> I didn't say anything about "crude communism," an
> expression which does not occur in the Critique of the
> Gotha Program, but only in the much earlier Paris
> Manuscripts. And is described in totally different
> terms from the "lower phase of communism," which does
> occue in the GCP. The difference is that "crude
> communism" is a vulgar leveling, whereas the "lower
> phase" is just the period of communism where the
> principle To Each ACcording to Hois Work applies,
> before (as Marx imagines) the forces of production are
> unfettered. abundance reigns, and the the higher phase
> of communism is introduced with the princople To Each
> According to His needs. The former "work" principle is
> clearly describeda s the correct principle for the
> lower phase of communism -- as well as for bourgeois
> society, thogh unrealizable under bourgeois society.
Like the section from the EPM on "crude communism" and as is explicitly claimed in the passage I quoted, the Critique of the Gotha Programme is describing "the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society."
> 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
> birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly,
> the individual producer receives back from society -- after the
> deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has
> given to it is his individual quantum of labor.
The beginning and the end of the EPM passage also identify the "crude communism" described there with the "first form" of communism, "the first positive annulment of private property."
> communism is:
>
> (1) In its first form only a generalisation and consummation of it (of
> this relation)
> The first positive annulment of private property — crude communism —
> is thus merely a manifestation of the vileness of private property,
> which wants to set itself up as the positive community system.
The distribution principle the EPM passage claims would characterize this first form differs from the one set out in the Critique of the Gotha Programme - "equality of wages" versus "individual quantum of labor." But this is irrelevant to the point I was making.
That point was that the principle manifests the economic, moral and intellectual backwardness that continues to characterize communism in its "first form" when it is "still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges." Though it's an "advance" on the distributive principle operative in capitalism it retains a "crude" and "brutish" aspect.
Thus the EPM passage connects the principle it claims will characterize the "first form" - "equality of wages" - to "greed" masquerading as "general envy."
So the principle isn't "correct" if you mean by this a rational principle of distributive justice appropriate to this first form of communism.
If this first form were to be so crude and brutish as to retributively inflict suffering as punishment (a claim about it that Marx himself doesn't make), it would be a manifestation of the "vileness of private property" that continues to characterize that form, rather than the application of a principle of justice rational in the context of that form.
Marx makes Shane's point about attempts to rationalize "retributivism."
He says of Hegel's "seductive" attempt to do this by means of a theory that recognizes "human dignity in the abstract" (this is the seductive/attractive aspect) that It's "only a metaphysical expression for the old jus talionis: eye against eye, tooth against tooth, blood against blood." (It's this feature of Marx's treatment of the theory, by the way, that justifies "specious" as a description of the theory as a whole since, though the recognition of "human dignity" in the abstract makes it "attractive," it's only "misleadingly plausible or genuine but actually wrong or false" - it's "misleadingly attractive in appearance" - i.e. it's "specious."}
A theory that is a "metaphysical expression for the old jus talionis" can't provide a rational justification for punishment in any society including the first form of communism. In the latter community it would itself be an "infraction of its vital conditions" (as opposed to a defense against such infraction) since in that community all barriers to full human development are supposed to be removed. Retributively inflicting suffering isn't positively developmental for either children or adults.
Ted