You drive into the vast parking area and jigsaw your car into one of the spaces. The supermarket looms within a few easy strides and in a matter of minutes you are inside the electric-eye doors, selecting a shopping cart; the heat, the cold, the rain or the snow — as the case may be — is left outside and as you push your cart up one aisle and down the next you are lulled by pleasant music, attractively displayed merchandise of hundreds of varieties, the meat counters. the delicatessen counters, the frozen food counters and, occasionally, the smiling demonstrator woman or man who offers free samples of this or of that delicacy.
So you forget, for the moment, all but the fact that here are food items, durables, even — in many instances — articles of wearing apparel waiting to be selected and dropped into your shopping cart. You know you can find good use for much, if not most, of everything in the market and heavens knows! you have been reminded enough that your life will not be full unless and until you have this. that, and the other product in your pantry, your refrigerator, your closets, or some place or other even it in your attic or your cellar! So you sail into the pleasant chore and before you know it your cart is piled high with delectables for the table, with stockings for the kids, with cleaning solvents, can openers and all of the things that go to make a happy home, maybe even a clock radio. Wonderful country, America! Where else could one find so much of what everybody wants under one roof? And all there for the taking. Richest country in the world — highest standard of living — freest democracy—etc., etc. You muse on all of this because you have heard this and read this, time and time again, interspersed between commercials advertising beer, cigarettes, beef, underwear and so forth. "Only in America," you muse.
Then suddenly you are caught up short. “For crying out loud!” you cry out inwardly. “How much is all of this going to cost? I won't have enough money and if I do and I pay for all this I won’t have enough to do till next payday."
Yes! The trouble is that there are cash registers in those supermarkets. And one does not get out of the store with one’s selections until they are paid for — unless you can do it without getting caught, which is quite a trick.
Well, up to a point, this has been a recitation of the right of access to the items which are supposed to constitute a decent standard of living. Capitalism does give one the right of access to what is produced, providing one has the money to pay. But how, you must be wondering, how does this socialist nut think one can run a supermarket without cash registers.
Of course you can’t run a supermarket or anything else without cash registers, under capitalism. The cash registers and the money that is used to transact the business are the hallmarks of class ownership. Everything in the supermarket, including the cash registers has been produced socially by thousands of workers from many different countries using raw materials from areas in far flung parts of the world. But under capitalism, the land, the mines, the forests, the workshops, and the supermarkets are all owned by a capitalist class or a capitalist state — which amounts to the same thing, class ownership rather than social ownership.
When the world is socialist, everything — including the supermarkets — will be run differently. Certainly there will be a variety of the things people want although the chances are that wants — when no longer conditioned by hucksters on the mass media and in the newspapers — will be fewer. But there will be no cash registers, because ownership will be vested in all mankind, not an economic class. The money that changes hands today has nothing at all to do with the production and availability of the goods in the store. Only labor power applied to raw materials can produce wealth. Goods and services under socialism will be produced only to satisfy human needs and wants. The world will become one vast supermarket. Better look into this further.
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