On 05/09/2013, at 12:24 AM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> CB: Sure they are. Society will always have children, elderly, disabled who
> will not be able to work and will receive welfare. pronounces precisely that there will be
> welfare in communism.
Government welfare is not socialism, for the reason Andie gave. Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production and exchange. Not the private ownership of same tempered by survival benefits paid (conditionally) to those who would otherwise be left to die as a result of their alienation from those productive forces.
Its is precisely the conditional nature of welfare that is the key to understanding this. As Andie explained, state welfare does not disturb the relations of class power, in fact it is carefully designed to reinforce and strengthen the power of the ruling class.
All welfare payments are conditional around the crucial requirement to sell your labour power. Welfare payments simply provide exemptions from the requirement for those that are considered "worthy". Those who are too old, too young, too disabled or sick, etc, to work.
This is far from the maxim "from each according to their ability, to each according to need". (Not the perversion: "From each according to work, to each according to need" which you spewed: "From each according to work" is a perversion of that maxim dreamed up by someone with a psychotic fixation on work. Such sentiments are not the sentiments of socialists, whose aim is to abolish class distinctions so that everyone enjoys the same security as is only enjoyed by the ruling class in class society.
"From each according to work" is the rallying cry of those who want nothing of the sort, they want to drag the existing ruling class down to the level of the working class, rather than raise the working class to the level of the existing ruling class.
The latter can only be dome by abolishing the class power of the capitalists, which is exercised precisely by forcing the working class to work for them.
> Providing for the general"Welfare" is in the Preamble to the US
> Constitution , and is therefore one of the purposes of America, by the way.
> One of the declared purposes of America is to provide socialist
> institutions.
>
> "Ownership" refers to property relations. Since the abolition of _private_
> property is the goal of Marxists, not the abolition of all property, what
> remains in socialism is exactly publlic property or public ownership.
Marxists and socialists are not intent on abolishing all property, but only the means of production and exchange.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas