Transition

[McGuigz]

Hows it going everybody?
I have a few questions about the transition from capitalism to a utopian society that communism/socialism/anarchism explains would be a greater life for us all.

I am a Socialist by definition in terms of economic and social ideas but this bit always puzzles me. A few of my friends question my belief by asking me to justify my opinion with hypothetical real world situations. One as such is 'if we live in a world where From each according to his ability, to each according to his need then how do people have a drive?' I returned with the fact that if the world actually gets to that stage then people won't need money they would work to do good for other people and help society as a whole to move forward. They then asked that if the principle is such how exactly does it work with labour? If everyone is equal then why exactly would people want to be say.... a binman? instead of say...a doctor. They also added that in our current lives most people become a doctor for the money. Why would people become a bin man? or some other jobs that would be seen as unpleasant? i could not exactly come up with a solid answer for this question..

My friends could not understand how people could function without this motive of money. They also asked about housing which was also difficult to answer. So i ask how exactly would housing work? Does it mean that if a person works hard and has a family of 5 then they would get a 4 bedroom house?

I have several other questions, however i will leave this at that for now until i get a few replies so thanks!

[Tim Cornelis]

Binman / doctor issue:

http://marxistpedia.mwzip.com/wiki/A_Marxist_FAQ#Will_people_stop_doing_skilled_work_ like_being_a_doctor.3F

From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs presupposes a state where the amount of necessary labour-time for the reproduction and expansion of wealth (accumulation of use-values in communism) is so low that it can be done by people volunteering for activities that they enjoy. In my opinion this would be a situation where most physical labour has been replaced by automation. Even surgery will be replaced by machinery at some point. The remaining labour, mostly creative work, would be "life's prime want" as Marx said.

[tuwix]

Hows it going everybody?
I have a few questions about the transition from capitalism to a utopian society that communism/socialism/anarchism explains would be a greater life for us all.

I am a Socialist by definition in terms of economic and social ideas but this bit always puzzles me. A few of my friends question my belief by asking me to justify my opinion with hypothetical real world situations. One as such is 'if we live in a world where From each according to his ability, to each according to his need then how do people have a drive?' I returned with the fact that if the world actually gets to that stage then people won't need money they would work to do good for other people and help society as a whole to move forward. They then asked that if the principle is such how exactly does it work with labour? If everyone is equal then why exactly would people want to be say.... a binman? instead of say...a doctor. They also added that in our current lives most people become a doctor for the money. Why would people become a bin man? or some other jobs that would be seen as unpleasant? i could not exactly come up with a solid answer for this question..

My friends could not understand how people could function without this motive of money. They also asked about housing which was also difficult to answer. So i ask how exactly would housing work? Does it mean that if a person works hard and has a family of 5 then they would get a 4 bedroom house?

I have several other questions, however i will leave this at that for now until i get a few replies so thanks!

My answer won't be different very much from previous message, but I will write it in different words.
The abolition of money and so on isn't going to be immediate. The world must develop until a stage when more than 90% of work will be done by machines. We're doing in that direction despite capitalism restrains that. However, now the majority of jobs in so-called Western world is completely unnecessary. And the process will expand. When all rest of jobs can be done by volunteers without money incentive, then we can say we reach a state of thing described in words "according to needs" that is higher phase of communism. Then abolition of money is possible and necessary.

[McGuigz]

Thank you for the answers lads they were very insightful! Well i have a few more questions, How would this process even begin? There has not been a class conciseness phase, there are no real signs of anything going on in the western world as far as i can see.. But you would imagine humanity will eventually come to the conclusion that that would be the right way to live.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I think that any answer that relies on increased automation and technological advancement is problematic. Which is not to say that these things will not happen; capitalism holds back both technology (by subordinating it to an increasingly moribund organisation of production) and automation (in order to secure a favourable organic composition of capital). We can expect that both will make massive strides in socialism and even in the transitional period.

However, first of all technological advancement doesn't simply make some jobs obsolete; it creates new products, new jobs, new methods etc. This is a good thing. Imagine how life would be if the development of (relatively) inexpensive mechanical and electronic computers simply removed the need for human computers. But it didn't; it created probably dozens, maybe hundreds of new kinds of job. The same would probably hold in socialism. The factory worker, a few decades into socialism, will probably be an overseer of an array of machinery more than anything else, but he will still exist.

Second, it's besides the point. Even if this state of nearly complete automation were possible and desirable (would anyone here really want to be operated on by an automatic surgery machine?), socialism is possible now. The transitional period is necessary, not in order to develop the productive forces, but because the relations of production can't be changed in a day.

Work is a need for human beings, as much as companionship, shelter etc. We find prolonged periods of inactivity to be unpleasant. And as in socialism individuals do not need to work in order to have access to products and services, work becomes an expression of this need. Are certain lines of work going to die out because they are unpleasant? Probably. But that's not the fault of the workers, but the fault of crappy jobs.

