The aim of the human society

The aim of the human society must be to achieve a socio-economic system which will abolish the capitalistic system, abolishing the manual labour.
In order to achieve such a socio-economic system, where people have equal opportunity, people must be free to teach their own progeny based on the respect of Planet Earth’s balance.

How is this possible?

The only way, to me, is to grow people up by adopting the free circulation of the ideas, by fruitful debates which give critic sense free from the capitalistic logic of profit, finally by being aware of what the aim of the human society is.

This is the reason why forums like this must exist and flourish.

World’s conditions are still catastrophic, considering that only a tiny percentage of workers are able to communicate freely with others by the use of internet. Moreover, considering that only a smaller percentage of this tiny number of workers is actually interested and positively aware of the class struggle, we must do something.

Debates about the revolution of this unbalanced socio-economic system to achieve a better one, must spread like oil stains.

Therefore:

What is the most efficient way to engage workers?

What shall we do?

Action please!

Cesco wrote:The aim of the human society must be to achieve a socio-economic system which will abolish the capitalistic system, abolishing the manual labour.

Abolishing the manual labour or abolishing the wage labour?

Abolishing the manual labour or abolishing the wage labour?

ok with gian maria (we says "bien vu!" in french)

Abolishing manual labour.

Simply because it is the only way to eliminate the division of labour.

Automation will be the only solution to this. An economic system based on the common production will not destroy per se the division of labour which creates alienation.

The only kind of contribution that people will give to an evolved economic system as communism must be their supervision of automatic systems. The future system of production must be so advanced that must make Humans free from any sort of manual labour.

We cannot imagine that at a certain point all the people will cooperate in sharing the fruit of the production, even though they will still do different job requiring different competences in order to produce.

A society of equal opportunities must find a way to abolish the division of labour, which to me means abolition of manual labour.

A very curious conception of a socialism without working class. The division of labour is not between manual and intellectual workers, and an intellectual employee can be as much alienated than a manual. ( & it's supposed that the machines could replace the man in all, absolutely all, manual functions in the production?)

lucien wrote:( & it's supposed that the machines could replace the man in all, absolutely all, manual functions in the production?)

Furthermore, who will produce the machines?

Probably a socialist society without working class seems very curious but to Frederick Engels in the The Principles of Communism, 1847, in a communist society

“the existence of classes originated in the division of labour, and the division of labour, as it has been known up to the present, will completely disappear.”

“Communist society will, in this way, make it possible for its members to put their comprehensively developed faculties to full use. But, when this happens, classes will necessarily disappear. It follows that society organized on a communist basis is incompatible with the existence of classes on the one hand, and that the very building of such a society provides the means of abolishing class differences on the other.”

A communist society can take place only by taking over the most developed capitalist society. It is not a mystery that the industrial production can be completely substituted by unmanned factories. One example of those factories is in Japan Seibu Electric created by Tetsuro Mori.

Since I am nobody I will once again quote Frederick Engels from the same text:

“The form of the division of labour which makes one a peasant, another a cobbler, a third a factory worker, a fourth a stock-market operator, has already been undermined by machinery and will completely disappear.”

Who will produce the machines?

As already mentioned the communist society will come from the most developed capitalist society. Therefore, structures and infrastructures will be taken from the current system. It is unreasonable to think that a communist society will have any chance of success when the capitalist system is not highly developed.

People’s contributions to the production of goods in a communist system must be reduced to standardised intellectual performances.

This does not mean that people will not have the possibility to perform any manual work. This simply means that manual labour aiming to produce goods will be abolished.

These standardised intellectual performances will concern the supervision of the unmanned systems of production.

People will be unchained to the system of production by knowing exactly how it works.

“Education will enable young people quickly to familiarize themselves with the whole system of production and to pass from one branch of production to another in response to the needs of society or their own inclinations.”

It is unreasonable to think that a communist society will have any chance of success when the capitalist system is not highly developed.

Then, let us accept our fate while waiting for the kingdom of the robots?

[/quote]Then, let us accept our fate while waiting for the kingdom of the robots?[/quote]

I have never said to wait for something.

Conversely, I am just trying to do what a Marxist should do:

Work out a better system than the current one.

"Marxism in Western Europe is the world view of a working class confronting the task of converting a most highly developed capitalism, its own world of life and action, into communism." (Anton Pannekoek, Lenin as Philosopher
Chapter 7,The Russian Revolution)

Cesco wrote:Probably a socialist society without working class seems very curious but to Frederick Engels in the The Principles of Communism, 1847, in a communist society

“the existence of classes originated in the division of labour, and the division of labour, as it has been known up to the present, will completely disappear.”

“Communist society will, in this way, make it possible for its members to put their comprehensively developed faculties to full use. But, when this happens, classes will necessarily disappear. It follows that society organized on a communist basis is incompatible with the existence of classes on the one hand, and that the very building of such a society provides the means of abolishing class differences on the other.”

A communist society can take place only by taking over the most developed capitalist society. It is not a mystery that the industrial production can be completely substituted by unmanned factories. One example of those factories is in Japan Seibu Electric created by Tetsuro Mori.

Since I am nobody I will once again quote Frederick Engels from the same text:

“The form of the division of labour which makes one a peasant, another a cobbler, a third a factory worker, a fourth a stock-market operator, has already been undermined by machinery and will completely disappear.”

I think the (rigid) division of work will disappear (along with the classes), but not the workers.

Cesco wrote:Who will produce the machines?

As already mentioned the communist society will come from the most developed capitalist society. Therefore, structures and infrastructures will be taken from the current system.

It is unreasonable to think that a communist society will have any chance of success when the capitalist system is not highly developed.

People’s contributions to the production of goods in a communist system must be reduced to standardised intellectual performances.

This does not mean that people will not have the possibility to perform any manual work. This simply means that manual labour aiming to produce goods will be abolished.

These standardised intellectual performances will concern the supervision of the unmanned systems of production.

What will happen when the machines go out of order?
And do you think there won't be progress in a socialist society?

Your view seems utopian to me.

Nowadays, there are already some rudimental examples of auto-diagnostic, for example on-board diagnostic or automatic system recovery.

It is not so futuristic to imagine a machine or device able to find a failure in itself and auto-repair it.

Another not very futuristic example is the spare machine which substitutes the one out of order while this one is repairing itself or it is repaired by a repairing machine or machines (designed to repair all or part of the machines involved in that particular production). This is in part already true even for the simple light bulbs in the lighthouses from the 80’s. A spare bulb goes automatically it to place when the first one burns out.

The system, whenever the failure is a major failure, could decide to dispose of the machine. All the pieces will be recycled by following the principle that a communist system must be in balance with the Eco-system of the planet.

Therefore, a good question would be what sort of alternative energy source will be used.

I think that a socialist society will be better than the current capitalist one.
But this does not mean that it will be perfect, and therefore not improvable.

I also think that we should not wait for the “kingdom of the robots”. On the other hand, it is important to have a clear image of what a developed successful socialist society should be.

Talking about which movement is right or which movement it is more right than anothers, does not really improve Marxism.

Marxism needs to be applied.

A society were manual labour would disappeared means obviously a society almost ruled by technic/technology, in which today's (manual) human labor would be made by machines.
I'd fear a society completely ruled by technic/technology/machines, cause it seems to me that such a society would lose natural human immediacy, and the rule of technology could bring to a sort of human alienation also in a system without division of labor and with the collective ownership of means of production.
On the other side I think in a future society should be rediscovered forms of manual/artistic/artisan activities. That I think should disappear is not manual labor at all, but capitalistic conception of "labor" as human activity completely divided from the other activities which build the immediate material human life. So we'll need, within a change of the property and management of ther means of production, a reconceptualization of the meaning of the same labor, thinking also that in other not western languages there's not a word to say "labor/travail/trabajo/lavoro", cause activities made to guarantee human subsistence are made with and while other activities of life. In this sense we could think to the theories of "ludic labor"...

