Material World: A Socialist Future: How it works and how society is organised (2026)

The Material World column from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism is not a reform of capitalism nor a system of state management exercised by a minority. It is a fundamentally different form of society based on common ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth, democratic control by the whole community, and production carried out directly for use rather than for sale and profit.

At the centre of this vision is the principle articulated by Karl Marx in Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875): ‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’. This is not an ethical command enforced by authority, but a description of how social relations can function once class divisions, markets, and material insecurity have been overcome.

How the socialist system functions

In a socialist society, land, industry, transport, and infrastructure are held in common by society as a whole. No individual, corporation, or state body owns productive resources as private property. As a result, the wages system disappears, along with money, buying and selling, and the accumulation of profit.

Production is organised solely to meet human needs. The immense productive powers already developed under capitalism—science, technology, automation, and global logistics—can be consciously redirected toward ensuring that everyone has free access to food, housing, healthcare, education, and cultural resources. Freed from the constraints of profit, production becomes rational, sustainable, and humane.

Individuals contribute according to their abilities and inclinations. Work is no longer forced by economic necessity but becomes a cooperative social activity. Distribution is based on need rather than purchasing power, reflecting the real material requirements of human life.

Democratic organisation and coordination

Socialist society is organised democratically from the bottom up. Communities and workplaces collectively decide priorities and communicate their needs and capacities. These decisions are coordinated at wider levels to ensure efficient use of resources and to avoid duplication or waste.

This is not rule by planners standing above society. It is society consciously planning itself. Modern information systems already demonstrate the technical feasibility of coordinating complex production on a global scale. In socialism, such coordination is transparent and accountable, serving human needs rather than profit or power.

Political structure and the end of class rule

Because socialism abolishes class ownership, it also abolishes the political structures designed to maintain class power. The state, understood as an instrument of coercion and domination, becomes unnecessary. What remains are administrative and coordinating bodies tasked with carrying out collectively agreed decisions.

Delegates are elected, mandated, and recallable. They do not rule; they serve. There is no permanent political elite, no professional governing class, and no separation between those who make decisions and those who live with the consequences. Political activity becomes an aspect of everyday social life rather than a specialised career.

The Paris Commune: A historical example

A glimpse of this kind of organisation was seen in the Paris Commune of 1871. For a brief period, working people took collective control of the city and replaced the existing state machinery with directly accountable institutions. Officials were elected and recallable, paid workers’ wages, and combined legislative and administrative functions rather than standing above society as a separate authority.

Although the Commune existed under extreme conditions and did not abolish capitalism, it demonstrated essential socialist principles in practice: popular control, the dismantling of hierarchical state power, and the replacement of rule by administration. Its significance lies not in its limitations, but in showing that ordinary people can organise society themselves without a ruling class.

Freedom, equality, and human development

Socialism expands freedom by removing the economic compulsion that dominates life under capitalism. With secure access to the means of life, individuals are free to develop their abilities, participate meaningfully in social decision-making, and shape their own lives. Equality means equal access to resources and equal standing in society, not enforced uniformity.

In such a society, politics and economics are no longer separate spheres. Society consciously regulates its productive activity, its relationship with nature, and its social priorities. Cooperation replaces competition, and production for use replaces production for profit.

Socialism, understood in this way, is not imposed by leaders or institutions. It can only be created by a conscious majority acting in its own interests. It represents the collective self-emancipation of humanity and the practical realisation of a society guided by the principle: ‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’.

Jake Ambrose, 

Australia

Letter: Thomas Piketty (2025)

Letter to the Editors from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Practical proposals"

Dear Editors

I have read Socialism as a Practical Alternative, this is very interesting, although I would like it to know more about voting rights and other decision making processes in the political sphere and in the economic sphere, in particular regarding the rights to use capital assets, both for housing and for equipment in small production units vs large production units, etc. I make some practical proposals on my Brief History of Equality (see eg, tinyurl.com/5xbapcn5), but of course they are highly imperfect and the only way to make progress is to compare with other proposals and learn from them!

Thomas Piketty

Reply:

At this stage, when there are so few who want a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control of the means to produce what society needs to survive, it is premature to draw up detailed plans as to how things will be arranged in such a society. That is something for those around at the time to decide when capitalism is about to be replaced by socialism; in other words, when a majority of the population want socialism. All we can do is to come up with some suggestions and even then not going into the detail that your proposals do. But we don’t doubt that when that time comes detailed plans will be drawn up.

We are approaching the question from a different position from yours. You see a different kind of society coming about gradually through a serious of reform measures, to be implemented now under capitalism. Hence the need to come up with a detailed proposal. We don’t see that a gradual transition to socialism is possible as, in the end, what decides what happens is the operation of the uncontrollable economic laws of capitalist society which impose that the priority must be profit-making and the accumulation of capital. They rule out detailed reform measures working as planned. Our view is that, before anything constructive and lasting can be done, the basis of society needs to be changed root and branch from class ownership of the means of life to their common ownership and democratic control by society as a whole.

So while you are proposing measures to be implemented now under capitalism, we are envisaging possible measures to be implemented after capitalism has been replaced by socialism.

Nevertheless, to try to answer your specific questions. By ‘the rights to use capital assets’, by which we assume you mean the physical means to produce wealth. These won’t belong to anyone; they will simply be there to be used in accordance with democratically decided rules. We imagine that the day-to-day operation of them will be in the hands of those who operate them, through some democratically chosen management committee. This could be chosen by any number of different voting systems or even by lot (now called ‘sortition’). And there is no reason why this needs to be the same everywhere and in every workplace.

Housing: houses and flats won’t belong to anyone either. They wouldn’t be privately owned, not even by individuals; but this wouldn’t rule out people having the right to use a house or flat for a prolonged period. One possible arrangement would for their allocation to be in the hands of a local council in accordance with some democratically agreed criteria. These would have to be fairly complicated, allowing for appeals and settlement of disputes, but we can’t say much more today about them other than that they would have to exist and that it will be up to those living in socialism to decide the details which, once again, need not be the same everywhere.

Editors.

Letter: Equality (2025)

Letter to the Editors from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Equality

Thanks for sending this (your review of Equality, October Socialist Standard). Needless to say, everything I propose and describe about democratic socialism needs to be discussed, amended, improved, discussed again and again. See the longer discussion in my Brief History of Equality. From that viewpoint, I am very interested to better understand what kind of organization and institution you are advocating in your own view of socialism.

Thomas Piketty

Reply:

We comment on your Brief History of Equality on page 9. In the meantime we refer you to our pamphlet Socialism As A Practical Alternative – Editors.

New Pamphlet: Socialism as a Practical Alternative (1987)

Party News from the June 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

The pamphlet rejects the idea, sometimes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Material World: Think global, act global (2023)

The Material World column from the December 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is an interesting report in The Conversation of a recent paper by a group of academics on optimal land use for agriculture and carbon capture (see ‘Benefits and trade-offs of optimizing global land use for food, water, and carbon’ in the journal PNAS. They ‘targeted three key ecosystem service (ES) indicators: total carbon (C) storage (indicative of climate regulation and climate-change mitigation), crop production (indicative of food supply), and available runoff (indicative of freshwater supply)’ and produced models to balance these three objectives.

This is interesting to us, because it is an example of how we can look globally at land use, looking at competing objectives (and trying to balance them) and not using money as an indicator: in short, the things necessary to engage in a planned co-operative economy. We don’t need to endorse the specific results of this group of academics to see the possibility of this level of global land use planning. But, as they state: ‘Results show a potential to increase all three indicators (+83% in crop production, +8% in available runoff, and +3% in carbon storage globally)’.

However in the article, Deepa Senapathi points up what this could mean:

‘It’s also tough to see the suggested land use as feasible or pragmatic when geopolitical and socioeconomic factors tend to drive decisions on what to do with land. For example, the optimisation suggests more cropland in most of Great Britain, with parts of Scotland and southern and eastern England left to nature. But this would require significant policy and socio-culture change in a country where 52% of land is already enclosed farmland and only 11% is woodland.

‘Only a very brave politician would suggest abandoning British farms, or taking iconic woodlands or moorland grazed by sheep and turning them into wheat fields.’

She also notes that there are other factors: flood plains, biodiversity and insect life that would need to be taken into consideration. This is true enough. Impressive though the optimisation algorithms are on a global scale, the kind of changes that this paper suggests would be necessary would require detailed local planning and co-operation to achieve. We would not believe for one instant that a small group of academics in Germany could produce wholesale a plan to tell the world how to use its land. Indeed, in our pamphlet Socialism as a Practical Alternative we note:

‘In socialism a world specialist body like the FAO [Food and Agriculture Organisation] could be concerned with co-ordination, assistance and advice. It would be in a position to provide this service against a detailed world picture of all the problems associated with the need to increase world food production in ways which would be safe within the natural systems of the environment. This is not to suggest that such world bodies would be entirely centralized and operating from a single world location. They could operate regionally and locally and their members could be involved in any scale of activity where the necessity might arise.’

Freed from the imperatives of geopolitical confrontation between property owners and the incessant drive to make monetary profit, information from such studies as this PNAS paper could be part of a worldwide debate to democratically agree a common course of action, as well as guidance for local debate on implementation. Indeed, to even make their model work, the German academics had to assume an absence of trade barriers for food and water.

Even land non-use is important, as they note that their ‘results further strengthen previous work that highlighted the importance of conserving tropical and boreal forested regions for their unique climate regulation services […] and emphasize that crop and fodder production should be focused on temperate and subtropical regions.’ The logic of capitalism would see this as a waste, as it demands that everything be put to instrumental use in making profit, deliberately choosing not to exploit a resource is outside the capacity of the market system, no matter how vital it is to human survival.

Still, it is useful to note that the paper tells us that we have scope to increase food production, as well as a useful element in fighting climate change by securing more carbon in plants and soil.

It also shows us how computer algorithms and models can be applied to solving the world’s problems, but, again, not in isolation or as a technocratic fix, but as part of an ongoing discussion and democratic decision. That’s why it is important that the paper’s authors have made some of their data and models available (github.com/slautenb/lpjguessOptim) as a part of open science.

At each stage in the debate, to implement this sort of co-ordination would require openness and accountability.

Pik Smeet

Letter: Socialism as a practical solution (2002)

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

Socialism as a practical solution

Dear Editors,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philip Hutchinson, 

Huddersfield

To a new reader. (1924)

From the April 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

You work hard when you have employment, you search hard when you have not employment. Your very existence depends upon your finding and keeping employment. Yet, in or out of employment, your daily life is hard, crammed and cramped with hard work and skimpy of enjoyment. From infancy to old age you are surrounded with poverty and the manifold miseries that are due to poverty. While you work and live amidst privation others are idle and enjoy the best the world has to offer.

Poverty is not a disease imposed by nature ; it is not due to a shortage of wealth but to the way in which wealth is distributed. It is born out of particular social conditions and its existence to-day is due immediately to the way in which wealth is distributed. The way in which wealth is distributed depends upon the method of production, so that this is the fundamental cause of poverty.

To-day wealth is produced by means of privately owned means of production (land, machinery, and so on), consequently the wealth produced belongs to those who own the means of production. The workers work upon and operate the means of production but they do not own a fraction of the wealth produced.

The economic evils that exist are caused solely by the fact that the means of production belong to private individuals and not to the whole people. The only solution of these evils is to change the basis of society ; transfer the means of production from the hands of private individuals to the whole of society—change private ownership of these things into social ownership. That is Socialism.

Perhaps you think that this solution, the Socialist solution, of your evils is too easy to be correct. Perhaps present arrangements appear to be too complicated to allow of a revolutionary change without tremendous friction.

If you will consider the matter carefully for a little while you will discover that much of the complication existing to-day is due to, and bound up with, the making of profit.

The fog surrounding international exchange ; the fickleness of demand and supply; the credit system; taxation; Wages Boards ; and the multitude of other things that are such perplexing problems at present, and which in turn are given as the cause of low wages and unemployment, are all problems bound up with a system in which business is carried on for private gain. You can satisfy yourself of this fact by turning to the older systems of society that flourished during barbaric times. There you will find that the problems mentioned above did not exist. These older societies had other problems, chief of which was the lack of the means to produce wealth easily.

If the means of production and distribution are owned in common by the whole of society and used to meet the needs of the whole of society the necessary measures to be taken to secure the requisite production and distribution would be comparatively simple.

Let us assume for a few moments that the majority of society have considered that Socialism is desirable and have elected delegates to Parliament to make the change. What would be the steps to be taken once these delegates had obtained control ? We will emulate the prophets and indulge in a little idle surmise, on the assumption that general conditions will be as at present on the morrow of the revolution.

First of all three main lines of investigation would have to be followed. It would be necessary to—

1. Ascertain the needs of the population.
2. The means available to satisfy these needs.
3. The labour required to do the necessary work.

Let us take these three items in turn and examine them.

1. It would be necessary to divide the country up into areas according to the distribution of the population, and to find out the kind and amount of goods required for different areas. The skeleton of such an organisation already exists to-day in the form of Urban, Rural and County Councils.

It would only be a question of compiling different kinds of statistics from those which are compiled to-day. The main things we require are food, clothing, and habitations.

2. The means available to satisfy the above needs would include land, raw material, machinery, and transportation facilities—roads, canals, railways, sea routes, air routes. Again a question of compiling statistics.

3. It would be necessary to find out the number of workers, the various kinds of skill, and the distribution of the workers over the country.

In the above three directions it would be a matter of compiling statistics. The vast amount of statistical work that is done at present and its nature show that the organisation for doing such work is already in existence and would be available.

Once having compiled and collected the statistics (a relatively simple matter) it would be necessary to distribute the work according to workers and resources, and spread the work approximately equally over all so that more work would not be demanded from one than from another.

It may be urged that England is not a self-supporting country and that once dealings are entered into with people abroad complications would arise. Here it must be borne in mind that all over the world the degree of advancement in the important countries (those that would really matter) is roughly about the same. By the time the majority of the people in this country had arrived at the idea that Socialism was desirable, the people in other countries would be near, if they had not actually reached, the same view. So that a fundamental social change in England would rapidly develop a corresponding change abroad and ease the necessary international dealings. While each country must settle its own social problem, yet each cannot do so without involving the world in its operations. Hence the international character of Socialism.

At the moment of writing a matter is occupying considerable attention in the newspapers that may provide us with an illustration of the complexity of affairs at present.

Within a few days two wild fluctuations occurred in the ratio of English money to French money. The French franc was quoted at 2½d. not long ago, then it suddenly went down to 2d., and at the moment of writing it has suddenly risen to 2½d. once more. These fluctuations, we are assured, are extremely dangerous to business. The production of goods, and buying and selling, are interfered with, and the existence of empires is imperilled. So we are informed by the newspapers. Now surely this is curious and perplexing. Raw materials exist in abundance, workers are walking the streets for lack of employment, yet we are pinched for want of the necessaries of life, and the reason given is that certain purely financial operations are clogging the wheels of production.

The point to be borne in mind is that financial operations are built up on the production and distribution of wealth, and that without such production and distribution there would be no financial operations. On the other hand production and distribution of wealth can exist, and has existed, without financial operations.

When the workers of the world take control of the production and distribution of wealth on their own behalf there will be no room for the financier and the latter’s operations will no longer interfere with the production of the things necessary to life. Born out of profit-making he, and all his tricks and entanglements, will go out with the going out of the profit-making system.

Gilmac.

Letters: Road to socialism? (1981)

Letters to the Editors from the April 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Road to socialism?

Dear Editors

On page 35 of the February Socialist Standard, ALB states that the majority working class must be organised for the subsequent running of socialist society. Socialist society in practice, however, would at least need temporary delegate bodies. The- democratic machinery needed for electing the temporary delegate bodies of a whole society could not itself be set up arbitrarily by an unelected body; it would have to grow with some functional purposes over a period of time; and ALB does not show how this evolution of democratic machinery preceding socialist society might possibly come about without any existing function 

H. Smith

Bristol

Reply

The working class will be able to make use of some of the existing institutions of capitalism in order to indicate the democratic decision to set up socialism. In this country it will make use of the elaborate parliamentary machine, together with the various forces of the state which it controls. The SPGB urges workers to elect socialist delegates in local and national elections, not simply as a propaganda exercise, but in order to gain democratic control over the machinery of the state. The growth of the desire for socialism can practically and effectively be demonstrated via the ballot box. In most capitalist countries this “democratic machinery” does exist, at least in constitutional theory. What is lacking is a working class which has decided to use constitutional democracy for the purpose of creating socialism.

The best model of how a democratic organisation of men and women can work is the SPGB. We do delegate responsibility to people within the Party, but only on condition that the delegates do what the members want; should they prove to be unsatisfactory they are removed. Socialist society will be the same. Electing delegates does not, of course, ensure that those elected will be the best people for the job in question, but it will mean that the majority can decide how things are done, and, once they have decided, ensure that their will is not ignored.

Membership of the Socialist Party (in Britain or any other country) is an important training in democracy. In the last century, Marx pointed out membership of a trade union helped to prepare workers for democratic action. In short, the job of working for socialism is itself the best means of preparing workers for a democratic future. If anyone wants proof of that, they should attend the SPGB Annual Conference at Conway Hall, London, between April 17 and 19. There they will see for themselves that democracy does work and that when everyone wants the world to be run democratically they have only to put their political strength behind it.

Editors.

Real answers, please

Dear Editors,

Arising out of the letter from Jean Ure (Jan. 1981) and your self-righteous reply to it. The SPGB is strong on the whats and whys of socialism, but weak on the hows. What is socialism? It is a wageless, classless, stateless social system. Why socialism? Because it will give people a better, more secure life. How will socialism come about? Firstly, when the majority want it they will vote for it democratically. Secondly, it must be introduced simultaneously throughout the world. This leaves some unanswered hows:

1. How to persuade the House of Lords to accept the decision of the elected chamber. How to persuade the military to accept the decision. 
2. How to persuade the civil service to accept the decision.
3. How can it be voted for throughout the world when most of the world is illiterate?
4. How do you persuade people to choose socialism when all they car. think about is their empty bellies?
5. How do we prevent ourselves from being blown to kingdom come while we are waiting for socialism?
6. When we have socialism, how do we persuade people to empty dustbins, dig roads, mine coal, dive in the North Sea, without the wage incentive?
7. Without the machinery of state, how is socialism to be administered?

Unless it comes up with some real answers to real problems, the SPGB must be regarded as a religious sect rather than a political party.

