Why does the Left oppose free access?
‘The idea that socialists want free stuff is the great lie of capitalism. Socialists want the fruits of our labor to be equitably distributed rather than allowing 10 old men to hoard half the planet’s resources’ (Post on Ancap vs. Ancom Debate Facebook group).
Seriously? Why would socialists not want a society in which goods are freely distributed? This is just the logical extension of bringing the means of producing those goods into common ownership. If you have to buy these goods, that would imply private or sectional ownership of these means.
One left-wing respondent even went so far as to suggest that ‘free access’ was not a Marxian principle at all: ‘nothing would be free in socialism’. No doubt capitalism´s more gung-ho supporters will be relieved to hear that their left-wing critics have no intention of implementing what the Communist Manifesto (1848) called the ‘communistic abolition of buying and selling’.
Free access to goods produced by our voluntary labour has always been fundamental to a Marxian vision of a post-capitalist society. Many anarchists have also supported the idea, including Peter Kropotkin in The Conquest of Bread (1892).
True, Marx himself did not think it would be feasible straightaway in socialism. Ongoing shortages would necessitate some rationing, for instance via a system of labour vouchers, a proposal that many modern-day socialists see as obsolete. However, suggested Marx, rationing would eventually give way to free access, ‘after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly’ (Gotha Programme Critique, 1875). Then the principle would apply, ‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs!’
The problem is that you don’t hear much about this in left-wing circles today. Mostly, you will look in vain for any reference to the revolutionary goal of a moneyless, wageless, classless and stateless alternative to capitalism – what ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’ means in classical Marxian terms.
Such labels were used interchangeably as synonyms before Lenin changed the meaning of the former by equating it with just the ‘lower phase of communism’ (something he then further misrepresented by suggesting it would retain a state and wage labour). Lenin´s redefinition of ‘socialism’ functioned politically to legitimise the Bolshevik programme of state capitalism, capitalising on the positive associations the term ‘socialism’ generally elicited at the time.
The question arises – why this strange reluctance among many supposed ‘socialists’ or ‘communists’ today to even acknowledge the revolutionary goal of a non-market stateless society? Is it because they feel embarrassed that this might expose them to the charge of being ‘utopian’ or, worse still, ‘idealistic’?
Under the spell of ‘capitalist realism’ (Mark Fisher’s term), it is as though they feel obliged to formulate their political programmes in terms that pragmatically acknowledge the irreplaceability of such capitalist categories as money, markets and wage labour. However, no social revolution has ever succeeded by slavishly conforming to the values and ways of thinking of the status quo.
This is the problem with what is called the Hard Left. Its timidity and opportunism – its craven desire to appear credible to a (still) overwhelmingly non-socialist electorate, perpetually condemns it to the political sidelines. For if the objective is merely to mend capitalism rather than end it, why would a non-socialist majority want to vote for some small Trotskyist sect when they have the opportunity to vote for some much larger (and more electable) reform party, like Labour or perhaps, now the Greens?
Muddying the waters
There was a time when, arguably, the case for a genuinely post-capitalist society was better known and appreciated than today. Two main developments muddied the waters considerably.
The first was the rise of Social-Democratic parties associated with the Second International (1889-1923), advocating a ‘minimum programme’ of reforms in the short run alongside a maximum programme of social revolution. Predictably, the latter was abandoned, these parties being duly transformed into fully capitalist entities.
Today’s ‘soft left’ might be said to be the outcome of this development. It has no vision of a future beyond capitalism, only a more humanised version of capitalism.
The second development was the emergence of various state capitalist regimes commencing with the Bolsheviks in 1917. Though these claimed to be ‘socialist’ by expediently redefining what ‘socialism’ meant, such regimes retained all those basic features that make capitalism, capitalism. Above all, a system of wage labour. Marx himself talked of capitalism being the ‘wages system’. In Value, Price and Profit (1865), he argued that trade unionists, rather than limit themselves to a guerrilla war against capitalism’s effects, should use their organised force as a ‘lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system’.
How has state capitalism advanced this goal by even one iota? Quite simply, it has not. Yet one still comes across Leftists calling for nationalisation of the ‘commanding heights of industry’ (this, despite the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 provoking some soul-searching, and prompting some to gravitate toward less statist variants of so-called ‘market socialism.’)
Moreover, China’s rise as an economic powerhouse, implementing a different kind of state capitalism from the Soviet Union’s so-called ‘command economy’, has injected new vigour into the Left´s love affair with state capitalism. However, love is blind, and it has certainly blinded these adoring fans to the fact that capitalist China is one of the most grotesquely unequal countries on the planet, with a crop of multibillionaires surpassed in size by only America. There is no more prospect of China paving the way to a post-capitalist society than the Soviet Union did.
So why do these people still cling tenaciously to this state capitalist model of social transformation, despite occasionally paying lip service to the goal of a post-capitalist society? The usual excuse is that you cannot realistically hope to jump straight from capitalism into a post-capitalist society. Pragmatically, there needs to be a ‘transition’.
Profound misunderstanding
Superficially, this does not seem an unreasonable point to make. Nevertheless, it reveals a profound misunderstanding. To see why, we have to consider what the basic preconditions are to establish a post-capitalist society.
Firstly, we must have the capacity to produce enough to satisfy our reasonable needs. Significant shortages, as noted, could make the principle of free access unworkable even after capitalism has disappeared.
According to the Communist Manifesto, before capitalism disappeared, certain (state capitalist) measures would be needed to ‘increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible’ . Writing in 1848, Marx and Engels sensed that socialism was nowhere near being a practical proposition back then.
However, by the late 19th century, they began to see that circumstances had changed. Those earlier measures proposed by them were now thought to be outdated due to the ‘gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848’ (1872 Preface). As Murray Bookchin put it: ‘A century ago, scarcity had to be endured; today it has to be enforced’ (Post-Scarcity Anarchism).
The other precondition to establish socialism is that a majority of workers should want it and understand what it means. It cannot be imposed from above by some enlightened vanguard. Those who implement such a society will also have to operate it. How can you do that without knowing the new ‘rules of the game’, without embracing the mores, values and expectations that this new system of society would entail?
This is precisely what a genuine ‘transition’ must involve – the gradual, if painfully slow, build-up in support for, and awareness of, a genuine alternative to capitalism. Engels understood this perfectly in arguing against minority action:
‘The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of masses lacking consciousness, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in on it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are fighting for, body and soul’ (Introduction to Marx´s Class Struggles in France, 1895)
Actually, ‘The Transition’ is something in which we are already participating (though there is no guarantee it will lead to a successful outcome). However, it is not, and cannot possibly be, what the Hard Left imagines it to be – some far-off hypothetical stage after the Vanguard Party has captured power.
Any model for successfully exiting capitalism has to have a clear destination that breaks completely with capitalism. You cannot possibly do this if your whole strategy is built around perpetually postponing and deferring what is crucially required to make this happen – promoting awareness of what should replace capitalism.
The Hard Left’s belief that it is inappropriately ‘utopian’ now to even discuss a genuinely post-capitalist alternative is precisely what ensures there never will be an appropriate time to begin discussing it. Meanwhile, state capitalism is promoted on the spurious pretext that it will somehow prepare us to move beyond capitalism. That may have been true in the early 19th century, but not now. State capitalist regimes are no closer to a post-capitalist society than any other regime. This is the great deception. The relationship of the ruling class to the working class under state capitalism is precisely the same as anywhere else. It is the irreconcilable class antagonism that exists between capital and wage labour.
To imagine any state capitalist ruling class would ever voluntarily relinquish its privileged class status by facilitating the emergence of a classless society is utterly naïve. In fact, without exception, all state capitalist regimes obsessively promote bourgeois nationalism and support for their ‘socialist motherland’.
Under capitalism, nationalism is the universal ideological format that enables a ruling class to deflect any expression of class struggle that might otherwise threaten its rule by positing an illusory commonality of interest between workers and capitalists – the so-called ‘national interests’. The Hard Left’s susceptibility to this nonsense is not only evident in its support for nationalisation; it also shows in its willingness to align with the so-called ‘oppressed nations’ (and their comprador bourgeoisie) against the ‘imperialist nations’.
Shadow boxing
The shadow boxing it constantly engages in is particularly evident in its attitude towards reformism. For all its talk of ‘non-reformist reforms’, there is, in practice, no difference between the Hard Left and the Soft Left in this respect. The Trotskyist concept of ‘transitional demands’, supposedly designed to serve as a bridge between the minimum and maximum programmes, is anything but. Cynically promoting demands you know the system is incapable of granting is more likely to result in rank disillusionment than revolutionary consciousness.
You can’t trick or manipulate workers into becoming socialists. While some disdainfully dismiss what they call ‘abstract propaganda’, the fact is you cannot possibly achieve socialism without these workers knowing what it is about and wanting it. Plainly speaking, that means talking about it.
This is what the Left has been conspicuously reluctant to do. As noted, it even seems embarrassed by the very thought of doing this. Notwithstanding its steadily declining fortunes in recent decades (with one or two notable exceptions), the Left seems hell-bent, not on learning from its past mistakes, but on recycling them.
According to Bhaskar Sunkara, founding editor of Jacobin magazine:
‘Any serious democratic socialist politics must pursue a politics of rupture with capitalism. You can’t reach the abolition of class through an infinite series of small reforms” (‘Reforming Capitalism Is Not Enough’, Jacobin 8 June 2026).
One glance at the small print, however, reveals something totally different. Sunkara’s idea of a ‘twenty-first-century socialism’ is not remotely a post-capitalist one. Markets, he imagines, are a ‘great tool for socialism’ (and for ‘coordinating a complex economy’). Wage labour will continue in his ‘twenty-first-century socialism’ and hence also a class-divided society of employees versus employers. Unsurprisingly, the state, as the institutional tool of ruling-class domination, will continue to be needed in such a society.
For all the rhetorical flourishes concerning a ‘politics of rupture’, Sunkara’s musings boil down to just ‘business as usual’. Sadly, this might also be said of the Left in general. Good intentions will never be enough to eliminate capitalism.
ROBIN COX