"I would disagree that one cannot find the answers for transtion in Marx. Even his suggestion of labour vouchers in the "Critique of the Gotha Programme" is an indication that the wages system should be abolished in a transition from the DOP to higher levels of socialism/communism. What's been missing from most of the official communist/socialist dialogue has been the critique of the wages system and how the wages system itself contributes to the reproduction of bourgeois consciouness............."
Mike, I went to read the rest of your post in the archives, with the quotations from Marx concerning surplus value that you included. Yes of course, SV is the way in which capital is formed from the labour of workers. And you correctly point out that there is no transition to communism without abolition of the wage system.
But that doesn't really address the problems of transition. You seem to be endorsing labour vouchers. But those are only a mechanism, for what? You appear to be saying either that there should be no surplus, or, more likely, that the surplus (i.e. beyond individual workers' susistence) should be returned to the worker, presumably through the mechanism of the labour voucher. But is that really desirable? No commons? Everything belonging to each individual worker? That doesn't seem to be feasible, or a particularly advanced notion of communism. Yes I know this is supposed to be only the lower stage, but it seems a little regressive in some respects. I mean, no infrastructure, no public transport, no global means of communication? These are projects that are normally created out of the surplus.
But given that the above question can be dealt with somehow, I still don't see the way from there to communism, and I didn't see you address that in your post. In fact I don't know what sort of political setup is meant to prevail in the labour vouchers scenario that you mention. Some communists say there is no way of preventing the vouchers from turning back into money and private property again, i.e. from becoming transferable and accummulable as capital.
Today we also have a situation where the majority of humanity (about 4b. people) are city dwellers. I presume we need a way of transferring a surplus of food that is produced, by what are now the food producing classes, to the people in the cities and transferring consumer goods out of the cities to the people in the country. I suppose a modern and very sophisticated variation on the labour vouchers idea, using computers, could accomplish this. But I have no idea what sort of polity would surround all of this or how this revolutionary change would be defended in such a scenario. But further, I don't know how you even see this scenario coming about. Presumably this is to be a worldwide creation, so as to prevent the possibility of it being overrun by a 'neighbouring state' that has not revolutionised itself in this way.
I am not disparaging your post or anything. I just wanted to problematise it. Most communists duck these questions by means of vague references to 'revolution' (simultaneously worldwide or what?) or the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' (ditto), which makes me suspect that they have no clue as to how it could come about. Your further thoughts would be welcome.
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