Vote for yourself for a change . . . (1983)

From the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The capitalist system is fundamentally undemocratic: it does not run in accordance with the wishes and needs of the majority, but to satisfy the material interests of the small minority who accumulate rent, interest and profits. In Britain, capital ownership is confined to a very small minority: not only does one per cent of the population own more of the accumulated wealth than the poorest eighty per cent put together, but they have access to areas of power, information, communication and luxury goods and services which are not within the price range of the vast majority. Three quarters of all daily newspapers in Britain are owned by just three massive companies. The statistics of inequality are similar throughout the capitalist world; indeed, there are countries in Africa and South America where the ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution are in the hands of a few powerful families who, between them, determine the destinies of millions of human subjects.

It is nonsensical to speak of genuine democracy within a capitalist world when the vast majority of people — the working class, who do not own capital, but must live by selling our labour power for a wage or salary — is excluded from control over the resources and productive machinery of the earth. The workers have never been consulted as to who will own and control the vast multinational companies; there are no referenda called before the commencement of trade wars in which thousands of workers’ lives are wasted; the editorship of the Guardian or The Nine O’clock News has never been a matter for working class election; the millions who are starving in a world of potential abundance were never asked to cast a vote for malnutrition.

The workers run capitalist production and distribution from top to bottom but have no ownership or control. The minority, who live in affluence on the backs of the wealth producers, are in no position to determine precisely how capitalism will run. They are, of course, entitled to ensure that decisions made are socially beneficial to themselves rather than the workers, w'hose economic interests are diametrically opposite, but they are not able to plan the system with any accuracy. Capital, as a social force, is uncontrollable even by the capitalist class. For example, most capitalists would love to have a society where there was no war, no unemployment and no working class discontent. The anarchy of the profit system does not allow the bosses to govern the system: it governs them. So. capitalism is undemocratic not only because the majority class of people is alienated from the means of living, but also because it is impossible to plan capitalism on the basis of democratic decisions for the market, with its profit priorities, is a dictator which cannot be controlled by votes.

The only way to establish human control over society is to create socialism, which will be a democratic world society based on common ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution. Once we have done away with classes, markets and profits we will be able to take hold of this global village called the world and run it in direct accordance with democratically expressed human needs. The way that socialism will be organised will have to be decided consciously and democratically by the working class at the time of the establishment of the new system: we in the Socialist Party of Great Britain are unable to lay down blueprints for the next stage of social evolution. We can, however, make some comments about the advantages of worldwide socialist democracy.

Firstly, the new system would enable humanity to collect and use information on a global basis. At the moment countries duplicate the storing of necessary information about production and distribution; they often spend their time trying to mislead trade competitors as to what the real situation is or keeping secret knowledge which could make world production much more efficient in relation to human needs. World information authorities which exist at the moment, often under the auspices of the United Nations, are often ignored by governments because the statistical possibilities publicised by such bodies all too frequently are in conflict with the market capacities of capitalism. So, in a world socialist society there would be worldwide collection and storage of information relating to production and distribution. Such information could be handled with case by the computer technology which has already been invented, but which is presently used for the useless purposes of military communication and world trade.

Secondly, socialist society will utilise the information technology which has been developed within capitalism in order to allow every human being to have a say in matters which they feel to be important. Of course, not every person in a socialist society will want to be involved in every decision; democracy does not mean that all people must contribute to all decisions made by society, but that all people will be able to do so. On hearing this, the opponent of socialism has often asked whether it will be the case that every human being in a democratic socialist society is going to meet together in Wembley Stadium and put up their hands for or against a particular proposition. We would doubt very much whether four billion people are going to fit into Wembley Stadium — and we doubt even more whether the inhabitants of Peking or Mexico City will know the nearest tube station to Wembley! Of course, those who present such an objection are hopelessly caught up within the primitive thinking of capitalism which only allows them to envisage democracy in terms of some sort of grand tribal ritual. Society now has technology to enable human beings to sit in their homes and buy food from the local supermarket by pushing a button; business conferences are held with executive managers sitting in front of television cameras in London, Tokyo, New York and Moscow. These modern means of communication must be placed at the disposal of the whole community, who will make decisions on all the available evidence. Such decision-making will sometimes involve the entire world population but. needless to say, it will not require four billion people to decide whether to build a dual carriageway on the stretch of motorway between Hexham and Newcastle.

Thirdly, socialism will create a democracy where those who disagree with the majority will be free, within the confines of implementing the majority decision, to live in accordance with their own desires. It is quite possible that upon the establishment of socialist society there will be some people — perhaps millions — who are religious: they would be able freely to indulge in their primitive superstitions. Under capitalism, to be a nonconformist is to face problems ranging from psychological persecution to capital punishment; socialism will depend on the right of men and women to assert their individuality, but will require them to remember at all times that democracy is the only workable alternative to tyranny.

Democratic political action

There are two accusations which are often thrown at socialists: one is that we are Utopians who want to create a society of perfection; the other is that we are undemocratic and seek to impose our aims on a society which does not want it.

Socialism was only a Utopian proposition when it was detached from the concept of democratic change. The old Utopians, like Owen. Fourier and Saint-Simon wanted the new system, but imagined that it could exist without a socialist community to run it. It is only when a majority of the world’s workers understand and want socialism that it becomes a practicable proposition. The new system will not be free from problems but — and this is the essential qualification — a socially conscious world community will be infinitely more capable of dealing with those problems than is the present working class which is alienated from real social power. The socialist proposition depends entirely on the capacity of men and women to think consciously and to act responsibly. That is why, when the defenders of capitalism have been defeated in discussion on every single aspect of their outdated social system, as they invariably are, they always resort to the final argument of the anti-socialist: It's Against Human Nature. Of course, if they were correct and humanity was incapable of mass consciousness there would be no possibility of creating a democratic society. Curiously enough, many of the historically paralysed minds which assert confidently that humans are incapable of running society for ourselves insist that they are convinced democrats. We have all met the opponent of socialism who is sure that he or she would be quite capable of acting consciously within a democratic world society, but you'll never get everyone else to behave so intelligently. Capitalism's ideology of anti-democracy is based on the myth of inherent inequality; once workers realise that what they can understand, want and do others can also we will be ready to make our move to the next stage in history.

Do socialists seek to impose our aims on an unsuspecting majority? Alas, we could carry on insisting that socialism can only be established democratically until Ronald Reagan's hair turns grey; there will always be someone who will not believe us. Opponents of socialism will point to the Bolshevik revolution and to those anti-democrats who support its tactics today and, quite correctly, conclude that such socialism has nothing to do with democracy; it simply changes one ruling class for another. We go further and say that such so-called socialism has nothing to do with either socialism or democracy. It is nonsensical to imagine that you can impose social liberation on a majority of people who are content with the system of exploitation, oppression and misery. The socialist task is to take the discontent which capitalism inevitably engenders within the working class and to educate the discontented to reject the system which is the cause of their social problems and to establish socialism. Of course, capitalism is an undemocratic system and therefore socialist persuasion and education is made very difficult by the virtual monopoly by the capitalist minority over the means of education and communication. But we have on our side a valuable weapon: the experience of the working class which does not conform to the false ideas thrown out by the capitalist propaganda machine.

There will be no socialist revolution without socialists. The socialist revolution, unlike all those before it which have depended on the substitution of one ruling minority for another, will require a conscious majority. But it requires more than that: there can be no socialism without democratic political action. What form will that action take? Where democratic elections are held, workers will need to use our votes, not to elect the representatives of capitalism, but to elect delegates whose sole mandate will be to transfer the legal ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution from the minority to the whole community, without any distinctions of race or sex. Of course, capitalism's elections are never going to be completely democratic, but they are sufficient barometers of social consciousness to be used by the working class for the purpose of capturing political power. In those countries where democratic elections do not exist socialists must use their energies to create such institutions, either by putting pressure on the state or — perhaps — by setting up their own rival democratic institutions which the ruling class will be unable to ignore. In Britain, however, the political task of socialists is to capture power by means of the democracy of the ballot box; the fact that the ballot boxes are under the legal control of the capitalist class does not deny their validity as an instrument of revolution, any more than the potentiality of a blade to cut one’s throat denies its usefulness as an instrument for shaving.

Those who claim to be democrats and support the undemocratic system of capitalism are no more democrats than the Russian dictatorship is socialist. Democracy, in its fullest and most exciting sense, has yet to be tried by the inhabitants of our society. At the moment, to want power is considered a greedy and rather unpleasant aim; that is understandable, because power under capitalism means power to deny power to the majority. Socialists want power to produce what we need to survive, to live in comfort and to be free. Let those who stand against us tremble: the democratic revolution will not go away as long as men and women have brains in our heads. 

Steve Coleman

Democracy and the Silicon Chip (1978)

From the September 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Karl Marx once said that the hand mill gives you feudalism and the steam mill gives you capitalism.  Had he lived for another hundred years, he might have added with a wry smile that the computer gives you Socialism.  The ways in which human society can be organised, is organised and ought to be organised depend on the techniques and resources which can be used in its running.  The idea of a society where no one goes hungry and all co-operate to control the conditions of their existence is no more than a pipe dream unless there is the wherewithal to translate idea into reality.

It is the case of the SPGB that the wherewithal is there.  The potential for providing for everyone’s needs has been created by capitalism.  Thanks to the development of machinery and automation, wealth can be produced in quantities which would have been unthinkable in earlier phases of human society.  However, one of our greatest difficulties in getting anyone to accept our view is to convince them on just this point.  For its truth is masked in capitalism.  The potential for plenty is there, but it cannot be made actual.  A profit system can only work with a labour force compelled to sell its energies.  If an abundance of the necessaries of life were freely available, the system would grind to a halt.  (Who would work at the kinds of jobs on offer in our society if they did not have to?)

We do not ask anyone to take our word for it that the problem of producing enough wealth has been solved.  Rather, we refer them whenever possible to the facts unearthed by non-Socialists who are particularly concerned with such issues. (See, for example, in our pamphlet Questions of the Day, the chapter on the myth of overpopulation, and our Canadian companion party’s pamphlet A World of Abundance).  In this way we hope to show that hackneyed prejudices about human greed are irrelevant and that, far from being a pipe-dream, a society based on common ownership is a practical necessity.

But this is only one aspect of our case.  Our aim is not just common ownership; it is democracy.  For us, democracy is not an optional extra or simply a means to an end.  It is part of our end, as anyone can discover by reading our Object on the inside back cover of this journal.  We define Socialism as “. . . common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth . . .”

What do we mean by democracy? Amongst other things, a world in which people are not bossed around by a government or told what to do by their “superiors”.  More positively, a world where everyone takes an equal and responsible part in making decisions which affect society, without the strife which is inevitable in a class-divided society.  That is one reason why we say there will be no socialist society until a majority desire it.  As long as most people are content to be told what to do by elected representatives there will be no democracy in the sense defined.  (Not that an electoral system is completely worthless.  More of that later).

At first sight, this suggestion of literally everyone taking part in social decisions may seem as unrealistic as the earlier one of common ownership.  Surely, it might be said, these matters have to be left to the experts, and surely modern populations are far too large for active participation by everyone?

Objections like these are meat and drink to political theorists and political philosophers.  They think the point so obvious that they state them far more often than actually arguing for them.  Yet they are not obvious.  In view of the demonstrated failure of legions of experts and government advisers to solve any of the major problems of civilisation, the less said about expertise the better.  On the other hand, numbers may seem a genuine problem.  How can millions of people all have a say in running society?

The answer, once again is that this would be a mere “good idea” unless the means were available to make it a reality.  And the means are available.  Here, too, it is a matter of pointing to existing resources and developments within capitalism.  It would be futile for us to offer a blueprint, of course.  The exact form the future democratic society takes will depend on the historical circumstances prevailing when it is established.  But there are aspects of the technology already available which show how large numbers of people could be drawn into the decision process.

Communication is the lifeblood of capitalism.  This is reflected in the facts that by 1975 over 95 per cent of households in Britain had TV sets, 53 per cent had telephones, and world traffic in telecommunications has continued to grow at a rate of 12-15 per cent per year (much higher than the rest of world trade).  If no vested interests were involved, and if there were a desire for it, imagine how much useful information could be disseminated and how far the ordinary citizen could participate in decisions, just by replacing one old American film every week with an information-and-decision programme.  People listen to proposals for some project (say, the building of a new playground or power station), discuss the issues by phone-in, and then ring in to some central point with their vote for or against.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg.  Developments are now taking place which will put phones and TVs in the museum along with the stone-age axe.  The device which will be responsible is the microelectronic silicon circuit.  It is about one centimetre square and is made, incredibly, of grains of sand.  In effect, this “silicon chip” is a tiny computer, enormously efficient and dirt-cheap to produce, which has been responsible for bringing together computer and telecommunications technology in one all-embracing “information technology”.

The first fruits of the marriage will be available next year when the Viewdata system goes into public service.  This will make available to its select customers 100,000 pages of information, any part of which can be called up on a screen literally at the touch of a button.  Not only that, but the system will be fully “interactive”—which  means that as well as it giving you information, you can give it information, which it will then store.  Even the feeblest imagination should be able to grasp the implication for democracy.  Such technology gives the opportunity for the population to keep themselves better informed and to take a more active role in decisions than at any time since the small city-states of ancient Greece.

But back to reality.  Viewdata is being developed in capitalism, which means it is first and foremost a commercial venture.  It will be used not for the sake of participatory democracy but to store information for its customers—advertising agencies, financial institutions, mail order firms and the like.  Moreover, systems of this kind have already begun to cause headaches in America, producing the telephone equivalent of junk mail and the hard sell.  The micro-computer works its way methodically through a list of victims, automatically ringing them up to relay its recorded message to buy someone’s goods.  You may not want to buy them, but it’s no use putting the receiver down because the computer will automatically continue to ring you back until you have heard it out.

And that is the least of it.  This potential boon to mankind is not just proving to be a nuisance:  it threatens to produce a crisis.  Microelectronic technology is so flexible it will be throwing people out of skilled jobs such as making precision watches and cash registers.  In the UK telephone equipment industry alone the number of jobs is expected to fall by 30 per cent between 1976 and 1979.  How far the capitalist system can cope with these far-reaching consequences is a problem for those who continue to support it.

Not to labour the point, here as elsewhere capitalism is double-edged.  The system has itself called forth instruments which could, in a different framework, be of untold benefit.  But under capitalism their use is perverted and only means further trouble.  Once again, therefore, the implication is clear that we must change the framework.

