Marx and Equality (Was: Why Decry the Wealth Gap?)

JKSCHW at aol.com JKSCHW at aol.com
Wed Jan 26 09:01:32 PST 2000


I had said that Marx never expresses any interest in achieving
> equality.
>
> (((((((((
>
> CB: Yes, he does. To each according to need is a complex equality. To each according to need, or even to each according to work are direct expressions from Marx in the Critique of the Gotha Programme of interest in achieving equality.

This is just an assertion. Marx says that to "each accoding to his work" is a right of _inequality_, because it does not take into account different capacities to work and different needs. He then goes on to say, in order to take accoun of these things, "right would have to unequal rather than equal." But Marx regards "unequal right" as a contradiction in terms, so he rejects the notion of right.


> Also, imbedded in historical materialism and the idea that exploitation of humans naturally begets a class struggle to get the full fruits of one's labor

I suggest you look again at what Maex says in the Critique of the Gotha Programme about "the full fruits of one's labor." He ridicules this programmatic goal of the LaSalleans.

> is based on the assumption of the equality of each individual's labor. The whole logic of Capital, the calculation of value added to the commodity based on equality of labor hours such that the hour of one human's labor is equal to the labor of another is a profound expression of interest in equality.

Yeah, but I would hardly think that the degardation of all labor to abstrct unskilled exploited labor under capitalsim is what Marx would regard as a moral imperative, or any other kind of imperative, for communism. Equality (of that sort) and capitalism go hand in hand for Marx.
>
> Marxist equality is material equality, not bourgeois idealist equality.

Marx is not interested in material equality. He does not want everyone to have the same amount of material stuff, even approximately. Of course he does not want the bourgeoisie to have private ownership of productive assets, but that is not because it would be good if we all owned the same amount of productive assets, or even because private ownership denies the worker the fruits of his labor (itself not ana egalitarian idea). It is because private ownership unnecessarily restricts freedom that he wants to abolsih it. Marx does not want to abolsih it and replace it by _equal_ distribution, but by common ownership (hence "communism"). In that context, it makes no sense to talk of equal or not, it's just common.


> You miss the direct , bold, loud and clear expressions for equality in Marx because you are not reading Marx as a materialist.
>

Well, you haven't shown me any expressions for equality in Marx, direct or indirect.

--jks



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