What do we mean by Production for Use

Capitalism is in fact not just an exchange economy but an exchange economy where the aim of production is to make a profit .Profit is the monetary expression of the difference between the exchange value of a product and the exchange value of the materials, energy and labour-power used to produce it, or what Marx called “surplus value”. Defenders of capitalism never seem to ask themselves the practical question about what the critical factor determining a production initiative in a market system. The answer is obvious from everyday experience. The factor that critically decides the production of commodities is the judgement that enterprises make about whether they can be sold in the market. Obviously, consumers buy in the market that they perceive as being for their needs. But whether or not the transaction takes place is not decided by needs but by ability to pay. So the realisation of profit in the market determines both the production of goods and also the distribution of goods by various enterprises. In the market system the motive of production, the organisation of production, and the distribution of goods are inseparable parts of the same economic process: the realisation of profit and the accumulation of capital. The economic pressure on capital is that of accumulation, the alternative is bankruptcy. The production and distribution of goods is entirely subordinate to the pressure on capital to accumulate. The economic signals of the market are not signals to produce useful things. They signal the prospects of profit and capital accumulation, If there is a profit to be made then production will take place; if there is no prospect of profit, then production will not take place. Profit not need is the deciding factor. Under capitalism what appear to be production decisions are in fact decisions to go for profit in the market. With the capitalist system, information is a contra-flow of information. It flows from producers, through distributors, to the consumer. This information is the prices of goods determined by the accumulating costs of production and distribution plus profit. Prices are increased in each part of production, from mining through industrial processing, manufacture and assembly, then accumulating further through distribution until the final price is passed on to the consumer.

The function of cost/pricing is to enable a business enterprise to calculate its costs, to fix its profit expectations within a structure of prices, to regulate income against expenditure and, ultimately, to regulate the exploitation of its workers. Unfortunately, prices can only reflect the wants of those who can afford to actually buy what economists call “effective demand”. - and not real demand for something from those without the wherewithal - the purchasing power - to buy the product (or even to express a preference for one product over another . I may want a sirloin steak but i can only afford a hamburger).

Socialist determination of needs begins with consumer needs and then flows throughout distribution and on to each required part of the structure of production

Socialism will make economically-unencumbered production decisions as a direct response to needs. With production for use, the starting point will be needs.

By the replacement of exchange economy by common ownership basically what would happen is that wealth would cease to take the form of exchange value, so that all the expressions of this social relationship peculiar to an exchange economy, such as money and prices, would automatically disappear. In other words, goods would cease to have an economic value and would become simply physical objects which human beings could use to satisfy some want or other. The disappearance of economic value would mean the end of economic calculation in the sense of calculation in units of value whether measured by money or directly in some unit of labour-time. It would mean that there was no longer any common unit of calculation for making decisions regarding the production of goods. Socialism is a money-less society in which use values would be produced from other use values, there would be no need to have a universal unit of account but could calculate exclusively in kind .The only calculations that would be necessary in socialism would be calculations in kind. On the one side would be recorded the resources (materials, energy, equipment, labour) used up in production and on the other side the amount of the good produced, together with any by-products. This, of course, is done under capitalism but it is doubled by an exchange value calculation: the exchange value of the resources used up is recorded as the cost of production while the exchange value of the output (after it has been realised on the market) is recorded as sales receipts. If the latter is greater than the former, then a profit has been made; if it is less, then a loss is recorded. Such profit-and-loss accounting has no place in socialism and would, once again, be quite meaningless. Calculation in kind entails the counting or measurement of physical quantities of different kinds of factors of production. There is no general unit of accounting involved in this process such as money or labour hours or energy units. In fact, every conceivable kind of economic system has to rely on calculation in kind, including capitalism. Without it, the physical organisation of production (e.g. maintaining inventories) would be literally impossible. But where capitalism relies on monetary accounting as well as calculation in kind, socialism relies solely on the latter. That is one reason why socialism holds a decisive productive advantage over capitalism by eliminating the need to tie up vast quantities of resources and labour implicated in a system of monetary/pricing accounting.

Socialism is a decentralised or polycentric society that is self-regulating, self-adjusting and self-correcting, from below and not from the top . It is not a command economy but a responsive one. Planning in socialism is essentially a question of industrial organisation, of organising productive units into a productive system functioning smoothly to supply the useful things which people had indicated they needed, both for their individual and for their collective consumption. What socialism would establish would be a rationalised network of planned links between users and suppliers; between final users and their immediate suppliers, between these latter and their suppliers, and so on down the line to those who extract the raw materials from nature. The responsibility of these industries would be to ensure the supply of a particular kind of product either, in the case of consumer goods, to distribution centres or, in the case of goods used to produce other goods, to productive units or other industries. Planning is indeed central to the idea of socialism, but socialism is the planned (consciously coordinated and not to be confused with the central planning concept ) production of useful things to satisfy human needs precisely instead of the production, planned or otherwise, of wealth as exchange value, commodities and capital. In socialism wealth would have simply a specific use value (which would be different under different conditions and for different individuals and groups of individuals) but it would not have any exchange, or economic, value.

Since the needs of consumers are always needs for a specific product at a specific time in a specific locality, we will assume that socialist society would leave the initial assessment of likely needs to a delegate body under the control of the local community. 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. This would achieve a rhythm of daily production in line with daily needs with no significant growth. We 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 stabilized 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, a zero growth society operating in a stable and ecologically benign way.

What do we mean by no leaders

"Where are the leaders and what are their demands?" will be the question puzzled professional politicians and media pundits will be asking when the Revolution comes. They will find it inconceivable that a socialist movement could survive without an elite at the top. This view will be shared by some at the bottom. Lenin and his Bolshevik cohorts argued that we couldn't expect the masses to become effective revolutionaries spontaneously, all on their own. To achieve liberation they needed the guidance of a "vanguard party" comprised of an expert political leadership with a clear programme. The Trotskyist/Leninist Left may remix the song over and over again all they want but the tune remains the same: leaders and the cadres of the vanguard can find the answer; the mass movements of the people cannot liberate themselves. The case for leadership is simple. Most working-class people are too busy to have opinions or engage in political action. There’s a need for someone to dedicate their time and energies to adequately represent working class people. Instead, we what really need is professional, full-time advocates for our interests. It’s only logical that the Trotskyist vanguard, understanding better the decision making processes of power, represent organised resistance on our behalf. Ensuring we have a united position is more important at this stage and what does solidarity mean if not getting in line behind strong leadership - even if that leadership isn’t always sure what its principles are? Too many people don't have the right political consciousness, and if we let them use too much democracy they will make counter-revolutionary decisions that sabotage the revolution. The "masses" just can't be trusted is the clear conclusion. If the masses don’t have an evolved enough political consciousness to be pro-revolution, then would elect people as their representatives who reflect their backwards political views.  If the masses don’t have advanced enough political consciousness, this is going to sabotage the revolution one whether through counter-revolutionary decisions being made via direct democracy via electing counter-revolutionary leaders via representative democracy. This would be the point where the vanguard party strategy would suspend even representative democracy. They attempt to solve the problem of widespread backwards consciousness by implementing a one-party dictatorship with the “representatives” chosen from within the party rather than freely elected by the masses. If most people don’t have a sufficiently advanced political consciousness, the revolution will fail whether a vanguard party is used or not. And if a totalitarian vanguard party succeeds in stealing power from the not-revolutionary - enough masses, the revolution will still fail – because tyranny in itself is counter-revolutionary.