The development of information technology is double-edged in a further way.  At the turn of the century most political organisations depended largely on outdoor meetings for getting their message across.  With the widespread introduction of radio and TV this ceased to be true for the larger and richer parties.  But the gap which thus opened up has begun to close again.  The SPGB has managed to snatch the odd few minutes of broadcasting, and no doubt if capitalism lasts long enough we shall also, like our companion party in America, come to have our own programmes.  For the technology developed by capitalism for its own needs eventually becomes available for those who wish to replace capitalism.  The computer will make the dissemination of Socialist propaganda an easier and more efficient affair.

That it is something for the future.  For the present all we can do is make the best use of our limited resources in what is at least a relatively open political climate.  In Britain we can publish a journal and make tapes of our meetings without the threat of immediate persecution.  In a one‑party state like Russia we could not.  We do not exaggerate the extent of this freedom: it costs a lot of money to exercise it fully, and we know that such political freedoms as we have now can be withdrawn.  But equally we do not underestimate its importance. (Only a person who had never imagined living under a totalitarian regime would do that).  A climate of tolerance is useful to Socialists.  It is also fragile, and constantly endangered by our opponents of left and right.  Their policies of confrontation and smashing this, that and the other serve only to make it easier to place further curbs on political activity.  We received tangible proof of this recently, when one of our London branches lost the use of its meeting room in a pub as a result of threats between other organisations which use the room.  The SPGB will have no part in such tactics, and the only force we shall continue to use is the force of rational argument.

A number of points have been made in this article to show that out aim of a democratic society is a practical possibility.  There is also another kind of evidence—that of example.  The structure of the SPGB is democratic, foreshadowing the future society we advocate.  We have no leaders or ruling groups.  Though we cannot afford a computer or even to become a customer of Viewdata, our affairs are run according to the decisions of the entire membership through instructed delegates at Annual Conference, and all our officials are elected annually, again by the entire membership.  Any organisation can claim to be in favour of democracy.  We ask to be judged not on what we claim but on what we do.  Having nothing to fear from the presence of non‑members (welcoming them, in fact), we have never held a closed meeting in our entire history.  That is completely in keeping with our conviction that the revolution to establish the Socialist democracy will not be ours; it will be a revolution itself decided upon by a majority of humanity.

Bill Valinas

Sources

The General Household Survey 1975

The Times 1st March 1978

The Times (Supplement) 4th April 1978

The Future is Socialism (1978)

From the April 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Throughout history, man has sought to increase his power, that is, his ability to act. The successive stages of social development have corresponded to the development of human powers and, the last four hundred years, the era of capitalism, have seen the greatest and most dynamic expansion yet of those powers. Now, as previously, mankind is progressively extending what it can do, but, with the exception of certain rare instances, man’s past development has been more or less in step with technological possibilities. At present, however, there is generally a vast gulf between what is technologically and humanly possible and what is actually realised and the contrast between the two and the question of how to reconcile them is the most pressing problem that confronts man today.

Concrete examples of this problem can be found daily in newspaper reports. They inform us amongst other things: —

• that food is not produced in a sufficient quantity to relieve the starvation of millions—despite the fact that it is technologically possible to feed the world;
• that schools, hospitals, factories, homes, etc., are not built in sufficient numbers to satisfy the need for them—despite the necessary materials and manpower being available;
• that not enough of the many other items that are necessary for a pleasant human existence are produced—despite the existence of the requisite powers for their production;
• that artistic and intellectual development, and scientific and medical research is limited—despite the vast human potential for such development;
• that millions of people in the world (whether officially unemployed, or employed in uncreative jobs) are deprived of creative activity and the opportunity to usefully employ their talents—despite their desire for creativeness.

The news reports, however, are largely superficial—they record the effects of the problem but they do not generally look at its cause. The cause of the problem is not technological or human but social: it is the result of the way people relate to each other.

A society is an association of people for the promotion of a certain common function or purpose. These social functions are conducted within the context of a definite social organisation, that is, certain fundamental relationships between society’s members. Today’s society is organised on the basis of the minority ownership of the means of living (the factories, the land, the railways, etc.) while the majority of society’s members are deprived of such ownership and are therefore dependent for their livelihood upon the minority who own.

Because of their ownership of the means of living, the minority have an advantage over the majority and can generally use this advantage to promote their own interests even when they conflict with the interests of the majority. Thus while it might be in the interests of the majority for more food to be produced, more buildings to be constructed, more medical facilities to be provided, etc., it is not necessarily in the interests of the owning class—and if it isn't, the development of these things is limited. The main criterion for whether or not something is in the interests of the owning class is whether or not it will create them profits. Today, profits are made in the process of commodity production and are realized in the sale of the commodity (an item of wealth produced for sale) on the market. Thus where there are not the market conditions to make the production of a commodity profitable, that commodity will not be produced. It is for this reason that man's potential for abundance and development is not fully realized, as progress is restricted by the present social organisation and its market in which the general rule is NO PROFITS, NO PRODUCTION.

It is therefore class division, which is basic to the present form of social organisation, which today causes the great gulf between what is possible and what is actually realized in the field of wealth production. The solution to the problem of how to realize man’s full potential lies therefore in the replacement of the present social organisation with a new social organisation in which everyone owns the means of living in common—that is, Socialism.

As the means of living will be owned in common, so too the produce of society will belong to everyone. Each person will have equal rights of access to the social produce, each will determine her/his own needs and take freely from the common stock of wealth produced. This concept of wealth distribution is termed “free access”, and it means precisely that. For in Socialism wealth will not be bought or sold on a market, it will not be exchanged for money, but rather it will be made freely available so that anyone who needs it can take it.

Abundance

Because it will not be restricted by the market and the profit motive, production will be able to realize the abundance that it is technologically capable of. Production in Socialism will be of useful and necessary items, to satisfy society’s needs, not for profit. Further, because there will be no market, the work currently done by millions of people will become unnecessary. Socialism will not need the services performed by those who work in the vast finance departments of governments and businesses, or those who work in banks, insurance companies or building societies (after all, there will be no money!). Nor will it need the many policemen, security guards, ticket collectors and shop assistants whose essential task it is to ensure that wealth is only possessed by those who have “legally” acquired it. Also, Socialism will not require armed forces, legal and judicial systems, nor the vast propaganda organisations (e.g. the church) whose main tasks are the maintenance of the dominant position of the minority owning class in each national territory and the subjugation of the majority. Instead of doing these socially useless jobs, the people presently undertaking them would, in Socialism, together with those who are now unemployed, be enabled to be creative. They would be so enabled because they would own the means and instruments for such creativity which the present social organisation denies them. Thus Socialism will mean the liberation of mankind from such useless and uncreative work and the mobilisation of all human abilities for the extension of human abilities.

Work in Socialism will be on the basis of voluntary co-operation and the democratic administration of society. The production and distribution of wealth will be controlled by the whole of society. Just as at present there exists in Britain a national grid system for electricity, which, under a central board, assesses market demand for the product nationally, and maintains supply in all areas, so too, in Socialism there will be a sort of worldwide grid system for all wealth, which will assess people’s needs, regulate production accordingly, and maintain the requisite supplies to all areas. Socialism will also involve the rational use of resources and areas, using those resources and areas for the activities to which they are best suited.

