Envisioning Another World: Creating a socialism that meets human needs

[Anonymous]

Just came across this published by a Left Wing group

http://climateandcapitalism.com/2017/01/08/creating-a-socialism-that-meets-human-needs/

[ALB]

Thanks for that. One of the few attempts (apart from us) to describe how a non-market socialism might work. He doesn't think much of labour-time vouchers either.  I see it was originally published here and rejects the so-called "market socialism", the oxymoron put forward by other named critics of capitalism.

Quote:

A number of authors have attempted to produce such a vision, including Alperovitz (2013), Alpert (2000), Schweickart (in Ollman 1998) and Wolff (2012). All of them suggest one or another form of worker self-directed enterprises that compete with each other, and some form of socially-directed investment, as the core for a new society. Explicit or implicit in what they propose is that production continues to be on the basis of workers of various sorts being hired to produce tangible or intangible commodities in order to sell them.These authors argue that their model is fundamentally different from commodity capitalism and its needs to destroy the environment, create social injustice and create conditions that lead to global warfare. I am not going to attempt to argue against this claim of theirs here. (But see Friedman 2008; Hudis 2012; and Ollman 1998 for further discussion.) Instead, I want to offer a different view of what kind of new world we might aim for.

I think the author, Sam Friedman, is associated with the "Marxist-Humanists".

[Anonymous]

ALB wrote:

Thanks for that. One of the few attempts (apart from us) to describe how a non-market socialism might work. He doesn't think much of labour-time vouchers either.  I see it was originally published here and rejects the so-called "market socialism", the oxymoron put forward by other named critics of capitalism.

Quote:

A number of authors have attempted to produce such a vision, including Alperovitz (2013), Alpert (2000), Schweickart (in Ollman 1998) and Wolff (2012). All of them suggest one or another form of worker self-directed enterprises that compete with each other, and some form of socially-directed investment, as the core for a new society. Explicit or implicit in what they propose is that production continues to be on the basis of workers of various sorts being hired to produce tangible or intangible commodities in order to sell them.These authors argue that their model is fundamentally different from commodity capitalism and its needs to destroy the environment, create social injustice and create conditions that lead to global warfare. I am not going to attempt to argue against this claim of theirs here. (But see Friedman 2008; Hudis 2012; and Ollman 1998 for further discussion.) Instead, I want to offer a different view of what kind of new world we might aim for.

I think the author, Sam Friedman, is associated with the "Marxist-Humanists".

http://www.internationalmarxisthumanist.org/authors/friedman-sam

[Anonymous]

This group is 'left wing' yet advocates a wageless, world community without markets. Should we be waging war on such groups? 

[ALB]

Are we waging war on them?http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1316-april-2014/relevance-marxian-economics-todayhttps://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/andrew-kliman-talk-to-spgb-video.htmlIncidentally, while I'm posting, I see Friedman talks about the "95%" rather than the "99%", which strikes me as more correct.

[Dave B]

I know it is a bit different but I came across some stuff about capitalist utopia’s eg by Gillete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_C._Gillette it looks as if his second book might be more interesting I was wondering if anyone knew anything about it? This is what a Stalinist said of it  …..the capitalistic Utopias of Carver, Gillette and others for the workers directly to buy out the capitalist industries (expressed in their books respectively, The Present Economic Revolution in the United States and The People’s Corporation); the fatalism of Veblen who, in The Price System and the Engineers, maintains that capitalism will eventually, through the working of its inner contradictions, get into such a chronic and devastating crisis that in desperation society will spontaneously call upon the engineers to take over the operation of the industries and the government.  https://www.marxists.org/archive/foster/1932/toward/05.htm It is selling on Amazon for  $2500

[Anonymous]

I was not aware of Gillette's Utopia. Thanks for that, Dave. 

[robbo203]

Vin wrote:

Just came across this published by a Left Wing grouphttp://climateandcapitalism.com/2017/01/08/creating-a-socialism-that-meets-human-needs/

 Its a good article – quite thought provoking – although I think possibly a little over prescriptive in places.  One of the points that perhaps needs developing is the balance between community needs and individual needs which has implications for a socialist democratic "praxis" – something I alluded to on the thread on "socialism and democracy".   I would be slightly concered about the idea of a “society based on socially-validated need" if this covers every conceivable need that individuals might entertainI think it is important to stress that in a future socialist society there needs to be quite a substantial component of automaticity about needs fulfilment and the need for demcratic decision making really arises in the contect of collective needs – that is to say where needs take a collective form and have a collective impact.  There is a balance to be struck between individual  "freedom" (implied in free access/volunteer labour) and "democracy".  Too much of one at the expense of the other can be harmful to socialist society in the long run. Has this guy been contacted by the SPGB? Its great to a come across articles like this…..

[ALB]

The key passages which show that he is on the same wavelength as us, i.e that this is a contribution to how a socialist society might organise the production and distribution of wealth are:

Quote:

I posit that when and if the broadly-defined working class comes to have dominant power in a large section, or all, of the world — regardless of the means by which we get there — we will need to end commodity-based production, commodity-based exchange, commodity-based belief systems and commodity-based culture as quickly as possible.

Quote:

Replacing “Exchange” with Distribution?How to avoid production for sale? Here I make a moderately concrete proposal for how we might organize production and distribution in a bottom-up way that avoids markets and the re-constitution of the value-production-based alienated society that markets may help to re-produce — at least unless we have eliminated all vestiges of the selling of labor power including systems of workplace cooperatives in which income or working conditions depend on selling the products.To be clear, the process I will describe here is not “exchange,” but rather distribution, because those getting the products do not pay, trade or in other ways reimburse those distributing them.Most fundamentally, distribution of products and services among production units and among people will have to be based upon socially-validated need. This means that if a community, person, or work place needs steel, rice, a laptop or special software, they have the right to ask for it from those who can provide it. It also means that those they ask will see themselves as having a duty to provide for this need if they realistically can do so, and if they do not see fulfilling these needs as harmful. (6)In short, we need to build in an expectation that if someone needs something, and we can provide it, we will — unless we think that this will create undue hardship for the producers (us) or for others who might have to wait for the product, or if we think the product or need is in itself harmful to fulfill. In such instances of disagreement, the requestor should be able to refer the issue to the council system for a democratically-based decision.

His position seems to be that if somebody wants something they go into a store or place an order for it and would normally get it free without having to pay anything. In exceptional cases and in exceptional circumstances (eg dangerous product, product not available, asking for too much) they might not be given what they ask for.  The same applies to productive units: normally, they would get what they asked for, free, from some other productive unit.Although he says in footnote 6 above:

Quote:

Note that this is not the same as Marx’s phrase “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need,” which can only come about later in the process of transforming the world. I am suggesting that this mode of distribution in accord with socially-validated and feasible need might begin to be implemented as soon as the working class assumes the direction of production and distribution.

surely what he is proposing is one way of implementing this. It is difficult to see how the implementation of Marx's phrase would differ in practice as, even with this, there would still be cases where people won't get all they ask for.  The difference would be one of degree, i.e. there'd be far less such cases.Friedman's scheme also provides a possible solution to the question of  how to deal with temporary shortages in the very early days of socialism or after a natural disaster which we have discussed here. It is certainly better than "labour-time vouchers" which he rejects even if rather gingerly, probably because it has been endorsed by some other members of his political group.PS Yes, we have drawn his attention to our pamphlet Socialism As A Practical Alternative.

[Anonymous]

robbo203 wrote:

Has this guy been contacted by the SPGB? Its great to a come across articles like this…..

I don't know if he has been 'officially' approached but I complemented him on his site and asked if he had heard of the SPGB and and I sent him  a Socialist Standard article.There is the opportunity to leave a reply here:http://climateandcapitalism.com/2017/01/09/creating-a-socialism-that-meets-human-needs/

[Anonymous]

Here is another article, not new but posted today.  https://radicalnotes.com/2012/12/30/non-market-socialism-life-without-money-an-interview-with-anitra-nelson/ 

[Dave B]

