File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-04-05.230, message 1


Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 22:56:27 -0500 (EST)
From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: LOV and state capitalism



Substantiating my substantially correct view. I fail to see how Lew can
counter the proof that follows:
   
   What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has
   developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it
   emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect,
   economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the
   birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly,
   the individual producer receives back from society -- after the
   deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has
   given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the
   social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of
   work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part
   of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He
   receives a certificate from society that he has furnished
   such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the
   common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social
   stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor
   cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one
   form, he receives back in another.
   
   Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates
   the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal
   values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered
   circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because,
   on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals,
   except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution
   of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same
   principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a
   given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of
   labor in another form.
   
   Hence, equal right here is still in principle -- bourgeois right,
   although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while
   the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the
   average and not in the individual case.
   
   In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly
   stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is
   proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the
   fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.
   
   But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and
   supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time;
   and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or
   intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This
   equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no
   class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone
   else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus
   productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right
   of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very
   nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but
   unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if
   they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard
   insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken
   from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are
   regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything
   else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not;
   one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with
   an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social
   consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will
   be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right,
   instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.
   
   But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist
   society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs
   from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic
   structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
   
   In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving
   subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and
   therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has
   vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's
   prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the
   all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of
   co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the
   narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and
   society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability,
   to each according to his needs!

[Excerpt from Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program.]

				* * * 

Andrew Austin   





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