> ed Winslow
>
> "From each according to his
> : ability, to each according to his needs!"
> :
> : That such a principle proved impracticable in the former Soviet
> Union
>
> : doesn't invalidate this claim since the requisite individuality and
>
> : developmental conditions didn't exist there. In fact, they have
> never
> : existed in any community.
>
> ^^^^
> CB: Actually,they have existed in pre-class communites, "primitive"
> communist communites, as in the Western Hemisphere before the
> Europeans
> got here, or many parts of Africa, Australia; everywhere before the
> rise
> of "civilization".
>
> That's part of why we know it is not contrary to human nature to
> organize society on this principle. It existed for most of the time of
> human society, 200,000 years before class society started.
How can this claim be made consistent with Marx's claim that the principle "only" becomes practicable when the conditions specified in the preamble have been met, conditions which include "the all-round development of the individual" and with his claim that such fully developed individuals, "universally developed individuals,"
"are no product of nature, but of history. The degree and the universality of the development of wealth where this individuality becomes possible supposes production on the basis of exchange values as a prior condition, whose universality produces not only the alienation of the individual from himself and from others, but also the universality and the comprehensiveness of his relations and capacities"?
Ted