: If a farmer provides his own labor, then he is receiving the full wage he is entitled to (since value is created by labor, the selling price should equal price of labor, or the wages). In this case teh selling price DOES equal teh wage paid to the worker (himself). So who can he possibly be exploiting? Himself?What remains of natural economy---and the peasant proprietor---is presently being WIPED OUT by capitalism.
Your point is moot.
(Socialism must come AFTER capitalism, not directly after feudalism.)
: If i wrote a book in my spare time, is that productive labor (I hope it will be, someday....) or is it leisure? If teh former it's illegal, if teh altter it's OK, right? But how do you decdie? At what point does it stop being leisure?
Society AS A WHOLE must be the authority that decides how much time is necessary for labor and how much time is desired for leisure. These decisions must arrive DEMOCRATICALLY---not as each individual sees fit. Job rotation would insure an honest appraisal in the case of EACH labor field.
: Third point. Anti-clericalism. To quote the inimitable Graham Greene, and his fictional Doctor Magiot, there is nothing fundamentally incompatible bwteen Communism and religion.
Nonsense.
Religion is the APOTHEOSIS of hierarchy---and that does extreme violence to the notion of people running their own lives. Communism: no representatives, no bureaucracy, no landlords, AND---likewise---no lords.
: Finally. Marx said quite clearly that revolution in Holland, England and America could come through the ballot box. Marx proposed 10 points by which social democracy could be established to pave teh way fro communism. Marx campaigned for socialist parties that sought to win power through parliamentary means.
See the asterisk in this post.
Seriously, would Marx call the U.S. electoral system anything but a gimmick to defalcate the masses?
There are TONS of Engels quotes (remember, Engles out-lived Marx by almost 20 years) to that effect...start with his Introduction to Marx's Civil War in France, fourth and fifth paragraphs from the end, for STARTERS...
: I'm not really a Marxist theoretically, for reasosn I'll get to eventually- mostly having to do with the atheism espoused by Marx, his preference for materialistic over diealistic explanations of human conduct...
Hate to say this, Nikhil, but you'll never be a Marxist if you cling to 'diealistic explanations of human conduct.' Marxism is all about PEOPLE changing their own destinies.
Don't you want to get behind that?
None.
