New Pamphlet: Socialism as a Practical Alternative (1987)

Party News from the June 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

This new pamphlet, published after wide discussion within The Socialist Party, is an important addition to socialist literature.

Starting from the position that a growing socialist movement will need to prepare programmes of action for transforming society and solving social problems in advance of the actual capture of political power, the pamphlet sets out a number of proposals for this with the proviso of course that it must be left to a greater number of socialists than at present to make a final decision on whether or not to accept them.

After the winning of political control and the formal abolition of all property rights, private or state, over the means of production, the immediate practical problem will be the setting up of a democratic decision-making and administrative structure and the gearing of the productive and distributive system to the direct supplying of goods and services to satisfy people's needs.

In addressing these questions the pamphlet points out that it will not be a question of starting from scratch — socialists are not in the business of constructing ideal systems — but of taking over and suitably adapting existing structures.

Thus, as regards administration, the existing machinery of political government would be converted by lopping off its coercive and class features while at the same time adapting and democratising its administrative ones. The basic unit of the new democratic decision-making structure is envisaged as being the local community which would elect its delegates to a local council having responsibility for local administration. Decisions affecting wider populations could be made by regional councils and global decisions by a world council composed of delegates from the various regions.

The organisation of production under capitalism today is also broadly divided into these three levels of world (raw materials), regional (industry and manufacture) and local (services) and this will continue to be the case after socialism has been established. Hence it would be a case of freeing the existing circuits of production and distribution from their subordination to value, cost and price considerations and of converting them into a system geared towards the direct supply of goods for consumption.

The pamphlet rejects the idea, sometimes

put forward by socialist writers in the past who had not thought through the question, of all production and distribution being planned by some "central directing authority". This is not only impossible how could all the millions and millions of decisions about production be "planned" from a single world centre? — but is also quite unnecessary. The mechanisms of the market and the use of money, says the pamphlet, can be replaced by what it calls "a self-adjusting system of production for use" which would operate on the basis of the communication of needs expressed, not as monetary purchasing power but directly as required quantities of materials and goods:

In practical terms, needs would arise in local communities expressed as required quantities of machinery, equipment, building materials, and the whole range of foods and consumption goods. These grammes, kilos, tonnes, litres, cubic metres of required materials and goods would then be communicated throughout the distributive and productive network. The monitoring and communication of needs, expressed as a demand on stock or required production, would be clear and readily known. The supply of some needs would take place within the local community (. . .) Other needs would be communicated to regional production units (...) Other needs would be communicated throughout the structure of production up to a world scale.

So in response to information about needs flowing from local communities the required goods and materials to satisfy those needs would flow back in the opposite direction. Such a flexible system would obviate the need for any central directing authority; the world level of the administrative structure would be limited to collecting statistics and organising the various world services (supply of certain raw materials, world communications and transportation, protecting the biosphere. space research) leaving the rest to be organised at local and regional levels.

It is true that capitalism will leave socialism with the problem of world hunger and misery. Solving this by ensuring that every person on Earth is adequately fed, clothed and housed will require a certain amount of "central planning", both for the immediate crash programme to stop deaths from starvation and for the development, in the regions of the world where the problem is concentrated, of the means for satisfying these needs (irrigation schemes, houses, roads, bridges).

However once this new infrastructure has been developed in the regions concerned, perhaps within ten to twenty years of the establishment of socialism, world production levels can be expected to platform off and the more decentralised self-adjusting system for supplying current needs described above can come into its own:

It can be envisaged that the centres of organisation. involved initially at the world and regional levels, could give way to more local administration for the work of providing for daily needs, the running of services and maintenance. What is possible here is a self-regulating society with work activity in balance with daily needs and in balance with the environment.

The pamphlet also discusses how the waste of capitalism could be eliminated, productivity increased and resources conserved in a socialist society.

(Socialism as a Practical Alternative, 45p postage paid, from Lit. Dept., The Socialist Party. 52 Clapham High Street. London SW4 7UN.)