For Motherland! For Mengsk!

Somebody asked me once: What, are you against distribution according to labor? The question made me think. Instead of answering something like "No way! Of course, I am all for distribution according to labor", I actually answered: "I am for distribution according to need". The following is the result of further reflections.

Theoretically this question traces back the "Critique of the Gotha Program". There, Marx, while pointing out that the problem of distribution is secondary to production, still goes on to roughly outline how distribution could be organized in the lower phase of communism. And he also clarifies it, that this outline, even with the utilization of labor vouchers instead of money, would still be based on the same principle as commodity exchange, and, moreover, would be regulated by law that would be bourgeois in nature. According to it, every worker "the same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another" (after the deduction for the dependents' and insurance funds). Lenin in "The State and Revolution" reproduced that discourse by Marx with little change (he used the expression "according to work").

In the 1930s, Stalin stated* that, "We have remuneration of the collective farmers, the workers, as well as the intelligentsia, according to labor. People of different qualification receive different pay; the labor of an engineer, for instance, is three times higher in qualification than that of a worker." He also laid out his thought on the matter quite thoroughly in "New Conditions - New Tasks in Economic Construction", the speech he delivered to the conference of economy functionaries (see the part on "Wages"). He put the main emphasis on the qualification. In fact he equated the qualification of a laborer to the intensity of his labor.

But this is perfectly wrong! The marketeering "efficient managers" all uphold exactly this principle, in order to having upheld it, like Stalin, against the "equalizationism", then set disproportionally high salaries for the employees of higher qualification, which they, naturally, count themselves as. They are aware that qualification is nothing else but capital. "The human capital", as they say. And this is correct, because in order to give a person this very qualification, the society expends quite a lot of socially necessary labor. What should happen to this capital in the lower phase of communism? Right, it must be socialized. I. e. the laborer's qualification in communism does not belong to him; it belongs to the society, as a means of production. As for the amount of labor proper, the brain and muscle effort, which gets materialized in the goods and services produced, it will be the same, as for a qualified engineer, so for an unqualified worker, in the same amount of time provided they labor with the same intensity (diligence, thoroughness). At that, a larger amount of value will be produced by the engineer due to the transfer of the value of his qualification onto the product of his labor, just like the worker transfers little by little the value of the machine he operates and of the raw materials onto the product of his. Engels formulated this in "Anti-Dühring" unequivocally:

In a society of private producers, private individuals or their families pay the costs of training the qualified worker; hence the higher price paid for qualified labour-power accrues first of all to private individuals: the skilful slave is sold for a higher price, and the skilful wage-earner is paid higher wages. In a socialistically organised society, these costs are borne by society, and to it therefore belong the fruits, the greater values produced by compound labour. The worker himself has no claim to extra pay. And from this, incidentally, follows the moral that at times there is a drawback to the popular demand of the workers for “the full proceeds of labour”.

According to Marx, in order to evaluate the amount of labor adequately for exchange, one must multiply the time of labor by its intensity. And, while the former parameter is pretty easy to assess, the latter is much more complicated, especially when it comes to non-industrial worker professions. It is clear that the wage&salary differential in the USSR was much lower than in any cap.country, so de facto the distribution was indeed much closer to "according to labor", than it is possible under capitalism. However, in the absence of a correct and universal system of labor intensity assessment, the "according to labor" principle could not but be violated all the time. The concept of "labor vouchers" was not realized in the USSR either. Some people assert that the Soviet ruble was in fact such a voucher, but this is an obvious and unjustified, needlessly apologetic stretch of reality.

Stalin himself never asserted that, although he did put quotations marks around the expression "monetary economy" in the Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, and said that under socialism, the function of money is different from that under capitalism. He also never asserted that the Soviet money serves or should serve as a means of equivalent exchange of produce. On the contrary, he seemed to have tacitly implied that the system of fixed prices was meant to regulate the allocation of value (and thus labor time) not on the basis of equal exchange, but on the basis of the requirements of economic development (including, most importantly, but not limited to the exchange of produce "between the city and the country", a.k.a. between the state-owned industry and the agrarian sector comprised largely of the collectivized farmers' cooperatives). Also, Vyacheslav Molotov, who probably understood Marxism even better than Stalin, in some of the conversations he had with Felix Chuyev, a journalist, during his years of retirement, unequivocally said, that the situation in the Soviet Union was very far from "distribution according to labor".**

Since the employee's qualification under communism is not his own private achievement, but a public asset, a consistent realization of the principle of pay "according to labor", the threefold difference between engineers and manual workers has nowhere to come from. The difference of pay may be between engineers of the same specialty and qualification, if one of them, due to his outstanding math skill, labors more intensively than his colleagues, just like one manual worker may be more physically strong and nimble and make a Stakhanovite output. But on average among all occupations the pay rate should necessarily be more or less equal. Therefore, from the standpoint of "distribution according to labor", "equalizationism" within one occupation is bad, and between occupations, it's good.

However, the equalization of pay rates entails "fluidity" of personnel, which Stalin took a very specific not of in the aforementioned speech. Given the same wage, employees will constantly compare the working conditions between various occupations, specialties and between different enterprises, and will strive to change jobs for easier and more comfortable conditions. Sometimes their expectations will not be fulfilled, and when they will, nothing will stop them from growing after a while, so the workers will try to "flow" further - to the third job, the forth, and so on. In the higher phase of communist construction and absence of cap.encirclement, this would be tolerable (or maybe even desirable, as this "fluidity" could expedite the process of elimination of the distinction between the manual, intellectual and managerial labor). But, under the conditions like those the USSR found itself in, that is the initial stage of the communist construction in the hostile capitalist encirclement, it was indeed unacceptable. That is why Stalin demanded to activate all available leverage to intensify production. And, as well known, mat.stimulation alone was not enough and at certain point even the possibility of changing employment on the initiative of the worker was limited. In parallel, the system of various bonuses and compensations ("for hazard", "for secrecy", the "polars", seniority, etc.) was developed. And while some of these bonuses were indeed related to the higher expenditure, so to say, of the labor power, in most cases they significantly overshoot the difference and in fact created a sort of progressive scale relative the basic pay rate. The same may be said of other methods of mat.stimulation (the resort trip arrangements and so on).

The threefold difference between the salaries of workers and engineers under Stalin was taken not from a threefold difference of their labor input in the social production, but from the shortage of those qualified engineers. The most "qualified cadre", in order to maximize the pace of industrialization, were booked from the USA, as a matter of fact. And the difference between their pay and the Soviet workers and engineers was not threefold at all... But in Brezhnev's time, when the USSR felt the need in workers' hands, more so that in additional engineers, some workers' jobs got paid 1.5-2 times the average engineer’s salary. These oscillations show, among other things, that labor power never lost its commodified character in the USSR.

Aside from all that, there is also the following theoretical consideration, as to why it is completely impossible to reduce the system of material stimulation to the principle of "according to labor":

Even if we had at our disposal an ideal system of evaluation of intensity and amount of labor, it could only work on the basis of the law of value. But as a result of the expansion of the field of central planning in the process of the construction of communism, the field of the operation of the law of value will be correspondingly diminishing, which in turn precludes the possibility of equivalent exchange, including such via labor vouchers.*** (And a fully centralized planned economy precludes any possibility of distribution "according to labor", just as it precludes commodity circulation. In a fully centralized planned economy no exchange is possible at all, as it functions on the basis of one-way transactions, including the distribution of consumer articles according to need.)

