Gerald Levy wrote:
>
> Do you really think that the National Health Service is a "communist
> element" within a capitalist social formation ???
>
Certainly,
it was explicitly set up according to the principle applying in
the higher phase of communism ' from each according to ability to
each according to need '.
After the 1940s the British social formation was a combination of
domestic, capitalist, state-capitalist and communist modes of
production. The political class struggle here since then has
centered on the struggle between modes of production and the
classes they throw up.
>
> > Does the process of cooking a meal at home in the US of A take place
> > 'under capitalism'.
>
> The product, though, does not take the commodity-form.
>
No it does not, but the work is socially necessary, so taking a
commodity
form is not a criterion for labour to be socially necessary even
within a predominantly capitalist social formation.
> > But you object to any attempt to improve our understanding of what
> > social labour time is now!
>
> No, I don't. What will improve our understanding of social labour time
> now?
>
Analysing contemporary social formations as a combination of modes of
production rather than restricting ourselves to a critique of the
categories of early 19th century economists.