A difficulty with most people is that they do not understand “How Socialism would ‘work.' ” Especially mysterious to them is the idea of anything being able to “work" if it does not “pay.” Now, we cannot blame these people for their inability to comprehend these matters. We should not get sore when they accuse us of being unpractical theorists. For the plain simple fact of the matter is that the great majority of people are far too busy working —i.e., producing, first of all, a profit for their boss, and second, a wage for themselves—to worry about the scientific whys and wherefores of these things. What we call “politics" embracing as it does, or should do, the complicated subject of economics, is pretty well big enough to be a full-time job to study adequately.
Nevertheless, some at any rate of the salient facts of the matter are easy enough to understand when summarised, once we get out of our minds the mass of unnecessary complications, misrepresentations, and lies with which the ruling class seeks to discourage and confuse the enquirer.
The great central truth of Socialism tests on a straightforward, elementary fact that a moment’s reflection will show to everyone as valid and obvious. It is this: that there is in the world sufficient of everything for everyone’s requirements, and where it is not immediately available (as, for instance, cotton does not grow in England), it exists somewhere, or can be produced end transported. In other words, we have the raw materials, the crops, the factories, the transport, the labour, and the machinery (or the means of making new, extra machinery): all we need is a sane, simple method of setting all these to work, move, and be used by means of a co-operative interdependent plan.
There is no need to ask, “Will it ‘pay’?” Because, under Socialism, there won't be any need for a thing to “pay” anymore. If everything everyone requires is provided, that is all there is need to worry about. The worker—worker “by hand or brain”—need only contribute the amount of (physical or mental) effort required of him (or her) and all will be automatically entitled to whatever they require in the way of food, clothing, shelter, travel, etc., etc. We must look at the necessary activity of mankind as one process, not as we are encouraged to do under Capitalism, as a host of different actions, most of them for different ends.
The whole character of this process can be summed up in the time-honoured phrase, “production solely for use instead of profit.”
But, the confirmed objector will interpose, if nothing “pays,” if nothing yields a profit, how about the replacement of worn-out machinery, how about all the costs involved and the materials, etc., required in the processes of production? The answer is obvious enough : all needs, will be automatically met by the overwhelmingly plentiful production under a planned Socialist economy : but it is a fact that the deliberate under education and miseducation of the masses which is a deliberate and fundamental part of the capitalist art of government has succeeded in presenting this as a major, practically insoluble, problem for the “uninitiated.”
Skilful, and unprincipled, use of this “Will it pay?” bogey has driven many of the unwary into accepting the “nationalisation” idea, instead of Socialism. Nationalisation conforms to the “profit and loss” method which is familiar to and understood by all who have lived under capitalism. It conforms very neatly to all the capitalist rules, and produces pretty much the same results.
John Jennings
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