This is how socialism will be (1/4)

We grow more and more isolated from each other. Nobody seems to enjoy things anymore. Nobody seems to know the joy of life. What everybody does know, however, is that this society seems to be falling apart and this misery will continue as long as we allow it to. Everywhere people sell their lives in order to survive. Everywhere life has been reduced to daily subjugations and a series of humiliations. Even our "free time" lacks any freedom. The esteemed experts tell us that it's our fault for being too "greedy" or too "selfish." But there is nothing mysterious about it. Capitalism has become a fetter on our existence and development as genuinely human beings.

Capitalism is a system of society based upon an exchange economy. It has now become a fetter on our further development as human beings. Every time you stand in a line at a supermarket check-out you do not accomplish any productive or socially useful function. The only reason you're waiting in line is to pay for the food, even though it would be every bit as good whether or not you pay for it. But unless you pay for it, it cannot be realised as a commodity, as exchange-value. In terms of its social use-value it would be much simpler and indeed more efficient, if you simply walked out with it. In place of capitalist society with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each individual is the condition for the free development of all. Production for profit will be replaced by production for pleasure. The end of the law of value will be the decisive beginning of the end of all alienations.

The "Left," of course, believe the problem with private capitalism is only that it doesn't do what it's supposed to on its own terms -- that there aren't enough "jobs," that people don't get high enough ("fair") wages for selling their lives, that women and "third world" people don't get their fair share of the shit pie, that Capital accumulation doesn't go on peacefully as it should. The "Left" has so little understanding of the actual workings of capitalism that when its tendency toward centralisation and monopolisation is pushed to an extreme such as was in Russia they think that it is no longer capitalism. In spite of their self-acclaimed "radicalism" they are really the staunchest of conservatives. And as capitalism -- the highest form of hierarchical society -- is falling apart, they dutifully try to come up with new ways of holding it together. As for the "Left," they can take their "transitional demands," "correct leadership" and "revolutionary self-sacrifice” and shove it where the sun don’t shine.

There will be no law of value no commodity exchange, no State and no religion to decide our activities for us; no "general interest," no "national interest," no pre-defined "human nature." Just our desires, skills, imagination, passions, and intelligence - developed over centuries and now freed for the first time, freed for the first time with all the world at our disposal. Unlike any previous revolutionary movement, the socialist revolution must be carried through actively and consciously by the overwhelming majority of the world's people. No "vanguard" Party can "lead" us, "represent" us, or seize power "on our behalf." Instead we must organise ourselves.

Capitalism has produced the largest and the most potentially important revolutionary class in all history – the working class which consists of all of us who are separated from control and ownership of the means of production and therefore have no control over our own life.  We are the overwhelming majority of the people in the world today. Our class includes not only industrial "blue collar" workers, but furthermore, white collar and "service" workers (skilled and unskilled alike), teachers, unemployed, welfare recipients, students, agricultural workers, and even a growing number of "professionals," artists and musicians The means of social production includes everything used for the production and reproduction of human beings and of society: not only factories, mines, raw materials, agricultural land, etc., but also all the implements and all the space and territory which are part of our overall life. We have no control over any of these because Capital has taken them all over and uses them all as Capital. Everything that is produced is produced and tolerated only insofar as it serves the needs of Capital i.e., of exchange-value which expands for the mere sake of expanding.

When the ruling class is fully overthrown we will be free to take on the re-organisation of everything. Each of us will be a co-owner of the entirety of the world's wealth and means of production. Planning and decision making will not be a separate or specialised activity. It will be an integrated part of production and of life, just like any other. We could easily begin by regularly holding popular assemblies in local public areas and production places of all sorts. Here ideas and plans could be initiated and elaborated with the full and direct participation of all those concerned. (Obviously not everyone will be interested in every question: the point is that anyone could, if they chose, participate in making any decision they think is important.)

When initial decisions have been made, the people at the assemblies can elect delegates who will then meet in regional and finally global councils with other delegates sent from assemblies throughout the world. They will meet simply to coordinate decisions already made by the people at their assemblies and will have no separate governing power of any kind. Their function will be rotated periodically among the population and monopolized by no one. Furthermore, they could be removed and replaced by their assemblies at any time. Even for planning and coordination of world-wide production, it is hard to say to what extent such meetings of delegates will prove necessary. With telecommunications equipment already existing, it would, in many cases, be simpler for the local assemblies to contact each other directly via the airwaves, and take part in each other's discussions. Such methods would be especially useful if you consider that in some cases even initial plans could not be made only locally and might immediately require direct dialogues between the respective assemblies. By means of mass communications networks such as the internet, each of us could be in instantaneous contact with each other in any part of the world, as well as with all the wealth of knowledge of the entirety of human history. Resources could be coordinated globally in order to maximise use-value and minimise difficulties in fulfilling desires. No longer would people be compelled to be competitive with each other. Instead the enrichment of others would only be a further enrichment of ourselves when we experience each other. The full and free development of each individual around us will be our own direct self-interest.

Whereas in capitalist society each individual can usually only pursue his interests narrowly, at the expense of others, in socialism every individual will have as his or her own the entirety of society and of social wealth. Each individual's pursuit of an ever-richer life would mean the pursuit of an ever-richer society. Nobody's activities need be restricted to a given "job" or locality. Each person can fish in the morning, plough the soil in the afternoon, compose and play music before dinner and write poetry in the evening, chop wood one day, cast steel the next, build castles one month and sail around the world the next (perhaps distributing the goodies they've made). And all of this without ever having to become as such a fisherman, a farm-worker, a musician, a poet, a woodsman, a steelworker, a construction worker or a sailor. There will no longer be a "work day." Nor a separate "leisure" time. Just life -- just the process of consciously creating and recreating ourselves and our world. With all the modern means of production at our individual disposal, each of us will have a direct self-interest in the building and rebuilding of the world in the image of our desires, and in participating fully in the accurate executing of this. Successful production in a socialist society will depend only on the real and immediate determination of each individual to live their life fully, to realise their wildest imaginations -- in the real world (that, by the way, is "how the work will get done").