Frank wrote on Apr 15
th, 2025 at 6:07pm:
thegreatdivide wrote on Apr 15
th, 2025 at 5:21pm:
Bobby. wrote on Apr 15
th, 2025 at 4:29pm:
thegreatdivide wrote on Apr 15
th, 2025 at 4:20pm:
Yet unemployment rates amongst blacks are much higher than among whites.
The fault is the mainstream NAIRU neoliberal economy which fails to utilize eveyone "according to his abilities" (Marx).
TGD is quoting Karl Marx.
Problem?
Interestingly, Marx who was concerned with providing economic justice for workers during the injustices of the Industrial Revolution (eg, children working underground in coal mines to support poor working families instead of getting an education, appears in the thread's topic....
Quote:What did Karl Marx mean when he said from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs?
He meant everyone should be employed according to his ability, and everyone should receive a reward which AT A MINIMUM ensures satisfaction of the essentials of life (housing, food etc) ie, "needs" - as opposed to wants...
Quote:The principle refers to free access to and distribution of goods, capital and services.
Utter nonsense.
"From each" means the individual has to give something (ie, work), to receive his reward necessary to satisfy his "needs" (defined above).
Nothing "free" there.....
Whoever came up with your quoted interpretation of what Marx said is obviously a sinister, lying, anti-'communist' ideologue.
Surely not you?
Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.
Blimey, glad I never had to deal with Marx's turgid style of expression.
So we have: "To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal."
(Remember, we started this discussion with bobby's question: what does "from each according to his ability" (etc), mean...let's push on with the current text, to see if we can resolve those issues).
Quote:But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished;
ie after the mindless repetition of tasks on the production line, or at a single machine, has vanished...
Obviously Marx is here looking forward to a time when men are liberated from being slaves to machines (... interestingly, Trump wants to make American workers become slaves to machines again, because he can't work out how to create a society in which its members are more creatively employed in a post-industrial society manned by robots...).
Let's push on...
Quote:after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! Ah.....so when robots are doing all the work, individuals will be free to contribute according to their ability, and to receive according to (in this scenario) their different, non-essential needs, since the essentials are guaranteed by robots.
Quote:Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats)
has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. Development of IT, AI and automation hold the promise of freedom from work required to supply society's essentials, and allow individiduals to manifest their own creativity and interests in a socialist (or "communist") society.
Nothing "vulgar" about that (possible) future.