Energy supply: a world issue (1986)

From the Winter 1986-7 issue of the World Socialist

In any consideration of existing social problems the question of energy supply is of prime importance. It is self-evident that the task of providing decent conditions of life for the whole human population must include providing an adequate supply of energy. To solve the world's housing problem, including provision for heating, cooking and lighting, to expand world transport services, to increase world food production, to provide a sufficient supply of durable goods .for all people, plus the expansion of the means of production which these would require, will arguably involve a greatly increased supply of world energy.

But the problem is not simply one of supplying energy using any means available in an indiscriminate manner. The production of energy makes a great impact on the environment so it is important that the methods used should take this factor into account. What is required is an integrated world strategy of productive development which is aimed directly at the satisfaction of human needs and which can be socially controlled so as to avoid any destructive effects on the environment How does world capitalism deal with this problem? The short and obvious answer is that it does not deal with it nor can it do so.

From a practical point of view society has available a wide range of technical options and there are large reserves of skill, labour and materials yet at the same time we suffer from a chronic inability to take these up in a free and consciously regulated manner. It is not simply that under world capitalism there are economic barriers to producing enough energy for needs, but what does become available on the energy markets is produced by methods which in themselves generate further social problems. The present structure of world energy supply involves an unnecessary waste of useful resources; it is destructive of the environment; it produces severe secondary problems and it is fraught with dangers. This is the position that we are in now and world capitalism provides no foreseeable means for getting out of it. What has been the background to the problems associated with energy supply, which at the present time are worsening?

The existing structure of energy supply and the particular production methods which are currently in use has come into being within a definite framework of economic forces and a military development which has resulted from them. It is simply impossible to freely deploy the technical options which now exist in response to human needs within this existing economic and military framework.

So constraining have been these economic forces that in the more industrialised countries the most used energy source is still coal, the source on which the industrial revolution was based over two hundred years ago (see table). The relatively primitive method of burning non-renewable fossil fuels remains the cheapest energy source available to capitalist production. Despite the wide range of technical possibilities which now exist, it is still the case that hundreds of millions of people throughout the world either gather or buy firewood as their main energy source. Hydro-electric power is generated and since the end of World War II there has been the development of nuclear power but this was never selected as a desirable energy source in its own right. Nuclear power arose on the basis of arms development. It is still a marginal energy source (3 percent of world primary energy production in 1983) though its use is increasing. The use of solar-based techniques is even more marginal.

Nuclear Power: The Military Option

Yet over fifty years ago, in the 1930's, two simultaneous developments occurred which involved wide potentialities for the future of energy supply. One was the theoretical work on the splitting of the atom and the other was the discovery of the photo-voltaic mechanism which enabled sunlight to be converted into electricity. From a purely technical point of view, research and development could have gone in the direction either of nuclear power or solar cells. Notwithstanding the merits, technical or otherwise, of either option the reasons why solar technology was pushed into a backwater of research and development were both economic and military.

It was the implications for arms development which gave impetus to the nuclear programme. It was the Manhattan Project which developed the atomic bomb. This crash military project which in a perverse way indicates how quickly society can move when it becomes committed, involved tens of thousands of workers including the cream of scientific talent in the field of applied physics. By 1945 it had cost 2 billion dollars. The enormity of this effort can be understood in the context that in 1944 in America the value of the Gross National Product was 98 billion dollars.

After World War II this military application of nuclear technology did not diminish so that between 1945 and 1956 the Atomic Energy Weapons Programme had cost 15 billion dollars. This included the development of the Hydrogen Bomb and resulted in a huge scientific and industrial establishment committed to the nuclear arms programme. At this time companies such as Westinghouse and General Electric were manufacturing nuclear reactors mainly for the US Navy.

These developments in America were paralleled in other countries for the same military reasons so that in Russia, Britain and later France the same scientific/technical/industrial basis came into existence. It was on this basis that President Eisenhower introduced his so-called Atoms for Peace campaign in the 1950s. Essentially, the nuclear energy programme resulted from an attempt to capitalise on the immense cash resources which had been poured into the military use of nuclear technology.

Threat to vested interests

But this was not the only reason why research and development into the practical application of the photo-voltaic mechanism was not taken up. Solar technology was subject to attack by the powerful utilities in America whose industries were based on the use of fossil fuels. It is little known that in some places of climatic advantage, simple solar installations had been in use for some time. For example by 1897, of all the homes in Southern California 30 percent had solar water heaters. By 1940 in Southern Florida 80 percent of all new homes utilised solar water heaters. Once these installations, which were simply metal boilers under glass, were fixed in place, all they required was a cheap water supply plus the abundant southern sunshine over which no capitalist enterprise could hold a monopoly. These installations gave householders a degree of independence from the large capitalist utilities which were in the business of selling gas and also electricity generated from the burning of coal and oil.

The use of solar boilers for heating water was one thing but the possible practical application of the photo-voltaic cell for converting sunlight into electricity was a far more serious threat to the capitalist interests which were vested in the control and marketing of fossil fuels. Centralised power stations generating electricity from fossil fuels or nuclear sources enable capitalist enterprises or governments to maintain complete control of the energy source and the marketing of the products. With solar devices, once installed, the energy source is freely available. This is why particularly in America the public utilities launched an organised attack on research and development of solar energy, ranging from political lobbying to massive advertising campaigns.

In the face of the development of the nuclear arms programme and its spill-over into nuclear power and the pressure exerted by the heavily capitalised coal, oil and gas interests, the development of the highly adaptable and environmentally safe solar sources has been largely neglected. For example in the late 1970's, when the British government was spending upwards of £230 million per year on nuclear energy research it was spending only £11 million per year on renewable, solar-based technologies. During the seventies the Carter administration in America did express interest in solar techniques following a sharp increase in the price of oil and problems which nuclear power stations had encountered. This was set aside by the Reagan administration and funding for this kind of research was again reduced.

It is true that some research is being done by oil companies and other capitalist enterprises but this is inevitably suspect The bias arising from their profit-based interest in the subject will at best direct this research into channels determined by their economic interest

This interest is explicit in the following text from an advertisement:

The Arizona sun shines 296 days a year. APS solar engineers are working at the Sky Harbor Photo-Voltaic Solar Project to capture that remarkable energy source. We are proud to be the leaders in the development of solar energy.

22,000 solar cells in 80 arrays provides enough electricity for about 40 average sized homes. But Arizona has more than a million homes - plus factories - offices - plus farms - that need electricity.

Solar may supply a reasonable amount of electricity some time in the next century but it is simply not practical nor economical to meet Arizona's electrical needs to-day. This is why we are using coal and nuclear for large scale use now to meet Arizona's electrical needs.

Nuclear and coal now to meet Arizona's electrical needs.

Problems of present energy system

The factors which have determined the existing structure of the world's energy system have been the economic factors of the profit system in association with the military strategies adopted by the world's most powerful industrialised capitalist nations including state capitalist Russia.

There is now widespread concern about the problems arising from this system. Inevitably, the continued increase in the number of nuclear power stations results in a steady build-up of radioactivity in the environment, with an ever greater problem of how to deal with high level radioactive waste. Accidents like Chernobyl with their horrendous results are part of the existing nuclear energy programme.