[tuwix]

Thank you for the answers lads they were very insightful! Well i have a few more questions, How would this process even begin? There has not been a class conciseness phase, there are no real signs of anything going on in the western world as far as i can see.. But you would imagine humanity will eventually come to the conclusion that that would be the right way to live.

I see many real signs. Each crisis of economy that is really a crisis of capitalism is such sign. There will be a crisis that ultimately destroy a capitalism.
And you're right that class consciousness is weak worldwide. However, people know very much by whom they are exploited and have desire to overthrow them. But this desire is too weak to do so. But capitalism eventually collapse by itself. It's just very unstable system.

[Tim Redd]

Binman / doctor issue:

http://marxistpedia.mwzip.com/wiki/A_Marxist_FAQ#Will_people_stop_doing_skilled_work_ like_being_a_doctor.3F

From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs presupposes a state where the amount of necessary labour-time for the reproduction and expansion of wealth (accumulation of use-values in communism) is so low that it can be done by people volunteering for activities that they enjoy. In my opinion this would be a situation where most physical labour has been replaced by automation. Even surgery will be replaced by machinery at some point. The remaining labour, mostly creative work, would be "life's prime want" as Marx said.

I think that if people have extra time beyond what is necessary to immediately sustain society, they can pursue activities that benefit society apart from the time they spend on that necessary labor. Hopefully the time available for such extra necessary activities increases as society develops. This means it's the revolutionaries and progressives wish that we have more time for what Marx spoke about as activity to enjoy life rather than activity that is required to sustain life. In some cases both activities may overlap, such that we enjoy the necessary activity/labor. But the overall point is that we should be trying to create time and space to perform more and more activities that we enjoy as socialist/communist society progresses.

[McGuigz]

But money can't really ever end because the people who control it manipulate its system to just print more money.. Im not sure it will ever end by itself. Maybe we are agreeing and i am just misunderstanding. I believe that yes you are right that it will fall but only if people then realise how ridiculous it is for a modern human society to use a piece of paper to dictate the lives of everyone and that they need it for the basic needs of life, food, water, shelter etc.

[tuwix]

^^Yes, it's ridiculous and this is why it must end. Now it's a fetish. That pieces of paper are exchangeable for goods. But there will be a time that this fetish will lose its power. It will become obsolete as using horses fora transport.

[ckaihatsu]

I'm also in general agreement with TC at post #2.

To elaborate, anything that *couldn't* be immediately automated and instead *tentatively* remained to be handled by human labor would effectively be a condition of dotp / 'market socialism' because those work roles couldn't be readily resolved by sheerly voluntary liberated-labor itself.

Certain roles would potentially remain distasteful and undesirable *until* sufficient liberated labor organization was realized to mechanize and automate (or obviate altogether) such tasks -- in the meantime society would have to offer a material 'premium' for the handling of socially necessary distasteful tasks, which would be 'backsliding' in relation a fully voluntary, materially effective global communism.

In this kind of 'in-between' type of material reality, society -- including all individuals *in* that society -- would have an inherent interest, or 'drive', *to* automate all unresolved issues of material tasks, just as the proletariat has a collective interest today to supersede capitalism and its inherent class-divided social relations.

Once everyone's material requirements could be fulfilled by a fully socialized collectivized social control over mechanistic production, that society would be entirely self-liberated to discuss the 'finer points' of what to do with social productivity and its relationship to life and living -- no one would have to put in labor out of any kind of material necessity.

There's a current thread on housing here:


What is to become of houses?

http://www.revleft.com/vb/become-housesi-t192428/index.html


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I think that any answer that relies on increased automation and technological advancement is problematic.


I find this *position* to be problematic since you're equivocating about the liberating role of technology / automation.





However, first of all technological advancement doesn't simply make some jobs obsolete; it creates new products, new jobs, new methods etc. This is a good thing.


Okay.





Imagine how life would be if the development of (relatively) inexpensive mechanical and electronic computers simply removed the need for human computers. But it didn't; it created probably dozens, maybe hundreds of new kinds of job.


But it did -- society no longer relies on human beings to do mind-numbing dull calculations because that kind of labor is no longer cost-effective compared to having digital technology (computers) do it. That's a *good* thing.

Newer jobs around computer technologies are necessarily *better* because they're higher-level in cognitive ability -- like the engineering of programs and scripts for all kinds of specific real-world applications, for example.





Thank you for the answers lads they were very insightful! Well i have a few more questions, How would this process even begin? There has not been a class conciseness phase, there are no real signs of anything going on in the western world as far as i can see.. But you would imagine humanity will eventually come to the conclusion that that would be the right way to live.


I think you're being overly dismissive here -- class consciousness is in a direct correlation to the existence of the class division itself, meaning that people's actual daily experience in a class-divided world like ours necessarily gives them / us a personal experience of the class division, or class consciousness.

But just as we can experience and/or think-of things without doing anything about them, it takes real-world *social organization* to tap into people's individual social experiences of class (exploitation and oppression), to *realize* the collective potential in those experiences, for the betterment of all.