Organisation

The social organisation of Socialism will be under the complete control of society’s members. There will probably be delegate assemblies and all administrators will have their functions delegated to them by society. However the exact form which democracy in Socialism will take, cannot be stated here, for that very form must itself be the result of a great and serious democratic debate. Further, the development of technology which could aid democracy is progressing; for example, in a relatively short time it might be possible for society to produce powerful computer devices in suitable sizes and in sufficient quantity to make them widely accessible, thus enabling a potentially vast expansion of readily-available information as well as facilitating mechanisms for the frequent registration of opinions. One thing is certain, however, Socialism will be the most democratic form of society possible, and, as the means of living will be owned in common, no minority will be able to enforce its will upon the majority by threatening to withhold their livelihood.

Because no one will be in a position to coerce others, all work in Socialism will be voluntary. Obviously in order to live people will need to produce wealth, but such production will not take place in coercive or exploitative conditions. Instead, each person will contribute to society as much of their talents and abilities as they are willing to give. Due to the fact that the producers will no longer be exploited (robbed of the full fruits of their labour) in the course of production; nor forced to work in conditions which are sometimes detrimental to their health; nor deprived of creativeness in work; nor forced to compete with one another for pay and promotion; nor forced to labour in circumstances which they don’t fully control; nor forced to divide their activity between employment and “leisure” (neither of which are fully satisfying)—work in Socialism will be a pleasure, a definite end and need in itself. Mankind will, for the first time, be in complete control of its circumstances, it will create and recreate its circumstances, it will venture to the very limits of its potentiality, it will continually extend itself to an extent that could never be achieved under the present social organisation. Mankind, in Socialism, will be revealed as the supreme creative artist, we shall constantly beautify and redesign our world, we shall perpetually increase our power, we shall continuously acquire more knowledge. In the future, having liberated itself from the restrictions of the present social organisation, mankind will mobilise all of its abilities for the extension of its abilities.

That future is Socialism, but it is no more inevitable than anything else which requires human action for its achievement. What is needed, is for all those who have an interest in introducing the new society (the vast majority) to realize that interest and to unite and organise with likeminded people for the purpose of taking the requisite action to change society.

Brian Philips

Socialism and Planning: What Can Work (2019)

From the July 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

The impossibility of ‘One Big Plan’

In any kind of society, people need to plan. Even in the most gung-ho, ruggedly individualist laissez faire society imaginable, there would be plenty of planning. Entrepreneurs would have to plan what and how much to produce, along with the requisite quantities of material and labour inputs needed, in the face of market uncertainty. No large-scale system of organised production can function without planning.

Obviously, this would be true also of a future socialist society though, according to some commentators, what distinguishes socialism from capitalism is not the need to plan but, rather, the number of plans needed. In short, the sheer scale of planning.

In capitalism, literally millions of plans are implemented every day. Most obviously, this is because there are literally millions of separate competing enterprises operating in a capitalist economy – from some giant corporation like Walmart to your local self-employed plumber. Thus, capitalism is a ‘polycentric’ system – meaning it has multiple planning centres or bodies. Those millions of plans are said to mutually adjust to, and mesh with, each other in a quite spontaneous, or unplanned, fashion via the market mechanism and in a way that purportedly benefits everyone in accordance with Adam Smith’s quasi-theological concept of the Market’s ‘Invisible Hand’.

‘Socialism’, argue these commentators, would be very different. Instead of millions of bodies each striving to implement their own plans, there would be just one single planning body and one single vast plan encompassing the totality of production. Meaning there would be conscious, society-wide, ‘central planning’ in the classical sense of this term.

This, it is argued, is because the entire apparatus of wealth production would be socially owned. There would be just one ‘owner’– society itself. However, society-wide planning is not a necessary corollary of social ownership. Even within a large capitalist corporation today, though it is owned by those who hold equity in it (and who thus exert ‘ultimate’ control over it), there are numerous gradations of control below this level of ‘ultimate control’. Different departments or branches of the same corporation often exercise a considerable degree of initiative in planning their activities. Even within each department or branch we see gradations of control in the form of a managerial hierarchy.

Of course, the workers filling the various positions in this hierarchy don’t own the corporation they work for. They don’t exert ‘ultimate control’ over the corporation which is what real de facto ‘ownership’ boils down to – having the final say over the disposal of the corporation’s assets. But they do exercise some control, albeit within certain limits.

The point is that the numerous operational decisions affecting the corporation’s performance don’t all emanate from a single source. Of necessity, a great deal of decision-making is devolved down the managerial hierarchy. Only the most important decisions get to be made at the top.

If a single entity like a corporation today is obliged to implement a ‘polycentric’ model of decision-making, then how much more true would this be of a future socialist society embracing all humanity? Of course, this is not to suggest the organisational structure of a future socialist society would be modelled on that of a hierarchical capitalist corporation.

Lenin once famously depicted a post-capitalist world in The State and Revolution (1917) as one in which, ‘The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labour and pay’ (he soon enough abandoned the idea of ‘equal pay’ on taking office). No doubt the dictatorial principle of ‘one-man management’ ruthlessly imposed by the Bolsheviks on Russian workplaces would similarly apply in Lenin’s imaginary post-capitalist world. Socialists see nothing appealing about this top-down version of what a socialist society is supposed to look like.

From our standpoint, it is entirely possible to envisage the world’s productive resources being owned in common by the global community yet subject to a complex system of polycentric democratic planning – with multiple plans being implemented at different spatial levels of organisation: global, regional and local – (depending on the nature of the ‘resource’ in question). While under capitalism, ‘planning’ likewise takes a polycentric form, minority class ownership of the means of wealth production invests it with a thoroughly authoritarian character. This is where any comparison with socialism ends.

Common ownership of the means of wealth production eliminates the very possibility of one individual or group exercising economic leverage over another, compelling the latter to comply against its will. In fact, socialism is the only conceivable basis upon which a truly free society can flourish.

Society-wide planning

Nevertheless, the idea still persists in certain circles that socialism would be a system based on society-wide central planning. Let’s examine this claim more closely to see why this cannot be so.

There are literally millions of different kinds of goods produced in a modern economy. Some of these (‘consumption goods’), in order to be produced in sufficient quantities to meet the demand for them, depend on the availability of other goods (‘production goods’) that likewise need to be produced in sufficient quantities to ensure enough of the former are produced. To produce production goods requires yet other production goods to be produced. Sometimes, the number of inputs needed can be truly mind-boggling. For instance, a single Boeing 747 plane is reckoned to have approximately 6 million component parts, supplied by hundreds of suppliers scattered right across the globe.

In an idealised system of society-wide planning, the requisite quantities of all these millions of consumption and production goods that society needs will have to be calculated in advance by the single planning centre and expressed as ‘production targets’ for each and every good within some vast Leontief-style ‘input–output’ matrix or table. Calculating these production targets does not simply involve finding out the aggregate demand for each good; one would also have to take into account the ‘technical ratios’ involved in producing them – something that, in theory, can be done through a method called ‘linear programming’ which we will look at later.

So, if a particular good – A – consists of two components, X and Y, and if it takes 2 units of X and 5 units of Y to produce 1 unit of A, then you will obviously need 20 units of X and 50 units of Y if you want to produce 10 units of A. This could change if your method of producing A changes. Let us say due to some technological innovation it now takes 3 units of X and 4 units of Y to produce 1 unit of A. If you stuck with your original production targets for X and Y – namely 20 and 50 units respectively – you won’t have enough units of X to produce 10 units of A while, at the same time, you would end up with a wasteful surplus of units of Y.

