[robbo203]

+

LBird wrote:

.Unless you agree, with what I'm starting to suspect is widespread within the SPGB, that only 'an elite of the educated and informed' will make decisions for the dumb majority.It seems that my understanding of the revolutionary process to human emancipation is very different from the SPGB's – not least, over this issue of 'democracy'. If you've got a mental picture of the 'ignorant and uninformed' having to be 'excluded', christ knows what robbo's visions of the "hell of workers' democracy" look like.

 More drivel from LBird,  He just dosesnt get it does he? After endless efforts to try to explain what the real issue is here, he comes out again with the same old boring evasion. No LBird  it is not a case of "an elite of the educated and informed' making decisions for the dumb majority" that we communists are arguing for.. This is an utterly, sociologically inept, conclusion on your part for two main reasons 1) Because the "decisions" you are referring to are more than just practical decisions about things like the allocation of resources or where a local sweage plant should be sited.  There is no disagreement that these sort of things should  be subject to democratic decision making despite your deceitful insinuation that I think otherwise.  However, you are extending the range of decisions, and hence the scope of democratic decisionmaking,  much much further than is warranted to include also things as the "truth value" of scientific theories or the artistic merit of works of art.  That is what we object to.  Its an utterly stupid idea ,  Its totally impractical and, more to the point, its totally unnecessary,  If a majority of people vote  to say a particular theory is correct what is meant to happen following that vote?  You never explaim, Are the minority then supposed to abandon their oppostion to this theory becuase the majority,support it? But thats just dumb.  If scientific progress was governend by LBirds model we would still be thinking  that th sun revolved around the earth and that the eath was not sphere, but flat.  Because that is what the majority thought  at the time and there would be no  mechanism by which this point of view could be altered if minority opinions were banished.  In fact if minority opinions were to be banished we would never arrive at communism – and should never according to LBird – since the overwhelming majority of workers today support capitalism and this view should prevail 2).  Becuase you dont understand what is meant by an "elite",  You lack any real understanding of what communism is about and how it precludes the very possibility of such an elite ever arising. Universal free access to goods and services and the voluntartisic nature of labour itself dissolves completely the very basis of political power in communism.  No one would be in  a position of being able to exercise any kind of  leverage over others.  Moreover,  you fail to ses that by an" elite" is meant a systematically unified  internally coherent body or section of the population sharing a common interest.  How could this possibly arise in a communist society  with a complex social division of labour? An expert neurologist will be a complete layperson  as far astrophysics is concerned while an astrophysicist will be a complete layperson as far as the neourological sciences is concerned,  What is the common basis on which these two very different experts can unite as a collective elite to conspire against the interests of the general  public in the way you suggest?   You dont explain.+ Your whole line of argument is incredibly weak , incoherent  and confused. You dont accept that in a communist like any other form of technologically advanced society there must be a complex division of labour, We cannot all become  competent neurologists so it is INEVITABLE there is going to be an uneven distribution of social knowledge.  If you disagree with that then how do you propose to overcome this unevenness – that we all become accomplished in every conceivable field of scientific enquiry so that we can all grasp the minutiae of every scientific  theory going and be able to competently vote on them?  But this is impossible LBird as you must surely realise .  Even becoming accomplished in just one single field of sceintifc endeavour is an uphill strugge for any one person, involving years of dedicated study and practice.  Yet you are proposing that we shall equip ourselves with a godlike omiscience of being able to grasp the sum total of human knowledge! This is a childiish idea. Frankly LBird  you are dreamer with your head in clouds more concerned with the sound of pretty words than what they actually signify in real terms

[robbo203]

Yes Alan  I agree with what you say.  I did not know of his new Party's support for the British Legion and presumably also the distribution of red poppies – that obnoxious hypocritical annnual event that the jingoists like to engage in, promoting patriotic values on the pretext of remembering the war dead.  Even so, though completely objectionable from a socialist standpoint, this does not really constitute "reformism". My only observation concerning this sad and sorry state of affairs is that, if you are going to initiate expulsion proceedings against Steve Colbourn, you need to be clear about the grounds on which you are expelling him.  I am not entirely convinced that the charge of reformism will withstand scrutiny for the reasons outlined in my previous post On a more personal note, does anyone know what prompted Steve to take this course of action?  Why did he not simply resign from the Party in the first place?  I got the impression that he was a pretty active member of the NE branch so why this sidden change of heart?  It would be interesting to hear his side of the story if he is willing to give it

[robbo203]