[ckaihatsu]

But money can't really ever end because the people who control it manipulate its system to just print more money.. Im not sure it will ever end by itself. Maybe we are agreeing and i am just misunderstanding. I believe that yes you are right that it will fall but only if people then realise how ridiculous it is for a modern human society to use a piece of paper to dictate the lives of everyone and that they need it for the basic needs of life, food, water, shelter etc.


We know that a fully collectivized social production would enable free-access and direct-distribution (material exchanges would no longer be necessary) -- this would solve the festering issue of *material* availability, but I think the question of (liberated) *labor* availability would remain, afterwards.

I'm all for the societal use of a collectivized political economy that measures liberated-labor labor *hours* according to a scale of difficulty / hazard for each kind of task, and that uses a circulating system of labor *credits* for the representation of the same.

Here's a model I developed that illustrates this (there's an intro to it at my blog entry):


labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

http://s6.postimg.org/nfpj758c0/150221_labor_credits_framework_for_communist_su.jp g (http://postimg.org/image/p7ii21rot/full/)

[Tim Redd]

Work is a need for human beings, as much as companionship, shelter etc. We find prolonged periods of inactivity to be unpleasant.

Dude, what planet are you living on? 'Work" for processes that aren't fulfilling is the pits. And that is the kind of work that probably 80% of humanity takes part in.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Dude, what planet are you living on? 'Work" for processes that aren't fulfilling is the pits. And that is the kind of work that probably 80% of humanity takes part in.

I would say it's worse than that - even work that is fulfilling slowly becomes unpleasant in capitalism, from the constant struggle to keep a job, to various pointless (from the viewpoint of the working man) additional requirements and tasks etc. But I don't see how this fact goes against what I've said. Food is also a human need, but shoving bark bread into your mouth is unpleasant. Work under capitalism is unpleasant - but socialism, by changing the relations of production, also changes the unpleasant nature of work, allowing it to become an expression of need, rather than something imposed by capitalism or some kind of rationing scheme.

The point is to dispel this bourgeois myth that humans are lazy creatures with infinite needs, who need to be kept under the whip of the bourgeoisie (or the equivalent myths of market "socialists").


But it did -- society no longer relies on human beings to do mind-numbing dull calculations because that kind of labor is no longer cost-effective compared to having digital technology (computers) do it. That's a *good* thing.

It is. No one disputes that. The point is that the development of electronic computers didn't simply remove one kind of job, it created other jobs as well. So anyone who thinks that technological development will make work obsolete needs to show us why this development will not create new kinds of work. I think it will - which, again, is a good thing. We'll have nano-lathe repairmen one day, and how cool is that? The point is not to denigrate technology - I think you will find I am pretty much a technophile - but to point out that the solution is not in technological development but in a change to the relations of production.

[ckaihatsu]

The point is not to denigrate technology - I think you will find I am pretty much a technophile - but to point out that the solution is not in technological development but in a change to the relations of production.


Okay, and yes.





It is. No one disputes that. The point is that the development of electronic computers didn't simply remove one kind of job, it created other jobs as well. So anyone who thinks that technological development will make work obsolete needs to show us why this development will not create new kinds of work. I think it will - which, again, is a good thing. We'll have nano-lathe repairmen one day, and how cool is that?


You're mixing contexts, though -- it's within the labor-commodification of *capitalism* that old and new kinds of 'work' roles are readily used for any little repetitive task since it's often cheaper and easier than tackling the problem with an exploratory attitude, to privately plow new innovative ground with novel and perhaps unknown costs, and with a degree of uncertainty over the outcome-by-mechanization.

As socialists we shouldn't *want* there to be 'nano-lathe repairmen', ultimately, and only so if that work role happens to bring in good wages -- a same business-sense over the business of our own labor-efforts as the business has for its investments of capital.

As a parallel consider what any typical person would do these days if they happened to damage some common everyday household goods -- the roof leaked and a bunch of toilet paper and paper towels got soaked and are now basically unusable: Those items would be thrown away without the slightest thought about it, and a little extra money would be spent to get new items to restock the supply on hand.

Why should *any other* material be different from this, if the costs and efforts were similarly negligible -- ?

All the 'nano-lathes' went bad -- ? Flush 'em and get a fresh supply of the gel that they come in. Ditto for buildings, equipment, and whatever else, once workers control the world and doing so would be less of an imposition on *people* than having work roles to 'fix' and cater to every little thing at the cost of people's dignity and life-time.

With full automation we'd have *machines* to make machines, instead of the wage-slavery regime that chains *human beings* to do mind-dulling repetitive tasks, for one's basics of life and living.





All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing. At present machinery competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve man. There is no doubt at all that this is the future of machinery, and just as trees grow while the country gentleman is asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing itself, or enjoying cultivated leisure – which, and not labour, is the aim of man – or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will be doing all the necessary and unpleasant work. The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.




https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/