library/marx%E2%80%99s-critique-socialist-labor-money-schemes-myth-council-communism%E2%80%99s-proudhonism