Letter: Do we need vouchers? (2024)

Letter to the Editors from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

Just one note on what seems to be the main disagreement with my article [Cooking the Books 2, August 2024 Standard]:

‘He does mention the argument that “since we have seen significant increases in productive capacities since the nineteenth century, during which Marx was writing, perhaps the token system is already outdated”. This is precisely a point we have made but Dapprich dismisses this, rather too offhandedly, as “unconvincing” without saying why.’

I do address this point in the article:

‘I am not convinced by this line of thought though, since the token system is perfectly capable of adapting to increases in productivity. As productivity increases one of three things (or any combination of these) can be done. First of all, the increased productivity can be used to produce more goods using the same labour. This means more consumer products could be afforded by consumers with their tokens. Secondly, the same amount of consumer products could be produced while lowering labour time, meaning that workers would have more free time while being able to enjoy the same material standard of living. Thirdly, the resources dedicated to public expenditure could be increased to improve sectors like healthcare, education or provisioning for those unable to work. No matter which of these measures, or combination of measures, is taken, increases in productivity are no problem in the lower stage at all, in fact they would improve people’s living conditions without any need to fundamentally overhaul the token system of the lower stage.’

Philipp Dapprich

Reply:

We understood your point to be that Marx was mistaken to envisage the non-circulating voucher system that he mentioned in 1875 eventually giving way, when productivity had increased enough, to distribution on the basis of ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’ where everybody could take freely what they needed. This, you say, on the grounds that the voucher system could be adapted to distribute goods and services according to an individual’s needs.

Our argument is that, in view of the ‘significant [in fact enormous] increases in productive capacities since the nineteenth century’, it is now possible for a socialist society to introduce free access fairly quickly.

Assuming that you accept that the capacity to produce now available to society is sufficient to satisfy the needs of everyone, the question is: why, then, would a voucher system be necessary which after all is a form of rationing, even if at a generous level?

We wouldn’t deny that in theory a voucher system could be devised to take into account increased, and increasing, productivity in the ways you suggest. But a voucher system would involve using up a considerable amount of resources to administer (recording the time worked by each individual of working age, calculating and adjusting the ‘price’ of the goods and services to be redeemed, etc), which would be wasteful as well as not needed.

The only objection to free access would be that it wouldn’t work because people would take more than they needed. But why would they? People don’t even do that today under capitalism when certain things are lastingly free to take and use. Surely not because it is human nature to be greedy? 

Editorial Committee.

Socialism—What it is, and how to get it (1977)

From the September 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The other political parties, who claim to stand for Socialism or Communism (identical terms), never trouble to define either. Most of these parties regard it as unnecessary. The SPGB has always been careful in defining Socialism. Our object, containing our definition of the new society that will one day replace capitalism, is prominently reproduced in all our literature. Likewise the method of obtaining Socialism—this too appears on all our literature in our Declaration of Principles.

Socialism is like capitalism in that it is a system of society where human beings cooperate to produce things that people require. There the resemblance ends. Socialism means that everything in society is owned by everyone and available for use to everyone. There will be no ownership of wealth in any form; the concept will become meaningless to humanity. As Marx put it: “From the standpoint of a higher form of society, private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite as absurd as private ownership of one man by another.” Capital Volume 3, p. 776, Lawrence & Wishart edn.)

Production will take place by people voluntarily applying their energies to satisfy the needs of themselves and others; material and mental needs. All wealth that is produced will be available to all, to take according to their own judged requirements. The only reason for production will be to satisfy that need. As there will be no private ownership, there will be nothing to prevent people using the resources of the world in their own interests. Likewise there will be nothing to stop people taking from the resources of the world.

World Society

This society must be a world society. It is quite meaningless to think of capitalism existing in the UK as distinct from the rest of the world capitalist scene. The system of society that is to replace capitalism will also be a system of society for the whole world. World resources must be freely available for Socialism to work.

People in Socialist society will have to produce things they need. It is a precondition to society itself that men cooperate to satisfy their requirements as living creatures. But the purpose of production will be completely different from that under all forms of property society. The object of production, looked at as a social whole, will be to increase the wealth of society itself, not of one class. If that is not the outcome then, unless there are some very special reasons, that particular line of production will be suspended.

So that whereas under capitalism the wealth of society is increased by the production of arms, or bombs, or useless luxuries, or pointless (to the majority of people) office blocks etc., in Socialist society there will be no question of producing anything other than something that fulfills the requirements of people. It won’t be possible to sell anything, so all that is produced will be produced for use. And in a world- harmonious system, no one will have any use for armaments. In this form of society people will democratically decide what is required in the interests of all. There is an argument for saying that in the first few years after the revolution, production will concentrate on building up the immediate pressing requirements, such as food and shelter, which capitalist society has kept in short supply. Once that temporary problem is overcome (if it actually proves to be a problem) society will produce everything required to the best of the technological possibilities available at the time.

Distribution will be a simple process under Socialism; once the absurd complications of capitalist social relations have been removed, there is no reason for it to be otherwise.

Free Access

Access to everything that is produced will be free and unrestricted. There will be no limitations on individual consumption, augmented by laws, backed by armies and police forces. The only restraint on consumption will therefore be social, that is, society will not produce what society cannot afford. Today’s society produces much that most people cannot afford. “Supposing everyone in Socialist society wanted a Rolls Royce? and their own Buckingham Palace and thirty-seven meals a day?” says the absurd questioner at Hyde Park almost every Sunday. “How would Socialist society cope with that?” The answer is simple—so far as we can tell, with current technological possibilities, it wouldn’t!

There is no reason to suppose that such absurdities will exist in a free society. Why should they? What the questioner fails to realize is that he is imagining that Socialist society will be the same as capitalist society, where the ownership of Rolls Royce, or a house like Buckingham Palace, actually means something. Such ownership concepts will have vanished once the revolution takes place. Besides, in a Socialist society, where distribution is organized, the number of things like cars actually required by society will probably be far fewer. What’s the point in having a car standing outside your front door all week, if you have no use for it until next week, when you will be able to take one for as long as you need it? When ownership is social, it will also be efficient.

Socialist society will not have class ownership of wealth. As it will be a voluntary non-coercive society, with no limits on individual consumption, it follows that there will be no compulsion on anyone to produce anything. A human being as a part of society will not be compelled to make his whole existence dependent on producing more for somebody else. So why should people work? There are many answers. Perhaps the most important for people emerging from capitalism is this; just as Socialism is a voluntary society when established, so also is its actual establishment. It will have been established by the majority in the interests of all. As it is absolutely necessary for man to produce (without that there is no survival) then it seems reasonable to suppose that people who have taken the trouble to set up this (system of society will do all that is necessary to ensure that it thrives. In fact the objection to Socialism “no-one will work” illustrates that the person that is making the objection has not understood the nature of Socialism and what is required to establish it. Society must produce: and this applies to a voluntary society. If people do not accept that proposition, i.e. that it will be necessary for each person to “do his bit for the common good” then Socialism cannot be established yet.

