Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 13:27:59 +0100
From: Lew <Lew-AT-dialogues.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: The Illusion of State Socialism


In article <v02130502afb61f9eea01-AT-[136.152.76.151]>, rakesh bhandari
<djones-AT-uclink.berkeley.edu> writes
>
>Now as for the illusion of state socialism, I want to make a more
>contemporary point first. It seems that even the revisionist movement for
>income equity to be achieved through the social wage (which seems to have
>always been less in fact than the taxes the working class paid anyway) has
>been now simply repudiated.
>

I agree about the illusion of state socialism. However, in Marx's theory
of the state the upkeep of the state is financed by taxes on surplus
value, or incomes derived from surplus value. In the long run taxes are
a burden on the capitalist class only. Wages and salaries (not some
theoretical gross, but what is actually received, what the employer
invests as "variable capital") corresponds more or less to the cost of
maintaining and reproducing the working skills which employees sell to
employers. 
-- 
Lew


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