Now all of reality is a process of becoming. there is no static reality, no static society. But the problem I am attempting to clarify is the idea of a transitional period between capitalism and socialism. Conceived in these terms, the transitional period is not socialism.

Thus it could be a lengthy period where socialist and capitalist sectors coexist. A process during which

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

But I think an alternative perspective is the case. The working class will in one fell swoop take over all the instruments of production and use them to meet basic needs. This will be a sharp rupture, likely a messy period of experiments and a steep learning curve that cannot be planned beforehand. It will be immediately communist. From day 1. The whole thing will depend on a revolutionary mindset, without which there will be no revolutionary rupture. Self serving accountants eager to maximise individual consumption and get their "money's worth" or, to get the correct reward for their labour time, will not make a revolution. They have not stopped thinking in capitalist terms. It would almost like going to war and saying well, I have shot 3 of the enemy, I have done my bit, I am off home now.

No, this is a different thing altogether, there will be no gradual wresting by degree, unless that refers to the extension of the revolution globally, which will have to be speedy if we are to survive the trauma. Any revolutionary bastion will immediately have to reinvent life with the tools to hand. Only a reapidly growing, sizeable bastion will be able to maintain the revolutionary flame which otherwiase will breakdown into a war of all against all, a disorder to be put down by capitalist intervention.

No, inflamed by revolutionary zeal, we leave behind the selfish fleas and cripples which capitalism produces and we have a collective vision of society.

We cannot individually work out what our individual efforts are worth. So one goes to work for four hours in a school, and another lugs breezeblocks around on a building site for four hours, whilst another trundles around in a fork lift...how long before the penny drops thgat there is no real measuring exact individual input, everything is determined by situation, chance and the like? Average social labour time is a capitalist invention, we cannot use it to make individual calculation of input and reward.

Either the working class recognises that egotistical calculation offers no future, or it embraces socialism as a collective endeavour from the outset.

Transition - well, the communism of day 1 will not be the same as the communism decades later, but that will always be true as long as communism exists, it will all be a transition. But a transition to communism, that is a differnet matter. It will not be a gradual affair with special rules, it will be a messy learning curve.