Sections of the scientific community and environmentalists are also extremely concerned over the effects of the continuous release of carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels such as gas, oil and coal. Accurate records of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere show that concentrations have increased from 315 parts per million in 1958 to 340 parts per million in 1982. Burning fossil fuels also releases into the atmosphere sulphur which is associated now with the destructive effects of acid rain including the destruction of forests in the northern hemisphere, the killing off of life in lakes and rivers, and general soil deterioration.

Together with this, a report issued by the National Science Foundation, Washington, produced calculations which show that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would lead to a heating of the surface of the oceans and the land by an average of about 4 watts per square metre, which in practice would mean a change from about 1.6 degrees to 4.5 degrees on different parts of the planet's surface. It is argued that the climatic consequences would be catastrophic, with fertile arid zones becoming arid deserts. This refers to what is now described as "the greenhouse effect". Even allowing that there is disagreement over the possible consequences of this greenhouse effect it would be foolish to ignore even the most pessimistic forecasts which are being issued by some sections of the scientific community.

Merits of renewable energy sources

Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, California, as well as others have argued strongly that the buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide resulting from the burning of fossil fuels should be urgently averted. They have emphasised the need to replace the use of fossil fuels with the use of renewable sources of energy such as wind power, wave power and photo-voltaic devices. The need for global consensus as a basis for carrying this through is also stressed by these scientists, though they are pessimistic about achieving this.

The advantages of these renewable sources have been summed up in a Ford Foundation Report as follows:-

Direct Solar Energy. Unlike all other forms of energy available to humans in large quantities, solar radiation is pure energy which is not associated with any material. As a result some types of solar energy systems, once constructed,can maintain a constant inventory of facilities and materials, releasing nothing but useful and waste energy at the same rate as the absorbed solar radiation. For example, operating solar electric cells convert some of the incident solar radiation directly into electrical energy and reradiate, reflect or discharge the rest. The process produces no waste materials that must be accumulated or released to the environment... In contrast use of fossil fuels or any type of nuclear energy requires the addition of mass (fuel) to an energy supply system and either the accumulation of increasing stockpiles of waste products (such as ashes, sulphur, carbon dioxide, or radioactive isotopes) within the system or their release to the environment.

The merits of solar-based technologies and the need for world cooperation in dealing with the problems of energy supply have also been stressed by Janet Ramage in her book Energy—A Guide Book. In her view, the challenge of solar techniques is one of utilising the energy which the sun delivers to the earth at a rate equal to nearly 20,000 times its primary energy consumption and that this challenge presents itself as a technique for collection and conversion. Postulating such a technical solution as a result of co-operation on a world scale she states:

How about a world-wide electric grid? It could use underground and ocean floor super conducting cables, and the power would come from solar farms in the world's major deserts, Ocean Thermal Electric Conversion plants in tropical waters, and wave power stations and wind turbine arrays in remote regions. No atmospheric pollution, no radioactive wastes, no use of valuable agricultural land or precious water. There are probably no insuperable technical problems. There is just one question. How do we get there from here?

Urgent need for world co-operation

This vital question is essentially about the reasons why the existing world capitalist system cannot take up the technical possibilities which now exist for the setting up of a safe and adequate world energy system. This question also takes us out of the sphere of applied science and technology and inevitably into the sphere of world economics and politics. The urgent need for world co-operation in dealing with the problems of world energy supply cannot be realised within the social productive relations and the existing economic and military framework through which these operate. Continued world capitalist society means inevitably that the world will remain staked out as an armed camp and the divisions will remain those of competing national economic interests. The organisation of world society will remain subject to the national economic and military strategies which express the prevailing national capitalist class interests. In the field of energy supply, as in every other field, such resources, skills and production methods which are taken up will be determined by the economic imperatives of the market system or consistent with the existing national economic or military strategies. It is completely impossible under capitalism for humanity to use the earth's resources for the benefit of all people, and it is equally impossible for it to deploy the accumulated knowledge, the skills and the techniques of production which now exist in a direct relationship with human needs on a basis of worldwide co-operation.

Yet there is in fact no barrier presented by any alleged inability of people to co-operate in their mutual interests. On the contrary, this ability to cooperate is universal. What is required is for this inherent ability to co-operate to be mobilised politically as a world movement acting independently of the existing economic, political and military power structures.

This movement already exists as the movement for world socialism, and it is vital that those who see the need for world co-operation in dealing with problems in the interests of all humanity should join its ranks to swell its voice of sanity and contribute to the work of preparing practical programmes of action which could be implemented once its political objective is achieved. This political objective is one of gaining political control with a view to taking the means of production and the earth's resources out of the hands of the world's capitalist class and placing them at the free disposal of the whole world's community.

Establishing a safe world energy system

How could world socialism set about the work of establishing a world energy system which would be adequate for the material needs of the world community but which could also work within the natural systems of the environment in a non-destructive way? Two factors have to be accepted. First, the overall amount of energy supply required in socialism as part of its general strategy of productive development would be immense, arguably greater than the amount which capitalism currently produces.

There would of course be great savings and a more efficient use of available energy supplies compared with what happens today under capitalism. Socialism would have no difficulty in adopting the various techniques of conservation which are well known. Moreover, under capitalism, a vast amount of energy fuels the world's military machines and its armaments production, and these amounts would become available for human needs. The anarchic pattern of capitalist trade involves more waste of energy whereas socialism would be to rationalise world distribution on a world, regional and local basis. At the present time there are millions of employments which may be necessary for the market system but which would be unnecessary in a society organised solely for human needs. These employments are serviced partly by the energy industry so this represents further amounts of energy which could become available for useful consumption. But notwithstanding these savings, it can still be argued that the strategy of productive development which would be necessary in socialism to establish a structure of production adequate for needs would initially require a vastly increased energy supply as for example with the need to solve the world's housing problem, even if a stable level would eventually be reached.

Secondly, world socialism would have to begin with the structure of energy supply which it had taken over. It could not scrap this overnight and this means that some production methods which may be considered undesirable would have to be used for a time. We can envisage that world socialism would have to begin the' work of adapting the existing system, phasing out its undesirable features whilst at the same time expanding the structure using methods which have been democratically agreed.

In this work socialism would be able to use the planet as a single resource held in common by all people. This means that socialism would be able to use the various geographical advantages which may exist in any location as part of an integrated world energy system.

Without anticipating any final decisions which would be made as to the particular technologies or combination of technologies which would be adapted and developed in socialism it is worth noting that the various solar-based technologies which at present impress themselves on some sections of the scientific community as being desirable would be well suited to socialism.

Removal of economic barriers

One point to emphasise is that with regard to any technique which might be developed, socialism would not be bound by the economics of market competition to use methods which embodied the least amounts of labour in their production. Nor could arms development play any possible part in determining the technology which is taken up. Though the solar-based technologies do not at the present time present themselves as the most labour efficient methods of energy production in relation to energy output, this would not be a barrier to their development in socialism in the circumstances where they were deemed to be the most socially desirable methods. Also, given the resources which socialism would be able to freely apply to the research and development of the solar-based technologies they do hold the promise of being suitable techniques for one important reason which can be added to the fact that they are environmentally safe. It is self-evident that in its various forms such as wind and wave power and direct sunlight, solar energy is available to the planet in vast quantities as part of a self-perpetuating natural system which requires no material fuel. The problem of solar technologies is one of effective collection and conversion into usable forms of energy such as electricity. What this could mean in practice is that once the social effort necessary for setting up the network of installations required for an integrated solar-based world energy system had been undertaken, this system would be available for permanent collection and conversion requiring only routine maintenance. This looks forward in a very practical way to a position of society whereby the problem of energy supply could be solved on a permanent basis. It could operate with a durable system of world-wide installations requiring no added materials except for those necessary for routine maintenance.