How can results of scientific knowledge (technology) rule a society?

Only a highly evolved mass of people who learnt to guide and rule themselves will be thinkable to exist in a communist society.
Therefore, they will be able to use technology to produce goods for the whole community.
They will know exactly how the Production works, no mystification will be possible in a such society. This can easily explain the reason why technology will not rule a communist society where manual labour is abolished.

Moreover, technology is present in large measure in the current social-economic system. The fact that we are writing these posts says clearly enough that we all know that technology do not rule the capitalist system.

By saying that a communist system ought to go beyond the controversy of the capitalist system, I do not mean that any form of art, creativity and imagination must disappear with manual labour. And it will not be a natural consequence.

Furthermore, manual labour must be abolished when related to Social Production.
Once again, this does not mean that any sort of manual activity will perish as a reflex.

“Since labour is only an expression of human activity within alienation, of the manifestation of life as the alienation of life, the division of labour, too, is therefore nothing else but the estranged, alienated positing of human activity as a real activity of the species or as activity of man as a species-being.” Karl Marx (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844; Human Requirements and Division of Labour Under the Rule of Private Property).

I agree that the concept of labour will be change when the alienation disappears. That’s why I think that standardised intellectual labour will be kept as a supervision of automatic systems of production.

However, as Marx says in the Capital volume I chapter 14 Section 4: “While division of labour in society at large, whether such division be brought about or not by exchange of commodities, is common to economic formations of society the most diverse, division of labour in the workshop, as practised by manufacture, is a special creation of the capitalist mode of production alone.”

It must be one of the main aims of the Communist Revolution to get rid of division of labour in the workshop then. Abolishing manual labour can be the way.

The word "labour" means work for a wage ("lavoro salariato" in Italian), right?

Labour means work, especially physical work (Oxford Dictionary).

When labour is sold to earn money, as it happens in the capitalist systems, we can talk about wage-labour.

“…a direct exchange of money, i.e., of realized labour, with living labour would either do away with the law of value which only begins to develop itself freely on the basis of capitalist production, or do away with capitalist production itself, which rests directly on wage-labour. The working-day of 12 hours embodies itself, e.g., in a money-value of 6s. Either equivalents are exchanged, and then the labourer receives 6s, for 12 hours’ labour; the price of his labour would be equal to the price of his product. In this case he produces no surplus-value for the buyer of his labour, the 6s. are not transformed into capital, the basis of capitalist production vanishes. But it is on this very basis that he sells his labour and that his labour is wage-labour.”

Marx, Capital Volume I, Part VI: Wages Chapter Nineteen: The Transformation of the Value (and Respective Price) of Labour-Power into Wages; 1867.

From http://www.elook.org/dictionary/labour.html :
[noun] productive work (especially physical work done for wages)

"Wage-labour" could be a wrong translation from German (instead of "wage-work" or "labour"). Can a Englishman help us?

Labour means work, especially physical work (Oxford Dictionary)
Labour is very hard work, usually physical work (Collins Cobuild)
Labour: work, especially physical work (Longman)

Well, my English isn't perfect I must admit, but that’s why there are dictionaries to refer to

The edition of Marx’s Capital that I cited was translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling.

Cesco wrote:Well, my English isn't perfect I must admit, but that’s why there are dictionaries to refer to

Try to look for "socialism" in a dictionary.

Does this footnote that Engels added at the end of section 2 of chapter 1 of Capital help:

[The English language has the advantage of possessing different words for the two aspects of labour here considered. The labour which creates use value, and counts qualitatively, is Work, as distinguished from Labour, that which creates Value and counts quantitatively, is Labour as distinguished from Work - Engels]

This would mean that "Labour" would disappear in socialist society (because "value" and "exchange value" would not longer be produced there, only use-values) but not "Work" (which is manual as well as intellectual).

Dear mondialiste, I see your point and I quite agree.

But, can't the labour which creates use value be called labour which creates use value and the labour which creates equivalent of value called labour which creates equivalent of value?

I tell you this because languages change and it is important that we are clear to anybody who comes in contact to Marxism.