Incompatible with socialism

Looking at this simple example, we can begin to see why this concept of ‘society-wide’ planning is completely incompatible with socialism.

Firstly, it is pretty obviously impractical for any kind of large scale system of production, let alone socialism. To successfully implement this society-wide plan would require the production targets for each of the millions of consumption and production goods to be precisely calibrated and then exactly fulfilled right across the board. Any deviation from any one target would have knock-on repercussions that would jeopardise society’s ability to meet all those countless other targets because of the interdependent nature of modern day production.

Even something as simple as a typhoon in Indonesia or a crop blight in the American Mid-West could seriously disrupt supply chains, resulting in shortages of some goods and surpluses of others. The plan would then have to be completely redrawn and, in the real world, since changes happen all the time, what this means is that the plan would never get off the drawing board. It would need to be constantly revised by the planners.

Moreover, for the plan to be successfully implemented, this would require a moratorium on any kind of technical innovation. This is because technological innovation, as we saw, tends to alter the aforementioned ‘technical ratios’ involved in the production of goods, thereby altering the production targets of the inputs needed.

Some enthusiasts for central planning argue that the exponential increase in computing power in recent years now makes the concept quite feasible. However, this is to misunderstand what the problem is about. It is not the lack of sufficient computing power that makes the concept impractical but, rather, the attempt to apply it to the real world when the latter is constantly changing. Saying that ‘the plan’ can be rapidly adjusted to accommodate any change in the real world means simply that it loses its quality of being a ‘plan’ – something that is supposed to guide production in an a priori sense. The application of such computing power then becomes simply the means of tracking, rather than initiating, changes in the real world. This is a very useful faculty to have but it does not technically amount to ‘planning’.

Secondly, and more importantly, the very nature of socialism itself rules out the concept of society-wide planning. The two outstanding features of a socialist society that are relevant here and spring directly from the very fact of common ownership of the productive resources of society are, firstly, that individuals will have free and unfettered access to society’s stock of goods and services and, secondly, that they will freely and voluntarily cooperate to produce these things.

Society-wide planning flies in the face of both these core social practices. To take the demand side of the equation first, how can one possibly ascertain in advance what people want if their appropriation of goods is self-determined? It is not logistically feasible to carry out a global survey of over 7 billion people and then compile a list of production targets for the considerable array of consumer goods they might want. It would also be completely pointless given that what individuals want can change from day to day. This is to say nothing of the fact that the global population can expand or contract.

Instead of free access, what a centrally planned economy would have to institute is some form of universal rationing. People will need to be told what they can consume even if they had earlier been able to vote on the matter. Very likely, this would lead to an asymmetrical distribution of power in favour of a bureaucratic elite tasked with devising and implementing this system of top-down rationing and ensuring compliance. Creeping corruption and re-emergence of some kind of class-based society would be the probable outcome.

Then there is the supply side of the equation – specifically, the labour inputs needed to produce what society wanted. To ensure that, the planners would have to impose some form of compulsion requiring workers each to perform a certain quantum of labour (in order to meet the Plan’s multiple targets) as a condition for gaining access to the goods and services they needed. Not only that, these workers would also have to be subjected to a compulsory division of labour to ensure the proportionate application of labour inputs required to meet all those production targets specified in the Plan: you couldn’t just choose what work you wanted to do, or when.

As the Bolshevik, Leon Trotsky, revealingly noted in 1920:

  If we seriously speak of a planned economy, which is to acquire its unity of purpose from the center, when labor forces are assigned in accordance with the economic plan at the given stage of development, the working masses cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers … Deserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps.

Exactly. What socialist could possibly endorse this capitalist apology for a workhouse system? As one commentator has noted, Trotsky’s recommendations are reminiscent of the Poor Laws enacted in Elizabethan England to combat the problem of vagabonds and beggars, as the rising bourgeoisie saw it, driven off the land by the Enclosure Acts and deprived of a means of living (‘Capitalism and Planning’, Libcom)

The voluntary nature of work carried out by the freely associated citizens of a socialist society would thus have been utterly obliterated. In short, we would have regressed back to something very much like a system of waged slavery that is the hallmark of capitalism.

(Next month the need for feedback).

Robin Cox

Link to Part 2.

Socialism and Planning Part 2: ‘Feedback’ (2019)

From the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

Socialism and Planning: The Need for Feedback

Last month we explained why socialism could not possibly be organised on the basis of ‘society-wide’ planning – that is, a single vast plan encompassing everything. Though the numerous production (and distribution) units would obviously all be engaged in planning, the overall pattern of production would be unplanned. Meaning it would be the emergent outcome of many different plans. What would ensure these plans co-ordinated to produce a coherent outcome is something called ‘feedback’.

Any large scale, technically advanced society requires information in the form of feedback to function. ‘Feedback’ is an attribute of dynamic systems, when the ‘outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop’ (Wikipedia). In this way the system is able to adjust its behaviour to accommodate changing circumstances.

The market is a good example. A contraction in the market for frozen fish fingers, perhaps because of some scandal concerning contaminated fish stock, causes a drop in prices and a decline in profits, resulting in some factory closures and reduced output. Here the relevant information takes the form of market prices. However, there is another kind of feedback system that operates alongside market prices and is, in fact, of far greater significance inasmuch as any kind of large scale society (including capitalism) utterly depends upon it. This is the feedback intrinsic to a ‘self-regulating system of stock control’.

Here, the basic information takes the form, not of prices, but of physical quantities – for example, counting the number of cans of baked beans stocked in your local supermarket. This is called ‘calculation-in-kind’. The supermarket simply tracks how many cans have been removed from the shelf – these days this is often computerised – and calculates the quantities needed to sufficiently replenish the stock to meet future demand, (taking into account the rate at which it is being depleted). That automatically triggers an order for fresh stock from the suppliers.

The beauty of the system is that any shifts in the pattern of demand can be picked up and almost instantaneously responded to, given the power of modern computer technology. This is precisely the kind of feedback system a socialist society can make full use of, enabling it to monitor and respond to the fluctuations in the demand for any conceivable kind of good produced in that society. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. This system already exists and functions today under our very noses.

Misunderstanding socialism

In a chapter entitled ‘Understanding the Market’, Norman Barry lists three possible ways of ‘organising a society for the production of wanted goods and services’ – altruism, central command and the market:

  Altruism presupposes that individuals, without either the incentives of personal gain or fear of punishment, will satisfy the wants of others in a system of generalised reciprocity. It is now generally agreed that this places impossible burdens on a fragile human nature and on human knowledge. In a large society, even if people were uncommonly well-disposed towards each other, how could they know what others’ wants were? In fact altruism is only conceivable in very small communities where there is broad agreement about ends and purposes (The State or the Market, 1991)

Since socialists reject both ‘central command’ and the ‘market’, it would seem we are left with only ‘altruism’ with all the limitations Barry imputes to it. However, his argument is plainly wrong on two counts.

Firstly, to take his point about not being able to know what other people want, this is simply not true. It seems to naively assume that to do that you have to directly ask them what they want. Now it is certainly true that customer surveys and the like can provide useful pointers when it comes to product innovation and design but it would be impractical to canvas the entire population; only a small sample is required. It is also unnecessary since, as we have seen, the great bulk of information concerning individual wants in a socialist society can be acquired indirectly in an aggregated form via the aforementioned procedure of stock control. Since this is an open-ended procedure, the question of the size of the society is completely irrelevant.