Yes Alan  I agree with what you say.  I did not know of his new Party/s support for the British Legion and presumably also the distribution of red poppies – that obnoxious hypocritical annnual event that the jingoists like to engage in, promoting patriaotic values on the pretext of remembering the war dead.  Even so, though completely objectionable from a socialist standpoint, this does not really constitute "reformism". My only observation concerning this sad and sorry state of affairs is that, if you are going to initiate expulsion proceedings against Steve Colbourn, you need to be clear about the grounds on which you are expelling him.  I am not entirely convinced that the charge of reformism will withstand scrutiny for the reasons outlined in my previous post On a more personal note, does anyone know what prompted Steve to take this course of action?  Why did he not simply resign from the Party in the first place?  I got the impression that he was a pretty active member of the NE branch so why this sidden change of heart?  It would be interesting to hear his side of the story if he is willing to give it

[robbo203]

Tim Kilgallon wrote:

From the Seaham Community Party Facebook site: "We want local people from all backgrounds and age groups to join us to change Seaham for the better. Seaham Community Party are really proud of our town and we would like to continue this regeneration seen at the sea front in to other areas. We will protect Seaham' heritage, Tommy, George Emily Lifeboat and The British Legion. We will reduce Seaham Town Councillors from 21 to 11, therefore saving costs to invest in our town. We will not put the council tax up by 3% like the current party. We strongly support all our local health and well being/fitness. We will save and improve Seahams' Leisure Centre and Youth Centre. We will run activities and support local families and also organise a childrens' summer holiday programme, including trips, events and sports/clubs. We will clean up our streets and parks to make them free from litter and dog mess. A zero tolerance on dog fouling. We will strive to invest and protect our allotments and open green spaces for future generations. We will continue to sup port and improve all of Seahams outdoor events such as the carnival, armed forces day and the fireworks display. We will work hard to enhance Seaham as a tourist destination by doing all that we can to further Seahams reputation as a holiday destination. COME AND JOIN US! Seaham Community Party are honest, approachable, trustworthy and reliable. Vote for us and together we will improve Seaham!"Clearly a set of reformist demands, not exactly a Revolutionary Socailist Party. Incidentally they call us impossiblists for proposing the creation of a society based on common ownership and the abolition of the wages system, the idea of making Seaham into a holiday destination is much more far fetched!!If it is the Steve Colborn of NE Branch who has been elected on this platform, he should hang his head in shame.

Not sure if the above would actually qualify as a "set of reformist demands" though, Tim.  Reformism, to me, essentially only applies at the level of state power (and above) and has to do with the attempt to ameliorate the consequences of capitalism through centralised  legislative and political  enactments.  In other words, it is capitalism you are trying to reform, not the shoddy state of Seahams' Leisure centre which may need a lick of paint or whatever.  Contesting local elections strikes me as being much closer to voting for representaives in your local Residential Association.  This Wikipedia link on Residents Associations is particuarly interesting and pertinent – in particular this:"While generally eschewing national party politics, since the reform of UK electoral law in 2000 several British residents' associations have been obliged to register as locality-based political parties to enable them to participate in local elections for borough and county councils."  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residents%27_association) The Party has no objections to members joining Residents Associations.  Providing these essentially locally based poliical parties, like the "Seaham Community Party", are not linked to national parties based on an unequivocally reformist platform,  I wonder if there really is much harm in what Steve Colbourn is doing from a socialist standpoint. You might want to argue that it is all a bit pointless – though that is a moot point – but that does not necessarily make it reformist as such.  There are lots of things that the Party opposes which are not in themselves reformist.  Racism for example is not in itself reformist though it can certainly be associated with a reformist programme that for example privileges one particular so called racial group

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

 I'm a Democratic Communist, whose ideology defines 'socialism' as 'democratic socialism'. 

 Another red herring. Of course socialism involves democracy .  No one is disputing that.  The argument is solely about the limits of democratic decisionmaking even in a socialist society. Do you deny that such limits will exist even  in socialism, LBird? Do you agree that there would be a vast range of decisions that would necessarily fall outside the practice of democratic decisionmaking.  For example  – albeit to take a rather extreme example – whilst you rail against what you ignorantly call the "individualists" on this forum, would you be comfortable with the fact that the democratic community (which in your eyes boils down to the entire global population) should determine how you shoud lead you life, thus: – what work you should do and for how many hours per day- where you may live – what you may study- where you may travel to- your  consumption and lifestye choices- your view on what constututes scientific truth- your view on what constitutes artistic beauty And so on and so forth. Also and I have asked this of you before LBird but would local communities exist in your version of democratic communism that would be able to take democratic decision on their  own (thus limiting democracy to locals in this case).  Can you please answer this question LBird 

