This will be socialism

It is, and always has been, a feature of capitalism that there are big differences in wealth and income between rich property-owners and property-less workers. The solution is to get rid of capitalism and establish socialism, in which there will be no incomes from property ownership and no wages system: all the members of society will have free access to the products of industry. With the establishment of socialism, all individuals will be members of the community. co-operating together democratically to meet the needs of all on the basis of “free access" and making the necessary production and other arrangements to make it possible.

 Socialism will mean production for use not profit. The community will control what is produced with all the care, meticulous research and pride which will flow from the awareness that we are producing for our own good, and not as now to provide profits for an owning minority.

 The Socialist Party stands for the establishment of a system of society fundamentally different from that which exists now. In a socialist society the means of producing and distributing wealth — factories, farms, mines, docks, offices, transport — will belong to the whole community. Common ownership will do away with the need for exchange, so that money will have no use. Production in socialism will be determined by people on the basis of social need, not profit. At the moment people may need wealth but, unless they can afford to buy it, they must go without. Production is geared to sale with a view to profit. Socialism means production solely for use: bread to eat, houses to live in, clothes to wear.

What will be the incentive to work in a socialist society? There will be no wages, for in a class-free society no person will have the right to buy another person's ability to work for a price. Work in socialist society will depend on co-operation and the voluntary decisions of men and women to contribute to society in order to keep it going. Just as an individual could not survive if he or she did not eat, drink or take basic health care, so a socialist society would not survive unless the people in it acted cooperatively in a spirit of mutuality.

Unpleasant work will still have to be done. Of course, much of the dirty work of the profit system will be deemed unnecessary will be dispensed with immediately in a socialist society. Other unappealing work can probably be taken care of by robots and automation. Where dirty work is unavoidable it will not be done by the same people all the time — members of society will share in the task by rotation and such work will be carried out by socially conscious men and women who will appreciate that society belongs to them and therefore its less pleasant tasks must be performed by them. In the knowledge that we own and control the earth, and all that is in and on it, it is unlikely that human beings will decline to perform the dirty work within socialism.

Critics of  socialism tell us that socialism would be confronted with millions of lazy idle men and women who would refuse to do their bit to make society run efficiently. They also tell us that given a society of unrestricted access to social wealth, human greed will lead people to rapidly consume all the wealth of society. Now it is quite true that if the stores were opened tomorrow and workers were invited to go in and take as much as they want without having to pay there would be a mad rush and the stores would be empty within a day. But why should this be the case if the stores are always open for free access? It would be odd indeed for the inhabitants of socialism to store dozens of loaves of bread, which would go stale before they could be eaten, when the option would exist to go to the store and collect a new loaf of bread each day or few days. Perhaps, in innocence, the earliest inhabitants of socialism will indulge in a few feasts of conspicuous over-consumption. Who wouldn't be surprised at such action after years of enforced poverty and privation, but such events will soon end when its irrationality is realised.

Apart from the enormous changes which will become possible to make the physical conditions of labour more pleasant, work will be viewed in the new light of usefulness to society. The incentive to carry out work will therefore lie in the personal knowledge that one’s efforts are meeting a social need. The maintenance of socialist society where starvation, the threat of warfare, unemployment and poverty with all its implications are things of the past, and where men and women are free to work in harmony for the sole purpose of satisfying their social requirements, will be the over-riding incentive.

We are also told that if classes were abolished and all people were equal, a hierarchy would soon return  again and society would be back to square one? Socialism does not attempt to eradicate  inequalities of talent and skills: one person might be a greater footballer than another will ever be, while another will better musician than another. But this does not mean that socialism will establish a hierarchy of musicians or athletes nor poets or brain surgeons. In a co-operative society it will be recognised that poets cannot write their odes unless the farmer is willing to bring food from the fields. Humanity lives interdependently. And who is to say that farmers will not be poets or that great chess masters in socialism will not clean the neighbourhood where he or she lives or that the greatest brain surgeon won't offer a helping hand in making the hospital hygienic and sterile? The rigid division of labour and consequently differing status and privileges which is a feature of the present system will not exist in socialist society.

A majority of people whose minds are still filled with the ideas and prejudices of the capitalist system can never operate socialism. Their objections and prejudices against socialism reflect their own conditioning by the present social order. The future always looks strange when people’s minds are imprisoned within the past, but the nearer we get to the next stage in social development the less strange the idea of production for need becomes. That is why the Socialist Party emphatically insists that there can be no socialist society until a majority of workers understand and want it. As the number of socialists grows as they gather into the conscious political movement for socialism, the doubts of the critics become fainter.