Is workable Communism really impossible?

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That's because we try to compare the USSR to Western Europe. It makes no sense. In 1914, Russia was a backwards country. By 1939, it was an industrial power with a decent standard of living, though lower than Western Europe (oviously).

Russia doesn't perform well economically ... whether it's Czarist feudalism, communism, or capitalism in operation there.

Can't say it did as poorly as market-based economies in Africa or Latin America, either. Head and shoulders above all those. Not because it was communist though ... just, again, because it's Russia.

Obviously you aren't familiar with the labour theory of value

All Capital is the product of labour, and since all labour comes from the workers all capital is the rightful property of the workers.

What workers are actually paid in practice is the capital less the profit margins less their business running costs. This is what is meant by the expropriation of labour.

This is not going to go well. It is usually a poor choice to assume someone you disagree with is is ignorant is usually a mistake.

The LVT is a central tenant of Marxism. Its essential to understand this principle before you can give an informed critique against, or for communism.

I didn't see a display of such an understanding from ruveyn.

But it is certainly unnecessary to subscribe to LVT to make an argument against Marx.
Most modern economists reject LVT in favor of marginalism.
In fact a person could reject Marx because they don't by LTV.

Regardless of how much value labor adds to the final product, the worker is selling his time and skill for a job. Time at the task is exchanged for cash or other valuable commodity.

ruveyn

The LTV - which actually has its origins with Adam Smith, not Marx - states that labour is the source of all value, including capital. The cash being exchanged as wages, was expropriated, as was the capital the worker is using (from other workers who made that capital).

Making Marx a more Conservative economist and heir to Smith than say Mises or Friedman. crazy world.

That is the paradigm Marx was attacking, the worker is co-erced into selling his labour as he has nothing else to sell, the tradesman, labourer are "stripped of their halo" as Marx put it and are relegated to a mere wage slave.

When people can buy or make their own tools and buy the raw materials they need for themselves they can open their own businesses. The poor oppressed proles do not have their own means of production. Marx proposed that they take those by force. That is theft.

If a person is willing to sell his labor in exchange for money or other goods he is not enslaved or oppressed. You can argue he has made a poor business deal, but he has not been wronged.

ruveyn

Your answer

So what? If a person is willing to sell his time and energy for cash and is not coerced into doing so, that is his choice and his business. Labor for cash is the very antithesis of slavery.


You labor under the delusion that all should receive his "just share" and that you are the proper judge of what is just. Dream on!

ruveyn

They did have their own means of production at one time, during the era of cottage industry. That was taken by force during the Enclosures, along with their feudal tenure rights and land. The nobles used the profits to set up their second + sons as mercers (no other means of support since primogeniture made them ineligible for inheiritance), who got rich exploiting newly homeless weavers etc. The money just kept accumulating in fewer and fewer hands, by virtue of the ability to use money to exploit, gathering more money from labour, kind of a vicious cycle - except that it did allow for economies of scale and technological progress by virtue of the fact of private collectivization in the factories, rather than individual production out of small shops and homes, as had occurred in the feudal system.

Ethically it doesn't stand up to scrutiny too well; it's mostly just the same old same old, the advantaged using their advantages to exploit others and take from them. In the end it still comes down to violence, the capitalists take their share of value that others produce and any who might try to keep the full proceeds of their work would find themselves in jail for theft. It never really changed much from feudalism, even if you account for the fact that a small few may rise to the same ranks - this was possible under feudalism too, for exceptional cases (and that's all it is still, exceptional cases).

Practically speaking, however, it's allowed for a good deal of progress nonetheless. And the search for alternatives has been futile and bloody - the way forward has always seemed to be the people challenging the elites for a small recompense here and there, which have accumulated over time (not unlike how peasants developed out of serfs, by establishing small concessions over time).

no, surplus value is appropriated. otherwise, how else can the owner profit from the labour of the worker?

The Prole chose not to charge for the "surplus value". A bad business decision and so it goes. Or maybe it is not a bad decision. If he attempted to charge for the surplus value, no one would hire him.

Your average Prole is mostly interested in beer and football games. Making rational business decisions is not his strong point.

ruveyn