From: Paul C (clyder@GN.APC.ORG)
Date: Wed May 19 2004 - 17:01:27 EDT
Anders Ekeland wrote:
>
> At 22:16 15.05.2004, Paul Cockshott wrote about progressive taxes:
>
>> In this sense European social democracy has already incorporated many
>> communist principles.
>
>
> One might discuss if progressive taxes is a communist principle, in any
> case it is one of the important slogans of the Manifesto that the
> soc.dems
> have implemented to a certain degree.
>
> And I think that it certainly was a good slogan. BUT, we must not loose
> sight of the fact that the world has changed since then. By not changing
> fundamentally the property relations and the income structure connected
> with them, the soc.dems avoided attacking the distribution of income
> generated by the market directly. This in my opinion had negative
> consequences for the struggle for ideological hegemony.
I agree with this, but the communist elements introduced by social
democracy are not limited to progressive taxation.
1. Free health care provided on the basis of need - this is directly
communist.
2. Free education with education grants for students - again this would
be done in a communist society and at the very least is a limitation of
the operation of the market.
3. Provision of social payments to those with disability, families with
children etc - this is an element of distribution on the basis of need
as advocated by Marx in his critique of the program addopted by
German Social democracy at its Gotha PartieTag. This element of
Marx's criticism seems to have been taken to heart by social democracy
in the 20th century.
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