Arthur Spender 

Weston-Super-Mare

Reply

1. Socialism will only be established when a majority of workers understand and want it. The workers constitute the vast majority of society. How many of the military are non-workers? How many civil servants are anything other than wage or salary slaves? (Not many, if the recent CPSA strike is anything to go by). How many journalists are able to operate without the aid of their fellow workers who print and sell their pro-capitalist propaganda? Once a majority is organised for socialism there is no reason to think that these groups will not be part of that majority. As for the unelected House of Lords, which is largely made up of members of the capitalist class, once the working class has decided to opt for socialism do you really think that anyone will care what a few unrepresentative old aristocrats have to say about it?

2. The gaining of the franchise by the working class tends to be a consequence of the development of industrial capitalism. Where democratic facilities do not exist, it is the message of the Socialist Party of Great Britain that workers must combine their struggles for such rights with a political struggle for socialism.

3. At the moment it is not only the illiterate who support capitalism; the literate workers are often equally taken in by their masters' propaganda. It is experience of capitalism which makes people think about socialism and the more this crazy system goes on the more likely it will be that workers will realise their real interest. Capitalism is rapidly eradicating illiteracy because the bosses need a literate workforce. In so educating workers the capitalist class is producing the gravediggers for their system.

4. Socialism is the immediate solution to “empty bellies" because production for use is the only alternative to the market anarchy which lets people starve if profit cannot be obtained. Can Mr. Spender think of anything better for starving people to think about than the urgent abolition of the system which deprives them of food?

5. If Mr. Spender cares to tell us how to avoid war other than by removing its cause we may be able to answer him. If he wants us to march up and down asking governments to ban the bomb we advise him to consider the more serious proposition of not electing the governments in the first place. If you wait for socialism to fall out of the sky. do not expect the SPGB to tell you how to spend your time.

6. In a socialist society work will be carried out for the common use of humanity. If people in socialism want a job done they will have to organise to do it. If machines can be employed to do jobs that humans do not want to do, then they will. The incentive in socialism will be that needs will be the primary concern of social organisation,

7. See reply to H. Smith of Bristol.

Mr. Spender has had his “real answers to real problems”. If he is unsatisfied he can come back with more. If, however, he is unwilling to accept the SPGB’s case, preferring to stick rigidly to the idea that the establishment of socialism is impossible, then who is being religious, him or us?.

Editors.

Wrong economics

Dear Editors

Having read a few issues of the Socialist Standard I find that, although mostly correct, certain of your statements on economics seem rather foolish.

Firstly, the statement that as wages are a price (of labour) a rise does not cause inflation. Wages may be a price but they are also a cost (i.e. a “variable” cost to the capitalist), and a rise in this cost will mean that to maintain profit the price of the commodity to the consumer must be pushed up. Secondly, the statement that a lower minimum wage would not increase employment is not thoroughly explained. The reason it would not is because the lower wage would reduce the worker’s spending power and thus cause unemployment in other industries and the recession-depression cycle would recommence. I think that these attacks on orthodox economics, although tempting to us socialists, are self defeating. May I strongly recommend all the editors to read Paul Baran’s Political Economy of Growth, which is an excellent Marxist book on economics and could provide the basis for better attacks on capitalist economics.

Another thing which concerns me is the repeated attacks on the once-socialist Labour Party. You would be better served by trying to persuade the socialist element (there must be one!) to join in your campaign instead of alienating them. As with the Labour Party, so with the SWP, IMG and Solidarity: a united socialist movement is far better than a divided one squabbling about tactics. These criticisms, I must stress, are concerned with your tactics rather than your aim and the majority of the Socialist Standard is excellent and lively leading. But the way in which you attack fellow socialists as much as capitalists is over-harsh—they are well-meaning and sense the correct way ahead if not the right path.

Finally, keep up the good work, for there are far too few of us socialists about. This I have discovered in the debates of the Grammar school sixth form which I attend. It is literally me versus the rest.

David Stubbs  

Sharples, Bolton

Reply

Marx considered the view that wage increases cause a general price rise to be an “antiquated and exploded fallacy”, and dealt with the question in his address to the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association in 1865 (available in pamphlet form as Wages, Price and Profit). Very briefly, profits are not settled by tradition, custom or the will of the capitalist; there is no ideal or “normal” price for a commodity. The capitalist sells his product at the maximum price that the market will bear and cannot therefore raise it at will. To accept the contrary would conflict with the labour theory of value — conceived by Marx and accepted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain — and leave us with the absurd notion that prices (of labour power) determine or regulate prices (of other commodities). Inflation, incidentally, is not synonymous with rising prices: we use the word to refer specifically to the issue of paper currency by governments in excess of that needed for the circulation of commodities.

The trade cycle of booms and depressions is not a consequence of workers being unable to afford to buy what they produce, of there being “too little” money. This is merely the superficial appearance. The present recession is confirmation that capitalism is operating as it always has: anarchy in production leading to the withdrawal of investment from industries in which the prospect of profit has diminished. Production for the market with a view to profit cannot by anything but a system of chaos.

Paul Baran is not a writer we would recommend, since he confuses socialism with state capitalism—in Monopoly Capital, written with Paul Sweezy, he describes the Soviet Union as a “backward and undeveloped socialism” (p. 15, Penguin edn.)—and was not noted for his opposition to Stalin’s economic policies in the 1920s and 1930s.

Our opposition to the Labour Party and left-wing groups generally is not based upon a difference of opinion over “tactics”. The Labour Party was formed as a trade union pressure group in parliament and had no socialist pretensions. In 1918 it adopted a new constitution which included the now notorious Clause Four, a commitment to nationalisation or state capitalism. Nationalisation is not of benefit to the working class or a step towards socialism; and by pretending that it is the left wing make the work of socialists that much harder. We advocate the abolition of the wage labour and capital relationship and its replacement with a world society of voluntary cooperation and free access to wealth. Labourites and left wingers do not share this objective.

Finally, don’t be put off by strong opposition to socialist ideas: we have faced it for more than seventy-five years but are just as determined as our founders.

Editors.

Could we organise things without money? (2005)

From the April 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

  How would common ownership and democratic control work in practice? Without a price mechanism some critics do not understand how signals can pass from the user to the producer or how decisions about  production can be made. Yet such non-market systems already exist even within capitalism and a study of  these can give useful insights into the practical operation of a socialist production and distribution system.

