Abolish the wages system (2026)

From the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is based on minority ownership and control of the means of production (land, railways, factories, food distribution, etc), that is, the means to produce what we need to survive and flourish. Production is for profit not human need. If something isn’t profitable it isn’t produced. Work is done by people who are forced by economic necessity to sell their ability to work for a wage.

How did the wages system come about? Well, it depends on who you ask, and whereabouts in the world you go to ask the question. If you ask the capitalist propagandists they will say it is because human beings decided to trade with one another and money was a way of doing this more efficiently. This is a lie that ignores the numerous indigenous communities from America to Africa to Australia whose land was forcibly and violently taken.

America is a land stolen from a people and built with the labour of other people whose land was stolen from them. In Britain, we had the Enclosure Acts of the 18th and 19th centuries in which roughly 5.5 million acres of common land was forcibly taken and placed into private hands, with mass evictions of agricultural communities. In Scotland in the Highland Clearances between 1750 and 1830 roughly 70,000 to over 150,000 people were ‘cleared’ from the land.

This story of enclosure and clearances was a win-win for the ruling class: communal land was turned into profit, specifically sheep farming in Scotland, and a mass of dispossessed people was created who owned nothing but their ability to labour, which they were forced to sell to survive. In 1750 Glasgow’s population was 32,000. By 1851 it was over 300,000. That’s the scale of the operation.

Marx wrote that capital comes into the world dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. That is the real story of how the wages system came into existence.

Why abolish the wages system? Because it is exploitative. The surplus value of our labour is taken from us by the capitalist parasites in the form of profit. It is also alienating in a number of ways.

Alienation from the product: we don’t own or control what we make; it ends up feeling like something outside us — even something used against us. We’re forced to buy back the products of our labour from the capitalists.

Alienation from the labour process: we don’t shape how we work; the pace, purpose, and methods are set by others, so our work is disconnected from who we are.

Alienation from other people: we’re pushed into competition and treated as commodities, which strains our relationships and weakens solidarity.

Alienation from nature: we’re cut off from the natural world; nature is reduced to a resource for profit, creating a rupture between how we live and the environment we depend on.

Alienation from our species-being: we lose the chance to express our creativity and human potential; work becomes just survival, not self-realisation.

Endless economic growth on a finite planet threatens ecological disaster. In 2024 alone, about 8.1 million hectares of forest were lost globally — roughly an area the size of England. Over 47,000 species are currently threatened with extinction. Wildlife populations have plummeted over recent decades: on average, global wildlife populations have dropped by about 73 percent over the last 50 years — a collapse driven by habitat destruction, pollution, deforestation, and industrial exploitation of nature.

War is an extension of the war of the market place involving different gangs of capitalists. Socialists were among the brave class-conscious workers who refused to murder their fellow workers in the first and second world wars, declaring instead the socialist mantra: ‘a bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends’.

The Socialist Party was formed in 1904 as a breakaway from the reformist and authoritarian Social Democratic Federation. We are a leaderless organisation that holds, like Marx, that ‘the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself’. We, also like Marx, define socialism as a stateless, moneyless society based on production for human need (as opposed to sale on the market) in which people will no longer have to work for wages.

Left-wingers don’t offer a real alternative. Lenin combined the state and the wages system into one tyrannical regime. Corbyn and Zarah Sultana claim to be socialists but what they’re actually advocating for is an impossibly humanised capitalism.

The only viable and practical solution to the world’s problems is socialism, a moneyless stateless society based on production for human need. Apologists for capitalism tell us that we’re greedy, selfish, bloodthirsty. Let the parasite class speak for themselves! Workers demonstrate their moral character every day through small acts of workplace solidarity. We can and will organise ourselves into a leaderless organisation of the working class for the working class when, as Marx put it, we take off our banners the conservative motto ‘a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’ and inscribe instead the revolutionary watchword ‘abolish the wages system’.

Johnny Mercer

Blogger's Note:

Though it isn't mentioned in the text, I believe this article is partly based on the talk that Johnny gave in London last November. An audio recording of that talk is available at the following link.

World Socialist Radio - Abolish the Wages System (2025)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Abolish The Wages System: Why We Need To Get Rid Of Capitalism by The Socialist Party of Great Britain

This episode is a recording of a talk given by Johnny Mercer at The Socialist Party’s Head Office on 30th November 2025.

The speaker outlines the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s case for abolishing the wage system, arguing that capitalism is rooted in minority ownership of the means of production and in production for profit rather than human need. They reject the idea that capitalism emerged naturally, instead tracing its origins to violent dispossession – from the Enclosures and Highland Clearances in Britain to slavery and colonialism globally – which created a propertyless working class forced to sell its labour. Drawing on Marx, the talk emphasises the exploitative and alienating nature of wage labour, detailing how workers are separated from the products of their work, the labour process, each other, nature, and ultimately their own human potential. Capitalism’s pursuit of endless growth is linked to ecological destruction, and global conflict is framed as competition between capitalist interests fought at the expense of the working class.

The second half outlines the principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, founded in 1904 as a breakaway from reformist movements and committed to a leaderless, democratic, revolutionary transformation. The speaker defines socialism as a stateless, moneyless society based on common ownership and production for need, stressing that emancipation must be won consciously by the working class itself. They argue that all other political parties – including those considered left-wing – ultimately support capitalism, offering only reforms rather than systemic change. The talk concludes by urging workers to unite under the SPGB’s banner to replace capitalism’s inequalities with a society grounded in freedom, equality, and genuine human solidarity.

World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources – land, water, factories, transport, etc. – are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants.

RSS Feed for Abolish The Wages System: Why We Need To Get Rid Of Capitalism.

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Letter: Money: Will it be needed under socialism? (1908)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money: Will it be needed under socialism?

To the Editor.

Sir,—Having participated, as a humble listener, in many discussions on Socialism, I have noticed, as no doubt have many others, what a stumbling block the money question presents to many earnest seekers after truth. Seeing on sale a pamphlet bearing the title quoted at the head of this letter, I purchased a copy in the hope that it would help in surmounting the obstacle in question.

Mr. A. P. Hazell, the author, is not, I understand, a member of your Party, but I feel sure you will grant him space to clear up my doubts and remove my difficulties.

“The ordinary individual is quite confused in his ideas concerning the medium of exchange,” says Mr. Hazell, with which I quite agree, as I also do with two other statements, viz., “Capitalism presupposes production of wealth which has to be distributed by means of exchange,” and “Socialism does not presuppose distribution of wealth by means of exchange. It assumes that society has evolved a stage beyond exchange, and that, consequently, there will be no need for money.” But I understand that Mr. Hazell is a prominent member of, and an accepted economic authority in, the Social Democratic Party, which has for its object “The Socialisation of the Means of Production, Distribution and Exchange.” Its members refer to this object as Socialism. Why then seek to socialise something which is necessary to capitalism but not to Socialism, which will supersede it? I have heard members of the S.D.P. criticise the I.L.P. because the latter would socialise capital, whereas Socialism means its abolition. Is this not a case of pot and kettle ?

Mr. Hazell deals with “The Guernsey Experiment” which “Shows that money even now under given conditions can be dispensed with.” But the paragraph records that the Governor of Guernsey issued paper money against the cash which was to come in as rent for stalls. As it came in the paper money was withdrawn from circulation. This, in my opinion, proves the opposite to what the author claims.

