Posted by Editors on April 21, 2008 at 20:26:53:
An anonymous viewer asks:
"What will the basis for exchange under your model? What examples of it more closely exist anywhere in the globe.
"Perhaps I'm not understanding the fundamentals behind the system you are proposing.
"There must be a means of exchange. Currently currency is exchanged and there is a value attached to it. Wages are just a component of that.
"How would a person that works for an employer be compensated if not in wages?
"Currency allowed for the evolution beyond bartering. It allowed people to more freely exchange goods and services.
"While there is impoverishment in the US, it can be argued that there are other countries with various socialistic ideas that are much more impoverished.
"Take Kenya, as a developing country or China as an expanding country for example. Both much more impoverished then even the lowest in the US.
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The so-called "socialist" systems to which you refer have NEVER been socialist..., always of the capitalism requirements. These societies have used the wages system..., to produce commodities for a profit market.., and have used a "Political" form of government, which is based on dividing inhabitatnts into territorial designations from which "political representatives form a Federal system, such as we have here in the United States. This form of government totally removes the working population from any representation in the society's necessary industries in which they labor to produce marketable, exchangeable products for the profit purposes of the society's private corporate owners or State corporate controllers. Such is the make up of the societies to which you refer as being "socialist."
Genuine socialism has none of the features which are of the political state construct. The social and economic democracy requires none of the oppressive control instruments which are features of your "examples" of socialist societies.
Re: JUST compensation......
Using the measure of wages as "just" compensation for values produced is overlooking the very logical factors which produce "PROFITS" for "capital" holders... Holders of investment capital need NOT spend one minute in the ACTUAL, hands on production of our social values..., YET, capital holders gather INCOMES from marketable values produced by wage workers..., We have been "Educated" to accept this unfair, legalized robbery of our labor power.
The system of wages is a man made mechanism which can easily be change once We, the People, have the democratic empowerment to do so.
On your question of a system of remuneration other than wages…. Wages today represent a fraction of the actual values produced by Labor..., whose cost to the corporate owners is the "wage."
In states like NJ, which openly declared the unfair ratios of values expropriated by the employers of wage workers..., which is true of the entire society...,it was advertised by the NJ Dept. of Commerce... (to have corporations set up in NJ) that for every buck a corporation pays out in wages, it receives back 4 0r 5 dollars in values added. Those values added, or, in the classic analyses of wages..., a "surplus" of production beyond the cost of labor and whatever other expenses are factored into the final product..., and this holds for the entire aggregate of commodity production..., from the mining of the raw materials to the finished product..., the 4 or 5 bucks in return for the ONE buck spent on Labor holds..., is the essential source for the production of more capital,(which goes to the capitalist owners) both in needed goods and, of course, the personal profits accrued to capital investors.
The "surplus values" need not be siphoned off by the holders of "paper" which gives them the right to take values front eh producer. such values should be used by our society in both enlarging our production facilities (which, under this system, either are expanded or limited to the profit market..., and not used to produce for our societal needs and wants..., despite the quite obvious areas in which we need to improve..., like our health care programs.., our overloaded highways..., our public recreational facilities which are being "privatized" as we speak..., and currently the purposeful reluctance of the owners of our technology to develop a full blown alternative source of solar power because most of their present "INVESTMENT" is being consumed in the technologies which require fossil fuel sources.. Were we to have an economic democracy, we would be doing all the right things for ourselves and our society..., but today, corporate and political power rules. Capitalism and a political form of government (Territorial divisions) are the antthesis of democracy.
Capitalism is man made. It is not sacrosanct.
No remuneration system other than "wages" is used anywhere in the world..., which doesn't mitigate the “Equal Labor Exchange” concept used in an economic democracy., nor its need.
The elimination of the destructive competitive commodity market is the first step in realizing a remuneration system which is fair, equitable and socially responsible.
In an economic democracy, production for our social needs and wants, rather than for capital investment profits...,enables us to use a system in which our LABOR POWER used in the production of socially necessary goods and services IS THE MEASUREMENT and medium to be used as OUR CONSUMER POWER.
Today, all corporate produced value is sophistically measured according to the AMOUNT OF NECESSARY LABOR TIME IS USED TO PRODUCE IT.
For example..., immediately after WW11, in 1948..., Ford Motor Company stated that its "Private-ownership capitalism system was superior to the then -anticipated Soviet government’s directions toward what was then called a "socialist" society..., (which we know today never was. .because of the same reasons none of the so-called "socialist" societies you have alluded to were a genuine system of economic democracy)..
Ford announced to the world that it required only 48 MAN UNIT HOURS TO PRODUCE A FORD CAR.., the 48 man unit hours began with the mining of the raw material..., refinement and fabrication of materials into the making of the auto into its finished form...Just 48 HOURS..., which was nearly half the time factor for the Soviet technology…, which, at that time…, in immediate post WW11 period, when all of Europe’s technology was recovering from the war’s destruction… , was at its lowest production capabilities, as was the condition for ALL of Europe’s industrial base.
This measurement of labor time embedded into any product, butter, a loaf of bread..., a chair..., is the basis for measuring production efficiency , thus a measurement of the pricing of a marketable product..., the less labor time used, the less labor costs... the lower the market, hence market domination...The labor time factor is measured to the minute.
Labor time embedded in values we produce..., is the measure we have to develop a remuneration system which enables us to exchange OUR social production of one particular economic or service need, or want, with another... , our exchange medium being OUR labor time credits accrued when we contribute our labor power in a socially necessary industry.
Our total labor time contributed to a socially necessary industry, minus deductions, which We, as our democratically-guided, society’s keepers, will determine …, deductions which are applied to the replenishing of resources and other social and production factors needed for the continuation of such programs …, and when compared with the present 1 to 4 or 5 ratio used in today’s wages system…, will leave us with more than enough spending powers to easily enjoy all the things our cooperative production facilities enable us to produce .
Example... IN an economic democracy…, an auto whose production required say, 20 hours of labor time to produce…, will cost us 20 hours of our own amassed labor time which we are credited with from our own contributions to a socially necessary industry. That simple! Our Labor time values exchanged equally for Labor time of others. This eliminated the massive surplus values which are taken by the capital investors fro which their operative needs and their accumulated capital needs are continued in the process of using the wages system as the basis for their economic, social and political empowerment over the rest of society…, namely the majority citizenry composed mostly of people who work for wages.
On the question of our personal motivations for innovative contributions to make for a better society…we must repeat…, new, positive cultural values sustained by a cooperative society in which our social production is for our society’s use and not for private profits…, is the wellspring from which we can equate our own positive desires and contributions to our own family members for their own, as well as our best interests. That’s the way our human psyche will change from this present, competitive , “Me First” mentality which capitalism, and all materially insecure and combative societies demonstrate, which is simply one aspect of our human nature…, a nature which is influenced and formed according to its environmental factors…
A hostile society breeds hostilities. Capitalism certainly does that. Change the system from a negative to a positive, and our human natures will respond accordingly.