What distinguishes the Socialist Party from the leftists is that when we talk of common ownership we do not just include the means of production, but also, specifically, call for the common and democratic control of the means of distribution. Equal access to the common store without requirement of exchange or payment is one of the things we consider to be the hallmark of genuine socialism. After all, you cannot buy something you already own.

To people living in a society where everything has a price, where access to any aspect of our society from necessities to leisure and culture comes with a price tag, such a system seems alien, or possibly even naively utopian. Clever apologists of gross inequality and privilege even try to claim that it is categorically impossible to organise provision of any good or service without the vital signals of monetary exchange or market haggling.

Socialists are loath to draw up blue-prints of the future. It would be undemocratic for a handful of us now without access to the exact details of available resources and conditions to try and draw up rigid plans. We also recognise that there may not be one single way of doing things, and precise details and ways of doing things might vary from one part of the world to another, even between neighbouring communities. Of course, we can reach logical conclusions based on basic premises – that socialism will be necessarily democratic, for example – and can outline broad principles or options that could be applied. That is, we do not have to draw up a plan for socialism, but broadly demonstrate that it is possible.

We draw upon scientific methods, that is, we do not come up with a dream and try and fix it to reality, but, rather, we look to the real world to see how it is, and how it could be. Just as the market – the central feature of capitalism – pre-dated the explosion of that society across the globe, so too are principles and practices that socialism could use latent in our world today. That is, provision of services based on free access at the point of use are more common in the world today than the ideologues of capitalism would have us believe.

Consider shopping in socialism. A person would walk into the store, browse the shelves, select what they want, and then arrange to take it away. They would take as much as they think they would need, sure in the knowledge that more will be readily available should they need more not to try and take and hoard everything. If what they want is not available, staff and procedures would be on hand to obtain the goods from another source. Before they go, they could let the store crew know what they’ve taken, so that both the staff and other consumers would know what was and was not available from the inventory.

Put like that, it sounds convoluted, but it is what happens everyday in local public libraries throughout Britain. Under the Libraries, Archives and Museums Act of 1963, local authorities must provide books and magazines free of charge, and obtain (by purchase if necessary, but usually from other libraries) anything they do not have immediately to hand. Currently, over 60 percent of library patrons get what they want from just cold calling into their local branch.

Big businesses provide a similar service. Blockbusters video stores provide rental goods for a charge per loan. Libraries too provide videos, and the difference between their operating parameters is clear. Big video stores overwhelmingly stock the latest hits in huge bundles, with older or niche films harder to find, while local libraries have a wider range of stock. Market provision leads to conformity more than conscious service. Libraries, however, are compelled by competition law not to undercut video stores (which they could do). That is, they are prevented from out-performing commercial rivals by legal fiat.

Libraries exhibit a number of non-monetary techniques for allocating resources, which they mix to various degrees, and each of which would be suitable for use in socialism. Library staff use published data to provide items to fulfil the publicly stated service level agreement in terms of the stock that users can assume they will find in the library. Once the stock is there, users can take it from the shelves on a first-come first served basis. If it is already taken, they can be put into a queue to receive it next, or they can order one to be brought in from another institution. If an item is highly popular, its terms of availability may be restricted to enable more people to have access to it, and people always have the option of trying a different source of information. In some libraries, if some users have particular needs, they may have their borrowing limit increased to be able to take more items out.

That is, a mix of queuing, lottery and rationing are used in various mixtures to maximise the use of resources. Alongside this, the library catalogue – the inventory of available stock which includes its current location and status – can be used to co-ordinate between both library users and staff so that everyone can control their use of the library and its goods. This information, unlike market information which travels at the speed of goods to market, travels at the speed of light. Today, it is possible to discover, via the internet, that the Communist Manifesto is available in the Mary L. Cook Public Library in Waynesville Ohio, shelved in the social sciences section. If that book were not available in a local library, it would be possible to ask them, possibly ultimately, to obtain it from this source.

Even the objections that these libraries exist within capitalism doesn’t bear much scrutiny. Although they must buy their books, it is possible to calculate how much would need to be spent to maintain the agreed stock levels, and set the budget accordingly. Publishers often tailor their print runs to their expectations of the number of libraries that will stock a title (and will often cancel titles if too few institutions do not order it via pre-publication data). The money largely follows the quality management.

 

Some parts of library management now might not be needed. Currently, a lot of personal detail is held by libraries in order to help protect their stock and monitor its usage. To generalise this might require some sort of identity registration, which some people may or may not find objectionable; but even then, an anonymous system like loyalty cards wherein the bearer of the card can simply record information whenever they remove stock could be used to see what combinations of goods people generally withdraw in so as to help ordering and stocking the stores. Again, this is a detail that can be left to the people who will live in socialism, but it is clear that we do not need an authoritarian state dictating each person’s precise ration as some commissars of capitalism might pretend.

 

This is just one, almost random example of the ways in which workers, with all their skills and experience of co-operating to run capitalism in the interests of the capitalists, could begin to run society in their own interest. We do not need to build the new society in the womb of the old, that is here already. What we need is to decide that we have the way to actively declare an end to unnecessary want, and build a free co-operative commonwealth so that “poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality and slavery to freedom.”

Pik Smeet

Pathfinders: Tsunami Special (2005)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tsunami Special

Nature is humanity’s best friend and worst enemy. The tsunami in South East Asia was a major disaster that, for a change, cannot be blamed on capitalism, and one which reminds us if we need it that socialism can also expect to face sudden catastrophes like floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and even meteorite impacts. How would we deal with them? We present a special Pathfinder report on some aspects of disaster prevention and recovery.

Population and demographics

The real reason earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and floods kill so many people is that they live in known danger zones. In capitalism it is a question of livelihood and property, either or both of which prevent people moving. There is no way at present to predict population demographics in socialism, yet it must be obvious that nobody would choose to live next to a ticking timebomb, and given the freedom of movement implied by the abolition of land ownership we would expect the largest contribution to saving lives to come from populations spontaneously shifting away from high-risk areas. Furthermore, work patterns in capitalism mean most people take their holidays at the same time, and in the same holiday areas, giving rise to a dedicated and overcrowded holiday coast industry. Instead of moving away from danger, the financial incentive at present is for poor people to move towards it. It is highly debatable, in light of all this, whether socialism would ever be required to mount relief operations on anything like the scale we see at present.