Hi Vin I doubt want to derail this thread, perhaps I need to start another. But what I found interesting about it. Was that a capitalist was analysing capitalism in pretty much the same way as the Marxists were. His central tenet was the increasing concentration of ownership and control of, say industrial production, which was bad, eg the 99.9% thing And the increasing alienation of the workers themselves being turned into cogs in machine which he appears to describe in ways that would be a credit to any Marxist. However he was not a ‘reactionary’ as he accepted the Marxist notion of necessary historical progress and the benefits of industrial production re productivity etc. Eg Masons post capitalism stuff?   And seemed to attack or criticise the increasingly dysfunctional nature of commercial or finance ‘capitalism’. Not only that he appears to be central to or part of a whole genre of mostly American thought from around 1880 including books that sold 2 million copies and others with several print runs, as well as H. G Wells Things to Come Technocratic utopia and engineers and scientists running the show re our Zietgiest friends H. G Wells Time Machine Bellamy’s Looking Backwards. Film Metropolis, written by Thea von Harbou and directed by her husband, Fritz Lang And reactions to it like William Morris.  I think a bod called Henry George was probably quite influential a started the ball rolling on that side of the pound. .. His most famous work, Progress and Poverty(1879), sold millions of copies worldwide, probably more than any other American book before that time. The treatise investigates the paradox of increasing inequality and poverty amid economic and technological progress, the cyclic nature of industrialized economies………. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George There is an element of disappearing up your own arsehole a bit with historical discussion of the development of ideas etc. And it does look like state capitalist bolshevism coming from the capitalist class instead of other pseudo ‘socialists’. Although it appears at least that Gillete was a democrat advocating a “World Syndicate”. Apparently Gilletes second expensive book was co written with Upton Sinclair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair Below is an analysis of Gillete;  The Human Drift which outlined in detail his belief that the traditional structuresof democracy were being slowly crushed by the tyrannical power of modern industry, and that the only way to prevent the calamity of a hostile corporate takeover on a national or global scale was to overthrow the existing world order and preemptively replace it with what he called a United Trust. This trust would be a single, all-powerful corporation that specialized in absolutely everything —the monopoly to end all monopolies. Its role would be to provide the whole population with meaningful employment and every necessity of life from the cradle to the grave. The trusts character and destiny would be controlled by its legions of employees, whose right to vote in company matters lay in their status as stockholders —this would be the new citizenship. Every company and government in the United States would be destroyed by this giant. All of their former employees and citizens would be folded into the corporate monolith’s swelling ranks until nothing and nobody else was left. At last the wasteful, brutal competition of the capitalist era would be replaced by cooperation, and corporate industrialism would be guided to achieve its full potential as the compassionate but supremely powerful liberator of humanity: “United Intelligence, Material Equality. And a Gilllete quote from  1910: Corporations will continue to form, absorb, expand, and grow, and no power of man can prevent it. [They] are the actual builders of a cooperative system which is eliminating competition, and in a practical business way reaching results which socialists have vainly tried to attain through legislation and agitation for centuries.To complete the industrial evolution, and establish a system of equity, only requires . . . support of “World Corporation”.

[Anonymous]

Thanks again for that info, Dave.The guy who runs the website in the OP(not Friedman)  informs me that he is familiar with the SPGB and believes there needs to be "dialogue and cooperation between and among all groups on the left. None of us has a monopoly on the truth!"How many groups and individuals, I wonder, are now talking of abolishing the market and commodities and advocating changes similar to our own? Perhaps we should compile a list and open up 'official' dialogue with them?Or is it the case – as Dave's informative post suggests – 'nothing new there, then'. 

[Bijou Drains]

On the same theme I don't know if anyone has come across this site:https://communistleaguetampa.org/points-of-unity/

[ALB]

There are quite a few left-communist groups, splits and breakaways that have the same understanding of what socialism is as us. Here's one at random, the CWO ,from "What We Stand For", taken from their paper Aurora which happened to be lying around at Head Office:

Quote:

We stand for a global society in which production is for need and not profit (and is therefore sustainable), where the state, national frontiers and money have been abolished, where power is exercised through class-wide organisations like workers' councils.

I agree the last phrase rather ruins it by suggesting that there could still be classes (even though it can't really mean this) in socialism.The big difference of course is how to get there. Nearly all these groups favour mass armed insurrection with a vanguard party somewhere in the background. And they can't agree amongst themselves on forming a single organisation.Still, putting across the same idea of socialism as us probably isn't doing any harm. It's get the idea into circulation.

[Author]

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