• miz [any, any]
    ·
    4 months ago

    The kind of socialism under which everybody would get the same pay, an equal quantity of meat and an equal quantity of bread, would wear the same clothes and receive the same goods in the same quantities — such a socialism is unknown to Marxism.

    All that Marxism says is that until classes have been finally abolished and until labor has been transformed from a means of subsistence into the prime want of man, into voluntary labor for society, people will be paid for their labor according to the work performed. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.” Such is the Marxist formula of socialism, i.e., the formula of the first stage of communism, the first stage of communist society.

    Only at the higher stage of communism, only in its higher phase, will each one, working according to his ability, be recompensed for his work according to his needs. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

    It is quite clear that people’s needs vary and will continue to vary under socialism. Socialism has never denied that people differ in their tastes, and in the quantity and quality of their needs. Read how Marx criticized Stirner for his leaning towards equalitarianism; read Marx’s criticism of the Gotha Programme of 1875; read the subsequent works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, and you will see how sharply they attack equalitarianism. Equalitarianism owes its origin to the individual peasant type of mentality, the psychology of share and share alike, the psychology of primitive peasant “communism.” Equalitarianism has nothing in common with Marxist socialism. Only people who are unacquainted with Marxism can have the primitive notion that the Russian Bolsheviks want to pool all wealth and then share it out equally. That is the notion of people who have nothing in common with Marxism. That is how such people as the primitive “communists” of the time of Cromwell and the French Revolution pictured communism to themselves. But Marxism and the Russian Bolsheviks have nothing in common with such equalitarian “communists.”

    from https://redsails.org/stalin-and-ludwig/

    • IzyaKatzmann [he/him]
      ·
      4 months ago

      Haven't read this one by redsails, I was expecting Lugwig Wittgenstein and a tear down of his work, the Vienna Circle, and the influence of Piero Sraffa (who was associated with Gramsci, not sure if he was a formal member of the communist party there). What I got was still great though, really like redsails as an outlet.

    • StalinStan [none/use name]
      ·
      4 months ago

      Also, of anyone got paid the same it would still be pretty cool though. Like, if someone offered me a cooler job for thr way I get now I'd take it. Or like, maybe I would take an easier job I like more. If I could go back to digging holes I would prefer it to the paperwork jobs I have had. The pay and other factors make that not as viable under capitlaism though.

    • quarrk [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      Marx says it all best in Part 1 of his Gotha critique. Especially focusing on excerpt #3. I think it’s clearer and also eliminates any third person interpretation of Marx

      https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm