Opting out of communism?

[liberlict]

Ah, yes, the old "luxury yacht" bogeyman/straw argument. Now why is it that i just knew this was gonna crop up? People who routinely bring it up do so almost in a manner of self conscious irony. Its their way of provocatively "testing the system" to its conceptual limits when they have run out of arguments. If necessary they will even volunteer themselves for the role of professional sponger who doesnt care a toss about others but insists on living out some kind of egoistic infantile fantasy dream. In reality of course they are nothing like the image they project - hence the irony - but, still ,its all grist for the mill when trying to argue the case against a rational communist society. The underlying assumption seems to be if its not perfect, its not feasible.


Well Ive got news for you, liberlict. If there did exist , in a communist society, hypothetical individuals such as the undoubtedly false image of yourself that you project, then they are going to be deeply disappointed. There is just no way a communist society is going to provide everyone with a luxury yacht and a lamborgini. It would be madness even to attempt to do so.

That apart, from where would craving for such status symbols arise in a free access economy? See, in this society we are living in - capitalism - there is a certrain logic to having a status hierarchy based on the consumption of wealth. Thorstein Veblen's seminal work Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) briliantly dissected and disclosed the class dynamics behind that kind of status hierarchy where your prestige in the eyes of others depends on your conspicuous consumption of wealth. Status systems tend to reflect the mode of production in which they are grounded.

The competition-fuelled tendency for capital to expand without limit has its reflex in the mumbo jumbo gibberish of bourgeois economists with their prattle about "insatiable wants". The "buy buy buy" mentality of the modern consumer slave is all of a peice with the self expanding character of capital. Capital can only expand if there are consumers willing to buy and so we are relentlessly indoctrinated from early childhood into a way of thinking that attaches immense importance to the possession of objects, going way beyond any sensible reason for having them. We accumulate for the sake of accumulation or, rather, for the sake of clawing our way up the capitalist status hierarchy in the hollow belief that we have somehow become a better person for being a wealthier one.

Communism sweeps away all this delusional crap, once and for all. In fact, in communism the drive for status - and I do believe that in any kind of society people have a need to feel esteemed and respected - can only take the form in which you gain status through your contribution to society not what you take out of it. Free access to goods and services completely undermines the rationale for a system of status acquisition based on the possession of wealth


A majority who had consciously and democratically established a new kind of society that will operate in the interests of everyone - not just a parasitic minority- are not going to jeopardise what they had worked so hard to achieve. Social systems tend to institute mechanisms that enable the system to function on its own terms and the prevailing form of status differentiation is one of these.


No doubt in a communist society yachts will continue to be built and who are we to begrudge others the pleasure of yachting on the high sea? But yachts are one of that class of goods that I very much suspect will be communal property. You will be free to make use of one of your local community's yachts on an "as and when" basis much like you would make an appointment to see a barber or a dentist.


Apart from anything else, this is much more efficient use of resouces - sharing them. I often wonder why people buy expensive 3 section extending ladders which they hang up in their garage for almost the entire year and only use to clean out the roof gutters once or twice in the Autumn. Why not have a local communty supply which individuals can borrow from whenever they want? You would only need to produce a fraction of the quantity of ladders that are produced today when everyone wants their own private ladder. The same could be said for all sorts of other household equipment. From a purely practical point of view communism would be vastly superior in so many ways


I have no problem with the idea of making yachts available on an "as and when" basis in a communist society. What I have a problem with is the kind of attitude that fetishsises the posssession of a yacht for one's own exclusive use as some kind of status symbol to be moored up in Marbella harbour 360 days a year because, well, that is where the super-rich hang out along with the "Towie" crowd or whatever it is they are called.


