Beyond Capitalism

 

To get rid of exploitation, we must have a world in which food and all other wealth are produced simply to be used. A world in which all humankind has complete freedom of access to the world’s wealth, to satisfy its needs. It is the system of working for wages which prevents the mass of people from enjoying the full freedom and happiness that modern production techniques can command. We need a world which works well for itself, to eat well and live well.

Our world broken-down world should not be revived as many well-meaning radicals propose with various reforms and palliatives. It should be terminated for good. It means we have to create a new system, and in that monumental task, granted, the odds are against us. But what we need is not naïve hope but whatever it is that lies beyond naiveté, beyond hope. We have to believe in something more than hope. We're not talking about heaven and Pie in the Sky. We shouldn’t distract ourselves by looking to somewhere or something that we pray to. It's also not about science fiction or living in domed cities or blasting off to another planet or even inventing ourselves out of our problems. So, let's not pay any attention to the claims of the religious fundamentalists and the prophets of technology.

Socialists are materialists which means dealing with the what is and not the what if. Avoiding reality by praying for deliverance by the hand of God or waiting for deliverance through the wizardry of gadgets are weak and lazy because they spin fanciful stories about how we can magically avoid a reckoning.

Averting planetary-scale destruction demands global cooperation, becoming more efficient in using energy, increasing the efficiency of existing means of food production and distribution, and enhancing efforts to manage our biodiversity and ecosystem systems. Humanity has not done anything really important to stave off the worst because the social structures for doing something just aren’t there. We all have to summon the political will to radically change the way we live. If we can do that, we might have a chance to avert disaster.  A socialist's task is to tell it as it, is as much as one can bear, and then all the rest, whether we can bear it or not. To proclaim hard-to-hear truths.

The economic system assumes you care only about yourself yet we become fully human only through embracing our humanity when care for each other and care for the larger living world. Our chance of saving ourselves depends on enough people willing to act. We must throw everything into the endeavour to remake the world into what we say we want it to be.

We in the Socialist Party are seeking a "steady-state economy" which corresponds to what Marx called "simple reproduction" - a situation where human needs were in balance with the resources needed to satisfy them.

Such a society would already have decided, according to its own criteria and through its own decision-making processes, on the most appropriate way to allocate resources to meet the needs of its members. This having been done, it would only need to go on repeating this continuously from production period to production period. Production would not be ever-increasing but would be stabilised at the level required to satisfy needs. All that would be produced would be products for consumption and the products needed to replace and repair the raw materials and instruments of production used up in producing these consumer goods. The point about such a situation is that there will no longer be any imperative need to develop productivity, i.e. to cut costs in the sense of using fewer resources; nor will there be the blind pressure to do so that is exerted under capitalism through the market. Of course, technical research would continue and this would no doubt result in costs being able to be saved, but there would be no external pressure to do so or even any need to apply all new productivity-enhancing techniques

Since the needs of consumers are always needs for a specific product at a specific time in a specific locality, we will assume that a socialist society would leave the initial assessment of likely needs to a delegated body under the control of the local community (although, other arrangements are possible if that were what the members of socialist society wanted).

In a stable society such as socialism, needs would change relatively slowly. Hence it is reasonable to surmise that an efficient system of stock control, recording what individuals actually chose to take under conditions of free access from local distribution centres over a given period, would enable the local distribution committee to estimate what the need for food, drink, clothes and household goods would be over a similar future period. Some needs would be able to be met locally: local transport, restaurants, builders, repairs and some food are examples as well as services such as street-lighting, libraries and refuse collection. The local distribution committee would then communicate needs that could not be met locally to the bodies charged with coordinating supplies to local communities.

The individual would have free access to the goods on the shelves of the local distribution centres; the local distribution centres free access to the goods they required to be always adequately stocked with what people needed; their suppliers free access to the goods they required from the factories which supplied them; industries and factories free access to the materials, equipment and energy they needed to produce their products; and so on. Production and distribution in socialism would thus be a question of organising a coordinated and more or less self-regulating system of linkages between users and suppliers, enabling resources and materials to flow smoothly from one productive unit to another, and ultimately to the final user, in response to information flowing in the opposite direction originating from final users. The productive system would thus be set in motion from the consumer end, as individuals and communities took steps to satisfy their self-defined needs. Socialist production is self-regulating production for use.