Human ‘Nature’

In fact, once Socialist society has been established, more fundamental reasons will emerge making sure that society does not commit social suicide by failing to produce. Without wishing to sound puritanical, man must work. First, without work, man is not man. One characteristic that distinguishes man from all other forms of life is that he consciously acts on nature; animals can only unconsciously react to it. If there is such a thing as “human nature” then its first feature is the desire to use energies to satisfy the needs of oneself and others. Second, work will be a pleasure; it will not be a “job”. A job today is something unpleasant, to be avoided (as the capitalist class avoids it) because it is made so unpleasant by the requirements of society. The worker cannot avoid a job, and consequently he has to work in order to live, instead of wanting co live to be able to work, i.e. use up energies in a fulfilling way. Not only are the majority of jobs performed by the working class today unnecessary (except in terms of capitalists’ profit-making), they are usually terrifyingly boring.

The most satisfying moment of any creative activity (having a useful end-result) is by definition, denied to the worker. The product of his joint labour with others when completed is automatically taken from him. It belongs to another class — the capitalist class—to whose interests, the worker, is diametrically opposed. In Socialist society, people will do things that are pleasurable because they want to do them, and because they have the satisfaction of doing something useful. In time, the distorted distinction between work and play will vanish. To the people who grow up in Socialist society working for themselves and others will seem natural, satisfying and an absolute requirement of “the good life”.

There are two obstacles to be overcome before this type of society can be established. First, it must be technically possible to produce sufficient of the requirements of life, to enable all to live without fear of want or deprivation. This requirement was satisfied a hundred years ago. It is certainly not an obstacle today. Second there has to be a substantial majority determined to establish this new form of running human affairs. Understanding has not been necessary for the establishment and running of capitalism (and other forms of property society) since the majority are compelled in one form or another to cooperate. In capitalist society, the workers are forced to sell their labour-power. Capitalism functions if a minority understand the total workings of society, so long as the majority understand how to produce. Socialism will require the substantial majority to cooperate in its establishment. To do that, the working class needs to understand how society works and why Socialism is in their interests. There are two irresistible forces at work doing just that. The first is capitalist society itself— its operation shows to the workers that it cannot function in their interest. The second force is the world Socialist movement.

Ronnie Warrington

Cooking the Books: Should tokens make the world go round? (2024)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 2022 Jan Philipp Dapprich, a researcher at a German university, published a paper entitled ‘Tokens make the world go round: socialist tokens as an alternative to money’ in which he argued that ‘non-circulating tokens should be used as an alternative to money for distributing consumer products to the population in a socialist economy’.

That he is talking about a socialist or communist society (terms which he says can be used interchangeably) is clear from how he envisages the production of all goods taking place. The places where they are produced ‘are collectively administered by the people or by institutions accountable on their behalf. Since all firms would share the same owner, there is no need for firms to exchange goods, as the general public would remain the owner of those goods either way’; ‘production units would simply receive raw materials and pass on their finished products, as specified by the plan without paying or receiving payment. There would thus be no need for money as a medium of exchange within the realm of production’; ‘The constraints, benefits and costs of production are to be evaluated in purely physical terms.’

So, he is recognisably talking about what we (and Marx) mean by socialism.

Marx, writing 150 years ago in some private notes published after his death as The Critique of the Gotha Programme, did discuss the possible need for a system of non-circulating tokens (vouchers that would be cancelled after being used to redeem some product) to distribute consumer products in the early days had socialism been established at the time, though he envisaged it eventually being abolished in favour of distribution according to self-determined needs.

Marx may have had a point had socialism been established in 1875 but it wasn’t, so this could be regarded as an academic issue. Dapprich, however, thinks that some token system (not necessarily the one mentioned by Marx) would still be required if socialism were to be established today; in fact he thinks that this should be a permanent feature of a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. He goes so far as to describe free access as envisaged by Marx as ‘pie in the sky’.

His argument is that this is unnecessary anyway ‘because the ‘needs principle’ of the higher phase can be sufficiently realised within the token system’. This can be done, he suggests, by the wider provision of free services such as health care and by giving tokens to those unable to work or to work fully. But why? His hidden assumption is that, with free access, there might not be enough to go round and that therefore the consumption of some will need to be limited, even if at a generously high level, so as to ensure that more urgent needs of others are met.

He does mention the argument that ‘since we have seen significant increases in productive capacities since the nineteenth century, during which Marx was writing, perhaps the token system is already outdated’. This is precisely a point we have made but Dapprich dismisses this, rather too offhandedly, as ‘unconvincing’ without saying why.

But whether or not society has the capacity to produce enough consumer products to satisfy likely self-assessed needs is the crux of the matter at issue. If it has, as we contend, then the case for a permanent non-circulating token system falls.

In any event, once common ownership and production directly for use have been established, should there arise some temporary shortage of some products it would be up to those around at the time to settle how to deal with it. Drawing up a blueprint for this now, without knowing the exact circumstances or the preferences of people then, is literally academic.

This is Socialism ! (1992)

From the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism means common ownership

The means of production will no longer belong to a privileged minority class, whether private capitalists (as in the West) or state bureaucrats (as in the East). Both private capitalism and state capitalism will be replaced by a system in which all natural and industrial resources will be held in common by the whole community. This is the basis of socialism.

Socialism means social equality

With the establishment of common ownership, the existing division of society into a privileged ruling class and a majority class of wage and salary workers will come to an end. Instead, every member of society will stand equal with respect to the means of production and have an equal say in the way social affairs are run.

Socialism means cooperation

With the disappearance of classes, a common social interest really will exist. People will no longer be alienated, isolated individuals competing in the marketplace, but will be members of a real community of free and equal men and women cooperating for their mutual benefit and for the common good. In line with the nature of humans as social beings, cooperation, not today's competitive individualism, will be the prevalent social ethos, transforming all aspects of social life — work, play, education, the family and personal relationships generally.

Socialism means democratic control

The existing political structures where a government rules over people on behalf of the class that owns the means of production will give way to a fully democratic system of decision-making and administration. Decisions will flow upwards from the broadest possible base rather than from the top downwards as at present. Delegates, subject to the full range of democratic checks and controls, will carry out and supervise the purely administrative tasks that will remain once the political state with its machinery of coercion has been dismantled.

Socialism means production for use

Production for sale with its profit motive will come to an end; goods and services will be produced to directly supply needs without the intervention of buying and selling. The mechanisms of the market will be replaced by a self-adjusting system of production for use. The productive and distributive network will be geared to respond in a flexible way to information about needs, communicated to it directly as required amounts of specific goods and materials.

Socialism means free access

With the abolition of market mechanisms, people will be able to obtain the food, clothes and other articles they need for their personal consumption by going into a store or distribution centre and taking according to their own self-defined needs. Houses and flats will be rent-free, with heating, lighting and water supplied free of charge. Transport, health care, communications, education, restaurants and laundries will be organised as free public services. There will be no admission charges to museums, parks, libraries and other places of entertainment and recreation. Money will become redundant.

Socialism means the abolition of the wages system

Since people will have free access to what they need, productive work will no longer be performed for an employer in return for a wage or salary but will become a voluntary service organised on a democratic basis. The factories, farms, offices, schools, hospitals and other places of work will be administered democratically by those working in them. People will undertake this work service as their contribution to the necessary social tasks of producing the goods to keep the stores stocked with the things for people to take for their personal consumption and of running the free public services and the administration.

Socialism means a world community

Because capitalism itself is already a world system which, either in its private or in its state form, dominates the whole globe, socialism too can only be a world system. This means that socialism could not be established in just one country but only as a world community without frontiers, in which the natural and industrial resources of the Earth will be the common heritage of present and future generations. The world will be regarded as one country and humanity as one people.

Scorpion is on holiday.

