.jpg)
The word "exploitation" often conjures up images
of workers toiling in sweatshops for 12 hours or more per day, for pennies,
driven by a merciless overseer. This is contrasted to the ideal of a "fair
wage day's wage for a fair day's work", the supposedly "normal"
situation under capitalism in which workers receive a “decent” wage, enough for
a "decent" standard of living, health insurance and security in their
retirement. Marxists have a broader and more precise definition of exploitation
than this. It is the forced appropriation of the unpaid labour of workers.
Under this definition, all working-class people are exploited and it is argued
that the ultimate source of profit, the driving force behind capitalist
production, is the unpaid labour of workers. So exploitation forms the
foundation of the capitalist system. The distinction between "labour-power"
and "labour" is the key to understanding exploitation under
capitalism. When a capitalist pays a worker a wage, they are not paying for the
value of a certain amount of completed labour, but for labour-power. Employers
buy labour-power on the market. In general, the wage, the price of labor-power,
is, like all other commodities, determined by its cost of production, which is
in turn regulated by struggles between workers and capitalists over the level
of wages and benefits, and by competition between workers for jobs.
Capitalism can be best defined as generalised commodity
production where labour power itself has become a commodity. The workers—those
who operate the means of production—are separated from them, they don’t own
them. Instead, a separate class of people—the capitalists—own the means of
production. The capitalists purchase labor power from people who belong to the
proletariat—people who own neither land nor capital. The proletarians sell
their ability to work, or labour power, to the capitalists and get in return a
definite sum of money—called a wage. Wages are therefore nothing but the price
of labour power.
The idea that socialists support everybody getting the same
level of pay is basically nothing more than a strawman argument of our actual
positions. Equal pay is a concept that has nothing to do with socialism which
is about getting rid of "pay" - the abolition of the wages system. In
point of fact, Marx argued that equal pay was a theoretical and practical
impossibility anyway as it iss at variance with the labour theory of value
concerning the value content of labour power which necessarily varies according
the the skill of the workers.
Marx said absolutely nothing about building a socialist
society as opposed to a communist society. He nowhere mentioned the building of
socialism at all in the “Gotha Critique.” Instead, he spoke of a transition
period between capitalist and communist societies with both political and
economic aspects. Marx wrote: “Between capitalist and communist society there
lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other.
Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state
can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” So if we
are to follow Marx’s logic, there is a transition period between capitalist and
communist society that has both political and economic aspects. Marx did not
believe that wage-labour would be retained under the first phase of communism.
“Within the co-operative society based on common ownership
of the means of production,” Marx wrote, “the producers do not exchange their
products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as
the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since
now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an
indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor.”
Remember, this is a description of the lower not the higher
stage of communism. While under capitalism only the labour that is used to
produce the money commodity is directly social, under communism, including its
first stage, the labour that goes into the production of all products is
directly social. Marx explained that the lower phase of communism is a
co-operative society. It is a gigantic producers’ cooperative that embraces the
entire economy. Its central feature is the common ownership of the means of
production. Notice, not some means of production but all means of production,
certainly all means of production of any significance. There is not only no
private ownership of the means of production. There is also no group ownership
of the means of production such as existed with the Soviet Union. Therefore,
there are no classes at all. We are already dealing with a classless society.
As far as their relationship to the means of production—ownership in legal
language—all people are equal. Second, “the producers do not exchange their
products.” This is not only true of the producers of the means of production
but also is true of the producers of the means of consumption. Many Marxists
over the decades—not only the theoreticians of the Russia but also the Trotskyists
–imagined that this was true of only the higher stage of communism. But this
was not Marx’s view at all. Even in its initial stage, according to Marx,
commodity production has already completely disappeared. “Just as little,” Marx
wrote, “does the labour employed on the products appear here as the value of
these products—since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor
no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of
total labour.”
Without commodity production, there cannot be money
relations. Therefore, money will not exist, if we follow Marx, in the lower
phase of communism. If commodity production and money still exist, it is not or
not yet the lower stage of communism but at best a hypothetical transitional
phase that lies between capitalism and the lower stage of communism. Since
wages are defined as the sum of money workers receive in exchange for selling
their ability to work for a given period of time to capitalists—this includes
the capitalist state—how can we speak of wages under the lower phase of
communism? Marx wrote: “For example, the social working day consists of the sum
of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual
producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in
it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such
an amount of labour (after deducting his labour 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 labour cost. The same amount of labor which he has
given to society in one form, he receives back in another.”