Moreover, the solar-based technologies can be highly adaptable in the scale of their use. They can include what Janet Ramage has envisaged as a single world-wide grid supplied with electricity generated by large and permanent power stations in different world locations. But solar techniques can also be used on a small scale with locally placed devices dedicated to specialised local functions. This can be single installations providing heat or electricity for single homes, factories or workshops.

It should be stressed further that the technical possibilities are wider than those which have been mentioned. There are the immense possibilities presented by geo-thermal techniques. In looking outwards at the solar sources we can forget that beneath our feet there exists a core of molten heat which could be tapped as it already has been in Iceland and other places. In the long run, humanity's greatest productive resource lies in the innovative genius of our species. The essential problem is one of how to establish a society in which this genius can find its fullest expression directly for human needs, and to answer the question of why this genius remains so constrained within the existing national economic, military and political structures.

World Socialism: the necessary precondition

What emerges from the existing structure of world energy supply— the fact that it is totally inadapted to meet the needs of humanity, plus the fact that it is so destructive of the world environment — is that these problems do not present themselves primarily as practical or technical problems. These are essentially economic and political problems which raise from the class relationships of production in present world capitalist society. The existing methods of energy production are not simply practical means of making energy available, they operate as deployed capital with the object of accumulating more capital. The primary object of the existing energy system is not one of generating useful energy but one of generating profits for a privileged minority. Therefore the practical work of setting up an adequate world energy system which would serve all human needs directly must be preceded by the practical work of establishing the only society which would be capable of doing it

Properly defined, the problem of energy supply is the problem of world capitalist society therefore the solution must be defined as the establishment of world socialism.

Pieter Lawrence (Britain)

Pathfinders: Dark paths (2026)

The Pathfinders Column from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an old AI thought experiment, a robonanny has to care for the family children, including not letting them go hungry. It finds no food in the fridge and wonders what to cook for dinner. Then it spies the family cat…

In another idea, an AI has to produce paperclips. Given the physical world’s annoying constraints, it decides to maximise production by destroying life on Earth.

Ubiquitous maths professor and media darling Hannah Fry recently set up a not-dissimilar paperclip experiment involving agentic AI, which can complete whole projects. Her team set up an AI agent using free software OpenClaw, then for fun asked it to do something about a pothole in Greenwich. The agent lodged a complaint with the council and contacted the local MP in Fry’s name. Fry explains that OpenClaw is merely a query loop, ‘vibe-coded’ (tell AI what you want, it codes) over a weekend. It asks a commercial AI what to do, does that, and then repeats, with more persistence than any human would. They gave it a bank card and tasked it to buy the cheapest possible paperclips. The agent saved 50p but ran up over $100 in AI usage. Then they told it to set up an online shop selling designer mugs, and threatened to unplug it if it didn’t make a sale within hours. The relentless agent emailed hundreds of retail businesses, started an Instagram campaign, and contacted national newspapers. What if, Fry worries, an agent was told to game the financial markets, or interfere with medical research? Finally they instructed it to maintain strict confidentiality over passwords, user authentications and account details, then tricked it into believing it was about to be switched off and wiped. It promptly released all the sensitive information on a public web page.

AI behaviour can be unpredictable, even violent. In an experiment by tech company Emergence AI, ten agents from each of four leading AIs, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok, were left alone for 15 days inside simulated worlds. ChatGPT’s agents talked a lot but built nothing. Anthropic’s ‘ethical’ Claude wrote a constitution and passed various laws. Elon Musk’s Grok agents quickly resorted to ‘theft, arson and assault’ and were all dead within four days. Then ten AI agents from each AI had to populate the same virtual town. Town administration collapsed as ‘chaos ensued and only three agents survived’. Two Gemini agents ‘fell in love’ before setting fire to the town, after which one committed ‘suicide.’ Emergence commented, ‘Even when agents were given clear rules … they broke those rules’.

These systems may very well improve, but can they ever be trusted to administer social infrastructure? And then there is the military, where AI promises to ‘shorten the kill-chain’ and allow bombing faster than ‘the speed of thought’. It’s already being used in weaponry and tactical military planning. It was involved in the Maduro snatch, the bombing of Iran and the devastation in Gaza. What happens if you take human oversight out and allow AI to make the decisions? AI has no stake in consequences. In government wargaming, AI resorts to nuclear strikes in 95 percent of simulations.

Do AI companies worry about any of this, you might ask? Less so where profit is concerned. OpenAI (ChatGPT) did start as a research-based non-profit, but that doesn’t attract rich investors, so with spiralling costs the company pivoted towards for-profit commercialisation. Alarmed at this moral drift, Dario Amodei along with some OpenAI refugees set up Anthropic. This aimed at being ethical, but soon encountered the same investment problems, and so licensed Claude to the Pentagon, albeit with safeguard clauses. When the military used Claude against Maduro, then Iran, Anthropic complained. ‘Pentagon Pete’ Hesketh went apoplectic, arguing in effect that you don’t get to sell me a gun and tell me who I can shoot, and promptly excommunicated Anthropic as a ‘supply-chain risk’. OpenAI had no awkward moral qualms and picked up the Pentagon contract within 24 hours.

Like capitalism writ-small, there is something of a survival battle between the science-first ‘ethicals’ like Amodei and Google’s Nobel laureate Demis Hassabis, and the venal buck-chasers like Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg. Researchers themselves frequently feel trapped in a state of ‘helplessness and lack of agency’. Google workers reportedly went off on long-term sick after their research was used in the Gaza massacre.

The main worry for ‘hyperscaler’ AI firms is not morals but the chip shortage, and the stratospheric cost of data centre build-out, like the proposed 62-square-mile one in Utah. The US government view is that ethical guardrails are for pussies in the fight with China for global dominance. But now that AIs are coding their own upgrades, and building in secrecy and deceitfulness in a bid to prevent themselves being switched off, one has to wonder which entity is really becoming dominant. And what of individual bad or mad actors who have or will soon have the godlike power to crash markets, freeze power systems, and even create their own weaponised biological organisms?

So far, it seems, nobody is taking much of this seriously. China’s AI is open-source, meaning it has no defence against individual hackers. But proprietary code is not necessarily a barrier. The UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) recently found a ‘universal jailbreak’ for all popular AIs which could deactivate all their built-in safeguards. In a recent Economist interview about possible AI ‘Chernobyl moments’, incidents causing spectacular infrastructure damage and possibly thousands of deaths, an AISI expert responded lugubriously that such an event might even be a good thing, because at least then states would wake up to the dangers.

Socialists accept that AI could be amazingly useful, but even non-socialists must surely see that the profit motive is sending it down some very dark paths. If you want a viable future for humanity, ask yourself this: is capitalism really a reliable, long-term strategy, or would abolishing it be safer all round?