Letter: Bicycle Thieves in Bennetts End (1992)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

Could it be that the Socialist concept of a society where the needs of the people are freely met is beginning to catch on. Going Places on Radio 4. on Friday 19th June, reported that in order to cut down on bicycle thefts the Police in Hemel Hempstead will be offering bicycles to the public free of charge. Apparently they have so many stolen ones that have not been reclaimed they will be making them freely available to the public.

George Pearson 

London SW20

Reply:

It’s true that there is no point in stealing what is freely available. Which is why this sort of crime will disappear in a socialist society—Editors.

Cooking the Books: Communism is socialism (2024)

The Cooking the Books Column from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

To promote his book, Mute Compulsion, A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital, Søren Mau contributed a piece to the publisher’s blog last July in which he asked ‘What should the communism we fight for look like’?

He starts by defining communism (what we call ‘socialism’):

‘The fundamental condition of communism is that the basic conditions of the life of society are brought under democratic control. The state would be abolished, all private companies would be dissolved, and all privately owned means of production—land, buildings, machines, etc.—as well as the wealth of the upper class would be expropriated’.

Like land originally was, they would ‘belong to no one, and thus to everyone’.

He envisages this society being divided into a ‘public sector’ and a ‘private sector’, the latter being productive activities that people carry out in their free time after working in the public sector.

He argues: ‘Everything produced in the public sector would be distributed without the use of money. Housing, healthcare, medicine, education, childcare, public transportation, and meals in public cafeterias would be free of charge and available to all, without control’.

That sounds like socialism. But then: ‘Consumer goods associated with varying individual preferences … could be “purchased” with digital coupons’ which everyone would receive ‘each week to use for services and products available from public warehouses’.

But why? If enough of what people might want can be produced, why could these consumer goods also not be made ‘available to all, without control’? Does he share the popular prejudice that people would otherwise take more than they needed?

It is conceivable that in the very early days there might not be enough of everything to permit this and that some sharing-out system might have be devised (by those around at the time) for any goods in short supply, but this would only be a temporary, stop-gap measure. It wouldn’t need to be a permanent feature of a communist society; free access to consumer goods would be the norm. In any event, to set up and run a coupon system (which would have to include putting a coupon price on consumer goods) wouldn’t be the appropriate answer; in fact it would divert resources that could be used to overcome the problem.

Mau says that technically the coupons wouldn’t be money as they wouldn’t circulate. When, however, it comes to his ‘private sector’ he does envisage money as such:

‘Here, everyone would produce and trade as they wish, keeping within certain democratically determined limits (no production or exchange of humans, weapons, or hard drugs, for example). [They] would also be able to create institutions and technologies that could ease and regulate exchange—for example, creating some sort of money’.

Once again, why? No doubt in communist society people, after having contributed to production ‘according to their ability’, would produce some things in their ‘free time’. They might want to grow vegetables for instance but why would they want to sell them? Why would they not simply give them away without asking for anything in particular in return, as happens even now under capitalism? People would continue too to do things for each other but why would this need to involve money?

Mau seems to realise that he is on shaky ground here as he himself asks ‘But isn’t this private sector merely another form of capitalism?’ His answer is that it wouldn’t be since ‘land, housing, and labor power would never become commodities. Money would exist purely as a means of exchange and couldn’t be used to give certain people power over others’. It wouldn’t be capitalism, but it sounds suspiciously like that contradiction in terms known as ‘market socialism’.

Inadequate as Mau’s contribution is, it at least shows that the idea and implications of a communist (socialist) society are beginning to be discussed seriously as the alternative to capitalism.

Letters: Two leaflets (1999)

Letters to the Editors from the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

As a Libertarian Socialist I send you an “Open letter— Alliance & Solidarity for a New Left/European New Left”, that is a translation (bad I’m sure) into English of an idea that started in Portugal during the last European Elections. Let me know what you think:

“—MAY 68— PARIS/FRANCE —APRIL 74/75— LISBON/PORTUGAL —CUBA/NICARAGUA and after?

For some the Left is dead, for others, the Left is the ‘Third Way’. But the reality is that we don’t know what’s meant by being ‘Left’. What do we stand for? What sort of Left in Europe for the 2000s?

It’s time to re-invent, to re-think, the Left, and in ‘Alliance & Solidarity’ to rebuild a New Left/European New Left.

For us the New Left will be a project for a new society, more democratic and alternative, socialist, libertarian and Ecologist/Green .A more free and less consumerist society.

This project must come from local community experiences, and not from ready-made theories. It must be a project capable of changing relations between human beings; producers; consumers; development— environment; sex—religion; working relations—leisure; racism—culture; nation state, etc. A project with new experiences for new communal relations and relations between peoples and countries.

There are no ready-made answers, neither will the answers be for sure. But in ‘Alliance & Solidarity’ with the contributions of all interested, Socialists, Libertarians, workers’ co-operatives, ecologists, green activists, lesbian/gay movement activists, New Age groups; trade unions, etc. we can rebuild step-by-step a new project, the New Left/European New Left.”

Emmanuel, 

Bracknell, Berks

Reply: 

The Old Left with its project for state capitalism has certainly failed but we don’t think what you propose is the answer. Certainly, all the groups you mention have an interest in getting rid of capitalism—and so, if only they knew it, of establishing a socialist society of common ownership, democratic control and production directly for use—except the New Agers (though perhaps they too will find what they’re looking for in socialism). But before bringing together various disparate interest groups, some of whose demands can be accommodated within the context of capitalism, we would need to be clear on the goal aimed at. We would need to be clear what the more free, libertarian and democratic and less consumerist society respecting ecological principles that you rightly want can only be achieved on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s productive resources. This understood, it would follow that all our political efforts should be exclusively directed to achieving that goal.

Editors.

* * *

Dear Editors,

The enclosed “Election Leaflet” represents a fictitious attempt by a World Wide Free Access Party in support of an equally fictitious candidate for Parliament. I was inspired to write this because of the recent correspondence in the Socialist Standard regarding changing the name of the Party. This leaflet is a fallout from it:

“Many voters will be learning about Free Access for the first time as a political force although the practice of Free Access is as old as mankind itself, in fact it worked inside every family in the past and so it does today. Whenever did you hear of parents selling food to their children or making them buy it from them? Never. That’s Free Access at work.

This long history of Free Access has been further developed by small groups all over our planet and advocated by poets and philosophers down the ages. Indeed the use of money as a total exchange unit is a comparatively modern thing, societies getting along without it for thousands of

years and, if using it at all, only sparingly.

World Free Access! What does it mean? Will it work today?

1. No, it can’t work because firstly it must be mentally accepted, then it will work.
2. It requires no leaders. They tend to freeze the mind. Free Worlders have no leaders and don’t need them—we know what we want.
3. We just need to be able to produce abundance for all—we can, right now!
4. A moneyless, frontierless world society will release a mighty flood of hitherto unproductive labour. No armed forces or armaments, no banks, no insurance, no income tax, no ticket collectors or travel costs, no customs, etc.
5. The rape of the planet for profit leading to global warming and danger to all life will cease instantly.
6. Numerous wars, always raging somewhere, will cease.
7. The elimination of life on earth will no longer be a possibility.”

Sam Levitt, 

London NW3

Reply: 

Your leaflet is certainly better than the one from Portugal. We will let readers judge for themselves whether separating the concept of socialism from its history and the class struggle doesn’t make it sound a bit insipid.

Editors.