Early Warning

Much has been made of the need for an early warning system in the Indian Ocean, and one proposal was turned down two years ago because the risk was thought to be remote (source: Unesco report). Most present systems are ill-suited to tsunamis, which cannot be detected by satellite or ocean-surface (a tsunami may only be centimetres high until it hits the shore). A new pressure sensor system (DART) sits on the ocean floor and detects a change in pressure in the water above it, a sure sign of a passing tsunami. Cost not being a factor, in socialism a network of DART sensors could be placed in all ocean floors for even unlikely events. One such tsunami, expected when part of the Canary volcano system eventually collapses, could devastate west Africa, Spain, western Britain and the US eastern seaboard.

Communication

One monitoring station in Hawaii did receive early warning of the Asian tsunami but could not confirm it with other stations and could not communicate it because many public offices were closed for holidays. Even had they been open, communication to people in risk areas would have been almost impossible in the short time available. Text messaging to mobile phones can get through when signals are too weak for voice calls, but who do you call? One answer is the Cell Broadcast system, originally designed for advertising local services but generally ignored, which exploits the fact that GSM phones can receive short data messages from the nearest cellphone base station on a separate channel from normal voice and text message communications. Another method is the mediascape system, which targets areas by global positioning satellite and then broadcasts to base stations. Phones are not destined to be separate items for much longer, with new technology emerging to have them sewn into clothes and bags. Capitalism may be developing this, but in socialism, keeping in touch would not be a matter of keeping in credit. Finally, even if socialists at leisure prefer naked bathing, there is always tannoy. Additionally, a chip implant the size of a grain of rice could track them down and, at worst, identify them. At present, the Verichip's usage is confined to Scottish clubowners offering it to customers to save time at the bar (News Telegraph, Jan 17)

Aftermath-disease

Cholera and typhoid are big dangers in tsunami-affected areas, and could double the already gigantic death toll. For our remarks about capitalism's approach to diseases which affect poorer parts of the world, see What is a disaster?.

Aftermath - food

A food crisis is set to emerge as the tsunami has introduced poisonous salt pollution into the arable land areas and polluted the water tables. Socialism could not prevent this, and is one more reason why pre-disaster depopulation would be a sensible precaution, however populations would not have to rely on their own agricultural production nor would they be forced to stay put. A massive mobilisation of people to other regions would be inconceivable today but not necessarily in socialism.

Aftermath - shelter

After a disaster, rescue services need to supply fast accommodation. Now there may be a better way to supply emergency housing, using reinforced polystyrene panels. Polystyrene is cheap and lightweight, quick to assemble, it insulates, so it keeps cool things cool and hot things hot, it is resistant to moisture, mould and mildew, and it's energy efficient. Wrapped in chicken wire and then coated in a film of concrete, it has been tested by the Florida designers in the most extreme conditions and outperforms every other temporary structure, even in earthquake zones. [Link.] This simple technology may very well be developed for widespread use in capitalism. However there is no guarantee that it will, as many such good ideas never see the light of day because there isn't sufficient profit in it for somebody. In socialism, a good idea and some team effort is all that's necessary.

What is a disaster?

Most natural disasters cannot be prevented in advance, but then, it depends what you call a disaster. Socialism, not being concerned with who has money and who doesn’t (because there wouldn’t be any) would prioritise those routine ‘natural’ disasters which capitalism is largely unable to deal with. Thus, quite apart from the ongoing disaster of famine and malnutrition, we would work flat out to save the 2 million people who die annually of diarrhoea due to poor water supplies, the 1.5 million who die of TB and the 1 million who die of malaria (source: WHO). These figures alone are the equivalent of almost two tsunamis a month. How would we deal with this? By not prioritising illnesses that only affect affluent westerners. The three largest drug markets today are fat reducers ($28b), anti-ulcerants ($25b) and antidepressants ($20b). Drugs that would help poorer countries are not developed because drug companies stand almost no chance of recouping the average $800m it costs to bring them to market (source: New Scientist, Jan 15, 05, p.41). In socialism, medical science could be re-oriented almost overnight to solve these ongoing disasters.

Paddy Shannon

Letter: Government (1962)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Friend,

For a number of years I have read with great interest your publication. My Father is a subscriber and he passes them on to me. Your principles are to me quite logical, therefore I agree whole-heartedly with them, for years before I had ever heard of Socialism I thought along the same lines, which makes me believe that the majority of working men think the same.

But I have a question to ask. How will the working-class become emancipated to such an extent that they can for all time control their own destiny? Without violence? With education? If it is with education, how can one educate the capitalist class to embrace this idealism when they are happy at the top of the heap?

I’m very interested to find out exactly how this change over could be brought about, how too would a community as large as say Europe govern itself. Would it have a board of Elders as advisers or perhaps some other way. Indoctrinated as I am with the idea of leadership, where would the over-all directive come from. In other words how will socialism work day by day in practice.

These are some of the questions I am stumped with when a discussion crops up. I’ve read your booklets on Socialism and War, Socialism and the colour/race bar, in fact all of them, but cannot find the answer to my questions of Socialism in Practice. I would ask you to describe step by step the approach to complete Socialism, if this is possible of course. You have the advantage of clear-thinking, all issues are in perspective with you in your discussions, but alone 1 reach a point where I cannot for the life of me continue to think on logical lines.

This particular issue is the one which comes in for most derision from the critics who say “It’s all very well in theory”. But what about in practice.

Thanking you in anticipation. Sincerely,

James Workman

Barrow-in-Furness

Reply:

Society is controlled through Parliament where power rests. The workers form the vast majority of the population, and it is mainly through their votes that members of Parliament are elected. When the workers accept the socialist outlook they will vote delegates to Parliament to take control on their behalf. The capitalists will have to accept what happens, regardless of their views, because they will have lost the power to resist it. Thus there will be no need for violence.

Once the workers have obtained control of Parliament they will proceed to organise society on a socialist basis. The capitalists will be unable to prevent this. They will have lost both their economic basis and their political control. Therefore they can only do as previous controlling classes had to do; fall in line with the organisation of the new system.

Socialism is international. Therefore the new system will be a world system. There would not be any government or leaders required. There are organisations in existence at present which attend to purely technical matters on an international scale, which can give you an idea of future procedure. Here is a list of a few of them.

