Results 1 to 16 of 16
"To each according to need..."
In communism, would an individual be able to create a product or service and trade it with another individual for another product or service?
I see this as a road to consumerism, and breaking the lack of relationship between production and resources(To each according to need, from each according to ability) that makes communism the fairest and most sustaining economy that it would be. Those more able would have a market that excludes those less abled. And, with any profit making economy, leads to depletion and misappropriation of resources.
Marx did say this in the Manifesto:
"We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others.
All we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it. "
Is that intended to support the right to private trade?
By no means. Rather, it was just saying that you could own a TV and not need to expropriate it to everyone, cause everyone could freely get a TV. It wouldn't necessarily be trade though, just that you can have your own shit.
There would be an expropriation of the means of production, but not necessarily of each individual product (I wouldn't have to share my coat with everyone). But everyone would be able to get a product if they wished.
"I'm not interested in indulging whims from members of your faction."
Seeing as this is seen as acceptable by an admin, from here on out when I have a disagreement with someone I will be asking them to reference this. If you want an explanation of my views, too bad.
What of the original question:
"In communism, would an individual be able to create a product or service and trade it with another individual for another product or service? "
Communism, in its truest sense, would operate according to the principles of reciprocity and mutual aid. Individuals and associations would freely provide goods and services to each other under the conviction and certainty that other individuals and associations would also provide goods and services freely. In this way individuals and associations work produce and serve to meet the needs of other individuals and associations, without requesting anything in return.
This principle of social reciprocity would make trading unnecessary and futile. Of course this principle of reciprocity will not be fully manifested in the great masses of people for a while, including after a revolution, so some kind of remuneration according to labor will be necessary for some time as a transition to communism.
"To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt." - Mikhail Bakunin
"No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution... revolution is but thought carried into action." - Emma Goldman
An Anarchist FAQ
Insurgent Dreams
I always believed Marx said, "You don't own a house, but that doesn't mean strangers can come in willy nilly and sleep in your bed."
You do own things, but not the means of production.
Well, it would be rather pointless, due to the fact that all products and services would be free.
However, if say, you have a shovel, and your friend likes the shovel but can't find one, so he asks if he can have it for say, a different shovel, and it's cool with you, I don't see why that trade couldn't happen. But if your friend didn't care that it was THAT EXACT shovel, then he wouldn't bother trading, but rather just go to a place where shovels are supplied and get the shovel.
"I'm not interested in indulging whims from members of your faction."
Seeing as this is seen as acceptable by an admin, from here on out when I have a disagreement with someone I will be asking them to reference this. If you want an explanation of my views, too bad.
The question is not whether the individual can "own" things, but whether s/he can trade things and, possibly, profit from that trade.
What do you mean 'profit'? Profit is derived from exploitation of labour power, not unequal exchange in a mythical free market.
If I have a sandwich, and you want a sandwich, and I ask you for a hat or a blow-job, we're exchanging the labour I used to make the sandwich for the labour you used to procure a hat or give me a blow-job.
If an individual can't 'own things' then they can't 'trade things' either. Why would we need to exchange sandwiches for hats if you could get a sandwich, and I could get a hat, without trade?
If they can 'own things' they can 'trade things'. 'Owning' presupposes the right to dispose of in the manner you deem appropriate.
Either way, they can 'trade services' - I can paint your kitchen, you can give me a blow-job; there's very little way society as a whole could stop that because no-one but us needs to know there was any reciprocal arrangement.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
Profit is "the excess of returns over expenditure in a transaction"(Merriam-Webster). Profit meaning that after the exchange one party has more than s/he needs. Whether you consider things in your possession to be ownership or not, if one person can take natural resources, add labor to it and then produce something someone else wants/needs, s/he can trade it for something else. Can't that "break" the 'To each according to need...' mantra? People who are more able can participate in a market economy that others cannot. Which leads to overproduction, and misappropriation of resources in the pursuit of profit(acquiring "things").
As for your "no-one but us needs to know" isn't all of communism based on trust and cooperation?
It is a common misconception that Marx advocated a system in which all goods and services would be free. He did not. In several places he talks about distribution using a system of labour vouchers. In one place he talks about distribution according to need. But distribution according to need is obviously radically different to free distribution since it implies that those who need things most get priority in the distribution process.
This is a kind of primitive barter. Each individual exchanges h/hr labor for the labor of another person. I think it is generally agreed that barter was never a dominant economic system. It could work for two individuals, but for a world of 10 billion people? We first have to transition from fully developed capitalism to the first stage of communism (some people call it socialism). It will contain some of the characteristics of capitalism, such as money, wages based on labor value, but it will be controlled by workers, society, people, etc. (from The Gotha Program.)
After that all production will be based on socially rational planning. I personally think the question of how to exchange the products and services has yet to be worked out. Marx could get no farther than labour-notes which he had ridiculed as "time-chits" in Grundrisse andThe Poverty of philosophy.
But individual barter? How do you barter for open heart surgery for your child?
Oh my monkeys.
Yes, that's a good idea, come to a site discussing political philosophy and political economy, and then quote Webster at us. We're liable to take the definition of Noah Webster, rather than the political economists and philosophers who actually, you know, investigated political philosophy and economy.
Come back to this argument when you've read Marx. Or even someone on Marx. Dictionary definitions will not get you far on RevLeft.
Or, as we call it 'capitalism'.
So your question is 'isn't capitalism impossible in communist society?'
To which the answer is rather 'yes, that's kinda the point'.
