RE: Mark Jones' excellent quotes and the class struggle for shorter work TIME as a transitional measure......

[Mike Ballard <swillsqueal@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

--- Mark Jones <markjones011@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Mike Ballard wrote:
> >
> > If you return to page 171 of the GRUNDRISSE you
> find
> > the following description of a socialist society:
>
> But it isn't that! This is not at all what Marx is
> doing in the passage Mike
> quotes (from p.172 of Grundrisse).

Well, it begins on page 171 in my copy, Vintage, 1973.
;D

Anyway, the similar, more mature Marx makes this
comment below in his 1875 "Critique of the Gotha
Program".



********************************************************

3. "The emancipation of labor demands the promotion of
the instruments of labor to the common property of
society and the co-operative regulation of the total
labor, with a fair distribution of the proceeds of
labor.

"Promotion of the instruments of labor to the common
property" ought obviously to read their "conversion
into the common property"; but this is only passing.

What are the "proceeds of labor"? The product of
labor, or its value? And in the latter case, is it the
total value of the product, or only that part of the
value which labor has newly added to the value of the
means of production consumed?

"Proceeds of labor" is a loose notion which Lassalle
has put in the place of definite economic conceptions.


What is "a fair distribution"?

Do not the bourgeois assert that the present-day
distribution is "fair"? And is it not, in fact, the
only "fair" distribution on the basis of the
present-day mode of production? Are economic relations
regulated by legal conceptions, or do not, on the
contrary, legal relations arise out of economic ones?
Have not also the socialist sectarians the most varied
notions about "fair" distribution?

To understand what is implied in this connection by
the phrase "fair distribution", we must take the first
paragraph and this one together. The latter
presupposes a society wherein the instruments of labor
are common property and the total labor is
co-operatively regulated, and from the first paragraph
we learn that "the proceeds of labor belong
undiminished with equal right to all members of
society."

"To all members of society"? To those who do not work
as well? What remains then of the "undiminished"
proceeds of labor? Only to those members of society
who work? What remains then of the "equal right" of
all members of society?

But "all members of society" and "equal right" are
obviously mere phrases. The kernel consists in this,
that in this communist society every worker must
receive the "undiminished" Lassallean "proceeds of
labor".

Let us take, first of all, the words "proceeds of
labor" in the sense of the product of labor; then the
co-operative proceeds of labor are the total social
product.

>From this must now be deducted: First, cover for
replacement of the means of production used up.
Second, additional portion for expansion of
production. Third, reserve or insurance funds to
provide against accidents, dislocations caused by
natural calamities, etc.

These deductions from the "undiminished" proceeds of
labor are an economic necessity, and their magnitude
is to be determined according to available means and
forces, and partly by computation of probabilities,
but they are in no way calculable by equity.

There remains the other part of the total product,
intended to serve as means of consumption.

Before this is divided among the individuals, there
has to be deducted again, from it: First, the general
costs of administration not belonging to production.
This part will, from the outset, be very considerably
restricted in comparison with present-day society, and
it diminishes in proportion as the new society
develops. Second, that which is intended for the
common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health
services, etc. From the outset, this part grows
considerably in comparison with present-day society,
and it grows in proportion as the new society
develops. Third, funds for those unable to work, etc.,
in short, for what is included under so-called
official poor relief today.

Only now do we come to the "distribution" which the
program, under Lassallean influence, alone has in view
in its narrow fashion -- namely, to that part of the
means of consumption which is divided among the
individual producers of the co-operative society.

The "undiminished" proceeds of labor have already
unnoticeably become converted into the "diminished"
proceeds, although what the producer is deprived of in
his capacity as a private individual benefits him
directly or indirectly in his capacity as a member of
society.

Just as the phrase of the "undiminished" proceeds of
labor has disappeared, so now does the phrase of the
"proceeds of labor" disappear altogether.

Within the co-operative society based on common
ownership of the means of production, the producers do
not exchange their products; just as little does the
labor employed on the products appear here as the
value of these products, as a material quality
possessed by them, since now, in contrast to
capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists
in an indirect fashion but directly as a component
part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor",
objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity,
thus loses all meaning.

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.


NB here:

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!

I have dealt more at length with the "undiminished"
proceeds of labor, on the one hand, and with "equal
right" and "fair distribution", on the other, in order
to show what a crime it is to attempt, on the one
hand, to force on our Party again, as dogmas, ideas
which in a certain period had some meaning but have
now become obsolete verbal rubbish, while again
perverting, on the other, the realistic outlook, which
it cost so much effort to instill into the Party but
which has now taken root in it, by means of
ideological nonsense about right and other trash so
common among the democrats and French socialists.

Quite apart from the analysis so far given, it was in
general a mistake to make a fuss about so-called
distribution and put the principal stress on it.

Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption
is only a consequence of the distribution of the
conditions of production themselves. The latter
distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of
production itself. The capitalist mode of production,
for example, rests on the fact that the material
conditions of production are in the hands of
nonworkers in the form of property in capital and
land, while the masses are only owners of the personal
condition of production, of labor power. If the
elements of production are so distributed, then the
present-day distribution of the means of consumption
results automatically. If the material conditions of
production are the co-operative property of the
workers themselves, then there likewise results a
distribution of the means of consumption different
from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in
turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from
the bourgeois economists the consideration and
treatment of distribution as independent of the mode
of production and hence the presentation of socialism
as turning principally on distribution. After the real
relation has long been made clear, why retrogress
again?

********************************************************

And with social relations based on wage-labour gone,
labour skills and time are no longer a commodities to
be sold on the market.  Unlike capitalism, where the
worker sells her skill for $8 an hour for 8 hours and
helps producing $500 worth of product over those eight
hours, she now puts in 4 hours and draws 4 hours
(minus deductions for replacement of means of
production, support for schools and so on) out of the
social stores.

For the abolition of wage-slavery,
Mike B)





=====
"Man first begins to philosophize when the necessitites of life are supplied."  
Aristotle

"determinatio est negatio"  Spinoza

"There are no ordinary cats."  Colette

http://au.profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

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