>>> <JKSCHW at aol.com> 01/26/00 12:01PM >>>
I had said that Marx never expresses any interest in achieving
> equality.
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> 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.
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CB: What you are saying is just an assertion too.
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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.
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CB: He rejects the bourgeois notion of right. But to each according to work is a rough statement of socialist law or right. Marx does not conceive of socialist society as lawless or without rights, including the right to a basic living for everyone EQUALLY. This is radical socialist equality.
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> 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.
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CB: Marx is ridiculing a reform of capitalism, and petit bourgeois radical conceptions. That doesn't mean he doesn't hold a revolutionary critique of capitalism that is based fundamentally on a complex equality of all humans. I suggest you look at _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_ for a full idea of Marx's conception of politics of equality in capitalism and the transition to socialism, and communism, as in the subject of this thread.
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> 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.
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CB: It is you who characterizes this as degradation of all labor. For Marx it is the basis for the class struggle by working classes through history. One could even say that Marx seems to impute an instinct for equality as part of the transhistorical character of struggle against exploitation or unequal treatment of labors as between exploiting and exploited . It is the inequality of exploited and exploiters that drives class history. Establishment of this material equality is the goal of socialism, which Marx is for.
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> Marxist equality is material equality, not bourgeois idealist equality.
Marx is not interested in material equality.
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CB: This is a false assertion.
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He does not want everyone to have the same amount of material stuff, even approximately.
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CB: It is a complex equality. First ,each according to work, which means equal pay for equal work , but inequality in the sense that some work more. Then , to each according to need, which would mean in some senses more "stuff" for those who need more "stuff".
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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).
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CB: You are refuting a simplistic , sort of bourgeois version of equality. Marx's notion of equality is more complex and fitted to the real world, with its diversity. Also, the notion of public property or the basic means of production held by society as a whole for all, is a form of a concept of equality. Each worker enjoying the fruits of her labor IS an egalitarian idea.
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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.
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CB: It makes complete sense to talk of both equal and egalitarian ownership in the relationship of the community , the commons, and the individuals who make up the commons. Marxism projects , not abolition of the individual , but the advance of the individual beyond her condition in bourgeois society, and fundamental to this higher development of the individual is the equality of all in being provided all material necessities or needs AS A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT OR ENTITLEMENT in the new society.
In the larger discussion of this thread, you might want to point to the fact that Marx does conceive that the individual has responsibilities in complementarity with rights in socialism.
> 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.
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CB: I have shown them to you in spades. You have to adjust the way you are thinking about it to "see" them.
CB