Emancipation from Money 5/7

 

We live in a world of potential abundance for all, but we are trapped within a social system of mass deprivation. We know the world has the resources for all humanity to live comfortably. Therefore the question is why isn't the whole of humanity living comfortably?  The way society is structured will not allow human needs to be met. “Needs" are measured by the “market”. You can have anything you want, from baked beans to even human beings, as long as you can afford to pay for it. We know that what we need and what we can afford are not necessarily the same thing. Surely, the very fact that present society has the capacity for everyone to live comfortably but won’t allow this to happen is in itself proof that a new system is needed?

What exactly does the Socialist Party mean by “free access”? If "free access” is interpreted as saying that in a socialist society whatever you think you would like to have you can have, we would say that it does not make sense. In a socialist society, you will only be able to have free access to the things which society decides it will make available for free access. In modern terms, we would say it means this: everywhere you will have water and sanitation, education and health services, transport, housing, food and all of the things that people want. But human needs are not all the same all over the world. In a tropical climate, some things are different to what they are in a temperate or cold climate. So nor will it make sense to say that production all over the world will be administered from a centralised institution such as the United Nations in New York. As far as is possible, with some very important caveats, it is proposed that decision-making is left to local people to take the initiative in everything, that is in producing what they want and deciding how they are going to make those things available for free access.

Global bodies such as WHO or the FAO will function as centres of administration information. When people locally cannot produce certain things which are wanted, they communicate and coordinate with the central administration and they pass it on to the people who are able to do it. If there is a shortage of something in Ethiopia which can reasonably be produced in England, it will convey the details to the relevant English administration that would do what is necessary. In other words, you rely on local or regional initiatives and you don't have to have great centralised institutions which are going to organise all these things.

Having scrapped the present system of only producing goods and services if there is an expectation of profit for the parasitical minority who monopolise the earth's resources, socialism will forget the old rules of the buying and selling game (the market) and will distribute what is needed on the basis of free and equal access. Money will be abolished: you cannot buy from yourself what you commonly own. The satisfaction of human needs will involve people giving according to their abilities and taking according to their needs.

Free access means that no human being will need to buy anything. Anything that society can produce will be there for the taking. Healthy food; decent homes, the possible to build; gas, electricity, water; entertainment; all medical and educational services - all completely free and available for all. For far too long our needs have been influenced by the selling process and the crude mind manipulation of the advertisers. In a socialist society, we can begin to think about what we really require to be happy human beings and we shall set about supplying ourselves with the resources needed to live as fully as we can. Socialism will not only be able to satisfy our current needs, but it will enable us to question and challenge those needs - to escape capitalist consumerism.

 

Once the means of production are the common heritage of all and are under democratic control, then the profit motive and the price system can be abolished. Wealth can be produced solely for people to use. People can have free access to all the things they need to live and enjoy life. Goods will not be priced but will be available for all to take freely according to their needs.

A world of production solely for use and free access for all is there for the making. All it requires is a majority of workers who understand and want it to join together for the purpose of bringing it about. For years a minority of workers have argued the case for such an exciting social alternative. For how much longer we will remain a minority is up to our fellow workers. Will they accept a world of misery and insecurity and poverty in the midst of potential plenty, or will they unite for the creation of a system where never again will the pained cry of a hungry child whose parents lack the money to feed it be heard on our planet?

Emancipation from Money 4/7

 

Capitalism is an economic system which operates according to economic laws which cannot be changed by human action, and which human beings have to accept and submit to in the same way as they do to natural forces like the weather and the tides.

 But there is a difference between the economic forces of capitalism and the tides in that the former only operate because humans chose to keep in being the system of production for sale on a market with a view to profit. If people decided to end this system, then these forces would cease to operate. But, as we have explained, there is no point in accepting to work within this system and then trying to stop these economic forces from operating. It can't be done. As long as capitalism remains its economic laws will continue to function roughly like the tides. We are talking about people being in charge of the production of the wealth they must have to survive. This is what socialism is about: subjecting production to conscious human control so that it can be directed to the single purpose of turning out goods and services to satisfy human needs. Why should this not be possible? After all, production for use — production to satisfy human needs — is the logical purpose of producing wealth.

Production to satisfy human needs is possible, but it requires a fundamental social change to make it a reality. Basically, all that is in and on the earth must become the common property of everyone. In other words, there must no longer be any territorial rights or any private property rights over any part of the globe. The farms, factories, mines and all other places where wealth is produced will not belong to anybody. Social classes would cease to exist and all men and women would stand in equal relationship to the means of production as free and equal members of a class-free community.

The case for a class-free society, in which production is geared to satisfying human needs, and in which production for sale and the market economy are abolished, is highlighted by the fact that modern industry and technology have now been developed to the point where they could provide an abundance of consumer goods and services for all the people of the world. The problem of production — of how to produce enough for everybody — has been solved. Mankind’s long battle to conquer scarcity has been won. Potential abundance is a reality. The task is to make abundance itself a reality.

This can never be done in a world based on private ownership of the means of production, where wealth is produced for sale with a view to profit. The only way in which abundance can be achieved is through a society where all resources, man-made as well as natural, have become the common heritage of all humanity, under their democratic control. On this basis, production can be democratically planned to provide what human beings need. In such a society, the market, wages, profits, buying and selling, and money, would have no place. They would cease to exist.

A society of abundance is not an extension of today’s unsustainable “consumer society”, with its enormous waste. It does not mean people will come to acquire more and more useless gadgets designed to have a limited operating life. Socialism means that people’s material needs, both as individuals and as a community, will be fully satisfied in a rational way.

Contrary to the misconceptions carefully cultivated by the defenders of capitalism, people are not inherently greedy and human needs are not limitless. From a material point of view, human beings need a certain amount and variety of necessities for a happy lifestyle; what this is in individual cases can soon be discovered by the individual himself — and would be if there were free access to consumer goods and services. Wouldn’t people take more than they needed? But why would they if they can be assured that there would always be enough to go round? When all consumer goods and services are freely available people can be expected to take only as much as they felt they need. To take any more would be pointless.

Modern technology can supply enough for everybody to have free access to consumer goods and services. Consider the current waste of resources. Think of all the armed forces and armaments. Imagine all the people, buildings and equipment involved with the market and money economy. Just how many people are involved in such unproductive activities? We all know of the planned built-in obsolescence, the deliberate manufacture of shoddy goods made to break down or wear out after a comparatively short period of time. In a rationally organised society, consumer goods could be made to last; this would mean an immense saving of resources. With the elimination of capitalist waste, surely there enough to adequately feed, clothe and house everybody could easily be produced.

Mankind can circle the earth without touching the ground; kill each other when thousands of miles apart; weigh the distant stars.  Humanity is indeed an ingenious species. But when confronted with one problem, it is defeated. Have six very hungry individuals without any money and have six loaves of bread and ask “how they can acquire the six loaves?”  The Socialist Party can provide the answer. The capitalist system cannot.

Emancipation from Money 3/7

 In a socialist society, the means of producing and distributing wealth — factories, farms, mines, offices, transport — will belong to the whole community. Common ownership will do away with the need for exchange, so that money will have no use. With socialism the best method of distribution will be to allow each as much as he or she desires of the social products. Each would contribute to the social production according to one’s ability and it would be a waste of effort and energy to measure or ration what each should have. At the moment people may have needs but, unless they can afford to buy them, they must go without. Production is geared to sale with a view to profit. Socialism means production solely for use: bread to eat and houses to live in.

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

Critics of the Socialist Party often tell us that socialism would be confronted with millions of men and women who would refuse to contribute to make society run efficiently. Indeed, socialist society will contain millions of babies, millions of frail elderly and millions of disabled and infirm who will not be able to work down mines or till the fields. If one who contributes less takes more, why should this be a problem in a society which is based on the satisfaction of needs? Those people living in a socialist society who are too work-shy will not be a drain on society's resources.

