AskProfWolff: Wages in a Communist System
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- Опубликовано: 19 апр 2021
- A patron of Economic Update asks: "In communism those who contribute most to society receive the most in return (ie. the fruits of their labor), and those who contribute less get less. How does this not create the same situation we are in now under capitalism? Does this not create a dependence on your job to keep yourself alive? Is it not the same situation we're in? Additionally, how would the contribution of a painter or philosopher to society be compared to the contribution of a construction or factory worker to society in communism?"
This is Professor Richard Wolff's video response.
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To me, Communism should free everyone from having to worry about survival for oneself and one's family. This is true freedom. Giving everyone a decent life means empowering everyone to be creative. We can see why some people don't want that, because they are used to being above others and in a position to bend other's will.
Whats worse is growing up in a capitalist system encourages the middle and lower classes to work harder "in order to become successful" while taking away competition in the form of the homeless and impoverished. This surprisingly is engrained deeply into the younger and older minds of our world; even if it means smarter people wont have the chance to show their worth, you, the one who got lucky under capitalism, does have a chance at the expense of covering the impoverished genius under the rubble.
In the near future,
When factory do more and more automation,
True capitalism can't be sustained.
indeed, but this future is not so near. There are plenty of lives at stake before then. We cannot sit and wait for capitalism to collapse
Those who are replaceable will starve out and the rest will proceed as usual
So yeah capitalism wont simply die out, it needs to be overthrown by force
But who suffered from this are mainly workers because capitalists just change labor into robots therefore we have to find a way to make sure worker doesn't suffer thruough this technological innovation.
@@krzysztofbroda5376
The automatic farming machine already make a huge impact on labor
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Or, that country need to be able to make a fair way to distribute wealth between the have and have not.
So, at least a social safety net is required.
Thanks again, Prof Wolff, for another enlightening answer. (The audio could be higher.) It occurs to me that our Congress also decides together as a group what they should be paid. How communist of them!
Also the best health care money can buy looted from the treasury!
Lel
@@finchwarbler2269 I think these are dangerous criticisms that should be carefully applied. Under socialism and communism, you would want to vote to have bureaucrats and representatives to have good pay and good healthcare, just like you'd vote to have all workers be well-paid and with proper healthcare. Under socialism and communism, it's not looting the treasury to pay the working class well, you should not levy criticisms of Congress in such a way. Instead, if you want to garner the most support by making the best argument, you should argue that it's unfair and unjust that Congress votes only for itself to be properly funded and with proper healthcare, and doesn't include the average American.
@@Yepmyaccount Just because there will be goverment in the socialism that does not mean politicians will lie less and should therefore be criticized less.
@@michalooo3425 This has nothing to do with anything being talked about in this conversation, or anything to do with what I said. Nowhere did anyone in this thread even discuss being less critical of politicians.
Very clear and comprehensive explanation, Prof Wolff. Nice work.
I was also unclear about this and you explained it well.
If it was unclear, how do you know how well it was explained?
The question shows a clear misunderstanding of communism. In the higher phase of communism there are no commodities, so there is no money, so wages don't exist either. Production and distribution are based on the principles of "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need".
So the question entirely misses the point. Because one of the major goals of communism and social are the abolition of wage labour. And under the lower phase of communism, generally called socialism, there isn't supposed to be commodity production either. For the short time between the final fall of capitalism and full communism people would perhaps get wages according to their work but not quite in the same way as they do now, in a way which effectively makes the money not quite function as a commodity. This socialist stage is one of the most contested concepts between pretty much all approaches to communism, so if revolutions actually managed to reach it anywhere we would likely see all kinds of approaches to it, but even there still we would not expect to see it be wages as such; more like a temporary rationing system because we'd be coming of the ashes of former capitalism and not yet have the abundance necessary to enable full communism.
Welcome to StarTrek
i wish wolff would answer questions more like this. he's so vague always.
Why? Do you want Wolff to scare people off? That version of communism is for people in insane asylums. Just look at that guys screen name. I guess they let patients use computers in his hospital. He is probably bunked with a flat earther.
@@PoliticalEconomy101 I'm literally summarizing the ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin what are you on about? lol
Not only would people continue to get wages in the final stage of the decline of capitalism but workers will have become unified with the factories in order to preserve their right to their productive power,--- if machines are taken away, sold from underneath them, so will their productive economic power be sold and shut down from underneath them....workers would not be working for a boss in the final stages of the decline but taking over the factories and running them as before without the boss, in community with themselves and society.
Owing to America's productive power, a transition period of socialism, would not entail any material deprivation at all as capitalism crumbles in that transition. Distributors and retailers would refuse to keep shelves stocked as a way of blaming shortages and high prices on the workers to get the public on their side against taking over the factories and distributorships so careful planning and imagination is needed to circumvent the power of capitalists over the circulation of goods to the masses, especially if Congress does nothing to stop the big retail chains and distributors from choking off society from its food and clothing. Currently, factory idle capacity is at 70%. This is not speculation as workers in Argentina are engaged in exactly this type of struggle right now.
Thanks mr. Wolff! You understand our history pretty good!
I’ve always wondered how self-employed people would get paid under communism, especially people who don’t have employees working for them. How would a freelance graphic designer get paid, for example?
I dont think much would change for freelancers, pick who you want to work with and you either agree for a salary they offer or not
Do people really need to be paid in Utopia?
I mean in Communism.
if you were working for an enterprise it would be the same as how employee wages are determined , I guess if you are providing services to people perhaps the rates you could charge would be regulated through democracy to ensure their was symmetry between the earnings people had and the services they need. that leaves innovation I suppose .. people coming up with new services or new enterprise ideas and I guess those coming into existence would also be democratically vetted. it’s hard to imagine with reference to the past, but I think the technology we have now makes democratic decision making more imaginable. Complex societies had to be governed by a small group of elites unlike smaller communities that can have group meetings to discuss and make decisions on the issues they confronted. Everyone had the same info. But now is different. If you can research stocks, buy them and monitor various data related to them on your phone... you can also research, vote on policies and monitor their performance data on your phone.
self-employed people are bourgeoisie and will end up in labor camp.
You can design the graphics on the side of your labor camp.
Hi Dr Wolff & all.
I know a company (restaurant) that have communism way of paying the wages the way Dr. Wolff said. There is one restaurant in Indonesia called *SARI BUNDO.* It located across presidential palace in Jakarta. All the server/waiter/cook got a fair percentage of the company profit. I don't really know the detail on how they count it. But I know that each of the worker there feel appreciated by the owner and feel they're also the owner of the place.
No you don't because communist or even socialist wages are a contradiction in terms. What you're describing is a worker cooperative. This is absolutely an improvement on the normal capitalist model of a firm run by capitalists exploiting workers dictatorially, but they're still producing things for the purpose of selling them rather than for the needs of people disconnected from capitalist markets. They're not being exploited by a capitalist, but in order to meet their needs they still must to a degree exploit themselves or else they may become uncompetitive in the market for whatever good or service they produce. They have not removed themselves from capitalism, merely greatly improved their conditions within it and perhaps made it easier for themselves to understand the self-directed activity which would be necessary to struggle against the forces of Capital.
Tit bit changes to usual capitalism would be beneficial to the employees, the society and the planet. When individual greed is zero, none, but society benefits. Plain living matters.
Oh hang on I just Googled Sari Bundo. It would seem it's not even a worker's cooperative, but rather it has a profit sharing system with the employees, but the owners still have most of the control and profits. Workers are just given a seat at the table, not actual control.
Hm.
Even rather right wing companies can have profit sharing. It’s one of the ways they dissuade unionizing.
Profit sharing like that company is only a policy within capitalism.
Worker cooperatives, what Wolff favors, are not communist but a socialist form of organization in a market system. It is not communism.
This was very helpful. Thank you so much!
Very interesting topic. Follow up question: Where does the profit we collectively distribute come from? Say for example that we work at a public hospital, school, water cleaning plant, etc. We wouldn't ve making a profit on a market. And if more utilities are collectively owned, then more things wouldn't be making a profit per se. I am not against that, but I am not sure how this would work. I suppose that we could vote how much of our taxes would be distributed to different enterprises, but then I think we would also as tax payers/consumers, like to have a say in how this money is used in the enterprise. How would we balance the power of the workers vs. the tax payers in a just manner?
Well there won't be profit in the legal sense, but there would be in the practical sense. Think of it as surplus, and it will make sense. In either private or public institutions now, the institutions get paid for useful work, goods, or services. It doesn't really matter if the payment comes from tax funding or in a market system. These things of value have a certain cost, future services has a cost, and then more beyond this is charged to get a surplus. The surplus includes the money that goes to paying workers and it includes paying to the owners of the institutions. In a private company this last one is what we legally call "profit" while payment to workers is considered a "cost". In modern public institutions, non-profits, and proposed communist ones, there is no "profit" but there is "surplus" as the workers get paid, and beyond that the institutions either don't charge more than that (operating at cost) or it gets reinvested back to the institution (or in some public institutions, back to the tax base)
And as to the second half of your comment, yea in Wolff's logic if tax payers are involved it would make sense that they have some control, though as I implied above that could be as simple as "not paying for the product". To match the way tax based institutions currently work, tho, strong opt-out unionization for public workers is a solution, or even better, give workers most control over the inner workings of a company but give the government a significant vote on the broad direction of an institution, a la Norway. And frankly I don't a market is necessarily an issue. Remember communism is about human needs, a market in trading cards isn't necessarily a problem. Even with needs, a market system with coops and democratic institutions working in it, with say, a UBI and price controls would meet "to each to thier need" IMO.
Tl:dr (and for the algorithm) my interpretation of what Wolff is saying is that "profits" or even markets don't matter so much as who owns and controls them and do they meet human needs regardless of circumstances
stop paying the congress sitters so much and give it to the people you just said. our taxes pay them to sit down and accept bribes from corporate lobbyists- thats a huge sum.
You can't think of it it terms of the capitalist monetary system, in my opinion. Shelter and goods are produced and distributed by everyone and made available to everyone that needs them. Luxury items are time shared and everything is owned by everyone else, also. You check them out like the library. Produce on the demand of consumption, rather than consumption being the end goal for profit and waste. Your contribution would include some time doing a few things that you may not want to do so that everyone enjoys the freedom to do whatever interests them with the majority of time. Without the illusion of shortages and unfair distribution of wealth and goods crime and hoarding disappears.
This is no free lunch - just the opposite. You do two weeks a year in-service and whatever interests you the rest of the time. If you want to Yacht or Jet Ski you learn to service them and use them properly for a while first. If you just need bling that is a personal choice. No need to control every aspect of behavior. If everyone's lunch costs are provided for everyone with shared labor that isn't "free." The key you are missing is that no one has a superior position to allow for the concept of free lunch.