It is probable, that this contradiction served as one of the main sources of revisionism in the USSR: the ideology prattled all the time about the domination of the principle of distribution "according to labor", and the theory was being trimmed and adjusted, promoting and substantiating the necessity to expand commodity production, ostensibly for the sake of the construction of communism, whereas in reality that expansion of commodity production was but a harbinger and even somewhat of a result of the already ongoing process of the restoration of capitalism. At the time of the collapse of the USSR, the bankruptcy of the slogan of "distribution according to labor" manifested very clearly, when wide strata of the Soviet citizens, realizing the inconsistency of this slogan with the actual state of affairs, became an easy prey of the demagogues and, high on the wave of the "fight against the privileges of the nomenklatura" (which were perceived as a major discrepancy and the source of all other violations of the "according to labor" principle), supported the market reforms, privatization of public property, and therewith the domination of the law of value in its very elemental form.****

Thus, in the correspondent polemic between Stalin and Engels, history unequivocally confirmed by the example of the USSR the correctness of Engels in the same Anti-Duhring:

The “exchange of labour for labour on the principle of equal valuation”, in so far as it has any meaning, that is to say, the mutual exchangeability of products of equal social labour, hence the law of value, is the fundamental law of precisely commodity production, hence also of its highest form, capitalist production. It asserts itself in present-day society in the only way in which economic laws can assert themselves in a society of private producers: as a blindly operating law of nature inherent in things and relations, and independent of the will or actions of the producers. By elevating this law to the basic law of his economic commune and demanding that the commune should execute it in all conscientiousness, Herr Dühring converts the basic law of existing society into the basic law of his imaginary society. He wants existing society, but without its abuses. In this he occupies the same position as Proudhon. Like him, he wants to abolish the abuses which have arisen out of the development of commodity production into capitalist production, by giving effect against them to the basic law of commodity production, precisely the law to whose operation these abuses are due. Like him, he wants to abolish the real consequences of the law of value by means of fantastic ones.
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For socialism, which wants to emancipate human labour-power from its status of a commodity, the realisation that labour has no value and can have none is of great importance. With this realisation all attempts — inherited from primitive workers’ socialism — to regulate the future distribution of the necessaries of life as a kind of higher wages fall to the ground.

One must clearly understand, that the necessity to rely on material incentives and stimulation in the lower phase of communism is nothing but a "birthmark" of the old society. It inevitably follows from the impossibility of immediate transition to distribution according to need (which involves, among other things, refrain from individual consumption of luxury items). This transition requires the "New Man" to be capable of complete control over his monkey instincts. The higher the level of individual conscientiousness of the members of the early communist society, the higher the percentage of the conscientious members in it ready and willing to wholeheartedly partake in the labor for the benefit of the whole of society, the lesser the necessity of mat.incentives will become.

It is clear though, that in the beginning of the communist construction, this readiness will be quite low overall, and therefore, mat.incentives will for a while remain the prevalent tool of the proletarian commonwealth in its relations with the workers. This tendency may be even used to measure the progress of the communist construction: from time to time, proportional cuts in mat.incentives may be introduced, and then the negative effect of this on the plan completion evaluated. The smaller the effect, the higher the conscientiousness, obviously... But while the society is still not conscientious enough for complete transition to the communist principle of distribution according to need, the amount of mat.stimulation, as well as its forms (premiums, bonuses, privileges, individual and team CLPs*****, piece-rate pay, market realization of surplus produce, etc.), must be decided upon by the commonwealth having in view primarily the minimal labor expenditures require for completion of the current plan.

Long story short, it is time to stop deceiving both the workers and ourselves. It is time to discard the slogan of "distribution according to labor" in the lower phase of communism. Nothing but theoretical confusion ever came out of the introduction to Marxism of this alien Proudhonian-Lassallian element. And there is no reason to expect anything good coming out of it in the future. This loophole for incorrigible socialists and camoflaged apologists of the old order must be eliminated.******


ADDON/SUMMARY: The Minefield of Social Justice.

It is well known that "there is not a single grain of ethics in Marxism". That's why social justice is just a bonus coming with the superefficient communist economy. In socialism, though, until all the "birthmarks of the old society" have not been eliminated, injustice and unfairness is omnipresent.

On the other hand, the perception by the masses of the unfair socialist society as a just and fair one improves its manageability, and so on. The slogan of the "distribution according to labor" is related directly to this, because on the intuitive level it is perceived as fair. Because of this intuitive perception, Lassalle and all the rest of the "ethical socialists for a capitalism with a humane face" began to force this slogan in the 19th century.

The classics of Marxism-Leninism brought the attention to the fact that "distribution according to labor" does not secure equality (neither in the socialist sense, nor in the communist one). But much more important is the fact, that "distribution according to labor" is impractical and unfeasible in principle (see "Anti-Duhring"). When the impracticability of this slogan is discovered and discerned by the masses, the masses begin to suspect, that they are being duped, - and it doesn't matter at that point what rationale may there be behind the deception, - the seekers of justice get the effect opposite to their intention. Thus, social justice is actually the minefield, which over the period of 200 years turned into a moral graveyard of the theorists and activists of the so called "Left".

As far as the so called "Right" is concerned, by the way, oftentimes they like to talk about justice too, appearing in various forms, starting with the relatively innocent copyrasty (the same good old "distribution according to labor", only the side view of it...) and ending with most reactionary racisms.


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*] This English translation of Stalin's conversations with the members of the Politburo and economists involved was apparently made from a different transcript from which the mentioning of the "three times" difference was missing.

**] F Chuyev, "140 conversations with Molotov", Ch. "On Constitution".

***] This was written in 2012. By 2020 I have come to the conclusion that the law of value gradually became inoperative already during the late stages of capitalism (imperialism and ultra-imperialism), which have been dominated by unequal exchange. Thus any attempt to "restore" the law of value under the guise of "socialism", would be a gross mistake, which F. Engels succinctly warned against, as quoted further down.

****] Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who would become the richest Russian oligarch at one point (before he was dekulakized by Putin's crew), authored a book with his business partner L. Nevzlin in the early 1990s, cheering for the market reforms, in which they claimed, among other things, that the "New Russian" businessmen "came to life to indeed realize the beautiful postulate of socialism: from each according to their ability, to each according to their labor", and that they themselves received their high income "according to labor". It's just that their labor was so much skilled and complex, apparently... The book was called "The Man with a Ruble", which was a tongue-in-cheek allusion to a Stalin-era movie about the October Revolution, "The Man with a Gun".
Even if Khodorkovsky was perhaps not quite sincere in those statements of his, he was certainly capitalizing on the discontent of the intelligentsia with the situation where their salaries were equalized or even lagged behind those of the menial workers. For example, some Nikolay Petrakov in his publicistic article "The Gold Chervonetz - Yesterday and Tomorrow" in #8 '1987 of the "Noviy Mir" (a monthly literary magazine), begаn by asserting the principle of distribution according to labor as the cornerstone of social justice which in turn must lead to communism, and in the very next paragraph bemoaned the fact that workers' salaries often exceeded those of engineers and doctors. He then returned to this fact in the conclusion of the article, to bemoan it once more and to attribute it to the prevalence of some "inertial tendencies". He even made a comparison to the year of 1940, when the white collars were paid on average times more against the unskilled laborers... Don't expect him to have praised Stalin though. His praise went to Gorbachov and the latter's initiatives of improving the "authority of the ruble" and putting an end to the "violations of economic laws, and primarily the law of distribution according to labor"...