Secondly, regarding his point about motivation, it is misleading to suggest that socialism would be a society based purely on altruism. For sure, people can and do behave altruistically and a socialist society will draw abundantly upon this very human quality of feeling concern for the wellbeing of others. Barry equates this altruistic concern with a ‘system of generalised reciprocity’ but fails to properly comprehend what that means. Yes, it denotes helping others out of concern for their wellbeing without expecting any direct or immediate return (what is called a quid pro quo transaction). However, it emphatically does not mean there is no expectation whatsoever of these others reciprocating in due course. It is not purely altruistic in that sense – as the very word ‘reciprocity’ itself suggests.

Actually, ‘generalised reciprocity’ denotes a system of moral, (rather than economic) transactions, governed by the ethos that we should all contribute to the common good rather than free ride on the contributions of others. It implies a generalised expectation that we help each other rather than just one-sidedly sacrifice our own interests for the sake of others. As such, this is a fair description of the kind of social dynamics that would operate in a future socialist society. It is not something completely unfamiliar to us today or necessarily confined to only small scale face-to-face societies. Even under capitalism, there are plenty of examples around. Indeed, the internet itself has been compared to a gigantic ‘gift economy’. (http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Gift_Economy)

Ironically, the accusation that socialism ‘places impossible burdens on a fragile human nature’ in assuming humans should expunge any concern for their own interests – can be thrown back at critics like Barry himself. If according to the market ideology they embrace, individuals are purely driven by self-interest, then why do the great majority today put up with a social arrangement that so demonstrably works against their interests? Why permit a tiny owning class to accumulate vast fortunes at their expense? Clearly, it is not out of self-interest that workers allow this to continue.

Economic calculation

Apart from enabling us to respond to the ever-changing pattern of consumer wants, feedback in the form of a self-regulating system of stock control will also facilitate the efficient allocation of resources by ensuring these are allocated in a way that economises most on those that are least abundant. Here, we are alluding to the ‘Law of the Minimum’ formulated by the 19th century agricultural scientist, Justus von Liebig, who demonstrated that the total output of a crop is determined, not by the total amount of resources available for plant growth but, rather, by the scarcest resource or ‘limiting factor’ – for example, nitrate fertiliser. Increasing the supply of this input would then mean some other input becoming the limiting factor – perhaps, irrigation water. The point is that it is entirely possible to grade all the relevant inputs required to produce a given output in terms of their relative availability and determine the degree to which this constrains output.

In 1920, the Austrian economist and prominent opponent of socialism, Ludwig von Mises, published a tract called ‘Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth’. In it he set out to prove that socialism was impractical since, without market prices, it would be unable to make the economic calculations needed to efficiently allocate resources. As he put it:

  It would be evident, even in a socialist society, that 1,000 hectolitres of wine are better than 800, and it is not difficult to decide whether it desires 1,000 hectolitres of wine rather than 500 litres of oil. There is no need for any system of calculation to establish this fact: the deciding element is the will of the economic subjects involved. But once this decision has been taken, the real task of rational economic direction only commences, i.e., economically, to place the means at the service of the end. That can only be done with some kind of economic calculation. The human mind cannot orientate itself properly among the bewildering mass of intermediate products and potentialities of production without such aid. It would simply stand perplexed before the problems of management and location. It is an illusion to imagine that in a socialist state calculation in natura can take the place of monetary calculation. Calculation in natura, in an economy without exchange, can embrace consumption-goods only: it completely fails when it comes to deal with goods of a higher-order. And as soon as one gives up the concept of a freely established monetary price for goods of a higher-order, rational ownership of the means of production, rational production becomes impossible. Every step that takes us away from private ownership of the means of production and from the use of money also takes us away from rational economics.

Mises could not have been more mistaken. His unwarranted belief that calculation-in-kind could apply only to consumption goods and not ‘higher order’ production goods stems from a peculiar blind spot at the very heart of his ‘economic calculation’ argument. This is the taken-for-granted assumption that the allocation of these higher order goods would be undertaken by a single planning authority acting on behalf of society – what he meant by his ‘Fuhrer principle’. As we saw last month, that means establishing, in advance, production targets for each and every one of the millions of different production and consumption goods in the economy within a single giant plan.

However, what that does is to eliminate the very possibility of a feedback system and, therefore, a means of efficiently allocating resources. If, instead, you had a polycentric system of planning in place this would permit such a feedback system to come into play and thus enable you to rationally allocate resources in the light of known stock levels.

Contrary to Mises’ claim, calculation-in-kind is applicable not just to consumer goods but ‘higher order’ production goods too. Thus, if a particular consumer good, M, consists of three components, X, Y and Z, it is entirely possible to calculate how much of M we can produce, given the available supplies of X, Y and Z. If there were sufficient supplies of X and Y, but not enough of Z, to meet the demand for M (thus making Z the ‘limiting factor’ in this example) you then have two options if you want to fully satisfy the demand for M. Either you modify the ‘technical ratio’ (discussed in Part One) involved in producing M so as to reduce the quantity of Z needed or you divert supplies of Z from other end uses. This latter option would entail ‘opportunity costs’ that can be readily quantified in terms of the reduction of output for those other end uses.

In either case, the Misesian claim that socialism cannot resort to economic calculation to efficiently allocate resources is refuted. What remains to be done is to establish the social priorities to guide resource allocation (which Mises conceded was possible) and, also, when to switch resources from one end use to another depending on supply and demand – neither of which strictly relate to the question of ‘economic calculation, as such.

The first boils down to a question of society’s values. Establishing a hierarchy of production priorities (perhaps informed by concepts like Maslow’s famous ‘hierarchy of needs’ model) might, for instance, entail classifying different consumer goods according to a rough-and-ready ‘points system’ to guide resource allocation. The second, concerning when to switch resources, could make use of such indices as the rate of take up of particular lines of stock or planning tools like consumer surveys. In neither case is pinpoint accuracy required; what matters is that the general thrust of decision-making broadly moves in the direction society deems desirable and that we have the means of ascertaining what society desires by fully utilising all the available means of communication.

Mises never really grasped this way of looking at socialism because he was too fixated on the idea that it would be a system of society-wide central planning. However, as we have seen, that precludes the very possibility of feedback so crucial to the refutation of his entire theory.

Robin Cox

What Could Socialism be Like? (2016)

From the October 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism will be a global society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the world’s natural and industrial resources. But how might this work? How will production, decision-making and culture be affected?

Production

There will be a complete transformation in the calculation of resources, and their production and distribution. In capitalism articles of wealth (commodities) are produced to be bought and sold on markets, at a profit. This trade in commodities generates: waste; pollution and externalities; overproduction and under -production; built-in obsolescence; quantity over quality; crisis and booms; poverty amidst plenty; employment for some and a waste in human potential for most; and obscene wealth for the few.

With no commodity production and trade there will be no exchange value and prices, just the inputs and outputs of resources and human needs. The decision-making process will aim to ensure there’s sufficient stock control to meet projected needs through calculation in kind.

This decision-making process will also configure: environmental impact assessments; a high standard of quality control and durability; positive recycling – where products will be deliberately designed so to ensure that they last longer and when they are passed their usefulness all their component parts are easily recycled into other useful products; and transportation miles for distribution of human needs so the shortest journey possible is covered. This efficiency of calculation will ensure the energy required for producing needs will be kept to a minimum and promote the production of renewable energy sources.