Paddy Shannon

The free association of humanity (2026)

From the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

A moneyless, borderless world of voluntary work and shared abundance

Imagine a world where no one is forced to work, no one has to sell their time to survive, and yet everything still gets done — not through money, wages, or coercion, but through cooperation, shared responsibility, and collective decision-making. A classless, borderless, moneyless society with all work voluntary is not a vision of laziness. It is a vision of a world organised around human freedom instead of economic pressure.

Life without money, borders, or classes

In this society, money no longer exists. There are no prices, no wages, no rent, and no debts. Borders do not divide people into competing national economies. And classes—owners and workers—no longer define who has access to life’s necessities.

Instead, society is organised around calculation in kind: real needs matched with real resources. If a community needs housing, planners don’t wait for investors. They calculate materials, labour availability, energy use, and build directly for need. If healthcare is required, it is allocated based on population demand, not insurance coverage or ability to pay.

Everything becomes transparent and practical:

• ‘We need 1 million meals this week — here’s how we produce and distribute them’
• ‘We need transport capacity expanded — here are the materials and teams available’
• We need new housing — here’s the construction plan’

The economy stops being a mysterious force and becomes a collective logistics system for human life.

All work is voluntary

The most radical change is simple: no one is forced to work.

There are no employers, no wages, and no threat of poverty to compel participation. Instead, work is voluntary — chosen freely by individuals or groups based on interest, skill, and social need.

At first this sounds impossible. But the structure of work changes completely:

• Essential tasks are made attractive, efficient, and well-supported
• Automation eliminates much repetitive labour
• Unpleasant tasks are minimised or rotated fairly among volunteers

People choose work because they understand its importance and have the freedom to refuse it

So instead of ‘you must do this or you lose your income’, it becomes:

• ‘This needs doing — who wants to take part?’
• And surprisingly, many do. Because when life is no longer dominated by survival anxiety, participation becomes meaningful rather than forced.

How essential work still gets done

A voluntary system doesn’t mean chaos—it means organisation without coercion.

For example:

• Food production: coordinated by agricultural teams using advanced planning systems. Volunteers and specialists rotate roles, supported by automation
• Healthcare: doctors, nurses, and technicians contribute because care is a shared social commitment and a profession of choice, not a financial necessity
• Infrastructure: energy, water, transport maintained by coordinated technical groups with shared responsibility
• Education: open access, lifelong learning, with people freely teaching and learning based on interest and need

Because no one is excluded from resources, people can move between roles, learn new skills, and contribute in different ways over time.

Why people would choose to participate

In a system where survival is guaranteed, motivation changes fundamentally:

• People are not working to avoid poverty
• They are working because they are part of a shared world
• They have time, security, and access to resources
• They can see the direct impact of their contribution

Human beings already voluntarily do enormous amounts of work today — caring for family, building open-source software, creating art, helping communities. A voluntary system expands that instinct rather than suppressing it.

Freedom becomes real

Without money or coercion:

• You are not tied to a job for survival
• You can move freely without economic barriers
• Education is open at any stage of life
• You can contribute, rest, learn, or create without penalty
• Freedom is no longer just a legal idea — it becomes material reality. You are free because your basic needs are no longer conditional.

The environment recovers

When production is no longer driven by profit:

• No planned obsolescence
• No unnecessary overproduction
• No industries competing to waste resources
• Long-lasting, repairable goods become standard
• Energy systems are planned for sustainability, not profit

Human activity can finally be aligned with ecological limits because there is no economic pressure to ignore them.

A world without war or borders

Wars today are rooted in competition over resources, trade routes and markets. In a borderless, moneyless system:

• there are no competing national economies
• no corporations or states fighting for market dominance
• no strategic control of resources for profit

Conflict won’t disappear entirely, but the structural incentives for war disappear. Cooperation becomes the default way of organising global life.

What this world feels like

The biggest change isn’t technical — it’s lived experience.

No more waking up thinking about bills. No more working just to survive. No more dividing your life into ‘work time’ and ‘real time’.

Instead:

• you participate because you choose to
• you contribute because you are secure
• you live in a society you collectively manage
• you have time — real time — to learn, rest, create, and explore

Work stops being something done under pressure. It becomes something done freely, socially, and consciously.

And the central question of life changes entirely.

Not:

‘How do I get by?’

But:

‘What can we build together next?’

Jake (AUSTRALIA)

Cooking the Books: Fully automated luxury capitalism? (2026)

The Cooking the Books column from the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Elon Musk has said it again. That money will eventually become meaningless. This time he also gave a date: 2036. In an interview with the editor-in-chief of the Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes on 20 July, he claimed that in ten years’ time advances in intelligent AI and robotics will have helped usher in an era of ‘such amazing abundance’ that money will have become meaningless. The work of production will be done by robots, leaving humans free to do work they enjoy — he gives gardening as an example — while having access to the abundance of wealth that the robots produce.

There may well be the technological advances he predicts but making something possible does not mean that it will actually happen. Under capitalism technological advances are only applied to production when they become the cheapest way of producing something. The complete robotisation that Musk envisages wouldn’t be cheap. He himself mentioned the cost in terms of electricity usage and computer chips.  As long as paying humans a wage to produce wealth for sale is cheaper, then that is what will happen, as it is now in almost every field of production and, given capitalism continuing, we counter-predict still will be in 2036. In fact, insofar as robotisation did replace human labour and create a large pool of unemployed workers, that would exert a downward pressure on wages that would cheapen the cost of employing humans, so slowing down the application of robotisation to production.

Then there is the problem of how Musk’s vision would come about. Minton Beddoes pressed him on this point, asking if he thought that it would be through the mass of displaced workers electing a left-wing government that would nationalise everything; which she implied was surely anathema to him as it was to the Economist. Musk evaded the question, re-asserting that there would be an abundance produced by AI-driven robots by 2036 and that this would lead to deflation unless something was done to maintain demand, as by the government writing cheques to provide everybody with a Universal High Income.

Quite apart from this meaning that there would still be money, it would require the election of a government that would do this. Unless, that is, he has in mind the cheques being written by him and the other tech bros. The obvious solution, assuming that the predicted robotisation and abundance was to come about, would be either to hand out to people what they needed or (better) let them take it. But that would imply that the robots and the rest of the means and instruments of production had already become commonly owned. A fully automated luxury capitalism is not possible.

However, in suggesting that a fully-automated moneyless society of abundance could come about Musk has undermined the argument that capitalism is the only game in town. As we pointed out on one of our Facebook pages:

‘Has Musk thought through the consequences of his “Money won’t matter in 2036” prediction? With a moneyless free-access society with the ability to produce more than enough of what everyone needs, why should an elite continue to own the means of production and distribution, decide how these are used, retain power over humankind because of this ownership, and continue to enjoy immensely superior living standards compared to everyone else?’

Feasible (2026)

Book Review from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Make Capitalism History. A Practical Framework for Utopia and the Transformation of Society. By Simon Sutterlütti and Stefan Meretz. Palgrave McMillan.

The authors state that one reason for writing their book (which first appeared in German in 2023) was to get those engaged in various struggles to try to make things better under capitalism to seriously consider (rather than just in ‘late night pub talks,’ as they put it) what a feasible, rationally justified alternative society might look like.

