Socialism means no pay at all. However, there are tons of differents approaches to what's generally called "lower-stage socialism". Most of them do not involve money, but some form of labour credit or rationing the goods according to the needs.
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Socialism doesn't mean equal pay, right?
I know the lower stage of communism features distribution based on contribution and the higher stage is free access to needs, so there technically isn't any equal pay, right? It seems to abolish the idea of payment itself. Im asking because I've seen some socialists say equal pay is desirable or good, but theres nothing in Karl Marx's writing that want equal pay, just free access.
Is this correct or am I missing something?
Socialism means no pay at all. However, there are tons of differents approaches to what's generally called "lower-stage socialism". Most of them do not involve money, but some form of labour credit or rationing the goods according to the needs.
Last edited by DOOM; 7th January 2015 at 21:52.
La dialectique, peut-elle casser des briques?
That's more or less correct. There is proportional remuneration in the lower phase of communism, because Marx recognizes that there will be people who are going to work more hours than others, just due to natural variance in how people work, what jobs they take, prefer to work or can work. That necessarily means there's going to be a slight inequality in "pay."
I know it's probably addressed already in the forums, and I already have a general idea so I'm not clueless, but what's the real incentive other than personal enjoyment of the job in higher stage of communism?
That's it. Work becomes life's prime want, rather than a toiling need. You don't need an "incentive" to do what you want. If there is a task that needs to be done, but no one wants to do it and automation hasn't taken care of it, then we'd need to come together to decide how best to make sure it gets done. It kind of violates the principle, but I like the idea of having an "army" of people that serves in an industrial corps for a year or two, just making sure things are running the way they need to be running or doing tasks that no one is volunteering for but still needs human labor to do. I dunno, there are ways to address the issue.
This is of course after automation of most or a good deal of labor, correct? I find it hard to believe somebody's own enjoyment of work is going to impel them to work to their ability with even modern technology, especially when you apply that to all of society.
Yeah, I edited my post to add this:
Also; it doesn't do to assume that work will be conducted in the same way. I don't think it's going to be merely a case of going in to the same job you had before the revolution and working in the same way. The job can be reorganised to make it more fulfilling, less alienating.
Plus, I think we see a lot of it already happening. People write software and make it available for free, more or less for the joy of it, and/or the kudos. That stuff is definitely work, and yet real people do do it with no expectation of reward, already.
Some of you seem to be confusing Socialism and Communism...
Anyway, the answer to your question is, yes and no.
By "equal pay" people generally mean that the pay is "fair".
"Fair pay" being 'equal' to the amount someone else would get working the same hours at the same job with the same productivity and quality.
Capitalists usually take this completely out of context and believe that this means everyone in the world gets 'paid equally' no matter how much work they do, what their quality is, and etc. This is simply nothing but filthy Capitalist propaganda, of course. They use this as an argument to discredit Socialism, and because they are ignorant of what Socialism really is.
People working two completely different jobs, different hours, or even producing different quality work will get paid differently, even in a Socialist society.
As for the phase of society wherein people take what they need and don't need money, that is called Communism.
I'm not sure why people here are suggesting there is no such thing as payment. People are always compensated for the work they do, no matter what form of society we're talking about. Even slaves often got paid in history.
The difference with Socialism being that they aren't paid in Capital-money, they are paid in a currency that is a direct equivalent of the amount of their labor, as per Marx's Das Kapital. This currency is often referred to as 'labor-notes'.
Last edited by Subversive; 8th January 2015 at 21:47.
There's a trade-off, though, between 'self-determination' (at any scale), and 'collectivism'.
These are *both* aspirations of a post-capitalist social order, yet more of one means less of the other.
In today's society as long as someone can *afford* to do something -- large or small -- they can pretty much go ahead and do it. This 'hobbyist' ethos, though, isn't necessarily *collectivist*, and doesn't necessarily benefit other people, because the person putting out a piece of free software according to their own inclination may have just uploaded something *so* specialized and niche that it's *not* of any use to anyone else. (Or it could be an academic or technical research paper, or whatever.)