Cooking the Books: Free is good (2009)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Journalist, broadcaster and author Libby Purves chose the day that the London Evening Standard became a free, give-away paper to launch an attack on the whole idea of people having free access to things. Under the headline “If the future’s worth having, it won’t be free”, she laid into the “internet generation” which “has grown up believing it can enjoy other people’s hard work for nothing. This has got to stop” (Times, 12 October).

We socialists would say that, on the contrary, “if we’re going to have to pay for everything, the future is not worth having”. The resources exist today to produce enough food, clothes, housing, transport and health care so that no one on the planet needs to starve or be malnourished, or go without clean water, or live in slums, or not have access to the medicines and treatment they need. Society could go over to the principle of “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”, with everybody having access to what they need without having to pay in return for contributing what they can to the work of producing what is needed.

This, surely, is a better future than the continued application of the opposite principle of “can’t pay, can’t have” ? Which means that in some parts of the world people die from starvation or easily preventable disease, or exist in shanty towns on the outskirts of big cities. And that, all over the world, most people are deprived of something which would improve their lives and which could easily be provided. Where we can’t build adequate public infrastructures or install anti-pollution technologies because it would “cost too much”.

And what is wrong with the “internet generation” taking for granted that “music, films, news, photographs, cartoons and carefully researched or creative prose” should be available for free? Isn’t this a sign that the money-wages-profit system that is capitalism has outlived its usefulness and perhaps also a sign of the beginning of a consciousness that it needs to be replaced by a system in which people have free access to what they need?

Purves is defending her vested interest as a royalty-reaping author. That’s understandable as, under capitalism, people need money to live and that’s how she gets hers. It might be thought, though, that as a public intellectual she’d be more broad-minded than to judge an economic system by whether or not it ensures her her chosen source of income.

In pleading her cause she goes back to the labour theory of property first put forward by John Locke in the 17th century:

“Content is not cost free. Writing is work. Musicianship involves cost and labour, art is not innately free, nor the infrastructure of news reporting. Until food, clothes, housing and transport are doled out free, content-makers need to be paid”.

And, according to her, the way to ensure this is through “intellectual property rights”, even if these are difficult, not to say impossible, to enforce in some cases.

But she does at least concede that if “food, clothes, housing and transport” were free – which will be the case in socialism – so should watching films or listening to music or reading a book, on the internet. As these will be too in socialism. The future is free.

Free (2009)

Book Review from the December 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Free. The Future of a Radical Price.  By Chris Anderson. Random House. 2009. £18.99.

“What happens when advances in technology allow many things to be produced for more or less nothing? And what happens when those things are then made available to the consumer for free?” asks the publicity for this (paying) book by the editor of Wired. His answer is not that this is the beginning of some sort of transition towards a system where eventually all goods and services will be available free of charge (which it isn’t anyway). It’s that profit-seeking enterprises involved in these things have to adopt, have adopted and will increasingly adopt, a different marketing strategy.

Thus, enterprises in that line of business can choose to give away free DVDs and charge for DVD-players or they can give away free DVD-players and charge for DVDs, in either case covering their costs and making a profit.

It is, as Anderson explains, a modern version of the strategy adopted by saloon owners in New Orleans in the 1880s. They offered customers free lunches banking on them buying drinks priced so as to cover the cost of the lunches. Hence the saying “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”. Today – and it will be the case as long as capitalism lasts – there’s no such thing either as a free DVD or a free paper or a free mobile. Those giving them away will be recuperating the cost from something else that they are selling.

Still, it can’t be bad that there are books discussing things being free.

Adam Buick

Letters: Power (1960)

Letters to the Editors from the October 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Power

I am nineteen years old and I am interested in Socialism as a political train of thought. Two years ago while on holiday in Nottingham I attended an open air meeting organised by your Party. When questions were asked by members of the public each was answered satisfactorily except one. I would therefore be most grateful if you could answer this question for me.

In the planning of a socialist society some individual or individuals are necessary to plan this society, i.e., these people will be in superior position to the common workers, whose job it would be to fulfil the plan laid down for them. How would the society protect the common worker from being oppressed by this intelligentsia, who would certainly use their high position for their own selfish ends, turning a new formed socialist society back to the class ridden capitalist society? The crux of my question being how can man's selfish bid for power be retarded while still giving a man with greater brain power the incentive to work wholeheartedly not only for the good of himself but for the good of the whole society.

I hope you are willing to accept that the “I'm alright Jack’’ attitude is very prevalent throughout the world today, in all types of worker.

I hope you get the meaning of my question which I regard as a most important one. I would also be most grateful if you would send me a copy of your paper, the Socialist Standard.

D. G. G.

Fareham Hants.

Reply:

Our correspondent postulates the existence of Socialism without taking into account the conditions which are necessary to bring it into being. Socialism will be the work of the great majority of mankind, who will consciously establish it because they think it in their interests to do so. It will not be the responsibility of any minority, whether they are planners or somebody else. Because of this, the work of

Socialism's planners will conform to the Socialist desires of the rest of society and will be designed within the framework of the Socialist community.

Those people who under Socialism are responsible for planning production, transport, and so on, will not be in “ a superior position." For in a world where the production and distribution of wealth is a social procedure, every individual depends upon the rest of society for his welfare and existence. This will be the strength behind society's determination to have a privilege-free world. Social pretensions will be powerless against it—and they will have no validity, when everybody has equally free access to the world's wealth.

This, too, will be the incentive to work wholeheartedly in a Socialist society. Capitalism, with its anarchic and acquisitive nature, fosters the narrowly selfish attitude to which our correspondent refers. Free from the necessity to strive for social superiority and from the many other restrictions of capitalism, mankind will be able to give of their best. They will do so in the knowledge—and with the intention—that the wealth of the world belongs to the world's people, without distinction of any kind. When society wants that, nothing can prevent them having it or, when they have it, take it away from them.

Editorial Committee. 

State Capitalism

After coming into contact with the SPGB through the pages of the American Western Socialist, I am left with the following doubt. Does the SPGB wish to see a regime of full scale nationalisation (i.e.. State Capitalism) instituted, or would industries be controlled by workers’ soviets?

As an anarchist, I cannot see that a centralised state bureaucracy can ever give true public control. Industry must be organised and run by elected workers' councils. What is the SPGB's attitude to this?

J. A. D.

Darlington. Co. Durham.

Reply:

Our correspondent correctly points out that full scale nationalisation is capitalism directly organised by the state machine. Socialists are opposed to capitalism in any form, including state capitalism. The method of controlling industries is determined by the type of ownership to which they are subject. Thus, it is of little importance whether privately owned industry is organised by private companies, as in many cases in this country, or by a central bureaucracy through so-called workers’ soviets, as in some cases in the USSR. Both types of organisation administer privately owned industries in the interests of their owning—or capitalist—class.

When Socialism is established, the control of industry will still be in line with its ownership. It is impossible, at the present, to give a detailed picture of the organisation which a Socialist community will use for controlling industry. That will depend upon the conditions prevailing at the time. But, because the means of wealth production will be commonly owned, we can say that they will be democratically controlled in the interests of the whole of mankind.

Editorial Committee.

Seamen and Socialism

It is long since I troubled you with any screed of mine, but 1 feel impelled to break a restraint of several years by making some comment upon your bewildering illogicality, as it seems to me, in certain directions.