“If Municipalities” says Mr. Hazell, “could overcome the opposition of the Bankers, and obtain the consent of Parliament, they could easily raise funds and do without the capitalist financiers whose function it is to exact interest on loans.” It seems to me that municipalities will not be able to do this until the conscious effort of the Socialist working class has deprived the capitalist financiers of their political power and appointed its delegates to organise the administration of things. If I am right then it is little use and very confusing to argue upon this “if.”

But it is on pages 4 and 5 that I encounter my greatest difficulties ! Mr. Hazell says : “A socialistically-inclined Cabinet would have to go cautiously to work to realise their aim. Its best method would be to enter the field of production, and bodily attack the present system of exchange,” and again, “But let us be clear. No Socialist Government would enter into production ostensibly for the purpose of either abolishing money or the system of exchange. They would be laughed at by the ignorant, who for a long time yet will remain in the majority,” and further, “Socialists are in favour of direct employment, and will, without question, force the hands of the Government to move in this direction against its will.” We would thus appear to have arrived at a condition of affairs in which we have an ignorant majority but yet a Socialist Government. This Socialist Government would not enter into production on Socialist lines, because they would be laughed at. The hands of the Socialist Government would be forced (against their will) by the Socialists ! Now mark this is not a position arising from a division in the House suddenly placing the Socialist Party in office, because “The capitalists, defeated at the poll, etc.” The unwilling Socialist Government has beaten the capitalists at the ballot box, although “the ignorant are still in the majority.” “Let us be clear,” says Mr. Hazell. Well, let us, by all manner of means, let us

No wonder that Mr. Hazell assumes that his Government is full of trouble ! It wants to borrow money, but has trouble with the financiers ; an agitation in the country has succeeded in getting passed through the House the Right to Work Bill, which increases its difficulties; it is afraid to raise the income tax beyond a certain point because that might cause civil war; but at last the sun appears upon the horizon. The Government receives an order from the Colonies for a warship, to cost two millions. To enable it to construct this monument to the establishment of the brotherhood of man, it issues paper to the value of two millions, which it redeems when the Colonies pay over the cash for the Socialist “Dreadnought.” It extends its undertakings and its profits enable it to defy all opposition. I did not think that warships and profits would play a part when a Socialist Administration had been elected, but I suppose I was wrong.

There are other points in the pamphlet I should like to deal with did space permit, but only one will I touch upon now. If Mr. Hazell endeavours to assist me will he please state whether there will be a “reserve army of labour” under Socialism—an army of unemployed seeking work ? I ask this because on page 15, after the “Reformers” have won, when “the organisation of labour is now so perfect that there is a superabundance of wealth,” he refers to the drafting of “surplus” labour into particular departments, and I do so wish to be “clear.”

—Yours etc., 

Kendrick Johns.

September 9th, 1908.

Is there a "Road" to Socialism? (1988)

Book Review from issue 5 of the World Socialist Review

State Capitalism: The Wages System Under New Management by Adam Buick & John Crump (The MacMillan Press Ltd, 1986)

You have only to attend a meeting of any of numerous groups identifying themselves as "socialist" or ’'communist” to find out one thing: with few exceptions, they do not define their immediate goal as being worldwide in scope. They regard replacing the buying and selling of necessary goods and services with free access to the same as a very long-term aspiration (though the notion enjoys wide acceptance as an abstraction). Between the cup of communism and the lip of capitalism, they claim, there lies a wide gap, and that gap can only be bridged by a complicated and unpredictable series of short-term objectives. Eventually society will be transformed, it is true, but not starting from the present reality as we currently understand it.

Those groups organized as formal political parties seeking to attract the support and/or the votes of workers and other sectors of the population thus find themselves nailed fairly tightly to a framework of nationalism which has to justify itself through an appeal to "proletarian internationalism" or something similar. Followers of Lenin and Trotsky. for example, advocate setting up a "workers’ state" which will liquidate the institutions and mechanisms by which private owners of the means of production perpetuated their legal monopoly over the output of goods and services. According to this scenario, the exploiting (capitalist) class continues in existence for a while but is sternly regimented by the party in control of the machinery of state and enjoying the well-informed support of the majority.

In State Capitalism Adam Buick and John Crump carefully dissect the concept of state ownership of the means of wealth production and lay bare the mass of rationalizations leading up to it. First they establish the general boundaries of discussion by defining what the term capitalism means, then they distinguish between two models of capitalism: the one traditionally accepted as such (private capitalism, the earliest form) and the other representing a number of historic adaptations or variants of capitalist monopoly over social production (in response to some structural failure on the part of the "private" model). Since this second type is characterized by the nationalization of enterprises--with or without a thoroughgoing state management of the system of production—it is of course best described as "state” capitalism.

This result can be accomplished in two ways. Either the state can bail out individual capitalists by taking over the legal proprietorship and control of their businesses without a major political upheaval occurring (as has become common in western Europe); or a revolutionary opposition can develop within the bosom of capitalist society and, with varying degrees of majority support, raze the preceding regime to the ground, totally reorganizing the system of exploitation (as in eastern Europe, Russia and China). In the second case, a new capitalist minority replaces the old, leaving the same or equivalent relations of production intact. Though from a narrowly legal angle the new minority renounces all private title to the system of production, they nevertheless retain monopoly control over it.

"Socialist” Profits?

In the fourth chapter, the authors deal with a question which everyone has sooner or later asked: What makes a state-capitalist economy different from a "classical" one? They tackle a couple of familiar old fallacies: namely, the belief that

"Socialist" profit is not capitalist profit because "all profits belong to the people" or, to put it another way, because "the state distributes profit for the benefit of the people. "Socialist" wages are not the mark of an exploited working class, but are the means by which social wealth is distributed according to each individual's contribution to production.

(Ch. 4, "The Capitalist Dynamic of State Capitalist Economies")

In the end, however, no matter on what ideological grounds wage exploitation is put into effect, the leopard cannot avoid keeping its spots. 

"Profit is pursued because, due to the competition which is inherent in world capitalism, state capital continually has to invest newly acquired surplus value in a compulsive effort to accumulate and hence expand itself." (p 101)

Before going on to socialism as the alternative to either state or private capitalism, they briefly outline some of the ideological underpinnings on which the justification for state capitalism rests, showing how the thinking of its advocates evolved out of "classical" socialist theory (as found in the writings of Marx or Engels) into its Leninist and post-Leninist forms.

Basic Features of Socialism

Having comprehensively sapped out the state-capitalist terrain, Buick and Crump have no difficulty elucidating the basic features of a socialist society: It must be worldwide; all goods and services will be produced for use only and distributed free; it will have no classes, states or national frontiers; no exchange of goods and services will take place—since there will no longer be any market to regulate consumption.

The disappearance of economic value would mean the end of "economic calculation" in the sense of calculation in units of "value" whether measured by money or directly in some unit of labour time. (Ch. 6, "The Alternative to Capitalism")

The need for planning will be met by establishing "a rationalized network of planned links" occupying the successive phases through which the cycle of production/consumption passes. "Planning" in that context will mean only the coordinating of "a direct interaction between hunan beings and nature." (The authority of economists rests partly in fact on the working class’s uncritical acceptance of their doctrine of an inherent natural scarcity. )

If the language in the last chapter makes heavy use of the conditional tense, this does not imply any prediction of utopia. It only acknowledges that workers have so far failed to shake themselves out of the slumber of poverty. This is a process which necessarily must take place on a world scale (if not everywhere at precisely the sane time); for a whole society to make the changeover to production for use requires a conscious understanding of the stakes by enough of the world's population to constitute a political force greater than any that capital can muster in its own defense.

Such an intense concentration of well-informed opinion has not yet occurred nor will it ever—if workers (including both highly paid professionals and exploited agriculturalists) continue to limit their thought horizons to those of the national state into which their destiny as wage slaves has thrust then. The admirable thing about State Capitalism is that it provides a sorely needed theoretical framework for tearing loose of the deadly embrace of nationalism This framework (as noted in the book) has been slowly emerging within the world socialist movement in the decades since the Bolshevik revolution, most significantly in the propaganda of our companion party, the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The book itself makes a highly readable contribution to this ongoing effort to create a class-conscious, socialist majority—one that will finally get capitalism's funeral cortege rolling toward the cemetery.

Blogger's Note:

Buick and Crump's book was also reviewed in the April 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard.  

Letter: Socialism as a practical solution (2002)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism as a practical solution

Dear Editors,

Socialism won’t change the human condition – did anyone even say that it would?

I am convinced of the case for socialism, but I am not utopian. I don’t believe in human perfectibility or a state of ideal political-social perfection. What I do think is that socialist economy would free up our human abilities to find solutions to our most pressing concerns. It is this freeing-up of resources, of capacity to concentrate on working for and towards what we want, rather than for a profit system for individuals that makes me know that socialist economic organisation is a better way for all of us on the planet than blindly accepting a capitalist global economy as dominant.

I think that this simple key message of abolishing money, or the need to work to earn money being replaced by working for and thinking about what we want wins the argument; it wins the argument with those who haven’t questioned capitalist organisation of society or of their parts in perpetuating it; it wins the minds of anyone who chooses to go away and think – and that is most human beings; it wins the minds of those who are fed up with the stresses imposed by working conditions geared to piling up money, or simply getting money to pay for things. For all of us concerned with the degradation of our lived-in environments by noise and air pollution and by oppressiveness of global capitalist corporations, there is the argument that removing the link between money and work will, or could leave us free to address these matters. They will not be dealt with half as effectively by any of the social-democratic parties under a capitalist organisation.

It has got to be a continuing part of Socialist Party philosophy that we seek to reach socialist organisation through peaceable, democratic, consensual ways; we must reject violence. We may feel very angry and we may well understand violence coming about as a result of frustration and feelings of powerlessness, but it is important that we do not condone violence; we must distance ourselves and dissociate ourselves with the destructive and negative.

For me, the breaking of the link between money and work would certainly enable the space and time for us to think about and address the roots of violence, ab-use (physical, sexual, emotional) in our selves as human beings.

Far from being utopian, socialism may simply be the next step for the survival of the human species.

Philip Hutchinson, 

Huddersfield

50 Years Ago: The Alternative to Private Ownership (1967)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The only alternative to the private ownership of the means of production by the few possible today, with the present stage of development of those means, is social ownership—ownership by the whole community. With the means and instruments for the production and distribution of wealth owned and controlled by the whole community there can be no other object in operating them but to produce wealth for the benefit of the community. The means of living belonging to the whole of the people, none is outside their ownership nor, on the other hand, can any person have ownership in these things as an individual, but only as a cell in the social body.

As a consequence of this the whole social fabric must reshape itself. The only means of productively applying it belonging to the community labour-power must come under communal control. No man can purchase it because, in the first place, he has no means of exploiting it, in the second place no worker would desire to sell his labour-power to another since he has the opportunity of exercising it through the communal means, and thirdly, since the whole of the wealth produced under such a system belongs to the community, there is no exchange within the community, and therefore money—the means of exchange— loses its function and its value, and becomes useless for the purchase of labour-power or anything else. The sale of labour-power for wages, then must disappear with the abolition of private property in the instruments of labour. The whole wages system, in fact, must collapse with the change in the property condition, and a new set of relations must arise between social units, in which the relations of master and man can find no place. The class division, by which the people of every country are divided into exploiters and exploited, employers and employed, masters and slaves, rich and poor according as they are propertied or propertyless, must vanish with the rest, giving place to a unified community of workers, socially equal because equal possessors in the economic basis of society— the means and instruments of producing the social wealth.

(From an article by ‘G’ in the Socialist Standard October 1917).

Banks – Who needs them? (2000)

From the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are few places in the world more pointless than a bank. There are few compelled to toil more uselessly than bank employees. In every respect, the function of banks is to facilitate a form of exchange in which nothing is produced and much can be lost. A world without banks would be a wholly better place.

Under capitalism banks are temples to the secular god of Money. These temples have no time for obsolete rituals of prayer and worship, the fool’s dances of a bygone age. In the bank capitalism does its business, in much the same way as a dog in the park does its business, and with remarkably similar effects. People in banks spend their time doing bizarre activities which seem to emanate from quasi-religious commandments. They fill in endless pieces of paper. They count pieces of paper and then recount them to be sure. The high priests sit behind unbreakable glass windows and the unclean feed them with more pieces of paper. There are machines built into walls which, upon revelation of secret numbers, pour out more pieces of paper. Upon these papers are written not one word of intelligible prose, less still poetry. These scribes of the bank are not working on writing dissertations, new equations or even their random thoughts. No, they fill in prescribed codes and figures and in return are given other papers, equally without content, which they guard with their lives.

Some enter the bank as wage slaves, there to count, shuffle and recount for a living. It is work so tedious that now they are training computers to do it so that the bank staff can be liberated to the dole queues. Some enter with grand schemes. These usually involve borrowing, a relationship which calls for much paper-filling, nail-biting and human degradation. Others enter with lost hope. They come to claim what they know is not theirs. They ask to have access to that which the bank machine will not give. They are full of excuses, promises and submission without depth to the petty gods of the counter. But they leave more often than not as dejected and poor as when they arrived. Banks are not there to listen to the cries of the needy.

Unlike the wretched churches of yesteryear, banks charge you for using them. The machine charges for pressing its buttons and the clerks now charge to answer questions about what has happened to your money. Of course, they will not answer very profound questions about where your money has been invested, the rate of profit and how it arises. But even a question about how much of your money they’ve got costs money these days. They even charge money to write you a letter telling you that you have no money. If they owned the pavements they would probably charge you for walking past.

Ah, the wonders of the internet! Now we can do our banking by computer. Bank employees can be sent to get jobs as walking puppets in the Dome while you key in your personal details and . . . clickety click: you’re broke, buster.

Of course, it’s not the sewers that are smelly and unclean, it’s the crap. It’s the same with banks. There’s no harm in banks as buildings. Put a snooker table down the middle and turn the counters into bars and they could be quite jolly. Money is what stinks. Banks stink of money and money stinks of property—yours-mine-not yours. And because we live in a yours-mine-not yours society where few things are yours or mine, but most belong to a small minority who own and control the world, the stench of money prevails.

So, we need to abolish money before we can get rid of banks. But to get rid of money we need an end to property. And you can’t abolish property relations until you abolish capitalism. Good idea. Let’s abolish capitalism and live in a moneyless, propertyless world without bloody banks.