Decision-making

Here the system will be participatory delegate democracy. In capitalism political parties represent the sectional interests within the capitalist class with all of them competing for political control of the state and its machinery of government. With no sectional interests to  be represented when there is common ownership, there won’t be political parties or a state machinery. Nonetheless, major issues will be thrashed out with decisions being made on what’s the best course of action for gaining a successful outcome.

A bottom up decision-making process involving voluntary participation cannot be imposed by a hierarchy or a vanguard or the concept becomes meaningless. The basic building block is the community or neighbourhood assembly, face-to-face meetings where citizens meet to discuss and vote on the issues of the day, not that there will need to be a vote on every issue as most of day-to-day work carried out will be routine. These assemblies elect mandated and recallable delegates who then link with other assemblies forming a confederated council, a ‘community of communities’. The difference between this form of delegate democracy and our current form of representative democracy is that in a representative democracy power is given wholesale to the representative who then is free to act on their own initiative. In a delegate democracy the initiative is set by the electing body and the delegate can be recalled at any time should the electing body feel that their mandate is not being met, thus power remains at the base.

Culture

Due to the impact of common ownership on the global community there’ll be even more of an increase in cultural choices and options than there is under capitalism. Unrestricted to the social conformity of private property relationships, individuals and communities will be able to focus on an ongoing celebration of freedom of expression – leading to an increase in cultural diversity.

Leisure activities are likely to increase in scope and decrease in size. Presently, with package holidays the most affordable way of taking a break from the drudgery and monotony of the production line or the office, they are the most popular form of holiday.

In socialism, where the principle of free access underpins the common ownership of the means of living, our options and choices on travel and holidays would be extended and influenced by what positive contribution we can make to the country we are visiting. And with package holidays and mass tourism a thing of the past, it is likely holidays in socialism would not be restricted within a timescale of 10 to 14 days of hectic hedonism, but transformed into an unique opportunity to stay in a particular location for as long as it takes to understand the history and culture of that region. In effect the transformation in the social relationships from private property ownership to common ownership will radically alter our perception of culture, leisure and travel.

Human nature

But wouldn’t all this be against human nature? No. Socialists make a distinction between human nature and human behaviour. That people are able to think and act is a fact of biological and social development (human nature), but how they think and act is the result of historically specific social conditions (human behaviour). Human nature changes, if at all, over vast periods of time; human behaviour changes according to changed social conditions. Capitalism being essentially competitive and predatory, produces vicious, competitive ways of thinking and acting. But we humans are able to change our society and adapt our behaviour, and there is no reason why our rational desire for human wellbeing and happiness should not allow us to establish and run a society based on co-operation.

Needs have a physiological and a historical dimension. Basic physiological needs derive from our human nature (e.g. food, clothing and shelter), but historically conditioned needs derive from developments in the forces of production. In capitalism, needs are manipulated by the imperative to sell commodities and accumulate capital; basic physiological needs then take the historically conditioned form of ‘needs’ for whatever the capitalists can sell us.

Social evolution suggests that no mode of production is cast in stone and the dynamics of change also affects capitalism as a social system. Studies of social systems with distinct social relationships related and corresponding to their specific mode of production have identified, for instance, primitive communism, chattel slavery, feudalism, and capitalism. All of these societies changed from one into another due to the contradictions inherent in that society and also due to technological advancement which each society found itself incapable of adapting to. Capitalism reached this point over a century ago. It’s time to move on to socialism.

Gravedigger

Decision-making in Socialism: How to Meet Needs? (2017)

From the March 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

In January – February 2017 the journals of the American leftist organization Solidarity (Solidarity and Against the Current) published a stimulating article by Sam Friedman entitled ‘Creating a Socialism that Meets Needs’. The author considers how production decisions might be made in a socialist society.

First a few words on Friedman’s political affiliation. His conception of socialism is broadly consistent with that of the World Socialist Movement (WSM), though he may have a different understanding of the road leading to socialism. He makes positive references to several works of Raya Dunayevskaya, who was Trotsky’s secretary during his Mexican exile but broke with him in 1939 over his insistence that the Soviet Union remained a ‘workers’ state’ (she regarded it as state capitalist, as we do). She then created a new school of thought that she called “Marxist Humanism’. Thus the author appears to belong to a tendency that has its origins in the Trotskyist branch of Leninism (Bolshevism) but has moved some distance away from Leninism and toward genuine socialist positions.

Consistent conceptions of socialism

Returning to Friedman’s article, why can we say that his conception of socialism is broadly consistent with ours? Above all, because he contrasts his own conception with the ideas of most other recent left-wing writers on post-capitalist society, who advocate a ‘market socialism’ in which worker-owned firms still hire labour and compete with one another to sell commodities on the market. He argues (as do we) that even if such a system were initially to differ in some ways from current forms of private or state capitalism it would inevitably degenerate into them.

In the author’s conception of socialism production is guided not by blind market processes but by decisions consciously and democratically made in the interests of the community as a whole. ‘Exchange’ is replaced by distribution. Aggregate output is no longer measured and assessed in terms of ‘growth’. All this corresponds to how the WSM views socialism or communism.

In contrast to Leninist doctrine, moreover, Friedman does not relegate this non-market and needs-oriented system to the remote future of a ‘higher stage’ of the new society – ‘communism’ as opposed to ‘socialism’. It is to be established immediately upon the conquest of power by the working class.

How to determine needs?

Like the WSM, Friedman states that production in socialism will be ‘for use not for profit’ and that its purpose will be to ‘meet human needs’. This, however, leaves unanswered the question of how to determine what human needs are.

Our literature frequently gives a simple answer to this question. Individuals will decide for themselves what goods they need. They will have free access to distribution centres where all desired goods are available in abundance. The advance of automation and robotics has made it technically possible to generate such abundance with a minimum of human labour. Elimination of the waste inherent in the money system will also play its part. (‘Money – a waste of resources’, Socialist Standard, July 2011).

On the other hand, we have also suggested that socialist society may for various reasons make a democratic decision ‘not to produce certain things even if quite a few people want them’ (‘Free access to what? Some problems of consumption in socialism’, Socialist Standard, July 2007).  Another article made a specific suggestion that socialist society might decide not to produce cars (‘Cars and socialism’, Socialist Standard, March 2013).

The author makes a similar point when he argues that ‘needs’ for specific kinds of goods will be met only after they have been ‘socially validated’ – that is, after all the possible negative as well as positive consequences of their production and consumption for people and for the environment have been assessed through the democratic institutions and procedures of socialist society. The needs of the community are to be determined socially and not just by aggregating the expressed needs of individuals.

Friedman’s emphasis on the social validation of needs is connected with his view of socialism in its early stages as a system operating under great stress. He does not view it as a society of abundance. This is not to say that he denies the potential for abundance. Rather, he foresees that by the time that socialism is established the human race will be embroiled in severe climatic, environmental and social crises. Top priority will have to be given to the tasks of coping with and gradually overcoming these crises. Enormous efforts will be required to halt and reverse global heating, care for masses of environmental and other refugees, and improve the living conditions of the world’s slum dwellers.

For a considerable period, therefore, the potential for abundance will not be fully realized. The author speaks only of achieving a ‘decency living standard’ for everyone. For instance, the choice of crops to grow will have to depend not primarily on what people prefer to eat but on how susceptible their cultivation is to drought, floods, and other extreme weather events (this example is ours).