Under the heading “Seamen on Strike” you write “One simple method of safeguarding the community’s welfare, keeping the ships sailing and making everybody happy, is to grant the seamen’s wage demands.” Indeed! But is this recipe for everybody’s happiness not a little naive, encouraging “demands” on the parlour-game principle “Think of a number (or demand) and then double it." Since when has it been good Socialism to accept the view that any good, let alone universal happiness, can come out of a wages system?

On the very same page you say that “ not so long ago " a farthing would buy a pocket-full of sweets. So it would, if not a pocket-full, a fist-full. Sweets— and food—was incredibly cheap before the first great war, and so was labour. You make the point that a worker’s wage today in command of real wealth remains much about the same. This, in spite of the precarious outcome of “full employment” in so-called key industries, overtime, and married women’s labour. Plainly, “demand” for anything less than Socialism is “not enough.” Then why confuse the issue merely to satisfy that class-war feeling? It’s phoney! As for the £40 a month and all found, I can only speak of the stewards you mention, but I have just come off a liner (an exploiting passenger, of course) considerably lighter in pocket. Why should you expect me to fall for that fudge? The workers, like everyone else (and who are they?) want all they can get and I don't blame them—or us—but don't ask me to idealise the ”gi-me" game. I gave all to a cause once, with no personal expectations. So did many pioneers of the SPGB. We didn't moan.

Now, isn't it about time the SPGB told the world what it means by Socialism? Yes, I know all about the statement of Principles, I had it in draft in my own hands some 50 years ago. But what does it mean? I ask modern artist friends of mine what their apparently crude abstract designs mean and they fob me off with jargon and more jargon. I ask you for details of how each takes from the common store without money and without price. Must the answer be the same? Just how, is all I want to know, but don’t misunderstand me. I, too, believe it possible to really socialise the main things of life gradually and I do not rely on any “ dawn ’’ appearing or the “ setting up'' of specialised and centralised bureaucracies for the purpose. I could develop the theme with plenty of early Socialist literature to my aid. Believe me, I do not propose to present every worker with a Jaguar on “ demand ’’—the problem disturbs me, for why not a helicopter apiece? 1 can “ visualise ” some “ store." Treat this as a little pleasantry if you like, but what do you really mean? No jargon, mind!

Lord Amwell.

Belsize Park, N.W.3.

Reply:

In the first chapter of our pamphlet “ Questions of the Day " we have told in some detail what Socialism is. Lord Amwell asks “for details of how each takes from the common store without money and without price.” We are puzzled at his difficulty. In a family, for example, each takes what he needs of what is there without either money or price. Likewise, from what is produced today each could take what he needs of what is available for each without having to pay for anything, providing it was all commonly owned.

As the question comes from Lord Amweli there are certain things we can take for granted. For instance, that we are concerned with a society in which everything that is in and on the earth is the common possession of all mankind. and each stands on an equal footing with regard to what is produced and distributed.

Before such a society can come into being the vast mass of the people must understand what Socialism signifies the kind of society that they are bringing into being. Hence they will know that the greater the quantity and variety they can produce the more in quantity and variety will be available to each.

The same kind of hands and brains that are concerned with production and distribution today will be available in the new society—but with greater freedom and opportunities. Consequently the provision of the necessary productive and storage facilities to meet society's needs in the requisite places will present less difficulties than they do today, where the profit consideration enters into the problem. Thus people will go to the appropriate stores and take what they need of what is there, in accordance with assessments of needs and the means to fulfil them—problems which are within the capacity of human brains that have been able to devise gigantic buildings, faster than sound planes, radar and space rockets. For instance, people go to super stores today, take what they need and pay for what they have taken. Tomorrow they will go similar places, take what they need and walk out.

Those who bring the new society into being will be reasonable enough not to expect more than society is capable of producing. Likewise, they will only want what they need, not what will be the envy of their neighbours. A person can only eat one meal at a time, sleep in one bed, sit in one car. The multiplicity of these things would only be a nuisance and a sign that the accumulator needed the attention of a doctor. Helicopters have been mentioned. It is surely obvious that everyone would not want a helicopter, a motor car, a racing stud, a yacht, a TV set, a private radar, a trip to the moon, a private salmon river, or a house papered with gold leaf and diamonds. People yearn for these things today because they signify security and importance, in the eyes of their fellows. In the new society such an outlook would be meaningless. The members of it would want comfort, happiness, the pursuit of occupations that gave them pleasure, and the harmonious co-operation of their fellows. A helicopter would not be needed as a possession, but as a means to get from place to place in a hurry. Today a man calls a taxi if he wants to get to a friend or the station in comfort and quickly. Would it not be possible to arrange to call a helicopter tomorrow? Members of the new society would not be unreasonable in their demands, harmonious co-operation would assure this, and unlimited human ingenuity would be used to solve any problems that arise.

In the beginning, before society has settled down in the new form, there may be those who, unable to throw off the heritage of the past, may want to satiate themselves with possessions. But what of it? They will gain nothing by it except satiation and will soon get tired of useless accumulation, like the child gets tired of a surfeit of toys.

With reference to the remarks about the seamen's dispute, the sentences quoted have been taken too literally—in a sense that the context shows was not intended. They were just flippant digs at the arguments put forward by the employers and their supporters.

Editorial Committee.

You must like it (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

Link to The Labors of Sisyphos

There is a funny story that once was kicked around against the socialist movement about a soap-box orator who had promised his audience that under socialism everybody would eat strawberries and cream. When an unfriendly heckler protested that he didn’t like strawberries and cream the socialist retorted that under socialism everybody would eat strawberries and cream and like it! There were, of course, two inferences in the answer that were and still are commonly held by those who have a smattering but not enough understanding of socialism and what it is all about. The first of these erroneous ideas is that socialists advocate a society in which everybody receives equal income; the second is that there is some sort of dictatorship that is to compel each and everybody to accept this equality.

The idea of equality in the consumption of goods and services is more than a little ridiculous when one goes into the matter. People have a difference in tastes, for example. 

Some of us like to go fishing and have a use for equipment and clothing that relate to that pastime. Does this mean that everybody will be forced to be consumers of fishing tackle and hip rubber boots for wading in streams? There are those who get pleasure from imbibing in beer. Does this signify that there must be enough beer produced to divide equally among the entire population — at least the entire adult population — and that those who dislike the taste of the brew will nevertheless be compelled to drink it and like it? There are countless examples that come to mind that expose the fallacy of this argument. In fact, socialists have never advocated such obviously ridiculous procedures.

What socialists have always argued for is a society in which each man, woman and child shall have free access to all that is produced and this is an entirely different thing. This means simply that the needs and wants of society can be satisfied if production is based upon use rather than upon sale on the market with a view to profit. The only thing that stands in the way of a society based upon production for use is widespread acceptance of or widespread apathy toward private or state ownership of the means for producing goods and services. When a majority of the population understands and accepts the idea of common ownership of all wealth-producing means and instruments and the obvious advantages to all mankind of such a system this majority will certainly take speedy steps to introduce it. When that time arrives there will be, for the first time, a real choice for the voters. No longer will one be compelled to decide which person is best suited to administer an “un-social" social system. For the first time voters will be able to register their approval or disapproval of a system based upon wage labor and capital as opposed to a brand new type of life, a classless society which will make poverty and war impossible.