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

The key political issue here is the question of 'independent'.'Independent of individuals' does not mean 'independent of society'.So, we're faced with arguing either that nothing is independent of society (and so this can be voted upon) or that something is independent of society (and so can't be voted upon).The problem is, as Marx says, nothing is independent of society, and so those who argue that something is independent have to then surreptitiously put their own elite in control of this something (which isn't really independent of society as a whole).This is precisely what Vin, robbo, and the rest of the Religious Materialists do. They claim to be dealing with something independent of society ('nature', 'matter', 'Truth', 'externality', 'reality', etc. etc.), which can't be voted upon, but then claim that they themselves, as an elite, outside of the democratic control of the social producers, can determine this 'something'. 

 You are talking absolute rubbish here Nobody is saying 'Independent of individuals'  means 'independent of society'.  You have totally musunderstood not only Marx but your critics on this forum Independent is an allusion to the will of particular individuals.  Society is indeed a socio-historical construction but as a socio historical construction the individual has to adapt it , to fit in with it , to live with it.  It is in this sense that the relations of the production are "independent" of the individual – in the sense of exerting an external constraining influence  on this particular individual. What you have done is to confuse particular empirical individals with individuals in general who collectively make up society. There is no such thing as a society without individuals and conversely there is no such thing as individuals without society.  We are social animals, No one is saying anything different on this forum. But you have completely misunderstood the signicance of what has been said and then drawing a completely invalid inference based on this elementary blunder So its back to the drawing board for LBird!  You could do with re-reading Marx through the eyes of Emergence Theory

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

Again, what this all boils down to is whether 'democracy' is a core value, or just something employed when it's 'practical'.But, who (or what) determines the 'practical'?Democratic Communists would argue that only the producers can determine whether a political situation is to be based upon 'democratic' values, or upon the 'practice' of an elite.Religious Materialists argue that special elites (in their political/ideological terminology, 'locals') can operate outside of the democratic controls of society. They do this by arguing that 'knowledge' is 'local' to an 'elite' – that is, 'knowledge' is not a social product by society, but a product by a 'knowing elite'.The obvious 'local' elite in political history is the Party, then its cadre, then its central committee, then its leader.You can't get a more 'practical' and 'local' power than 'Uncle Joe'.

robbo203 wrote:

Democracy for me is about practical decisions not abstract theories…

[my bold]What about 'democracy for us', robbo?How do you know what is 'practical', in the absence of 'abstract theories'?Whatever happened to Marx's 'abstract theories' about 'social theory and practice' and 'democratic production'?It's simply an excuse to try to realise the bourgeois myth of 'Individual Freedom' – you're an ideological individualist, robbo.By 'local' you really mean 'yourself'.

More incoherent  drivel.I am not a community, I am just an individual  and a community involves several individuals, by definition,  And democratic decisionmaking, also by definition, is something applies to communities only.  I dont democraticaly debate with myself to make a decision, do I? By local I mean the local community, however defined.  I cannot say in advance precisely what the spatial extent of a given local community might be, I wouldn't be so arrogant as to presume otherwise but what I can assert fairly confidently that there will be local communties, however defined And you completely twist and distrot what I say about abstract theories ,  Certainly I agree that the question of what is practical involves a theory but this is not what I was alluding to and you know that full well, LBird.  All thinking involves "theory" in this general sense but I am talking specifically about theories in the specialised sense as organised bodiies of knowledge such as scientific theories which I explicitly referred to So to give an example of what I mean – String Theory in physics.  Will this be voted upon in a socialist society to determine whether it is "true".  Obviously, no. Why?  Because 1) There is absolutely no point in the exercise.  What are you hoping to achieve by the exercise?  If a minority vote to say the theory is wrong and a majoriy vote to say it is right, how are you going to stop the minority continuing to think it is wrong? Should you even try if you believe in democracy.  So what have achieved with the democratic vote? 2)  Since the electorate in this instance is essentially boundless – meaning global – you have to organise a global vote.  This assumes that most people  have even heard of String Theory or are bothered to vote on it, Its also assume a worldwide mechnism for the organisation of such vote and the diversion of considerable manpower and other reseoruces to effect such a vote.  If you got more than .001 percent of the population voting you would be lucky.  So what is practical worth of the exercise String Theoiry is just one theory; there are hundreds of thousands of other theories in ever conceviable banch of humam knowledge.  Are you going to organise a global vote on all of these too?  What about art?  Are you going to organise a global vote on  different t forms of artistic expression to determine their artistic merit.  Art too is a social construction so, according to you, must therefore be subject to a democratic vote Frankly you have tied yourslef up in knots with this ridiculous argument of yours about democratic decisionamking. Democracy is about practical decisionmaking , about the allocation of resroceus to desired ends  – bot scitific truth or artistic merit.  We may not precisely know where the dividing lines is between practical decisions and abstract theories but by inference we can be certain that such a distinction can be be made – just as we can be certain that in capitalism there is a capitalist exploting class and an exploited working class even if the dividing line between them is blurred