And finally to answer one or two of your remaining points - no, you emphatically dont have to "match supply with demand in all cases" in order to achieve equality. Quite the contrary. A communist society will and, of neccesity, must have some kind of system of production priorities. It needs this to guilde the allocation of resources in cases where there are resource bottlenecks. If there 10 units of resource X and 3 end-uses A B and C that all require 4 units of X , then one or possibly two of these end-uses is going to have to go without what it fully needs, Which one is this to be? Having some sense of what should take priority helps you decide. Ive touched on this matter before (see post 167)

It may well be that yachts occupy a rather lowly position in society's hierarchy of production goals. Thats does not mean that yachts will not be produced; it just means that, quite rightly and sensibly, other more important end uses will have first claim on resources if these are limited. But of course there are always ways around resource limitations such as "technological subsititution" using some other more abundant subsititute resource

Here then is another massively important difference between communism and capitalism. It is the community that decides what is important and what should take priority. It is the same people who consume what is produced who produce it. There are no separate population groupings called "consumers" and "producers". This is a bourgeois constuct that arises out of the myth of "consumer sovereignty"

In capitalism what is produced depends on market demand. The golden rule of capitalism is that those who have the gold make the rules. So luxury yachts will be produced in order to be shamelessly flaunted in Marbella harbour for most of the year while homeless beggars sit in the streets around the waterfront with outstretched hands, denied even the simple dignity of a roof over their head in a country like Spain where there are approximately 6 million empty homes as we speak (if you include also second, third or even fourth homes).

So much for capitalism's system of priorities. It sucks, frankly.

Men don't seek status just because capitalism teaches them too. They seek it because in the evolutionary past women preferred men with high status as sexual mates. You know when you see a peacock flashing its colours? The same biological forces are behind status-seeking in male hominidae (and female , to a degree) ; The ones that weren't didn't pass on their genes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_status

Social status hierarchies have been documented in a wide range of animals: apes,[4] baboons,[5] wolves,[6] cows/bulls,[7] hens,[8] even fish,[9] and ants.[10] Natural selection produces status-seeking behavior because animals tend to have more surviving offspring when they raise their status in their social group.[11] Such behaviors vary widely because they are adaptations to a wide range of environmental niches. Some social dominance behaviors tend to increase reproductive opportunity,[12] while others tend to raise the survival rates of an individual’s offspring.[13] Neurochemicals, particularly serotonin,[14] prompt social dominance behaviors without need for an organism to have abstract conceptualizations of status as a means to an end. Social dominance hierarchy emerges from individual survival-seeking behaviors.

By chance, are you that landscaper who attempted to refute that Economic Calculation Problem?

If so, I read your paper, it was quite good.

[robbo203]

No, I'm not - "from each according to their ability to each according to their work" surely means 'you x-amount of work, you are entitled to x/y-amount of social product, where y=amount necessary for non-productive social expenses'. On the other hand "from each according to their ability to each according to their need" means 'If you work according to your ability you can have access to your needs, and if you do not, you can't'.

[/I]

Sorry I disagree. That's is definitely not what "from each according to ability to each according to need" means. There is no suggestion of a quid pro quo arrangement in this statement at all. You are merely foisting one on to it by saying that if you dont work according to your ability you wont be able to satisfy your needs - that is, have access to need "satisfiers"

In fact, what you are suggesting will inevitably return you directly back to the situation descibed by statement "from each according to their ability to each according to their work". You are making access to needs satisfiers conditional upon work contribution. By extension, what you can access will become proportional to your contribution otherwise you end up with an absudity.

For example, say if in the course of trying justify your claim to have access to goods in front of the community or its representatives. you were to say "I feel Im fully entitled to such goods because I worked for 5 minutes last month". The guffaws that this would provoke go to illustrate the point I am making - that once you start making access to goods conditional upon working in any way shape or form you have logically and inexorably to introduce the pirinciple of proportionality into your calculations. You have to say "if you work such and such number of hours per week you will be entitled to such and such a number of goods". That means you are back to "from each according to their ability to each according to their work".


If you dont do that then I personally think you are heading for a disaster. Maintaining a quid pro quo set up while not at the same time calibrating your access to goods in terms of your labour contributions is inevitably going to culitvate a totally cynical attitude all around - not to mention breeding rampant corruption Everyone is going to claim full entitlement to goods on the basis that they worked 5 minutes sometime last month.

I cannot stress this too much - it is the very maintenance of a quid pro quo set up itself, the enforced tying of one's access to goods to one's labour contributions in a kind of gordian knot - which is what creates and and perpetuates a kind of artificial division between the interests of you as an individual and the interests of others in the community of which you are a part and wherein you all compete for goods.


