First, I gave textual arguments that Marx rejects equality. These are not assertions but arguments with backing. You cite texts, some of the same ones, and say that these are "direct expressions of interest in achieving equality." But you do not explain how statements that are anti-egalitarian on their face are really, even obviously, egalitarian.
We discussed the labor contribution principle, to each according to his work, which I cited as evidence of Marx's anti-egalitarianism
>CB: He rejects the bourgeois notion of right. But to each according to work is a rough statement of socialist law or right.
But he says that it won't do, because "it is in its content a right of inequality, like every right." And it will be surpassed by a principle, the needs principle, that is beyond 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.
Rubbish. Show me where he says this or anything that implies it. Of course he things that under communsim, "all the springs of productive wealth will flow more abundantly," (CGP) and soi everyone will have _enough._ But here says nothing about equality, rather, he says each will have what she needs.
I think that Marx indeed conceives of communism as tendings towards a society that is lawless, without rights, and inegalitarian--a sort of anarchist paradise. I think he was quite wrong about that, but it's pretty clear that that is what he thought. Again from the CGP: will there a government under communism? He says, don't ask. Ask rather what will perform the functions of a government that are other than class oppression. There can be little doubt that he shared Engels' idae of the withering away of the state. And no state, no laws. No laws, no enforceable rights. Marx would that that is just fine.
Charles invoked the idea of a class struggle to get the full fruits of one's labor." I pointed out that in 1875 Marx ridiculed this idea in the CGP.
Charles says:
>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.
No it doesn't mean that. But you evade the point. He doesn't accept the idea that the worker is entitled to "the full fruits of his labor." Thatw ould be the contribution principle he rejects in the CGP. I note that _here_ this principle is perry bourgeois radical reformism, because Marx puts it in the mouth of the Lasalleans, whom for Charles are therefore Bad, but when Marx enunciates the principles (although to reject it), Charles makes it a "rough statement of socialist justice.
If Marx did accept the idea, he would be a different kind of inegalitarian, because, as Marx points out, different workers have different capacities for work, and woulld therefore get unequal fruits of their unequal labor.
You still have offered no evidence that Marx's views are committed to any kind oif equality, complex or other.
> 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.
Well, I have read the CM a few times. It is an 1848 text, and therefore arguably less authoritative than the CGP, which has some claim to be the priduct of maturer reflection. IIn any case, I do not know the particular parts of the CM you are referring to which suggest that Marx is committed to a politics of equality.
A few passages that come to mind from the CM suggest otherwise.
(1) "The theory of the Communists can be summed up in a single [expression]: Abolition of private property." Not, attainment of complex equality. As i said before, making property common does not imply distributing it equally.
(2) Under communism, when "capital is converted into common property, personal property is not therefore transformed into social property. [Rather] it loses its class character." That is, we'll take away their power, not their stuff. There will be inequality of income and wealth as fara s personal property goes under communism.
(3) Marx mentions a sort of generally applicable transitional progarm with 10 points that he says will suit most advanced countries. Some of the planks are redistributive, a progressive tax, abolition of inheritance, etc. But these are clearly intended not to promote equality but to start to socialize capital, to make property common. The word equality appears only once, with "equal liability of all to labor." I don't think you can makea deep commitment to equality out of that.
So, what in the CM do you have in mind?
Charles said that the notion of equal exhange of labor values described un Capital, vol. I was an indication of a Marxsit commitment to equality. I said I thought that was peculiar to commdity exchange and was a condition of the exploitation of labor.
> 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.
Not through history, but in capitalism. There is no equal exchange of labor values outside capitalims, because you need generalized commodity exchange. And within capitalism, it is the basis of class struggle _because_ it involves exploitation, degradation, and alienation. Why the hell do you think that workers resist and struggle against it? Because they are having so mucn fun exchanging labor power for its value measured in wages?
> 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.
Oh, so if everyone were equally unpleasantly treated, Marx would that that was OK and they would not resist?
> 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.
Well, unequal ownership of productive assets is crucial to the story. But Marx doesn't say the answer is _equal_ ownership, but _common_ ownership. He is a _communist,_ not an _equalist_. And where does he advocate socialism? For him, that was a term for middle-class reformism.
> Marxist equality is material equality, not bourgeois idealist equality.
What does this mean?
> 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".
But this isn't equality. Marx explains _why_ it isn't equality.
You say, oh, it isn't bourgeois equality. It's s copmplex kind of socialist equality in which everything is unequal.
>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.
Well, I'm too dense to see in what sense inequality is equality.
> 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.
It's neither equality nor inequality but commonality, a different notion. The associated produces don't "equally" own the means of production like tenants in common (sorry to anyone who has read so far, this isa legal term)--for one things, you can't break the common ownership and get your equal share.
> Each worker enjoying the fruits of her labor IS an egalitarian idea.
Not of those fruits are unequal.
> 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.
Show me where he says that, and explain away the language where he treats right talk as rubbish.
--jks