No.149525[Reply]
How do we refute the right-wing claim that leftists seek to "abolish" wage labor and commodity production?
This seems to be the biggest hurdle I've come across when talking to working-class conservatives. Many of them seem fairly sympathetic to the idea of socialism in an economic sense, i.e. they like the idea of workers' self-management, central planning, free healthcare, housing for all, a "government of action", etc. Yet they refuse to fall behind socialism because they believe that 1. communists want to abolish private property, 2. communists want to abolish wage labor as an institution, 3. communists want to take commodities away and put them all in communes where they have no clue how profitable they are, 4. communists support classless society (this is THE biggest issue for a lot of right-wingers, even trumping abortion), and 5. communists want to see distribution of goods based on need (especially basic physical needs) be the norm to replace prices and market exchange.
How do we counter this? I've thought about bringing up the fact that socialist countries that exist today are quite conservative when it comes to issues of wages and markets but I can't give any details to show how.
13 posts and 4 image replies omitted. Click reply to view. No.149669
>>149646That's how dumb /leftypol/ is nowadays
I should stop browsing this forsaken website but I have to fuel the bait a bit more:
>[Capital] is not simply an abstract vampire sitting on top of the concrete whereby one could simply get rid of it, like taking a headache pill. Within this imaginary, capital is considered extrinsic to the concrete, to production or labour. Capital, however, actually molds the concrete. It empties labour increasingly of its meaningfulness. At the same time it is an alienated form of human sociality, of human capacities. As such, it is generative of socially general forms of knowledge and power, even if it generates them historically in a form that oppresses the living. Yet, in many respects, precisely this becomes the source of future possibilities. That is, living (proletarian) labour is not the source of future historical possibilities. Rather, what has been constituted historically as capital is that source. Now, I know this sounds like I am turning everything on its head. I am saying that the category of living labour in Marx is not the source of emancipation. Rather, dead labour is. Maybe this sounds like a provocation, but it needs to be thought about. No.149676
>>149525Peep the handbook (Read Capital)
>I've thought about bringing up the fact that socialist countries that exist today are quite conservative when it comes to issues of wages and markets but I can't give any details Don't do this. Are you going to end up defending the bourgeois family too? Maybe instead of regurgitating talking points that you think correspond to an acceptable perspective try thinking for yourself (preferably from a materialist basis).
No.149679
>>149646Which post is the falseflag here?
No.150130
Marx and Engels literally said in The Principles of Communism that "the abolition of private property" is best shorthand for communism
What the fuck are you all talking about? Have you literally never read Marx in your life? I don't care if it pisses off right wingers, the abolition of private property IS the most crucial component of communism