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

Thanks for your very clear political reply, robbo.All democratic socialists should take note of it.

 Indeed.  And if you claim to be a democratic socialist do you also take note of it?  Do you concur with the statement I made or not.  Yes or no.   And if "no", in what way do you specifically disagree with it,  Spit it out LBIrd.  Lets hear you concrete objections to what was said in post 10 if you have any….

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

…as a democratic communist…

So you agree that we can elect truth then, robbo?If not, 'who' or 'what' produces 'truth'?

 You know my answer to this LBird so stop playing games.  I see no point or purpose in 7 billion plus people  democraticaly voting on literally tens of thousands of scientifc  theories to determine their truth status and I see no practical way in which this crackpot idea can ever be put into effect.  If you think otherwsie then explain in practical terms how your idea could be put into effect? But you wont will you? You never doDemocracy for me is about practical decisions not abstract theories and the praxis of communist democracy involves different levels of decisionmaking – local regional and global – but mainly local.  Which means local people get to decide democratically what applies at the local level  – not  the 7 billion plus people that constutue the world's population,  Or do you think the whole world population should be able decide on where you want to site your local sewage processing plant?

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

…as a democratic communist…

So you agree that we can elect truth then, robbo?If not, 'who' or 'what' produces 'truth'?

You don't have to answer that question publicly here, robbo, but, for your own development, try to work out for yourself what you think that the answer is, and then try to work out why you think that.That is, come up with a socio-historic answer of what you believe, where that originated, why that originated, and who benefits from your continuing to believe that answer.Of course, you can always refuse to do this historical analysis of a social product, and just continue to claim that, as an individual, you just know eternal truth (probably on the basis that 'reality' is 'obvious' to your biological senses).alanjjohnstone mentioned a history book on the other thread, and you could do worse than reading that, to help situate your political beliefs about 'nature' and 'science' in a socio-historic context of human production.That is, in a social context that we can change.

 Perhaps you would do well to stop trying to patronisingly lecture others on what you see as the inadequacies of their beliefs and what they should do to overcome these and focuss instead on addressing the glaring inadequacies of what they see in your own beliefs.  But no  – whenever your critics on this forum point out these inadequacies to you, or ask serious questions of you, all you ever do is to point blank ignore them and take refuge in a, by now, very well rehearsed little ritual of intellectual evasion. There is more than a touch of the Jehovah Witness way of looking at the world in your case which is richly ironic given your tendency to boringly and oh-so-predictably  label anyone who has the audacity to question your presumed elitist expertise as a…err…"religious materialist"!

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

Vin wrote:

“In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. "(my emphasis) Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy 

I know that you're not very good at this theoretical stuff, Vin, so I'll make it easy for you.'Relations of production' are socio-historical products of human activity.This doesn't mean that 'rocks talk to us', as Religious Materialists like you allege, Vin.No worker with half-a-brain listens to this 19th century guff any more, Vin, so you're wasting your time pretending to them that you have a 'special consciousness' and access to something that they don't have. If you agreed that they had the same access, you'd clearly agree that they could vote on this access, but you don't, so you have to deny democracy to those you pretend to able to persuade to give you power within socialism.Have a nice night, chatting to the rocks.

