Julien, this will be my last for a while I think and I'll
keep it brief.
You fired off a whole lot of questions, technical ones of
detail mixed in with broad ideological ones. I don't know
exactly how we would do the calculations of "each according
to his work", but I reckon that we have enough clever people
to help us with that if they wanted to: computer
programmers, mathematicians and economists like yourself.. I
didn't say that everyone should get exactly the value that
they have produced on an individual basis. Obviously a
portion of the social product would need to be allocated to
groups of people for their collective needs. What I am clear
about is that this should not happen on the basis of money.
Money, because it involves an abstraction from the
production and distribution of use values can be accumulated
as capital. And if you didn't want to accumulate it as
capital what would it be for? You would not need to "forbid"
people from accumulating. There would have to be an
agreement to abolish the means of accumulation, at least an
agreement among the majority, and an alternative
production/distribution system created that works. And for a
long time you would have to protect it from those who would
undermine it. But you would be very much more successful at
that if it was a world system. As for your reference to
"non-labour value" (where you insist on including "capital"
- hello!!!), by which I suppose you mainly mean natural
resources, surely it is not beyond us to devise a system of
distributing these according to need and through a system of
arbitrary equivalences with the value that has been rpoduced
through labour. The fact is that only under capitalism is it
possible for someone to accumulate huge resources without
any labour, just by virtue of ownership. Even under
feudalism this was not the case, where a code of chivalry
and nobility was at least expected of the warrior class. And
this is because commodification has been generalised to
every corner of social life under capitalism and there is no
way of putting the genie back into the bottle. And that's
why reformism won't do it. We need to go beyond money and
commodities. As I said, if you want to lobby your
politicians wherever it is that you are, fine, but we can
talk a year or two from now and see what that has yielded.
But I think those kids and workers on the streets of Seattle
and London and the other instances that will follow soon
have a better sense - that the struggle is anti-capitalism,
not just anti-imperialism or anti-fascism - they just need
some guidance that's all.
Cheers
Tahir
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