Eric wrote:
> How do you separate capitalist command over labor
> from labor itself?
You can't. Capitalist command over labor (or rather, the subsumption of goods production to the imperatives of value creation) *is* the domination of people. That's why communism is unthinkable without the abolition of wage labor.
> But here you have, just like anarchism's fantasies
of
> decentralized utopia, decided in advance
requirements
> for how a future society should operate.
Yes and no. I have a vague idea of what I want in a future society, at least from the viewpoint of my own self-interest. I like washing maschines, laptops, a sewage system, and large metropolitan areas. I also don't want to waste my time deciding how the structures delivering such services operate. I'd much rather occupy myself with food, drink, sex, books, film, and music. If part of the deal was that I also had to sweep subway trains for 4 hours a week, I suppose I wouldn't object too strenuously.
> Really? I never pegged you for a Lenin lover.
I don't care for LeninISM, but I am also opposed to demonizations of Lenin, certainly a remarkable figure in 20th century history. But this isn't relevant to the current discussion.
> This was exactly his plan: Taylorism in the factory
> and redistribution by the state. But it's utter
crap.
That's exactly what I criticize. Many otherwise heroic figures in the communist movement assumed one could have communism while retaining wage labor and the state (i.e., the domination of people). One can't. The absence of those two things is what makes communism communism.
> Indeed. Parecon retains waged labor and money as the
> general equivalent. How revolting.
Eric, I could embrace you. The abolition of the general equivalent, aka money, aka abstract labor, is precondition number one for transcending capitalism. Unfortunately, only a handful of people, on this list myself, Carrol, and Yoshie, maintain this openly. Although I suspect Doug knows this too. I told Michael Heinrich a few weeks ago that there is a brilliant American financial journalist who actually managed to figure out in a book from 1998 the centrality of Marx's analysis of money and finance in the critique of political economy, and who managed to do so without reading Hans-Georg Backhaus and Helmut Reichelt! So I imagine it's not too hard to figure out for careful readers of Marx.
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