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Communism is not the social allocation of individually produced goods of value; rather,
communism is the social allocation of collectively produced goods of value.
The condition for joining a cooperative of associated producers is that what is
collectively produced will be allocated according to the individual needs of each and
every direct producer, according to the conscious design of the partnership.
Communism is not about redistributing to others what you have produced by your
own solitary labor. Communism is itself a democratically planned formula for the
rational distribution of socially produced goods, either according to individual
merit/work, or according to individual need/want.
If an individual is a partner in a productive association, then that individual's labor
is not solitary labor; rather, it is associated labor performed in solidarity with other
associated producers, with all the other partners who have joined the association.
In capitalism, how hard one works has no empirical effect on how much one earns
by actual productive labor. In early-phase socialism, according to the marxist school
of socialism, how hard a person works will have an effect on how much that person
receives as earned goods of value; while in higher-phase communism, how hard a
person works will have no significant or indicative effect on how much that person
gets from the commonwealth. If early-phase socialism cannot make progress
towards mature-phase communism, perhaps because of human nature, then we
will be arrested at the early stage of socialism, which will be a class society with
income differences based upon the work-ethic, the productive merits, of each person.
Early-phase socialism is a kind of merit system; while really-existing capitalism is
only a money system. Ideological capitalists believe that a system based on merit,
and a system based on property are identical. They believe that a true plutocracy would
be a meritocracy. But, they are fools for believing this; they are fooled into thinking that
a capitalist plutocracy is also a kind of meritocracy.
Most wage workers work very hard for the good of their employers. If today's wage
workers eagerly and willingly produce the private profits of their employers, then is
there really any valid reason to believe that the workers in a future socialist republic
will not just as eagerly produce the surplus that will be needed to sustain an affluent
and prosperous democratic commonwealth?
There have been ideological capitalists who have claimed that they need more than
I need, or more than what most people need. There was one ideological capitalist,
in a conversation, who made the claim that he needs both a private yacht and a private
jet. It seems that those who believe in capitalism are precisely the ones who like to
think that they need more of everything than the average person needs.
I'm not a capitalist. I earn the income that I need in order to provide for myself some
of what I need. I do have some investment earnings; but, most of the income that I
make is income that is earned by personal labor, not income from owning property.
Capitalism divorces production from reward because the class of direct producers
earn far less reward than the class of private proprietors.
Those who are able to produce are the producers, while those who have need are
the consumers. It is very likely that, in a future socialist-communist society, there will
be more consumers than there are producers, because there are, more than likely,
going to be infant, minor, elderly and disabled consumers in a possible future
socialist-communist commonwealth.
Consumers of value, who do not engage in value-producing labor, do not produce
value.
There are many who say that socialism sounds good in theory. How cansocialism
sound good in theory, if socialism cannot be noble, decent and good in practice?
"All true work is religion."
-- Thomas Carlyle
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Posted by rallen2 on 2008-02-23 20:59:13 | Rating: | Views: 40
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