Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 19:47:32 +0200
From: Ilan Shalif <gshalif-AT-netvision.net.il>
Subject: Re: AUT: What could "proletarian socialism" possibly mean?


Hi People.
Some people do not have enough life experience, or insight about
humans nature.

> >
> Ok.  I'm still not sure wha this really means, however.  For example, I
> don't think it was possible to achieve a communist society without
> possibility for abundance and the changes in human consciousness.

The total unlimited abundance is possible only in science fiction.
The limiting factor of libertarian communist social system is consciousness
mainly - the policeman in each person mind.

In the proper consciousness and social environment you could see libertarian communist
relations in communes with various ideologies - from religious to national-leninism.
The relative abundance that came along the years was a contributing factor to their
deterioration....

> I am not sure that people 1,000 years ago were actually really the same in a
> psychological sense and the material preconditions were certainly not there.

The "material preconditions" are precondition only because they limit the
development of consciousness. Communes were around even 2000 years ago.

> > "Labor certificates have nothing to do with money, " you
> > say. I would rather say they are a primitive form of money,

Labor certificates can be a pre-capital form of money if they
are used only for distribution of consumption. As long as they are
only certificates that say you contributed such and such amount
of work and entitled to consume equivalent invested work.

As long as it is not used to buy means of production and work of others
it is just a tool.

> > 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 just lack of imagination. There is no reason the certificates
that say you contributed such and such amount of work in one side
of earth will not be respected in the other side of the world.

You do not need any kind of bureaucracy - just a good universal
accounting system.

Tourists from one side of the world to the other will not have to take
with them all their needs for the traveling...

> > The only thing that
> > could make thwwwem somewhat differ from the money we know being
> > would be if they were made incovertible, the use of Freedoms
> > being made geographically restricted.

For sure they will have to be geographically restricted... I do not think
the moon will be included in their area of validity....

> And again, since none of this can buy another person's labor power or means
> of production, exactly how is it money?  Money has no relation outside such
> things.

To be a kind of devil advocate, I will not see a crime if a person ask another
to give hir an hour of work or so of work for painting on the wall of the room
one live in, in return for an hour or so certificate.

> However, this whole question revolves around the question of whether or not
> we could achieve 'from each... to each'.  In a lot of the world, I doubt we
> could do that terribly quickly.

If you take the to each according to needs in the strict meaning of the
word, it is possible to provide nearly immediately. However, if you
include in it every thing wan would say "I need" in the meaning of 'I wish"
it will never materialize.

>  That will mean that, tokens or no tokens,
> who decides who gets and who does not?

Well, there will always be people mandated to decide this like
in the medical treatment of people.

In a way, in the regular traffic of cars there are regulations that
give priority to ambulances.

> Lack always produces people trying to find alternative means.

The more the harmony in a society and interpersonal relation
the more "civilized" is the behavior of people who want more.

> > There are some quite obvious complexities involved. How much is
> > an hour of work to be worth?

In a libertarian communist society an hour of work will be worth an hour
of work....

> > And who decides the bank or the  market?

In libertarian communist society there will not be a 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.

How come? If 99.9% of work will be done in a socialized production,
and the distribution of products will be from the production point to the
consumption point where merchants find a place?

> > On the
> > other hand, if the "real value" of each hour was tried sought out
> > by other means, what a hell.  I could continue ...
>
> Actually, Marx specifically says that unequal labor will produce unequal
> results and unequal personal 'income'.  So clearly Marx has in mind the
> tracking of real labor expended, which may be difficult for us to see, but
> which may be rather simple in many contexts.

The above is clearly not libertarian communist approach to freedom, equality
and solidarity. If the freedom hour converted to work of a strong wise fast ones
is "compensated" more than the hour of a weak dumb slow ones, we better
go to do something else.....

> Maybe this is the wisest approach.  As I said, I am not sold on the 'two
> stages' notion since we live in a vastly different world.  What may have
> made sense 125 years ago may not make sense today.  And in either case, the
> problem of distribution will be largely resolved by how communist society
> develops and on what material basis, which today is much higher than that of
> 125 years ago.

I think that the idea that one hour of one person is equivalent to one
hour of any other is a principled one. It is not conditioned of the level of
development of the economy. It is just expression of the essence of
what a person have in mind regarding social solidarity.

In a way, you either support 100% solidarity - libertarian communism
or you support the right of the fittest to get more.

> > 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.

The less alienated you are, the borders between labor time and free
time are less and less formidable. However, there will always be some
tasks no one will do on hir free time...

> > 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.

> Yeah, hard to say.  But all of this is rather speculative and Ilan's
> perspective has to take into account the subsidization by a capitalist state
> and a host of other issues, so it is a complicated 'example'.

It is not so speculative as it is based on hundreds of communes and few
generations... The fact that the existence of the communes was possible
because theirs role in the settler colonialist project is beside the point.

The subsidization was mostly in the form that they were less exploited
so much as they would have been other wise.

The problem of the inter relations between the communities will not be restricted
to the marginal case of travelers... No one can imagine isolated communities
who produce alone every thing they need.

The expression of cooperation, equality and solidarity all over the world will mean
lot of transfer of products from place to place. Some of it will be one directional
for a while, for long or forever, but most of it will be bi-directional. I just think that
when every thing is equal, communities will give the equivalent of what they get
with regard to the hours of work invested in it.

Between the communes was a kind of "returning work days".
according to this, I worked for a while in a neighboring commune
in the bananas plantation, and in another commune in oranges picking...

> > 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.
>
> Hmm...  Won't get rid of capitalism without that last bit anyway, I think.
> But true enough.

Ilan
EMAC (East Mediterranean Anarchist Collective in construction)
http://www.shalif.com/anarchy/
http://www.shalif.com/psychology/
Tel-Aviv 61132 ISRAEL (Occupied Palestain)

Please visit
http://www.matzpun.com/
http://www.petitiononline.com/ssc2001/petition.html




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