*****] CLP - coefficient of labor participation. Conceived as part of the system of material stimulation, it was widely implemented across many Soviet enterprises to make the distribution of bonus pay accurately reflect the quantity of labor each worker contributed individually to his team output in a given period. In essence, it combined the element of piece-rate pay with the hourly wage. Detailed and elaborate instructions were developed concerning the methods of the CLP evaluation, the metrics involved, etc. Yet in practice it was often left to the arbitrariness of foremen, resulting in petty conflicts leading to dips in morale and discipline.

******] By the way, Che Guevara had a similar interpretation of the Critique of the Gotha Program, leading to his take on the of material incentives as a "necessary evil" and the operation of the law of value in the lowest phase of communism as very limited. "Sobre el sistema presupuestario de financiamiento", 1964




DISCUSSION:

[Kovin]: Interesting digest, although due to time constraints just skimmed through it. Later will read again, without haste. This is a very important problem, but there are too few people willing to study it.

[Romdorn]: This is expounded very reasonably. Material stimulation, no doubt, is the legacy of capitalism, and not at all something socialistic of perpetual.

[Antresol]: Very fitting. Spot on, about qualification. The root of evil is that this mean of production is uncommunalizable in principle. The acquired qualification can only be but lost or drunk away, but hardly communalized. In fact, the demands of pay according to qualification while sounding like pay according to labor, are demands of interest on capital, which qualification, as a mean of production, actually is.

[1504]: It's both a private achievement and a social good, 50/50, because he still had to make certain effort to acquire qualification. It didn't generate by itself in him (or in anyone) by the will of the party or of the society. Therefore, they have to be rewarded according to the measure of the special effort that they've spent.

[SovOK]: For the hard labor of acquiring qualification in the lower phase of communism they pay a stipend, as I've heard. They should be rewarded, of course. But it is exactly that - a reward, and incentive. For the labor, but not "according to labor".

[Buntar1917]: Have you read the criticism of "distribution according to labor" by Kropotkin?

[SovOK]: Yeah, I am just bemused, how Kropotkin ended up being an anarchist, despite such a clear mind.

[Rezerved]: Within the framework of your approach to the problem, it remains unclear, how the society could incentivize a citizen to improve his qualification in a situation when material needs are met both for the qualified and unqualified more or less equally?

[SovOK]: Even when the basic individual needs are already met, many levers remain to improve qualification of the unqualified: better working conditions, reduction of working hours, extended access to public consumption funds, moral incentives. Lastly, if the society really requires more qualified cadre, but the non-conscientious proletarians who got fat on socialist grubs are unwilling to improve their qualification, the problem may be solved in a mandatory manner. Until the "new man" arrives at the scene.

[Pif]: Let's say, a Soviet JRA sits through his pants in an SRI*, but whether he labors there or just sips teas, is a lot more difficult a question.

[SovOK]: Such people that do nothing at all except sipping teas are a fraction of a percent and can be written down to the statistical margin of error, for the present purposes. But to figure out who sips teas half the worktime, who - three quarters and who just a quarter of it, appears impossible. Yet some inveterate tea-sippers in the time left over from the tea breaks labor more intensively than others. Some have ingenious solutions popping in their spare time. All this is hardly possible to account for. Just like it is impossible to reduce to a common denominator the labor of a JRA, a miner, a cab driver, a night watchman, a teacher and a ballet dancer.
We can't measure adequately the quantity of labor, we only can account for the fact that a person does labor, or does not for a given length of a working day. If we set a task for ourselves to arrange at all costs the distribution "according to labor", we'll have to forfeit the central planning, and forfeiting the principle of central planning we give the green light to commodity production, appropriation and exploitation.

[Pif]: That's exactly what I'm driving at. Even if some kind of labor "supermoney" could be set up, the socialist political economy would drown in the problems of "fair" labor dispensation.


* * * *

[Zaphrail]: This problem cannot be solved purely by education. Reason: any society organized on altruistic principles is vulnerable to parasites. If it doesn't have a defense mechanism, and all it's counting on is the education of conscientiousness, parasites will infest it sooner or later and gain competitive advantage against the "conscientious" altruists. They will use the goods of the system and give nothing in return, and in time will kill the system altogether. Consequently, aside from education, defense against parasites is necessary, in the form of a robust feedback mechanism, protecting the system from being hacked. This feedback must discriminate against parasitism, "prohibit" it, make it less advantageous than the "conscientiousness".
It's possible to think up many specific mechanisms, both negative and positive. But you can't specify them until you formulate clear-cut principles on which the socio-economic system must function at the more fundamental level, than the particular, albeit important, question of incentives to improve qualification.

[Rezerved]: By and large, it doesn't matter what a man is stimulated for - to improve his qualification or to just properly perform his present functions (as opposed to just pretending of doing it). The kinds of incentives are still the same. There are three principal kinds of motivation: an idea, fear or greed. The latter is euphemistically called "material incentives", and the problems with it have been discovered in practice, as summarized in the topic here. If we exclude greed (mat.incentives) and the idea (education), then only fear remains. Have you had it in mind under the term "feedback"?

[Zaphrail]: It does matter, what one is being stimulated for. Because the necessary degree of motivation and the kind of incentives may vary, depending on the importance of the goal. I don't by any means deny the role of education. I've just specified that education alone won't be enough.
Let's suppose that a certain system of values is present in the society, and based on this system of values and his own actions every member of society has a certain status. The higher the status, the higher the respect towards this person, the larger the influence he can exert upon the life and development of the society. Correspondingly, the lower the status, the smaller the influence, and in case it falling below as certain threshold, the society begins to apply various sanctions, up to exclusion of this person from society. Therefore, if we, as a society, are interested in stimulating the members of society to improve qualification, we include in our value system that higher qualification entails a certain elevation of status.
If we are at present particularly interested in specialists in a certain field, the status in that field will grow faster; if we have problems with carelessness and they are still not in a hurry to improve qualification, which leads to a shortage of critically needed specialists, we add lowering of status to the system... We can adjust it flexibly. How would you characterize this system in terms of your three principal kinds of motivation?

[Rezerved]: What is the "status" expressed in? If it is in shiny tinsel and pretty diplomas, then it's only good for nothing. If it is in the access to goods, it's reduced to material stimulation (see above). But nobody will kowtow to the "purple pants" without a threat of "tranclukation"...**

[Zaphrail]: It's a certain rating, a system of ranks. It varies over time, depending on the conformity of the person's actions with the certain criteria affirmed in the social system of values. The higher the person's status in a certain field and/or in general, the greater weight his opinion will have on the questions in that field and/ or in general, and the larger influence he will exert on the decision making. The lower the status, the smaller the weight, down to zero (you don't give a damn, OK, don't give, but nobody will listen to you either). Material stimulation is absent here (there maybe present destimulation, in case of overly low status as a result of overt disregard for the social system of values, for example, a refusal to participate in the public life and intention to use public goods nonetheless).