I have just been asking to an English speaking PhD student at the University where I work.

Without influencing him I simply asked:- is there any difference between the word labour and work?-.

He answered that in current English work is rather generic, while labour is used more for physical work.

I know that one student is not a significant sample of the population, but since he confirmed what I looked up in the main English dictionaries (Oxford, Collins, Longman), I am pretty sure that labour (in current English) means work, especially physical work.

"When labour is sold to earn money, as it happens in the capitalist systems, we can talk about wage-labour."

I still agree with mondialiste that we should define what kind of labour of work we are referring to, but I do not agree that in current English it would make things clearer to call Labour what produces use value and Work what produces equivalent of value.

Although, Gian Maria does not think that I know enough about socialism, I think we should be accurate yes, but accessible to as many people as possible.

In conclusion I would define words with their definitions when there could be any sort of misunderstanding.

I still think that manual labour should be abolished to achieve a society without division of labour.

Gian_Maria wrote:The word "labour" means work for a wage ("lavoro salariato" in Italian), right?

Oh... I mean labor as "human activity through wich people provide to the means for subsistence and life. I'm sorry if the expression is wrong.

Cesco wrote:How can results of scientific knowledge (technology) rule a society?
[...]

Well, I'm going to better tell what I mean...
First of all, I'm not a primitivist or something else who think we shall return to the caves. I'm not against technology at all, and I think a certain technology could be usefull and necessary.
However, at a too high level of technology/technic (if we except the problem of pollution) it could bring to sorts of what I call not-self-managementability (inautogestibilità). This means that to control some high levels of machinery, we'll still need the role (or the rule?) of experts, and the division of human activity. Such a society, made by experts, not-self-managementability could bring us to some sort of alienation. And I'm sceptical that technology, going on, will go through simplification (as a lot of people think).

I am generally glad of the popularity of this post, because it is consistent with the spirit of a forum like this one.

I initially stated that:

“The only way…to achieve…a socio-economic system, where people have equal opportunity… is to grow people up by adopting the free circulation of the ideas, by fruitful debates which give critic sense free from the capitalistic logic of profit, finally by being aware of what the aim of the human society is.”

I think that something like free circulation of the ideas, fruitful debates which give critic sense free from the capitalistic logic of profit, is having place here.

I believe that a forum like this should have a new section where ideas on how the communist system should and could work. In such a section these ideas can be criticised, discarded or improved.



Back to Scapigliato, I appreciate you further explanation.

In that case the experts would rule society and not the technology per se.

Anyhow, I just would like to step back to better introduce the reason why I talked about abolition of manual labour.

A society with an economic system at common production must get rid of wage-labour (or for what said before wage-work as well) and division of labour.

My suggestion is the abolition of manual labour and use of standardised intellectual performances (supervision).

This comes from the fact that intellectual work is standardisable and manual labour is not. Manual labour origins professions (mestieri); while, intellectual supervision even on different fields won’t create any profession.

Once we get rid of division of labour we need to get rid of wage-labour or wage-work.

Following Marx

“In the case of socialised production the money-capital is eliminated. Society distributes labour-power and means of production to the different branches of production. The producers may, for all it matters, receive paper vouchers entitling them to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity corresponding to their labour-time. These vouchers are not money. They do not circulate.”

(Marx, Capital Volume II, Part III: The Reproduction and Circulation of the Aggregate Social Capital.Chapter 18: Introduction, I. The Subject Investigated)

Therefore, these paper vouchers will be use to take the same amount of goods from the social supplies equivalent to the time of the supervising performance.

Only in a very advanced society, production of goods, administration of the goods produced, distribution of the goods produced and other sort of administrations can be done by means of standardised intellectual performances.

I see Scapigliato’s point that experts are required in such technological advanced society and that this would produce alienation.

First of all, the education level and therefore the use of potentials will be much higher than in the current society. This is due to the fact that a communist society requires knowledge of the whole nature (relationship between man and nature and man and man). All the people will have the same opportunities of using their potentials. Nowadays only a minority has the chance to develop their potentials.

