Severian
30th December 2005, 09:00
Originally posted by Storming
[email protected] 29 2005, 09:50 PM
I don't think we can predict whether a Socialist state will have a higher or lower tax rate than a capitalist one because there are too many unknowns involved in such a prediction.
We can say something based on the experience of post-capitalist societies so far.
It is worth noting however, that tax would be redundent in a society based on collective rather than private ownership.
Exactly!
In societies where most of the means of production have been nationalized, the state draws its revenue from that ownership. The value produced by workers' labor, that would have been capitalists' profits, becomes the property of society as a whole. It goes to meet society's priorities...whatever those may be.
(As Noah says, some of these will increase greatly after a revolution. Some will decrease....Marx made the point, in "The Civil War in France", that the cost of state administration can be greatly reduced if state employees are paid workers' wages, not the inflated bureaucratic salaries some big shots "earn" under capitalism.)
Most postcapitalist countries have had little taxation. One of the big headaches of people trying to restore capitalism in Russia, etc., has been trying to set up a tax system....last I heard they were still having a lot of trouble with it. Partly 'cause people have no habit of paying taxes.
Cuba's national assembly, and workplace assemblies around the countries, debated setting up an income tax system in the "special period" after the collapse of the USSR, in 1994 or so...they hadn't had one previously. They ended up establishing an income tax....on foreign companies investing in Cuban joint ventures, on self-employed people, on independent farmers, but not on wages. Since the first two categories of people didn't exist before the "special period", there was no need for an income tax before that.
In Cuba also, bureaucratic types complain about the lack of a "tax culture."
The tax question is only a major question when there are major elements of capitalism or a need to smooth out the inequalities resulting from bourgeois modes of distribution.
The communist policy on taxes, when they are needed, is simple: a steeply graduated income tax falling on the wealthier parts of the population. In the U.S., I'd say this should start around $50,000. Communists should not be for taxing working people, period, at all.
At the end of the day, it depends on whether he owns his means of making a living, and particularly whether he is an employee or an employer. Basically the situation seems to be this: employees are proletarians, employers are the bourgeoisie and the 'self-employed' are petit-bourgeoisie.
A clear and concise expression of a certain view on this, but I think it does not entirely cut it in the modern world. There's been a tremendous growth of the "new middle classes" - high-salaried professionals, like doctors and lawyers, who conditions of life and class interests have little or nothing in common with workers'. IMO even if these people are employees, living on a salary, they cannot be considered workers. They have something to sell besides their labor-power....in the case of doctors, in many countries there is an artificially maintained shortage which lets them charge a monopolistic price for their services.