equal pay?

[A-S M.]

this is a question for anyone who does not believe in equal wages

how can a classless system be maintained when some earn more then others? doesn't this automatically create new kinds of classes? if not how?

[Unicorn]

Does everybody get the same pay in socialist society?

"No, they do not. The skilled worker gets more than the unskilled; the manager gets more than the workman; the great musician gets more than the average musician; the farmer who produces 400 bushels of wheat gets more than the farmer who produces zoo; the miner who digs eight tons of coal gets more than the miner who digs six; and so on. People are paid according to the quality and quantity of their work.

The person who receives even the largest income in socialist society can continue to receive it only so long as he continues to earn it through work. He cannot ever convert it into unearned income by buying the means of production and then living on the labor of others. He cannot buy the means of production for the excellent reason that in socialist society the means of production belong to the people and are not for sale. The higher pay he receives by dint of harder or better work enables him to live better than others who earn less; but his higher pay does not enable him to exploit anyone else.

Though there is inequality of pay in socialist society, there is equality of opportunity. Though skilled workers get higher pay, unskilled workers have ready access to the training and experience necessary to become skilled; though administrators, engineers, writers, artists get higher pay, free education for all in proportion to their ability to learn opens wide the entrance doors to these professions. And "all" in socialist society means exactly that—it does not mean all who can afford to pay the fees, or all whose manners are beyond reproach, or all who are not blacks or Jews."

Huberman and Sweezy, "Introduction to Socialism," Monthly Review

[A-S M.]

this doesn't make sense to me at all, the only thing that changes is that people won't earn money on other peoples labour, but this will automatically create a new class system where one will have more then the other, shouldn't people be treated equal in classless society? someone who has more talent is born with it, someone else isn't, that's not their choice or fault so

[Wake Up]

this doesn't make sense to me at all, the only thing that changes is that people won't earn money on other peoples labour, but this will automatically create a new class system where one will have more then the other, shouldn't people be treated equal in classless society? someone who has more talent is born with it, someone else isn't, that's not their choice or fault so

Sure some people will have more money than others, mainly because they work harder. But with the abolition of capitalism those with more money will not be able to exploit others by buying their land, workplaces etc etc. Remember that without capitalism money is just a standard trading item.

Besides not having a reward system for quality work is just asking for negligence and disillusionment.

[rosa-rl]

First -

Socialism is not a classless society. It is the lower stage and still has class divisions and inequalities and other scars from capitalist society - however if it is really socialist it is moving toward a classless and stateless society.

Equality is not just about pay either. Think about this - is it equal for a woman with 4 kids to get the same pay at the same job as a single woman? The kids have done nothing to justify that they be treated unequally. They did not chose to be born in a family of 5 not a family of 2! If the woman pays daycare you have to deduct that from her check before you start thinking in terms of how much she makes. Does she also have to pay for a double wide?

If one person has to travel and hour each way and the other walks 10 minutes to work - how does this impact them on the level of equality? Is one paying 300 a month plus insurance and gass to get to work and the other nothing but a decent pair of shoes and an umbrella? Freak'n hell right now I can not afford to drive. Gas is creepin up toward minimum wage.

I do not think you can address equality in any real way until you get past dealing with it on bourgeois terms like pay scales and look at the actual individual situations.

And yeah, I believe every child no matter what background should get a monthly check from the state and food coupons. No woman or man who is a father or mother should be put in the situation that they have to support a child alone in order to get out of a relationship. No child should be property and with this there should be no child support to tie the woman to the man or man to the woman. The child is the future of society not the future of one individual set of parents or parent and should be the responsibility of all of society.

[gla22]

What is becoming equal is peoples relation to the means of production.

[rosa-rl]

Yeah. indulge me in a rant on this topic:

And the relations of production consist of three main aspects:

1) the form of ownership of the means of production
2)the position and mutual relations of people in production
3) the form of distribution of products

In class society these relations are expressed and manifested as class relations. The form of ownership is the defining aspect and the basis of the production relations. Until it is transformed the others cannot be significantly revolutionized.

This of course is closely linked to the issue of state power because it is not possible to transform the ownership of the means of production without control over the oppressive and violent powers of the state. How would you expropriate those who hold the leash of the police and military?

The transformation of the old relations of production and the establishment and perfecting of new relations of production are often realized only through revolutionary struggle.

This is not to say that state power is the be-all-end-all of revolution as the state itself must wither away.Communism is a STATELESS and CLASSLESS society. Anything less than this is socialism, state capitalism or some other form of mixed economy led by capitalist economic principles that rest on the exploitation of man by man.