In the middle age a person like you, Scapigliato, or I, or who else is reading this post, (talking about only knowledge), would have been considered a philosopher or anyway no average people (I am not referring to the ideas). Only few people had the opportunity to have a certain education. The technological progress consistently was slow.

Nowadays, many more people can study at a certain level and then the speed of the technological progress is higher and higher. Furthermore, technology helps us to increase the slope of innovation.

Secondly, people will not be passive workers and consumers in a communist society, but they ought to be involved actively in the production of goods. They need to know how the whole system works in order to supervise it.

Finally, a practical solution to the problem of unmanageability is to use devices which follow a basic functioning principle common to all the areas of production. To make it very simple they will be a bit like a “steering wheel” of a car, bus boat etc. The engines are different but the mean to supervise is the same.


Saluti marxisti

"Abolition of the wages system!"

Cesco wrote:First of all, the education level and therefore the use of potentials will be much higher than in the current society. This is due to the fact that a communist society requires knowledge of the whole nature (relationship between man and nature and man and man). All the people will have the same opportunities of using their potentials. Nowadays only a minority has the chance to develop their potentials.

I think this is a central point of discussion. Can we be sure that in such a society things will be as you say? And if not, should we think that all the socialist system can't work?
In my opinion, about what we know, I think it's not only a problem of education or expressed potential, but also of personal interests. For example, I don't think I'll never know anything of motives or engineering, cause of the fact that we better remember things according our personal interests. And also in a socialist society we could think that will happen something similar to what we can see today: in some fields of knowlegement are a lot of people, while in other fields there are few people, that become the experts.

When you ask me whether I am sure about how the society should be, I can answer you directly with Rosa Luxemburg (The Russian Revolution; The Problem of Dictatorship; 1918)

“The socialist system of society should only be, and can only be, an historical product, born out of the school of its own experiences, born in the course of its realization, as a result of the developments of living history, which -- just like organic nature of which, in the last analysis, it forms a part -- has the fine habit of always producing along with any real social need the means to its satisfaction, along with the task simultaneously the solution.”

What we do know is what a socialist society will not be. We have leant that by reading Marx who analysed scientifically the current capitalist system and its contradictions.

Rosa Luxemburg again:

“…Thus we know more or less what we must eliminate at the outset in order to free the road for a socialist economy. But when it comes to the nature of the thousand concrete, practical measures, large and small, necessary to introduce socialist principles into economy, law and all social relationships, there is no key in any socialist party program or textbook. That is not a shortcoming but rather the very thing that makes scientific socialism superior to the utopian varieties.”

I totally agree with Luxemburg, we need to get into a socialist system to make it perfect.

But we need to visualise, analyse and then optimise the target, which is the new society.

How can we think that, out of the blue, a communist society will flourish if we do not work to overtake the contradictions of the capitalist society?

If you find a better way to abolish wage-labour and division of labour, I will be happy to come on your side.

Of course a socialist society which does not work out the contradictions of the capitalist system is not going to work. It will be only a different expression of the capitalist society.

About the personal interest: This does not have anything to do with the abolition of wage-labour or division of labour.

The whole point to have a standard intellectual performance of supervision as only form of interaction with the production of goods is that you do not have to specialise your knowledge (no experts!).

Please be very careful on this point. I am referring only to the knowledge necessary to the production.

Your personal interests, your capabilities, your skills, you predispositions will be completely separated from the production in a communist system.

In a communist system you will not be considered an artist or what else because you make a living out of it. You will be freed from the production in such large extend that the whole life will be about your personal education, your interests, other people’s interests any views too, and again about improving systems about helping people...

Many people are puzzled when they think about a society where the engagement in the productive system is almost negligible in comparison to now. They think what they are going to do then, and that they will get bored.

By being alienated in this old and unfair economic system for large part of our lives, we do not see how may differnt other things we could do instead.

Using a capitalist way of thinking we end up judging a man for its job and this will not have any sense in a communist or socialist society whre there will not be jobs.