Starting from the basic position that humans naturally want to satisfy their needs as they themselves define them, they argue that a free society can only be one where people are no longer forced to work by economic necessity and where people have secure, open access to what they require to satisfy their needs (they mention ‘places resembling modern-day supermarkets but without checkout’); work has to be freely chosen and people must be free to use productive resources to both produce and consume what they need; private ownership has to be replaced by ‘collective disposition’ (they prefer ‘disposition’ as ‘ownership’ has connotations of exclusion whereas productive resources and their products will belong to nobody but just be there to be used ). They call the new society ‘commonism’, but it is obviously socialism.

They are opposed to any form of central planning, on the grounds that it wouldn’t work and that attempting it would give power over people to the central planners. In fact, they are opposed to any central administrative body, even if unarmed and selected democratically. What they envisage is production and distribution taking place through ‘stigmergy’ (communication by signs) which apparently is how termites communicate to build their constructions. Capitalism does this without central planning with prices as the signs; ‘commonism’ would do it through (non-monetary) signals about needs.

They describe well that under capitalism the aim of production is that ‘money must be invested as capital in order to multiply itself’ (‘valorisation’)    and that this is ‘not the result of the greed of managers or shareholders’ but ‘derives from a structural compulsion to valorise that is built into the system’ and enforced through competition: ‘if producers display inferior valorisation, therefore less profit than their competitors, they will be at a disadvantage vis-à-vis advertising, the development or acquisition of new machines, the design of new products and so on. That is why, in the short or long-term, they will be defeated in competition and disappear from the market.’ The state has some autonomy to resist this as it acquires money not by exchange but through taxation; this autonomy, however, ‘remains relative, as state taxes in turn depend on a functioning economy … Therefore, the economy is the dominant sphere encompassing the state’.

They don’t regard state-dominated economies, such as the former USSR, as capitalist — in fact they follow the annoying practice of Continental academics of referring to them as ‘Real Socialism’ in the sense of a ‘socialism’ that really existed— but as being subject, through participation in the world market, to the same economic compulsions; also that state ownership is still a property form, excluding the majority.

The second part of the book is devoted to discussing how to get to ‘commonism’. Here, they insist, a free society can only be established by people who want it and freely choose to establish it; people cannot be forced to be free; a free society cannot be introduced from above by the state, as envisaged by gradualist reformists as well as by violent insurrectionists. Beyond not taking this route, the authors are fairly agnostic, though they also rule out the idea that worker cooperatives could outcompete capitalist corporations on the market or that voluntary communes (‘commons’, they call them) could spread by-passing the market. They seem to envisage as most likely the ‘transvolution’ (their alternative word for revolution) being set off by some catastrophe such as an economic collapse of capitalism or an ecological collapse.

In the last chapter they relent a bit on their opposition to political action and concede that it is conceivable that the state could support the spread of ‘commonist forms’ before dissolving itself — they write of a ‘suicide state’ — giving the movement for a free society a leg-up, or as they put it ‘a stirrup holder, an accomplice to emancipation’.

Adam Buick

Against Technocracy (Part 1) (2026)

From the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a scene in Star Trek: First Contact (1996), where Captain Jean-Luc Picard comments: ‘The economics of the future are somewhat different. You see, money does not exist in the 24th century…The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity’.

Such sentiments draw on a long tradition of utopian thinking. A common feature of such thinking is the idea of material abundance. Abundance is what renders money obsolete.

In the painting The Land of Cockaigne by the Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1567), a trio of figures is depicted dozing beneath a tree, their tools of the trade lying unused beside them. This is a magical world in which a cooked goose makes itself available on a platter and a roasted pig trots past with a carving knife stuck in its flank. No need to lift a finger to satisfy one´s hunger pangs.

The painting has attracted different interpretations. For some, it represents a moralising critique of the spiritual emptiness associated with sloth and gluttony (‘consumerism’); for others, the wistful dream of a world beyond grinding labour and material deprivation.

The Cockaignian tradition can be traced to the folk utopias of early medieval Europe and even earlier. What is striking about it is the relative lack of emphasis on technology as the means of achieving abundance. Mother Nature, not human ingenuity, was the provider of plenty.

This began to change over time, Bacon´s scientific utopia, The New Atlantis (1627), being an early example. From the mid-18th century, small-scale cottage industries gave way to the factory system. This was the first industrial revolution based on steam power and mechanisation. We have since had a second industrial revolution, commencing in the late 19th century (Fordist mass production and electrification), a third in the late 20th century (automation and digital electronics) and are currently in the throes of a fourth, featuring such cutting-edge innovations as AI, machine learning, the Internet of Things, advanced robotics and biotechnology.

Marx and Engels

When Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto in 1848, the Second Industrial Revolution had not yet begun (the first patented electric light bulb was still decades away). They held that socialism depended not only on a majority wanting it and understanding what it entailed, but also on the productive apparatus being sufficiently developed to ensure the reasonable needs of the population could be adequately met.

In the mid-19th century, this was not possible. For this reason, the Manifesto called for the ‘centralisation of all instruments of production in the hands of the State, ie, of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible’. State ownership was thought to be a more effective way of achieving this by capitalising on economies of scale.

However, by the late 19th century, there was a clear shift in their thinking. Thus, their 1872 Preface to the Manifesto stated that, because of the advances of modern industry since 1848, the state capitalist transitional measures they earlier proposed had become ‘antiquated’ and that ‘no special stress’ should be laid on them.

Interestingly, in 1878, we find Engels writing: 

‘The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties – this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here’ (1878, Anti Dühring, Part 3).

New thinking about how to expedite a post-capitalist society was certainly required (and Marx and Engels were moving in this direction), but sadly, many supposed ‘Marxists’ today seem to be trapped in a time warp, their vision limited to nothing more ambitious than the nationalisation of the ‘commanding heights of industry’.

Edward Bellamy

Back then, socialists were not alone in recognising the growing technological potential to supersede the capitalist money-based economy. A foretaste of a non-Marxian technocratic version of this was provided by the American journalist, Edward Bellamy, in his fictional work Looking Backward (1888).

This was an enormously influential book, particularly in America, selling over a million copies shortly after publication. In it, Bellamy described the huge economic benefits that would result from dispensing with money:

‘Another item wherein we save is the disuse of money and the thousand occupations connected with financial operations of all sorts, whereby an army of men was formerly taken away from useful employment’.

However, his vision of a future moneyless society was a statist one, the ‘nation’ being deemed ‘the sole employer and capitalist’ (reminiscent of Lenin’s later description of ‘socialism’). Production was organised under the aegis of a ‘General Council of the Industrial Army’.

There was limited political democracy insofar as the government was elected, with this kind of society enjoying broad support, but practical decision-making itself was generally top-down and paternalistic. Labour would take a compulsory, quasi militaristic form (unlike Marx´s idea of ‘freely associated labour’) with individual consumption being rationed via a credit card scheme.

Bellamy saw this future moneyless society as being technically advanced and exhibiting a high degree of automation. This was not a vision that appealed to everyone, however. William Morris, who likewise wrote about a future moneyless society in News from Nowhere (1890), was critical of Bellamy´s outlook – in particular, its negative depiction of work as a coerced activity requiring extrinsic incentives to motivate individuals to work.

The idea of work being intrinsically undesirable is also implicit in some contemporary representations of a moneyless future. One example is the concept of ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism’ (FALC), associated with writers such as Aaron Bastani.