Steve Coleman

Crack Down On Robbery – Abolish The Wages System (1998)

From the February 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much talk about crime and disorder fills the press. New Labour’s neo-Tories compete with one another to invent harsher ways of being “tough on criminals”. They speak as if they are opposed to robbery. But the fact is that they fully support a system which is based upon legalised robbery. Governments, be they Labour or Tory, are the robbers’ best friends and protectors.

There are two classes in present-day society: those who possess but have no need to produce wealth, and those who produce all the goods and services but do not possess the means of production. Between these two classes there can never be peace or stability. The one is enriched at the expense of the other.

According to the most recent United Nations Human Development Report (July 1996) “half the world’s wealth is owned by just 385 people”. The report gives figures to show how just 385 billionaires possess more assets than the collectives GDPs of countries containing 45 per cent of the world’s population. This staggering concentration of economic power is not the result of these billionaires working hard. (Most of the very rich inherit their wealth.) But it is the result of hard work–ours.

The capitalists of the world (by which we mean the millionaire and billionaire monopolisers of the means of wealth production and distribution, not the owners of corner shops or small businesses) are the beneficiaries of a system of organised robbery known as the Wages System.

How does this system work? Most people own little except their mental and physical energies. The one thing we have to sell is our ability to work – our labour power. We sell this for a price known as a wage or salary.

To whom do we sell our labour power? To those who possess the power to exploit it. In short, to the owners of the means of production (factories, offices, farms, mines etc.) who pay us money for producing wealth which they own.

The unique characteristic of labour power, which makes it a particularly valuable commodity for the capitalists to purchase, is that it can produce value greater than itself. In other words, even if workers are paid approximately the value of their labour power, the product of their labour is always greater than that value.

Let us take an example of how this robbery works. A boss employs a worker for £200 a week. For the worker to be profitable they must reproduce the price of his own labour power (£200) and transfer the costs of using capital, i.e.. machinery, electricity, raw materials. But still, having repaid the capitalist’s investment, the worker must produce a surplus: wealth over and above the value of his or her own purchase. This surplus value is the source of profit.

Now, let us imagine that a worker earning £200 a week realises that by Wednesday afternoon they have reproduced their wage: paid back the capitalist’s investment in them. And she has covered the investment in capital. So, they go into the boss’s office (is a boss is to be found in the workplace!) and say,”‘I’ve given you a fair exchange. I’ve received a wage and now I’ve repaid it. So I’m going home to take a rest.” The capitalist (or a managerial errand boy) would soon have to put this worker straight. For workers sell their labour power for a weekly wage or monthly salary and the deal is that they are only offered payment as long as the capitalist can reasonably expect to be able to rob them of the fruits of their labour.

The serious problem of mass unemployment of millions of able-bodied people in this and other countries is a direct result of the need for capitalists to be free to exploit workers for surplus value. A man might have great skill as a bricklayer or computer programmer, but if the wage or salary which they would receive as an employee is unlikely to be repaid by surplus value, then the skill is unused and the human doomed to idleness and hopelessness. No profit, no employment.

So, employment is in reality a system of legalised robbery. Deluded wage slaves have been taught to be grateful to employers for giving them a wage or salary. In fact, this payment is only a fraction of what they produce. It is they, the wealth producers, who are giving an income to the capitalists. It is an unearned income. And it is a thief’s income. For, like all robbers, the capitalists do not steal from the workers on an equal basis. Just as the mugger with a knife takes the purse from an old lady and pleads in court that she “chose” to part with it, so the capitalists maintain that working for them is a “voluntary contract”. And in a sense it is. The alternative to being an exploited wage slave is to starve or depend on the ever-diminished pittance of state charity. Some choice; some voluntary contract.

There is only one sense in which workers choose to be robbed, and that is the acceptance of the working class of the wages system. For most people, this is not an enthusiastic embrace of a wonderful system, but a resigned acquiescence to what seems like an inevitable way of running society. In short, the majority has been conditioned to believe that there is no alternative to being robbed. Just as slaves once believed that there was no alternative to being owned as chattel.

It is time to fight against robbery. The battle need not be wasted on those poor wretches who rob in order to feed their kids. Nor need we waste time on those workers whose robbery of other workers is anti-social and foolish, but only a reflection of their poverty and lack of hope. The war against robbery must begin and end with the system which allows the rich to prosper in privilege and affluence by robbing the vast majority of us. Declare war on the robbers. Abolish the wages system!

Steve Coleman

Abolish the Wages System and . . . (2022)

From the March 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

One short way of presenting the aim of the Socialist Party is to say that we wish to abolish the wages system. Four words of course cannot say everything, but their implications are very wide-ranging in terms of the kind of society we stand for.

This is because the wages system is at the very heart of capitalism. The vast majority of the population have to work for an employer in return for a wage or salary, or have to rely on someone else who does so. Even many so-called self-employed are in practice in a similar situation, as they also need to work for a living. But socialism will do away with this: do away with being forced to perform work that is often boring or dangerous or pointless, and that is undertaken at the behest of and for the benefit of the employer. Instead, the principle of ‘from each according to their ability’ will apply: people will do work that, as far as is possible, will be made interesting and challenging and rewarding and varied and useful, with working hours reduced from now.

Doing away with employment and working for a wage will also involve a fundamental change to how society is organised. Under the present system, the reason why most people have to do waged work is that this is the only way they can get access to the money needed to pay for food, housing, etc. A small minority of the population (less than one in a hundred) own and control the means of production, the land, raw materials, machinery, factories, warehouses, offices, shops and the rest, while those not in this elite group are forced to work for them. This is known as a class division: the capitalist class own the means of life, as is sometimes said, while the working class do not own them and so must work for the capitalists. Abolishing the wages system will imply putting an end to this class system, with its attendant inequality, poverty and exploitation.

Working for an employer involves working for the employer’s profits, which is how the capitalists become so wealthy. Production, then, takes place to make a profit, so only goods and services that are likely to result in a profit will be produced. That’s why there can be unemployed building workers while at the same time there are people who are homeless or living in crowded or substandard accommodation: building homes for these people will simply not be profitable. But ending the wages system, employment and production for profit will mean that houses, along with everything else, will be produced in order to meet human need. It sounds like a simple idea, but it will have major consequences for how society is run and how people relate to each other. It also means that there will be no making goods that are substandard or even dangerous. And with no employment, there will be no unemployment, nobody trying to survive on meagre state handouts.

And if goods and so on are produced to meet human need and wages no longer exist, it will follow that money has no role and there will be free access instead. If you want some fruit and veg, just go along to your local shop (or whatever name is used) and take what you want. Obviously you aren’t going to take more than you need. The same will apply to other foodstuffs, clothes, DVDs, books and all the rest. People will not need to pay to use the train or bus, or to visit the dentist or go on holiday. There may — especially at first — have to be restrictions on free access, perhaps for housing, but ensuring that everyone has a decent roof over their heads will be a priority. The general principle here will be ‘to each according to their needs’.

There will also be no role for government, which nowadays exists to serve the interests of the capitalist class. Administrative functions, such as mending potholes or providing public libraries, will still exist, but the vast machinery of armed forces, police, courts and prisons will have no place. Without a wages system and class division, there will be no rulers, no elites or privileged people, no inequality. People will just work together for the common good.

A society such as this will not be able to exist in just one country, but it will not be international either, as this would imply that nations still existed. Rather, it will be global, with no countries or borders or passports or visas. One worldwide system, without wars, where environmental and climate-related issues can be addressed properly, with no interference from considerations of profit.