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) continually reviews the food and agricultural conditions in the world and supplies governments with facts and figures relating to nutrition, agriculture, forestry and fisheries; with appraisals and forecasts in relation to the production, distribution and consumption of agricultural products. It also makes recommendations on the improvement of education and administration relating to the fields in which it works.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has as its object “the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health".

The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) assists Civil Aviation by encouraging the use of safety measures, uniform regulations for operation, and promotes the use of new technical methods and equipment.

The Universal Postal Union (UPU) aims 
at assuring the organisation and perfection
 of the various postal services and promotes,
 in this field, the development of inter-
national collaboration. To this end, the
members of the UPU are united in a single 
postal territory for reciprocal exchange of
correspondence. That is why it is so easy 
to send letters to Los Angeles. Valparaiso
, Cape Town, Delhi, Tokyo and Melbourne

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) sets out to promote international co-operation in the field of meteorology and the quick exchange of weather data to establish world-wide networks of meteorological stations and facilitate the publication and standardisation of their observations, to further the application of meteorology to human activities, and to encourage research and training in the field of meteorology. In conjunction with Radio and coastguard stations it gives warning of gales, and enables ships in distress, regardless of nationality, to have assistance sent to them.

These are just some of the purely technical organisations that collect and distribute facts and general information, and there are many others, less known, in other fields. These technical organisations work at present under capitalist conditions, where the profit motive limits to some extent the value of their work. But when Socialism comes into operation such organisations will be free to work to the fullness of their powers, without having to bow to the interests of property. In the future there will be nothing to hinder the work of people who are delegated to central bodies in different areas, and to world central bodies, for the purpose of collecting and disseminating information to enable society to produce and distribute what will be required to satisfy the needs of all. There will be only one interest to serve, the interests of the whole of the world’s population.

Our own organisation, on a very small scale, is an example of the kind of thing that will come into operation. We depute members to do various jobs, including an Executive Committee to carry out the Party’s instructions. No one would gain by failing to do the job deputed to him. and the better he does it the better for all the members, including himself. That is the spirit which will actuate all those in a socialist society, but a spirit that, in general cannot operate unhindered in a class society where some can gain by wielding domination over their fellows. And, incidentally, in socialist society the better a man does a job the more he will be appreciated by his fellows, but he will have no power of any kind, nor will he be treated as a ’leader”.

The technical organisations we have mentioned are manned by members of the working class who will become socialists in the same way as other members of the working class, by acquiring socialist knowledge. When we are on the brink of Socialism they will know what will be required of them and act accordingly—gather and impart the information necessary to enable the change over from Capitalism to Socialism to be accomplished as smoothly as possible. Obviously it will take a little time for the new society to get properly on its feet and setttle down, but this will only be a question of solving technical difficulties. The working class that inaugurates Socialism will be quite aware of this, but the multitude of problems that afflict a class society will no longer exist.

Gilmac

Socialism explained (1986)

From the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

From Capitalism to Socialism: How we live and how we could live. The Socialist Party. 40p.

Our latest publication is a basic introduction to the case for socialism which contrasts our present way of life with what a world society of common ownership would bring. All the main arguments for socialism are covered in seven chapters, beginning with a discussion of the lifestyle of the average worker and the restrictions imposed by capitalist society on our choice of work. What we do, where and when is essentially decided by our employer.

The second chapter deals with humans as they are, biologically and physiologically. Basically we have developed very little as a species; socially, however, we have lived through many changes. Not only can we adapt to many different surroundings, but we also have the ability to change our conditions to suit our purposes. Instead of altering ourselves to suit a new environment we have often altered our environment to suit our needs. Society moulds people, but people can equally as well mould society.

The pamphlet goes on to discuss earlier social systems and then examines capitalism in some depth. A society of common ownership how we could live — is then presented as a practical alternative. The dominating feature is the change that would take place in work, where freedom from compulsion would mean an environment suited to human needs rather than maximum profit. This section also includes two interesting lists of products and occupations that would cease to exist in socialism because they are concerned with money.

One objection to a society of common ownership is that there is just not enough wealth in the world to sustain a system of free access. But this idea is nurtured today by the artificial scarcity created by the profit system: goods and services are only produced if there is a market for them. On the face of it. goods are scarce; potentially, however, there is no shortage at all. Sometimes it may be too costly to, say, extract a mineral from the ground or irrigate barren land. Socialism would do away with all the restrictions of a private property society.

Socialists are confronted daily by those who believe that the answer to social ills is to reform society a little at a time, and a section in the pamphlet is therefore devoted to the issue of reformism. What emerges clearly is that there is no common ground between reformism and revolutionary action: if you seek reforms you openly accept the political and economic structure of society and limit your activity to effecting superficial changes. By opting for revolutionary action, on the other hand, socialists are aiming solely at a fundamental alteration in social relationships. The pamphlet shows that reforms are only accepted by governments if they do not clash with the needs of capitalism — a "successful" reform can easily be withdrawn if it becomes a hindrance to profit.

The pamphlet ends with a call to action. A conscious majority, using delegates and not leaders, must take control of the state and abolish its coercive functions and the profit system in all its forms.

Letters: Life in Socialism (1988)

Letters to the Editors from the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Life in socialism

This month, two interesting letters raise the same question of how socialist society will deal with violent individuals. We hope our reply covers the point in both letters, their other points are dealt with separately.

Dear Editors.

Whilst heavily in support of the aims of your party, I am concerned about the treatment of criminally disturbed persons in your envisaged society, whilst right in your condemnation of the media hype following the events in Hungerford in August 1987. I would like to know how the SPGB sees a Socialist society handling anti-social elements such as habitual drunk drivers or gun-wielding "madmen" without resorting to coercive organisations such as a Police or Militia. (I do realise that in a society of production according to need the pressure to drink to excess would be highly reduced.)

I would also like to raise the matter of professional competence, in a recent (November) issue you talk of an after-shave brewer deciding to grow bananas, are we to take it that the SPGB thinks that anyone could tackle any job in a Socialist society just because they think themselves equal to the task. e.g. engine driver or civil engineer say? I know that the current professional bodies exist to maximise the wages of their members, but I'm also glad to know that the chap who designed the Tay bridge knew what he was doing whenever I cross it.

Yours for Socialism.