We need as communists to move completely away from the whole ideology of "from each according to their ability to each according to their work" and such pointless cumbersome and socially divisive schemes such as the system of labour vouchers advocated by Marx for the lower stage of communism (although admittedly without great enthusiasm).


Suffice to mention, the expression, "He who does not work, neither shall he eat" comes from The Second Epistle of St Paul to the Thessalonians, in the New Testament and is also enshrined in that preeminently godless and state capitalist Constitution of the Soviet Union of 1936. Thus, Article Twelve of that constitution states: "In the U.S.S.R. work is a duty and a matter of honor for every able-bodied citizen, in accordance with the principle: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat.". You would be getting into bed with some pretty strange bedfellows by insisiting 'If you work according to your ability you can have access to your needs, and if you do not, you can't'[/I].

Im not a fan of Lenin as you know but some of his descriptions of a future communist society are spot on . Like this one, for example


"Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society, labour performed not as a definite duty, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not according to previously established and legally fixed quotas, but voluntary labour, irrespective of quotas; it is labour performed without expectation of reward, without reward as a condition, labour performed because it has become a habit to work for the common good, and because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good—labour as the requirement of a healthy organism. It must be clear to everybody that we, i.e., our society, our social system, are still a very long way from the application of this form of labour on a broad, really mass scale.
(V. I. Lenin "From the Destruction of the Old Social SystemTo the Creation of the New" April 11, 1920 http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...920/apr/11.htm)


I couldnt have put it better myself!

[Jimmie Higgins]

Men don't seek status just because capitalism teaches them too. They seek it because in the evolutionary past women preferred men with high status as sexual mates. You know when you see a peacock flashing its colours? The same biological forces are behind status-seeking in male hominidae (and female , to a degree) ; The ones that weren't didn't pass on their genes.

Well this is wrong on a number of counts - first of all because humans don't grow social relationships and attitudes out of their behinds like peacocks grow feathers.

Unlike a lot of animals, human sexuality seems to be guided by choice for the most part, choice of partners and choice of when and how to have sex. Many animals have visible signs of when they are periodically ready to mate whereas humans are in "heat" for basically their teen years to as long as we are physically able (while biologically there's a drop-off for reproductive sex as we get older which probably is influenced by biological evolution). Status is social and so it would be difficult for it to be the basis of sexual selection since status in a band society would be organic while status in a classical or feudal or capitalist society would all be based on different factors. In fact, for feudalism this biological determinism would seem absurd since status was based on bloodlines and titles and shit, so families of noble blue-blood inbred people probably wouldn't be that evolutionarily favored. And as far as status-seeking, well first women weren't doing much of the choosing and there was a caste system so peasant men or women might desire upper class people all they want (and even have sex with them if it suited the lord or lady) but they would never actually be able to achieve any status from it. In fact how status plays into such relationships (as well as slave masters and slaves or sexual harassment today) is power over other people.

If people seek status in class societies, it's because status determines what your life will be like for the most part. In capitalism, the more status, the more potential autonomy and security and personal freedom you can enjoy... when we have an inherently unequal society where people have to have money, is status-seeking really such a mystery let alone some biological imperitive?

Finally, in many accounts of societies where there is little class or caste hierarchy (even where some form of class exists), shit-taking or knocking people down a peg is common and boasting or trying to hold power over people is shamed and disfavored through social custom. So I think clearly social status as we generally mean it in this sense (as opposed to maybe just interpersonal competition for "bragging rights" or people wanting to be accomplished at something for its own sake) is a result of this status having a very real effect on our quality and freedom in life.

[robbo203]

Men don't seek status just because capitalism teaches them too.

That is exactly the point I was making. Status acquistion is part and parcel of our social make up - the need to feel esteemed and valued. Such a need will continue to exist in a communist society but, as I have argued it. will express itself in a radically different form which will be based on one's contriubution to society rather than what one takes out of it in the form of conspicuous consumption...

By chance, are you that landscaper who attempted to refute that Economic Calculation Problem?

If so, I read your paper, it was quite good.

