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No, it won't. I can join a library, the amount of books I take out doesn't depend on how much I work, or how tall I am, or anything else. I qualify (by virtue of living in a particular place); so I can do what the library allows. Likewise, I work in communist society (ie, I qualify), and am entitled to have my needs met..
No, you misunderstand. Joining a library does not entail a
quid pro quo set up. That much I agree with. Afterall, you dont pay for the library books, do you? But what you are proposing is different. You are making entitlement to things you need
conditional upon work performed. You "qualify" for these things not becuase you are a human being who has needs like everyone else, but because, and only if, you work. This is a quid pro quo set up unlike in the case of a library. This is what is meant by "from each according to ability to each according to work". In other words what you get depends on how much you work.
Once you start talking in terms of being entitled to have your needs met because you work you are on dodgy grounds. I dont mean just because that leaves out whole groups of people who are incapable of working - the sick , the elderly, the very young. I presume you are not going to just ignore their needs becuase they havent worked . I have no doubt that you will agree that entitlement to goods and services in these cases should not depend on whether you have worked. My question is why you do not then extend this principle to everyone. Make work completely voluntary and independent of any form of remuneration whatsoever. In fact get rid of the whole archaic idea of "remuneration" itself
The problem is you dont and, since you dont, you have effectively ensnared yourself in a train of logic, the conclusions of which are ultimately and thoroughly anti-communist though you do not yet see this. I dont think you really understand the point I was making about
proportionality and this may be part of the problem., So I will explain it again.
If you make entitlement to the goods and services that your need dependent on your work contribution (i.e. you "qualify" as you put), this immediately raises the question of
how much work you have to perform in order to "qualify". Since we are talking here of a quid pro quo set up - your work in exchange for goods and services - this creates a situation in which you will inevitably try to get as much out of this arrangement for as little as little as you can put in, as possible. Right from the start, the worm of cycnicim is burrowing away in the apple you invite us to eat.
Now you may protest against my argument (and it seems like that is exactly what you are doing!) that if you insist upon making access to goods and services conditional upon work, but refuse to make what you can have access to proportional to your work contribution, you will inevitably end up with an absudity. Your reponse shows that you have not understood the argument. So what are you are going to say to someone who says "
well, yes, I worked 5 miunutes last month so I am fully entitled to have whatever I need" Are you going to say "
sorry, thats no where near adequate to qualify". What then in your opinion would be "adequate"? 20 hours per week, 30? 40? What?
At any rate you cannot say people can qualify for goods and services only if they work (or are sick, old or very young) unless you are willing to measure and monitor their labour input. You would also incidentally have to price goods in labour time units if you are going make this system work. Quite apart from the enormous and wasteful bureaucracy all this is bound to generate, you are going to run into quite a number of problems that make this whole idea of yours highly questionable. I mention just one of these - how are you going to distinguish between different kinds of work? How much more valuable is one hour's worth of work performed by a neurosurgeon than one hour's work performed by a janitor? It is no solution to say we will regard the value of all work as being the same regardless. Thats is not going to stop a neourosurgeon feeling undervalued and less motivated
The point Im making is that these kinds of difficulties
ONLY arise becuase you insist on maintaining a quid pro quo set up whereby you can only qualify for the things you need providing you perform work. I would go further - such a set up would help ensure the perpetuation of the very attitudes and values that currently bolster capitalsim. It shores up precisely the kind of competitive egoistic outlook on life which as communists we should combatting
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Anyway; I've realised (it was the reference to time-frames earlier that got me thinking about this), that this argument isn't about 'communism' at all, it's about consciousness.
You think that socialist consciousness will develop to a point and then socialists will overthrow capitalism; communist society will be produced by the 'new socialist man'. Thus 'communist consciousness' (that you attribute to our new contributing communists) pre-dates the capacity of society to pruduce in abundance. Therefore, there is no 'free-rider' problem, because everyone (or nearly everyone) in the free-access society will already be socially-well-adjusted.
