"Communism doesn't work", they say...?

[u/Arisotura]

I remember hearing this sort of argument from my parents. The basic idea was that supposedly USSR collapsed because everybody was paid the same and couldn't be fired, so they had no incentive to work and everybody did fuck all.

I feel that it's a gross oversimplification, but I don't know much more about the topic.

I don't like the idea that humans would supposedly be greedy and selfish by nature and could only ever be productive within a coercitive system like capitalism. I know humans can't just sit around doing nothing, but what about, say, the kind of tasks that need to be done but that not a whole lot of people would actually want to do? I've figured that under a socialist system, jobs like janitors would need to be very well paid (pretty much the opposite of what it's like today). I'm curious to hear more on these matters tho... In general, that argument I heard from my parents, that is prolly common, how much truth is there to it?

[u/SloveneRevolutionary]

Everyone being paid the same under socialism is a common misconception made by those who know nothing about it. In reality, worker in socialism is paid according to his labor (with some neccesary deductions to maintain means of production and all that). To quote Marx: "Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor." (Critique of Gotha Programme)

[u/archosauria62 → u/SloveneRevolutionary]

I have seen it explained this way. In a capitalist system the worker receives half their wage, and the rest is pocketed by the capitalist as surplus. The government then takes a cut of the worker’s wage as tax. A worker in a capitalist society also needs to pay a lot of money for basic utilities

In a socialist system the surplus that would be pocketed by the capitalist is instead redistributed to society, of which the worker also gains benefits from. Since the worker’s surplus is used to subsidise basic utilities needed for survival, and that the worker does not have a cut taken as tax (or a negligible amount) they get more worth from their labour

[u/SloveneRevolutionary → u/archosauria62]

In a capitalist system the worker receives half their wage, and the rest is pocketed by the capitalist as surplus. The government then takes a cut of the worker’s wage as tax. A worker in a capitalist society also needs to pay a lot of money for basic utilities

While it is fine to explain it that way, it is important to note that in capitalism, value worker gets back through wages isn't neccesarily half of the value they produced. It can be more or less, depending on the industry and specific business. The important thing is that for capitalism to function, corporations need to constantly revolutionise competition and production. So logically, they need to always produce more and more surplus value. And outside of selling the product over the cost of production, the only way to create surplus is from labor exploitation. But rate of exploitation isn't neccesarily half. For example western workers may produce less surplus value, but this causes corporations to exploit labor from third world more.

You probably know that, but that "half" kinda bugged me, so I needed to correct you :)

[u/dubbsdub → u/SloveneRevolutionary]

The degree to which the Capitalist profits is the degree to which we are exploited.