[lbo-talk] The SMB in a socialist economy?

Bill Bartlett billbartlett at aapt.net.au
Sat Feb 28 21:46:35 PST 2009


At 9:52 PM -0500 28/2/09, SA wrote:


>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.

I would suggest that the reason these countries didn't eliminate pay differences, or indeed achieve much of what is needed to make a socialist society, is that these societies simply didn't have the physical means to do so. Or indeed the social means. They were under-developed, both in the means of production and culturally, in that they were hardly out of feudalism.


>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":


>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.

This is hardly surprising. The Soviet union suffered from shortages. Its more difficult to sustain selflessness when people are starving. Whereas when there is plenty to go around and everyone knows there is plenty to go around, in other word when there is universal economic security, socialism is possible.

On the other hand, when the material conditions create universal economic security, it is capitalism that becomes impossibly inefficient. To the extent that artificial scarcity must be created to "motivate" the working class. This phenomenon was the basic problem behind the western stagflation of the 70's. Workers were too secure, workplace discipline was going to hell in a hand-basket. Productivity was impossible to maintain, because the working class had too much economic security (for capitalism).

The solution was found of course. It wasn't rocket science what had to be done.

In summary, just as socialism cannot be made to work when economic insecurity is necessitated by the degree of development of the means of production, so the obverse also holds true. No big mystery. No insurmountable problem of human nature makes socialism impossible under any conditions. In fact I can't help thinking that Charles is right that socialism is the natural form of social organisation for homo sapiens. That class society is the temporary aberration necessitated by particular material conditions.

People tend to revert back to form under certain conditions. For instance following the recent Victorian bushfires, it seems that many shopkeepers in the small towns affected, simply gave away their stock to hundreds of refugees who had fled their burning homes. The refugees had left in something of a hurry, not stopping to collect their credit cards, wallets, or even their ID in many cases. But they needed some supplies. In fact they needed just about everything imaginable. So the local shopkeepers simply let them take what they needed.

Quite a natural, human thing to do. But of course if the material conditions had been different, it would be less likely to happen. If the shopkeepers were living on the edge of starvation themselves, if supplies had been harder to come by, or even if the material conditions were the same, but the shopkeepers subjective state of mind was different, things would have turned out differently. That is to say, if the store-keepers felt highly insecure, they may have panicked and boarded up their stores to defend their own subjectively precarious existence.

But this is Australia, not the Soviet Union in the 1930's. People don't fear actual starvation, real famine. They could no more watch their neighbours go cold and hungry because of a catastrophe, than they could strangle their own children.

But either reaction is equally normal human nature under the right material conditions. Your analysis seems to lack any cognizance that material conditions are relevant.

Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas



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