Notice here Marx does not say the workers receive a certain
sum of money for the labour they perform for society but rather certificates
that they have furnished a certain amount of labour to society. Marx
specifically avoids using the term money here. So there is no wage labour in
the sense of a price of labour power in the first phase of communist society as
foreseen by Marx in the “Critique of Gotha Program.”
Workers work because they need the certificates that they
have performed a certain quantity of work if they are to get access to goods
they need to live, giving them the right to draw a certain amount of means of
personal consumption. They do not work because work has become their primary
need. Marx certainly does not overlook this. Let’s see what Marx has to say
about this not unimportant subject:
“Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which
regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal
values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances
no one can give anything except his labour, and because, on the other hand,
nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of
consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual
producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of
commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an
equal amount of labour in another form.”
According to Marx’s definition of the first stage of
communism as expressed in his “Critique of the Gotha Program,” all people able
to work are required to do so. All the means of production are held in common
by society. Therefore, there are no classes, and since there are no classes
there is no class struggle. To talk about the class struggle under the lower
phase of communism is therefore nonsense. Since there are no longer any classes
during the lower stage of communism, the state is no longer truly a state,
defined as an organization of repression by which one class holds down another
class. But is there equality and justice? Compared to capitalism or any class
society, the answer is yes. But is there full equality and full justice?
Here we get to the distinction between the lower and higher
stages of communism. Unlike the higher stage of communism, people are paid,
with some modifications, according to their work. This element survives from
the “wages system” and still exists in the lower stage of communism, according
to Marx. Why is this so? Marx assumed that under the first phase of communism
the productive forces would not be sufficiently developed to fully meet the
needs of all people. Therefore, we cannot yet have full justice and equality.
Different individuals have different abilities to work and different interests
and therefore needs. So even if goods—notice I say goods, not commodities—were
distributed equally—either in the sense of the exact same material use values
or a basket of goods that take on average the same quantity of labor to
produce—everybody’s needs would not be equally met and the result would not be
perfectly just. Perfect justice requires, on the contrary, that we recognize
the different needs of individuals. Not equality but the meeting of everyone’s
needs is required for a fully just society. Notice that a “just” society is
therefore not an egalitarian society.
This is explained by Marx as follows:
“But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally,
and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and
labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity,
otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an
unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because
everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal
individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It
is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right,
by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard;
but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they
were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are
brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only—for
instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is
seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married,
another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth.
Thus, with an equal performance of labour, 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 Marx foresaw a day when: “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 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!”
Before society can be described as having reached the lower
stage of communism, the private sector that breeds a petty bourgeoisie of small
business people must become an economic impossibility. When society achieves
the lower phase of communism, any attempts by individuals to engage in private
business will come to nothing. Private businesses will die out, not because
they are repressed by state power but because there is less and less business
for them to do. Therefore, there will no longer be any need to repress such
attempts. People will be free to set up private business and hire wage labour
without limit—if they can find anybody willing to work for them—but they won’t
get very far. Any attempts to hire wage labour under the lower stage of
communism will fail not because there are laws against it but because the
would-be employers will not be able to find anybody willing to work for them.
So we can say that Marx in his Critique of the Gotha
Programme identifies three more or less distinct periods which are often
confused. There is a period of revolutionary transformation, a first phase of
communist society, and a higher phase of communist society. Within the context
of discussing these societal shifts, “socialism” is never described by Marx as
a distinct phase, as he did not differentiate between the concept of socialist
society and communist society—the terms were interchangeable for Marx. Right
from the first phase of communist society, labour must be socially distributed
for the purpose of satisfying human needs. Marx consistently maintained that in
transition towards communism exchange of commodities and the use of money would
be eliminated.
For Marx, money is not simply a unit of measure, but
presupposes private commodity owners confronting each other on the market. Its
social function is the mediation of the private labours of commodity producers.
For Marx in the first phase of communism—this social function of money is no
longer necessary. The labour certificates have a different function, that of
facilitating a conscious allocation of goods. Marx in no way identifies the
idea of labour certificates and labour-time accounting being used in a
communist society with the law of value. Marx decidedly does not identify the
“rule of value” with bookkeeping and conscious social control over the
production process, but rather with the producers’ subordination to the
production process. According to Marx, “the concept ‘value’ presupposes
‘exchanges’ of the products. Where labour is communal, the relations of men in
their social production do not manifest themselves as ‘values’ of ‘things’.”
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