Exactly. Not everyone is going to spend their personal time learning to improve their station. If you don't want to spend your service time doing strictly labor you have to spend personal time to learn a new skill. But no one is to do any one thing all of the time.
I'm sure what I speak of is more like The Venus Project rather than basic democracy at work. But, as mentioned in the video, no one has achieved communism yet either.
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Depending on one stream of income had never made any millionaire and earning check don't put you on forbes
@Rita Queen I can, but I think crypto is less complicated,
Yeah, I can testify to that, I tried others but lost a lot of money because I didn't have more knowledge, but crypto is easy and anybody can be involved in it, my rate of loss has dropped since I started Crypto
I've worked with 4 traders in the past but of them is as efficient as he is , his trading strategies are awesome !
I'm from the UK, I and my colleagues gave him a try and it has been good returns of our investment, Thanks Michael Williams .
Expert Michael Williams have really made a good name for himself, I'm involved with him too
And the persistent use of the word socialist in those countries was also not a claim by the true socialists as having achieved the socialist stage as well. They and any honest socialist militant knows is still a pending project to achieve as the alternative to capitalism world wide. Yes there are socialists programs and projects in the making with all their shortcomings and success to in history become the alternative we seek to the present failed capitalist system. It is a huge and dynamic always changing world more and more progressive as it grows in experience .
Just like the capitalist system replaced the past will socialism replace the present. Solutions are coming.
What do You think about the criticisms of market socialist economy? namely that:
1. there will be a class of very rich workers (as in a market system money takes a maxwell-boltzmann distribution) who will have self interest in restoration of exploitation so that they can become capitalists and get even richer
2. there will be a large pool of unemployed and capitalists could exploit that by claiming that they will be hired once it becomes profitable (once they can be hired with exploitation)
3.there are a lot of loopholes companies can use to effectively hire workers without paying them their fair share by subcontracting
I think a centrally planned economy with worker ownership is the way to go. They would still be bound by a plan but how to achieve it and how to split income would be their choice. This makes reprivatization impossible on a large scale as well.
Prices would still be fixed and updated according to real time computer planning to prevent unequal exchange
Why do you think central planning would be any different- it still relies on a corruptible group of privileged elite making decisions for everyone. Blockchain tech would enable decentralized democratic decision making and planning while providing transparency/equal access to information.
Let me say that I'm pretty much open to anything left of Bernie (as nonviolent as reasonably possible, please & thank you). That being said..
1. "very rich workers who become capitalists" has no meaning in a market society that is actually socialist. If you assume a market society that is much like ours is now but with the dominant mode of production is through worker owned companies (the bare minimum of what could be called market socialist, in my view), the only way you are going to get "very" rich workers is if they do a lot of business, which, if the society is otherwise like our own, will probably only get that way if there are either a multi billion dollar company like Amazon (which has a ton of workers, all of whom would be "very" rich), or a particularly high value but relatively low input industry like finance (which, in a market socialist society, would largely serve the interests of rich workers). But these rich workers, by definition, are not "capitalists" by definition. They will never get as rich as capitalists, their interests will be different than capitalists, they would-again, by definition-be more responsive to local conditions, and power would never be as concentrated in such a society.
2. Why would there be any more unemployed under market socialism than in capitalism. Chances are there would be far less. What reason would a worker have to offshore their own jobs or automate (unless nobody wanted to do them) them away? Why would a work be more likely to ignore the effect that their business has in at least their own communities compared to a faceless conglomerate? What reason do you have to think that a dominant coop sector would be less profitable than a capitalist one? worker owned companies would have one less cost to them than a capitalist firm does: shareholders. You seem to be assuming that Capitalists are barred from exploited hiring and are going to be using what ever money they have left to reset the situation? They won't even be Capitalists at that point, its either start a worker coop themselves or look for a fascist to fund XD. I'm not even assuming that, I'm assuming they are competing with a dominant worker owned sector, and since you are assuming that capitalists are going to presumably use the unemployed to advance their interests in the government, why would "very" rich worker owned companies not do the same?
3. Not if it is actually market socialism. What are they going to do? Outsourcing? Not socialist. Contractors? A grey area, but probably not socialist unless the contractors are themselves worker owned companies.
And of course this wouldn't be all or nothing in the real world. An economy even 1/3 dominated by worker owned companies would be the most egalitarian the world have ever seen, let alone >50% dominated. There's no reason why the workers in this system wouldn't push for more state planned/communist things if they wanted them. There will be all sorts of coops from left wing to right wing but they would all distribute power, so I would expect to see things like this. For example, it makes no logical sense for businesses to be against M4A: company-provided healthcare is exactly the kind of cost you don't want to have in a business. It DOES make sense if you see it from the lens of capitalists wanted to keep their workers under heel. That conflict goes away with worker ownership. So it is likely that a society of worker companies will push for stuff like that (at least).
I tend to agree with the other guy about central planning, saying "Prices would still be fixed and updated according to real time computer planning" is not that far from me responding to your #1 with "unicorns will fart on the worker owners of a socialist Amazon and they will be come angelic people" XD The whole argument of market socialism is that the market is the "computer" and historically works better than planning over a biblical scale, because, er, we are not gods (planning for sure works great on the scale of, say, a worker owned company though!). So if the market is the computer, then it is better to make sure your inputs is correct (i.e. select democratic market controls, welfare programs) and make sure you aren't running viruses (capitalists :P).
