John, While I concur with your overall direction here, I think you have maligned Marx, despite quoting his words. Yes, the Spanish Republicans did attempt to implement the concept, but in the end did not succeed due to subordinate political and military power. The same had happened in 1871 with the inspiring but doomed Paris Commune. THIS, I think is why Mark referred to a distant time (then) why it could not be successfully implemented, though desirable, because the bourgeoisie had the power to crush the effort. In fact, you allude to just that fact later in your essay in the appeal to conduct an egalitarian revolution against the rich (bourgeoisie) in order to successfully implement the concept! So, you end up making exactly the point Marx already cited.
As for China, a mixed assessment. The "Great Leap Forward" despite its aspirations, turned out to be horribly implemented, with over-zealous middle management making impossible demands on the rural population, mandating what they were incapable of achieving. Eventually after the policy disaster was rectified, the principle was more fully implemented. I spent a month there as part of a bookseller's tour in 1976, and we did not see abject poverty--certainly no homeless people in tents on streets nor visible garbage either. Clearly people were not wealthy, but everyone by then had enough to survive. Jon
A relatively recent attempt to satisfy this idea is how things are shared on the kibbutz. In the early days of this social institution, the kibbutzim were so poor that they virtually were forced to use common showers, dormitories, dining halls, and child's caring centers, where the parents participated by working elsewhere and seeing their children for only a few hours each day (if that). As time passed and the wealth accumulated, these institutions were able to provide individual homes, private vehicles and relaxed access to farm produce for private use, and the schools were not full-time child-raising arrangements. So the varied needs of the kibbutz members became so widely spread that the Marxian principle was no longer practical. The member's needs were so different that it was impossible to balance them for equality in worth and even money became a useful way for a limited kind of equality in sharing. What evolved was the realization that from each according to ability and to each as per need. was not a practical way for sharing folks to live in villages together and today most kibbutzim have compromised greatly away from this older theory of sharing. In other words theoretical socialism (even when communalism is only partial), does simply not work in practice.
People are unequal in both their talents and in their basic necessities. It seems to me that this idea of sharing would better expressed were it to be the sharing of opportunities that are provided by the natural resources and in particular the benefits possible depending on where you live. Those that live in a wealthy neighborhood should pay more tax than those whose homes are far away from the centers of the more civilized parts of town.
John, While I concur with your overall direction here, I think you have maligned Marx, despite quoting his words. Yes, the Spanish Republicans did attempt to implement the concept, but in the end did not succeed due to subordinate political and military power. The same had happened in 1871 with the inspiring but doomed Paris Commune. THIS, I think is why Mark referred to a distant time (then) why it could not be successfully implemented, though desirable, because the bourgeoisie had the power to crush the effort. In fact, you allude to just that fact later in your essay in the appeal to conduct an egalitarian revolution against the rich (bourgeoisie) in order to successfully implement the concept! So, you end up making exactly the point Marx already cited.
As for China, a mixed assessment. The "Great Leap Forward" despite its aspirations, turned out to be horribly implemented, with over-zealous middle management making impossible demands on the rural population, mandating what they were incapable of achieving. Eventually after the policy disaster was rectified, the principle was more fully implemented. I spent a month there as part of a bookseller's tour in 1976, and we did not see abject poverty--certainly no homeless people in tents on streets nor visible garbage either. Clearly people were not wealthy, but everyone by then had enough to survive. Jon
A relatively recent attempt to satisfy this idea is how things are shared on the kibbutz. In the early days of this social institution, the kibbutzim were so poor that they virtually were forced to use common showers, dormitories, dining halls, and child's caring centers, where the parents participated by working elsewhere and seeing their children for only a few hours each day (if that). As time passed and the wealth accumulated, these institutions were able to provide individual homes, private vehicles and relaxed access to farm produce for private use, and the schools were not full-time child-raising arrangements. So the varied needs of the kibbutz members became so widely spread that the Marxian principle was no longer practical. The member's needs were so different that it was impossible to balance them for equality in worth and even money became a useful way for a limited kind of equality in sharing. What evolved was the realization that from each according to ability and to each as per need. was not a practical way for sharing folks to live in villages together and today most kibbutzim have compromised greatly away from this older theory of sharing. In other words theoretical socialism (even when communalism is only partial), does simply not work in practice.
People are unequal in both their talents and in their basic necessities. It seems to me that this idea of sharing would better expressed were it to be the sharing of opportunities that are provided by the natural resources and in particular the benefits possible depending on where you live. Those that live in a wealthy neighborhood should pay more tax than those whose homes are far away from the centers of the more civilized parts of town.