Yes. Im currently working on a much longer and more detailed peice which will hopefully answer the responses of various critics.

[liberlict]

That is exactly the point I was making. Status acquistion is part and parcel of our social make up - the need to feel esteemed and valued.

It's not just a part of our social make up, it's part of our genetic make up.

Yes. Im currently working on a much longer and more detailed peice which will hopefully answer the responses of various critics.

Cool. What have the criticisms been, in the main? Do you have a link to it? I read it ages ago, I'll offer you my criticism if you like. I forget most of the details of your argument now.

[Jimmie Higgins]

It's not just a part of our social make up, it's part of our genetic make up.

What part of our genetic make-up would that be? Social status is social and means different things in different social situations so it would be historically impossible for genetics to favor any specific indicators of status. Crude Darwinists might argue that sexual selection makes people attracted to certain physical characteristics, but this is irrelevant in the modern world, irrelevant in feudalism, etc where such physical "provider" signifiers would not be the same as people surviving in band societies. If people seek status and the attraction is based on the social situation, then it must also be that people have to socially understand what makes "status" and therefore it also can not be genetically based.

In fact, the argument that women "naturally" seek men with staus is based in sexist assumptions IMO. Where there is any historical tendancy towards this I think it probably has far more to do with the social situation where women in class societies have been stripped of their own means of producing and accessing wealth and are socially forced to only do so by attaching themselves to men how have such social standing and "social capital" so to speak.

[liberlict]

What part of our genetic make-up would that be? Social status is social and means different things in different social situations so it would be historically impossible for genetics to favor any specific indicators of status. Crude Darwinists might argue that sexual selection makes people attracted to certain physical characteristics, but this is irrelevant in the modern world, irrelevant in feudalism, etc where such physical "provider" signifiers would not be the same as people surviving in band societies. If people seek status and the attraction is based on the social situation, then it must also be that people have to socially understand what makes "status" and therefore it also can not be genetically based.

In fact, the argument that women "naturally" seek men with staus is based in sexist assumptions IMO. Where there is any historical tendancy towards this I think it probably has far more to do with the social situation where women in class societies have been stripped of their own means of producing and accessing wealth and are socially forced to only do so by attaching themselves to men how have such social standing and "social capital" so to speak.

I thought the wikipedia entry I posted explained it well enough:

Social status hierarchies have been documented in a wide range of animals: apes,[4] baboons,[5] wolves,[6] cows/bulls,[7] hens,[8] even fish,[9] and ants.[10] Natural selection produces status-seeking behavior because animals tend to have more surviving offspring when they raise their status in their social group.[11] Such behaviors vary widely because they are adaptations to a wide range of environmental niches. Some social dominance behaviors tend to increase reproductive opportunity,[12] while others tend to raise the survival rates of an individual’s offspring.[13] Neurochemicals, particularly serotonin,[14] prompt social dominance behaviors without need for an organism to have abstract conceptualizations of status as a means to an end. Social dominance hierarchy emerges from individual survival-seeking behaviors.

Or any of Richard Dawkins' books.

You can call me a 'crude darwinist' I guess, but my belief that the reason women favour powerful men is because of a genetic disposition. It's not always about "rich" men either: Women are attracted to violent criminals more than Ned Flanders types, despite them being unlikely to be able to provide a good "life outcome". Ted Bundy and Richard Ramirez had hot girl groupies coming to support him in court every day. Ni-ether of them were rich or likely to be able to provide much for any of those girls, yet the girls still found them desirable. How does your social conditioning theory account for that?

[Jimmie Higgins]

I thought the wikipedia entry I posted explained it well enough:

Social status hierarchies have been documented in a wide range of animals: apes,[4] baboons,[5] wolves,[6] cows/bulls,[7] hens,[8] even fish,[9] and ants.[10] Natural selection produces status-seeking behavior because animals tend to have more surviving offspring when they raise their status in their social group.[11] Such behaviors vary widely because they are adaptations to a wide range of environmental niches. Some social dominance behaviors tend to increase reproductive opportunity,[12] while others tend to raise the survival rates of an individual’s offspring.[13] Neurochemicals, particularly serotonin,[14] prompt social dominance behaviors without need for an organism to have abstract conceptualizations of status as a means to an end. Social dominance hierarchy emerges from individual survival-seeking behaviors.

