50 years ago: The abolition of class divisions (1966)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have seen how the whole structure of present-day or any other society, rests upon and takes its shape from the property base; and now we can proceed to consider what, broadly, must be the result of the carrying out of the Socialist proposal to change the social base from private ownership of the means necessary to satisfy the economic needs of the community to one in which these things are owned and controlled by the whole people.

The first and most important effect must be to abolish class distinctions. Just as, when the needs of gaining a livelihood have only reached such a stage that common ownership in the land was the only form of ownership that was useful to either the community or the individual, and therefore the only form that was possible in the circumstances (i.e. when the chase offered the highest reward to human product activity), there were no class divisions, so in the society arising from the new social base there could be no classes. Where property is owned by some only of the people, those who own are marked off from those who do not; they are a class apart, and their interests are to try their utmost to maintain and increase the advantage which their properly gives them over the property-less. In the nature of things, these endeavours are more effective if carried out collectively, hence they harden into class effort to support class interests.

But when all these things necessary for the well-being of the community cease to belong to individuals, but are owned as a single individual instrument of production and distribution by the whole people as an organic unit, none are possessors and none have any advantage over others. Since all are in the same situation, all have the same interests, namely to make the means of gaining the common livelihood serve with the utmost efficiency the common purpose. Society, therefore, so long rent by class divisions founded upon unequal properly conditions, at once loses its class nature with the abolition of private properly, and being classless, there can be no class interests.

From the Socialist Standard February 1916