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Price-controlled labour market implies that price is actually a mechanism which is complicated to do if you’re operating on something akin to “from each accordi

• sudosysgen 4y ago
  >if you’re operating on something akin to “from each according to ability and to each according to need”. Well nobody is saying that this possible short of a post-scarcity society. The Soviets themselves were certainly not making the claim that was how they were operating, simply that it was their goal and they were getting closer to it. > Whatever system you use needs to somehow resolve the issue that 53% of the youth population wants to be a social media influencer yet far fewer than 1% of jobs are that. Permitting price gets you this but it seems to be a very weak form of socialism if you adopt a system in which some people will make millions and others will make peanuts. The basic issue Marx-inspired people have with capitalism (I think Marxist is far too strong of a term) isn't necessarily with the fact that income inequality exists. Marx did write about how perfect egalitarianism is not a realistic nor desirable goal, and I don't think Varoufakis disagrees. The issue that is seen with capitalism is rather the unfair social relations that capital forms against which society is inevitably structured, which leads to people making billions simply from being an owner, and having debilitating control over society. As far as people making hundreds of thousands or even in the low millions because their work is particularly necessary to society's needs and few other people can fulfill those needs, there is nothing necessarily wrong with that. As long they don't get undue control and get to set up biased relations that are then independent of their ongoing contribution to society, I don't think this is a weak form of socialism at all, it would actually be a much stronger form of socialism than most that have been successful, and I think that this is also the kind of socialism Varoufakis would prefer. Short of a post-scarcity society in any case, I don't think any reasonable socialist, Marxist, or Communist has hopes for anything better. As far as the people making peanuts, if it is because what their productive output is not useful to society and they can't adapt to produce anything useful, we can use redistribution and de-commodify necessities in order to make it so that at least richer people do not have too problematic a power differential. And of course, we should strive to make opportunities as absolutely equal as possible. But what I'm trying to get at is that really socialists are fine with some degree of inequality if it simply comes from differences in productivity. The issue is not from the distribution of resources, but really the process of production and its impact on society. Of course, from each according to his ability to each according to his need is on a spectrum. The more our abilities increase relative to our needs, the closer we can get to the ideal.
  • TimPC 4y ago
    My how the goalposts have moved. Millionaires are the new proletariat. Socialism needs to borrow almost all of capitalism from capitalism. Fairly soon socialists will be advocating for (partial) investor ownership of the means of production because once you accept price mechanisms in labour markets you have almost no good alternatives for new business formation.
    • sudosysgen 4y ago
      No goalposts have been moved. The proletariat has never been defined by income level, rather simply if they sell their labour without owning capital. A vanishingly small percentage of the proletariat has been a millionaire or equivalent basically forever. Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production, nothing more, nothing less. If someone really is able to produce 20x more than their peers, there's nothing wrong with them have a before tax income of 20x more.