As for the idea that a socialist world would require some sort of dictatorial apparatus at the top — a minimum of reflection will expose its fallacy. Political power in the hands of a minority can only exist when ownership of wealth-producing property is vested in private or state hands and when scarcity of the things people need and want is the order of the day for most people. Who would possibly want to delegate power over one's very life when right of access to wealth is available? Socialism will transform governments over people into administrations of things and the very thought of being compelled to consume goods whatever one’s likes or dislikes would be unthinkable.

Now they say there’s too much electricity (1971)

From the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is facing another problem linked with the coming of potential abundance, this time in the field of electricity supply.

Nuclear power stations—which at present use the heat of nuclear fission to raise steam to drive the turbines generating electricity — can produce so much electricity that as more and more of them are built the problem is arising of what to do with the “surplus” produced during the hours of off-peak demand.

According to Keith Richardson, Industrial Editor of the Sunday Times in an article “Will they have to give electricity away free” (26 September), this was one of the matters discussed at a recent conference in Geneva on the peaceful uses of atomic energy. Since, apparently, nuclear power stations cannot be easily damped down from time to time in the way coal and oil-fired stations can, two possible solutions were discussed. One was to quite literally give away the “surplus” electricity free during off peak hours; the other was to waste the heat produced during this period by releasing it into the atmosphere. If capitalism’s past experience is anything to go by, there should be little doubt as to what will happen.

Free electricity, free transport, free goods and services generally—this is the way modern technology points. But all this is impossible under capitalism with its class monopoly of the means of Iife and its profit motive. Capitalism cannot digest abundance and has to seek ways to prevent and pervert its progress. Only when all the resources of the earth, natural and man-made, are owned in common by all the people of the world can they be used in a rational way – to provide an abundance of goods services which people can take and use freely as and when they need to.

Post-capitalism: what will it look like? (2022)

Book Review from the October 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The term ‘post-capitalism’ has come much to the fore in recent years. It is used, generally by left-wing critics of capitalism, to mean the social arrangements they would like to see replace the current global system of society in which a small minority of people own and control the large majority of the wealth and resources. This has been widely referred to as the ‘top 1 percent society’, meaning that 1 percent of the population own 99 percent of the wealth. Though this figure may be something of an exaggeration, not many would dispute that capitalism, now dominant throughout the world, is a system of massive inequality. Among the justifications offered for this by its supporters is that those who benefit overwhelmingly deserve to do so because they possess and apply such valuable skills as judgement, forethought and entrepreneurial ability. It is portrayed as providing the incentive and the drive for people to constantly improve their conditions and those of the whole of society. The system’s critics, on the other hand, point to the ingenuity and cooperative ability of the human species as a whole as well as the existence of technology beyond the wildest dreams of earlier societies, to argue that modern society could produce an abundance of goods and services to provide everyone on earth with a secure, comfortable existence if only it were organised on the basis of the satisfaction of needs rather than the maximisation of profit. However, what these critics differ on is how such a society is to be brought about and, an obviously connected matter, the details of how it should be run.

Beyond Money

Precisely this problem is the focus of a new book entitled Beyond Money. A Post-Capitalist Strategy (Pluto Press, 2022, xviii+205pp) by Anitra Nelson, a writer and activist in Australia. Nelson may be known to readers of the Socialist Standard for the 2011 book she co-edited, Life Without Money, in which socialism is referred to as ‘a money-less, market-less, wage-less, class-less and state-less society that also aims to satisfy everyone’s basic needs while power and resources are shared in just and “equal” ways’. In this new book, she reiterates and amplifies this concept characterising money as ‘the driver of political power, environmental destruction and social inequality’ and arguing that it has to be ‘abolished rather than repurposed to achieve a post-capitalist future’. It is in this understanding, that post-capitalism must mean the end of money or it is not post-capitalism at all, that Nelson goes beyond those left-wing critics of capitalism who argue that the system can be run in a somehow more ‘benign’ way with money being retained. As John Holloway puts it in his introduction to this book, ‘modified forms of money and markets are included or inferred in practically all visions of post-capitalism’. Nelson is intensely and coherently critical of all such visions with their recipes for ‘post-capitalism with money’. Here she is referring to such schemes as guaranteed minimum income, universal basic income, local community-based currencies, forms of alternative monies or labour exchange systems such as LETS, all of which she rejects as ‘hardwired to capitalist imaginaries and practices of markets and trading’ … ‘Reformers still imagine that they can alter capitalism in various ways to enable us to meet the challenges of socio-economic inequalities’, she states, insisting that ‘unless post-capitalism is money-free, we will fail to establish a world beyond capitalism’.

Late-stage capitalism

In this compellingly written book, she sums up what she calls ‘late stage capitalism’ in the following highly recognisable terms: ‘We witness flagrant overconsumption, massive waste and obesity alongside food shortages, starvation, famine and absolute poverty both within and between nations’, with the vast majority ’who cannot enjoy the full benefits of their everyday work and have little say in how they live or work’. And she sees all attempts, no matter how well meaning, to ‘mould money to progressive ends’ as bound to fail. We simply cannot, as she puts it, ‘tweak the system to overcome its weaknesses’. The words she quotes from the writer Eduardo Galeano sum this up well: ‘Capitalism is sold as freedom but experienced as control’. In two powerful early chapters on ‘Capital and Crises’ and ‘Money: the Universal Equivalent’, minutely researched as all areas of this book, she points up capitalism’s inability to respond to the planetary environmental crisis which it has created, providing jaw-dropping figures on, for example, the rate of climate change and the loss of biodiversity. She dismisses ‘green’ solutions to all this, even those current among people who called themselves ‘socialists’ or ‘anarchists’, since they invariably involve ‘finance, trading and production for the market’, part of what she ironically terms ‘this market-based wonderland’. None of this, she argues, can be proof against the systemic crises which capitalism with its tendency to overproduction for the market (though not for real needs) is irreparably prey to. The core problem, she insists, lies in the very practice of trade involving exchange of goods and services via a so-called ‘universal equivalent’, in most cases money, but even characteristics of other forms of exchange, such as barter and ‘other monies’. Her conclusion here is that ‘we can neither address inequalities and unsustainability nor establish post-capitalism without moving beyond money’. And she sees post-capitalism in these terms as ‘already emerging in enclaves and practice’ both locally and globally among ’numerous distinctive social and environmental activists’ and movements. For this kind of activity she coins the concept ‘real valuism’, to distinguish it from activity based on the kind of value that is fundamental to capitalism, ie, exchange value practised through trade.

Ecological Solutions?

It is in her chapter ‘System Change not Climate Change’ that she systematically tackles what she calls ‘inappropriate approaches’ to solving the ecological problems caused by capitalist production. She makes short work of ‘green innovations’ and ‘green technologies’ that continue to ‘focus on trade, markets and money’ using such tactics as trying to ‘price the environment’ and ‘integrate costs of externalities’. So she dismisses as futile such policies as carbon trading, carbon offsets and water trading and explains in meaningful detail why, in a profit-based, or even just money-based, society, they cannot have significant impact. She tackles even apparently radical critics of capitalism for their lack of imagination in wanting to maintain money in some form, for example with alternative currencies or ecological footprint accounting. She sees money as ‘social not natural’, but also recognises that monetary practices are so ingrained that even some of the most radical thought finds it difficult to dispense with ‘economic contortions and statist dead ends’. A case in point is Extinction Rebellion, one of whose newsletters she quotes as stating ‘Money is an ingenious technology that allows for social energy to operate across space and time’. Other targets are ecological economist Joe Ameni for his description of money as ‘a foundation of human civilization’ and Alf Hornborg, the human ecology anthropologist well known in environmental justice movements, who talks about redesigning money on the basis that he ‘cannot believe that it would be feasible to completely abolish money and markets in human societies’. ‘Hornborg’s “post-capitalism”’, she goes on, ‘retains wage labour, entrepreneurs, taxes, trade, production for trade and banking’. Others who are able to see beyond the limits of monetary arrangements are regarded more favourably. Examples of this are of course Marx, but also mid 20th century Austrian economist Otto Neurath and, in the present day, philosopher John O’Neill with his book Life Beyond Capital, eco-feminist Friederike Habermann for her chapter in the 2017 book Society After Money, and Adam Buick of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, contributor to Life Without Money (2011) and long-standing contributor to this journal.