 Nice. LBird has taken the art of patronising others to a new level with this contemptuosuly elitist brush off of his but never mind… The odd thing about this quote that Vin cites is that it comes from Marx, the same Marx who LBird claims to faithfully interpret and endorse unlike the rest of us who are supposed to be "Engelsists" prone to engaging in fascinating conversations with rocks. The point about this quote which seems to have eluded LBird competely is NOT that relations of production' are not socio-historical products of human activity – I don t think that is what either Marx or Vin are suggesting at all – but, rather that these relations present themselves as being independent of the will of individuals.  That is to say, particular individuals. Or to put it differently, the way society is organised has a certain "objective" character vis a vis these particular individuals insofar they cannot as individuals do much about it. These relations of production exist for them  as a set of external constraints According to emergence theory higher levels of reality "supervene"  on lower levels of reality but cannot be reduced to lower levels of reality.  So society depends or supervene on concrete individuals – you cannot have society without individuals – but social phenomena , like the "relations of production" that characterise society – cannot be reduced to individuals (who in case differ sharply with one another – for instance over the desirablity of a given set of relations of production). Rather, they are what are called "emergent" phenomena that exhibit a degree of relative autonomy vis a vis these individuals. This is the point that Marx was getting at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence The irony about all this is that it is LBird who, after all, reveals hinself to be an an extreme individualist and reductionist (and Anti-Marxist) by denying the emergent character of social phenomena like the relatons of production.  These arise out of the interactions between indviduals rather than .their "will".  Only particular individuals can express a "will",  Society is not an individual that in some reified sense expresss a "will".  So what LBird is saying in effect is that the relations of production that characterise a given society are the direct product of some particuar individuals "will". Naturally, as a democratic communist I throughly repudiate LBird's extreme  individualism

[robbo203]

jondwhite wrote:

Indymedia UK has closed down. Add that to Freedom Newspaper and The People (SLP) who also tried online only

 And Common Voice/World in Common unfortunately which was a purely internet-based phenomenon (apart from a very brief spell when a physical leaflet was produced for distribution).  This is why I say dont go down that road of becoming totally reliant on the internet.  Your primary tap root has to be grounded in the physical reality of face to face contacts, not cyberspace. The internet must   of course be exploited in any way you can but it should be seen as supplementing not replacing physical organising and activity

[robbo203]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

 This is a version of Brexit Exiting As Name Only (BEANO).  Also worrying is May's view about European nationals.

Not to mention British Nationals in Europe like yours truly…Still not quite sure what the wider implications of Brexit are for us emigrants

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

Our comrade Binay Sarkar in India has written an article about "The Bolsheviks and the Abolition of Money":https://www.academia.edu/24449687/THE_BOLSHEVIKS_AND_THE_ABOLITION_OF_MONEY

 Thanks for that very interesting and useful link I dont know if you have come across an article by Paul Gregory and Mark Harrison, entitled, “Allocation under Dictatorship: Research in Stalin’s Archives” (Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XLIII , September 2005, pp. 721–761). They make the point that while, in theory, “money was relatively unimportantin the Soviet command system”, in practice this was far from being the case.  In theory, what was supposed to happen was that the planners would set about the task of drawing up their plans, directly allocating producer goods and fixing controlled prices for such goods with the banks supplying “money and credit to ‘follow’ the physical plans”.  This was a process dubbed “planned autonomism”. Money, from this perspective, was purportedly just a means for “monitoring financial flows to detect departures from physical directives”. However: as they put it: "A major surprise from the archives is that money played a much larger role than we expected. Allocation actually began not with physical supply plans but with nominal budgetary assignments to investment and other government uses such as military orders. The Politburo gave much more time and energy to how rubles would be spent than to consideration of the “control figures” for output in physical units (Davies 2001a; Gregory 2001; Davies, Iliˇc, and Khlevnyuk 2004). Budget outlays usually came first because broad-brush supply plans could not fix the detailed assortment of physical products or their final uses. Plans in rubles of output were then calculated at “fixed” plan prices. Plan targets had to be fixed in rubles because most producers supplied many products and output was too heterogeneous to be planned any other way" This last point is highly revealing for it demonstrates all too clearly the underlying capitalist rationale that justifies the need for a single universal unit of accounting – namely, money – to facilitate market exchange

[robbo203]

Dave B wrote:

it comes under the “Communist subbotniks” movement thing I think? There is quite a bit of it from Lenin around 1919 on it re unpaid gratis labour etc. just one link on it from Lenin below; https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/jun/28.htm