Obviously pretty much anyone 'can' take natural resources and add labour to them to make something others need. Mostly what stops them is the enforcement of property law. I could go and cut down a tree and start making it into a table - but, if I went and started cutting down a tree, I'd be arrested for cutting down someone else's tree. It's about ownership (possession).
Do you think it was an offer to paint your kitchen for a blow-job?
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
In simple economic terms that indeed is what profit is: sales minus costs; or, the price of goods less costs.
What Marx (expanding on Adam Smith and Ricardo before him) demonstrated is that profit was produced by workers during the process of production. The technical Marxist term for this is "surplus value." It is a value added to the process of production by the worker for which value the capitalist does not pay. This value is a cost (it costs the worker h/hr labor) which does not cost the capitalist anything. This surplus-value or added-value only appears, as money, when the capitalist sells the product. This is why the value looks like it is created during the selling/buying process.
Under communism (to each...from each, etc.) society will own all the means and products of production, thus society will own the surplus value or profit. However, and even the genius of Marx was unable to foresee this, soon all production of goods and services will be done by machines, computers and robots, except for occasional oversight There will be no profit any more from the work of humans (in my opinion), there will no longer be any production for profit and exchange, but only for rational, centrally planned, use.
I personally don't think anyone has discovered how the products will be distributed, whether by labor-notes, Federal Reserve Notes, computer entries on a plastic card, etc.
I would say you've unwittingly described what communism *is*, in a nutshell -- it would be the mass-*barter* of roughly equivalent portions of mass-productive (and lesser) labor, freely and willingly, on fully open-source (collectivized) implements.
People understandably think of barter in conventional terms -- items of roughly equal value exchanged on a person-to-person basis -- but the practice has usefulness, too, once we shift the overall context from one of a commodity basis at a personal scale, to one of a free-distribution basis on a *mass* scale.
What *could* be bartered is the amount of work that one would have to exert in order to get a certain amount of material (mass industrial) production accomplished. Sure, maybe an entire small city needs suntan lotion, but who is really going to step forward and do it for everyone (or a fraction thereof) when they could probably just find some idle-machine time and only put in the time and effort for a batch for themselves -- ?
We should be ready to recognize that the *informational logistics* for a "mass-barter" of everyone's willing labor on liberated implements is easily done with current computing and networking resources -- over the Internet, in other words.
The amount of time in 'transition' would depend on real-world actual conditions and events -- the less time in transition, the better, obviously.
I agree, but I also have a proposal for general consideration, at my blog entry.
People who are new to politics may not readily realize that the issue of a post-capitalist mass production is a complex one, even with the overall socio-political context plainly laid-out and agreed-upon (as described above, for example).
One approach / method for the use of labor notes indexes its use to a determined standard of 'socially necessary labor time', which then serves as a defined 'threshold' -- anyone earning amounts of labor notes *below* the threshold would receive respective proportions thereof of the social production 'staple' deemed 'socially necessary'.
Then, once *above* the threshold, one would be able to freely access any and *all* social production, as for luxury goods produced, etc.
The Free-Rider Problem in Communism
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...0&postcount=33
I happen to be critical of this approach since it -- conventionally -- implicitly assumes a linking / ratioing of labor time (for production) to *consumption* needs and wants.
This is as bad as anything a right-winger would come up with since this formulation ignores the material leveraging of mass production, which multiplies labor effort immensely as compared to discrete needs for basic 'staple' consumption. We should eschew and not-fall for any model that scrutinizes, or measures, according to raw work inputs, since such an approach "hides" the productivity *resulting* from those leveraged work inputs -- instead preferring to focus on the work effort alone, of whatever amount, in a very individuating and moralistic way.
This, too, is another red herring that should be avoided -- the 'doctor' or 'surgery' argument is used since it's at the pinnacle of bourgeois specialization. The argument insinuates that there are no other available approaches to the treatment of health in general, and that one will always be a *hostage* to the prevailing bourgeois paradigm of health and medicine practice.
At the risk of belaboring the point here, I'll continue on this topic and provide an illustrative example....
Suppose a post-capitalist society found that 'socially necessary production' for 10 billion people happened to be 200 billion labor hours per week -- an average of 20 hours per week, per person.
The conventional, individuated approach [1] would be a Taylorist one -- most likely under a technocratic or other bureaucratic elitist administration -- with a general production policy oriented to *increasing* production outputs for whatever grand-plan reason, and tracking work productivity down to each individual, as is done today. This very method of individuated labor tracking would encourage a class-like separation of interests, between those who would be *subject* to the tracking, and those who would *oversee* the labor tracking. While procedures *could* hypothetically be implemented to put the administrative components into a *circular* configuration, so that everyone really *would* 'wash the next person's back', with no top-of-the-hierarchy present, in reality this would most likely devolve first into favoritism and then a full class-like division of interests, or hierarchy.
Any kind of labor-notes-type, work-for-reward method [2] would necessarily run up against all of the *qualitative* complications and complexities that *can't* be easily factored into the tit-for-tat, *quantitative* measurement of a 'labor note' or anything similar. Here we find the issues of permissible youth work age, retirement and senior care, disability status, health issues, etc. -- would we really want to have a 'labor note' standard set in stone that would *ignore* the complexities of actual work ability at the individual scale -- ? If someone *fell below* the calculated average of 20 hours per week would that mean they should be *denied* a humane share of total social productive output -- ?
It's for these reasons that I find all conventional approaches to this topic to be lacking, and why I developed an *alternative* method for a post-capitalist approach to the organization of liberated labor and social production.
communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors
