Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

45 2

KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY

to reintroduce into the party 'dogmas, ideas which in a certain period

had some meaning but which have now become obsolete verbal rubbish'.^69

He did not find very revolutionary the opening declaration that the

proceeds of labour belonged to society as a whole since it was a propo-

sition that had 'at all times been made use of by the champions of the

state of society prevailing at any given time'.^70 Further, he criticised

the programme for not attacking landowners along with capitalists. Talk

about 'fair distribution' and 'equal rights' was vague; proposals that the

workers should receive the 'undiminished proceeds of their labour'

showed a complete disregard for necessary expenditure on capital replace-

ment, administration of social services, poor relief, etc. In terms of the

future communist society the phrase 'proceeds of labour' was meaning-

less, for

within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the

means of production, the producers do not exchange their products;

just as litde does the labour expended on the products appear here as

the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them,

since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labour no longer

exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of the

total labour.^71

Marx then offered a description of the distribution of the social product
in the first stage of communist society 'as it emerges from capitalist
society, which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellec-
tually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose
womb it emerges'.^72 In this society the individual producer would receive
a certificate from society that he had furnished such and such an amount
of labour (after deducting his labour for the common funds), and with
this certificate he would draw from the social stock of means of consump-
tion the cost of the equivalent amount of labour. The same amount of
labour which he had given to society in one form he would receive back
in another.^73

Of course, Marx continued, this equality was, in effect, unequal.
Measurement was made with an equal standard - that of labour: whereas
men's capacities, family situations, etc., were not the same and thus
inequality would arise.

But [continued Marx in a famous passage] these defects are inevitable

in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged

after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be

higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural develop-

ment conditioned thereby.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordi-