Letters: What Makes us Different ?

I would like you to consider the difference between the SPGB and other organizations that call themselves Socialist. What is it that makes up the difference? I suggest that it is theoretical knowledge. This has been developed by facing up to hypothetical problems that may have to be faced on the way to, and also within, the new society. It seems to me that this task is not even half-done, hence I called Socialism a half-baked idea. The vast majority of SPGBers seem to think that this task is over, but in fact there is no Socialist politics nor any Socialist economics. In fact the SPGB is not so very far ahead of the mindless SWP in being able to explain what Socialism is. I think we would agree on their theoretical merits.

Anyway, the problems of Socialism will certainly not be solved by wishing them away as Engels did. It is not a fact that all conflict is due to private property. People are likely to clash over other things like temperament, sex and even philosophy and taste. But even if Engels was right, we would still need Socialist law and order until the “new man” emerged. As it is I would drop Engels’ brand of Owenism and attempt to work a theoretical system of politics that will enable you to explain what Socialism is today, and will, perhaps, develop into a body of theory that will give the revolutionaries some idea of how to go about things in the new society.

Of course the majority of revolutionaries will cooperate, but then the vast majority of people always do; in any society. Law and order is a minority problem but this minority is unlikely to be uniform or static. It is likely to be continually changing as people go through phases of development.

A general framework of Socialist economics needs to be added to the politics mentioned above. No matter how much technology improves our standard of living, it will never do so at a uniform rate. Economic choices will have to be made as to what to produce, and of how much as well as the allocation of scarce consumer goods and the effective use of producer goods. As those problems of investment and consumption will remain in the new society, a Socialist solution to them is required. The price system gives us the sort of information we need in capitalism. What is going to replace it in Socialism?
DAVID MCDONAGH, Birmingham

Unfortunately we can’t deal with all the points you raise in a short reply. Some of the questions you mention will have to be left to an article.

However, the main point you raise relates to “socialist economics”. In our view “economics” would be a very much simpler question in socialism than it is under capitalism. You require some “socialist economics” to explain socialism in the same way that modern economics explains capitalism. First, modern economics does not explain capitalism, far from it. Second, socialism will not have the need to “justify” itself in the same way that capitalism uses “economics” to justify itself. The theoretical exposition of socialism is the description of the way socialist society will be organised; i.e. common ownership and free access to wealth based on the technological possibilities that capitalism has created. This needs explaining; it does not (cannot) involve the equivalent presentation that those who (attempt) to explain modern capitalism indulge in.

How will socialist society know what to produce when money no longer acts as a guide? The answer may be this: in socialist society people will take freely from what is produced. But when goods are taken there is no reason for them not to be numbered and checked. So for example, the local store supplying product x to the locality could keep a record of the number of “takes” (there would of course be no sales) of product x. It would know how much of product x had to be kept in stock to cover the time between the requisitioning of x and its arrival at the store. Computers could be used to monitor the “take up” of all products as part of the world system, and this information would be relayed to the producers. This system would of course be far more efficient than the present system.

The above outline does of course depend on society being able to produce sufficient of the things people require for no one to go without. But it is possible that society as a whole will decide that one particular product (an example given in the September ss was a Rolls Royce) will not be produced. How society would decide which products to do without would of course in part depend on the product in question. At this stage, all we can indicate is that no human being would be without any “need” and anything over and above that which might be required but not be socially possible will be decided on by society, democratically.

So far as your question on Law and order is concerned, there is no space to go into that here. We would refer you in particular to The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Engels, which shows that law is a product (and therefore a problem) of property society, and will be of no relevance to propertyless society.