>There is nothing wrong with coercing people to work (by formal or
>perhaps, as JS Mill onserved in another context, even more effective
>informal) methods, any more than there is with coercing people to
>pay taxes to provide public goods --
Except that the social mechanisms necessary to coerce people corrupt those whose function it is to do the coercing. In a social system based on class rule, all those things are a necessary evil, but in a socialist society such coercion, whether by brute force or economic force, would be unnecessary.
>I'm not stuck un unequal incomes, if people can be coerced to do
>necessary work they don't want to do and wouldn't otherwise do by
>other other means that aren't even even more obnoxious, I have no
>objections. I also don't see any point in dicsussing that level of
>institutional design for a far-distinat future society that will
>make its own decisions.
Yes it is, and it isn't a question of whether to use economic coercion, as under capitalism, or whether to revert to a more primitive system of coercion. The whole point of socialism is to advance. Socialism isn't conceived as a new and more sophisticated form of class rule, but a whole new form of society. One without classes, hence without class rule.
Those people who demand that such a society maintain some form of coercion just don't get it. You can't have people being ruled over without having rulers.
>As I said, I don't rule out that after several hundred years of a
>solidaristic society (where, however, coerces work from the lazy),
>that such coercion may not be necessary. I think the prospect barely
>worth contemplation.
On the contrary, it is the burning question.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas