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What does the socialist
society of tomorrow look like?
Many who advocate a socialist
system are hesitant to talk about what such a society might look like, however,
the discussion on how socialism will work is as old as the workers’ movement.
Marx once said it was not for socialists to describe “the recipes of the
cookshops of the future”, that a future society must emerge from those who are
actually creating socialism and not from a wishful imagination. In general this
aversion to drawing up blueprints has been healthy, in the respect that we
cannot predict the specifics of the revolutionary situation and it is not the business
of socialists at this moment in time to tell those who will be engaged in the
socialist revolution how they should construct their post-revolutionary
economy. We're not going to get a blueprint of socialism from Marx who knew that
something would come after capitalism...
… Yet he did make some predictions
about what it could be like, and those are the very famous pieces of his speculations
about future society that he divided into two phases where the first involved
labour tokens and an accounting system to determine how much workers would get
paid. But they're very small compared to the majority of his work, which is
just about understanding capitalism. What socialists should decline to do is to
lay down detailed instructions for every minutia of daily life in socialism. It
may be difficult to draw up our vision of future society and a degree of
confrontation with differences of opinion. But if we're serious about
revolution, we have to be serious about what we want and how we propose to get
there. The important thing is that a practical alternative is shown. We can easily
alter it on the way taking into account new experiences and the new lessons to
be learned from them.
A socialist economy would for the
first time give people, as producers and users, the chance to control every
step of production, take initiatives and experiment without being strangled by
profit-driven competition. Each productive enterprise is managed by those who
work there. Workers are responsible for the operation of the facility and
organisation of the workplace. Though workers manage the workplace, they do not
own the means of production. These are the collective property of the society.
But it is invariably asked, "Will a self-managed firm do so as well as a
capitalist firm? Are workers sufficiently competent to make complicated
technical and financial decisions? Are they competent even to elect
representatives who will appoint effective managers?" it is strange that
these questions are raised in a world where that prides itself on its
democratic commitment. And which already deems ordinary people sufficiently
competent to select local councils and national governments. We regard ordinary
people capable of selecting representatives who will decide their taxes, who
will make laws which, if violated, consign them to prison, who might even send
them off to kill and die in wars. Should we really ask if ordinary people are
competent to elect their bosses? Nevertheless we can answer the question directly
from actual study. Research from 1973, which concluded: "In no instance of
which we have evidence has a major effort to increase employee participation
resulted in a long-term decline in productivity" (United States Department
of Health, Education and Welfare) A later by Jones and Svejnar (1982) report:
"There is apparently consistent support for the view that worker
participation inmanagement causes higher productivity.” In 1990 Princeton
economist Alan Blinder reaches the same conclusion. Levine and Tyson (1990), in
their analysis of some 43 separate studies, found: “Our overall assessment of
the empirical literature from economics, industrial relations, organizational
behavior and other social sciences is that participation usually leads to
small, short-run improvements in performance, and sometimes leads to
significant longlasting improvements…There is almost never a negative effect…”
Lastly, of course, there is also
the empirical evidence of the continued existence of tens of thousands of
viable co-operatives around the world that demonstrate that worker
self-management is any less competent than their conventional counterparts. Not
even the most pro-capitalist critics of cooperatives argues that worker
incompetence in selecting managers is the problem. It is not so surprising that
worker self-managed enterprises should be efficient since workers' well-being
is tied directly to the financial health of the enterprise, all have an
interest in selecting good managers. Bad supervision is not hard to detect by
those near at hand (who observe at close range the nature of the overseeing and
feel its effects quickly), incompetence will not likely long be tolerated.
Moreover, each individual has an interest in seeing to it that co-workers work
effectively (and not appearing themselves to be slackers), so less supervision
is necessary. The conclusions of Henry Levin (1984) after several years of
field study “There exist both personal and collective incentives in
cooperatives that are likely to lead to higher productivity. The specific
consequences of these incentives are that the workers in cooperatives will tend
to work harder and in a more flexible manner than those in capitalist firms;
they will have a lower turnover rate and absenteeism; and they will take better
care of plant and equipment. In addition, producer cooperatives function with
relatively few unskilled workers and middle managers, experience fewer
bottlenecks in production and have more efficient training programs than do
capitalist firms.” [http://www.luc.edu/faculty/dschwei/economicdemocracy.pdf]
“Our economic system and our planetary system
are now at war,” Naomi Klein writes in her book ‘This Changes Everything’, that
changing our relationship to nature is inseparable from changing our
relationship to each other by transforming our economic system. The immediate
threat to the earth “changes everything” in the sense that just adding “the
environment” to our list of concerns is not good enough. The sheer scale of the
problem necessitates a politics that can take on capitalism. We must do away
with any notions, Klein asserts, that the environmental crisis can be contained
and eventually rolled back through policy tinkering; geo-engineering technical
fixes or through market-based solutions
Klein is critical of the existing environmental and social movements. People
hunker down into a "survival bubble" in the attempt to ride out
economic hardships they face and this weakens social bonds that are essential
to political engagement. Significant numbers abandon reason and are more
susceptible to simplistic populist slogans and political messages based on
falsehoods. Creating a vacuous political environment, and framing issues in the
simplest manner possible, avoiding complexity
becomes the political strategy driving
mainstream election campaigns. Democracy
is not defined as "we" but "me", denying the common welfare
and the public good in preference for the personal advantage and
individualism. The Socialists endeavour
to seek frameworks that reinvigorate democracy for all. There
is the tendency of many in the movement to mistakenly identify structures
themselves as part of the problem. There is no going forward, however, without
the most serious development of institutions that can deal on a mass scale with
resources, coordination, generational continuity, leadership development,
outreach, popular education, and, especially, the accountability structures to
make complex and difficult collective choices and to keep wayward leaders in
check. As Klein writes, “The fetish for structurelessness, the rebellion
against any kind of institutionalization, is not a luxury today’s transformational
movements can afford… Despite endless griping, tweeting, flash mobbing, and
occupying, we collectively lack many of the tools that built and sustained the
transformative movements of the past.” Klein also insists that the struggle
against climate change cannot be won by fear alone. “Fear is a survival
response. It makes us run, it makes us leap, it can make us act superhuman. But
we need somewhere to run to. Without that, the fear is only paralyzing.” Calling
for a more austere lifestyle only reinforces the austerity pushed by capitalist
states. The issue is not just living with “less” but living differently — which
can also mean better. It is about an alternative society. The tactic is to point
to a long series of issues directly linked to the environment — housing,
transportation, infrastructure, meaningful jobs, collective services, public
spaces, greater equality, and a more substantive democracy — and work to
convince people that “climate action is their best hope for a better present,
and a future far more exciting than anything else currently on offer.”
But more importantly to take on capitalism we
must be clear about what this means, to ensure what “anti-capitalism” really means.
For many it is not the capitalist system that is at issue but
particular sub-categories of villains: big business, banks, multi-nationals
corporations. There is no “neoliberal” capitalism, “deregulated” capitalism,
“unfettered” capitalism, “predatory” capitalism, “extractive” capitalism – only
one capitalist system. It is capitalism — not a qualified capitalism that is
the enemy and the concept of a “green” capitalism is an oxymoron. Capitalism
does of course vary across time and place, and some of those are far from trivial.
But in terms of substantial fundamental differences we still have capitalism
that is inseparable from the compulsion to indiscriminate growth, commodification
of labour power and nature and consumerism. A social system based on private
ownership of production can’t support the kind of planning that could avert
environmental catastrophe. The owners of capital are fragmented and compelled
by competition to look after their own interests first, and any serious
planning would have to override property rights — an action that would be
aggressively resisted. Arundhati Roy is quoted as saying: “There’s really no
such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the
preferably unheard.”