But what about greed? Critics of the Socialist Party worry that in a society of free access, people will take more than they need and human greed will lead people to consume too much. It is based on the false assumption that socialism would be a society of consumption only, although it would obviously be a society where what is consumed would have to be matched by what is produced. So, if people in socialist society decide upon unhealthy gluttony there will have to be provision made to produce enough food to satisfy such over-eating. Now it is quite true that if the supermarkets were opened tomorrow and workers were invited to go in and take as much as they want without having to pay there would be a mad rush and the shelves would be empty within a day. But why should this be the case if the supermarket are always open for free access? It would be strange indeed for those in socialism to hoard dozens of loaves of bread when they can go to the supermarket  and collect a fresh loaf of bread each day. Perhaps, in innocence, the early days of socialism some individuals will indulge in a few feasts of conspicuous over-consumption (who could condemn such action after years of poverty and deprivation?) The newcomer to free access is unlikely to behave sociably, because the market system has conditioned us to anti-social, consumerist thinking but such occasions will soon end when the physical consequences of such irrationality are felt. Abolish prices once and for all, and replace this outdated system with a society of free and equal access for all, based upon self-defined needs and the social habit of behaving sociably will emerge. 

Critics of the Socialist Party also feel convinced that inequality would return and a hierarchy would soon arise again, a phenomenon from which society can never escape. But if each and every one of us can avail ourselves of the necessities of life, how can a bureaucracy impose its will as they do now by regulating and controlling what we require to live. By definition, socialism is a society of free people. They cannot be compelled to do what they do not want to do, either by brute force or (as in capitalism) by threats to their livelihood. We have to assume that they will be sufficiently responsible and self-disciplined voluntarily to do whatever may be required to implement a democratically made decision, even if they disagree with that decision. Otherwise socialism will have to acquire effective means of compulsion, but then it will be socialism no longer. 

Emancipation from Money 2/7

 

The exchange economy implies that the wealth to be exchanged is owned by different people. After all, if one person or one community owned all the wheat as well as all the sheep, the question of exchanging them just would not arise. Exchange presupposes the private ownership of wealth. This is why the establishment of the common ownership of the means of production and distribution will mean the end of exchange and so the disappearance of money. All the wealth that is produced, as well as the means and instruments for producing and distributing it, will belong to the whole community so the problem will be simply to distribute it to where it is needed. This is just a question of organisation. When the wealth has reached the stores then people can freely take of it what they need. Free access is our alternative to money. If we want a society where social wealth can move around the world freely, where it can be produced as human beings need it, we must think about a system which excludes money. The capitalist system hinders distribution and restricts production. Its priority is not efficiency but profit for a minority. It must be swept away and replaced by socialism, the world of free production and access.

Socialism has come to be a dirty word for many people. But it’s only once we establish a socialist society of production for use not profit that nobody will have to pay for housing, for travel, heating, food or healthcare. If you oppose a system of society where the market plays no role and there is free access to goods and services, then don’t expect a decent and dignified life for yourself.

You are one of the working people who operate the factories, work on the farms, build the houses, look after the sick, teach the children, run the transport and communication networks, staff the offices, cook the meals and wash up afterwards. You already provide everything that is consumed in society.

We say that free access is possible as soon as society is organised in a sensible way. You already run the system from top to bottom, spending your entire working life producing everything, yet you give it all away. 

There isn’t enough to go around now because, under capitalism, goods are not produced primarily to satisfy needs, but for sale and profit. Production is curtailed. Capitalism is not a system of plenty, it is one of scarcity and shortage.

Humankind has the means, the technical know-how and the skills, to end hunger and poverty. There is no technological reason why manufacturing should not turn out an abundance of the things people need. We can easily grow more and better food; build more and better houses, schools and hospitals. It is a question of incentive. Today where production is geared to profit-making, this is not done because the rule is “no profit, no production”. In socialism where production will be geared instead to meeting human needs, people can go on producing till all their needs are met.

Most people don’t want to be idle and laze around with nothing to do. It is normal to want to do something. Work may be pleasant (as in your leisure-time hobbies) or unpleasant (as in employment). Most people, quite reasonably, expect the work they do voluntarily to be pleasant. In socialism, with satisfying human needs as its aim and where all work will be voluntary, people will ensure that they work in safe and pleasant surroundings and that they enjoy what they are doing to help run the society of abundance which benefits them all.

