From: "Greg Schofield" <g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au> Subject: Re: SV: AUT: What could "proletarian socialism" possibly mean? Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 11:41:55 +0800 Harald this is just a short note on what you have written below. On the whole I am very much in agreement with your criticism of labour certificates below (as against Chris on this matter), in effect my thoughts echo your own on this. I do not mean to interfere in this but as the three of us seem to be involved in a larger debate, I thought it the correct thing to do to identify points of accord when they occure at a substantive level. (i have sent the post you were interested in separately to you). Greg --- Message Received --- From: Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba-AT-online.no> To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 04:30:02 +0100 Subject: SV: AUT: What could "proletarian socialism" possibly mean? -----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 Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ Modular And Integrated Design - programing power for all Lestec's MAID and LTMailer http://www.lestec.com.au also available at Amazon.com ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005