Progress Perverted

The role of technology is also an important element in Nelson’s analysis. In her chapter entitled ‘Technology and the Real Debt Cycle’, which includes an illuminating section on ‘Marx on capitalist technology’, she brings out vividly the way in which the progress inherent in new technologies and new inventions is perverted by the use they are put to by the profit system. So rather than use technology for ecologically and socially beneficial ends, ‘the bottom line of capitalists’ decision making over what is produced is profitability’ and not efficient operation, despite capitalism’s frequent claims to efficiency. The solution proposed to capitalism’s inefficiency and inequity in its use of technology is non-monetary production using the collaborative capacities inherent in the human animal to allow collective decision-making on which technologies should be developed and used and how. And, above all, such decisions should be based on ‘the common good, all the while being restrained by the implications and ramifications for the Earth’.

‘Commoning’

Genuinely democratic decision-making on the appropriate use of technology and on all aspects of social life, whether at a local or wider level, is fundamental to this book’s vision and encapsulated by the author’s use of the word ‘commoning’, a concept which occupies a central chapter of her book. She demands ‘end game clarity’ and insists that this can only mean dispensing with private property, with the ‘world of things and beings’ being held in common. Nor does she refrain from putting flesh on the bone by explaining ‘commoning’ as a world society consisting of ‘ecotats’, ecologically balanced human communities, whose members fulfil all their own basic needs creating what is needed and necessary on demand and entering into agreements with other communities when necessary through temporary or ongoing ‘compacts’ whereby goods and services are shared and exchanged (even though non-monetarily). She provides significant detail on how she envisages such arrangements and networks would operate and in so doing gives profound food for thought about human nature, children’s education, the ability of humans to cooperate and the interest they have in doing so. The mature development of such a moneyless, cooperative system she terms ‘glocal integration’, giving it the overall title of ‘Yenomon’ (anagram of No Money). It is also a world in which ‘we make a concerted effort to meld the sustenance of our human selves with the regeneration of non-human nature’.

In a later chapter, ‘Indigenous Peoples, Real Values and the Community Mode of Production’, she goes on to give examples of small-scale attempts at establishing the kind of social set-up she would like to see established on a world scale and in so doing exhibits the kind of impressive in-depth knowledge and research which inform all aspects of this book. Her description and analysis of pre-colonial Australian aboriginal societies illustrates ‘their diverse, subtle and ecologically appropriate forms of collective provisioning … testimony to culturally attuned and sophisticated inhabitation of their lands and waters’. Equally insightful are her portrayals of the ‘horizontal’ social and economic organisation of the Zapatistas in 20th century Mexico, of the cooperative economy of the Kurdish Rojavan communities in very recent times, as well as of short-lived attempts at the abolition of money and trade and ‘free consumption’ in certain Republican communities during the Spanish Civil War. She adds to this what she calls the ‘living embryonic version’ of commoning to be found in the Twin Oaks Community in Virginia, described as co-governing and self-organising and ‘based on commons principles and values supporting non-violent, just, collaborative, cooperative and sharing practices that respect earth and people’. All these attempts at non-monetary life are seen as characterised by ‘grassroots substantive democracy’ and as showing the way to ‘a decentralised community mode of production’ where people ‘co-design, co-plan and co-produce’ what is then made freely available on the basis of need, which the author sees as characterising a future post-capitalist and non-market world. She sums this up as ‘targeting the direct needs of people without the unnecessary, indeed confusing, contorting and destabilising, mediation of money.’

So Nelson makes a clear and refreshing distinction between these attempts at horizontal, decentralised and egalitarian communities and the actions of the left-wing social and environmental reformers who focus on activities like fair trade, social entrepreneurship and alternative ways to manage money. She sees the latter as ‘naïve experimentation and wasted energy’, the former as ‘really appropriate approaches’, exhibiting and exemplifying ‘community-based empowerment and self-organisation and social and environmental responsibility.

Acts of self-organisation or the ballot box?

While all this represents a refreshing antidote to the ‘post-capitalism with money’ camp, what is less persuasive is the author’s strategy for achieving on a large scale the kind of social arrangements she describes as existing in various places in a small way. Her advocacy of groups and movements that offer examples of democratic cooperation and sharing of resources and goods produced without the intermediary of money, which she wants to see ‘made more highly visible and replicated’ can only be commended. She considers that ‘acts of non-monetary production and exchange have the potential to disable and dismantle capitalist forces’, but it is hard to see how of itself this can be effective. Above all it seems to eschew the kind of democratic political action via the ballot box that we see as the most fertile route to the establishment of a democratic, moneyless, marketless society once the necessary spreading of consciousness of the need for that has been achieved. Without this instrument (ie, the ballot box), it is difficult to see how a socially conscious working class can take the power necessary to abolish capitalism and set about organising a genuine socialist society. Yet, positively the author does mention the SPGB and seems to identify her aims with ours (ie, ‘socialism will, and must, be a wageless, moneyless, worldwide society of common (not state) ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution’). With one possible difference, however – that, in the ‘small communities’ system she advocates, she appears to contemplate the idea of some form of (non-monetary) exchange between communities. But, despite these differences in ‘strategy’, there can be no doubt about the importance and value of this book, putting centre-stage as it does ideas and discussions about how to dispense with capitalism and establish a new society based on collective production for direct use.

Howard Moss

Is a free-access society possible? (2022)

Book Review from the October 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard 

‘Without money we would all be rich’ 

‘It is not money that produces and distributes, but human organisation and knowledge’

It’s always heartening when the idea of a society of free access without buying and selling gets voiced in quarters other than our own and in countries other than Britain. We already of course have companion parties and groups in Canada, India, New Zealand and the USA and members and sympathisers in countries such as Denmark, Norway, Italy, Spain, Poland and Japan. But, just as the best ideas seem to arise spontaneously and independently in many different places when the time is ripe for them, so now we also have writers in the French language putting forward the idea of a moneyless, wageless, democratic world society – the society that we call socialism. Two writers in particular have recently published their own substantial studies explaining the need for this kind of society, the reasons it is eminently feasible and how it might be organised. Their book, Description of the World of Tomorrow. A World Without Money or Barter or Exchange: a Civilisation of Free Access (Description du monde de demain. Un monde sans monnaie ni troc ni échange: une civilisation de l’accès) by Jean-Francois Aupetitgendre and Marc Chinal (Editions Réfléchir n’a Jamais Tué Personne, Lyons, 2021, 288pp), is divided into two long essays, one by each author, mapping out their own particular ‘take’ on why the current society, based on commerce, exchange, competition, hierarchy and production for profit (i.e, capitalism), does not suit human beings and why it must urgently be superseded by a different kind of society based on mutual cooperation, real democracy and production for need.