[Rezerved]: Bro, if you have a guaranteed piece of bread and a roof over your head, what do you give about the purple pants of the others? Why on earth should I listen to the opinion of some crank, just because he's got three stripes and I got only one? That is, are you suggesting a militarized dystopia? Thank you kindly... I like Ordnung, no doubt, but that gave me creeps...
You see, the thing is, your "status" is derived from a certain ideology and will work as an incentive no sooner than that ideology is hammered into the heads of all citizens. But if we find a tool capable of hammering ideas in the heads with such an awesome force, the system of "status stimulation" will become superfluous. It will be possible to just make people honest... that's more humane.

[SovOK]: There are always plenty of those willing to "kowtow to the purple pants" even for free. That's why the "tranclukation" of the unwilling is rarely problematic. The hitch is in the fact that the authority to wear the "purple pants" and to "tranclukate" is very easily convertible into a system of material incentives.

[Rezerved]: That's what I say. The goal is to implement the ideology not of the nerds, but of the creator of Linux. I doubt, by the way, that he did what he did for somebody's respect. He did it because he considered it necessary. This is the relation to the world that should be fostered from childhood. Without it, nothing will be accomplished. The problem cannot be solved any other way. And it should be solved progressively, in the course of generational change. No earlier than in the third generation grown up in communism will it be possible to test the abolition of mat.stimulation, after investing a hoard of resources and effort into education, and not just altruistic at that, but a complex one, with a "feedback", that is with immunity from one's own selfishness and that of others, with deep knowledge of psychology, and so on. Until then, the dollar and the whip must come hand in hand with the "children's book", only incrementally giving way to it.

[Zaphrail]: Any expectation of "conscientiousness", which is supposed to increase without a known and strictly defined cause, begs serious questions. Retention of mat.stimulation "in the first stage" as the main tool only increases the number of these questions. A "certain period" runs the risk of extending indefinitely, the increase of "conscientiousness" to lag, and the system to eventually degenerate. It is necessary already in the initial stage to build into the system some very serious feedback loops, whiсh will encourage, let's say, asceticism and frugality in the material needs, and correspondingly discriminating against excesses in material consumption. Building the mat.stimulation into the system in the initial stage is exactly the opposite measure, in direct conflict with the declared growth of conscientiousness, and extremely dangerous at that (not sure, if permissible at all).

[SovOK]: Yet you can't do anything about it. It is already built in and quite substantially at that, thanks to capitalism. You clearly won't be able to uproot it overnight, exactly for the reason that you can't count on the conscientiousness. The only avenue is to gradually diminish it, but not to smooth it over with Lassallian slogans.
As to how exactly it is to be achieved, that is a problem for a bunch of SRIs. As a matter of fact, in the USSR the topic of "scientific organization of labor" was getting developed, although witnesses testify that towards the end it degraded into complete profanation. So, to me it seems, the most promising direction is the games theory, which suggests that even the smallest adjustment of rules may sometimes deliver extraordinary results.

[Zaphrail]: Yes, this is no trivial problem. It is indeed the key problem, not a secondary one that could be taken care of sometime down the line, and so much must be clearly understood. Yet, sadly, it is raised very seldom. Some (the techno-utopians) think that it's possible to create such an economy that will satisfy any wants. А personal automobile for everyone, sure... how about a helicopter? Others openly or discretely gravitate towards a traditional variant with a privileged class of bureaucracy and material stimulation "according to justice", which will eventually be reduced to the traditional society of the last ten thousand years, based on the concentration of rights to manage and dispose of the property of the hierarchy. Some just don't want to touch it because of these "unpopular" implications…


* * * *

[Akabash]: The discourse is "fair" on the whole, but the conclusion is a bit extremist...

[SovOK]: IMHO, I've substantiated it enough. The quantity of labor cannot be measured with precision, and even if it could, the outcome would be "equalizationism" anyhow. Of course, it's possible to play around with different CLP systems, but in practice the CLPs would be assigned "by the eye", and together with the hourly pay-rate ("closing the hours") would be in essence a variation of piece-rate wages. Besides all else, it wouldn't be conducive to the vector of the reduction of the "alienated" labor time.
I think, that mat.stimulation in the period of socialism should assume the form of "distribution according to credit". The developed imperialism in the West has practically come to this form already, only the extent of the credit is defined by the banks, based upon the capital of the person being credited (the estimation of which is often conducted in a completely shamanistic manner though). In the lower stage of communism the single commonwealth bank would credit all citizens, based on the pay rate and bonus table provisioned in the five-year plan with the aim to maximally ensure the completion of the plan. Something along these lines.
Naturally, there must be the "top bar", and, most importantly, all this must be carried out on the background of the expansion of the public consumption funds. And new categories of produce should not be introduced in the retail at all, but distributed according to need from the beginning (thus, back in the USSR, it was a grave mistake to make passenger cars for sale to private citizens...).
By the way, I've read recently the modern champion of labor vouchers, Paul Cockshott, but found him somewhat unconvincing thus far. And, in any case, social fairness interests us mostly "insofar". It is supposed to emerge almost as a byproduct in the course of making the economic basis of society more and more efficient and to serve as a positive feedback loop. Aiming for it as a primary goal, will, on the contrary, derail the whole affair.

[Akabash]: And what about that place in the Gotha Critique about the "birthmarks"? Marx read Anti-Duhring badly, rolled down to pre-Marxist positions?

[SovOK]: No, the "birthmarks" are all right. But the "labor voucher" idea, yes, seems to have been a compromise with the socialists. The practice showed that the "equalizationism" is not the way to go (Stalin's right on this), However, it's not because it violates the principle of "according to labor" (Stalin's wrong on this), - on the contrary, it largely conforms to it, but because of the major "birthmark", namely, the ignorance and non-conscientiousness of the wide masses of the people, including the proletarians. Not only do they neglect to improve the productivity of labor (that would be half the trouble; theoretically, especially if the hostile encirclement were absent, it would be possible to get by until the conscientiousness has grown), but they also tend to shirk at the expense of the enthusiasts.

[Akabash]: The watershed between true and false is more subtle. It was not the principle of "distribution according to labor" that was false, but the failure to understand its contradictory essence and the instability of the society based upon it. The country perished not because the leaders were doing something wrong, but because they didn't realize they were doing everything more or less right. It's like a driver, who had to turn the wheel sharply now to the right, then to the left, in the end snapped and turned it all the way to the right.
The policy of the party in the sphere of economic relations at the industrial stage of the productive forces' development would inevitably be contradictory: both to rely on the MCO*** and to burn them out with napalm. Today NEP, tomorrow collectivization, rinse and repeat. (We should think how to explain it to people, that these tack maneuvers are normal). And of course, this is rich soil for the inner party suspense, mutual charges of deviations and repression; one can only wish to find some adequate forms for this...
As for the "distribution according to credit", I think that the categories of "according to labor (a.k.a. "in accordance with the law of value") and "according to need" (a.k.a. "regardless of labor input") cover the entire logical field of possibilities; tertium non datur. So "according to credit" is a subsumptive kind of "according to labor".
The expression "according to need" is itself not very apt. Although the tradition of its use is established, and it's better not to discard it, but to correctly interpret it. If "according" to need is taken too literally and complemented by the notion of "abundance", it leads to the endless talk about the needs always exceeding the possibilities, about true and false needs, etc. Therefore it's better to say "according to labor" and "regardless of labor input".