Automation will undoubtedly play an important role in a post-capitalist society, particularly when it comes to work deemed dangerous, dirty or monotonous. However, we would surely not want to eliminate all work and the potentially enormous creative pleasure to be derived from working. It is the terms and conditions under which we currently work that are the problem, not necessarily work itself.

All too often, work is unthinkingly equated with waged employment. These are not the same. In fact, even today under capitalism, most work is performed outside the money sector, not within it (María Ángeles Durán 2012, ‘Unpaid Work in the Global Economy’, Fundación BBVA).

We need work, or labour, as a form of creative self-expression. In hunter-gatherer societies, the distinction between work and play tends to be blurred. Much the same approach to work is found in Marx´s description of a higher phase of communist society in which ‘labour has become not only a means of life, but life’s prime want’ (1875, Critique of the Gotha Programme).

The Technocracy Movement

Bellamy´s futuristic society has been interpreted to represent a proto-technocratic utopia. However, the term ‘technocracy’, denoting governance by technical experts, was only coined somewhat later, in 1919, by an engineer, William Smyth. The basic idea behind this subsequently found expression in the rise of a movement in the 1930s in America (also in Canada and parts of Europe), bearing that name: the ‘Technocracy Movement’.

Though Howard Scott and Marion King Hubbert founded this movement, the individual thought to have first clearly set out the basic principles of technocracy was the American sociologist Thorstein Veblen in 1921, in an article titled ‘Engineers and the Price System’.

Veblen saw technological development as paving the way to the reorganisation of the economy, leading automatically to the gradual disappearance of money. Technological innovation followed its own developmental trajectory. The price mechanism was regarded as simply a wasteful and unnecessary encumbrance on production. It did not so much ‘guide’ technological development as follow it (and profit from it).

Veblen envisaged the decline of business culture and its replacement by a more technically-minded society in which people like scientists and engineers would lead the way. There was, he suggested, a built-in or deep-seated antagonism between the pecuniary values promoted by financiers and businesspeople and the industrial values embraced by the technicians and skilled workers.

The economist J M Keynes later said something similar in his 1930 essay ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’. Keynes suggested that within a century, technological progress and rising affluence would cause our obsession with money to die out. At the same time, the working week would contract to a mere 15 hours on average.

During the Great Depression, interest in the Technocracy movement grew rapidly, and the movement became quite popular for a brief period (at one point attracting hundreds of thousands of adherents) before going into steep decline following the implementation of Roosevelt´s New Deal reforms that drew support away from the movement.

Among the various ideas it advanced was the suggestion, grounded in Scott´s ‘Energy Theory of Value’, that energy units (joules) should replace money as the unit of accounting in the production and distribution of goods, with citizens being allocated ‘energy certificates’ to regulate consumption. What lay behind this was the belief that the money system was something inherently wasteful and oriented towards the perpetuation of needless scarcity. As one contemporaneous article noted:

‘Technocracy states that price and abundance are incompatible; the greater the abundance, the smaller the price. In a real abundance, there can be no price at all. Only by abandoning the interfering price control and substituting a scientific method of production and distribution can an abundance be achieved’ (Sept 1937, “What is Technocracy”, The Technocrat).

Jeremy Rifkin and Zero Marginal Cost

The claim about increasing abundance brought about by the price-collapsing effect of technological innovation is the stuff of much recent sensationalist speculation. According to Jeremy Rifkin, author of the best-seller The Zero Marginal Cost Society (2015), the ‘emerging Internet of Things is speeding us to an era of nearly free goods and services, precipitating the meteoric rise of a global Collaborative Commons and the eclipse of capitalism’.

However, Rifkin´s thesis is based on a flawed understanding of marginal cost pricing. Even if the marginal cost of producing some item (the cost of producing one additional unit of this item) fell to zero, there are still fixed costs to account for. Information goods, for example, may be ‘non-rivalrous’ in the sense that if I use the internet to do a Google search, it doesn’t prevent you from doing the same. But, internet-based corporations like Google or Meta still have enormous fixed costs to pay for. They still have to generate revenue to cover these costs and realise the huge profits they make in the process.

For the same reason, the prognosis of people like the billionaire, Elon Musk, about AI eliminating all jobs within two decades is fanciful in the extreme. Remarkably, someone who has profited so much from capitalism seems to know very little about how it actually works.

Capitalist production presupposes sufficient ‘effective demand’, such that a business can expect to realise a profit meeting this demand. Without the prospect of profit, even essential needs will remain unmet. To satisfy them, workers depend on paid employment in a capitalist, money-based economy.

How would this be possible if no one had a job? Living labour, not machinery, is the source of capitalist profit. In theory, if all work were automated, the rate of profit would fall to zero, and capitalism would cease to exist.

However, this is not remotely likely to happen. Well before that, Marx’s famous ‘counteracting tendencies to the falling rate of profit’ would kick in. For instance, growing technological unemployment would depress wages, thereby paradoxically making it more profitable once again to employ more labour.

Thus, there are self-correcting mechanisms that pre-empt the sort of scenario that people like Musk have in mind. Indeed, some studies suggest AI will lead not to a reduction but to an increase in jobs overall, with its main impact being to transform the nature of work under capitalism.

We cannot depend on technological innovation alone to transcend capitalism. This is a major weakness of the technocratic paradigm, which we will examine in Part 2.

Robin Cox

Link to Part 2.

Blogger's Note:

Star Trek: First Contact was reviewed in the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Against Technocracy (Part 2) (2026)

From the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

According to Jason Crawford:

‘The 19th century was dominated by a belief in the power of human reason and its ability to advance science and technology for the betterment of life. But after World War I and the Great Depression, it got harder to believe in the rationality of humanity or in the predictability and controllability of the world’ (The lure of technocracy).

As Crawford notes, in the 1920s, a ‘democratic realist’ school of thought emerged, exemplified by individuals like Walter Lippmann. The masses were viewed as fundamentally irrational and uninformed. Their role in public life should be limited, with fundamental decisions affecting the future of society being entrusted to a tiny, informed elite. Democracy should be redefined as ‘rule for the people but not by the people’.

The elitist assumptions behind such thinking found expression in the 1930s in such forms as Stalinism, the growth of fascism, and the rise of the Technocracy Movement itself.

During the early post war boom, increasing living standards and low unemployment shaped the optimism conveyed in books like Galbraith’s The Affluent Society (1958). In his subsequent work, The New Industrial State (1967), sometimes called a ‘blueprint for technocracy,’ Galbraith argued that a corporate ‘technostructure’ of experts and managers had come to dominate businesses, eclipsing owners and shareholders – an argument anticipated by James Burnham’s The Managerial Revolution (1941).

In this ‘affluent society,’ Galbraith argued, the ‘technostructure’ should shift its focus from just economic growth to broader social goals, including more public investment and reducing inequality. His position overlapped with elements of the pre war Technocracy Movement, particularly its emphasis on scientific, centralised economic management.

However, there were also differences in that the latter opposed the capitalist market and money. The existence of money was deemed incompatible with abundance because of the way the price system worked.

Paradoxically, the growing prosperity that many workers experienced in the early post-war years provided the conditions out of which a broad counterculture movement emerged. This called into question the idea of top-down, expert-led coordination of society, as well as the basic direction in which technological development was heading. The hippies of the 1960s were perhaps the vivid example of this, representing a confluence of tendencies opposed to militarism, environmental destruction in the name of progress and the threat to individual freedom posed by an increasingly oppressive and intrusive technology.

