Socialism/communism is not about taking away people's
personal possessions. That's just a scare story put around by those whose
property socialism will take away: those who own and control the means for
producing goods and services (farms, mines, factories, etc).
And they won't be bought out, but simply expropriated
without compensation when a majority decide democratically to make the means of
production the common property of all, so they can be used to provide for the
needs of all instead of to make profits for a few. We are merely expropriating
the expropriators. All wealth comes from the application of human labour upon
the raw materials in conditions of waged slavery and absolute, actual, or
relative poverty for the majority, with privileged access to the means and
instruments of producing and distributing this wealth by and for the minority
capitalist class. The reason for their capital accumulation rather than
intelligence and superior or intelligent application of opportunity. The
richest 1% probably are just as likely to have their economic affairs managed
for them. Generally if one is born poor, one will die poor and the converse if
one is born rich, one will die rich.
Nor has socialism anything to do with government ownership.
It's about common ownership, which is the same as non-ownership. The means of
production won't belong to anyone or any institution, not corporations, not
rich individuals, not governments. They will simply be there to be used under
democratic control to provide for people's needs in accordance with the
principle "from each their ability, to each their needs". All
companies and corporations (which are only legal entities created and
maintained by the state) were dissolved or that all stocks and shares, bills
and bonds, etc were declared null and void. They'd then just be pieces of
paper. Then no one and no legal entity will be able to exert enforceable
property rights over means of production. They would belong to nobody or
everybody (the same thing). Imagine if, tomorrow, it was made illegal to be an
employer (to use terminology from British law, to be the ‘Master in a contract
of service’). That would render almost
all capital worthless at a stroke, and the only way in which labour could be
secured would be through voluntary co-operation. When material conditions
change so to do social relationships, we've had the former not the latter. The
productive forces are out of sync with social relationships. Every time too
much of anything is produced, capitalism goes into 'crisis'. Too many houses,
too much food, while people starve.
The great bulk of economic activity in the formal sector of
the capitalist economy is completely and utterly useless from the standpoint of
meeting human needs. Such activity occurs simply and solely to enable the
system to operate on its own terms. The only aim of any capitalist concern is
to make profit. If in making that profit they meet human need and or desire, so
be it, if in making that profit it meets no human need or desire again that is
immaterial.
The only realistic model of a totally non-market socialist
(or communist, if you prefer) economy would be one which would be very largely
self-regulating and decentralised. We see this in embryonic form today in the
system of physical accounting - stock control - that exists alongside the
system of monetary accounting linking business enterprises along a supply
chain. Socialism will dispense with monetary accounting but will retain the
physical accounting aspect of this relationship There would be no economic
exchange in the quid pro quo sense since this necessarily implies private
property and hence the absence of common ownership. It would be very wrong to deduce from the
mere existence of numerous planning bodies the existence of private property as
such.
"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 labor
employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a
material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist
society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly
as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor",
objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all
meaning" - Critique of the Gotha Progamme
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