So while social *mores* may certainly allow for a fiercely individualistic hobbyist work ethic, the larger society in its *collective* interest may actually be allowing itself to be *taken* by not having stricter social expectations in place for the individual, that *oblige* or *mandate* work that really *does* have a clear social benefit, instead of such discretion being left to the individual themselves.
'Labor notes' is the conventional orthodoxy, but I'll maintain that -- in line with the larger dotp or market socialism -- it *could* conceivably lend itself to commodity-type exchanges and thus to implicit exchange-values.
The response here usually is 'But people would have their own designated labor notes accounts and the notes are never withdrawn or circulated so where's the problem?'
I'll just note that whatever is *bought* with one's own account could then *subsequently* be exchanged for other types of goods, at varying quantities of exchange, and in this way would be a step backward to bartering, black markets, and possibly the use of informal currencies (cigarettes, etc.).
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mar...gotha/ch01.htm
It seems like you're confusing Lenin with Marx.
eta. Marx also didn't address this issue of payment within communism in Capital.
Last edited by Creative Destruction; 9th January 2015 at 03:09.
Seems you may be drawing an unwarrented distinction between 'socialism' and 'communism'.
"Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."
I don't see any mention of a stage called 'socialism' in there, do you?
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."
'Labor Notes' are generally referred to by Socialists, by a certain definition, but in truth there is not a factual definition for this item. In general, I see it, along with many other interchangeable terms, as a word merely to imply money as a non-commodity. A value for commodity exchange, but not being used as a commodity itself.
Though, your argument is still applicable in many cases. But I think we're losing scope here. The fundamental premise of currency alone is irrelevant because the currency is not the sole-means of abolishing Capitalism. The currency is just a method for exchange, and nothing but that. If applied correctly it can be used as a means of countering Capitalism, but the means of applying it is regarding laws and rules and not of the currency alone.
Thus, the 'M-C-M' cycle of currency is not abolished merely by changing the coin or the dollar, but by an entire social-political-economic system which alters the exchange paradigm to instead utilize the C-M-C cycle of exchange.
A labor note alone cannot shift a paradigm. It is merely a note indicating an exchange, nothing more or less. It is therefore the responsibility of the society itself to regulate the process of exchange and therefore deal with the issues of exchange and therefore change the paradigm.
That is the point of the revolution and the establishment of a completely new form of government: To shift paradigms. And certainly not just economic ones, either.
I'm not confusing anything. What gives you that idea?
Marx didn't need to "address this issue of payment within communism".
What issue of payment are you even referring to, exactly? I wrote more than one paragraph and you quoted the entire post. Can you be a little more specific?
Are you just suggesting that he didn't mention labor notes? That is not what I was explaining, if so. I was merely noting that many Socialists these days often refer to 'labor-notes' or some other term as a mechanism of payment, rather than use the term "money" itself which is connotatively tied to Capitalist-money. This was aside from the reference to Marx and not related to it but the former subject in the same paragraph. If this is what you are indicating, I apologize for the confusion.
I feel it is warranted.
Are you suggesting they are the same thing?
Yeah, I do. "The period of revolutionary transformation of the one into the other".
He just doesn't use the word "Socialism" specifically. However, this is obviously what he was indicating here.
What else do you call it?
Did you think 'Socialism' and 'Communism' are synonyms? What would be the point of this? I am confused by your reply.
For a simple answer to the OP's question - you get back from society everything that you need + whatever society can give (within reason) proportionately to the number of labour hours you put in. This way nobody has some special privilege because of a subjective, immaterial difference between the job that they chose to do and someone else's.
You said that "labor notes" is something that Marx talks about in "socialism" but not "communism" (he never makes a distinction, anywhere, of these two, btw, so you're wrong on this point, too. This is a Leninist aberration.)
Marx specifically says that this labor chit scheme should come about in the lower phase of communism. It contradicts your contention. You're: a.) confusing "socialism" for the revolutionary dictatorship and b.) denying that Marx places this labor-hour trade scheme in the stage of communism.
I'm not suggesting that at all. Try reading the passage I quoted. He specifically said that this would be needed in the lower phase of communism.
