Marx’s Non-Market Model of Socialism

Abstract

From the theoretical point of view, Marx’s concept of direct allocation (non-market model of socialism) has at least two shortcomings. The first consists in the assumption that the mere collectivisation (socialisation, nationalisation) of the means of production makes the concrete labour of each individual a priori social labour. Says Marx:

Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labour employed on the product appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labour no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of the total labour.¹