Revolution in a major industrialized nation in this epoch is a question that we must proceed from. The answers have not been given – instead we must start from the concrete conditions as they have presented themselves and move forward to an analysis of these conditions based on Marxist theoretical and philosophical concepts.

I believe this should be viewed as process, as something that we are not only working to understand but that exists in conditions that are constantly altering and in some aspects changing the potential ‘answer’ such that the answer itself, based on a given number of identifiable factors is also in motion.

Action on these existing factors leads to a change in the actual set of factors and their potential direction thus bringing into being a new set that has elements of the first set but now has elements of a second set who’s motion in space time is different from that of the first set.

The goals of all our action on the existing factors should be in the/tend toward/influence in the direction of:

1)the abolition of all class distinctions
2) the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest
3) the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production
4) to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations
(Class struggle in France)

This is a much broader definition of what constitutes revolution that the narrowly understood seizure of state power AND this process starts in the relations between people within the revolutionary movement before it is possible to seize state power. Without the crucial transformations of the individuals and the people who they come into contact we will only reproduce capitalist society by default. Lenin addressed this some in his discussion of the vanguard party in which he talked about how the differences in party members had to be narrowed so that every party member became a ‘tribune of the people’. It extends far beyond that!

More later…
Rosa Harris

[Dros]

There won't be wages or pay in a classless society at all.

There won't be commodity exchange. Because everyone owns the means of production collectively, they already own all of the products that are produced! There is no need for pay or for wages.


Edit:

Remember, a classless society is a Communist one, not a Socialist one. The difference is very critical here.

[nvm]

the manager gets more than the workman;

I don't agree with that.
A manager has to be paid like an average skilled worker in a socialist society

[rosa-rl]

There has to be a means by which to calculate re-investment into industries (large scale machinery has to be produced, other products needed for production and so on) and investments into social programs (education, health, housing and so on) from the collective products of society.

Beyond that wages under communism make no sense - logically - however I do believe that at the level of managing the economy there has to be some means of calculation - but that is speculating on something that its impossible to know the exact conditions of.

However under socialism society has to work to narrow wage gaps. Narrowing wage gaps can not happen all at once because those trained in this system who expect certain finacial return on their investment in education- who we need - what if all the DRs revolted before new Drs were trained?


Under socialism the educational system will change and those interested mostly in profitability will not find a situation where they can get any benefits out of persuing a degree in medicine. At the same time the socialist system will pay for and house those working to develop more complex skills.

As far as management goes, this will be carried out by teams of specialist and workers from the factory floor in co-operation with each other and EVERYONE in any type of management position will have to do their time on the floor, too.

[Niccolò Rossi]

how can a classless system be maintained when some earn more then others?

In a classless society there can be no such thing as wages. As has been said money indicates the exchange of commodities. When the means of production are held in common, the whole of the social product is not distributed by means of money between independent producers, allowing for the expansion of capital.

Well you may then ask, what about in a socialist society, the lower phase of communism? Do wages exist here or is free and full access to consumer goods possible? Let us see what Marx had to say in his Critique of the Gotha Programme:


Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.


What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. 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.


Hence, equal right here is still in principle -- bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.


In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.


But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.


But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.


In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!


When reading the above passage it is essential to keep in mind the context. Marx advocated the used of such "labour-time vouchers", that is the unequal allocation of consumer goods on the basis of socially necessary labour-time, only during the lower phase of communist society where the productive forces were not at a high enough stage of development so as to eliminate all possible physical scarcity. Whilst this may have been the case in 1875 when Marx was writing, today such a "lower stage of communist society" is almost completely unnecessary due to the development of the means of production and the near super-abundance of material wealth, today still confined by the forces of capital.

However, this is not to say that the concept of labour-time vouchers is completely redundant for a number of real world, practical challenges. Certainly during the outbreak of disease when vaccines are limited distribution can not be made full and free, rather they must be rationed according to an equal standard of labour.



To answer the question I posed above on the existence of money in a socialist society - the lower phase of communism - the answer is clearly no. Money only exists so long as exchange occurs between independent producers. Further, money serves as the basis of capital accumulation in that money is circulated and performs the M-C-M' function. A labour-time voucher on the other hand is only a voucher which entitles the holder to withdraw an allotted quantity of consumer goods from the common social pool. Further, such labour-time vouchers do not circulate, rather they are destroyed in the process of withdrawing consumer goods and thus can not facilitate the M-C-M' function.