Yes, well first of all other animals also have very different relationships, mating patterns, etc. But more importantly any of these adaptations are due to environmental factors which are much more constantly present than the various ways humans have organized themselves and assigned status or not to different relationships within that social organization.

Or any of Richard Dawkins' books.

Well there's your problem! Try some Stephen Jay Gould instead.

You can call me a 'crude darwinist' I guess, but my belief that the reason women favour powerful men is because of a genetic disposition.

But how can there be a genetic disposition to traits and signifiers which are socially constructed and change more quickly than humans adapt biologically.

It's not always about "rich" men either: Women are attracted to violent criminals more than Ned Flanders types, despite them being unlikely to be able to provide a good "life outcome". Ted Bundy and Richard Ramirez had hot girl groupies coming to support him in court every day. Ni-ether of them were rich or likely to be able to provide much for any of those girls, yet the girls still found them desirable. How does your social conditioning theory account for that?

Well first, my perspective is that human sexuality is dominated by mutual choice more than most animals... maybe dolphins and bonobos are up there too. "Conditioning" wasn't my argument, my arguement was that any tendancy towards women being attracted to powerful men is much more about women having no independant access to power or even their own independance in most class societies.

As for the "groupies" thing, honestly I think a lot of the sensetionalism and attention to these stories comes from mysoginistic attitudes: women can't make good choices of who to be with and must have their sexuality regulated. As for why those induviduals are attracted to some famous serial killers... well why were tons of people of all sexes consuming true crime books and fascinated with these stories, why did Patty Hurst become a sex symbol? Men love "bad girls" as much as women supposedly love "bad guys", so I don't think there is anything biologically predestined about women seeking "status" in relationships.

[robbo203]

It's not just a part of our social make up, it's part of our genetic make up.

I think you have to be very careful to distinguish between the disposition to acquire status and the particular form that a system of status differentiation takes. All systems of status differentiation reflect the kind of society in which they operate - and its dominant or driving motive force. In a hunter gatherer society it is the skilled hunter or gatherer that will be looked up to for the reason that the group may depend heavily on those skills. This is why, incidentally, in preliterate societies (unlike our own) old people tend to be particularly cherished and respected - because they contain within their skulls the accumulated wisdom of society which in literate societies can be stored and transmitted through books, electronic media etc

In capitalism, the driving motive is the accummulation of capital and the pursuit of profit out of which such capital is accummulated. A system of status differentiation based on the conspicuous consumption of wealth is simply a logical extension of that, as I explained

We are not born with a disposition to show off how wealthy we are; we have to be socialised into such a mindset by the kind of society in which we live. Our human nature - our genetic endowment, if you like - consists in the fact that we are fundamentally social animals and one aspect of that is the need to feel wanted and esteemed in the eyes of others. How we gain that esteem, on the other hand, falls very clearly on the nurture side of the nature-nurture dichotomy. It will, as I say, differ markedly from one society to the next and thefore cannot possibly be ascribed to our genetic make up

Cool. What have the criticisms been, in the main? Do you have a link to it? I read it ages ago, I'll offer you my criticism if you like. I forget most of the details of your argument now.

The site in which the original article appeared - the e-journal Common Voice has unfortunately succumbed to a virus attack. However the article itself was posted oin a number of other webistes I know including this one


http://socialistcommonwealth.webs.co...capitalism.htm


If you scroll half way down the page you will find it there

[Baseball]

Im not a fan of Lenin as you know but some of his descriptions of a future communist society are spot on . Like this one, for example


"Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society, labour performed not as a definite duty, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not according to previously established and legally fixed quotas, but voluntary labour, irrespective of quotas; it is labour performed without expectation of reward, without reward as a condition, labour performed because it has become a habit to work for the common good, and because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good—labour as the requirement of a healthy organism. It must be clear to everybody that we, i.e., our society, our social system, are still a very long way from the application of this form of labour on a broad, really mass scale.
(V. I. Lenin "From the Destruction of the Old Social SystemTo the Creation of the New" April 11, 1920 http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...920/apr/11.htm)


I couldnt have put it better myself!