[SovOK]: Yes, one can't dispute that distribution may be either "according to labor" or not "according to labor". But the assertion that any distribution not "according to labor" is distribution according to need, is somewhat perplexing, to put it mildly.

[Akabash]: "According to credit" is nevertheless a kind of "according to labor". Imperfect does not mean inoperable. What I’m saying is that it is the formulation and the conclusion that is in question, not the inquiry into the contradictions. The lengthy period of a compromise with the MCO was inevitable, and it will be again, and this must be reflected in the official slogans.

[SovOK]: "According to credit" is not a kind of "according to labor" at all; although that is exactly how various "efficient managers" of the bourgeoisie try to present it (pretty successfully, so far). And Stalin, unfortunately, fell head first in this very trap, when it came in the same order with the "efficient management", and he mixed up qualification with the intensity of labor. And his fault is not that he practiced "efficient management" (the ends justify the means, after all), but that he fell in the trap. Later on it gave the broadmasses the impression that the "Bolsheviks fucked us over" about the distribution according to labor, and that "everyone for himself".
The quantity of labor of a neurosurgeon who assembles together a car crash victim for 8 hours is not greater than the quantity of labor of a gardener or a janitor who for the same 8 hours collects candy wrappings in the neighborhood. The neurosurgeon's qualification - the knowledge he acquired in training and the expertise he gained from experience - is constant capital (or a social fund, under communism), the value of which is transferred by the neurosurgeon into the service of assembling people from their parts. Therefore, if we want to distribute money/credit/labor vouchers "according to labor", we must pay janitors and neurosurgeons approximately the same on average, and a janitor with a higher CLP will always receive more than a neurosurgeon with a lower CLP.
I suggest another system. During the designation of the tasks and the plan for each 5-year period, the amount of mat.stimulation is to be determined according to this plan. For example, in the 1st 5-year plan, our Politburo have decided that while the general long term plan of the transformation of economy on the communist basis is being drafted, it is necessary to combat the trash in the streets, left over from the days of revolution and civil war. To this end, aside from all other ingenious measures, it might make sense to set the credit allowance of gardeners and janitors, for instance, twice that of neurosurgeons.
The rationale being that there is a need in many janitors, and they must work well, to clean up our cities; and the neurosurgeons are not that much needed because if people get injured while driving their private cars instead of riding the public transport, it's their own damn fault. Afterwards, when in the beginning of the 2nd 5-year plan the General Plan of the transformation of economy on the communist basis is enacted, more neurosurgeons will be required to deal with the industrial accidents, and fewer janitors, as the clean-up of the cities will have been completed. So for the 2nd 5-year plan the credit allowance of neurosurgeons will be set twice that of janitors. Such is the "credit maneuver".

[Akabash]: But this hardly fits in with both the assertions that the "equalizationism" between occupations is good, and with those stating it's bad. You use the expression "easier and more comfortable conditions" yourself, to explain what makes people switch occupations. But that only means the suffering of "uneasy and uncomfortable conditions" is part of the labor expenditure, which must be remunerated by the principle "according to labor". So, the level or the required labor expenditures per the unit of time is not the same for all occupations; therefore, the pay rate should be unequal. If we compare occupations by the shedding of sweat, a miner in a shaft, and a secretary in the office of the mining enterprise, for example... It seems the inequality of wage between these two occupations would be justified simply due to the unequal expenditure of the muscle labor.

[SovOK]: I don't have any contradiction here. At first, I talk about how it should be in theory, and then I describe how it works in practice. It would be justified to compensate the extra muscle effort of the miner not in the form of a higher wage, but with personal vouchers for reinforced meals for the miner (extra milk for hazard, sanatorium annually and so on). As you know, they tried to implement this in the USSR, but in practice it led to a whole framework of benefits and privileges, in which some little labor-intensive professions rivaled the very same miners, while some quite labor-intensive ones were compensated/rewarded insufficiently: janitors, dockers, etc. Also the bonuses and privileges extended to the relatives of the entitled workers, although they didn’t have to exert those muscle efforts and suffer those hazardous or strenuous labor conditions themselves, so how do you justify that?
The heresy about the "unproductive" labor of teachers and doctors is adjacent to this... Anyway, as a result, all the elements of the capitalistic labor market, including the direct relation between the "prestige" of the occupation and its pay-rate, and their inverse relation with the labor effort required, were reproduced under the slogan of "distribution according to labor"!

[Akabash]: The most basic element of the system of relations "according to labor", the relations of bourgeois law, consists of the objective necessity to compare the labor input of separate individuals and to make the amount of goods they receive dependent of that input. This necessity remains as well in a society where the differential credit described by you is practiced. Wages will be there aside from credit, won't they?
To utilize the expression "according to labor", it is sufficient to acknowledge the fact of a larger remuneration of those who obviously and undoubtedly work more, if only counting the bare work time. And the problems of remuneration of qualified and unqualified labor are but a special case.
In other words, there are pre-communist relations and mature communist relations. This is the main differentiation, which is not to be lost sight of, by ascribing any specific kind of relations to just one of this general types. Or do you mean that the "credit-commodity relations" are already "according to need"?

