What Will A Socialist World Look Like

Marx refrained from offering future generations any instructions or blueprints. Nowhere in Marx is there to be found a detailed account of the new social system which was to follow capitalism. Marx wrote no “Utopia”. Socialist society of the future will be for the socialist generations themselves to decide upon and organise. It was Auguste Blanqui, the French revolutionary who said: “Tomorrow does not belong to us.”

However, we can project general principles and note what will be redundant in socialism. We can outline the broad features of the new society and the way in which it would develop.  Actual socialist society, like all previous forms of society, will come into existence on the basis of what already existed before it. We do not start with a blank page. Capitalist society has actually prepared the way for socialism. Production has become increasingly social and the process of production has linked  together a very large number of people in the course of transforming raw materials into the finished article and  crated a greater and greater interdependence between people.  It is because the fact that capitalist production is now the co-operative work of all society that it can no longer be the property of one individual or group but instead it should be the common property of all.  Production is carried out by workers and  the transfer of ownership to society as a whole does not essentially alter their work. Therefore the working class can take over immediately. In a socialist world production will not be not for profit but for use. There will be no new division into classes, because in a socialist society there is nothing to give rise to it. Socialism will not be perfect but there will no longer be a struggle between opposing classes. The State will shrivel away.

Capitalism condemns those of us to poverty, enforced idleness, and hunger which it cannot employ for the purpose of enriching the capitalist class.  Our capitalist society is based on the waste and the squandering of resources and energy. Consider the waste of militarism and war. Just think of it! Billions a year wasted on the arms trade under the present system. Billions expended on advertising to promote consumerism. Millions of  people, engaged in all kinds of useless, non-productive occupations in capitalism such as sales-persons.

Laziness is a social malady, a legitimate response in our system, which offers ample role-models encouraging laziness. It assures all riches, all the pleasures of life to those who work the least possible, to the idle rich and to the social parasites. Sloth develops from the intolerable conditions of forced and excessive labour in unhealthy factories. How can a people work with enthusiasm when they know that their work will go to the enrichment of others? The typical grasping individualist, with no sense of social or collective responsibility, is the capitalist surrounded by competitors, all struggling to survive by cheating and corruption. These ideas of the dominant class – the competition and rivalry instead of solidarity – tend to infect the workers, especially those favoured by the employers for special advancement.

When the producers know that the products of their work will belong to them they will throw overboard the reluctance which forced labour engenders in them. Work well-regulated and properly apportioned will become attractive. It will become a joy and a pleasure, and this is because work is necessary for the physical and mental well-being of man. Even within capitalist society there is what is known as “solidarity” among the workers – the sense of a common interest, a common responsibility. The workers have at their disposal a thousand means of organising administration, control and division of products – Workers councils, factory committees, trade unions, co-operatives, etc., etc. There is no obstacle that cannot be overcome in a society that is based on labour and not on profit.

There would be a certain amount of necessary work to be done which would be usually repellant; some of this, probably the greater part of it, would be performed by machinery; and it must be remembered that machinery would be improved and perfected without hesitation when the restrictions laid on production by the exigencies of profit-making were removed. But nevertheless some of this work may not able to be done by machinery and so  volunteers would have to be relied upon. It is not foreseen that there will be any difficulty in obtaining them, considering that the habit of looking upon necessary labour from the point of view of social obligation would be universal, and  such work will be spread amongst many which would remove objections to work usually disliked.

The future alone can tell what will be the precise forms and special methods of organisation.  However, try and imagine the new society as an organised body of communities, each carrying on its own affairs, but united by a delegated federal body. It is to be understood that these two bodies, the township (or community) and the federation, would be the two poles but between there would be many other expressions of the decentralised principle, -- as in districts and regions  that were linked together by natural circumstances, such as language, climate, or the divisions of physical geography.

 The Socialist Party task is convincing people that a socialist is desirable and is possible. When we have enough people of that way of thinking, they will find out what action is necessary for putting their principles in practice. The Socialist Party accepts that, for the moment,  workers do not believe in their own capacity to undertake the management of affairs and unprepared to take responsibility for running society in their own interests.

Remember Our Past, Organise Our Future