A dual structure of decision making

Friedman’s conception of decision-making in socialism, like that of the WSM, consists of two elements. The first is the proceedings of elected councils at various levels, supplemented by procedures of direct democracy such as referenda. The second is the ‘requests’ (Friedman’s term) or ‘orders’ – the term used in the article ‘Supply and needs in socialism’ (Socialist Standard, July 1984) – that circulate within the network of production and distribution for material inputs required to maintain stocks of consumer goods at levels sufficient to meet individual needs.

For this sort of dual structure to work well it is necessary for the division of tasks between the two elements and their mode of interaction to be clear and effective. For example, the councils could concentrate on major decisions concerning the overall pattern of production facilities and supporting infrastructure. In order to prevent overloading of their agendas, fraught with the risk of neglect of their proper function, they must avoid entanglement in detailed decision making – although they might issue guidelines to assist those responsible for making detailed decisions.

Routine operational issues are better handled by direct consultation between workgroups. Provided that requests are reliably fulfilled, their circulation should achieve the desired result automatically. However, Friedman seems to envisage the councils functioning as clearing houses that receive and coordinate requests, assess how ‘reasonable’ they are, and find workgroups able and willing to fulfil them.

Reliable fulfilment of requests?

Why does Friedman assign this burdensome task to the councils? The key point is that he does not assume that workgroups can be relied upon to fulfil requests that they receive. A workgroup may deny a request because it disagrees with the associated production decision – he thinks it should have the right to do this – or for less legitimate reasons, in which case it might be subjected to ‘gentle community and perhaps organizational social pressure’ (whatever that may mean).

But how can the true motive be discerned? Surely all denials of requests would be justified by reference to the sole legitimate rationale – principled disagreement. For example, a factory might refuse to fulfil a request to change its output mix to meet new consumer preferences on the grounds that it considers the request ‘frivolous’ when its real concern is to avoid the inconvenience of reorganizing its operations.

By definition socialism is a society of free people. They cannot be compelled to do what they do not want to do, either by brute force or (as in capitalism) by threats to their livelihood. We have to assume that they will be sufficiently responsible and self-disciplined voluntarily to do whatever may be required to implement a democratically made decision, even if they disagree with that decision – unless, arguably, they have good reason to regard the decision as dangerously incompetent (if, say, a council has approved an unsafe design for a nuclear reactor). Otherwise socialism will have to acquire effective means of compulsion, but then it will be socialism no longer. This is one reason why socialism has to be established by a majority of conscious socialists.

Stefan

World Socialist Party of the United States

What is Socialism? (1963)

From the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is often criticized for not being “practical ” or for not putting forward any proposals for today. But this is not the point.

The Socialist Party does not exist to campaign for petty reforms within the capitalist system. It is the instrument which the working class can use to gain control of the machinery of government. Once in control the workers can use this machine to dispossess the capitalist class by declaring all the means of life the common property of all society. This will allow the workers to take over the industries and to keep production going in the ways they will have worked out beforehand.

As soon as the last capitalist has been dispossessed then classes will have ceased to exist. It will no longer make sense to speak of a working class and a capitalist class. Everybody, including the ex-capitalists, will have the same status as free producers. Not that things will immediately be startlingly different from what they were before. Production will have to be kept going. Although such jobs as bank clerks and ticket inspectors would disappear, engineers would remain engineers and, perhaps, railwaymen, railwaymen.

The main point is that we today don’t know and can't really imagine what conditions will be like immediately prior to the capture of political power so that we can't say exactly what the problems that will have to be faced afterwards will be. But we earn say this. The conversion of the means of life from the private property of an exploiting class to the common property of society will establish the framework within which can be solved once and for all the problems which the working class face today precisely because they are the working class. Even today we can see that the world is quite capable of producing enough for everybody if only production were arranged with this object in mind. Socialism will allow this to happen.

The economic problem which Socialist Society will have to solve is that of organizing those able and willing to work to produce the food, clothing, houses and all the other articles men need to live. This problem is by no means small and it is important to realise what the problem involves. It has three aspects:

First, what articles are to be produced? Clearly there will be room for a wide choice here. Socialist society will have to decide what it needs most.

Second, how shall these articles be produced and by whom? There is also a wide range of possibilities here: mass production, handicraft and the many combinations of both.

Third, how shall those articles produced be divided among the world’s population?

Though capitalism faces the same problem these questions are not consciously asked and the answer has always been provided by the impersonal workings of capitalism's laws. Socialism will allow society to ask and answer these questions consciously. This is what planning means. Men will have control over the means of production to use them as they think fit. Under capitalism there can be no genuine planning as the market is the real king. Firms turn out goods and hope the market will absorb them. Socialist society will estimate what will be needed in advance and then produce it. Allowances for changes in taste and natural disasters can be made by producing more than is needed as a kind of insurance.

One of the most important problems to be faced is how much of production should be articles to be consumed directly by the people and how much should be devoted to renewing and expanding the factories and places where the other articles are produced. The point is this: the same problems which the laws of supply and demand and capital accumulation arc supposed to solve under capitalism will still have to be faced by society under Socialism. However, the abolition of private property and the conversion of the means of life into the common property of mankind will allow society to set about tackling questions of economic organisation in a scientific way. This emphasis on planning means that the information available will have to be the most accurate possible. Social planning will also raise the question of how much social control should be exercised from the centre and how much from the locality. This is a further problem Socialist society will have to meet. Socialism will not, of course, be a static society. Changes in ways of producing things, ways of living and behaving will continue. Just as living patterns have changed under capitalism in the last fifty years or so with the invention of television, wireless and the like so will there be similar changes under Socialism.

As soon as the capitalist system has been abolished distribution will be direct. This means that money will not intervene. It will have become redundant as soon as common ownership has been established.

How articles are distributed will to a large extent depend on how many articles and of what sorts there are to distribute. It may well be the case that for a short time it will not be possible for people to take as much of every article as they think they might need. The reason for this is simple, it takes time to produce articles and even longer to build factories and cultivate fields so as to be able to produce more. In this situation it would be for people to adjust their requirements to what was available, recognising that such shortages were temporary anyway and that eventually production would match up with distribution as the new society progressively removed the obstacles left over from capitalism.

Another change will be in the field of “government." Government of people will disappear. This means that those parts of the government machine which actually make it a government machine, namely, armed forces, law courts, etc., will disappear as soon as possible after the capture of political power. This does not meant that all administration will disappear; on the contrary; the idea of social control is essential to Socialism. It just means that the coercive government machine will have been transformed merely into a clearing house for settling social affairs. This clearing house will be a part of the administrative machinery through which the economy will be managed.

With the disappearance of politics and the political state will disappear also political parties. This does not mean there will be no disagreements; of course there will. Men and women will directly participate in discussing and organizing production for what they consider to be their own benefit. This is why the Socialist Party insists that you cannot have Socialism without the great majority of people desiring it and understanding its implications. The working class will establish Socialism themselves; they cannot rely on leaders and “experts." So, in addition to common ownership. Socialism means that there will be democratic control of the means of life. Democracy is just as much a fundamental part of Socialism as is common ownership.

This, then, is the Socialist alternative to capitalism. Socialists are not Utopians. We know that such a system is possible. Everything necessary is present save one thing: a desire on your part to have such a system.

Adam Buick