Return-Path: Delivered-To: andy@mira.net From: JulioHuato Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 10:40:39 EST To: miballar@leland.Stanford.EDU Cc: andy@mira.net (Andy Blunden), Cemal@magnet.com.tr (Mustafa Cemal), ysw@mail2.quiknet.com (Yale Wishnik), ktlau127@netvigator.com (lau kam to), annette.schlemm@t-online.de, mclemee@igc.apc.org (Scott McLemee), h.weslaty@lancaster.ac.uk (Hager Westaly), hmeng@athena.valpo.edu (Hao Yu Meng), universe@palmera.colimanet.com (Rafael Francisco), steve@kiwi.gen.nz (Steven Taylor), ozgurn@netas.com.tr (Ozgur Narin), regionx@netconnect.com.au, TSIAMBAS@AOL.COM (Nectarios), defteri@superonline.com (Iskender Savasir), Hipsterdoofus1@JUNO.COM (Kenneth Ferris), pashton@alphalink.com.au (Paul), hipsterdoofus1@JUNO.COM (Kenneth Ferris), dwest@yorku.ca (David Westbrook), DennisNFD@AOL.COM (Dennis Dixon) Subject: Re: economic theory Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com) Mike says, "I don't understand why wages would still be used in a socialist society. Perhaps it's the terminology. Socialism to me means classless." I'm not sure I understand either, but these are my impressions. In my view, a wage is a payment that is somehow proportional to the effort applied. Free associated producers (no classes here, no State either) may decide to pay themselves "wages." The producers as members of the association would assign themselves as individuals a payment somehow proportional to their effort. Why? Maybe because they recognize that they are not ready to distribute the whole social product directly to everyone according to needs. And this is why wages may be necessary. The producers as an association recognize that their level of culture doesn't ensure yet that people would refrain from taking too much while giving too little to society while their joint productivity is not yet sufficient to support such "take as you need, give as you can" system. Think of how even a mature and healthy individual personality can be "incoherent" and need to promise bribes to her/himself in order to keep working or studying or, in harder cases, to put a lock in the fridge to avoid overeating. (I heard that Billy Gates deletes all games from his computer or else he wouldn't be able to work at all. He's the paradigm of the bad guy now-a-days, but don't tell me we, the good guys, don't use tricks like these to push ourselves.) Now, here we are talking about millions of individuals that haven't been able to entirely shed the habits of centuries of class societies, transmited generation after generation. If an individual is "unreliable" to her/himself, is it not justified that an immature classless society may still consider their members as not-yet fully reliable? The socialist "wage-system" wouldn't necessarily exclude the possibility of using the surplus-product in a way that partially offsets the income/consumption-differentiating effects associated with wages. (Yes, I also think that the wage system (and commodity production) has a dynamics that perpetuates and expand itself, and leads to capitalism, etc. But I can't see any riskless path to socialism.) Many goods would be free as long as the association considers to be ready for such give-aways. When they are ready to entirely offset such differentiating effects via direct allocation, they may as well be ready to get done with wages at all. As to the transition, the necessity is greater, of course. Let me pose this question in the following terms. Imagine the workers in the whole capitalist world take political power tomorrow. Suppose they assume power with an overflow of revolutionary enthusiasm, etc. Suppose all people who would oppose the new power fall in the category of "capitalists," and say that capitalists peacefully accept the new power and give up any attempt to reverse the process. They may not cooperate, but they won't wage an active war against the process. You can hardly imagine a more favorable set of conditions for a transition society. However, even though full of enthusiasm and revolutionary energy (which may go a long way towards pushing the process), the political struggle has not radically transformed the "sociological" character of the producers. The direct producers will be an energized mass, but still a mass of heterogeneous classes and layers -- peasants, craftpeople, wage earners, skilled, unskilled, etc. Add nationality, ethnicity, religions, customs, culture ... Now, consider the socialist principle that Mike stated in his last note: "Workers would have to make the revolution themselves." Let's add that they would have to implement the transition towards socialism by themselves too. Notice this principle doesn't say that workers from an underdeveloped area of the world would accept the construction of socialism as determined and designed by the workers in the developed area of the world. Since there's a lot of enthusiasm, the former would accept cooperation from the latter, but the former would still need to pull themselves out of their condition ... by themselves. It is a fact that the productive forces are not evenly distributed in the world. Let's imagine that the allocation of modern means of production and its shipment to any area of the world suddenly stops being a problem. Still, the organization of labor, the skills and culture of producers would be so uneven that the new means of production would be underused, if not misused, by those without the training and culture necessary to exploit them. Education would do much, but that may take generations. Morally, things should not be taken for granted. The revolutionary enthusiasm of the first years would give way to some sort of exhaustion. Unfounded expectations will not be fulfilled. So, how would the workers' state manage to drive the process? You need a leverage to hook the individual interest to the strategic task of building socialism. For these, among other reasons, wages, commodity production, and even capitalist production would probably be tolerated, respected, and even promoted by the workers' state in a transition economy. We may see an old and uggly building with rotten foundations and, with some architectural imagination, conceive how an entirely new building, functional and pretty, would look much better at that same location. We may draw the blueprints of the new building, pursuant not only of the laws of physics but also of aesthetics, and yet showing the blueprints to the old building will not do much to demolish it and to gather and combine the material and resources to replace it. My point is, we should distinguish between what is technically possible and what is socially possible. What is socially possible determines (ultimately) what is politically possible. And of course, if something is not technically possible, it cannot be truly socially possible. Still, I agree with Mike that showing the technically possible uses of the current forces of productions under different (communist) conditions is appealing and should be done. Julio