Socialism means that people have taken their destiny into their own hands. Socialism can't be created by decree or by force by a minority. It can only be implemented by the majority of the people taking over the economy (taking over their workplaces, streets and estates) and reorganising them as they see fit. But being against vanguards is not the same as being against organisation. A vanguard is a particular type of organisation, with specific aims and to reject vanguardism is not to reject organisation. The Socialist Party feels that if people were ever to enjoy a free, democratic, and equitable society, they'd have to build it themselves. From this point of view, so-called leaders should move from the driver's seat to the backseat and let the working class take the wheel. But the Socialist Party has not fallen for error of not having a firm vision of what we wish to achieve. History shows the dangers of failing to have a shared vision for system change and a well-organised political movement to back it up. Unstructured and unplanned efforts to implement the revolutionary alternative in the midst of social turbulence allows time and space for reactionary forces to step in to the vacuum of power. The Socialist Party also cautions against the temptation to build or to seek a blueprint, “The Big Plan.”

Because it is small many people disregard the healthy experience of the Socialist Party of Great Britain when it comes to being a politcal party without leaders. As a matter of political principle, the SPGB holds no secret meetings. All its meetings, including those of its executive committee, are open to the public (all EC minutes are available on the web as proof of our commitment to openness and democracy). In keeping with the tenet that working class emancipation necessarily excludes the role of political leadership, the SPGB is a leaderless political party, whose executive committee is solely for housekeeping and administrative duties and cannot determine policy or even submit resolutions to conference. All conference decisions have to be ratified by a referendum of the whole membership. The general secretary has no position of power or authority over any other member, being just a dogs-body, and despite some very charismatic writers and speakers in the past, no personality has held undue influence over the SPGB. The SPGB does not ask for power, but exists to educate the working class itself into taking it.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain argues that minorities cannot simply take control of movements and mould and wield them to their own ends. Without agreement about what it is and where it is going, leaders and led will invariably split off in different directions. We say that since we are capable, as workers, of understanding and wanting socialism, we cannot see any reason why our fellow workers cannot do likewise. The job of socialists in the here and now is to openly and honestly state the case rather than trying to wheedle and manoeuvre to win a supposed ‘influence’ that is more illusory than real.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain do not see ourselves as yet another leadership, but merely as an instrument of the working class. We function to help generalise their experience of the class struggle, to make a total critique of their condition and of its causes, and to develop the mass revolutionary consciousness necessary if society is to be totally transformed. We reject an organisational role. What we want people to come to is the realisation that they should take over their workplaces, communities, and put themselves in a position to control all of the decisions that affect them directly, and to run things themselves. If we were to be a vanguard, in the sense of an enlightened minority seeking to gain power over others, we could never achieve this aim, because WE would have the power, rather than people having power over their own lives, collectively and individually. We would also be assuming the arrogance to think we have a monopoly of truth, rather than certain views which we debate with others including amongst ourselves, coming to a better viewpoint at the end of it. There is a big difference between an organisation that produces propaganda and so on, and helps promote the popular will where people accept decisions because they have been convinced by the case and  have freely chosen to do so and a vanguard in the common sense of the word, meaning a party seeking to gain power over the masses. Revolution will be a process of self-education. Without the active participation of the mass of the working class in the fight for a communist/stateless society cannot even be contemplated.

We favour majority decision making in face-to-face assemblies and where and when necessary by fully accountable re-callable delegates. A representative is someone who makes decisions for the other people. A delegate, in contrast, carries out a mandate they have been given by the people who delegated them. In other words, they don't act as they think best, they act as they are told.  How could it not? The whole premise of democratic centralism is that a central authority dictates policy to everyone else, so no matter how democratically chosen it is it has to enforce its line and stifle dissent that makes this too difficult, which, in a revolutionary situation, there is bound to be a lot of. Democratic centralism would exclude you from participation. So whilst it pays lip service to the idea of the vanguard as the most conscious sector of the proletariat in practical terms, the real vanguard is the central committee.

Marx believed that, as the workers gained more experience of the class struggle and the workings of capitalism, it would become more consciously socialist and democratically organised by the workers themselves. The emergence of socialist understanding out of the experience of the workers could thus be said to be ‘spontaneous’ in the sense that it would require no intervention by people outside the working class to bring it about. Socialist propaganda and agitation would indeed be necessary, but would come to be carried out by workers themselves, whose socialist ideas would have been derived from an interpretation of their class experience of capitalism. The end result would be an independent movement of the socialist-minded and democratically organised working class aimed at winning control of political power in order to abolish capitalism. As Marx and Engels put it in the Communist manifesto, “The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.”

So when the television interviewers enquire who are your leaders, the answer will be that “we are all leaders” and when government ministers ask what are your demands, in the words of James Connolly we will reply “Our demands are most moderate. We only want the Earth.”

In the words of Eugene Debs

“I never had much faith in leaders. I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and mis-representatives of the masses — you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.”

And another time Debs said:

“I am not a labor leader. I don’t want you to follow me or anyone else. If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of the capitalist wilderness you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out.”

