I'm not talking about establishing labour vouchers under the rule of Capital. I'm talking about what Marx was talking about in his 'Critique of the Gotha Program'--socialism.
Common ownership of the collective product of labour is socialism, in my book. There is no socialism as such in the world, nor has there ever been more than attempts to establish it, beginning with the Paris Commune of 1871. With wage labour, the producer sells his or her skills on the labour marketplace for a price over an amount of time. In this sense, labour power, just like any other commodity, is sold for a price. The difference is that commodified labour power produces more wealth, when at work, than it is bought for in wages. This social relation of product and its producer is obscured by the vast division of labour necessary for industrial production; still it applies.
As a class, those who work for wages in order to make a living and their dependents make up 90% of the population and produce 100% of the wealth. The resulting fact is that 10% of the people in the world own and control 71% of the wealth produced. A system of common ownership of the collective product of labour would see 100% of the people owning/enjoying and controlling 100% of the product of their labour.
Here's Marx playing with the topic:
"Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour power of the community. All the characteristics of Robinson’s labour are here repeated, but with this difference, that they are social, instead of individual. Everything produced by him was exclusively the result of his own personal labour, and therefore simply an object of use for himself. The total product of our community is a social product. One portion serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another portion is consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion amongst them is consequently necessary. The mode of this distribution will vary with the productive organisation of the community, and the degree of historical development attained by the
producers. We will assume, but merely for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour time. Labour time would, in that case, play a double part. Its apportionment in accordance with a definite social plan maintains the proper proportion between the different kinds of work to be done and the various wants of the community. On the other hand, it also serves as a measure of the portion of the common labour borne by each individual, and of his share in the part of the total product destined for individual consumption. The social relations of the individual producers, with regard both to their labour and to its products, are in this case perfectly simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to production but also to distribution."
from CAPITAL volume I, chapter one
Salud from WA to Tassie, Mike B)
At 6:03 PM -0800 10/2/13, Mike Ballard wrote:
>This is why Marx would promote 'labour time vouchers' to replace
>money, as labour time vouchers would make the relation between
>product and producers' time at wealth production transparent, just
>after the social revolution from class dominated society to a
>classless democracy of social ownership of the collective product of
>labour.
Labour time vouchers may very well make the relationship between wage labour and wealth production more transparent, but it would still be wage slavery. I just can't see the employing class being much interested in making the system of wage slavery more transparent.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
*********************************************************************** Wobbly Times http://wobblytimes.blogspot.com/