Milestones in the emergence of the Palestinian problem and the Arab-Israeli conflict

Résumé du document

In Critique of the Gotha Programme, written in 1875, Marx distinguishes different stages of communism from "crude communism? to a "higher phase of communism?. He defines crude communism as "a communist society [which has not] developed on its own foundations, but on the contrary, [has] just emerg[ed] from capitalist society? . According to Marx, although it represents a more equal society than a capitalist society, inequalities still exist among people. In a crude communist society, "the individual producer receives back from society ... exactly what he gives to it? , so "the right of producer is proportional to the labour they supply? .

Extraits

[...] In these socities there is no property other than clothing or similar personal items. Even in our societies we have such examples of groups functionning like this. In a family for example, there is a social expectation that parents should provide for their children and that married adults should share their wealth. William Montgomery Brown states that “always, because we were human, we have had to introduce cooperation, or we could not get along at all. The family is just one instance. [...]

[...] In most of the societies nowadays, wealth is distributed with respect to what people gave to socitety : people receive different wages according to the work they did and the qualifications they have. But according to Marx, this repartition reproduces the natural inequalities between people. According to Plato, inequalities are natural and inevitable. We could then argue that only society can compensate inequal skills and abilities and put everybody on a equal footing. However, Plato uses this idea of natural inequality to justify the existence of a ruling class. One main criticism made by some liberals, like Ayn Rand, is based on another conception of justice and equal rights. [...]

[...] For people to be able to consume whatever they want in the communal property, the society must achieve economic abundance. For Marx, in the communist society there would be such an abundance that the principle of property rights would not be necessary. For example, there is an abundance of air on earth so it does not belong to anyone, and that nobody would want to possess air. To achieve this abundance, Marx thinks it is necessary to produce more than enough. So the production system created by capitalism would be the base for this economic state of abundance. [...]

[...] According to Ayn Ran, the moochers curse the people who make that help possible, because they hate the talented for having the talent they don't possess. She argues the moochers seem benign but are arguably more destructive than the looters, and criticizes the legal looting of governments intended to help them. In response, Marxists usually argue that if you refer to such things as food, education or medical care, needs are objective and are more or less equal between individuals. [...]

[...] Moreover, workers have different needs with respect to their familial situation –they can be married or not, have children or so if two workers give a same amount of labour, and hence receive equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another”[5]. So the crude communist society “recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment” and is therefore an inequal society. So this necessary step towards communism has to be improved. Which conception of communist society Marx describes in order to eliminate all inequalities still existing in crude communism ? In this essay we will explain and critically assess Marx's conception of communist society. [...]