I. S. STAND FOR - CONFUSION (1974)

From the December 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard “Socialist Worker”, the weekly paper of the International Socialists, regularly publishes a statement of their main principles called “What We Stand For”.(1) We would expect this organization to stand for Socialism. Surprisingly, Socialism is nowhere defined in the statement and it only appears as a word upon which various people and organizations have placed many different interpretations. Still it is possible to get some idea of what IS stand for by a careful reading of their statement. It is also possible to get very confused. For instance, the statement starts off: We believe that socialism can only be achieved by the independent action of the working class. Whereas, the last part says they are For the building of a mass workers’ revolutionary party . . . which can lead the working class to power . . . (our emphasis both times) Now, unless the workers are supposed to be getting power for something other than Socialism, it is simply ridiculous to say that someone who is being led is taking independent action. Could IS tell us which statement they stand for and which is this week’s deliberate mistake? It would also be interesting to know just how large a “mass” the workers of this “revolutionary party” are to be. Presumably, if it attracted too many workers the working class would be leading themselves! The second part of the statement reads: We believe in overthrowing capitalism, not patching it up or gradually trying to change it. We therefore support all struggles of workers against capitalism and fight to break the hold of reformist ideas and leaders. We would wholeheartedly agree with this although we wonder if they only mean reformist leaders in the last bit. However, IS don’t appear to agree with this part of the statement themselves. Later on they say they are: Against unemployment, redundancies and lay-offs. Instead we demand five days’ work or five days’ pay, and the 35-hour week. For nationalization without compensation under workers’ control. What is this if it is not an appeal to patch up capitalism? No form of nationalization ever has or could solve the problem of unemployment in capitalism. This is a strange way to fight reformist ideas. As another example, at the two general elections this year they have supported the return of a Labour government. This is despite acknowledging (although their election posters made no mention of the fact) that such a government would be anti-working class and reformist. This is another strange way of supporting all struggles of workers against capitalism and fighting reformist ideas. Again, perhaps IS could explain? The fifth part of the IS statement at least gives us some idea of what they stand for. It contains the sentence: The experience of Russia demonstrates that a socialist revolution cannot survive in isolation on one country. This holds the definite implication that a Socialist revolution took place there. So, we must go back to the Russia of 1917 to find out what they mean by a Socialist revolution. There, in a backward, predominantly agrarian country which was collapsing under the strains of a modern twentieth century war, the Bolsheviks took power in a minority insurrection. They did so on the promise that they would provide “Peace, Bread and Land” and not Socialism. The Bolsheviks had also expressed the wildly optimistic hope that the workers of other countries would follow their example and take power also. When these workers, who at the time were butchering each other in defense of their masters’ interests, did not do so any hope of establishing Socialism was obviously futile. In this situation, which could have been predicted from the start, the Bolsheviks consolidated their position by establishing a dictatorship which suppressed all opposition and under Lenin’s guidance, embarked on a program me of state capitalism. If this is the IS idea of a Socialist revolution it is easier to understand their opposition to parliamentary democracy with an almost universal franchise and their preference for soviets (or “councils of workplace delegates” as they put it) which have at best only a haphazard democracy. Their stated reasons are that The state machine is a weapon of capitalist class rule and therefore must be smashed. The present parliament, army, police and judges cannot simply be taken over and used by the working class. True, the state machine is a weapon of the ruling class but there is little logic in saying that because someone uses something as a weapon then nobody else can use that weapon. And of course the present parliament, army, etc. cannot simply be taken over and used by the working class. In the words of Engels: . . . the victorious proletariat must first refashion the old bureaucratic, administratively centralized state power before it can use if for its own purpose . . .(2) The IS preference for soviets may also be due to the fact that they are less representative and thus provide a better opportunity for a minority to come to power as the Bolsheviks did. It is to be hoped that IS have a greater love for democracy than their counterparts of 1917 who dissolved the first and last completely democratically elected Russian assembly (the Constituent Assembly of 1918) when they found they were in the minority. To return to the point about “the independent action of the working class”. The statement also says that To achieve socialism the most militant sections of the working class have to be organized into a revolutionary socialist party . . .  Taken in conjunction with the apparent endorsement of the Bolsheviks’ tactics this would seem to indicate that IS hold the Leninist “vanguard” theory. This theory says that far from taking independent action for Socialism, the mass of the present working class will never understand Socialism anyway and will have to be led by professional revolutionaries who will introduce it from above. Whatever way you look at it, the IS statement is either confused or dishonest. Quite possibly it is a mixture of both as any "vanguard" can only survive on the confusion of its followers. The Socialist Party, in contrast to IS, has a clear line on what Socialism is, and how it will be achieved. Socialism will be a society in which all the means by which wealth is produced and distributed will be under the common ownership and democratic control of the whole community. Of necessity, it will be a worldwide system because the means of production and distribution are worldwide. There will be no wage or price system as things will be produced solely for use and not for sale. People will work to the best of their ability and take according to their needs. The nature of Socialism shows that it can only be achieved by the conscious and independent action of a clear majority. It is the job of Socialists to help build that majority. We do not deprecate the struggles of workers but we insist that they must understand the class basis of those struggles. Without that consciousness all their efforts will eventually be futile. Once Socialists are in the majority they will have to get hold of the state machinery to prevent it being used against them. Socialist delegates elected to the various assemblies of the capitalist nation-states by a Socialist working class would have this control, and would leave any recalcitrant capitalists in a virtually helpless position. The capitalist class only maintain their order with the active support or acquiescence of the workers. Once they lose this and are faced with an organized, uncompromising working class it will be plain to all what they are—a socially useless, parasitic minority living off the backs of the workers. Con Friel Glasgow Branch (1) The quotations in this article are taken from the statement as it appeared on 24 August, 1974. (2) Extract of a letter from Engels to Bernstein on 1 January, 1884.

What we mean by no State

A classless, stateless world

Running global human society without the machinery of states is regarded by some as being as unachievable as radio and hi-fi systems were to some people before their invention. Socialists observe that the coercive governmental machinery of the state has not always been a feature of human society but was created necessarily in a phase in our history and will, with equal necessity, be abolished with the establishment of socialism.

For the greater part of the history of human society social affairs have not been regulated by governments. The state arose from the need to keep class antagonisms in check. The economically most powerful social class becomes the politically dominant class through the state and uses its machinery as a means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class. "The ancient state was, above all, the state of the slave owners for holding down the slaves, just as the feudal state was the organ of the nobility for holding down the peasant serfs and bondsmen, and the modern representative state is an instrument for exploiting wage labour by capital." (Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State)

When the majority of men and women —the wealth producers — democratically act to put the means of life into the hands of the whole community there will no longer be a social need for the coercive machinery of the state. The majority of people will no longer have to suffer government by a minority. The government of people will be replaced by the administration of things. This will mean that the institutions now used by the state to keep the working class in check — the judiciary, laws, police forces and prisons — will become socially redundant. Similarly, the organised force used by the state to protect the interests of territories and markets of its wealth owners—armies, navies and air forces — will also become socially unnecessary. "The society that organises production anew on the basis of the free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machine where it will then belong: in the museum of antiquities side by side with the spinning wheel and the bronze axe." (Engels, Anti-Duhring)

Organising the world on the basis of a society in which people will contribute according to their skills and inclinations and take according to their self-determined needs is an attractive idea. A world society undivided by national boundaries and free from war and famine. A world society unfettered by the rationing system of money. Is it possible? Socialists contend that not only is the establishment of socialism immediately possible, but that it is an urgent necessity if we are to avoid the potentially horrific sorts of destruction which the continuation of capitalism would render probable.

There are several ways in which the practicability of socialism can be doubted but basically these doubts arise in three areas of inquiry. First, will "human nature" permit a classless world without government? Second, will the resources of the planet be sufficient to support a society based on producing goods and services simply to meet all human needs and third, do we have sufficiently advanced systems of communication, organisation and distribution to cater for running the world for all humanity?