[SovOK]: No. First of all, wages&salaries nominated in credit "money" are a form of credit, which is not the same as lending, as you seem to imply. You know the difference between the terms "credit" and "loan", don’t you? They are completely different things. "Credit" is literally a fact of trust one person (or corporation) has ("extends") for another. When people take loans in a bank, the bank entrusts them with using a certain sum (under certain conditions, including the return of the sum after a certain period of time). But the sum in fact remains the property of the bank the entire time.
Likewise in the lower phase of communism salaries in the form of money, or some kind of "points", or kilowatt-hours will remain public property, while the salary recipients will just utilize this credit that the society has extended to them in order to acquire goods and services for their individual consumption. Since this credit will be extended not as a loan, but as salary, "repaying" it will not be necessary - one will just spend and forget it. AS you may know, in communism citizens fulfill their the debt to society "in kind", i.e. by putting their labor power at its disposal. For which they receive salary, and so on in circles, until conscientiousness rises, planning improves, and the necessity for the intermediate means of payment and the from of credit-commodity relations withers away.
Secondly, the credit-commodity relations are not yet "according to need", obviously. Except in the sense that when properly arranged they serve the needs of the communist construction, which, in a sense, may be regarded as the ultimate and total sum of the needs of society. That is, in the lower phase the CCR will serve the purpose of distribution of resources in accordance with the requirements of the said construction process of communism, one of the important requirement being the satisfaction of the individual needs of the members of society, to keep the whole process steady on the course of dynamic progress.
Like I said, if in the 1st 5-year plan there is an increased need of the society (and correspondingly of its every member) in janitors, they get paid more. If in the next 5-year plan the need in neurosurgeons is higher, we pay more to the neurosurgeons. Meaning, we credit more funds to their personal accounts every month, (as salary, not as a loan). This will reflect the fundamental relation between the society and the individual which is to be achieved in high communism, namely that the society is the principal source of wealth, which it owns in its entirety, while entrusting individuals with handling certain portions of it, including for the purpose of personal consumption. The individual owns nothing and owes everything to the society.
Eventually, after the central planning in kind is perfected, the intermediate means of distribution in the form of credit money is to be phased out. For the basic basket (food, apparel, hygiene, small gadgets and appliances) we achieve abundance, that is, everyone takes as much as he pleases (with the pathological squanderers having been eliminated by the bloody GPU in the earlier stages), and all the rest is processed via "corporate orders" from plants, shops, labs, clubs, art houses, etc., coordinated with the plan and procured to the limit of resources available according to the targets of the 5-year plan.
Thirdly, any utilization of the expression "according to labor" is exactly the same as the notion of the "fair" remuneration of the "efficient managers" for their oh-so-complex labor (with their risk taking and all) in the course of business administration. For it leads inevitably to the situation that those getting paid more than others work less than others. The slogan "according to labor" binds the hands of the Party and the government, forcing them to lie in propaganda and perverse the theory.

[Akabash]: The despite over the words started. I haven't looked it up in Ozhegov and GSE****, but it seems to me that credit is synonymous with a loan in common usage of the terms. But it matter is not in the words, so let's accept your terminology ad hoc.
I don't understand how it is that the salary remains a property of the society, and its recipients just get to use it. Can't we say that they receive it as property? Will such a description be an error?
Earlier you gave neurosurgeons and janitors as a example. I far as I understand, by default some neutral state of affairs is supposed in which neither must be stimulated. But if a special necessity arises in janitors, they will be given, by your expression, a credit. Well, there is something like that in capitalism: independent rise in demand of some product, leading to increasing employment and a wage rise. This rise, with the quantity of shed sweat remaining the same, is explained that it's not just "according to labor", but according to a "socially necessary" one. When the number of the employed in that particular branch is normalized, it will turn out that in every branch they pay with respect to the labor expended. That is to say that the expression "according to labor" is applicable to your condition of stimulation of janitors just as well.
In general, aren't the expressions "according to labor" and "mat.stimulation" synonymous?
And I also don't understand, what is the failure exactly. Is distribution according to labor impossible in principle? Or is it some kind of intolerable evil? Or is it tolerable, but obfuscating of the perspective of the end goal?

[SovOK]: Replying point by point.
There is no "dispute over the words" here. There is the statement of fact on my part, that "in science" credit is not what laymen and sales managers understand by it. That is at best a special case. But since you accept "my" terminology, let's go straight to the next point.
What can you not understand about the salary remaining the property of society? Just like the CEO of a state enterprise in the USSR handled millions of rubles in clearing accounts, which remained a public property the entire time, so every employee of such an enterprise may use a personal credit in the form of rubles/points/kilowatt-hours, remaining in the public property. In the lower phase, by using this credit, he will purchase articles of consumption into his personal private property; in the higher phase the private property on articles of consumption will wither away also. The abolition of private property on wage/salary is but a first step towards that.
As for "something similar" (to mat.stimulation) in capitalism, it's because mat.stimulation in the lower phase of communism is not something new and fancy. On the contrary, it's a "birthmark" and a vestige of the exploitative formations. Also, is it just me, or you have, by mixing up the "necessity" as a public benefit, i.e. usefulness, i.e. utility, with the "necessity" as in SNLT under average conditions at the given level of economic and techno-scientific development, fallen casual-like into marginalism?
As for the "normalization" of the number of the employed by wages and branches, that's exactly what citizens Khodorkovsky and Nevzlin had in mind, when they claimed that businessmen "receive according to labor". "The market sorts out".
And no, the expressions "according to labor" and "mat.stimulation" aren't synonyms. Rather, they are practically antonyms.
Yes, "distribution according to labor" is impossible. And even if it were possible, it would have been harmful. Therefore, the slogan of "distribution according to labor" is indeed an intolerable evil, because it not just misleads people away from the end goal, but leads them into absolute thickets and quagmires.

[Akabash]: I still think that the disagreement is not so much about practical proposal, but about the descriptive language. I suggest to focus on this point that I don't get. What is the difference between "the workers are the proprietors of their salary" and "already-not-proprietors"? Let's take the real USSR. Yes, a plant director was not a proprietor of the cashless funds. But the workers, who bought food for their salary, were they its (salary's*****) proprietors?

[SovOK]: Yes, they were.

[Akabash]: OK, now we reform the law and announce that the workers are no longer proprietors of their salary. What will really change in their situation? What will change in the situation of a capitalist made a red director is clear. In the case of the workers as proprietors of their salary, it's not clear.

[SovOK]: But it doesn't have to change radically and momentarily. It will change gradually and incrementally. Further steps that come to mind include redemption of salary only in the CenterMainDistrib's networks and forfeiture of the unspent points. But it's obvious that before the transition to these further steps, those CenterMainDistrib's networks must be filled with sufficient assortment of goods and services, the shadow economy must be defeated, and so on.
However, I understand why you don't understand. It's because you dismiss the terminological subtleties. Of course, one must not overestimate the importance of language, like some postmodernists ("world as text; how we scribe so will it be..."), but ne must not underestimate it either. Language is a signal system, that is to say, a productive force. if you don't have a uniform understanding, what the traffic signs and light mean, in what sequence they turn on, etc., then instead of organized transportation you'll have a total chaos on the roads. So it is with the construction of communism. It can't be organized in general without a complete terminological clearness and uniformity in this process.
For example with the formal abolition of family, just like the the salary, it's clear that nothing will immediately radically change. Citizens will en masse keep cohabiting in pairs and will not haste to submit the begotten posterity to the totalitarian all-year-round pioneer camps. Yet the mere fact that the "family situation" are not be registered anywhere and, thus, no special obligations and privileeeeeeges, which it used to involve, no longer appear, will lead to the change sought for in the public consciousness and gradually prepare the ground for the transition to the 100% public fostering of children.

