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It's no wonder we can't live in harmony with the Earth as we
treat this world of ours as a piece of private property, subject to price
fluctuations on the stock market. It's no wonder we can't 'live in harmony with
the Earth' now as we treat the Earth as a piece of real estate, subject to
price fluctuations on the stock market. Most people have been taught to believe
that socialism means mass poverty and a lack of liberty. Of course, most people don't want to
sacrifice their standard of living and their freedom. Yet there is a basic proposition of true socialism
that no pro-capitalist apologist will touch with a ten-foot barge pole. That
proposition is abolition of the thing that is causing poverty and takes away
our liberty - the wages system and its replacement with a system wherein labour
will receive directly and indirectly the full fruit of its labour! Workers may
well ask themselves what is fair about the conservative motto, "A fair
day's wages for a fairs day’s work."? What is fair about a pickpocket
economic system wherein capitalist profit derives from labour that the
capitalist does not pay for? What is more, some workers are beginning to
question the very thing that they are today struggling to get more of! MONEY!
Why is paying wages theft? Picture, for example, a worker
paid $80 for eight hours of work, but produces goods worth $80 in only two
hours, then the rest of that time, s/he is working without pay. During those
other six hours, the worker produces $240 of goods. That amount (minus the
other costs of running the industry) is surplus value. The capitalist, who
privately owns and controls the means of production, appropriates (steals) the
surplus value by asserting ownership over the new commodities. The surplus
value is turned into profit when the commodities are sold, and a portion is
reinvested as capital for the industry to expand. The capitalist class dominates
the working class in three main ways: 1) economically via their ownership of
the means of production 2) politically via their state apparatus (including the
threat and use of force); and 3) ideologically via their culture (media,
religion, education, traditions, etc.). The working class should not abandon
its daily struggle against capital, but should continuously advance it for the
appropriation of the means of production and the abolition of wages. For
revolutionary socialists our criticism of capitalism is based on the
identification of the exploitation of wage labourers by capital as the producer
of surplus value, and not on finance capital which only valorizes itself on
interest raised on the social surplus value which comes from the productive
sphere as does the landowners’ rent. Logically therefore, the struggle must
begin with the destruction of industrial capital. But the fact is that most
“anti-globalists” defend the production of commodities (when it is not
“multi-national” and, preferably, when it is carried out in the framework of
nationalised industry and/or small units of artisanal production, cooperatives,
etc.)
Abolish money? You socialists are mad! Not so. The thing
about money that socialists find unacceptable lies outside its use as legal
tender or as a medium of exchange. What socialists decry is an abominable
aspect of money which appears to be inseparable from it -- its use in the
producers' market as CAPITAL. So what should socialism use instead of money?
Some advocate labour time vouchers! Unlike money, these will not circulate.
Unlike money, the labour voucher will be non-transferable. Unlike money, whose
stamp provides no clue as to how its possessor came by it, the labour voucher
will record socially-necessary labour time expended by the worker, which
voucher (after deductions for retirees and those unable to work, for
maintenance and/or expansion of the industrial and service infrastructure, for
medical research, for restoration of the environment, etc.) will be exchangeable
for an equal amount of socially-necessary labour that is crystallized in
consumer goods -- value for value. But some other socialists promote a system
of free access according to self-defined needs. Once free access to goods is made available,
why would someone work for someone else in exchange of money? It would be
useless. Why should someone buy something, when he can get it for free? Some
form of barter, perhaps in cases of rare items, may still exist, but it will be
unable to harm the system.
We don't want to "abolish" money, we want to
simply make it obsolete. When the means of production are managed by society,
they will be run for the benefit of society, which would lead to free access.
This would make it pointless to work for money anymore, thus making the
monetary system "superfluous." We are at a stage in which we have
overcome scarcity. Therefore, goods can be distributed on the basis of free
access. Should we limit access to goods merely to "incentive" people?
In fact, it is the opposite. In the current system, only a minority can become
doctors, for instance. In a socialist society, however, everyone will be able
to study and work where he wants. The lack of free access to goods generates
inequality, and if you e.g. are born in a poor family, no matter what
social-democrat politics are in place, you likely will not be able to study
what you want. Even in the case that studying was completely free, you may need
to e.g. get a dead-end job quickly because you or your family needs money.
The abolition of commodity production necessarily means the
abolition of wage labour itself. Wages are never anything other than the price
of a particular commodity: labour power. If products no longer represent
values, and if the allocation of labour power is no longer subject to the
accidental laws of the market, then it is also impossible to consider labour
power itself as an exchange value and to give it a market price. The members of
society, henceforth undertaking collectively social labour, which meanwhile has
been simplified enormously, will no longer be paid for services. This is what
is meant by the abolition of wage labour, which has always been a synonym for socialism/communism.
There is nothing utopian or impracticable about it. Men and women will work in
order to live, instead of living in order to work. Whatever activities and
projects we undertook, we would participate in them because we found them
inherently fulfilling, not because we needed a wage or owed our monthly hours
to the cooperative. This is hardly so implausible, considering the degree to
which decisions about work are already driven by non-material considerations.
The reason for being a socialist is to fight the class system.
Like the lyrics of The Internationale says: "There are no supreme saviours,
neither God, nor Caesar, nor Tribune” and so a socialism must thus be directed
by all of its members, and not entrust itself to the "leaders". The
movement towards the emancipation of humanity can only be the result of the
action of the majority. Marx attacked the capitalist system for the absence of
all provision to render the productive process human, agreeable, or at least
bearable. The demise of wage labour may seem like a faraway dream but once upon
a time people actually worried about what we would do after being liberated
from our daily dreary drudgery. “Economic possibilities for our grandchildren”,
John Maynard Keynes predicted that within a few generations, “man will be faced
with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing
economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest
will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.” In a 1956 discussion,
Max Horkheimer remarks to Theodor Adorno that “nowadays we have enough by way
of productive forces; it is obvious that we could supply the entire world with
goods and could then attempt to abolish work as a necessity for human beings.”
Recent technological advances has created an even more boundless potential for
abundance. With some knowledge of what lies ahead, perhaps we will be better
able to avoid setting off in the wrong direction.
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