Automated robots could be designed to do nearly all the dull, repetitive jobs which people are now forced to do because it is cheaper to employ them than to install high-tech machinery. When society is geared to serving human needs, there will be every incentive to design and install machines to eliminate drudgery. If there prove to be some jobs that cannot easily be done by machines, then either they can be left undone or done (perhaps only for short periods) by people who recognise that someone has to do them. That such people will be found is a reasonable assumption since even today the dangerous, but obviously necessary, the job of manning lifeboats is done mainly by volunteers.

It is not quite true that the Socialist Party seeks to abolish money. What it wants is a society in which, among other things, money will become unnecessary. That brings us to the free distribution of wealth, free access to wealth, where people can take from the common store what they need as and when they need it. Socialism is practical and common sense of course shows that it is desirable.

Welcome to Socialism (video)

 

Emancipation from Money 1/7

 

The productive powers of the world have permitted humankind to allow free distribution of the things needed to live and enjoy life. The Socialist Party is proposing a world community where wealth is produced by voluntary labour and is available to all free of charge.  No section of society should be able to monopolise access to the means for producing wealth. With socialism, these will belong to no-one and so will be the property of the whole of humanity to use as they think fit. Humankind will control the use of the means of production through democratic administrative bodies. Our case is that the technical capacity for world abundance exists. Free access means exactly what it says: that each person will be able to take all he needs without paying or asking permission. Socialism will unfetter production and enable it to meet these needs adequately. Any decisions and choices will be made by all the people involved, in contrast with what happens under capitalism. Why is it assumed that everyone will automatically want a mansion and a luxury limousine? That is projecting into socialism the way people think under capitalism.

Today’s society is organised on the basis of the minority ownership of the means of living (the factories, the land, the railways, etc.) while the majority of society’s members are deprived of such ownership and are therefore dependent on their livelihood upon the minority who own it. Because of their ownership of the means of living, the minority has an advantage over the majority and can generally use this advantage to promote their own interests even when they conflict with the interests of the majority. While it might be in the interests of the majority for more food to be produced, more homes to be constructed, more hospitals to be built, etc., it is not necessarily in the interests of the owning class—and if it isn't, the development of these things is restricted.  The main criterion for whether or not something is in the interests of the owning class is whether or not it will create the profits. Where the market conditions make the production of something unprofitable, that commodity will not be made. It is for this reason that the potential for the development of abundance is not fully realised, as progress is limited by the market in which the general rule is NO PROFITS, NO PRODUCTION.

If the means of living will be owned in common, so too the product of society will belong to everyone. Each person will have equal rights of access to the social produce, each will determine her/his own needs and take freely from the common stock of wealth produced. In socialism, the world’s wealth will not be bought or sold on a market. Nor will not be exchanged for money or bartered but rather it will be made freely available so that anyone who needs it can take it.

Because there will be no market, much of the work currently done by millions of people will become unnecessary. Socialism will not need the services performed by those who work in the vast finance corporations. Nor will it need the police, security guards, ticket collectors and check-out cashiers. Also, socialism will not require armed forces, legal and judicial systems, nor the vast propaganda organisations whose main tasks are the maintenance of the dominant position of the minority owning class in each national territory and the subjugation of the majority. Instead of doing these socially useless jobs, the people presently undertaking them would, in socialism, together with those who are now unemployed, be enabled to be creative. They would be so enabled because they would own the means and instruments for such creativity which the present social organisation denies them. Thus socialism will mean the liberation of humanity from such useless and uncreative work and the mobilisation of all human abilities for the extension of human abilities.

Just as there exists in Britain a national grid system for electricity, which assesses energy demand ], and maintains power supply in all areas, so too, in socialism, there will be a sort of worldwide grid system for all wealth, which will assess people’s needs, regulate production accordingly, and maintain the requisite supplies to all areas. Socialism will involve the rational and sustainable use of resources, using those to which they are best suited. There will probably be democratic assemblies and all administrators will have their functions delegated to them by society. However, the exact form which democracy in socialism will take, cannot be stated here, for that very form must itself be the result of a great and serious debate. The world already possesses intricate computer devices enabling the vast dissemination of information as well as facilitating decision-making.

Our future can be socialism, but it is not inevitable and requires human action for its achievement. What is needed, is for all those who have an interest in introducing the new society to unite and organise with like-minded people for the purpose of making socialism a reality.

Post-Capitalist Society (video)