MINORITY RULE NOT NATURAL

Does "human nature" stand as a barrier to a world without governments? In answering this question, socialists would draw a distinction between human nature and human behaviour. There are a few characteristics of humans which could be described as "natural" in the sense that they are anatomical or physiological features of all people irrespective of the social system that they live in. Reflex actions, like blinking to water the eyes, stereoscopical colour vision, bi-pedal locomotion, prehensile manipulation and so forth are examples of this sort of feature and they are relatively fixed characteristics. Also, of course, the needs for food, drink, clothes and shelter. Contrasted with this are a great variety of behaviour patterns which are socially learnt. Behaviour traits instilled in young people by families, the indoctrination of education systems and the aggression and murderous techniques taught by military forces are all examples of this sort of socially conditioned behaviour. In commercial society we are steeped in a competitive mentality from a tender age but this learnt behaviour conflicts with an essential characteristic of human society: that of co¬operation. As a society we are a highly integrated body of entities and we all rely upon one another. Our very advanced division of labour means that we are all, to some degree, mutually dependent and require each other's co-operation even in capitalism. Because socialism will abolish classes — the relationship of employer and employee — and create a social equality of human beings, it will harmonise our social relationships with the way that we need to work in order to survive. It is worth observing that even in today's competitive world we are all co-existing in an intricate network of co-operation. Picture the seething mass of work going on in one of today's big cities — it would grind to a halt in one second without the continued and very complex co-operation amongst millions of people.

Primitive humankind co-operated for tens of thousands of years without government, but apart from this evidence that we are not organically predisposed to be ruled by a minority, there are many examples to corroborate the versatility of our nature. Anthropological examinations of Red Indian, Aboriginal and Eskimo societies all testify to the fact that we can and have organised society on a democratic basis. Many modern societies which organised themselves on a communistic, democratic principle (like the Kalahari Bushmen, or Kung people, of southern Africa) are now being sucked into the commercial, competitive world. They are being driven from the lands that they inhabit as it is "purchased" by developers, and are forced to seek a living by wage-slavery. Another example of this, occurring now, concerns the Panare Indians who live in the Orinoco basin in Venezuela. They have enjoyed life, until recently, in 38 communities living on the basis of "from each according to ability, to each according to need". They have no divisions of class and no status discrimination on the grounds of age or gender. Ideas of competition and violence are entirely antithetical to them. Their stress-free lifestyle is now being shaken by an American airborne evangelical group, the New Tribes Mission. Their lives are being smitten with religious indoctrination and all sorts of sinister devices are being used to make them docile, ashamed of their lifestyles, and to go in search of employment in the local mines.

In a rat-race we do acquire rat-like propensities but even now they do not dominate us and more importantly, they are subject to change if and when we decide to abolish the sort of social environment which causes them.

SUFFICIENT MATERIAL AND HUMAN RESOURCES.

The latest United Nations estimate of the world population is 4.7 billion. Are the resources of the world enough to support everyone? Today there is a massive unmet social need as a result of a social system which only produces goods if there is the prospect of selling them on the market for a profit. These unmet needs range from the horrors of mass starvation (according to Oxfam 500 million men, women and children go hungry every day) and homelessness to the relative impoverishment of all the wealth-producers. Alongside these needs capitalism presents in all countries the conspicuous over-consumption of a small elite, lakes of wine and milk and mountains of food (the European Common Market has a current butter stockpile of approaching 600,000 tonnes) and gigantic resources being pumped into socially useless or destructive ends.

Military spending now totals close to the equivalent of £1,000,000,000 across the world every 24 hours. This greatly exceeds the resources needed to meet the United Nations targets (idealistic as they are under the profit system) of providing everyone with adequate food, sanitary water, health care and education. UNICEF, working in 112 countries, had a total income of £171 million in 1981. This is the equivalent of the expenditure the world makes on the military forces every 4 hours and ten minutes (World Military and Social Expenditures 1982). It is an unchangeable priority of states in capitalism to put the needs of the Death Industry before basic human requirements. In a socialist society all of the ingenuity, human effort and resources which are now pumped into militarism will be donated instead to producing goods and services which are useful and enjoyable. On a similar point, consider all of the materials and human resources which are spent today on the necessary workings of the commercial system which would be liberated in socialism to be devoted to more rewarding sorts of work. The millions of men and women who are today engaged in running the system that exploits them in banking, insurance, commerce, tax revenue, everything connected with the production and running of prisons and the police forces, would be freed to help take part in the task of providing the sort of things that people really want.

Julian Simon and Herman Kahn in their book The Resourceful Earth produce carefully researched evidence to demonstrate that the planet enjoys much greater resources than are currently being tapped. Their writing is, ironically, aimed at advocating a free market economy with minimal economic controls — the very principles which produce such great hardship now — but their evidence is nevertheless useful. As they observe, the scaremongery about dwindling resources is not new. People have always been predicting that one or other natural resource will be exhausted. It was once a respected view that oil reserves would dry up in the 1880s. In practice these predictions encourage discoveries of new reserves or the development of new substitutes for the threatened material.

Capitalism only ever aims to produce on a scale matching what people can afford to buy, not what they actually need. For this reason many agricultural techniques are underdeveloped compared with our technological abilities.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) still sees great scope for expanded production. It reported this year that, using current Western farming methods, the world could produce enough food for up to 33,000,000,000 people, seven times the world population. Using somewhat less sophisticated farming methods, 15,000,000 people could be fed and, even if the whole world relied on primitive farming methods, using no fertilizers or pesticides, traditional seeds and no soil conservation methods, the present world population could still be comfortably fed. ("In Defence of Population Growth", New Scientist 4 August 1984)

ORGANISING A GLOBAL CLASSLESS SOCIETY

Do we have adequate systems of communication, organisation and distribution to operate a global classless society? As with the questions of "human nature" and the earth's resources, the answer to this question is partly apparent now. Because it is necessary for capitalism's international trade, the world is already a highly integrated network of communications, travel and distribution. In this sense, capitalism is pregnant with socialistic organisation. With its booms and slumps, shortages and gluts, disruptive wars and embittered industrial disputes, capitalism is a chaotic, anarchic social system. In socialism production and distribution will be democratically planned. Society will not be told by a minority that food cannot be produced because there is no market for it. We shall harness all of the technology that capitalism has produced, discover exactly what our needs are, and where, and then plan production to meet them. Computer systems, current electronic stocktaking devices used in supermarkets and the astonishing technology of communications and travel used today by military forces and banks will all play their part. And think how much easier it will be to simply find out how many people in what places need what goods, than the task of market researchers of discovering who might buy what in the uncertainties of the market.

Without nations and governments, how will this production be planned? The world administration for production for use will need to satisfy the requirements of historical continuity, practical necessity and democracy. That is, it will need to adapt existing social organisations, develop them in a way to deal with the practical problems which need to be solved and to permit democracy in all decision-making. Socialists are currently in a minority and it will be for a majority to make the final decisions about how socialism will work. We can however still make some practical suggestions today. Decision-making could operate on three sorts of geographical level: the local level (corresponding to current local government areas), the regional level and the global level. Decisions about social policy and planning, whatever the scale of their intended effect, would need to originate in a locality. They could be raised by individuals, groups or local representatives of a specialist global group, connected with, for instance, health or the ecology. A policy proposal intended to affect society generally would need to pass successfully through all three levels of decision-making and then be implemented at local levels across the world.