Not opposed to planning in principle if workers and the democratically controlled society at large are the ones deciding what the plan is, but it doesn't really solve your #3 at all, and it doesn'tspecifcally solve #1 or #2 unless resources are divided in a way completely divorced from the public's wants, or even their needs. And this would all have to be done by people delegating that power to a relative few indivduals and that is the main issue. If your worker society doesn't have your 3 caveats answered for like mine does, then you are going to have either "very" rich workers or all those secret capitalists lurking about deciding where resources go, even if individual workers have control over their piece of the pie, and potentially undermining the system. How do you keep that above board? How much easily will people be able to attack your system once the planners inevitably mess something up?
prof wolff got his best old man shirt on today for this one xD
Hot.
A discussion concerning money occurred in an Internet Chess Club nearly 2 years ago. A woman said this about life in the USSR:
"Pavel, all liberal parties in the capitalist world and their adherents are a bourgeois anti-people tribe, which includes a very small percentage of the world's population and all of them are liberals only for their beloved ones. Only the Socialist System of the USSR, was a liberal-folk. You probably still do not realize that the People of the Soviet Union, each of its citizens, lived "in a bourgeois manner." We were all very wealthy, unaware and did not appreciate all this. Where in the capitalist world do ordinary people not save for housing, for gas, for water, for transport, for vacation, for medical treatment, for education, for books, for entertainment, for sports and any other human interests, on all variety culture? Only in the USSR - it was available to everyone without saving personal funds."
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Thank you professor from Turkey. Your videos are very beneficial for one who wants to understand what Marxism actually is.
A propos to Prof Wolff's topic, when I was a grad student at the U of Heidelberg in the early 1970s I first heard one of my fellow students (from a family that had fled from the then- Czechoslovakia to West Germany) express the aphorism (in German) about the regime in Czechoslovakia, "They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work."
However, according to the attached article by Daniel Rosenbloom (who worked at the Free Trade Institute of the AFL/CIO) this apparently also became an even more well-known expression in the USSR:
"...When Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union, there was a popular saying
that captured the cynicism engendered by the socialist economy: 'They pretend
to pay us, and we pretend to work!'" RUclips won't allow me to include the URL, but for those interested Google these as the arguments:
“They Pretend to Pay Us. . . .”
The Wage Arrears Crises in the Post-Soviet States
DANIEL ROSENBLUM
NOTE: I agree with the comment about the audio needing to be increased in volume.
Nailed it!
Comparing the way CEOs get paid to the way everyone would get paid, in a communist system, is about the best argument I have heard against such a system. CEO pay has little and sometimes nothing to do with said CEO performance. Instead, it is a self centered racket where, those who are about to get their 'compensation' considered, are very likely to be considering the compensation of those who are considering their compensation, soon.
If we were to model everyone's compensation this way, productivity would likely break down.
Or, even worse, the workers themselves would divide themselves into factions, and then create more and less compensated ones, depending on who has the most power at the time.
Capitalism, dispite it's many flaws, did not create racism, or even classism. Human nature did.
It is a good argument though that capitalism does tend to severely aggravate these flaws in human nature, because it tends to reward them.
Why does Prof. Wolff look thinner here? I hope he's fine.
The sweater and lighting
Yeah, I was also thinking it may be the location and the angle of the camera that's making him look thinner. Though let's not forget, he's no spring chicken, he is after all 79.
@@seanpol9863 79 and ready to live 110+ if we keep our support strong and hardy. Long live The Professor.
I noticed too. All the power to him and his health. Let's hope it's just intentional dieting healthy lifestyle sort of situation rather than illness!
This is what the Social Security was built on in France by a communist in 1946. You put workers' money collectively in boxes, and in retrurn you have retirement coverage, unemployement benefits, healthcare, and child benefits to raise children. It was run by unions before, and since 1967 it is run saddly by the state, but it's still there to this day despite the fanatics that ruled over the last decades.
It is also an extension of salary through life with the status of public servants and retirees basically getting a salary no matter what they do, they're paid cause they're considered workers and not for the job they fulfill (even retirees work). It already covers a third of the grown up population, and technically if we were to extend this to the whole society, then the society would become communist, to the condition that it wouldn't be state-run anymore but people-run.
It doesn't decomodify the entire economy, but it contributes to cover everybody no matter what. Up and running for more than 75 years already, that's pretty good for a utopia.
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"...It was run by unions before, and since 1967 it is run saddly by the state, but it's still there to this day despite the fanatics that ruled over the last decades."
Is there a reason that it was removed from the unions in 1967, M. Marion? Poor management? Corruption? Was it run by a subset of the major unions rather than a group that was proportional in its representation to the union membership of the constituent unions? Has the State run it well or poorly in your estimation?
@@rogerforsberg3910 De Gaulle hated the democratic principles it was ran on. That's why it got put back into state ruling. It was mostly a question of power, rather then efficiency.
Healthcare system didn't exist pre-1946 for the overwhelming majority, hence building up a system from scratch by the unions with hospitals and such is quite the feat.
The state, managed well afterwards in 2000 it was ranked number 1 healthcare in the world, but it costs money and for the last 20 years it has been dismantled piece by piece ("because we need budget cuts !" or so it seems...).
So what the state continued, is now dismantled by the same state to finance private sector rather than the public one.
That's why the question of power and who decides is an even more important question.
The history of every detail would require a lecture by Bernard Friot economist and sociologist. I doubt his works are translated tho.
