"Capital does not consist in the fact that accumulated labor serves living labor as a means for new production. It consists in the fact that living labor serves accumulated labor as the means of preserving and multiplying its exchange value." Marx The Communist society thesis. WL. Communism society as an economic system, a complex of production and distribution or a mode of production, is the anti-thesis of capital. Communist society is "accumulated labor" serving living labor as the means of multiplying productive forces and the cultural life of our species. Communism is a sovereign birth right - social contract, that guarantees "socially necessary means of life" to the individual at birth, as they exist in real time or without a prior demand and surrender of a quantum of labor. The degree of development of means of production, define the magnitude of "socially necessary means of life" delivered to the individual at birth and without a prior surrender of a quantum of labor. Capital is the dominated of living labor by dead - accumulated labor. Capital demands a surrender of a quantum of labor - work, as the "economic-political" basis of the social contract, and means to acquire socially necessary means of life. One acquires socially necessary means of life with money, which in turn is acquired by a paycheck received from being paid wages. Communism is the anti-thesis of the bourgeois social contract. The degree to which socially necessary means of life can be delivered to the individual is ultimately bound up with the degree of development of means of production.
II. We are born into an existing state of development of means of production, mode of distribution, political superstructure, ritual culture and the underlying division of labor buttressing our species life activity. No society is sustained by its working population, living labor. Rather accumulated labor - dead labor, is the platform on which society reproduction takes place. Ones actual state of development of productive forces is the measure for making a general determination of what is requires for the continuous reproduction of "socially necessary means of life." Economic communism and communism as system is a vision of a society based on public ownership of means of production and a mode of distribution based on the prevailing productive forces. The productive forces in existence on earth, and most certainly in America - since that is where many of us live, can be measured to determine what is possible. Stalin's old formula of what constitutes economic communism in its first and higher phase cannot be applied to America because it is based on a specific state of development of productive forces in the 1930's - 1950's Soviet Union. Actually, only Marx general outline is applicable today. Waistline. _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list Marxist-Leninist-List@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list