It ought not be forgotten that Lenin was a failure.

The above quote reflects it- there needs to objective ways to prove that ones labor does is in fact for the common good.

[Baseball]

Well Ive got news for you, liberlict. If there did exist , in a communist society, hypothetical individuals such as the undoubtedly false image of yourself that you project, then they are going to be deeply disappointed. There is just no way a communist society is going to provide everyone with a luxury yacht and a lamborgini. It would be madness even to attempt to do so.







A majority who had consciously and democratically established a new kind of society that will operate in the interests of everyone - not just a parasitic minority- are not going to jeopardise what they had worked so hard to achieve. Social systems tend to institute mechanisms that enable the system



And finally to answer one or two of your remaining points - no, you emphatically dont have to "match supply with demand in all cases" in order to achieve equality. Quite the contrary. A communist society will and, of neccesity, must have some kind of system of production priorities. It needs this to guilde the allocation of resources in cases where there are resource bottlenecks. If there 10 units of resource X and 3 end-uses A B and C that all require 4 units of X , then one or possibly two of these end-uses is going to have to go without what it fully needs, Which one is this to be? Having some sense of what should take priority helps you decide. Ive touched on this matter before (see post 167)

It may well be that yachts occupy a rather lowly position in society's hierarchy of production goals. Thats does not mean that yachts will not be produced; it just means that, quite rightly and sensibly, other more important end uses will have first claim on resources if these are limited. But of course there are always ways around resource limitations such as "technological subsititution" using some other more abundant subsititute resource

Here then is another massively important difference between communism and capitalism. It is the community that decides what is important and what should take priority. It is the same people who consume what is produced who produce it. There are no separate population groupings called "consumers" and "producers". This is a bourgeois constuct that arises out of the myth of "consumer sovereignty"

.

The auto workers are the only people who can have cars?

Why is it madness for the people, in a communist society, to democratically vote for everyone to have a yacht?

Describe the system of allocation and prioritization which supports the functioning communist system.

[Jimmie Higgins]

It ought not be forgotten that Lenin was a failure.

The above quote reflects it- there needs to objective ways to prove that ones labor does is in fact for the common good.

if I get your implication here, I think this statement can only make sense within the context of a capitalist world where labor is not valued simply for the use value, but for the exchange value. A large amount of effort under capitalism has no specific use value other than increasing exchange value and yet under capitalism, it is considered valuable. So in a band community for example, if someone was really good at making rafts, then their labor would be raft-making. If they then went out making signs telling people about the superiority of their rafts and how people shouldn't accept rafts made by others, then it wouldn't occur to anyone, even the raft maker that this activity is useful labor... People would just think he or she is really boastful I guess.

So in a communist society, someone could dig holes and fill them back up all day, but in the context of that society, this activity would not be considered labor because there is no common use for such an activity, it would be thought of as a personal hobby.

[Baseball]

if I get your implication here, I think this statement can only make sense within the context of a capitalist world where labor is not valued simply for the use value, but for the exchange value. A large amount of effort under capitalism has no specific use value other than increasing exchange value and yet under capitalism, it is considered valuable. So in a band community for example, if someone was really good at making rafts, then their labor would be raft-making. If they then went out making signs telling people about the superiority of their rafts and how people shouldn't accept rafts made by others, then it wouldn't occur to anyone, even the raft maker that this activity is useful labor... People would just think he or she is really boastful I guess.

So in a communist society, someone could dig holes and fill them back up all day, but in the context of that society, this activity would not be considered labor because there is no common use for such an activity, it would be thought of as a personal hobby.

Its not simply an issue of advertising- the greater skilled raftmaker is providing more to the common good than the lesser skilled one. The community ought avoid the latter and embrace the former.
However, even in the communist society raftbuilding could just ad easily wind up being digging holes and filling them again, even if those rafts are being produced and used.

[robbo203]

The above quote reflects it- there needs to objective ways to prove that ones labor does is in fact for the common good.

Certainly. And the "common good" expresses what people demand. What they demand is, amongst other things, something that is automatically transmitted as signals to the producer units in a communist society via a self regulating system of stock control.

