Some questions – and answers
Question: You say ‘With no owners, employers or profit, there would be no wages, no money and no buying and selling’.
No money. No buying or selling. You don’t think this is lunacy on the political fringes? And how do you think such a delightful ‘utopia’ will be enforced? Through the barrel of a gun, like it always has been whenever tried throughout history.
Reply: The ‘barrel of a gun’ argument is precisely backwards. Socialism as we know it couldn’t be imposed by anyone, armed or otherwise. A society based on voluntary cooperation and production for need is impossible to run by force. You can’t compel people to freely associate. That’s why we’ve always insisted it can only come about democratically, when a majority of working people understand and want it. No vanguard, no coup, no coercion.
And when you claim ‘whenever tried throughout history’ what was tried? The Soviet Union? Maoist China? Those societies kept wages, money, buying and selling, and a working class selling its labour to an employer, the state. That’s state capitalism, not socialism. We said so at the time, in 1918, when such a view was deeply unfashionable. The failure of state capitalism no more disproves socialism than the failure of ‘people’s republics’ disproves republicanism.
As for ‘lunacy’: you already live largely without money in your own life. Nobody invoices their children for dinner. Neighbours don’t draw up contracts to help each other. The RNLI doesn’t send you a bill after pulling you from the sea. Cooperation for need is one of the most ordinary human behaviours there is. What’s actually extraordinary, what’s only existed for a few thousand years of human history, is a system where most people must sell their working hours simply to survive, while food rots and homes sit empty because there’s ‘no demand.’
We don’t need to abolish money by decree. We need to make it unnecessary, by producing for use, not for sale. That begins not with a gun but with a vote and an idea.
Question: You say ‘People would freely contribute according to their ability and take from the common store according to their needs’.
What if I don’t feel like working? That okay? And who determines what my ‘needs’ are? What if I feel I need a mansion and a Ferrari? Can I demand that?
We live in a world of finite resources. Who gets to decide which resources are allocated to whom? You keep saying “democratically” but what does this mean? 50 percent +1 vote? And what if the 49 percent disagree?
If you believe that humans are good-natured enough to make this work, surely just embrace libertarianism? Humans have created the current system, it wasn’t handed down by God and imposed on us, so what makes you think humans won’t find ways to exploit others?
Reply: What if you don’t feel like working? Then you wouldn’t. Socialism abolishes work entirely, in the sense of employment, wages and compulsory labour for an employer. What remains is productive activity people choose to do, and the labour actually needed to feed, house and care for everyone is a fraction of what’s done today once you strip out advertising, finance, arms, duplicated brands and built-in obsolescence. The rest of us would carry on for the same reason people write open-source software, crew lifeboats and volunteer. Useful activity is satisfying. Nobody needs the threat of destitution to run a functioning society. That threat exists to keep people profitable, what we seek to abolish.
Who decides your needs? You do. Socialism means free access. You take what you need from what’s produced.
What if you need a mansion and a Ferrari? You’ve chosen status symbols as examples of what you need. Their value comes from exclusivity, from other people not having them. A Ferrari anyone can drive is just a fast car. A mansion everyone’s entitled to is a hotel. In a world of free access, hoarding positional goods is like demanding credit for your own sandwiches at a pot-luck.
Who allocates finite resources? Who allocates them now? Those with purchasing power, which is a ludicrous way to distribute anything. We throw away a third of the food we produce while people go hungry. Democratic allocation doesn’t mean a ballot on every toothbrush, any more than a co-op votes on every light bulb. We use common sense, expert advice and consensus where possible, majority vote as fallback, exactly how unions and co-ops already run.
Why not libertarianism? Because it keeps the things that allow some people to exploit others: private ownership, wage labour, buying and selling. Humans created the current system, but not freely, any more than peasants chose feudalism. We created slavery too, then abolished it. Systems are tools, and this one’s time is over.