From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: spontineity... Re: AUT: marxism vs. leninism
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 22:22:59 -0500


Actually, the materials I sent on Marx'sCritique of the Gotha Program
addressed money and exchange very clearly.  Money is not simply a medium nor
are exchange and trade natural acts.  They are social relations between
people expressing a separation of the producers from control over what they
produce, how they produce it and how they distribute it.  Exchange and trade
imply a market system, which implies alienated relations between human
beings, ie class relations.  They will have to be done away with, not later
but sooner.  Nay, maybe immediately.

What will take their place?  It would be absolutely presumptuous to pretend
to have a concrete answer to that question because that will have to be
worked out democratically by billions of people (or rather, some things will
be worked out locally, some regionally, some globally, but wecannot
predetermine that.)  Your question does not have an answer in theory, it
will be answered in practice only.  At the same time, we have a variety of
different examples from history that will all play some role.

In Russia, the soviets and factory councils organized affairs, not according
to money, but based on giving and taking according to what each place
needed, and that was decided upon by the councils.  Co-ops (and I mean
producers' co-ops, not simply consumer coops) offer some other ideas.
Anarchist communes offer another way of thinking through the problem.
Likely, the forms will both rely on existing networks that come out of
capitalism combined with the transformation of relations into non-alienated
forms.  We have seen alternatives, but we also know that none of them can
survive indefinitely alongside the alienated human relations of capital,
that capital must be destroyed.  What we know does NOT work is some
state-centric solution with planning from above.  This is the
Leninist-technocrat solution that in Russia quickly resulted in piece-wages,
increased workplace discipline, one-man management, destruction of the
factory councils, compulsory unionization and union enforcement of
production quotas, etc...

Clearly, we will not get there from here.  We have to go through massive
struggles which bring to the fore all kinds of levels of working class
self-organization and which break down all kinds of barriers.  To tell you
the truth, people will not be convinced until they have already begun to
solve the problems of regulating their lives in struggle.  One thing we can
do is to propose positive alternatives in struggle, not simply negative
struggles.  This would mean things like student and/or education strikes
involving the creation of alternative schools, based on alternative methods
of education, or alternative methods of healthcare instead of simple strikes
in hospitals.  The unions limit demands to wages, benefits, and rarely,
working conditions.  We can push past that by raising alternate methods of
meeting those services or production.  Only in this process will themass of
people come to believe that they can run the world without bosses.  We will
never convince more than a handful of people by ideas alone (and even those
of us who see it today had to experience something that made us see through
the fog.)

Cheers,
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sharon Vance" <canito3-AT-earthlink.net>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 9:51 AM
Subject: Re: spontineity... Re: AUT: marxism vs. leninism


> That answers the issue of wages as a means of buying things, but what
about
> as a means of exchange? Or as a means of accounting? How would global
trade
> look? I assume we would still need some global trade to create the dvds,
cds
> and machines to play them on, not to mention dialysis machines and other
> life support systems for people in need of them, insulin etc.
>
> And as a means of accounting. If you have ever lived in a coop situation
you
> know the types of fights over the division of labor, who is doing what,
who
> is slacking off etc. Some of these fights do come from our capitalist
> conditioning, but these issues and problems will continue even in a
> post-capitalist society.
>
> Thanks for answering my question. No one else seemed to take it seriously.
I
> think they should. Most people in the US can not imagine a world without
> wages and money, and not taking these practical issues seriously doesn't
> bring them, me included, any closer to seeing a non-wage, no money based
> society as a real, practical possibility.
> Sharon
>
> > From: "Another Brick at the Gap" <satellitecrash-AT-yahoo.com>
> > Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> > Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 13:11:53 -0700 (PDT)
> > To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> > Subject: Re: spontineity... Re: AUT: marxism vs. leninism
> >
> >
> >
> >> If we do away with wages, what do we replace them
> >> with?
> >
> > there would probably be libraries for lots of things
> > that we don't have libraries for right now: dvds, cds,
> > much much more i can't think of good examples right
> > now, and than anything that couldn't be borrowed
> > anything that is a need would just be free, but also
> > some items that aren't needs would be free. i hope the
> > idea of communism as a grueling, spartan existence is
> > gone forever.
> >
> > this is kind of vague, but easy to understand view of
> > how things would pretty much go...
> > in struggle,
> > -Sean
> >
> >
> > ====> > "Read, read, read. Read till your eyes swim; get yourselves right, hold
> > meetings, keep on holding them. To aim high and far is not the problem,
for
> > that is not what distinguishes those who accomplish. It is the planning,
the
> > origanisation, the attention to detail, the tenacity that count."
> > -C.L.R. James-
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
> > http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
> >
> >
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>
>
>
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