@@jeremiemarion3966 Thank you, Monsieur, for your careful & thoughtful response. I'm much more familiar with similar types of social security programs in Sweden & Germany because I've either studied &/or worked & resided in both of those countries. I'm much less familiar with France, so this offers an interesting window into France.
As for Bernard Friot I recognize his name as someone whose focus has been on welfare economics (mine has been on monetary economics), and we're in the same generation of post-WWII economists. I believe that you're right: he has only one publication in English.
@@rogerforsberg3910 I'd rather not make mistakes on this cause there were changes up to 1967, and medicine also made huge changes during those decades due to research. So it would be hard for me to say it was wonderful and everything was perfect. First and foremost cause this system was for France, and not the colonized people of France as a starting ground for a flaw in a healthcare system.
The union handling of such system always create conflicts, position of power, potential corruption, but it would require historical details, that he worked on and i'm a doctor but in physics not in this field so the transcription of this work would be mischaracterization since i mostly listen to his talks at universities and the books are really scholar work on this they're not an easy approach.
I found a conference of his that has subtitles in French that can be translated to english.
ruclips.net/video/BzRpsyfmTvc/видео.html&ab_channel=Universit%C3%A9d%27%C3%89vry
It would give an approach of the work he's done.
This is the best i can do, sorry about that.
Hey Mr Wolff what's your view on anarchism?
cringe
Based
@@missk1697 okay liberal
That is the goal of any true Marxist pursuing socialism and the natural result of socialism as a historical stage that will make the coercive structures needed to hold the socioeconomic organism together a selfeliminating process. The state will program it's own dissolution. Product: no state = anarchism. Of course it is supposed to take as long as society become naturally capable to function in equality and freedom from external authority and fear of sociopathy. Paradise is anarchism
@@georgefurman4371 that's the point said by Lenin in his state and revolution and I know it but the real essence of my question was can we support anarchists except from this view? And even Marx and Bakunin worked together in the first International what's your view on that George?
Question: Does Banks and the Federal Reserve pay Taxes?
I personally understand communism as all humans united into one big family or community (commune), where the laws and rules of a family or a commune are applied to everyone.
But understand that every family has different rules. And communism will look different in any given territory. But it's basic principles will be the same, just like capitalism.
Once the people take over the reins of the state in a true democracy with unlimited and unrestricted exercise of the freedom to choose their own representatives will have a real premise to start a socialist new contract and way to organize production and distribution . the isolated socialist experiments will be capable to take a world market collaboration. In the mean time socialism not yet becomes the new stage it will be a gradual symbiosis of capitalism economic structures transferring to a socialist democratic administration without the capitalist leadership. And then replaced by the workers leadership. No more extreme accumulation of wealth. No more abuse of others work and resources. Scientific and collective use of the productive forces and resources will regulate and protect nature in an international collaboration. It won't be an automatic from one day to another sudden change. We are animals of habit. Democracy is a conditioning factor. Without it there can't be socialism. Socialism must be a world market system of international collaboration among the workers of the World. The social plans programmed by the government of workers will be the international community at work. Socialism is impossible within borders as we know them. This means big government at first but democratically regulated . The modern technology advances are the greatest factor making administrative work a prehistory of humanity. The capacity to produce will liberate the people from the need to oppress others. No more hunger and war. That government will make itself small when technology replace beaurocracy and that will make the state no burden and slowly expendable.
No trade or profit or private property. Only sharing of personal property.
@@kellyhowe5986 the first comparison or historic reference is found in the first social community found in the past we all have as a common root. Primitive communism was that first Association of humans in families together in which the survival of the whole depended on the survival of the few. The productive forces or capacity to produce goods indispensable for survival was primitive and the need and law was collective cooperation to secure the prey and the fruits collected in a wilderness of terrible wild beasts and at times competitive communities. Before agriculture and becoming sedentary the close social ties and sense of community was based on mutual protection and care. They were communists. The community was the condition for the individual survival.
Domestication of animals and agriculture started the development of society into a more specialized division of work and duties. Property was not yet a complex or considered concept other than the belonging to the community. It was theirs and his. Theirs and his was the same undivided. The hunt was collective and owned collectively. The leadership was matriarchal. With agriculture came the possibility of rest and thinking. It was a hard life before it.
@@kellyhowe5986 communism doesn't deny private property . only that the productive forces or means of production are supposed to be for the social good first and the profit ( the surplus of work produced) will be abolished as a concept it will be simple surplus product for the social benefit according to the community and external need to maintain the commercial exchange and market functioning. The world market will persist as activity but the same surplus product will solve the inequalities in a planned and scientific administration.
You can own your personal land necessary for a normal living your instruments and whatever your inventiveness creates. Communism doesn't deny ownership. What it denies is appropriation of others people work for accumulation in the personal circle. And for purposes of competition to profit by dispossessing others. No more gambling for profit.
@@georgefurman4371and how would you stop corruption. How do you stop the "regulators" from hoarding things for themselves
Wage labor means the extraction of surplus value due to the private ownership of means of production. The labor force of a human is sold as a commodity for the exchange value of wages disproportionate to the use value created by labor. The end goal of the communist movement is to eliminate commodity production. People work for the need of the society and maximizing use value production, instead of the endless accumulation of exchange value under capitalism. So there will be no wages under communism. The exchange of goods is no longer based on exchange value but on use value, everyone doing their best for the society will get what one need in return, given the advanced productive forces can fulfill all the needs from the total labor input available.
If I pay you ten dollars (or one labor credit or whatever) to cut my hair, I am not extracting surplus value from you. I'm only agreeing to return the favor or entitling you to a favor of similar value owed to me.