The decision-making process in socialism will be such that everyone will have access to any information they need to make the decision and the opportunity to express views on the issue to everyone else. In the age of advanced telecommunications and the teletext this will not present any significant problems. Decisions only affecting a locality will probably be participated in by people living or working in that locality and similarly with regional decisions. We could make great use of the various information-gathering systems and expert organisations which have been developed by capitalism. Take one example, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. It is organised in 147 countries and has 4,000 planners and technicians all over the globe. It produces scientific papers which collate research material from all over the world and maintains a library of knowledge on food, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, nutrition and conservation. It keeps a census of world agricultural resources. In 1978 it completed a soil map of the entire world using a variety of techniques from aerial photography to satellite surveillance. This combines details of climates and soils and builds up a picture of potential world food production.

Socialists propose the immediate establishment of a classless, global society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of living by the whole community. This sort of society can only be created by a majority of people consciously and democratically acting together to take on the responsibility of running the world for ourselves. Today's reality is, very often, yesterday's vision:

It is a dream, you may say, of what has never been and will never be; true it has never been, and therefore, since the world is alive and moving yet, my hope is the greater that it one day will be: true it is a dream; but dreams have before now come about of things so good and necessary to us that we scarcely think of them more than of the daylight, though once people had to live without them, without even the hope of them. (William Morris, The Lesser Arts, 1877)

Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too

Imagine all the people living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope some day you'll join us

And the world will be one.

(John Lennon, Imagine, 1972)

Gary Jay

What do we mean by no money

Why Money?

Money is the universally accepted means of exchange. It is a universal equivalent. Instead of me giving you three toasters for your armchair, I pay in an accepted, legal currency. Sounds sensible. Who wants to return to the awkward system of bartering goods? It seems sensible as long as we have a property-based system of society where wealth is owned by some and sold to others.

The two main uses of money by most people are for food and housing. You need money to buy food from the corner store, or, more probably, the supermarket. In effect, you are paying the owners of food production for the right to have access to what they possess. These millionaire food manufacturers did not produce the food. But you must buy if from them so that they may profit. You pay money for housing to the landlord or the building society. They own the land that you live on and they own the means of producing the buildings in which you dwell. Directors of building societies are not to be found on building sites making houses. They are too busy getting drunk in their clubs or playing golf.

Now, imagine that all these things that you need were owned and controlled in common. By everyone. All of us—you included. There is nobody to buy food from—it is common property. There are no rents or mortgages to pay because land and buildings belong to us all. There is no need to buy anything from any other person because society has done away with the absurd division between the owning minority (the capitalists) and the non-owning majority (the workers). You would not need money. In a society of common ownership money would have no role. It would be like the tramlines in a city which has done away with trams. No longer would money exist.

The money test I

"But we need money—couldn't live without it". That is what most well-conditioned readers will say. In our society people learn to turn money into a fetish. In primitive societies certain objects were invested with magical powers. For example, in Ancient Egypt cats were regarded as sacred animals which had to be treated with great respect or they would turn the world upside-down. Modern people are taught to believe that money contains intrinsic powers. Where would we be without it? Beware of dethroning the money-god. Let us put this to the test.

Take a pile of money. Three fivers and a couple of pound coins. Leave them in a dark room and see what happens. Will they dig coal? Will factories be built or homes furnished? Well. at least they could cook you a good dinner: you can get good food for seventeen quid. Nothing will happen. Humans make money powerful. Left to itself it is just a pile of tokens of no worth. Even the picture of the Queen is ugly.

The money test II

But is money that important to you? Perhaps it is less intrusive in your daily life than has been suggested. Try one more test.

Stop selling yourself for money for three months. That is what you do every time you go out to work in return for a wage or salary. You put yourself on the shelf along with the baked beans and the canned tuna fish and you say 'Buy me!'. The wages system, which turns the vast majority of people into exploited workers, is a process of selling your mental and physical energies in return for some money. For most of us, if we do not sell ourselves we will have little or no access to what we need in order to live. We devote most of our waking lives to trying to obtain money. Our work is devalued by money: if we enjoy working, the pleasure is diminished by the knowledge that we are only really engaging in a sordid transaction—and how many workers hate the miserable work that they are forced to do in order to get money?

Give it a try: stop selling your labour power for money. You will give up on the test long before three months—or three weeks—or even three days. Most wage slaves are too petrified of losing their jobs—their chance to be bought for money—to even contemplate such an exercise. And rightly so, for under the wages system we are lost if we do not sell ourselves for money.

Abolish money

Socialists stand for a world without money. All wealth will be commonly owned, so there will be no body to buy what you need from. The right to live, and to be comfortable and happy, will not depend upon your pocket-book. Freedom will not be costed by accountants who will only give you liberty if you can pay for it.

In a socialist society people will work according to their abilities and take according to their needs. Who will decide what their needs are? Not their bosses or the state or a cunning advertising industry—none of these will exist. People will decide for themselves. Who but humans ourselves are able to decide what we need?

There will be no "socialist market". Contrary to the economic babble of certain "theorists" on the Left, it is quite obvious that the market, which is a mechanism for buying and selling commodities and realising a profit for the sellers, will have absolutely no function in a community where nobody is buying or seiling or making profits. In a society where production is solely for use people will have free and equal access to take what they need from the common store.

Are people capable of living in a society of free access without making a mess of it? Will they take too much? Will they all refuse ever to work? Will they go to sleep for a thousand years and refuse to move a muscle? These are the fears about the nature of human beings that we in this money-mad society are urged to have. Socialists do not share such fears. We know just how co-operative and sharing and intelligent workers are capable of being. After all, we are a party of workers.

Given a society of moneyless, free access men, women and children will co-operate together to make and to take what they commonly need and desire. They will do so democratically. And we could do so tomorrow if the vision of a moneyless society grabs hold of enough imaginations and penetrates the consciousness of enough of those millions of workers who are currently crying out, openly or quietly to themselves, under the strain of the enormous and often unbearable pressures of the money system. Without money, humans will be free to relate in ways which we have forgotten or only half-remember. The banks can close down, the cash machines put in museums and the children who cry because their parents have too little money to pay for them to grow up can stop.

Steve Coleman

From the November 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

It's Everything Change

Workers are not yet class conscious, they have not yet developed even the concept of independent political action, and, on the whole, are permeated through and through with the ideas of capitalism. These incontestable facts are the starting point of our fundamental task: to struggle for the development of class consciousness. The working class can open up the way to a new world. They are the majority. They have the power. All that is necessary is for the working class to understand it—and to use it.