So abolishing the wages system does not just mean doing away with your wage packet or salary advice. It also means there will be no employment or classes or money or government or countries. This will therefore have tremendous and entirely positive results for the whole planet and all its people.

Paul Bennett

Material World: Was Money Abolished in Cambodia? (2022)

The Material World column from the February 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Khmer Rouge governed Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. It was an authoritarian regime, possibly responsible for as many as two million deaths, the result of famine and executions. One of its policies still sometimes remembered today is its supposed abolition of money. As self-proclaimed ‘Communists’, the Khmer Rouge leaders allegedly wanted a society with no wages or means of exchange, hence no money.

Some writers claim that this abolition of money had, and still has, negative consequences for Cambodian society. For instance, an article by Sheridan Prasso (eastwestcenter.org, January 2001) claimed that, although money had by then been in use again in Cambodia for over twenty years, its former abolition had made people there distrustful of money, hence their preference for US dollars or gold and the ineffectiveness of the Cambodian financial system. More recently, Anirudh Bhati (mekongresearch.org, 19 June 2018) has argued that Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge had no money, private property or trade, and states that ‘without money — and therefore without effective trade — there is no possible freedom.’ As can be seen, supporters of capitalism have sometimes seen the abolition of money in Cambodia as an argument against socialism, against the very idea of a moneyless society based on free access.

But it simply is not true: the Khmer Rouge did not do away with money in Cambodia. This was pointed out by an article in the October 1978 Socialist Standard, citing contemporary reports of various kinds. There was still exchange of some goods, and rice, fish and rubber were exported in order to acquire foreign currency. Most Cambodians lived on little more than rice, and that probably was distributed without using money, but the Khmer Rouge and their soldiers were better fed and clothed than the rest of the population: privilege need not imply having greater access to money. Ieng Sary, a Khmer Rouge leader, had accepted in 1976 that a monetary system might be set up later, but in fact such a system already existed, even if ordinary Cambodians had few or no dealings with it. As Prasso says, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot ‘apparently concluded that money was fine for the state but not for its people’.

This whole issue was recently raised again by James Tyner in an article ‘“Currency is a Most Poisonous Tool”: State Capitalism, Nonmarket Socialism, and the Elimination of Money during the Cambodian Genocide’ in the open-access on-line journal Genocide Studies and Prevention Volume 14, 2020. He notes correctly that, ‘Marx’s vision of a stateless, moneyless and classless society aimed to encourage the fullest development of human consciousness and creativity’, and then investigates to what extent the Khmer Rouge approached this goal.

Before seizing power, Khmer Rouge leaders had discussed abolishing money, and they announced its supposed elimination in September 1975, just five months after taking control. Workers received food rations, with more for those who performed the heaviest manual labour. Rations were fixed but the working day was expanded, resulting in an increase in what Marx termed absolute surplus value (see Capital Vol 1, chs 12 and 16). But the rulers still needed to ‘raise investment capital for a moribund industrial sector’, and this was done by exporting rice and other goods for sale. Tyner writes that ‘On the one hand, party leaders participated in the monetary-based global economy as state capitalists while, on the other hand, they instituted a non-monetary, non-market domestic economy’ and ‘the resultant economic order of Democratic Kampuchea resembled more so a hybrid form of state capitalism and non-market socialism than it did either a barter economy or an economy of associated producers as envisioned by Marx.’ But there simply cannot be a mixture of state capitalism (or any form of capitalism) and socialism: the former has money, wages, profits, the latter has none of these. The vast majority of Cambodians certainly did not live in a society of free access and democratic control: they were extremely poor and subject to brutal exploitation and oppression.

One noteworthy aspect of his article is the fact that the idea of state capitalism is almost seen as commonplace, not something that needs to be described or explained at length. A footnote defines it as ‘a political-economic system of governance whereby a ruling party controls the state apparatus and in turn manages the means of production in order to appropriate surplus value’, and refers to writers such as Tony Cliff and Richard Wolff.

Marx certainly advocated a society without money (see the Socialist Standard for April 1980), but he saw money’s disappearance as part and parcel of the establishment of common ownership and production for use by workers who supported this and were prepared to make it work. It was not something that could be done by itself, with few or no other changes in society, and certainly not after a military takeover of the state, as happened in Cambodia.

Paul Bennett

Letters: Abolishing money (2010)

Letters to the Editors from the February 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Abolishing money

Dear Editors

Why on earth should there be cuts in any or all of the public services, as intimated by the main three political parties vying for votes in the forthcoming general election? These public services are essential to our health and social wellbeing. At the same time each party advocates and provides support to the very institutions that sap the lifeblood of the nation and spawn malpractices.

The N.H.S, Education, Housing, Old Age Pensions, Transport, Childcare, Single parents, Care of the elderly, are among the most obvious worthy of ongoing and increasing investment and support yet these are being targeted for reductions or, at best, stagnation. This need not be the case. A change is needed, indeed a change is essential and long overdue. And not a weak-kneed Barack Obama style change.

This is an extremely wealthy country in terms of development, infrastructure, skilled technology, inventiveness, art, theatre, sport, social cohesiveness and friendliness etc. but it is gradually losing its way on the altars of greed and possessions and a me-first doctrine. So much of all the wealth derived from the pluses is dissipated and wasted. We have a nation that is engulfed and at the mercy of a monetary system. So many of our recent generations have been persuaded that the pursuit of personal financial advancement is the requisite lifestyle (in the Thatcherite mode of devil take the hindmost) that whatever may be their preferred interests occupationally they gravitate to those which patently offer the greatest scope for achieving fast and vast income providing your scruples are on a back burner and there is no consideration for general wellbeing.

Thus we now have a potentially actively and productively caring and sharing extremely wealthy society based on a powerfully intellectual platform becoming a downgraded self-seeking one that is willing to be antisocial and wasteful and, if need arises adopt criminality, in reaction to an overbearing self important administration which has lost any plot to which it might have once aspired.

The answer, the only feasible answer, is to remove those institutions referred to above by removing the tools of their trade. Abolish money and in doing so recover the personnel space and resources which rightly belong to the people of this country. Consider the beneficial knock on effects of such a move. If you need me to itemise them my phone number is 01793 82XXXX.

E. W. Reynolds, 

Swindon

Reply: 

We agree that money is a barrier to getting things done but we don’t simply want to abolish money. We want socialism – the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources – where money will be unnecessary. And we don’t think that this could be done, as you seem to be suggesting, just in one country –Editors.

No Alternative

Dear Editors

I’d like to contribute to the debate/discussion on globalization.

Marx wrote ‘The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord and the steam mill gives you society with the industrial capitalist,’ and if writing now he might well say that the microchip gives you society with the global capitalist – in accordance with the materialist conception of history as formulated by Antonio Labriola in 1897.

As Marx wrote and as anyone who has made a sustained study of capitalism knows, the centrifugal expansionism of the capital system’s dynamic will drive the system to its ultimate limits.

What the capitalist class and their administrative arm (Maggie Thatcher, Frederick Von Hayek, Francis Fukuyama et al.) want most to instil in the minds of the working class is that capitalist production and distribution of life’s necessities and wants is a natural and, above all, moral system. It is their heart’s desire and ‘wet dream’ that capitalism is viewed as an entelechy, developing itself in a process of self-realization, thereby reducing history to a process without an active, creative, doing subject; an automaton driven by the dead laws of history and nature, i.e., There Is No Alternative.

Globalization, I suggest, is not a tendency nor a phase of capitalism, but the logical progression of the system. Capitalism is almost at its non plus ultra – the only move left it is either to turn and eat out its own guts, devolving into barbarism, or to be replaced with socialism. Our message surely must focus on the planetary destruction and global warming resulting from production for profit that will annihilate the only liveable world we know to exist.

There Is No Alternative – to socialism

J.R. (by email)

What May-Day Means to Us. (1938)

From the May 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Position

For many years past thousands of working-class men and women throughout the world have claimed May-day as their own. They march in procession with flying banners, announcing Labour's rights and aspirations. In some ways this is as it should be; movement means life. Here in London, the chief site in world capitalism, the famous Hyde Park is the stage always set for their declaration of political faith. It is not without social and political significance that the richest city in the world should give rise to these May-day meetings. It provides abundant evidence of the underlying material realities which vitalise such mass demonstrations of our class.

The great contrast in riches and poverty, the immense class division, is here exhibited with almost naked brutality. It may go without saying that, just as there can be no mistake about the fabulously wealthy parts of London through which we march, so there can be no mistake about the class to which those who participate in these demonstrations belong. Any onlooker could hardly fail to understand that those who see fit to thus parade their political convictions reveal that the colossal wealth of modern times neither lines their pockets nor fills their stomachs.

But these May-days come as a happy counter-blast to all this. They mean something of immense and vital importance to men and women who are forced to work for what is little more than bread and butter. They signify a spirit of revolt against things as they are, the sentiments of a class aiming to emerge from the conditions of an age-long subjection.

This is the emotional, instinctive and intellectual yearning behind these working-class assemblies; we say this despite all their confusion of political tongues.

But why do these demonstrations have to take place? Is there no way out for the class which labours to confer riches, rights and privileges upon others, only to leave themselves in the subordinate position of publicly announcing the “wrongs" of the class to which they belong? If there is a way out where or what is it?

We of the Socialist Party of Great Britain are men and women who belong to the working class; we share the same experiences of exploitation and fear of economic insecurity; we know what all this means because we live the part. But we claim to have studied the problems of the workers' lives at their foundation. As a result we are able to declare unhesitatingly that the solution has been found. We know, and can prove our case, that the wealth of the world is produced by the workers. We know, and can prove it, that what the workers can do so efficiently for the capitalist class they can do even more effectively for themselves.

To extract from nature the food, clothing, shelter, and all other things which serve to make life worth while only two elements are essential. These we have at our disposal, namely, Mother Earth and our mental and physical capabilities. How often have we Socialists illustrated this point of view by asking whether any sane man or woman would expect coal to work itself up from the depths of the earth by merely placing money, or what is called “capital," at the top of a coal-mine. Would any of the things, apart from natural conditions that minister to human wants, exist but for the hand of labour? Can there be more than one serious answer to these questions? Yet there are many millions of our class who still cling to the belief that we cannot do without capital or the capitalist; that we cannot dispense with the power of money. Because workers living to-day have not experienced the production of goods without capital or money the really vital elements indispensable to all human existence are forgotten. That the workers are blind as to the actual truth of the position is, of course, not to be wondered at. The modern workers, the wage- slaves of civilisation, are much like the feudal serfs of the Middle Ages and the bond-slaves of old. They are largely dependent upon those who benefit from the proceeds of their exploitation for their knowledge of things. They have been taught and trained to look up to their masters as though these people owed their social position to some divine right or to some special endowment of nature. What has passed under the name of education has been in effect little more than propaganda aiming to secure the continuance of capitalist-class control of the means of life. But we Socialists have revealed the fallacy of the ideas which helped to keep capitalism going. Class domination has its roots in the possession of the ownership and control of such things as the land, mines, mills, factories, ships, railways, in fact, in all those means of producing and distributing the essentials of life. That is the basis of the class division and not any superior mental or physical power on the part of the ruling class. This class possesses money or capital to-day through the operation of historical, economic and social causes. The vast possessions of the modern capitalist class have behind them a record that is largely associated with past murder, piracy, spoliation and robbery, rather than with any mark of superior intellectual ability. In fact, the history of class divisions from very early times is directly connected with conquest, plunder and enslavement. Read its history and it will reveal the facts only too tragically.

But, to come back to our point about file meaning of capital! Those who insist that it is indispensable belie air past human history, besides actually distorting the real significance to the workers. The land and all other things, including money, which are used to-day as agents of wealth production are in themselves no more capital than the moon is green cheese. Capital is wealth, the result of past labour, used to obtain profit. This in turn is but the unpaid labour of the workers. The profit motive is behind all capitalist production. The bread we eat, the clothes we wear, the houses in which we live are not produced for their use, but for profit. Unless there is a profit, or the prospect of it, capitalist production ceases, in fact it would not be started. This will explain, apart from other considerations; why millions of our class are unemployed, are forced to a demoralising idleness: the capitalists can find no profitable use for even the goose that lays the golden eggs. Yet for thousands of years, for by far the greater part of human history, capital was unknown to the human race. Even the extensive use of the precious metals marks but a late stage in human development. The predominance of money as a factor in economic relationships is, in fact, not more than a few centuries old. The point we wish to emphasise is that there is nothing intrinsically indispensable about the great “god" money. The "yellow, glittering gold" of capitalism, apart from its various uses to the present system, is in reality of much less real use to human needs than many of the baser metals. In a really healthy and sanely-organised system of society, wherein profit was absent—could not exist, in fact—there would be no need of such things to facilitate the distribution of the products of labour. Therefore, we of the Socialist Party of Great Britain stand for the abolition of capital because we stand for the abolition of capitalism. The immense productive powers of to-day must be converted into the common property of the community; they must be democratically owned and controlled, through which they would be operated for use instead of for profit. There is no other way out for the working class. The capitalist class must be dispossessed of their control of the means of living, and this can only be done by divesting them of their political power. Those who represent the varied interests of the capitalist class in Parliament are elected there by the workers themselves. Under the guise of specious promises to effect this or that social reform the Conservative, Liberal and Labour Parties obtain the political support of the workers to administer capitalism. Not even the Labour Party proposes to abolish capitalism, despite its frequent use of the word “Socialism" ; it seeks to carry it on in the form of State ownership, with the capitalist receiving interest and compensation under the direction of the State. This is not Socialism, but State capitalism. Although backed by many workers, the Labour Party has proved itself in practice a supporter of the capitalist system. And this will help to explain the Labour Party’s wholehearted support of the War, 1914-1918, as well as its being pledged to support the next war. The workers must learn the fatal errors of their ways. They must get political power to smash capitalism. Until they do this there seems to be little alternative but for them to go on acclaiming resolutions, such as they usually do at these and other demonstrations, calling upon capitalist governments to do this, that, or the other thing for them; they will continue to seek the reform of their slavery and exploitation, where only its abolition will suffice.

