Die Neue Zeit
29th March 2008, 18:41
During the past week the level of "noise" regarding wage slavery and the proper socialist mode of production (based on compensation through labour-time vouchers) has gone up. Over the past while I've read some stuff on this topic myself:
What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.
Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.
And this, too:
The means of production are no longer the private property of individuals. The means of production belong to the whole of society. Every member of society, performing a certain part of the socially-necessary work, receives a certificate from society to the effect that he has done a certain amount of work. And with this certificate he receives from the public store of consumer goods a corresponding quantity of products. After a deduction is made of the amount of labor which goes to the public fund, every worker, therefore, receives from society as much as he has given to it.
I hereby bring to attention of comrades Lenin's error, however:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/scientific-anarchist-late-t72293/index.html
In the same work (State and Revolution), Lenin, while paraphrasing Marx, also gives hints of his still-Social-Democratic equation of the socialist mode of production with what he called later on "state-capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people" (what I call proletocratic capitalism):
All citizens are transformed into hired employees of the state, which consists of armed workers ... The whole society will have become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labour and pay.
In "Left-Wing" Childishness, Lenin wrote:
To make things even clearer, let us first of all take the most concrete example of state capitalism. Everybody knows what this example is. It is Germany. Here we have “the last word” in modern large-scale capitalist engineering and planned organisation, subordinated to Junker-bourgeois imperialism. Cross out the words in italics, and in place of the militarist, Junker, bourgeois, imperialist state put also a state, but of a different social type, of a different class content—a Soviet state, that is, a proletarian state, and you will have the sum total of the conditions necessary for socialism.
This same error is carried over to the ideological spinoffs (Trotskyism, Marxism-Leninism, and MLM).
Now, before some non-Leninist comes in here and tries to display "left-wing childishness" by shouting "Ha! Lenin was a REVISIONIST!" (ComradeRed, this is you ;) :D ) - keep in mind that state capitalism developed quite a bit since Marx wrote his critique of the Gotha programme. Only because of the stagnation of dynamics pertaining to the extreme forms of state capitalism since Stalin's time can one say that the modern spinoff error is both reductionist and revisionist.
Also, the law of uneven development shouldn't be ignored:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/law-uneven-development-t72803/index.html
The whole global economy should be referred to as a "multi-economy" (for the purpose of this discussion).
Take the financial sector, for example (I'll give two or three here). The global proletocracy would absorb most of this sector into the state-capitalist economy, but there would still be the niche "credit unions" to serve as local competition (the private-capitalist economy, yet in this example "cooperative" in nature). The directly democratic elements ("socialist sector" - ie, no bureaucracy, but with sufficient communications technology to make society-wide decisions [based on labour-time]) would take quite a bit of time to wrest control of the financial sector from the state-capitalist economy, all the while competing with state enterprises. Then there are ["gift"]/communist considerations to consider (upon communism eliminating this sector completely).
Second example: in the case of the capital-intense "heavy industry" (especially construction and the related heavy urban development projects, which is dear to me), the "niche" would be either much smaller or non-existent (because of improved, yet capital-intensive, information technology in controlling manufacturing processes, for example), but direct democracy would also come after a protracted period of state monopoly capitalism. The ["gift"]/communist economy would emerge MUCH later.
Third example (and this one's dear to Ben): the media. In this one, I'm not sure if the private-capitalist economy will be existent immediately afterwards. The Big Media will have been wrested by the state-capitalist economy, and even then methinks the directly democratic economy will QUICKLY wrest this away from state capitalism. Furthermore, ["gift"] relations will be more prevalent here than in the financial services (the Internet). According to this example of uneven development, the full socialization of the media - and partial communization - will occur much faster than those of the financial and heavy-manufacturing sectors.
What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.
Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.
And this, too:
The means of production are no longer the private property of individuals. The means of production belong to the whole of society. Every member of society, performing a certain part of the socially-necessary work, receives a certificate from society to the effect that he has done a certain amount of work. And with this certificate he receives from the public store of consumer goods a corresponding quantity of products. After a deduction is made of the amount of labor which goes to the public fund, every worker, therefore, receives from society as much as he has given to it.
I hereby bring to attention of comrades Lenin's error, however:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/scientific-anarchist-late-t72293/index.html
In the same work (State and Revolution), Lenin, while paraphrasing Marx, also gives hints of his still-Social-Democratic equation of the socialist mode of production with what he called later on "state-capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people" (what I call proletocratic capitalism):
All citizens are transformed into hired employees of the state, which consists of armed workers ... The whole society will have become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labour and pay.
In "Left-Wing" Childishness, Lenin wrote:
To make things even clearer, let us first of all take the most concrete example of state capitalism. Everybody knows what this example is. It is Germany. Here we have “the last word” in modern large-scale capitalist engineering and planned organisation, subordinated to Junker-bourgeois imperialism. Cross out the words in italics, and in place of the militarist, Junker, bourgeois, imperialist state put also a state, but of a different social type, of a different class content—a Soviet state, that is, a proletarian state, and you will have the sum total of the conditions necessary for socialism.
This same error is carried over to the ideological spinoffs (Trotskyism, Marxism-Leninism, and MLM).
Now, before some non-Leninist comes in here and tries to display "left-wing childishness" by shouting "Ha! Lenin was a REVISIONIST!" (ComradeRed, this is you ;) :D ) - keep in mind that state capitalism developed quite a bit since Marx wrote his critique of the Gotha programme. Only because of the stagnation of dynamics pertaining to the extreme forms of state capitalism since Stalin's time can one say that the modern spinoff error is both reductionist and revisionist.
Also, the law of uneven development shouldn't be ignored:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/law-uneven-development-t72803/index.html
The whole global economy should be referred to as a "multi-economy" (for the purpose of this discussion).
Take the financial sector, for example (I'll give two or three here). The global proletocracy would absorb most of this sector into the state-capitalist economy, but there would still be the niche "credit unions" to serve as local competition (the private-capitalist economy, yet in this example "cooperative" in nature). The directly democratic elements ("socialist sector" - ie, no bureaucracy, but with sufficient communications technology to make society-wide decisions [based on labour-time]) would take quite a bit of time to wrest control of the financial sector from the state-capitalist economy, all the while competing with state enterprises. Then there are ["gift"]/communist considerations to consider (upon communism eliminating this sector completely).
Second example: in the case of the capital-intense "heavy industry" (especially construction and the related heavy urban development projects, which is dear to me), the "niche" would be either much smaller or non-existent (because of improved, yet capital-intensive, information technology in controlling manufacturing processes, for example), but direct democracy would also come after a protracted period of state monopoly capitalism. The ["gift"]/communist economy would emerge MUCH later.
Third example (and this one's dear to Ben): the media. In this one, I'm not sure if the private-capitalist economy will be existent immediately afterwards. The Big Media will have been wrested by the state-capitalist economy, and even then methinks the directly democratic economy will QUICKLY wrest this away from state capitalism. Furthermore, ["gift"] relations will be more prevalent here than in the financial services (the Internet). According to this example of uneven development, the full socialization of the media - and partial communization - will occur much faster than those of the financial and heavy-manufacturing sectors.