The capitalist system, the system which puts profits above all other considerations, has long outlived its usefulness. Capitalism has exhausted its progressive role; now it must leave the stage to a higher system. Capitalism has done its work. Capitalism now offers no future to the people but depressions, wars, dictatorships, violence and a final plunge into barbarism. To avoid such a fate, the workers must go into politics on their own account, independent of all capitalist politics. They must take power and reorganise the economy on a socialist basis, eliminating capitalist wars, profits and waste. It will be so productive as to ensure a rich living for all who are willing and able to work, and provide security and ample means for the aged and infirm. The economy of the entire world will be united and planned on a socialist basis. This will bring universal peace—and undreamed of abundance for all people everywhere. The real upward march of humanity will begin. Socialists want no part of this current nightmare world. It is true that humanity is confronted with a problem of survival on this planet. But the human species will survive. And in order to survive, it will do away with the social system which threatens its survival. Socialism will win the world and change the world.

 Reformism is a blind alley which diverts the workers from a class advancement and even from any real struggle for their immediate needs. The capitalists, bent on loading the burden of the recent crisis onto the backs of the workers, are preparing thereby the necessary conditions for a labour revolt. In this way they will convince the workers, as propaganda has been unable to convince them, that there is no way out but to fight. Under such conditions the prospect of a series of stormy battles, of which workers have many times shown themselves capable, is by no means unreasonable. The defensive struggle of the workers is gaining momentum, although slowly and in a tentative fashion, although, there is nothing in the facts to sustain those blockheads who describe the situation as a “workers’ offensive”. The theory that the workers are not inclined to strike during periods of wide unemployment receives a certain confirmation from economic history but it is quite false to construct a law to the effect that the workers will not strike during the crisis. They may well do when push becomes shove as in the proposed new Tory anti-union regulations. In the course of these struggles the workers will learn the most necessary lessons from their own experiences. In that event the socialist movement would get a hearing the like of which has not been granted before.

Today industry operates blindly, without a general plan. The sole incentive for the operation of each and every factory in this country is the private profit of the owners. There’s no general coordination. There’s no concern about what’s going on in other industries or in other parts of the same industry. There’s no concern about whether the people need this or that, or don’t need it. The sole driving motive for the operation of each and every individual corporation is the private profit of the owners. The decisions on production are made, not by consumers, what the people need and want; not by the workers, what the workers would like to make; not by scientists and technicians who know best of all, perhaps. The main decisions on production under capitalism—what shall be produced, how, where, and when—are made by financial magnates remote from the factories, remote from the people, whose sole motive is profit in each case.

What are the results of this system, which can be rightly called call the anarchy of capitalist production? One result is wasteful competition. Another result is the preservation of obsolete machinery and methods and the suppression of new technological innovation.

Consider the waste represented by the conspicuous consumption of the capitalist social parasites. That is absolute waste. The huge share of the product of labour that goes to these non-producers furnishing them with luxuries is all pure waste. That’s not all. Consider the waste of militarism and war. Just think of it! Billions of dollars every year wasted on the military budget at the present time, under the present system, which they say is the best in the world and the best that can ever be, wasted on military equipment and preparation for war.

There is the waste of advertising. Only 10% of advertising is useful—that 10% which comprises announcements, explanations of new processes and so on, which will be used under the new society. The other 90% of advertising is devoted to lying, fakery and conning the people, and trying to get them to favour one identical product over another, or to buy something they don’t need and that won’t do them any good, and then buy something else to overcome the effects. That is pure waste. And then, there’s another waste connected with advertising, as with so many other non-productive occupations—the waste of human material, which really shouldn’t be squandered. Just think of all the people prostituting their talents in the advertising racket to deceive and to promote misleading advertising campaigns.  There are millions of such people, engaged in all kinds of useless, non-productive occupations in this present society. Advertising is only one of them. Look at all the lawyers in this country. What are they good for? Look at all the landlords, lobbyists, salespeople, promoters—hordes of non-productive people in all kinds of rackets, legitimate and illegitimate. What are they good for? What do they produce? All that is economic waste, inseparable from the present system.

Costliest of all the results of the anarchy of capitalist production is the waste of economic crises—the periodic shutting down of production because the market has been saturated and products cannot be sold at a profit. This is what they euphemistically call a “depression”—an unavoidable cyclical occurrence under capitalism.

What will a really civilised person in the future think when reading history books that there was once a society, long ago, where the people might be hungry and that workers were eager to produce food but because the hungry people couldn’t afford to buy food, the workers weren’t allowed to feed them?   What will the people of the future think of a society where the workers lived in constant fear of unemployment? He or she can work all his or her life and never be free from that fear. Having a job depends, not on the willingness to work, nor on the need of the people for the products of labour; it depends on whether the owners of the factories can find a market for the products and make a profit at a given time. If they can’t, they shut down the factory, and that’s all there is to it.

Socialists do not conceive of socialism as an arbitrary scheme of society to be constructed from a preconceived plan, but as the next stage of social evolution. Our view of the future socialist society, therefore, is not a blueprint for implementation, but just a broad forecast of the lines of future development already indicated in the present. The architects and builders of the socialist society of the future will be the socialist generations themselves. The Socialist Party refrains from offering these future generations instructions. Auguste Blanqui, the French revolutionist, said: “Tomorrow does not belong to us.” We ought to admit that, and recognise at the same time that it is better so. The people in the future society will be wiser than we are. We must assume that they will be superior to us, in every way, and that they will know what to do far better than we can tell them. We can only anticipate and point out the general direction of development, and we should not try to do more. But that much we are duty bound to do; for the prospect of socialism—what the future socialist society will look like—is a question of fascinating interest and has a great importance in modern propaganda. We are quite justified, therefore, in tracing some of the broad outlines of probable future development; all the more so since the general direction, if not the details, can already be foreseen.

Workers can and must put a stop to this monstrous squandering of the people’s energies and resources. Just by cutting out all this colossal waste—to say nothing of a stepped-up rate of productivity which would soon follow—the socialist reorganisation of the economy will bring about a startling improvement of the people’s living standards. The first condition will be to stop production for sale and profit and organise planned production for use, to eliminate the profit motive; to eliminate all conflicting interests of private owners of separate industries. All science will be pooled and directed to a single aim: production for the benefit of all. There will be a revolution in the production of food when the economic side of it is lifted out of this terrible backwardness of private ownership and operation for profit. One thing is absolutely certain, from a reading of the scientific literature and all the experiments already in progress: The productivity of the farms, of the land, can be increased many times and there can be food in abundance for all.

 “If we’re all doing well and living good, producing more than we really need in an eight-hour day—then why the hell should we work so long?” will be the first and most natural reaction of the workers. This question will arise in the councils of the workers in the shops at the bottom, and will be carried up via their delegates throughout their industries. And the logical answer will go along with the question: “Let’s shorten the working day. Why should we work eight hours when we can produce all we need in four?” That may appear to be a simple answer to a complicated question, but many things will be simplified when the anarchy of capitalist production for profit is replaced by planned production for use. That will be a very simple and natural and easy thing to do, because socialism will have the means, the abundance, the productivity—and all this will be produced for use, for the benefit of all. The system of planned economy will provide the people with abundance, and what is no less important, the time to enjoy it and get the full good out of it. I have spoken of the four-hour day, but that would be only the beginning, the first step, which is more than possible with the productive machinery as it is today. But the productivity of labour under the new, more efficient system will be expanded all the time.

