David B. Shemano wrote:
Yes, many societies/organizations manage to solve such problems without wage labor. My children do many things around the house they do not "want" to do without payment of money, However, there is no claim that my house is a socialist democracy, that my children live in the realm of freedom and not necessity. What if somebody doesn't want to clean up after their pets? I think that is true of many people -- that is why in our capitalist democracy, we have rules that "require" people to pick up the poo. So will those rules continue to exist under socialism? If so, how will those rules be made, implemented and enforced, and how are those rules philosophically compatible with the realm of freedom and not necessity?
I'm not sure that Marx claimed that socialism would be characterized by absolute freedom. There will be a realm of necessity within all societies. But in a socialist society this realm is minimized as much as possible and the realm of freedom is the realm that dominated society.
The passage below is from Capital III Chapter 48. I would emphasis the part where Marx states that the realm of necessity exists "in all social formations and under all possible modes of production." My reading of this passage is that necessity is not eliminated under socialism and that the existence of necessity doesn't negate socialism.
In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.
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