[Akabash]: In any case, the topic of "conscientiousness" seems to be the most slippery. It's clear from the text that you suppose conscientiousness as some kind of independent variable, capable of growth on its own: it's low at first, but will gradually improve; we'll only have to measure it regularly, to determine the degree of readiness for the "according to need" relations. But this independent growth of conscientiousness is not very likely. A person, no matter how heroic, tends to minimize the effort and maximize the result. If a cushy office job is paid the same as heavy and dirty labor, there will be a shortage of miners soon, and a surplus of office workers. Precisely for the reason of insufficient conscientiousness (and even ignorance), you assert the necessity to come to a compromise with the principle "according to labor". To shrug off and shirk from work it is the same as a struggle for the improvement of labor conditions.
Even supposing the top conscientiousness of every member of society, some militarization of production will be in order: somebody will have to select young males and send them into the mines, after clarifying that such is their duty to the society. That is a labor army. Even if we imagine a picture of mass heroism, with people rushing to the hardest spots, it is still most likely that they will strive to sort out and normalize those "hardest spots", and in this case bring the pay rate into accordance with their labor efforts, or to evenly distribute the burdens of the labor service. The good and the bad are so much intermixed here, that you can't separate them mechanically.
So this problem indeed exists, but it is to be resolved by way of technological development, and not by the increase of this very conscientiousness all by itself. It was the development of the productive forces that has been traditionally considered the main requirement for the transition to the principle "according to needs". The creation of the material base of communism. So it’s the other way round. As long as alienated (meaning dull, monotonous, unappealing) labor still exists, the bourgeois law retains its relative rationality and "finds a way". Only the replacement of man from the realm of production, the extreme growth of free time for the "universal scientific labor" - that is the condition and requirement for both the conscientiousness and the distribution according to need.
But I agree, at least, in principle, on motor cars and new categories of produce. As far as material stimulation is concerned, all produce should be divided into the basic necessities of livelihood and education, and that which just improves comfort. The former to be provided freely, the latter to be earned with work. Whereas fridges, washing machines and personal computers could be argued to fall in the first category, no way motor cars could.

[SovOK]: To shirk work and to struggle for the improvement of working conditions is by far not the same. It's one thing when the team "hammers the nails", i. e. explains it to the enthusiasts, that "tearing one's ass on the job" is a bad idea, lest the management should increase quotas. And it's a whole other thing when the team gets infested by the shirking parasites, who work less than expected quite deliberately, counting on the enthusiasts to maintain the average values of output high enough, so that nobody up the ranks takes any notice. But both the enthusiasts and the average "just doing my part" workers do take notice, and they promptly become unwilling to have somebody basically riding on their shoulders, and ideas, that "it's OK to slack around and get paid like everybody else", gain ground and get strongly imbedded in the workers' minds.
Concerning the conscientiousness, although from this particular text of mine it is indeed unclear what its growth is predicated upon, I, of course, don't consider it possible to increase by itself. The growth of conscientiousness I assume by default here, because without it, it's pointless to talk about anything else. How to increase the mass conscientiousness is a separate and huge topic. For now, suffice it to say, that although mat.stimulation is bound to impede the growth of conscientiousness in general, the mat.stimulation under the slogan of "distribution according to labor" absolutely torpedoes it.
Let me reiterate this once more. The slogan of "distribution according to labor" reeks of the assumption that wage&salary differentials are something inherently good (because they are "fair", or whatever). In reality, wage&salary differentials are bad, they are a "necessary evil", legacy of capitalism, of the commodification of labor. As such, they must regularly undergo close inspection and revision. The Party's ideological message to the workers must be like: "Yes, some of you get paid more than others, and that's fine for now, because you're fucking greedy & lazy monkeys, remember that every fucking time you look in the mirror!" We might want to word it a little better, but the meaning that it drives across should be that clear.
That's why I do not assert the necessity to come to a compromise with the principle "according to labor". I don't even count it as a "principle" anymore. I think, distribution according to labor is a complete theoretical impossibility, and thus cannot be a principle of anything. It's a non-principle, a "red herring", a false slogan, which has, quite unfortunately, attained some features of a religious creed among some people. Therefore I assert that the Party must discard this false slogan and nuke it from orbit, and only after that come to a temporary compromise with the principle of material stimulation, which has nothing to do with the aforementioned slogan, and is inherently unjust and unfair and must be surrounded with machine guns and barbed wire, so that it won't proliferate beyond the boundaries set for it from the beginning, upon the expropriation of all private corporations and enterprises.
When their basic needs are met, people usually don't mind two or threefold disparities in income, even if they perceive such as "unfair". The better paid are considered "lucky bastards", and that's that. But it is imperative for the Party to be absolutely open and honest and clear with the masses about the reasons for the pay rate differentials. Otherwise, the Party will lose all trust and popular support in a matter of years, just like it happened in the USSR. The conscientiousness will go to zero, and you can kiss your revolution good-bye (again).
So one last time. The "equalizationists" are right that, on the face of it, equalized pay rates more closely conform to the notion of "distribution according to labor". But they do not, and there is no feasible way to account for all the differences of individual effort and particular working conditions, many of which are largely or completely subjective. Therefore, the notion of "distribution according to labor" is unrealizable. On the contrary, as long as the legacy of capitalism, such as money in some for or other and distribution at least of the articles of individual consumption via retail, a.k.a. commodity exchange, remain, so will the pay rate differentials.
And there is zero need to call those differentials or justify them via the unrealizable notion of "distribution according to labor". Because all there is to justify the differentials, the fact of their existence and their degree and their limits, and the resultant gap between the top and the bottom decile of the personal income distribution among the working population, and everything else, consists in the requirements of the current and upcoming 5-year plans.
As for the needs themselves, it is pretty straightforward. "Necessities", or the "needs" proper, are those that are "natural", "reasonable" and can be calculated and approved by the Party in its wisdom; "wants" are those that no abundance can ever satisfy enough. The goal of communism is to expand the former by limiting the latter, by teaching people to want only what they really need. That's where the conscientiousness comes in. To put it in simple terms, when a man eats a sandwich in communism, it is literally the same type of process as that when he designs or assembles a space station. To put it in the old school Marxist terms, it means overcoming the contradiction between production and consumption. All consumption becomes productive in one way or another. All human activities, including rest and recreation, become productive, and as such require expenditure of resources, on the basis of which the needs of the society and each of its members are calculated and provided for.


* * * *

[Fumiripits]: There is no problem in justifying the threefold difference in pay rates. See, for instance, the table of metabolic equivalent of performance at various jobs from I. German's book "The Physics of Human Organism", 2011, p. 446.

[SovOK]: Thanks, I am aware of the difference between the physical and intellectual labor. But, first, Stalin got his ratio completely inverted. And, secondly, the main parameter to quantify each kind of concrete labor is time, simply because the intensity (which your table is about), is too difficult to calculate for certain kinds of it. They haven’t learned to reduced to tables many factors, especially those pertaining to the intellectual labor, up to now.

[Fumiripits]: The main parameter is exactly the intensity, which they learned to precisely evaluate already half a century ago. The working time is usually the same. At least, by law, the working day is the same for everybody, with the exception of some jobs.

[SovOK]: How can you compare the intensity of labor, that is, of the muscle and brain efforts of a worker and an engineer? With your table of metabolic equivalent?

[Fumiripits]: Consumption of oxygen is the key parameter, characterizing the power of work, regardless of what it is done with. If the intellectuals desire to revise this approach, they are welcome to voice their concerns. But in general, the creative activity of a designer is associated mainly with the right hemisphere and practically does not require expenditure of power. As opposed to the left hemispherical activities, like coding in some complex language. Complying with intricate requirements is quite exhaustive, subjectively. But all this is reflected by the oxygen consumption.

