>My take on Marx is that he was advocating a society
>without commodity production/consumption, no buying
>and selling. That is, a socialist society's
>distribution would be based on how many socially
>necessary labour hours one put in.
Of course in such a society the only way someone like Marx could have devoted so much of his working life to questioning the very basis of that society, is if it was first agreed that his work was socially-necessary. Otherwise he would presumably need to work as directed, or starve.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas ******************************************************
Whether one puts in socially necessary labour time in or not is up to them in a grassroots democracy. In other words, the freedom to starve would not be taken away in a communist society.
I figure that it wouldn't be too much time out of one's life anyway to put in your fair share of skill and time, as the productive capacity which has been reach already under the dictatorship of the capitalist class is quite sufficient and I'm confident that we can improve on it and reduce snlt even more.
If critiques of political-economy and philosophical speculation are your "thangs", then I don't see why one couldn't do them either in the academy, teaching others or by writing books--both socially necessary. And if you're not up to snuff, you can do them in your own time, which should be quite sufficient--ah for the two hour day.
Poor Marx spent half his life time scrambling around for the odd coin or two which Engels didn't generously pass along. Nobody paid him to write CAPITAL. I suspect that he did make a buck or a pound or two from sales later but nothing compared to his efforts.
Cheers from WA, Mike B)
===== ***************************************************************** "--why do you slack your fighting-fury now? It's hard for me, strong as I am, single-handed to breach the wall and cut a path to the ships--come, shoulder-to-shoulder! The more we've got, the better the work will go!"
One of Sarpedon's speeches in THE ILIAD--The Trojans storm the rampart http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal
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