And since there will be no need to pile up profits for the benefit of non-producers; since there will be no need to find ways of wasting the surplus—the natural, logical, and inevitable conclusion will simply be to cut down the hours of labour to the time actually needed to produce what is needed. The greatest boon, and the precondition for changing the way of life into a truly humane, cultured, and civilised way of life, will accrue from the progressive shortening of the working day. That’s only the beginning. You can count on a shorter work day, and there will still be abundance and super-abundance. When people get accustomed to leisure, they soon learn what to do with it.

Workers will also decide, freely and voluntarily out of the generosity of solidarity and a world outlook which the vision of socialism has given to them, to work, say, an extra hour or two a day, for a certain period, to produce the tools and machinery and other things to raise the living standards of the undeveloped countries. And this will not be a loan or foreign aid with strings attached. They will simply say to their kinfolk in less-favoured lands: “This is a donation from other workers to help you catch up with us and firm up the foundations of world socialist cooperative commonwealth.

When there is plenty for all, there is no material basis for a privileged bureaucracy and the danger, therefore, is eliminated. From the very beginning, we will go in for real workers’ economic democracy. Democracy is not only better for ourselves, for our minds, and for our souls, but is also better for production. Democracy will call out the creative energy of the masses. When all the workers participate eagerly in the decisions, and bring together their criticisms and proposals based upon their experience in the shops, higher production will result. Faults in the plans will be corrected right away by the experience of the workers; misfits and incompetents in the leading bodies will be recalled by the democratic process; officious administrators will be given the boot. An educated and conscious working class will insist on democracy. And not the narrowly limited and largely fictitious democracy of voting every four years for some big-mouthed political faker picked for you by a political machine, but democracy in your work. That’s where it really counts. Every day you will have something to say about the work you’re doing, how it should be done and who should be in charge of it, and whether he or she is directing it properly or not. Democracy in all spheres of communal life from A to Z. A self-conscious working class that has made a revolution will not tolerate bureaucratic tyrants of any kind. Counterrevolution will not be tolerated but outside that society will keep its nose out of people’s private affairs. Counterrevolution can hardly be a serious threat because the workers are an overwhelming majority, and their strength is multiplied by their strategic position in the centres of production everywhere. How is there going to be any kind of a counterrevolution with such a broad and solid social base? The Socialist Party doesn’t think the capitalists will try it. The real exploiters are a very small minority. They couldn’t get enough fools to do their fighting for them, and they are opposed in principle to doing their own fighting. The little handful of recalcitrant capitalists who don’t like what is happening could easily be given an island or two, for their exclusive habitation. Let them take their bonds and stock certificates with them—as mementos of bygone days—and give them enough caviar and champagne to finish out their useless lives while the workers get on with their work of constructing a new and better social order.

When socialists propose a future along these lines, there is always someone who will say: “Utopia! It can’t be done!”

The Class Struggle (1975)

The Class Struggle (1975)

From the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The major problem that most people face today can be summed up in one word — poverty. They are denied access to the wealth of society which would enable them to develop and enjoy themselves to the full. They have to make ends meet and make the best of it. The result is a life-style of frustration and boredom — getting up in the morning, the buses, the trains, the traffic, the shop, the office, the factory, the boss, the canteen and so on ad nauseam. 

Not everybody has the life of a battery human. There are a small minority who have a life of wealth, ease and luxury. In a recent divorce case, the counsel for a textile magnate's wife who was claiming maintenance, explained to an incredulous judge: "The wife of a millionaire is liable to go to Paris at any time and spend £1,000 on a dress." (Glasgow Daily Record, 19th March 1975) Doubtless, she would leave dinner in the oven and do the washing-up when she got back. 

There is no natural reason for this division between rich and poor. Both classes include every biological and psychological facet of humanity — you find the black and the white, the jew and the gentile, the lazy and the industrious, the aggressive and the timid, the intelligent and the dull, and the philanthropist and the skinflint. The only difference between them is one of ownership. 

The vast majority of people own practically nothing but their ability to work and the little that they do own — some clothes, some furniture, perhaps a house and a car — is dependent on their continuing to possess and exercise that ability to work. Unable to do so through sickness, old age or unemployment, they will quickly be reduced to the level of pauperism. They are the working class because they have to sell their working power to live and to such an extent that they are virtually living to work. 

This lack of ownership among the many is paralleled by the immense wealth of the few. In fact, they own practically all the means by which the wealth of society is enabled to be produced and distributed. They are the capitalist class because they live on the income from their capital which, as well as the means of production and distribution, includes the labour-power, the mental and physical energies, of those workers hired to operate them. 

The capitalist class do not give workers jobs out of charity. If they did not make a profit out of the deal, they would soon be left in the same position as the workers. They only employ you if your abilities can be exploited to provide some of the wealth which secures their life of ease and luxury. If not, your much vaunted "right to provide for home and family" becomes your right to whistle for it. This is what is happening in many industries just now. All over the world, there are large stockpiles of unsold goods with many either wholly or partly unemployed. 

These situations give the lie to the false notion that Hard Work will solve all the worker's problems. If the people in these industries worked any harder they would just be out of a job so much the sooner. The market that they produce for is on the downturn, their masters cannot profitably sell all they are capable of producing, and so there is no work for the wage-slaves. 

This is all happening despite the fact that the commodities they produce — cars, houses, electrical appliances, etc. — are still needed by many workers. This is because, in capitalist society production does not take place for the purpose of satisfying the community's needs but for the purpose of satisfying the needs of the capitalist class at the expense of the rest of us. 

The working class produce all the wealth of capitalist society but they only get back a part of it. The rest goes to the capitalist class — first, to provide for the continuation of production and the maintenance of the conditions by which the working class are exploited, and second, to keep them in the manner they are accustomed to. This is the basis of the class struggle in capitalism. It is the real Socialist struggle which has hardly started due to the lack of class consciousness on the part of the working class. They are divided against each other and can only dimly react to the actions of their class enemies. 

Politically, the capitalist class are supreme but, economically, they need the working class. Much is made of the wealth of the capitalists "providing" jobs for the workers. The only way that they can put their wealth to effect is by hiring the labour-power of those with no wealth. 

In terms of playing a social role in production, the capitalist class are redundant. At the dawn of their epoch, they were instrumental in razing to the ground the anachronistic restrictions of feudalism and developing the means of production and distribution on an enormous scale in their drive for bigger and better profits. Today, they only take part on a small, individual basis and have been replaced by paid managers and various other hired hands. The only role left to them is that of consuming the finest fruits of a society run by the working class. 