Money problems

Both writers begin by examining the multiple problems prevalent in a money-based society (e.g, poverty, social inequality, insecurity, corruption, homelessness, war, environmental degradation, misuse of technology) and then go on to detail how they see a ‘post-monetary’ society overcoming such problems, or indeed how most of those would simply not arise in a post-money world. The two then discuss in more detail how the solutions they advocate would play out. And in this they differ somewhat from one another. So, in Aupetitgendre’s vision, while we see an insistence that the means, technological and otherwise, already exist to provide a comfortable life for all if the focus is placed on producing for need (‘a mental rather than a technical problem’, he calls it), at the same time he emphasises the difficulty of being able to forecast the precise details of how the moneyless system will be organised once established. He is likewise somewhat vague on how the changeover from a commercial to a free-access society will take place, simply describing it as ‘a great upheaval’ which might last ‘two or three decades’ and talking about a ‘step by step’ transition.

Chinal, on the other hand, proposes detailed scenarios of how a society based on production for need might establish itself and operate as a worldwide system (his final chapter is even given over to an imagining of ‘My day spent in a society of free access’), but he sees it as coming most likely via ‘oases’ of people espousing and practising the idea to the greatest extent they can and then spreading the idea to others who will come to see its benefits and advantages until the vast majority are reached. And he theorises that, even when a post-monetary society is set up, in the early stages a system of labour-time vouchers might need to be used. Neither writer seems to share (or perhaps even to have considered) our view that socialism can most easily be established once the majority of the world’s people are ready to take democratic political action to do that via the ballot box, and, once they are, no transition period will be necessary since the plans for organising the new society will already have been amply discussed and agreed by that majority and free access for all can be established immediately. However, both writers are clear that socialism must and can only be a wholly democratic society at all levels (a ‘real direct democracy’) and that it will not work under any other conditions.

The dirty work

They are also both expert in demolishing the various myths about the ‘impossibility’ of people living cooperatively in a situation of economic equality. They line up the most common objections one by one and show how flimsy they are. So arguments about ‘the lazy person’, ‘the greedy person’, ‘the violent person’, ‘the competitive person’, the person who will want luxuries like a personal swimming pool, all these are patiently considered and expertly put to bed. They are shown to be rooted in the behaviours and mentalities intrinsic to a society that both alienates and rations people via money, wages and the pursuit of profit. As Aupetitgendre puts it, ‘Rather than engage in the futility of looking for humans to become “better” people, rationality dictates that we establish a new form of society which will inevitably bring with it new mentalities’.

The ‘who will do the dirty work’ argument in particular is exceptionally well dealt with by both authors. They outline how, in a society in which work isn’t done on the basis of people cooperating to do what’s socially necessary but to make profit for the owners of capital, people have to sell their physical and mental energies to an employer in order to earn the money that will buy them the necessities of life. Then once they have contracted to sell their energies as, say, dustbin collectors or teachers or bank workers, they have to carry it out for much of the time they are awake and perhaps for the rest of their active lives. The imposed daily stretch of work and the lack of variety make most work unsatisfying, as does the hierarchical organisation and potential precariousness of that work. In these unattractive conditions most jobs become objectionable and ‘dirty work’ can become positively offensive. They contrast this with what conditions will be in a ‘post-monetary’ society where people will no longer work for an employer or for a wage or salary but simply to achieve a socially desired result. All the completely negative work that has to be done today — a prime example is the production and use of armaments — will disappear. So will all the useless non-productive work associated with money and production for profit — insurance, banking, sales promotion, taxation, legal contracts, etc. All work will be equally useful and necessary to society and no stigma will be attached to any of it. People will be free to create conditions that will make any task pleasant and interesting, and in the process they will be able to put technology — no longer ensnared by the profit motive — to its best use. They conclude that people don’t mind getting their hands dirty or their bodies tired. What they do mind is having to work under conditions that have taken the pleasure out of work. Change the system, they argue, and then the very concept of ‘dirty work’ will disappear.

Post-capitalism with money

They also counter the arguments of those who claim to be ‘post-capitalist’ yet still cannot tear themselves away from the idea of money, exchange and buying and selling. Even if efforts are made to organise this in a more ‘moral’, a more benign way than now, they argue, it will still inevitably be ‘a primitive way of organising society’. In this context the writers point out, as the Socialist Standard has in a number of recent articles, that ideas like ‘Universal Basic Income’ and the so-called ‘Green New Deal’ can do little to resolve the overwhelming problems inherent in a society based on the profit imperative and are doomed to failure even as ways of significantly alleviating the pressures that capitalism puts upon its wage and salary workers. Campaigners who involve themselves in well-meaning reformist activity along these lines on the grounds that we need to be ‘realistic’ are seen as just ‘prolonging the agony of buying and selling society’ and effectively delaying the growth of consciousness among many. In other words their task is a futile one, as what they are doing is trying to ‘repair the very thing that is destroying us’. Another writer, Anselm Jappe, is quoted in this book for the way he reverses the ‘realism’ argument and, in The Self-Consuming Society (2017), writes: ‘The abolition of money and value, of exchange and wage labour, of the State and the market needs to happen without delay. It is not someone’s “maximalist” programme” or utopia but rather the only true form of realism.’

Chinal too has a novel way of framing the futility of reformism: ‘As soon as you move a domino piece, that just pushes another or other pieces elsewhere and in the end you can never reach a solution that is equitable and stable’. And Aupetitgendre has a different but equally effective formulation: ‘Wanting to create an egalitarian, ecologically sound and peaceful society without free access is like wanting to build a car without inventing the wheel.’ So, they argue, avowed anti-capitalists should not, as they often do, seek to find ‘a way of managing capitalism better, of giving it a human face’, but rather ‘seek to abolish it’.

Absurdities or abundance?

These writers’ patient exploration of the incurable ills of current society offer striking insights into the many absurdities and paradoxes of the money system. Chinal points to how the very existence of money, far from creating wealth and abundance for the many, actually creates uncontrollable penury and, no matter how much of it is in circulation, it never ceases to be seen as in short supply (‘Money is a tool of exchange, but also a tool of exclusion’). He illustrates the many unpredictable and unforeseen consequences of the money system and its knock-on effects. How, for example, the supply of such basic necessities as food and accommodation is constantly subject to the destabilisation brought about by the working of the market – something that can seriously affect those on both the buying and the selling side. So, for example, ‘If food becomes more expensive, it sells less well, meaning that buyers have to make do with less and that local producers may “disappear” since their market is reduced’. There is also much commentary on how today’s money-based society has the effect of setting human beings against one another rather than bringing them together: ‘In a money society we are at war with one another to get money and even our neighbour may be competing with us for a job that we both need.’ Again: ‘If the work environment or the wider system is aggressive, human beings become aggressive to survive, even if in their hearts they would prefer to seek harmony and cooperation.’

So what we have overall in the commentaries of these two writers is an impassioned plea for a society of ‘comfortable abundance’ organised via a system of ‘real direct democracy’, where available resources provide for essential needs and reasonable desires and there is not the constant need and pressure to grow and innovate that capitalism experiences as an essential feature of its profit imperative. As the kind of arguments that the World Socialist Movement has been putting for a long, long time, it can only be heartening to see them coming from others too and so appearing to be taking root and spreading.

Howard Moss

Blogger's Note:

Translated excerpts from the book can be viewed at the following link.