If you are interested you may also which to read this (http://bataillesocialiste.wordpress.com/english-pages/1975-the-myth-of-the-transitional-society-buick/). It is a critique of Mandel's concept of the "transitional society", but more importantly it is an argument against the wider Trot concept on the existence of money in a socialist society.


doesn't this automatically create new kinds of classes? if not how?

No. Classes in the Marxist conception are not defined by material or social wealth, rather they are defined by their position in the process of appropriation of social surplus-labour, that is, their relation to the production process which is fundamentally a question of their relation to both the means of production and labour.

[dannydandy]

1. does or does not in the final stage of a communist society those who work not as hard (voluntarily, due to sloth and not because of their bodily or intellectual defects) will get the same as those who work very hard?

2. does or does not in the final stage of a communist society those who are not capable of produce as much (due to defects inborn or not) be given less?

3. is there an efficient way of distinguishing the two types of people - those who are in fact capable but chooses to work not as hard vs those who work really hard but just couldn't match the output of others due to their less talents or so?

[gla22]

1. No, people will get paid differently according to how hard they work and the nature of their work.
2. Please clarify.
3. It dosen't matter, they both would receive less if they had the same job.

[dannydandy]

1. No, people will get paid differently according to how hard they work and the nature of their work.
2. Please clarify.
3. It dosen't matter, they both would receive less if they had the same job.

so is it justified that those who are born less talented will never be given a higher quality of life no matter despite they being work very hard?

and by what standard does it determine which jobs gets more?

[Niccolò Rossi]

1. does or does not in the final stage of a communist society those who work not as hard (voluntarily, due to sloth and not because of their bodily or intellectual defects) will get the same as those who work very hard?

They will get what they need. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". Super-abundance in a communist society eliminates the need for rationing on the basis of labour.


2. does or does not in the final stage of a communist society those who are not capable of produce as much (due to defects inborn or not) be given less?

I think the answer would be yes. If (and only if!), production is not developed to a point where distribution can be made on the basis of needs (in which case such individuals would have access to the greatest number of consumer goods), then some form of rationing must take place, one that rewards initiative. However this is not to say that people of disability would be made to starve! In no way so! All it means is that if rationing was necessary, these individuals would receive less than an individual who engages in many hours of hard labour.

To quote The Critique of the Gotha Programme:


But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.


But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.


However, it is important to remember that today's world is not 1875. Today the means of production have been advanced to such a level which allows for a super-abundance in production, and thus makes the talk of a "lower phase of communism" and labour-time rationing largely (but in no mean entirely) redundant.


3. is there an efficient way of distinguishing the two types of people - those who are in fact capable but chooses to work not as hard vs those who work really hard but just couldn't match the output of others due to their less talents or so?

As I've replied in your other thread, this question is largely irrelevant.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Comrade, I think you've become much more radical. ;)

Even if there is super-abundance in production, there is still the hegemonic crust and/or magnetosphere to consider: before people will buy in, they'll need decades of full compensation for their labour.

Besides, with my comments on vertical farming ("Is land reform obsolete? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/land-reform-obsolete-t74905/index2.html)") and my thoughts on social projects in general, labour-time vouchers or even hard $$$ (yes, for state capital accumulation purposes) will still be needed.

[In the case of $$$, it would NOT be the second post-revolution stage of socialism, but rather the first stage of "multi-economy."]


To answer the question I posed above on the existence of money in a socialist society - the lower phase of communism - the answer is clearly no. Money only exists so long as exchange occurs between independent producers. Further, money serves as the basis of capital accumulation in that money is circulated and performs the M-C-M' function. A labour-time voucher on the other hand is only a voucher which entitles the holder to withdraw an allotted quantity of consumer goods from the common social pool. Further, such labour-time vouchers do not circulate, rather they are destroyed in the process of withdrawing consumer goods and thus can not facilitate the M-C-M' function.

On the other hand, you could be right: even if full compensation of labour were the norm, I'm not sure if everyone will get to "cash in" their labour-time vouchers for goods (unless they're really into commodity fetishism, buying luxury cars, jewels, and what not :D ).

It's effectively communism already, but with the cover of "full compensation of labour."


No. Classes in the Marxist conception are not defined by material or social wealth, rather they are defined by their position in the process of appropriation of social surplus-labour, that is, their relation to the production process which is fundamentally a question of their relation to both the means of production and labour.

I think you neatly summarized my position in Chapter 2, comrade. ;)