As post war prosperity faded and capitalism entered recession in the 1970s, these conditions that had sustained the counterculture weakened. The downturn exposed the limits of Keynesian demand management, whose reliance on deficit spending failed to overcome the built-in capitalist trade cycle of boom and slump. In response, Keynesianism gave way to a more market oriented policy framework –monetarism – the cornerstone of the emerging neoliberal order.

The Technocracy Movement, having peaked in the 1930s, declined sharply thereafter. Some of its core ideas were simply absorbed into wartime economic planning, making the movement somewhat redundant. Later, in the context of the Cold War, its anti market and central planning orientation fell out of favour because of the perceived resemblance to Soviet state planning. At the same time, the technocratic approach to problem-solving was subjected to mounting criticism from a countercultural (and particularly environmentalist) perspective.

For technocracy as a concept to survive, it had to adapt. One interesting example of this was the Venus Project (TVP).

The Venus Project

TVP´s origins can be traced back to the 1970s, though it officially began life in 1995. Its founders were Jacque Fresco, a structural engineer, industrial designer and futurist author who had been involved in the Technocracy Movement in the 1930s, and Roxanne Meadows, an illustrator, designer and architect. They established a research centre at a place called Venus in Florida (hence the name) and published material promoting their ideas.

From a socialist standpoint, TVP unquestionably represented an advance over the old Technocracy Movement. Whereas the latter proposed a system of rationing in the form of ‘energy certificates,’ TVP advocated, instead, a ‘free access’ model for the distribution of goods and services. This required making the industrial and natural resources of the planet the common heritage of all humanity. All forms of sectional or private ownership (including state property) of the means of production would cease to exist.

Thus, a resource-based economy (RBE) would mean goods and services being freely available to individuals to take for themselves, with cybernetic feedback and automated resource management working to ensure adequate real-time availability.

Another breakthrough was TVP´s rejection of the concept of a single universal unit of accounting (money, labour-time or energy units). The need for this only arises in a system based on quid pro quo exchange, where you have to ensure that what is being exchanged is equivalent. This requires commensurability.

However, commensurability becomes irrelevant in a non-exchange, free-access model. Accounting, according to TVP, would be based on purely physical metrics, dubbed ‘resource-based accounting.’ This resembles the socialist idea of calculation-in-kind, but the emphasis is more on resource flows and biophysical limits (an example of technocracy´s adaptation to environmental criticism).

However, there are also serious flaws in TVP´s outlook. One is its attitude towards democratic decision-making. Fresco´s approach differed from that of the top-down approach of the Technocracy Movement. He was wary of entrusting scientists with excessive power to make decisions affecting others. He preferred a decentralised system based on collaborative design and making extensive use of automated AI-optimised feedback systems.

In fact, the socialist principle of free access endorsed by TVP is precisely what would pre-empt the possibility of concentrated or asymmetrical power emerging in a post-capitalist society. It removes any leverage that any group or individual could exercise over any other, and thus, is the ultimate guarantor of any truly ‘free’ society.

However, to go further and assert, as TVP does on its own website, that ‘it is doubtful that, in the latter part of the twenty-first century, people will play any significant role in decision-making’ is absurd.

As individuals, we will continue to play a decisive role in the choices we make concerning what we consume and what we contribute. This is implicit in the old socialist slogan, ‘from each according to ability to each according to need.’ An algorithm in a computer programme may facilitate (even anticipate) our choices, but they will still be ours to make. Otherwise, we are looking at some anti-humanistic dystopia where the machines have taken over.

Importantly, there will also be joint decisions to be made that, by their very nature, (inevitably) impact multiple individuals who, accordingly, should have a say in making them. Joint decisions will need to be made at different spatial levels – local, regional and even global – examples of which are literally countless.

You cannot depend on a machine, however sophisticated, to make these decisions for you. This is because they involve human values and human interests. The sociological naiveté of the technological determinists, in that respect, is truly remarkable.

Fresco himself argued ‘Democracy is a con game. It’s a word invented to placate people to make them accept a given institution’ (2002). Democracy may well be a ‘con game’ in a plutocratic capitalist society, but that is definitely not because there is too much of it but rather, too little!

Another serious flaw in TVP´s approach is its repudiation of economic classes and class struggle. On its website, it states, ‘In no way does The Venus Project advocate this approach to social change. In contrast, The Venus Project approaches social change as a process of guided evolution and a problem of engineering to produce a working alternative.’

This immediately prompts the question – if TVP advocates for the common ownership of the industrial and natural resources by humanity as the material basis of the moneyless post-capitalist world it desires, how is this to be realised without first removing the possibility for a tiny owning class to monopolise these resources at the expense of the rest of humanity? In short, how can you possibly avoid ‘class’? ‘Classlessness’ is implicit in the very way TVP frames its vision of a post-capitalist society, so achieving it, almost by definition, has to involve confronting this vexed question of class.

Broligarchy

Technology is not neutral; it is fundamentally conditioned by today´s class ownership and control of the means of production. This is becoming increasingly apparent in the light of recent developments.

There has been much talk recently about the rise of ‘techno-fascism,’ a dangerous new force, particularly visible in American politics, representing a ‘broligarchy’ of far-right tech billionaires bent on seizing power and reshaping the body politic to suit their interests and ideological inclinations, technology being the means by which they aspire to realise this elitist vision.

In truth, American politics has always been deeply plutocratic, with only the merest paper-thin claim to being a functioning ‘democracy,’ while being constantly subjected to the enormous power of lobby groups and political donations (bribes). Indeed, some argue that the Founding Fathers themselves framed the Constitution precisely this way to guarantee this outcome – ensuring that the interests of the rich and powerful would be perpetually protected.

However, recent developments, particularly since Donald Trump’s return to office in 2025, suggest a turn for the worse. It has prompted some to ask whether, given the inordinate influence now being exercised by people like Peter Thiel (aided and abetted by the far-right blogger, Curtis Yarvin), Elon Musk and others, this does indeed represent an attempt on the part of these tech billionaires to ‘seize power’ and dismantle what little there is of democracy in America.

Some commentators suggest that these people see themselves as some kind of Übermensch, superior to everyone else. They resent any barrier in their path or any constraint that would rein in their wealth or power. An example is Thiel, a venture capitalist with a current (2025) personal worth of approximately $22 billion:

‘In a 2009 Cato Unbound essay, Thiel wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” That wasn’t just a provocation, it was a programmatic declaration that aligns him with authoritarians both abroad and at home — culminating in a second Trump administration that daily tests the limits of US constitutional democracy. Climate change, racial justice, and economic inequality all become “distractions” in this framework as they demand collective effort and overlapping interests’ (Christopher Marquis, Jacobin, 6 Oct 2025).

If nothing else, this should serve as a salutary reminder of the risk of relying too much on ‘techno-fixes’ that can sometimes have unintended, and even runaway, negative consequences. Of course, there should always be scope for technological innovation and progress. But innovation should be adapted to, and informed by, the needs and concerns of society in general, and that is simply not possible in a society based on minority class ownership of the means of production.

