From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no>
Subject: SV: AUT: What could "proletarian socialism" possibly mean?
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 04:30:02 +0100



-----Opprinnelig melding-----
Fra: cwright 
Dato: 26. mars 2002 19:05
Emne: Re: AUT: What could "proletarian socialism" possibly mean?


First to Greg, could you please resend  your reply to me
as I managed to delete all my e-mail during a reinstallation.

So to Chris. A few smaller points to begin with before
turning to your comments about labour certificates, a
question we appear to see quite differently.


My use of the word banality  was not intended as a critique
of  Marx.  Banalities need to be stated too, and Karl
articulated himself well. My objections -- apart from those
against the parts of the "Critique of the Gotha Program"
explicitely stated --  were however foremost addressed to
those who turn his text into some historical law we have
to abide to, rather than pointing to the obvious
weaknesses within the text.

So to my banality, at least I think it to be one, although not
all would agree me in this. Essentialist it may be but I see
no reason why people living 200, 500 or a thousand years
ago should have been born with less human potentials
for  bringing about communist relations than we are. That
concrete, historical, socio-material conditions, containing
the ghosts of the past, in different periods put up greater
or lesser obstacles is another matter, and the difficult part.
But communism was always possible. Likelyhood is
another thing all together.


                                        * * *

In a comment to Greg, you write: "This is very clearly not
about a state within communist society, although contra
Harald, Marx prolly did suspect that larger means of
organization would exist for coordinating certain social
functions on a global and regional scale."

I will at this point leave it to others to argue whether Marx
did or did not think of the first phase of communism
organised as a state. He is not on the list to contribute
anything further on this matter. More intersting is the
question surrounding "larger means of organization ... for
coordinating certain social functions on a global and
regional scale."  I consider forms of co-ordination on
regional, continental and global scale to be an absolute
condition for the creation of communist social
relations. But if these are gonna have the force needed
both in functional and emotional terms, and not to immediately
undermine our ends, this whole cannot exist as the
fragility of centralised power but must glued to together
at numerous points on the social basis of decentralised
power, which is the only form in which
collective power can maintain itself.


                                            * * *


My  rejection of "two stages" does not involve any belief
in  a sudden transformation to a world free from every
conceivable "sin" of the past. There will be problems and
challenges enough to go around.  And the poets will still
be able to write down those words about young and old
broken hearts.

                                            * * *


"Labor certificates have nothing to do with money, " you
say. I would rather say they are a primitive form of money,
and as such also pretty useless if you do not tend to be
restricted in one small community for the rest of you life. 
On the other hand, if they are generalised, and I have
hard to imagine that marx thought of anything else, they
will soon aquire every aspect of what we know as money
and a life of their own, with a full blown bureaucracy, means of
coercion  and radical alienation attached. It is all to easy
to imagine the fruit of the first phase scenario in "The
Critique of the Gotha Program" as state capitalism, with
wages, income taxes, a state bank, etc, or to put it other-
wise, as what is outlined in more detail in the
Communist Manifesto.

In your reply to Greg, you write . "Nowhere in this whole discussion
does there exist a place for the capitalist, for the expropriation of
alienated labor.  Nowhere does alienated labor exist in Marx's
entire discussion here.  I can only suspect that anyone defending
the idea that 'labor certificates' or 'tokens' equal wages or money
does not understand that money and wages are FORMS of the
capital-labor relation, not 'things'."

"Nowhere in this whole discussion" does not mean there would no
place for such as a consquence of they operating in the world
outside Marx' letter. Nowhere in Proudhon's entire discussion on this
topic, as far as I can remember did there exist a place for the
capitalist either, but none the less the fruit, as somebody argued ...

Now we can imagine labour certifcates in the form of rationing
cards or food stamps. This card give so and so the right to
recieve such and such amount of these specified things, and as
with any cheque there would have to exist the possibility to cheque
the authenicity of the card at those who issued it. Even if electronic
credit cards might be closer to what Marx had in mind. With
tokens, let us call them Freedoms, things become clearer, as
no personal names are stamped on them. The only thing that
could make them somewhat differ from the money we know being
would be if they were made incovertible, the use of Freedoms
being made geographically restricted.

There are some quite obvious complexities involved. How much is
an hour of work to be worth? And who decides the bank or the
market? You would protest, and say, there is no mention of any
market in the text. But if each hour of work is to have the same
value, regardless of what is actually produced within that hour, a
black market and a merchant class would soon appear. On the
other hand, if the "real value" of each hour was tried sought out
by other means, what a hell.  I could continue ...

Personally, I also always imagined that going beyond capitalism
would further blur the borders between labour time and free time,
not make them appear more self-evident, which would tend to
indicate that the former was still a pretty saddening affair. There is
another far more sympatic way around this outlined by Ilan on the
background of experience – but there within the radically different
framework of "from each according to ... to each ... needs" –  where
labour could be said to be defined by the hours each of those so
capable have to put into provide for the collective needs of the
community.  What is unclear fro me here is what happens when
you go outside of the community.

To me it is obvious that the communist principle must apply globally
and must become the dominant practical principle from the very
beginning. Some pockets here and there locally putting into force
some degree of accountancy morals, will not do much harm but 
there is no way around that all-superior currency called "a degree
of mutual trust (and interdependence)" if we are to
move beyond capitalism. 

This is too brief and leaves much untouched but it is none the
less what I will post now.  

Harald



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