>Soviet planners used wage levels as incentives, though I
>suppose some state cap type would say "I told you so" on that news. A
>lot of people who argue that markets are necessary do so because
>planners can't know everything about the present much less the
>future, so some kinds of decentralized adjustment mechanisms are
>necessary. I really don't want to set off another market vs. plan
>debate though.
A wage system keeps workers in a subservient position vis a vis control of the social product of their labour. In the Soviet Union, the Party was in control of planning and most everything else, not the producers. This social relation put up a material barrier to the development of a "free association of producers" and paved the way for the development of the social relation which Marx called Capital.
Karl Marx wrote:
Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour power of the community. All the characteristics of Robinson’s labour are here repeated, but with this difference, that they are social, instead of individual. Everything produced by him was exclusively the result of his own personal labour, and therefore simply an object of use for himself. The total product of our community is a social product. One portion serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another portion is consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion amongst them is consequently necessary. The mode of this distribution will vary with the productive organisation of the community, and the degree of historical development attained by the producers. We will assume, but merely for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour time. Labour time would, in that case, play a double part. Its apportionment in accordance with a definite social plan maintains the proper proportion between the different kinds of work to be done and the various wants of the community. On the other hand, it also serves as a measure of the portion of the common labour borne by each individual, and of his share in the part of the total product destined for individual consumption. The social relations of the individual producers, with regard both to their labour and to its products, are in this case perfectly simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to production but also to distribution.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S3
Best, Mike B)
Wage-slave's Escape http://happystiletto.blogspot.com/
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