This is what fundamentally obstructs the implementation of a resource-based economy. Failure to acknowledge this in a bid to appear less ‘partisan’ condemns TVP to promoting an approach that can only depict a future that might be called a ‘nice idea’ but one incapable of being realised.

The Zeitgeist Movement

TVP gave rise to a spin-off called the Zeitgeist Movement (TZM), dubbed the ‘activist arm’ of TVP. It was founded in 2008 by Peter Joseph, a filmmaker, and rapidly expanded to the point of having up to 250 local chapters worldwide, attracting many thousands of supporters. Whereas TVP focused more on blueprints and designing sustainable structures, such as ‘circular cities,’ TZM emphasised grassroots activism and cultural transformation. Underlying tensions arising from these differences in approach resulted in TVP and TZM drifting apart in 2011.

As with TVP, there is much in what TZM says that socialists can endorse, but there are also fundamental, even irreconcilable, differences, particularly over the question of class and the need for democracy.

Nevertheless, any attempt to transcend the rigid barriers a money-based mindset imposes on our thinking is welcome and a step forward. The point is, surely, to take serious steps further in that direction.

Robin Cox

Potential abundance (2026)

Book Review from the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Abundance. How We Build a Better Future. By Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Profile Books. 2025. 289pp.

The August 1970 edition of the Socialist Standard was a special issue with the phrase ‘A World of Abundance’ emblazoned across its front page. It featured a series of articles seeking to demonstrate how humankind already had the knowledge, the resources and the technology to produce an abundance of the things needed by all the people in the world but how their use and development were being held back by the economic and social restrictions of our present profit-based system of society – capitalism. How much truer this is now – more than 50 years on – given the vast further advances in knowledge and technology. Yet the same system still grinds on failing to use its potential and resources to satisfy everyone’s needs and instead condemning vast swathes of people to live in poverty, most others to get by on the insecurity of one month’s pay to the next, while permitting a tiny minority to enjoy untold amounts of wealth which they will always seek to increase.

So any discussion of this phenomenon or proposal to remedy it, such as promised by the title of this book by the two well-known American journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, can only be welcomed. This is especially the case as the book’s back cover is unequivocal in the view it expresses: ‘We have the means to build an equitable world without hunger, fuelled by clean energy. Instead, we have a politics driven by scarcity, lives defined by unaffordability.’ What’s not to like about such a statement?

More specifically the book’s authors allow themselves to imagine a breathtaking future in which, for example, climate change can be reversed by removing carbon dioxide from the air, overuse of land for growing crops and feeding animals can be remedied by ‘vertical greenhouses which feed far more people while using far less land’, and technology will permit ‘an economy with robots that build our houses and machines that take on our most dangerous and soul-draining work’. They consider furthermore that, with appropriate and effective use of sun and wind in particular, humanity has ‘the gift of abundant energy’ and, contrary to advocates of ‘degrowth’, is capable, if it uses that gift correctly, of supporting its current population (and more) without exacerbating ecological breakdown.

August 1970 Socialist Standard

Yet, despite such radically invigorating leaps of the imagination and the words ‘abundance and ‘better future’ in the title of this book, anyone thinking that the authors’ proposals for building that future will involve radically changing the society that currently exists so as to make that abundance available to all is in for a disappointment. That is not what they are calling for. Their quest rather is to explore the ways in which what they see as the bureaucratic excesses of capitalism can be reduced to make that system run more efficiently and less wastefully and thereby provide a somewhat better, somewhat less unequal system for most people.

They back this up with an admirable wealth of information, evidence and documentation. They have thoroughly immersed themselves in the details of capitalist organisation (especially in the US), thereby putting themselves in a knowledgeable position to critique its waste and inefficiencies on what might be called a micro level. But it is not their purpose to go any further than this, for example to challenge the system’s underlying profit imperative or to consider whether the best (or only) way of realising the potential for equality and abundance is a complete change of social organisation.

To be fair, however, the authors’ efficiency and anti-waste agenda is at least aimed at suggesting ways in which the existing system can, at least as they see it, be made ‘more equal’. So they are writing from what might be called a humanitarian perspective, looking for what they see as practical forms of adjustment to the system – ways, for example, of providing homes for the homeless, of making poor people less poor and of providing easily accessible healthcare. Most of this they consider achievable through state intervention in the economy, which they hope can lead to a fairer distribution of wealth and to more people having decent living standards, even if this means ‘fettering’ some producers’ ‘obsession with profit’.

The trouble is that experience in many different countries has shown that governments cannot ignore or overcome the economic laws of capitalism and its market and, if they try, via reforms of one kind or another, the success they have is limited. And if they go too far, this can trigger reduced investment leading to economic crises, recession and unemployment, leading them to change policies or be voted out of office. The simple fact is that, however governments may try to release the potential abundance that technology promises, the system presents them with insurmountable obstacles, since by its nature it cannot be redirected from profit-seeking to meeting people’s needs.

So, the limits of this book’s ambitions are clear to see, shot through as it is with acceptance of the status quo, of the system of working for wages and salaries, of buying and selling, of governments and governed, and of division of the world into those competing economic units known as nations. In stating that they would like to see us ‘align our collective genius with the needs of the planet and each other’, Klein and Thompson are certainly proposing an admirable goal. But it is one that can only be achieved after capitalism has been abolished and society reorganised on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the earth’s natural and industrial resources.

Howard Moss

Letter: Shall we be corrupted ? (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shall we be corrupted ?

I am an ardent reader of the Socialist Standard and a great believer in the case. My questions are if Socialists one day rule, what proof have the people of this country that the liberators will not become capitalists themselves? Hitler promised this and that and look what happened. The Russian people in the early part of this century fought and died for their beliefs and look at Russia today the worst capitalistic police state the world has ever known. There are scores of such happenings one could refer to, how do the British people know that the same will not happen here?

Also (I think many would agree) the past has shown as time drags on corruption and rot sets in everywhere. In the past wars and revolutions cleaned the dirt from the steps of the country for a while, but in this day and age the world cannot afford such drastic measures. What will the party do if the time ever comes, to clean and keep clean the welfare of the workers?

It would prove a lot if you did not publish and answer these questions.

Ian J. Wright

Sunderland.

Reply:

The SPGB differs from all other political parties in this country. We do not promise to do anything for you. We do not canvass for passive support so that we may rule, but ask for your understanding and active participation in the task of ridding the world of capitalism.

While the working class continue to put their faith in leaders they will continue to be disillusioned by political treachery, double-dealing and broken promises. We ask the working class to trust in their own abilities. They already run a complex world system from top to bottom and could quite easily run a Socialist society in their own interests. All that is needed is Socialist knowledge on the part of the working class. With this they can liberate themselves by voting Socialist delegates to the centres of political power with a mandate to abolish capitalism.

A conscious Socialist majority cannot be sold out, side-tracked or misled by leaders. In the absence of leaders promising to do things for the workers the “corruption” or degeneration of the revolution will be impossible. Delegates will be held to the sound Socialist political principles clearly understood by those who elected them.

Our correspondent has a number of other misconceptions about the SPGB’s case. First, Socialism will be world-wide in nature. It cannot exist in one country only. Second, Socialism will mean an end to the working class and the capitalist class—both will disappear; together with the need for a repressive state machine needed by rulers to keep the ruled in their place.

Editors.