The message of the Socialist Party of Great Britain is, therefore, that they must organise with us for Socialism. We stand for the working-class capture of political power by the only method available to-day, namely, through democratic election to Parliament to abolish capitalism and establish Socialism. This is the first and foremost plank in our programme; anything short of this will not do. We neither advocate nor ask capitalist governments for social reforms. Like millions of other workers, we would like to see the end of the means test, unemployment pay increased, schoolchildren well fed, and many other of the demands of the workers met, but the fact remains that, with things as they exist now, capitalism would still be with us, demanding removal. Working-class action must be revolutionary, not reformist. Political catch cries such as “Chamberlain must go," "Down with Hitler," and "Defend the British Empire against Fascism," are useless and dangerous to the real interests of the workers. If Chamberlain goes, who comes? Only somebody else representing the class interest to which Chamberlain belongs. The British Empire: the workers own none of it. Its existence marks the fact of their exploitation. The existence of the Hitlers and Mussolinis is largely the result of working-class inactivity and concentration on social reformist instead of Socialist revolutionary action. When the working class heeds our message it will not fail to take the necessary step to put an end, once and for all, to capitalism and all its Dictators. We picture a world free from exploitation and want, free from wars and the power of Dictators—in short, a world of our own making in which the guiding principle would be the common interest of “ associated humanity."

This is no wild Utopian dream. The material conditions of its realisation are here now, awaiting the understanding and action of the international working class.

Fellow-workers, the Socialist Party of Great Britain appeals to you to look to your own interests through Socialism.

Robert Reynolds

"Check to the Bishop." (1920)

"The Bishop"

From the October 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bishop Welldon is very amusing: he asks ridiculous questions and raises a laugh—against himself ! As witness the following :

  "What can be more ridiculous amongst the Labour parties than that the very men who clamour for the abolition of international warfare should be the first and foremost to declare industrial warfare by striking again and again for increases of wages.
  "If arbitration is the proper means of settling disputes among nations it must be the proper means among classes too. If the hope of civilisation lies in the League of Nations, is there no hope in, no need of, a league of classes?"

-"Daily News," 25.8.20.

Like most of the men in clerical camps, he suffers from confusion of ideas when he deals with economics and politics.

There is one thing, though, that he has learned, namely, that THERE ARE CLASSES in our present day society.

That is a good basis from which to investigate the composition of the social structure ; it will lead him to understand why there is a class division, and may possibly lead him to understand the principles of Socialism.

The bishop speaks of the Labour parties, by which I take it he means the whole of the various groups supposed to represent the interest of the working class, as though their two mentioned activities were inconsistent and absurd. They are: (1) clamouring for the abolition of international warfare; (2) declaring industrial warfare by striking again and again for increases of wages.

These things are quite understandable, for the first, international warfare, means that it is working class who have to wage war on behalf of the master class, and have to risk physical and mental ruin, and death itself, for the war-making capitalists.

They have to destroy in warfare, the workers of other countries, who are similarly pitted against them.

The workers of all lands are wage slaves. They have the same miserable lot, of whatever race they may be. Also, let Bishop Welldon understand, they have one common foe—the capitalist class the world over.

And bishops, whether well done or only half baked, generally can be relied upon to back up the latter most religiously.

With regard to the workers "declaring industrial warfare by striking again and again for increases of wages," it would be well for the Bishop to grasp the fact that, so long as the wages system continues there will be strife between those who own the means of wealth-production and those who operate those means for wages.

The workers are only allowed access to the instruments of labour in order that they may produce more wealth than they have returned to them in the form of wages, hence they are exploited—robbed. And as a natural consequence they try to lessen the extent of that exploitation by struggling for increases of wages. Even a bishop would do the same.

And the strike—the withholding of our labour-power—to gain a tiny advantage is one of the weapons that labour is self-defensively compelled to use. The employers, on their part, make war on labour—generally with success. They "speed up" production on the one hand, and on the other eliminate wherever possible anything that threatens their chance of extracting surplus-value from the economically forced labour of their slaves.

But bishops, as a rule, don't see that side of the shield. They want the wheels of industry running smoothly so that Rent, Interest, and Profit shall be assured to the class to which they belong. And they supply the oil of admonition in order to keep the workers docile, diligent, and contented in the position in which "Providence" places them.

What we of the Socialist Party have to declare stoutly is that the working class don't go for the root of the matter—only the Socialists do.

We of the S.P.G.B. are out for the abolition of the wages system—the result of the private ownership of the means of life. We want the workers to grip the fact that it is just this— the way in which these means are used against our class by our exploiters—that causes all the misery.

We desire the overthrow of the capitalist system, and in its place the establishment of Socialism. Then production for the use of all will take the place of the pernicious production for the profit of a few, and a new and splendid era will open up for mankind.

Mere clamour against international warfare will not prevent its occurrence. War after war will and must be waged while capitalism lasts. Why? Because under capitalism it is the conflict of capitalist groups that starts the war machinery, and the battle field is the arena where is decided what fails to be decided in the political ring.

The Bishop thinks highly of arbitration. He considers that if it is the proper means among nations it must be the proper means among classes too.

Let it be said right here that we of the S.P.G.B. say the day of arbitration is long past.

We wage war against CAPITALISM, and therefore are out to rid the earth of it. We look on it as the social upas-tree, whose very shade is blighting !

And the world's workers, when they are educated in economics and Socialist principles, and organised for the capture of political power, will soon annihilate it root and branch.

There is no hope for a capitalist-formed "League of Nations": thieves who quarrel over the commercial "swag" once will quarrel over it again !

There is no hope of a "league of classes. " The Bishop, if he thinks, must admit it to be "ridiculous."

We want the abolition of the system causing the class division. We desire the speedy overthrow of the bloody system that is built up out working-class slavery and exploitation.

We are out for SOCIALISM !

Graham May

50 Years Ago: French “Communists” support wages system (2020)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 37th Congress of the French trade union centre, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), voted last November to change its statutes. It threw out the phrase “abolition of the wages system” (disparition du salariat et da patronat) and substituted “socialisation of the means of production and exchange” (socialisation des moyens de production et d’échange).

Of course the paper aims of an organisation tell us very little about what it actually does, but they can tell us how its members and leaders think. The CGT is led by members of the French Communist Party. So it is particularly revealing that they should wish to remove a phrase which Marx described as revolutionary and specifically recommended trade unionists to adopt.

It is also a measure of the French Communist Party’s aim to reform rather than abolish capitalism that their trade union centre should adopt instead so meaningless a slogan as the “socialisation of the means of production and exchange”. The means of production arc already socialised in the sense that they can only be operated by social, co-operative labour. This has already been done by capitalism; what Socialism will do is to end the class monopoly of these means, to establish social or common ownership as well. The CGT’s new aim cannot mean this as the social ownership of the means of exchange (banks, etc) is a contradiction in terms. When the means of production arc socially owned, wealth will be produced purely and simply to satisfy human needs. Production for the market, or exchange, will disappear and along with this banks and other commercial and financial institutions.

(Socialist Standard, April 1970)

Editorial: Let’s have free access (1971)

Editorial from the February 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Abolish money? That’s impossible.” Is it? Surely all we need to produce wealth are human beings who are prepared to work and materials from nature. So if it is impossible to abolish money, it cannot be because money is an essential ingredient of the production process.

Before we go any further let us establish what money is. The metal discs and coloured paper which people carry around with them are not money. They are only almost worthless tokens for the real thing— gold. Gold of course is itself wealth in that it is the product of human labour on nature-given material. This is an important point since many people assume that money itself is not wealth, but merely a voucher entitling a person to so much wealth of his choice.

Money is useful wherever wealth is exchanged. Exchange is a simple word whose meaning should be clear —when things are exchanged one is given in return for the other—but it is commonly confused with distribution. When things are distributed they are not exchanged; they are merely being taken from one place to another. The work involved in this is strictly speaking part of the process of producing wealth. Money, then, does not distribute wealth. Wealth is distributed by men loading and driving lorries or trains or ships or planes.

Perhaps this confusion arises because the word “Distribution” means sharing-out as well as dispersing and so fits in well with the mistaken view that money is a voucher entitling a person to such-and-such a share of the wealth that has been produced.
Historically, the most common kind of exchange has been that of equivalents and this is the only kind that need concern us now. So much wheat would be given in return for so many sheep or so many pots in return for so much cloth. This process of barter is cumbersome and becomes impractical when exchange grows to any extent. At this stage the need is felt for something that can be exchanged for anything else — money, for that is what money is, an item of wealth that can be exchanged for any and every other item of wealth. We can now see why money is itself, and must be, wealth. For, with the exchange of things of equal value, nobody is going to give his wheat or sheep or pots or cloth in return for something that is not worth the same.

Exchange implies something else, too. It implies that the wealth to be exchanged is owned by different people. After all, if one person or one community owned all the wheat as well as all the sheep, the question of exchanging them just would not arise. Exchange presupposes the private ownership of wealth.

This is why the establishment of the common ownership of the means of production and distribution will mean the end of exchange and so the disappearance of money. All the wealth that is produced, as well as the means and instruments for producing and distributing it, will belong to the whole community so that the problem will be simply to distribute it to where it is needed. This is just a question of organisation. When the wealth has reached the stores then people can freely take of it what they need. This — free access — is our alternative to money.

We are witnessing how the other alternative works in the present upset over the introduction of a decimal coinage in this country. The official propaganda, a vastly expensive advertising campaign, has been directed at getting us to understand the new system and to accept it. We have seen the photo-strips of the crotchety old lady being won round to a decimal enthusiast. We have had, coming through the door with the detergent coupons, the booklet from the Decimal Coinage Board.

And we have been told that it is all to do with efficiency. Decimals will be easier to work, the system will save money in the long run. It will bring the British currency somewhere into line with those of other countries and, as we point out elsewhere in this issue, is a step towards a common European currency. What this amounts to is that decimal coinage is an efficiency measure designed to benefit British industry and commerce, by which is meant the owners of industry, by which is meant the British capitalist class.

It has yet to be demonstrated, how “efficiency” helps the other side, the people who have to bumble through the shops with the unaccustomed coinage, the people who have to worry about whether they are being swindled in the changeover, the people whose lives depend on the wage which comes in the form of money. The interests of these people — the working class, the vast majority of society — are not concerned with “efficiency” or export drives or international trading tie-ups or rearrangements of currencies.

What the change to decimals does show up is the basic inefficiency of capitalism. The apologists for the system tell us that money is itself an efficient thing, that it oils the wheels of production and distribution. Yet here we have had a situation in which those same apologists have been telling us that money is a hindrance, that the different currency systems lead to inefficiency and we need a huge, expensive, time consuming propaganda campaign and a mighty upheaval to adjust it all.

Yet if we are interested in efficiency (as we are) there is something which is of top priority. If we want a society where wealth can move around the world freely, where it can be produced as human beings need it, we must think about a system which excludes money. The capitalist social system hinders distribution and restricts production. Its priority is not efficiency but profit for a minority. It must be swept away and replaced by Socialism, the world of free production and access.

The Socialist Objective (1983)

From the December 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

  With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then for the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man. who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of Nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history — only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the realm of freedom.

The above passage is taken from Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Frederick Engels. It has a number of important points to make about socialism which this article will examine further.

1. Abolition of Commodity Production

Capitalist production is geared to creating wealth in the form of items for sale on the market with a view to profit. Wealth produced primarily for sale rather than use takes the form of commodities. A socialist society will do away with commodity production and will produce solely for use. This means that buying and selling will no longer take place and money will be obsolete. In a system based on free access to goods and services members of the community will not need to purchase from themselves the wealth which they already possess. Along with all other commodities, human labour power will be abolished as an item of sale: the abolition of the wages system will give way to a society of cooperative labour where each will give according to ability and take according to need.

2. Organisation, Not Anarchy

The capitalist system cannot be planned. The market gives rise to anarchy because its economic laws are based on speculation rather than the efficient measurement of social needs. Periodic crises are endemic to the profit system. In a socialist society, where the means of wealth production and distribution are owned and controlled by society as a whole, it will be possible to use the technology of mass communication to allow decisions to be made by the community about the best ways of satisfying human requirements. Of course, democracy will not always lead to the right answers and socialist society might occasionally suffer as a result of wrong decisions but, unlike capitalism, at least production and distribution will be regulated.

3. No More Individual Struggle for Existence

In the capitalist jungle people are forced to compete in order to survive. Worker is set against worker in the struggle for jobs and promotion and decent housing. Socialism is based on the recognition that the individual is not able to survive without society, and therefore the individual aims which capitalism conditions into us must be replaced by the understanding that only by co-operation with our fellow human beings can we exist in comfort. Unity is strength; in socialist society individuality will not be replaced by Maoist grey uniforms, but it will be understood that humans can only express themselves fully as social beings.

4. From Animal to Human Conditions

Unlike our older animal relations, human beings have the capacity to control the environment. Animals are, to a great extent, the inevitable victims of nature. Human beings have the unique ability to understand and change our conditions — to become "the conscious lord of Nature". Hundreds of years ago. when our forebears had yet to dominate their surroundings, they invented the myth of god which was supposed to be the prime mover of all things, natural, and social. These days there is the myth of "human nature", often used by anti-socialists to argue that social behaviour is fixed within the mould of capitalist social relations. Consciousness is the tool which makes it possible for humanity to master its social environment.

5. Making Our Own History

In the past most people have been pawns in the game of ruling class history. Socialism presents the possibility of making our own history in line with conscious plans. Planning does not mean that socialist society will determine its affairs in accordance with some master plan or blueprint. To plan on the basis of conscious thought is quite different from the undemocratic, centralised planning of capitalism. Of course, there is one other crucial difference between capitalist and socialist planning (or history-making): the capitalist planners are nearly always incapable of predicting what is going to happen to their system in the near or distant future; only in a society of conscious human control can it be meaningful to make decisions about the future.

6. From Necessity to Freedom

Capitalism sets up its own needs: it cannot avoid wars, unemployment, and mass starvation. Well-intentioned reformers want to see these symptoms of the capitalist disease — or, needs resulting from the power of capital — eliminated without ending capitalism. As the history of reformism has shown, this simply cannot be done. Only when we have removed the cause of these problems will they no longer be necessary. In "the realm of freedom” needs will be determined by the men and women (Engels refers to "man" but means both) who inhabit society.

If you read the Object of the Socialist Party, which is printed in every issue of the Socialist Standard so that nobody need be in any doubt about what we stand for, you will see that it is consistent with Engels’ vision. Clearly, socialism does not exist in countries like Russia. China, Cuba and Albania, where commodity production still exists, and where the features of socialism outlined by Engels are far from present. Socialism has never been tried, just as capitalism at one time was a system in the historical future. When a majority of workers want and understand socialism it will be established.

Steve Coleman