: USSR had wages, and it had class.
Wages, yes; class, no.
The 'new class' crap was demolished by Trotsky as early as1937.
No ownership, no class.
What did Khrushchev get when he left office? He supplemented his meager pension by growing potatoes in his garden...
There was no class in the U.S.S.R. There was only hierarchy from the social division of labor (wages reflected the hierarchy, they did not cause it).
The U.S.S.R. crumbled only because Gorbachev was going to decentralize management, ending the only thing that Soviet 'officials' had (a monopoly on the social division of labor). If there was a class, as you assert, then the existence of private property would have PREVENTED the (peaceful) dissolution of the Soviet state.
See Kotz and Weir's Revolution From Avove and Solnick's Stealing the State for confirmation...
Stoller:
Why are you defending the social division of labor anyway? You know Marx and Engels considered it the fundamental predicate for classes.
: I am actually simply pointing out that to some extent we can't all do the same jobs...
I never said ALL jobs would be done by ALL people. Don't you read links? I said that if (some) skilled work and (some) unskilled work was not shared between all people, hierarchy would eventually reemerge.
Stoller:
Remember Engels' 'On Authority'? The authority is the authority of 'the steam,' i.e. of industrialization itself---not people.
: Aye, and William Morris on authority too - but tehre is a differ3ence between acknowledging authority, and authoritarianism, particulalry the mindset which thinks that if the other is not controlled, it will do something daft.
Screw Morris.
Do you or do you not remember---acknowledge---agree with---Engels' point?
You keep dodging---but as far as I'm concerned, the issue has yet to receive a credible rebuttal.
: Which is all I ahve been saying all along, except my claim is that such changes of task will occur organically on a day to day basis...
'Organically?'
One word, RD: How?
: ...without an enforced system of rotation. I think six trotskyies can dance on teh head of an ice-pick - you?
Repeating 'trotskies on an ice-pick' like some mantra will not be considered a credible response.
: Not necessarilly any vote, if frank's the one who knows where to drive to, etc....
But HOW does it come that 'Frank' is the one who knows where to drive?
Because he's monopolized that particular job?
: I doubt that majority votes would be used all the time, often people would just volunteer to undertake such a job, and people would know how to work together to get the job done.
Again: How?
Are you hearing me at all?
Again:
Am I insinuating that some workers may try to take advantage of other workers (after---especially right after--- the revolution)?You bet I am.
You always seem to imply that once the revolution happens and private ownership of the means of production is gone, people will be immediately (5 minute dictatorship of the proletariat and all) transformed into fair, considerate, and co-operative beings.
On what material basis will that transformation occur?
A 5 minute event?
Get serious, RD.
The vigor and eloquence of Marx's socialism is its realistic appraisal of humans and the irrefutable truth that humans emerge out of their existing material conditions (and conditioning)...
Socialism, according to Marx, will be built from the stuff it emerges from.
There will be disputes.
I'm sure there will be rules to settle disputes.
I'm only canvassing forfair rules.
You (and that bonehead Lark) seem to think society---right after a 5 minute transformation---will be able to do without rules.
That's not Marxism---that's utopian chldishness.
: Tehre will always be rules, but, I suspect, those rules will be open ended, and alterable - to be otehrwise is to replace one machine-god with another.
Tell you what.
Answer how those rules will be 'open ended' (who will enforce THAT?) and get back to me.