Don't apologize for confusion. Apologize for being completely wrong in your political analysis.
No, that's what Lenin indicated there. Not Marx. Lenin doesn't speak for Marx, though, so it's an incoherent argument to say that this is what Marx meant. He specifically calls the revolutionary transformation the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat, not socialism. You can better work this out by thinking about it for two seconds:
Socialism is the complete negation of capitalism. Capitalist commodity production still exists in the revolutionary dictatorship. Ergo, the revolutionary dictatorship can't be socialism. It's the process of getting to socialism (or communism.)
Call it what Marx called it. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
There is absolutely no evidence to suggest or imply that Marx thought "socialism" and "communism" were separate things, as in they represented different stages of revolutionary transformation.
Again, no I did not. That was a misunderstanding. I already apologized for the confusion. I was speaking merely in the context of the paragraph, not of the reference to Marx. You're misplacing context here.
A) I'm not confusing this. I don't see you making a clear argument that this is the case.
B) Simply not true. It occurs in both to some degree. It is established in Socialism ('the lower-phases of Communism').
You do understand that Marx used the phrase "lower phase(s) of communism" as a term for Socialism, right? You seem confused by this.
It is becoming clear to me that you seem confused by Marx's use of this phrase. Do you disagree that these are synonymous?
(Insert link to Wikipedia: Socialism. Apparently I'm not allowed to post links yet.)
I'm kind of new here, so I'm not sure how this forum responds to Wikipedia, but this properly points out that Socialism and Marx's use of this phrase are the same thing. I thought this was common knowledge.
I could easily find references to the same in places like marxist.org and such. For example:
(Insert link to Marxists.org's glossary definition for 'Communism')
If you still disagree, please tell me what are your true contentions with this and what evidence do you have to suggest they are not the same thing?
lol
I would possibly indeed do that, if I were the one who was wrong. So I assume it must be you who will apologize?
Incorrect. Blake's Baby was directly quoting 'Critique of the Gotha Program' by Marx.
(Insert link to Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program, Ch. 4 - again I'm not yet allowed to post links.)
It is about the 10th paragraph down from the top. You can't miss it.
Yes, like all men Lenin speaks for himself.
But is indeed what Marx meant when it was Marx who actually said it.
Now you're the one making a distinction that isn't really there.
The formal definition of Socialism is a system that abolishes the private ownership over the means of production. Perhaps somewhere within the revolutionary state this is not yet abolished, like in regards to the USSR, but in such an argument you're ignoring the fact that this revolutionary-period is a relatively short transitional phase to implement Socialism from a social state of Communism. You also forget that there is no specific name for this phase, as it generally just considered to be part of Socialism, even if it doesn't formally qualify under Socialism's explicit definition.
My point being: I see no reason to try to cut semantics like this. You're just being obtuse.
Or Socialism, since the dictatorship of the proletariat exists within the state that is Socialism and the revolutionary element of society only exists for as long as it takes to take power and ownership away from the ruling bourgeois.
Again, I see no reason to be so dry about the definitions. Marx certainly wasn't.
I'd argue that he most certainly did think of them as separate things. So much so that he felt no need to explicitly qualify them as such, only implying it in general terms because he spoke mostly in concepts and theories, not of terms. Such dry definitions were never necessary for him.
I think all of his writings are more than enough evidence to 'suggest' and confirm this. Your objections are meaningless to me unless you are to clarify your position further with an explanation of why you believe they are synonymous terms.
You seem to keep coming back to the thing that confuses all Leninists. Marx never termed the lower-phase of communism as "socialism" as separate from the higher phase of communism. He doesn't make a socialist/communist distinction between the lower phase and the higher phase. He simply distinguishes them by lower/higher. The calling of the "lower" phase of communism as "socialism" only is a Leninist invention. Further, it seems a lot of Leninists also bring "socialism" under the guise of the revolutionary dictatorship, which is wrong itself. There is a user here that does that, named RedMaterialist. I'm sure you two will have a masturbatory field day if he ever comes in this thread.