The auto workers are the only people who can have cars?

No. Who suggested such a thing? Auto workers would produce cars for the general public of which they themselves are a part. Production today is a socialised process. That cup of coffee you are drinking at the moment is directly and indirectly the product of entire global workforce when you think about it. You cannot strictly isolate one group of workers and say they made a certain object. Did they make the machines that enabled them to manufacture the product? No Did they prpduce the energy that powered the machines? No. Did they mine the ore out of which the metal was forged? No. Etc etc Production today is a socialised process and that fact stands in glaring contradiction to the private ownership of the means of production. Hence social-ism.

Why is it madness for the people, in a communist society, to democratically vote for everyone to have a yacht?

I believe what I actually said was it would be madness even to attempt to
provide everyone with a luxury yacht and a lamborgini. Why. Becuase it would involve a massive diversion of resources away from the production of much more important things, frankly - things that satisfy our basic needs. You were earlier going on about the subject of opportunity costs. Well there's your answer. The opportunity costs of providing everyone with a luxury yacht and a lamborgini would be totally unacceptable.

Describe the system of allocation and prioritization which supports the functioning communist system

Well is a big subject and I can hardly do it justice in a single response on a forum. However, you might care to look at the link I suggested to Liberlict, for starters:

http://socialistcommonwealth.webs.co...capitalism.htm

[Blake's Baby]

Sorry I disagree. That's is definitely not what "from each according to ability to each according to need" means. There is no suggestion of a quid pro quo arrangement in this statement at all. You are merely foisting one on to it by saying that if you dont work according to your ability you wont be able to satisfy your needs - that is, have access to need "satisfiers"

In fact, what you are suggesting will inevitably return you directly back to the situation descibed by statement "from each according to their ability to each according to their work". You are making access to needs satisfiers conditional upon work contribution. By extension, what you can access will become proportional to your contribution otherwise you end up with an absudity...

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.

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.

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.

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.

[robbo203]

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

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!

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. The 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?

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.

[Blake's Baby]

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...

No. You 'qualify' to take books from the library by joining the library. You 'qualify' to take goods from society by joining society. That's like completely the same.

...
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 ...

From each according to their ability...

...
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"...

From each according to their ability...

...

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?...

From each according to their ability...

...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.




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'm with 'the ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class'. Socialist consciousness cannot become the 'ruling idea' under capitalism, ergo your socialist transformation is impossible.

...
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. "...

Exactly. The transformation happens in the revolution itself. Not before... because the ruling ideas are the ideas of the rulers. See my previous answer.

... 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!
...

Marx, in the quote you've just quoted, clearly says that it the revolution transforms people, not that transformed people make a revolution, so I don't know what you're talking about.

...
On the contrary I think your view is the one that is hopelessly naive - even dangerously deluded. The 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...

No it's the view that things are terribly bad, unlike your view that they're getting better. They're not.

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?




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.

I hope we get to argue it out after the revolution.

[robbo203]

No. You 'qualify' to take books from the library by joining the library. You 'qualify' to take goods from society by joining society. That's like completely the same.

But thats not what you originally said, is it? . What you originally said was this


"from each according to their ability to each according to their work" surely means 'you x-amount of work, you are entitled to x/y-amount of social product, where y=amount necessary for non-productive social expenses'. On the other hand "from each according to their ability to each according to their need" means 'If you work according to your ability you can have access to your needs, and if you do not, you can't'.

Now you seem to be saying that you are entitled to take goods from society simply by virtue of being a member of society - which I agree with. I dont agree with your previous view that you have to work in order in order to be entitled to take goods

From each according to their ability...

Yes , From each according to ability - such ability being expressed on a free and voluntary basis without the mediation of any quid pro quo set up or remuneration whatsoever

I'm with 'the ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class'. Socialist consciousness cannot become the 'ruling idea' under capitalism, ergo your socialist transformation is impossible.

This is absurd. What you are saying is that you have to have a non capitalist society (i.e. socialism) in order for people to become socialists. But how can you get to socialism without socialists in the first place? You cant impose socialism on a non socialist majority. So how do you get them to become socialists if we cant get out of capitalism for want of a socialist majority? You have actually boxed yourself in completely with this argument of yours. There is no way out and what you are suggesting is that capitalism will forever remain with us.

