"Just reading Leszek Kolakowski's explanation of Marx's early writings these past few days has actually confirmed to me that Marx sought to promote *INDIVIDUAL* SELF-FULFILIMENT via the fulfilment of our social nature."

You're hopeless Tristan. You're a compulsive committee man and talker; you'd still be extoling and explaining the actions of the commies as they took you out to the firing squad: "that's alright, they're just helping me achieve my utmost individuality by killing me and by doing so enabling me to show my maximum support for the individual rights based Marxist revolution".

Hopeless.

The hive mind is the ultimate expression of individuality because it allows the individual to express his maximum capacity for conformity as part of our social nature.

Our "social nature".

Crap.

What's good for me is good for you is good for everyone. Big brother is just in your genes Tristan; you really think this BS is right don't you? You should read 'Hellstrom's Hive' by Frank Herbert.

Our "social nature' my backside.

Cohenite; Look up Karl Kautsky, Julius Martov, Rosa Luxemburg - and note how they are radically opposed to the "Bolshevik model". And once you've done that and understand what I'm talking about pls come back to me. If you actually do so I think you will find it very hard to tar me with 'the totalitarian brush'.

"Our social nature" (which you mock; probably mistaking it for 'socialist nature') simply infers that humanity is social by nature - in the sense we need to co-operate in order to survive - and to further the aims of civilisation. But Marxists also meant that capitalism creates alienation by taking away peoples' creative control over their labour, and forcing us into menial and repetitive tasks. The idea of Marxism is that by organising socially we can pursue our INDIVIDUAL needs; whether that be through art/music/literature etc. Socialism also makes such fulfilment more likely - as we actually need the free time in order to pursue that kind of life... Capitalism's fault is that it is predicated upon producing more and more ad infinitum. That is: creating abundance of material goods beyond the realm of 'diminishing' (human) returns. Further - that is - we could make do with less and partake of reflection, art, leisure, civic activism, fitness... "The system" - enforced by the capital-state-Ideological nexus - prevents this from occurring.

Tristan,

Bullsh!t. Pre-capitalist societies could hardly be said to be hives of fun, ingenuity and endless creativity, no more than early capitalism. BUT surely you can't maintain that current capitalist societies/economies provide the sorts of limited opportunities as just fifty years ago for creativity, that jobs are just as boring and repetitive as so many were then ?

In the sixties and seventies, I worked in factories, Metters, Arnotts, Balfours, Kodak, in meat works, in a pug mill and in a tyre repair shop. THAT was often repetitive work, and occasionally very boring. Hence the flitting from one to another. Those jobs have almost all gone, they've been computerised, or shipped overseas.

Most jobs these days either tend to involve decision-making, problem-solving, hard choices, OR they confront a skilled worker with unpredictable situations: both pose the risk of being bounced for making a wrong choice, by one's employer or by one's client. Risk rather than boredom is probably more of a problem now than back in the 1950s or 1960s.

Perhaps Marx would say that it is all a function of the development of productive forces and the differentiation of labour, a consequence of capitalism's inevitable need - which they would agree with - for constantly innovating, up-grading and up-skilling. But in the process, work has become less repetitive, more 'judgmental' and - dare I say it - more interesting, more 'challenging', more 'exciting'.

On the other hand, I don't regret those factory years, they were good training years; currently I'm transcribing old documents, at the moment S. A. Aboriginal Depot Ledgers, 1909-1932, which requires a high degree of tolerance of repetition. Only got to be done once !

Joe
www.firstsources.info

old zygote

It is mere stupidity to argue that someone doubling their income shows an increase in their poverty which is what you just argued, stop trying to squirm out of it.

Furthermore it is the oldest fallacy in economics to think that the increase in someone's wealth is despite, rather than because of the increase in someone else's wealth. Thus you have got cause and effect back the front, at the same time as you are stupidly confusing a mutually beneficial process with a zero-sum process: Marxism in a nutshell.

If what you are saying was right, we would all be better off starving to death, which is why attempts to realise socialism result in mass starvation.

Tristan
"But at the same time Marx erred, I think, in not discerning the subjective value of labour insofar as it relates to of skills, hardship, productivity etc... "

Correct. That means his theory - and your theory so far as you assume that premise- are *wrong*. Okay?

Now. Hold that thought.

"Produced goods are there because of creative labour... But is all labour equal?"

No it's not is it? So it's complete nonsense to talk, as Marx and you do, of "labour" or "the workers" as some monolithic lump, and still more stupid to assume that all persons supplying it have some kind of solidary class interest in common.

"Also importantly, though - It remains true from Marx that workers suffer unpaid labour time as a consequence of surplus value/exploitation..."

You've just contradicted yourself. The idea that "workers suffer unpaid labour time as a consequence of surplus value/exploitation" is based on the labour theory of value, i.e. that the value of labour is OBJECTIVE, that the value is in the labour itself, not in people's downstream SUBJECTIVE evaluation of the utility of whatever was produced.

According to the labour theory of value, if we spend $10 billion on labour for a gold mine, and it produces one ounce of gold, the value of that gold is $10 billion. But if someone accidentally kicks up a kilogram of gold, its value is the value of the labour that went into it - nothing. It's just wrong, can't you see that?

"Even if not all labour is equal - exploitation still remains..."

No it doesn't. You've just disproved that. You're back to the labour theory of value.

"Part of the answer ... is for workers to receive the full proceeds of their labour"

So you're back to asserting what you yourself have described as Marx's error.

And you're back to your dream that the bliss of socialism is to be attained by socialising the means of production! The means of production are to be owned by the State. And labour, according to Marx, is the means of production par excellence! Therefore the workers are to be owned by "the community" - translation: the State. That is the logical consequence of the labour theory of value.

Therefore it's not some strange coincidence that socialism resulted in authoritarian dictatorship and mass starvation and genocide you fool - it's the logical consequence of what you keep arguing in favour of, without understanding your own self-contradictions!

As soon as you recognise the error in the theory of the objective value of labour, it means Marxist theory is *demolished*. *None* of your beloved socialist conclusions can be salvaged therefrom. It's just simply wrong, epistemologically, economically, factually, logically, ethically, wrong.

And the fact that you don't understand what you're talking about, and keep circularly repeating slogans you don't understand, like "exploitation", does not make it right!

It's you who don't understand Marxism.

Although the slave philosophy of the socialists is most starkly on display in their defence of Marxism, in fact it runs through *all* socialist policies whatsoever, which is why none of them can defend it without self-contradiction or blatant absurdity like Zygote's or Tristan's.