 Very interesting link Dave B.  These two passages in particular: We know that in practice such contradictions are solved by breaking the vicious circle, by bringing about a radical change in the temper of the people, by the heroic initiative of the individual groups which often plays a decisive role against the background of such a radical change. The unskilled labourers and railway workers of Moscow (of course, we have in mind the majority of them, and not a handful of profiteers, officials and other whiteguards) are working people who are living in desperately hard conditions. They are constantly underfed, and now, before the new harvest is gathered, with the general worsening of the food situation, they are actually starving. And yet these starving workers, surrounded by the malicious counter-revolutionary agitation of the bourgeoisie, the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, are organising “communist subbotniks”, working overtime without any pay, and achieving an enormous increase in the productivity of labour in spite of the fact that they are weary, tormented, and exhausted by malnutrition. Is this not supreme heroism? Is this not the beginning of a change of momentous significance  It would be a good thing to eliminate the word “commune” from common use, to prohibit every Tom, Dick and Harry from grabbing at it, or to allow this title to be borne only by genuine communes, which have really demonstrated in practice (and have proved by the unanimous recognition of the whole of the surrounding population) that they are capable of organising their work in a communist manner. First show that you are capable of working without remuneration in the interests of society, in the interests of all the working people, show that you are capable of “working in a revolutionary way”, that you are capable of raising productivity of labour, of organising the work in an exemplary manner, and then hold out your hand for the honourable title “commune”! Of course "working without remuneration in the interests of society" begs the question as to how then one is supposed to obtain access to the means of living.  In socialism/communism,  the corrollary of "unremunerated work" is free access to goods and services.  You can't have one without the other.  This brings us to the question – if you dont have free access, if you continue to operate an exchange economy, what then does the call to "work without remuneration" – or more specifically to "work overtime without pay" –  really amount  to?  I would suggest it amounts to little more than code on the part of Lenin to signify the desire on the part of the Bolshevik state to step up the rate of exploitation, to increase the volumne of unpaid surplus value extracted from the Russian working class for the purposes of capital accummulation All this talk of the so called "war communism" of the period 1918-21 " is just  sheer bunkum.  Yes Lenin and his associates might have discussed the idea of the abolition of money in relation to the period  we are talking but that doesnt translate into any serious attempt to introduce a communist society which was simply not possible anyway under the circumstances then prevailing,  Talk is one thing ; action is quite another.  Besides, communism signifies far more than just the "absence of money". Money was not abolished though its value was undermined by hyperinflation.  This may have contributed to the practice of paying wages in kind rather than in money and I understand that at the height of the period of "war communism" up to 90% of wages paid to Russian workers were paid in kind.   We also know from Lenin writing in 1918 that the policy of  uravnilovka or income levelling – as a political tactic to gain working class support – had to be discontinued. In an address given in April 1918 (published as "The Soviets at Work") Lenin stated:  “We were forced now to make use of the old bourgeois method and agreed a very high remuneration for the services of the bourgeois specialists. All those who are acquainted with the facts understand this, but not all give sufficient thought to the significance of such a measure on the part of the proletarian state. It is clear that such a measure is a compromise, that it is a departure from the principles of the Paris Commune and of any proletarian rule" With regard to the money component of the wages Russian workers received, it is interesting to note that in the Soviet Union there was a determination on the part of the authorities for this to be paid according to the peice wage form.   This is significant because as Marx had observed: "the piece wage is the form of wage most appropriate to the capitalist mode of production” and that "piece wages become . . . the most fruitful source of reductions in wages, and of frauds committed by the capitalists."(Capital 1 ch 21) By 1933, peice work accounted for 70% of wages according to Peter Petroff  (February 1938, “The Soviet Wages System”, Labour, p.141-2) Payment in kind continued in the Soviet era though it was disproportionately skewed in favour of the political elite.   Some theorists like Howard and King have argued that a substantial proportion of the soviet workers' wages were provided outside of the market, thus providing grist to their mill that the soviet union was not really a capitalist economy.  However, that claim appears to be based on an exaggeration since according to some estmates the “social wage” constituted less than a quarter – 23.4% – of the income of the average soviet worker – though, during the seventies, this figure apparently grew   (Arnot Bob, 1988, Controlling Soviet labour: Experimental Change from Brezhnev to Gorbachev, M R Sharpe p.36)  The greatest irony of all is that since the so called "fall of communism", payment-in-kind has increased.  According to Tore Ellingsen : Recently, we have witnessed massive domestic barter at the firm level in Russia (and in several of the other former Soviet republics). In Russia, barter constituted almost fifty per cent of industrial sales in 1997, up from around five per cent in 1992 (Aukutsionek (1997,1998)). In the same five year period, Russian firms started to pay their workers in kind on a grand scale, sometimes under tragic-comic circumstances. Hungry workers were paid everything from porcelain and kitchen utensils to sex toys and fertilizer, in the form of piles of manure, instead of their ordinary money wage. Likewise, a large fraction of taxes were being paid in kind rather than cash (OECD, 1997) (Tore Ellingsen, "Payments in Kind", Stockholm School of Economics Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance, No 244,  February 10, 2000)    

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