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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Risk vs. Reward (who gets what under socialism)
Message-ID: <389@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28-Mar-85 17:28:43 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.389
Posted: Thu Mar 28 17:28:43 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 29-Mar-85 01:37:30 EST
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 108

Neal Weidenhofer writes:
> > ...the principle of socialist fairness: "To each according to his
> > work, from each according to his abilities."  [Tony Wuersch]

> This is "socialist"?!?  I had always heard "To each according to his
> NEED."  It sounds like you're half-way to capitalism.

Wake up and smell the coffee, Neal.  Socialism *is* halfway between
capitalism and communism, according to its Marxist meaning.  Here is
what Marx had to say about distribution under socialism:

"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 from economic ones? ....

"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
birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.
Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society --
after the deductions [for costs of administration, funds for those
unable to work, for schools, etc.--RC] 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....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....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*....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 so
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 every is only a worker like everyone
else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment and thus
productive capacity as natural privileges.  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 in so
far 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 not; one has more children than another, and so on and so
forth.  Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal
share 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-round development of the individual, and all the springs of
cooperative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then can the narrow
horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society
inscribe on its banner:  From each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs!  [This was an old socialist slogan before
Marx used it here.] ...

"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 non-workers 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 cooperative property of the workers themselves,
then there likewise results a distribution of the means of
consumption different from the present one.  Vulgar socialism 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?" --Marx, *Gotha Critique*

Richard Carnes