Letters – Beyond money
Dear Editors
Beyond money
I want to thank the Socialist Standard for the thoughtful and generous review of my book Unchained: Living Without Money in the September 2025 issue. It is both humbling and encouraging to see my work placed in conversation with such a long tradition of literature and activism envisioning a society beyond money.
Your review captured well the spirit in which the book was written: to help people imagine what it might look like to move from a system based on scarcity and profit to one rooted in cooperation, equity, and access. I especially appreciate your recognition of how Unchained seeks to address common objections — from ‘human nature’ to so-called ‘dirty work’ — in ways that reframe the conversation around what capitalism itself conditions us to believe.
At the same time, I want to briefly clarify the ‘non-political’ framing you note. My intent was not to dismiss the necessity of political action, but to emphasize the power of grassroots practice, imagination, and lived experiments in shifting consciousness. Free stores, time banks, mutual aid networks, and community projects may not abolish capitalism on their own, but they expand people’s horizons of possibility. They give form to what many assume is impossible and, in doing so, prepare the ground for larger systemic change.
I understand and respect the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s long-standing position that governments under capitalism cannot be instruments for emancipation. Where I differ is in leaving space for the possibility that policies such as universal housing or healthcare, while constrained, can normalize access-based thinking and open cracks through which movements grow. History is full of examples where small openings in the system gave people the courage and imagination to demand far more. I do not view these reforms as endpoints, but as catalysts.
What encourages me most is the clear common ground between us. Whether we emphasize revolutionary political action or grassroots contributionist models, the destination we envision is strikingly similar: a democratic world without money, bosses, or exploitation, where governance becomes the transparent administration of things and not the rule of people. I believe the diversity of approaches can be complementary rather than contradictory. Political strategy and cultural practice need not compete; together they can reinforce one another in the shared project of building a society based on need, not profit.
Thank you again for your generous reading. I hope Unchained can continue to serve as a small contribution to the broader movement the SPGB has long championed. The task before us is too urgent and too vast to allow our differences of approach to overshadow the deep unity of purpose that animates us both.
JUSTIN FAIRCHILD
Marxism and pigeons
I always enjoy grabbing the Socialist Standard from the local radical bookshop, and read with interest the October Life and Times piece, ‘Chasing pigeons in the park’. Here stalwart HKM finds himself in a fractious encounter with a working class mother, and unsurprisingly, comes off worse for it. I would never advise anyone, Marxist or otherwise, to intervene in the parenting of a stranger’s child. It smacks of condescension, and I’m hardly shocked that she went straight for the jugular.
That aside, while I appreciate the article’s humane spirit and its attempt to connect everyday behaviour to the wider social order, I think it falls into certain traps that weaken the socialist case.
As an anecdote and moral exhortation, one small incident, a child chasing a pigeon, is made to carry the burden of a sweeping claim about capitalist society. What’s needed instead is structural analysis, grounded in class relations and historical development. Otherwise the critique risks idealism, as if cruelty will simply vanish once capitalism is abolished, and empathy will bloom automatically.
The piece also overlooks the way ideology and institutions actively reproduce capitalist values. Capitalism doesn’t just ‘promote thoughtlessness,’ it systematically manufactures individualism, competition, and alienation through schools, media, and the daily grind of wage labour. Those habits of thought won’t dissolve on day one of socialism, they will need to be challenged through conscious struggle, education, and organisation.
Under capitalism, ‘competition,’ ‘self-interest,’ ‘private property,’ and even what counts as ‘good parenting’ or ‘normal behaviour’ are all suffused with hegemonic ideas.
Finally, the article sidesteps the harder question of how socialism itself will handle conflict, scarcity, or antisocial behaviour. To imply that a socialist world will be one of effortless harmony is to underplay the ongoing, practical work of building and sustaining solidarity in the face of real contradictions.
In short, the piece has a sound moral impulse, but its reliance on anecdote and lack of class analysis blunt its usefulness as a Marxist critique.
Marx himself could well have been a pigeon fancier, though most likely encapsulated in pastry and well baked in a pie. While I can’t cite a specific reference for that, it is at least recorded that he did enjoy a pork and matzah sandwich when he could.
A.T.
Equality
Thanks for sending this (your review of Equality, October Socialist Standard). Needless to say, everything I propose and describe about democratic socialism needs to be discussed, amended, improved, discussed again and again. See the longer discussion in my Brief History of Equality. From that viewpoint, I am very interested to better understand what kind of organization and institution you are advocating in your own view of socialism.
THOMAS PIKETTY
We comment on your Brief History of Equality on page 9. In the meantime we refer you to our pamphlet Socialism As A Practical Alternative – Editors
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