Originally posted by
[email protected] 12 2005, 12:20 AM
How does the pay system work in communism? All my friends as "Oh a trash man get's as much as a doctor" I know THATS not true, but I need a response to it. Thanks to those that respond to this dumb question. I'm just learning.
As someone already said, there wouldn't be a pay system, as we know it today, in a fully communist society. The economy would be organized around the principle: "from each according to ability, to each according to need" (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm)). As in, each individual contributes to the best of their ability and receives what they materially need.
Furthermore, the division of labor where some people are garbagemen their entire lives and others are doctors would be abolished. The division between manual and mental labor would be abolished. For the first time, people would be allowed to develop as genuine all-around human beings.
I haven't read Marx's German Ideology, but this well-known excerpt sums up nicely how work would be organized:
". . . in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic." - from the MIA encyclopedia (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm#division-labor)
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The difficulty arises when we think about the transition from capitalism to communism. Marx differentiated between the higher stage of communism (described above) and a lower, transition stage (often called socialism). There's some debate on how we get from capitalism to communism through the transition stage.
Some argue that during the transition period, people should receive as much as they contribute, "from each according to ability, to each according to deed." Professions that require extensive education like doctors would receive more in pay than professions that require less training like garbagemen, based on some sort of fixed rate. One purpose of this arrangement would be to encourage people to work hard and produce for society based on individual material incentives.
Others (including the Che) said that material incentives should be de-emphasized in favor of moral incentives during the transition stage. Placing all the emphasis on material incentives would only promote careerism and opportunism. People should be encouraged to work because they're inspired on moral level to help build a better world free from capitalist injustice, not because they want to have more pay for themselves in the short term. Pay would probably be a lot more egalitarian with this arrangement. Voluntary work was supposedly a big thing that Guevara was promoting in Cuba after the revolution.
I'm not sure where I stand on this. On one hand, the fear of unequal pay scales reviving capitalist values has a point. But, I think bending the stick too far in the other direction would have terrible results too. At some point, unpaid voluntary work becomes forced work.
One last point (in this already way-too-long post), it's important that no country attempting to build socialism has ever been able to do it in a vacuum. Beginning with the Russian Revolution, every country taking the socialist path has faced military encirclement, economic strangulation, and political interference. In every case, the need to defend the revolution in the immediate period from very real threats is the number one factor in making economic choices, not what would be best for moving towards full communism.