Nothing in Marx's writings suggests that socialism and communism are two different things, and I challenge you to go through any of his writings and find where he even implies that this is the case. You haven't done so thus far. You've quoted Lenin, but Lenin made an error, so quoting him here isn't going to do your argument any good whatsoever. To that point:
Marx was very clear about his definitions, almost to a fault. Again, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a revolutionary transformation from capitalism to communism. It is still based on a capitalist mode of production -- it has to be because it hasn't abolished it yet. It's in the process of doing so. You cannot have socialism in capitalism, and thus you cannot have the proletarian dictatorship in socialism. Socialism (being communism) requires the abolition of classes. How in the hell can you have a proletarian class in a classless society? It's completely incoherent. Again, think about it for longer than 2 seconds. If you do, you'll realize what you're saying here is complete nonsense. I get the feeling that you haven't actually read Marx, but you've mostly read Lenin's interpretation of Marx.
You're just arguing rhetoric. There is no difference between calling them "lower/higher" or calling them "Socialism/Communism".
This is why it is commonly accepted, Leninists or not.
You just seem to have some obscure bias against Lenin/Leninists and seem to be using this bias to blind you from real discussion.
Do you have a real argument for anything, or do you just like to throw around insults and say "wrong wrong wrong" all day?
I don't need to reply to you. I am doing you a favor by explaining your errors.
He references lower/higher phases of communism many of times.
He very distinctly depicts them as two separate things.
I haven't quoted Lenin. You are just being blind.
He was clear with his concepts. Not with definitions. These are two very different things.
Definitions deal with explicit terminology of single words. Concepts deal with ideas that may go by many different names.
Marx didn't write dictionaries. He wrote theories and social-political documents.
You are in error, again.
To be honest, you seem to be the one more focused on Leninism than I ever was.
Was it not the USSR which held on to Capitalist ideology after their revolution, unable to shrug away the lingering Capitalist mode of production due to an unrealized proletariat? A stationary existence of perpetual revolution. As Trotsky called it: "Permanent Revolution".
So are you arguing that Lenin was right, or are you arguing that he was wrong? You can't have it both ways.
Or are you... like I said, just nitpicking semantics?
There is a direct line you can divide phases between to separate them into cognitive categories.
Just like how an evolutionary path of a species has no clear distinction between minor changes, yet however you can still differentiate between a human and an ape.
Such is the processes of social evolution and the categories of how we define them. The revolution is not clearly cut individually, but in those processes is indeed a change between Capitalism and Socialism. And from Socialism into Communism. The Revolution overlaps both Capitalism and Socialism to some degree, but neither of those two overlap each other.
Make sense? It's simple if you just think about it for a moment. It's how humanity categorizes pretty much everything, from plants to animals to political regimes.
That seems outside of the confines of it's formal definition even moreso than the definition that I was using.
The modern definition suggests that it is merely the change in the mode of production and that it is NOT synonymous with Communism.
Why do you bother arguing rhetoric and semantics? It is pointless. Just understand and be done with it. Historical literacy has no place here. Find the history section if you wish to argue those things.
My thoughts exactly.
So says the one arguing pointless semantics.
I might suggest you do the same...
We have come to an impasse.
I get the feeling you have a Lenin-complex.
Now, stop with the rhetorical games, please. I am not going to bother responding again unless you present some reasoning, evidence, citations, relevancy or anything that might be considered a legitimate argument. I would simply suggest checking the rhetorical games at the door.
To clarify the situation: Again, I'm merely using the modern definitions. Meanwhile, you're suggesting that it is necessary to use only and strictly words directly from Marx, but not giving any reason as to why this is necessary or productive. I argue that it is pointless semantics.
What in the ever loving fuck are you talking about? You quoted from State and Revolution, you fucking moron:
That's not Marx. That's Lenin, from State and Revolution. Marxists.org, while doing important work, are generally Trots (afaik), so it's not surprising they would use this definition (their brackets are insertions, based on Lenin.) It is wrong, though. And you're wrong. You were quoting Lenin.Originally Posted by Subversive
If you're not going to deal here honestly, I'm not interested in having this conversation with you.