Socialism will be a self-regulating, decentralised inter-linked system to provide for a self-sustaining steady-state society. And we can set out a possible way of achieving an eventual zero growth steady state society operating in a stable and ecologically benign way. This could be achieved in three main phases.

First, there would have to be emergency action to relieve the worst problems of food shortages, health care and housing which affect billions of people throughout the world.

Secondly, longer-term action to construct means of production and infrastructures such as transport systems for the supply of permanent housing and durable consumption goods. These could be designed in line with conservation principles, which means they would be made to last for a long time, using materials that where possible could be re-cycled and would require minimum maintenance.
Thirdly, with these objectives achieved there could be an eventual fall in production, and society could move into a stable mode. This would achieve a rhythm of daily production in line with daily needs with no significant growth. On this basis, the world community could reconcile two great needs, the need to live in material well being whilst looking after the planet

For socialism to be established, there are two fundamental preconditions that must be met.

Firstly, the productive potential of society must have been developed to the point where, generally speaking, we can produce enough for all. This is not now a problem as we have long since reached this point.
Secondly, the establishment of socialism presupposes the existence of a mass socialist movement and a profound change in social outlook.

Humans behave differently depending upon the conditions that they live in. Human behaviour reflects society. In a society such as capitalism, people's needs are not met and reasonable people feel insecure. People tend to acquire and hoard goods because possession provides some security. People have a tendency to distrust others because the world is organized in such a dog-eat-dog manner. If people didn't work society would obviously fall apart. To establish socialism the vast majority must consciously decide that they want socialism and that they are prepared to work in a socialist society. If people want too much? In a socialist society "too much" can only mean "more than is sustainably produced."
If people decide that they (individually and as a society) need to over-consume then socialism cannot possibly work. Under capitalism, there is a very large industry devoted to creating needs. Capitalism requires consumption, whether it improves our lives or not, and drives us to consume up to, and past, our ability to pay for that consumption. In a system of capitalist competition, there is a built-in tendency to stimulate demand to a maximum extent. Firms, for example, need to persuade customers to buy their products or they go out of business. They would not otherwise spend the vast amounts they do spend on advertising. There is also in capitalist society a tendency for individuals to seek to validate their sense of worth through the accumulation of possessions. As Marx contended, the prevailing ideas of society are those of its ruling class then we can understand why, when the wealth of that class so preoccupies the minds of its members, such a notion of status should be so deep-rooted. It is this which helps to underpin the myth of infinite demand. It does not matter how modest one's real needs may be or how easily they may be met; capitalism's "consumer culture" leads one to want more than one may materially need since what the individual desires are to enhance his or her status within this hierarchal culture of consumerism and this is dependent upon acquiring more than others have got. But since others desire the same thing, the economic inequality inherent in a system of competitive capitalism must inevitably generate a pervasive sense of relative deprivation. What this amounts to is a kind of institutionalised envy and that will be unsustainable as more people are drawn into alienated capitalism.

In socialism, status based upon the material wealth at one's command would be a meaningless concept. The notion of status based upon the conspicuous consumption of wealth would be devoid of meaning because individuals would stand in equal relation to the means of production and have free access to the resultant goods and services. Why take more than you need when you can freely take what you need? In socialism, the only way in which individuals can command the esteem of others is through their contribution to society, and the stronger the movement for socialism grows the more will it subvert the prevailing capitalist ethos, in general, and its anachronistic notion of status, in particular.

All wealth would be produced on a strictly voluntary basis. Work in socialist society could only be voluntary since there would be no group or organ in a position to force people to work against their will. Free access to goods and services denies to any group or individuals the political leverage with which to dominate others (a feature intrinsic to all private property or class-based systems through control and rationing of the means of life). This will work to ensure that a socialist society is run on the basis of democratic consensus. Goods and services would be provided directly for self-determined needs and not for sale on a market; they would be made freely available for individuals to take without requiring these individuals to offer something in direct exchange. The sense of mutual obligations and the realisation of universal interdependency arising from this would profoundly colour people’s perceptions and influence their behaviour in such a society. We may thus characterise such a society as being built around a moral economy and a system of generalised reciprocity.