There is no central committee distributing goods based on "need" under communism. You're confusing a platitude from the Christian tradition with a political program. Communism doesn't rule out specialization and trade or anything else free people choose to do.
@@restonthewind In your case, there is no surplus value extraction as no one is hired to use privately owned scissors to cut the hair. Yet commodity production is still there, as the duality of use value and exchange value in this social interact still exists. The service of cutting hair is sold for its exchange value to exchange for something else in the future. In the case when commodity production vanishes, cutting hair will be a service provided not specifically to earn that credit, but as a personal interest of making great haircuts. The society as a whole is able to support all these kind of activities in enthusiasm, as the need for basic necessities can be easily met with advanced productive forces, with the labor required to produce necessities reduced to minimum, and everyone can have a greater amount of free time to do interesting things, such as associating to have great haircuts in your case.
Why would everyone do their best if there are no wages? No incentive? Communism is an idealistic model. One that sound okay in theory but never actually works in practice.
These systems still has mega wealthy and the government lived like kings. True or false?
What about taxes in these totalitarian systems?
So basically everything is free
I think it's really neccessary to have, at least partially, a consumption based on need.
Basing things on your actual input will always exclude those who can not actually put in the full work that's "required" of them, like disabled people for instance.
I feel like it's about time we start reflecting that in the rhetoric, stop talking about "workers" and find a better term for all the people represented in leftist thought.
Watch out folks, there are trolls in the comments. Some serious disinformation bots around.
Communism is a stateless system. No central authority tells a commune how it divides its product (according to "need", whatever that means) or even how it decides how it divides its product (by majority vote or whatever). A community consensus decides these questions, and free association (a right of members to leave the community at will and to join a community subject to its standards) ensures the consensus. The only necessary voting is voting with one's feet. Members need not hold daily meetings to vote on what they'll all have for dinner, from a menu determined by the dinner committee, and who will prepare it. A community could operate this way, but I wouldn't join it.
A community could look a lot like a corporation under capitalism. I join the community as I accept employment from a corporation now, understanding my contribution but expecting no vote in how the corporation's means are administered. The difference is that the community owes nothing to absentee owners, to shareholders outside of the community. It's more like a nonprofit corporation. It may distribute its product to non-members if it chooses, so it may trade with other communities, but it has no enforceable relationship with non-members. The only force organizing capital is the force of attraction between members of a community governing the capital by standards determined entirely within the community.
Market forces governing trade between communities exist, but "force" is a misnomer here because all trade is strictly voluntary. All terms of trade are strictly voluntary. All contracts between communities are strictly voluntary, and any party to a contract may withdraw from it at will.
So you're still being controlled by a select group of people. How do you stop corruption. How do you stop them from helping themselves. How will they be regulated. Communism never works
I wonder if Dr. Wolff sees stalins neutering and crackdowns of trade unions in the USSR as one, big part, of the USSR's decline
I'm sure he does. That sort of thing is why you would be justified on calling the USSR state capitalist rather than socialist and is precisely why Wolff considers state ownership to be an understandable but failed experiment in socialism
@@Ellimist000 But obviously the State should own all the critical infrastructure, like electricity, roads, water, healthcare, natural resource extraction - and it's been proven a major success in many European countries - and a complete disaster in USA where private corporations only with profit motive own these important things for society.
And what is one to expect should happen if global markets fail to perform in certain periods. I'll tell you what one would have to accept, poverty! With no means of attaching value to one's necessity based skill sets... You allow no windfalls in good times which leads to no savings for bedtimes. No one keeps their head above water! Please, point to a single recession,( use the great depression) that ended this country, or completely ended the majority of the populations chance at potential economic upward mobility. Not a single one! We have bounce back from every single bump in the road, including a global depression.
And please for the love of God I beg of you point to China. Go ahead, let's try to base a society on picking and choosing who gets to play in the world's economic markets and who doesn't, who gets to play capitalist and who gets to play slave. You know it wouldn't be so bad the whole bill in the family for the bullet really does cut down on the crime rates. Oh and then there's the forced one child thing. We're not there yet but give it 10 years
A manager of a cooker factory in Communist Eastern Europe takes an annual trip to the capital for a fortnight of meetings in the top down system. A fortnight of heavy drinking follows and at the end the manager goes into the office which is empty as everyone is sleeping it off. On the desk is an envelope. He opens it and inside are the instructions. How many cookers he needs to build for the next year, what features on them, how much they are to be sold for, where he should buy the materials & how much he pays the workers. It's a communist price mechanism?
As I now understand things, it depends on whether you understand communism to be what the USSR ended up with, or what Marx had in mind.
There's no money or trade in communism.
No capital no private property. Plenty of personal property though.
Why is there a perception that communist systems is necessary against your right or different.?
The soviet system failed and not necessarily represent what Socialism Communism all about.
The interpretation of the ideology of communism very much up to the leaders of the society then.
How is the system in communist China different from USA?
I don't wish America bad but it's a common sense thing.when America will finally get raid of her present massive inequality..it shall because of more government and regulations.not less government and capitalis money,but people must work.
😂
So, the person paves the road benefits less than the person wrote the paperwork. No equality there is there ? In democracy, if 51% don't like your show, you're gone. You think that would be fair ?
How is it possible to consider america a democratic system, when a person's vote does not count as a vote. For years we have watched presidents winning elections with fewer votes ... than competitors.