[SovOK]: This is all, of course, very interesting and remarkable. But then you will have to register the precise time that the "wheelbarrowman" actually pushes his wheelbarrow loaded with 50 kg, as opposed to pushing it empty or taking a smoke break, and not cover the whole 8 hours for him, as if he pushed those 50 kg all the time. Or, will you implant all workers with a counter of oxygen intake in their windpipe, including coders and architects? Why not go straight to counting the kilojoules of energy expended?

[Fumiripits]: Many ways of counting are possible. Most importantly, it must be substantiated by a scientific basis. You can systematically measure average oxygen consumption for various occupations... Bottom line, when you have many hard physical jobs, the global skew in distribution must be towards them, whether intelligentsia likes it or not.

[SovOK]: Sorry, but Comrade Stalin was right on this one. It'll be a total clusterfuck. Besides, labor is a social phenomenon, so you can't calculate it in any way through pure biology and physics.

[Fumiripits]: And what did he say there? The problem is, that distribution according to labor cannot but depend on power expenditures. Anything else is just denial of labor efforts. Qualification is the result of training, and in my view, it cannot draw any regular premium pay rates. The training itself may and even must be rewarded, once. Then you get paid according to the energy expended, with more or less trivial margin of error. But for a grade or a degree itself, no way!

[Frazier1979]: Calories are not an issue here. Especially, if the conditions of production allow and the planning organs set similar prices for foodstuffs with high and low calorie content. In general, a worker employed in digging holes may be paid the same as that employed in telephone assembly. You got tricked by that table. You absolutely cannot tell, that a porter, who pushed 50 boxes weighing 20 kg each to the distance of 300 m during the day and smoked in between rounds, worked more (or less) intensively than a secretary who typed away at 100 words per minute without a pause. At east if you take the intensity of labor as it was defined by Marx.

[Fumiripits]: I don't understand what you've written. I'm talking not about calories (nutrition?), but about energy expenditure. High school physics, W=F*s, verstehen? The higher the oxygen consumption in the process of work, the more intensive the work is. A person achieved a higher socially useful power in the process of it. That means he deserves more.

[SovOK]: No. A person is a piece of society, that means he "deserves" exactly what and precisely in the amount that is useful to the society as a whole. Let's say, 10 collective farmers dig out potatoes, the 11th wisely manages them, and the 12th plays a balalaika all day. The oxygen consumption in the three offices is different, but why the player should be paid more or less than the diggers, if, without his music, they would dig out 20% fewer potatoes for the same quantity of oxygen consumed? And the manager? It's clear that he, the vermin, should get paid, "according to oxygen", the least amount of all... except maybe he is a big fellow like 2 m high and 120 kg in weight, so he consumes more oxygen than anyone even in his sleep... And that goes to the individual differences between the diggers as well. This is obviously an absurdity.

[Romdorn]: Engels in "Anti-Duhring":
"The demand for equality in the mouth of the proletariat has therefore a double meaning. It is either — as was the case especially at the very start, for example in the Peasant War — the spontaneous reaction against the crying social inequalities, against the contrast between rich and poor, the feudal lords and their serfs, the surfeiters and the starving; as such it is simply an expression of the revolutionary instinct, and finds its justification in that, and in that only. Or, on the other hand, this demand has arisen as a reaction against the bourgeois demand for equality, drawing more or less correct and more far-reaching demands from this bourgeois demand, and serving as an agitational means in order to stir up the workers against the capitalists with the aid of the capitalists’ own assertions; and in this case it stands or falls with bourgeois equality itself. In both cases the real content of the proletarian demand for equality is the demand for the abolition of classes.
Any demand for equality which goes beyond that, of necessity passes into absurdity."
"Nevertheless, the “universal principle of justice” [as per Duhring] must not in any way be confounded with that crude levelling down which makes the bourgeois so indignantly oppose all communism, and especially the spontaneous communism of the workers."
Perhaps Engels would regard as ludicrous the idea of measuring the energy expenditure by the workers and compensation according to those. But I don't consider it ludicrous. In essence, Engels excused himself with a general suggestion of the abolition of classes and refused to think further.

[SovOK]: Regarding Engels and the communist concept of equality in general, it consists not in the second part of the well-known formula ("to each according to their need"), but in the first part of it ("from each according to their ability"). The second part is just a logical consequence, corollary and guarantee of the first part. That is, in the process of realization of their primary need, a.k.a. socially useful labor, members of the communist society, depending on the particular task they are accomplishing at any given time, naturally require access to various resources.

[Romdorn]: In the process of labor, yes, but what about the process of rest and recreation? Will it be all right, that one takes his rest in a three-room apartment and eats red caviar, while another lives in a communal flat and subsists on bread and kefir? And this will all be validated (as we witnessed on multiple occasions) by the insurmountable complexity of the managerial tasks the former is responsible for, whereas Murhpy or someone like that formulated the social law that "income is directly proportional to the easiness and prestige of the work performed"...

[SovOK]: Here you conflate the higher phase with the lower phase. It is conjectured, that in the high phase of communism all day-to-day life will be organized similarly to that of cosmonauts at the ISS. In the lower phase, while the "birthmarks" still remain, what you're talking about is unavoidable in principle. The question is, how to remove them and not let them to develop into something malignant. To this effect there is a lot of haphazard suggestions from the giants of thought, like Lenin himself, and to yours truly. There is some experience accumulated, starting with the early USSR - Rabkrin******, the "party maximums", etc.
However, even with all these disgraces going on, that you and Varga and Molotov in the "Conversations" and many others talk about, there is the most principal consideration, which, if it is thoroughly though out and implemented in practice, would make them (the disgraces) of little importance, and allow to tolerate them to a degree in the lower phase. Namely, all these privileges, special rations and such must not extend to the kin, let alone become hereditary! That is, assuming you're Stalin, or Khruschov, of Furtseva, and gulp down caviar like no tomorrow, that's just half the trouble. After all, you earned it yourself, so to say. But if your children, who have no merits before the society as of yet, do likewise at your table - that's where the real trouble starts. Not just because it's socially unjust, but because it's also economically inefficient.
Communism - "from each according to ability" - is primarily a society of equal opportunity, where all individuals can and must fully develop and realize their full natural potential and talents. And for that the society must provide every and each individual with equal conditions from birth. Therefore, in order for the construction of communism to be successful, it is necessary from the very beginning to launch an offensive against the institutions of inheritance and the family itself, as they are nothing but mechanisms of reproduction of private property and social class. And communists will be in that regard under obligation to set the example themselves.

_________________

*] JRA - junior research assistant. SRI - scientific research institute.

**] This is a reference to the Soviet satirical/dystopian movie "Kin-Dza-Dza". One of the characters there strongly suggested that "a society without color differential of pants has no purpose".

***] Money-commodity relations.

****] The dictionary of Russian language by Ozhegov; The Great Soviet Encyclopedia.

*****] I am aware of the difference between the terms "wage" and "salary" in English. But that difference gets moot when you make all waged and salaried employees essentially public servants. In the USSR only the military received their salary ("the money rations") in a slightly different fashion than everybody else, who received "earned pay" is the Russian word "zarplata" to be translated literally.

******] Rabkrin - People's Commissariat of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection.

http://tarpley.net/audio/20150528-WGT_on_INN.mp3

И про идиш, на котором говорят "добровольцы" в ДНР, получилось и правда смешно!