> Yes, the soviet economy was a system of exchange. At no point did
> the fundamental system of the wage in exchange for labor get
> replaced, nor did the system of workers purchasing their primary
> needs get replaced. No doubt, there were some different form of
> exchange occurring on the black market, and with more regularity in
> the agriculture sector, but the official logic of the economy never
> abolished the commodity form. This is a different question then
> the one of who is involved in controlling relations of production.
>
[I was on the road yesterday, so I'm only getting to this now.]
I don't think this quite works. Yes, the Soviets paid wages for labor - but as opposed to what? In Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx sets out to describe how "the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production" works, after capitalism is overthrown and a post-capitalist political order consolidated:
> What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has
> developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it
> emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect,
> economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the
> birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly,
> the individual producer receives back from society -- after the
> deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has
> given to it is his individual quantum of labor....He receives a
> certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount
> of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with
> this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of
> consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount
> of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back
> in another.
So under communism, Marx says, workers *are* paid for their labor, using labor certificates. Now, the Soviet Union used money rather than labor certificates. But just like labor certificates, the "money" was not legally permitted to be used to acquire financial assets, credit, or means of production - only means of consumption. So, logically, if every worker had simply been paid the same standard hourly wage denominated in this "money," it would become a labor certificate in all but name. (In fact, Engels discusses the possibility of using gold coins as "disguised labor certificates" in Anti-Duhring.)
So why didn't the SU eliminate pay differentials? My understanding (Chris?) is that it, along with every other centrally planned economy, struggled at various moments with the issue. Every one of these countries, from East Germany to China to Cuba (how many countries? 15? 20?) at various times experienced debates between those who insisted on narrowing/eliminating differentials on Marxist grounds and those who argued that such equality wasn't practical because incentives were needed.
Yet according to Marx, the whole issue of incentives (along with many other thorny problems) was supposed to gradually melt away after, and as a result of, the establishment of "the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production":
> [The right to equal labor-certificate pay for equal labor-time] is
> therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every
> right.....[O]ne worker is married, another is not; one has more
> children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal
> performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption
> fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer
> than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of
> being equal, would have to be unequal.
>
> But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist
> society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs
> from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic
> structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
>
> In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving
> subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and
> therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has
> vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's
> prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the
> all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of
> co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the
> narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and
> society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability,
> to each according to his needs!
So I come back to Charles, who asked why a new system of motivation couldn't be developed other than competition/private gain. I gather that his view is the traditional view of socialists who want to abolish the market: E.g., "People are motivated by private gain under capitalism because capitalism is a system based on private gain. Change to a system based on common effort and common reward and people will come to be motivated by the advancement of the common good rather than by private gain." I responded: You can stop rewarding people for various deeds, but it's hard to find evidence (e.g., from the SU) that this will have a reliable or predictable effect on people's motivations.
[Disclaimers: (a) I don't believe economic motivation under capitalism is adequately described by the phrase "private gain"; I use it under erasure, and for shorthand. (b) I actually do believe social/economic structure affects the pattern of economic motivation, of course. I just don't think it does so in ways that are predictable or automatic enough to render it safe to seek a change in structure when the new structure, in order to properly function, itself requires and presupposes the rapid emergence of the new, predicted pattern of motivation.]
> To follow in Carrol's tradition, you might want to look at the
> Postone book, which criticizes 'traditional marxism' for tending to
> focus on distribution, rather than the production process itself.
>
I've been reading a long interview with Postone in the new (Spring 2009) issue of South Atlantic Quarterly. (Anyone who wants a copy, email me and I'll be glad to send you a pdf.) When I read this sort of thing, the following thoughts come to my mind. Warning: I don't claim I'm being accurate or even fair when I have these thoughts, I'm just honestly describing the thoughts as they occur to me.
I get the feeling that there exist (at least) two kinds of people in the Marxist orbit. Let's call them type A and type B. Type A people reacted to world developments of the past 40 years by making a certain number of adjustments, of particular kinds, to traditional marxist/socialist ideas. Type B people tend to see those particular adjustments as a surrender or betrayal or voiding of the marxist/socialist ideal, or as an accommodation to liberalism/capitalism/bourgeois thought. Type A people are divided and ambivalent on the question of whether, and to what extent, these accusations are valid.
But Type B people have inevitably made certain adjustments of their own. They have reasoned that if they could only attain a deeper understanding of the underlying philosophical foundations of Marx's ideas - i.e., figure out what Marx *really* meant - then they could make sense of the disasters and disappointments of the last 40 years without having to make the Type-A adjustments themselves. The publication of the Grundrisse, the rediscovery of the young Marx, and the revival of Western Marxism were all involved in this quest in different ways.
The typical outcome of this intellectual path is that certain politically crucial aspects of the traditional conception of Marxism/socialism are protected and preserved. Revolution is the only path; the market must be abolished; destroying capitalism must entail a total and complete break with the past; etc. But to avoid grappling with recent history, this is achieved through a sort of escape forward into ever-escalating levels of abstraction. The more abstract the reconceptualizations of ideas like capitalism and socialism become, the less relevant the concrete historical experiences of the last 40 years appear. So it becomes possible to argue that precisely no lessons should be drawn from recent history - except the lesson that the left never properly understood what Marx really meant anyway, so its historical experience turns out to tell us nothing about Marxism, conveniently.
This is all thrown into relief for me when I read Charles. I feel like I immediately understand what Charles is talking about when I read his posts. His conceptualizations of capitalism and socialism are the traditional ones that I'm familiar with. On the other hand, when I read Carrol I feel like I have no idea what his idea of capitalism or socialism means or looks like. For Charles, what makes capitalism capitalism is, very roughly, the private ownership of the means of production by capitalists who hire wage-workers and compete in a market. For Carrol it's a system where Guatemalan dollmaking changes the meaning of Singaporean flour-milling. For Postone, it's a system where capital is a totality. (I think.)
It should go without saying that there are many other types of Marxists, and that not everyone interested in Marx's philosophical foundations falls into Type B.
SA