Furthermore, voting is not mandatory, so only 30% of the population is exercising the right to vote, simply because others think: 1- I know that voting will not change anything.
2- they are not in agreement with the ideas of the Democrats nor with the Republicans ,.
3- agree with some ideas from both parties, so they prefer not to vote ...
This is not democracy ....
@@Alberto.LIS.Morais even if a vote wa truthfully counted, the math is the same, division. Freedom has a similar issue, some people don't want it, because Financial enslavement works for them. Mob rule by money is not a good idea obvious.
@@Alberto.LIS.Morais So, it is in fact a democratic society, meaning mob rule or winner takes all. It certainly a far cry from a republic, and that a far cry from freedom also. Squirrels don't pay rent and the experts are baffled ?
The only species on earth that has to accept compliance to Monetisation just to live "FREELY", and People might be surprised, the work in colonies... together.
I used live in a socialist country back in 60',70' and 80's. Your explanation is good, and that's how it was supposed to work. Everything was good on paper just like in your explanation, however due to people's corruption and greed it had not worked in real life. Another thing was that because one was guaranteed his wages, one didn't feel motivated to work hard and was looking to cut the corners, which resulted in lower work efficiency and lower quality products and services
In which country did you live?
@@dt2985 Indoincartica
Democratic Communism. Cool 😁
Contradiction in terms.For the system to thrive the very notion of democracy must be abolished.
Communism and socialism on for parasites…
If u don't like Richard Wolff don't watch his videos. I watch stuff I enjoy. You all just miserable people watching and judging
he liar under communism poltical class own means of production , how much do poltical class own under socialism
It's a command-system of economics.
Communism: Food is they pay.
The People: There is Food!
The best stop saying bullshit…
When I read Animal Farm for the umpteenth time, the truth was firmly set in my mind, that there would always be a cadre of those who establish the credo "some animals are more equal than others." I remain sceptical of ALL systems of control over the "working class," no matter WHO those "in power" are and how they got there. The utopian idea that there should BE NO elites having any kind of power over the lives of others is a dream I've been loathe to wake from. I've heard the staunchest socialists and communists insist that believing any ship of state can sail with no one at the helm, and eventually, ALL their rhetorical energies go toward bolstering their logic. When given enough rope, they eventually hang themselves defending an elitism that I personally will NEVER buy, not even at wholesale prices. "Leaders always arise and are required in ANY system" just proves my point, time and again. Are we all born equal or not? Make up your goddam minds! Is it true that From all according to their abilities, To all according to their needs? From where I'm sitting, that's another dream I embrace but ain't holding my breath to see if it ever manifests... on this planet or any other.
Lol, it's much worse being under control of private corporations that have profit motive as their only concern, and very few unions. Stop smoking so much - just take a look at what disaster of a capitalistic system USA has been for its people, but also for people all over the world - all because of capitalistic, imperialistic growth incentives not to collapse all together.
Every person born in this planet has the right to live under a home ,get free healthcare and should be free to study what they like with minimum guaranteed payment for their expenses. That's what real communism is all about and that's what world will surely be one day .
🤟
In the past, "socialism" meant that no one is entitled to consume without producing. Now, it means that everyone is. Communism is supposed to be some sort of high-tech nirvana where we're all the idle rich and robots have replaced the slaves. This way of thinking is the product of excessive childhood through paternalistic, state education.
Communism is freedom from coercive authority, not remaining a professional student for life. It's freedom as in free speech, not as in free beer. More precisely, it's freedom as in free association. People associating freely work for each other, not for a ruling class. They don't stop working 'cause everything is free.
Sorry much as I follow your channel I disagree with what has been espoused. I started a company in Russia during the hay days of yeltsins era. Firstly one assumes that everyone who works and have democratic input are as educated and well versed in micro and macro economics. This is not what I see and as such it had disintegrated into a an authoritarian system where’d the Bosses or senior managers dictates the work conditions and path of their enterprises. As they too are driven by selfish means to abuse their positions and also the lack of true managerial skills, the system failed. I believe the true qualities of a socialist or communist system to succeed requires competent leaders that have proven their skills and dedication much like the Chinese system. Simply putting people in positions of powers without meritocracy to prove their worth is suicidal. I am not discounting socialism but we need to Acknowledge that not everyone who votes and can influence the outcome or a critical decision are educated enough to know the differences. Example - keep sat 30% profits to ensure growth or distribute all. Most would vote to distribute all but not realizing that growth is integral to survival. In short they may be trading short term gains for long term survival and remuneration streams
You've misunderstood everything.
A complete load of BS from Wolff. In 1990 I rented a Party boss' dacha outside of MOSCOW. It was lavish and demonstrated the complete lie that compensation was equal amongst workers. Then there were the government shops where the upper class Communists were able to purchase products at a fraction of the cost that a normal worker would pay. The system was completely. slanted to allegiance to the Communist Party and unequal in every way across the population. This idea that democratic rule of a company is a good thing is absurd on its face. I would never invest a dime in any operation run like this because it is doomed to failure. People are not created equal in capabilities and to assume that the majority of workers will make the right business decisions is just absurd. My personal experience with Russian companies is mainly incompetence and miserable products that nobody should purchase. Wolff is just full of BS and is not telling anybody the truth. Maybe, being an academic , he just doesn't understand reality.... This would be typical..
Russia wasn't communist, and Wolff doesn't claim that it was.
Businesses that are managed democratically do not fail at a greater rate than private ones, and they are as, if not more, productive, with greater worker satisfaction and lower turn over.