The workers in capitalism are in a similar position to that of the bourgeoisie in feudalism. Economically, they are the most important class but their efforts on their own behalf can only reach fruition by taking political power from the class who seek to maintain an order built to work in theirown particular interests. To achieve their ends, the bourgeoisie had to become revolutionary and set out for the complete overthrow of the whole structure of feudal society. In order to do this they had to gain political power — control of the bureaucratic, military and legal apparatus of the state. The working class, to achieve their ends, will have to follow the path of the bourgeoisie and declare for revolution. But there the similarity ends. 

The Socialist Revolution will be fundamentally different from all previous revolutions. What was at stake before was the freedom of one class to exploit the rest of society. Today, working class emancipation from the bonds of capital will mean the emancipation of all mankind. The production of wealth is the cooperative effort of untold millions and the potential capacity of that production is unprecedented. No person need go short of anything. Under capitalism, productivity has increased dramatically but the fruits for the producers have only been slow and grudging: for this is a capitalist world and the ruling class can only be expected to look after their own interests. We must look after ours, by working for Socialism.

Con Friel

Glasgow Branch

Do you Live in Poverty? (1974)

Do you Live in Poverty? (1974)

From the February 1974 issue of the SocialistStandard

Poverty is an emotive word which must be carefully defined. It cannot be defined by any given quantity or quality, whether of possessions or things freely available. Truly, it can only be defined as a relationship between the actual state of things and the potentiality. The native of a primitive tribal society who is free to help himself to the simple food, clothing and shelter of his environment does not live in poverty. As far as he is concerned he could not be richer because everything that he knows is there to be taken. The moment he becomes poor and dissatisfied is when he develops a greater knowledge of the world and discovers things previously unknown to him. He would develop new needs in response to his changed environment as he found new ways and means to satisfy his physical and social desires. If they were not satisfied he would consider himself deprived and living in poverty. 

The above process would occur if our primitive tribesman were suddenly transported to modern-day New York, London or Belgrade. Once he had found an employer (a euphemism for "user") he would now have a vastly greater standard of living but would be living in poverty. He would be denied access to most of the immense mountain of wealth which would be displayed, advertized, and given the hard-sell wherever he went. Despite the motorcars, colour TV, holidays abroad, etc., which provide the illusion of increasing social status, the various forms in which these and all other commodities are marketed shatter that illusion. They range from the cheap imitations and bare utility models (or futility if you expect them to work) and then gradually upwards to the top-class de-luxe models made for jet-set oneupmanship rather than use. This fact shows clearly the poverty that exists in capitalist society. The production lines of capitalism are geared not to producing good quality but to producing the poor quality that workers can afford. 

The popular theory of why workers live in poverty (i.e. the capitalists, Tory government, shopkeepers etc., putting up prices). is an indication of support for capitalism rather than opposition to it. It implies that if we only had such things as "fair" prices and "fair" wages we could all live in splendid affluence. Without inflation the working class would still live in poverty as they did before inflation "became" the cause of all our economic woes. The poverty of the working class is caused by the exploitation that takes place at the point of production and not by any robbery at the point of distribution, and Marx's Labour Theory of Value explains clearly how the exploitation occurs. 

The legalized, and in that sense perfectly "fair", robbery takes place when the worker, having sold his labour-power (ability to work) to some member or section of the capitalist class, gets to work with the machinery and raw materials already purchased by his employer and produces a new commodity. This new commodity has a greater value than the sum-total of its original components—the raw materials, the machinery, and the labour-power that produced it. This surplus value which is created comes solely from the unique character of labour-power which creates new value in the course of its use by the purchaser, the capitalist. The basis of exploitation lies in the fact that the value of all commodities is determined by the quantity and quality of labour required in their production. 

Surplus value is created because the capitalist does not pay for the workers' labour but for his ability to labour. Once the worker starts to labour, the work that he does no longer belongs to him; the capitalist has already bought his labour-power for a contracted period of time, and everything produced in that time is the capitalist's property. The value of the worker's labour-power is, like all other commodities, determined by the quantity and quality of labour needed for its production. This, simply stated, is the food, clothing, shelter, etc., that allows the worker to keep himself reasonably fit in mind and body for his work and also allows for the raising of children to eventually be fit for this purpose. The result of this is that: 

The worker receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labour power, but the capitalist receives in exchange for his means of subsistence labour, the productive activity of the worker, the creative power whereby the worker not only replaces what he consumes but gives to . . . [the capital laid out, on men, machinery, and materials] . . .  a greater value than it previously possessed,  (Wage Labour and Capital. 1970 Moscow ed. Page 30). 

This means that the working class must always live in poverty. Having no access to any means of production of their own, in order to live they must sell their ability to work to the owning class and produce a surplus. The increasing of this surplus is the inexorable motive-force of all capitalist production. It determines which sections of the capitalist class will best be able to expand and crush their competitors, and inevitably leads to the constantly increasing rate at which this surplus is extracted from the working class. No matter how high their living standards may increase, the workers' relative poverty only increases (profits, which give a deceptively low indication of the true rate of exploitation, increased at approximately double the rate of wages during the past year). 

To end this exploitation, whereby the working class gets ever poorer and the idle class ever richer, a revolutionary transformation in the whole basis of society is needed. The present class ownership of the means of life and the relations resulting from it must be completely abolished. Everything in the earth and on it must become the common property of the people of the world to be used to satisfy their needs and wants. Only by this can poverty be ended. 

The resources, the organizational ability, and the technology to do this exist today. What is lacking is the social organization that could control and utilize the productive forces in the most effective way. In capitalism a large proportion of these forces are used in the negative capacity of maintaining the divisions in society. The money system, which regulates exchange between owners and non-owners, would be totally unnecessary in a society where all the means and instruments of production and distribution would be commonly owned. The police forces, armies, navies, air forces, and all their expensive ironmongery which is used to maintain the ruling class's supremacy at home and abroad, would have no place in a society without classes or borders. 

Finally, the profit motive of capitalist production ensures that many of society's productive forces are never even used. All production is geared to what economists call "effective demand" which is not what people want but what they can afford to buy. This is why factories are closed, men made redundant, and automation plans shelved while people are still obviously still in need. In fact, one of the greatest problems of capitalist production is to avoid producing so much that prices will fall to unprofitable levels and warehouses and stores start to fill with unsaleable goods, 

The popular conception of Socialism (or Communism) is of sharing-out poverty by retaining the present social organization but dividing up the existing wealth equally among everybody. This idea is a moralistic fantasy that would probably end up in more vicious divisions than before. The poverty that exists today can only be ended by a real revolutionary transformation — the establishment of a world-wide community of free men and women in total control of the productive forces of society. This is what Socialism means, and it can only be established by your active participation in a world Socialist movement that accepts no compromise with poverty.

Con Friel

Glasgow Branch