This is a caricatrure Yes, communist consciousness must predate and build up towards the point where we change from a capitalist society to a communist society. I take that as self evident. How on earth do you otherwise expect a communist society to come about if not by a majority consciously bringing it into being? A wave of some magic wand? A proclamation from the front steps of the palatial HQ of the Glorious Vanguard Party (ML) to the toiling proletarian masses assembled below? Obviously not
You cant have a socialist or communist society without a majority wanting it and understanding it. QED. Im with the
German Ideology on this point where it talks of the working class which
"
has to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages, which, ousted from society, is forced into the most decided antagonism to all other classes; a class which forms the majority of all members of society, and from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness, which may, of course, arise among the other classes too through the contemplation of the situation of this class"
I recall having discussed this matter with you before on the question of revolution and whether it is an event or a process. My position is that it is both or that it can be used in both senses. In the same chapter in the
German Ideology there is the following quote:
"
Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew. "
Note the point that for the "
success of the cause itself " - i.e. the establishment of communist society - a revolution is neccesary which leads to an alteration of men on a mass scale which, in turn, assures that success. Here Marx is using the term revolution in the sense of a "practical movement" which I would equate with what I call a "process view" of revolution, I have no objection to looking at revolution in these terms providing one understands that there is also another sense in which we can talk of revolution - as a fundamantal change in the basis of society
However none of this, invalidates the basic point you attribute to me that: "
socialist consciousness will develop to a point and then socialists will overthrow capitalism", If you think that is mistaken then let us hear from you how you imagine you can bring about socialism without conscious socialists being in the majority. Marx at any rate is quite clear: men have to be altered on a massive scale for the revolutiuon to be successful. "Socialist man" to an extent must precede socialism after which, no doubt, he or she will become even more fully "socialist man!
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You also know that I think this view is hopelessly naive. I think that the working class will overthrow capitalism not when it is intellectually convinced, but when it is desperate and terrified. It is not enlightenment that produces revolution, in my view, but revolution that produces enlightenment; communist society will not be the product of 'the new man', rather 'the new man' will be the product of communist society. Thus, free-access society will pre-date the socialisation of the unsocialised; indeed, it will produce that socialisation, be freeing people from the necessity of competition.
On the contrary I think your view is the one that is hopelessly naive - even dangerously deluded. T
he working class is not going to overthrow capitalism unless its got something in mind to replace capitalism with - that is, unless a majority of workers are socialists who want and understand socialism. The idea that a "desparate and terrified" non socialist working class will overthorw capitalism is just piffle - the stuff of idle daydreaming. Its part of a worldview that holds that things have got to get so terribly bad for workers that only then will they rise up and overthrow capitalism. Ive always found that view unconvincing. If anything the opposite is truer. The "terror and desparation" that a severe crisis can induce when your home and your job is at risk. more often not reinforces conservativism in the working class and can even pave the way to fascism. Think Germany early 30s.
I can go along with the idea that "revolution produces enlightenment" if we are talking about revolution in the sense of a practical movement (although that does not preclude enlightenment producing revolution as well) . At any rate that revolution (and the enlightenment is produces) must precede the establishment of a communist society. That being the case, I am a bit puzzled as to why you say "communist society will not be the product of 'the new man', but rather 'the new man' will be the product of communist society". This a bit black and white isnt it? Do you not hold a that a communist society must
prefigure the kind of society it seeks to achieve?. Do you not consider that communist attitudes and values will be steadily gaining ground as the communist movement grows and to that extent people will be changing as our social and political enviromnent changes?
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But this means that in the begining, communist society will still have to deal with 'anti-social' people, people who act in the way liberlict describes. We won't all have learned to get along before the revolution, I contend, we'll still be learning afterwards.
Of course we still be learning and of course there will still be anti-social people around but that doesnt means we have to make the satisfaction of peoples needs dependent on on their work contribution, does it now? Or do you seriously imagine that is the only way to deal with anti social people? Actually, in point of fact, follpwing on from what I said earlier, I actually believe that what you advocate will increase social tensions and the incidence of anti-social behaviour, not diminish it.