The point of worker cooperation is not to burden everyone with decisions they can't make but to provide them with a say in the decisions that affect them and to provide accountability for whatever managers are hired to propose business decisions to the workers themselves, and to disentangle their labor from power they might wield over others beneath them.
This should also back up Harry's point, or at least part of it.
Virginie Pérotin, Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School, who has examined two decades' worth of international data on worker owned co-operatives has also found that "in several industries, conventional firms would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they adopted the employee-owned firms’ way of organising production."
www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/3823/the_benefits_of_worker_co-operatives
www.uk.coop/resources/what-do-we-really-know-about-worker-co-operatives
www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/2020-10/worker_co-op_report.pdf
" It was lavish and demonstrated the complete lie that compensation was equal amongst workers."
Lavish? You are full of shit. You can give me an address i can go there and check.
"Then there were the government shops where the upper class Communists were able to purchase products "
There where no such shops at all. Berezka shops was not for upper class but for everybody who had vneshposyltorg checks, as Soviet monetary system based upon gold standard was isolated from the world outside ComEcon block
"The system was completely. slanted to allegiance to the Communist Party"
Yes, you ARE full of shit.
" I would never invest a dime in any operation run like this because it is doomed to failure."
Nobody wants your investments, idiot. The workers of this operation are the investors.
And btw, "failed" Soviet Union grew its economy by 5000% compared to Russian Empire of 1913.
" majority of workers will make the right business decisions is just absurd. "
They do not need to make all business decisions, a$$clown. They can hire managers to do so.
"My personal experience with Russian companies is mainly incompetence and miserable products that nobody should purchase."
That is why Russia is net exporter country i guess.
@@MarshallJukov 👏👏👏
@@knyazigorthe8617 Obviously you never lived in Moscow and actually saw the corruption, misery and daily intoxication of society. This is the problem with you liberals, you just know nothing about reality
poltiocal class will own means of production under communism not the workers
Dear God, I hope the guy is not implying that there is much less income inequality in his preferred systems, 'cause I would seriously doubt the accuracy of that.
Compare inequality trends between capitalist and socialist companies
@@DC-wg1cr
Yip, the average pay ratio of a conventional business is 320:1. Compare that with worker co-ops who have an average pay ratio of 5:1.
@@seanpol9863 just even the gini coefficient of national economies is enough to refute the OP. Sorry conservatives, facts don't care about your feelings
@@seanpol9863 Co-ops are a special case. They tend to be craft workshops (woodworking, ceramics, etc.), where capital investment is much less intensive and much more evenly distributed. Those things have little or no relation to communist/socialist economies.
@@DC-wg1cr Where do you find such stats?
Came from a socialist country, with all respect, I have to say that you stay too long in your ivory tower. In the 80s, our economic system was almost crumble until we realised that the capitalist economy and individual ownership are the right to go.
That because at that time you're country is not ready / strong enough to be communist/socialist.
and because USA keep waging a war (bribing) to destroy you're country.
Take a look at what happened to the average Russian life expectancy after the fall of the USSR, and ask them how much they like their newly privatized capitalist world. Plenty of interviews on youtube with old former USSR citizens are out there for all to see.
THIS MAN WILL WALK YOU OFF THE CLIFF
Capitalism already has us standing at the ledge with one foot over the edge.
@@Kwerk0 you mean socialism
@@Blueblackngold no they mean capitalism, the thing we have now that's bringing us to despair
@@respobabs did you type this in an air conditioned room with electric and wifi hookup?
Prices are not arbitrary and cannot be assigned. He will walk you into the ocean.
@@Blueblackngold You are just an idiot throwing big mouth statements, often reductionist or anegdotical as hell
#atlassociety #Needforpower #POMO #socialismsucks #socialismkills #victornotvictim #envyisevil #pragerforcemember #prageru
honestly i wish wolff would get a lot more specific with his examples. he goes over the same general theoretical points in every video for years. on his recent appearance on hakim, he did the same thing again even though he was asked more specific questions.
I think he is an economist and not a politician. Their role is to refine the theory and not to apply it.
@Salahuone 22 He purposefully does it. Same with the way he talks about markets being applicable in socialism - to convince baby leftists etc. When he spoke with Hakim he openly stated that he's all for economic planning, which proves that what he usually presents in his vids is aimed at a more newcomer audience, which I don't have a problem with.
@Salahuone 22 Not at all. The whole point of economic planning is to allocate the economy based on people's needs, meaning that if constructed adequately, especially with today's technology for gathering information, a centralised planned economy would be more than capable of serving the needs and wants of all (there are also proposals for a decentralised planning, but I'm not that well read on it so I just stick with an AI planned one. Also, even if it's centralized, if the planners are directly elected by the people I don't see how that would contradict democracy.
@@beyond_modernity8554 Concentration of power always leads to abuse, every single time, i honestly have lost all belief in centralized policy or decision making.
In my eyes, economic planning must be done in a decentralized way, otherwise this elected official would most likely be corrupted cause there would be an underlying incentive to do so. You have to make economic planning in a way that you can allocate resources accordingly, spread the decision power between the businesses and workers, but also have a set of regulating entities to make sure the planning stays as equitable as possible.
@@brawlgammer4424 If we get rid of the commodity form aka money as exchangeable currency, there wouldn't be much incentive left for corruption, since what exactly is the elected planner going to steal? A bag of chips? Even with money still circulating, all it takes is the ability of immediate removal from position by the voters if they aren't happy with what the person does.