Question

 

What is Marx's view of communism? Explain Marx's view of income distribution (the extent of income equality) and length of work day. It should also explain Marx’s view of division of labor and his approach to the role of managers and administrators in the full communist stage.

Answer 1

Marx's view of Communism:

Marx has been constructed his vision of communism out of the human and technological possibilities and visible in his time that given the priorities and would be adopted by a new socialist society. The programs introduced by a victorious working class have to deal with the problems left by the old society and would unleash a social dynamic whose general results.

Marx believed in projecting the communist future from existing patterns and trends is an integral part of Marx's analysis of capitalism, and analysis which links social and economic problems with the objective interests that incline each class to deal with them in distinctive ways. It is in this sense that Marx declares, "We do not anticipate the world dogmatically, but rather wish to find the new world through the criticism of the old."

Like the projections Marx made of the future of capitalism itself, however, what he foresaw for communism is no more than highly probable. Marx, whose excessive optimism is often mistaken for crude determinism and could not deny that some form of barbarism is an alternative, but a socialist victory either through revolution or at the polls is been considered far more likely.

Marx's view of income distribution:

Marx describes in Volume I of Capital, distinguishes between labour and labour-power, and develops a theory of exploitation which is built on this difference. Labour is the activity of a person in the production of goods and labour creates value of determines for the exchange and values of goods.

Marx follows here the classical paradigm. Adam Smith, the father of the Father of Economics, Defined: “If among a nation of hunters, for example, it usually costs twice the labour to kill a beaver which it does to kill a deer, one beaver should naturally exchange for or be worth two deer. It is natural that what is usually the produce of two days’ or two hours’ labour should be worth double of what is usually the produce of one day’s or one hour’s labour.”

The value of intermediate or capital goods which are used in a production process is transferred to the newly produced goods.

“The value of labour-power is determined, as the case of every commodity, by the labour time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this special article. If the owner has labour-power works today, tomorrow he must again be able to repeat the same process in the same conditions as regards health and strength.

His means of subsistence must bet therefore for sufficient to maintain him in his normal state as a labouring individual. His natural wants, such as food, clothing, and housing may vary according to the climatic and other physical conditions of his country. On the other hand, the number and extent of his so-called necessary wants, as also the modes of satisfying them, are themselves the product of historical development.

In contradistinction therefore to the case of other commodities, there enters into the determination of the value of labour power a historical and moral element. Nevertheless, in a given country, at a given period, the average quantity of the means of subsistence necessary for the labourer is practically known.”

Marx’s view of division and approach:

Marx was more than a mere economist. He was a social scientist in the full meaning of the phrase. The heart of his system was based on the idea of human production. Marx asserted, is a totally autonomous species-being, and as such man is the sole creator of the world in which he finds himself.

A man cannot be defined apart from his labour: "As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce." The fact that man rationally organizes production is what dis­tinguishes him from the animal kingdom, accord­ing to Marx.

The concept of production was a kind of intellectual "Archimedean point" for Marx. Every sphere of human life must be interpreted in terms of this single idea: "Religion, family, state, law, science, art, etc., are only particular modes of production, and fall under its general law.

Systematic study of the sociology of organizations is almost absent in both the classical and modern Marxist traditions. Although some recent studies in the Marxist tradition show considerable promise, the field has been dominated by the Webern perspective. The development of new theory should be informed by the Marxian concepts are the following:

(a) Labour theory of value,

(b) The forces and relations of production,

(c) Historical development of capitalism, and

(d) Class structure and class struggle.