Yes as a generalisation it is fair to say that 'the ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class'. But that does not mean they must prevail forever and forever . That is turning a generalisation into a dogma Your argument seems to be that ruling class remains in power because the ruling ideas of the epoch support it and that these idea are the ruling ideas becuase they are promoted by the ruling class itself . What you are suggesting then is self-fulfilling , self-perpetuating arrangement in which the ruling class and the ruling ideas mututally support each other and work to ensure that no other ideas can ever get a look in. If that was true you would never have had a change from one form of class society to another. would you? Clearly ruling ideas can and have been challenged and if that was not the case the history of the world would have been very diffferent and we would certainly not now be living in a capitalist society

Exactly. The transformation happens in the revolution itself. Not before... because the ruling ideas are the ideas of the rulers. See my previous answer.

Its not a question of whether the transformation happens in the revolution. I dont have any particular objection to that statement though I would also consider the transformation in outlook aids the revolution itself. Its not a one way thing , you know

The real problem, however, is your claim that you can get rid of capitalism and establish socialism without the transformation in outlook happening FIRST. That cant happen and, contrary to what you suggest, Marx's statement in the German Ideology directly contradicts what you are suggesting. Read it again. It says quite clearly that for the success of the cause - i.e. the establishment of a communist society - "the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary" . This alteration Marx goes on to say, "can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; but for the revolution itself to succeed in establishing socialism that alteration must first have taken place meaning people must become socialist before you can have socialism. I dont see how you can possibly argue against this.

Marx, in the quote you've just quoted, clearly says that it the revolution transforms people, not that transformed people make a revolution, so I don't know what you're talking about.

As I explained there are two different conceptions of the word "revolution"
- one, the idea of practical movement in the above sense; the other , the idea of a fundamental change in the basis of society.

As I said. Im quite OK with the idea of people being transformed in the course of a revolution (though this does not rule out transformed people aiding the revolutiuon itself). But for a change in the basis of society to happen - the other idea of revolution - people must be transformed in that sense first of all. There can be no socialism without socialists QED

No it's the view that things are terribly bad, unlike your view that they're getting better. They're not. .

I did not say that, did I? Where did I say things are getting better? Youve completely misread what I wrote. What I was saying was that it was foolish to hold that things have to get very bad economically to induce people to revolt. On balance, the weight of evidence suggests quite the opposite is true. Severe economic crises are more conducive to the spread of conservative and even fascist ideas. The "terror and desperation" that you spoke of that people feel when they face the prospect oif losing their jobs or their homes tends to make them much more cautious about being bolshie. There is a huge amount of evidence in the form of public surveys and the like that supports this claim which I can fish out for you if you want. What such evidence suggests is that those on the left who are pinning their hopes on a recession to bring about an upsurge in revolutionary consciousness are quite misguided in thinking that

[Baseball]

if I get your implication here, I think this statement can only make sense within the context of a capitalist world where labor is not valued simply for the use value, but for the exchange value. A large amount of effort under capitalism has no specific use value other than increasing exchange value and yet under capitalism, it is considered valuable. So in a band community for example, if someone was really good at making rafts, then their labor would be raft-making. If they then went out making signs telling people about the superiority of their rafts and how people shouldn't accept rafts made by others, then it wouldn't occur to anyone, even the raft maker that this activity is useful labor... People would just think he or she is really boastful I guess.

So in a communist society, someone could dig holes and fill them back up all day, but in the context of that society, this activity would not be considered labor because there is no common use for such an activity, it would be thought of as a personal hobby.

Well, people have different abilities in doing the same job. A well skilled raftmaket is contributing more to society than a lesser skilled one. Even in the communist society, the labor of the former would have to be considered of more value than the labor of the latter.

[Baseball]

Yes , From each according to ability - such ability being expressed on a free and voluntary basis without the mediation of any quid pro quo set up or remuneration whatsoever

So people can worj wherever they wish, whenever they wish, and to whatever skill they wish, without any connection to what they may draw from the community pot?