Jonathan Drane 

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

#    #    #    #

Dear Editors.

I subscribe to your excellent magazine and can find no fault with your arguments (as an ex-Green Party member I particularly enjoyed the "green" issue) but 1 do have three questions:

1. On a number of occasions your magazine has expressed a belief in the non-existence of God. Is this the view of the Socialist Party or just of the individual writers? Are a belief in God and a belief in Socialism mutually exclusive?
2. You say that Socialism is not possible in one country but must be worldwide. What if a country could be totally self-reliant? I realise that there would be limits on how high their standard of living could rise because of the limits on resources available in any one country but we have this problem at an international level so couldn't a self-reliant country become socialist?
3. Would prisons exist in a socialist society? Of course theft would be a thing of the past but surely there would still be some men who wanted to rape, hurt children etc - surely you can't see capitalism as the only cause of bad behaviour? Yours faithfully.

Michael James

Stockton-on-Tees

Reply

First, our comments on the question of restraining violent people in socialism:

Capitalism is highly selective in its definition of people who are "anti-social" and "criminally disturbed”. If the Hungerford killer had sprayed his bullets indiscriminately among Argentinian soldiers in the Falklands he would have been a national hero. Yet the motivation, the state of mind and the preparation for such acts are often similar. Much "anti-social" behaviour now is really a desperate response to the demands which capitalism makes on us; in many cases it is healthier than a docile acceptance of the indignities of wage slavery. Many human beings can't cope with the repressed. exploited, deprived lives they are forced to lead. They rarely respond as catastrophically as at Hungerford; more typically they haunt their doctor's waiting room, or their local pub or, in extremity, roam the grounds of a mental hospital. Social society will be free of those pressures, which means that most of the "bad behaviour" which is now an everyday occurrence will not happen.

But what about the few who, after all this, will cause problems? How big a problem would this be? Today, only a very small percentage of the people in prison are there because they have committed crimes of violence and of these an even smaller proportion are a danger to the public. Socialist society would be such that even that small number would be even further reduced so that, if the problem was present, it would apply to very, very few people — those who could not be absorbed and coped with through the care of the community. Without doubt, those few would have to be restrained but society's interests would demand that they be treated as the sick people that they are and the places where they are held would reflect that. Unlike the police, the military, the prisons today, this would all happen through majority will, with society's full participation and concern.

On Jonathan Drane's point about professional competence:

The function of much "professionalism" is to surround the "profession" with a mystical defence to conceal the fact of the professionals' fallibility (not every example of civil engineering endures like the Tay bridge). This is an inevitable result of the fact that "professionals" just like everybody else need to sell their labour power to an employer and to the fact that they engage in the production of wealth and services which are for sale with a view to profit. Thus "professionalism" is often aimed at separating the “professional" from the people who experience the results of it — the people who might for this purpose be called consumers. None of this will apply in a socialist society, where production will be a harmonious, cooperative effort. Socialism will be a sane society; it will of course recognise that certain jobs demand special knowledge and experience but those who have that knowledge will not be privileged, apart from the rest.

On Michael James' questions about religion and socialism in one country:

Socialists do not believe in god or in any supernatural influences (neither, strictly, do we "believe in" socialism; we advocate a social system based on common ownership of the means of life because the evidence proves that this is the best way of running modern society). There is no evidence for the existence of god; the only logical and consistent explanation of the world and what happens in it must have a material basis. Socialists affirm that this life is the only one we know of and to preoccupy ourselves with some other existence, outside the known and the material, would divert us from the task of dealing with capitalism's problems by establishing a different system.

Socialism will develop out of modern capitalism; it can't come from any earlier social system. Modern capitalism's interlocked economy and communication means that no one part of it can be self-reliant. For example, what would a "socialist country" do about international travel and safety systems7 Would it refuse to take part in them? Would it refuse to take advantage of developments in productive techniques or medical science in the capitalist part of the world? If not. how could it preserve its socialist nature when dealing with capitalism? Socialism will be a matter, not of just self-sufficiency but of abundance, of full and universal co-operation and participation in all that the world has to offer the human race.

Our brief replies may not do full justice to the questions raised in these interesting and encouraging letters. We urge Jonathan Drane and Michael James to visit their local branch of The Socialist Party. They will be warmly welcomed and have full opportunity to discuss their ideas.

Editors

Lazy people

I have read with great interest your set of principles. and would further like to know the answers to the following points:

1. Do the SPGB believe in Parliament?
2. Even with the support of the majority of British people. Britain would, by the SPGB's own criteria (Para 5) then only be a state capitalist nation, how is the leap from state capitalism to world socialism to be made?
3. In the SPGB's vision of a socialist future (Para 6) it is stated that work will be undertaken on the basis of voluntary co-operation. What is to become of the minority who refuse to contribute? And what incentive is there to perform "dirty jobs" (refuse collection, sewage work, monotonous labouring)? Yours.

Paul Weston

Manchester

Reply

Socialists aim at the democratic capture of political power, as this is the only way of taking over the state machine and so changing it from capitalism's army of class coercion into an "agent of emancipation", This will entail the election of delegates, by a conscious socialist majority, to the places where the state machine is controlled in this country parliament, in America Congress and so on. That is why we are a political party and not, as some people mistakenly believe, an educative organisation.

As socialism cannot be set up separately in any part of the world it follows that it must be established world-wide and, to all intents and purposes, at about the same time everywhere. This is perfectly reasonable; our ideas are formed through our material conditions and are therefore at pretty well the same stage of development all over the world. In particular the working class in all countries have the same attitude toward the vital question of carrying on with capitalism: they all fall for the same diversions into futile reforms and politicians' promises. Just as capitalism now receives this universal support, so will the ideas of socialism.

With all the incentives to work in socialism it would be only a very, very small minority who might, for some reason, choose to stand aside from the hugely exciting and satisfying task of producing to meet human needs. If there were such people, refusing the opportunities to realise their full potential as human beings, society could easily carry them in their unhappy condition. After all, a massive amount of capitalism's knowledge, energy and resources is now wasted in unproductive effort salespeople, accountants, lawyers, police, armed forces and so on.

Much "dirty" work would easily be eliminated in socialism; all that stands in the way of this at the moment is capitalism's priority for profit above human welfare. Socialism's priorities will put human welfare first. Any such work which could not be eliminated would, we are confident, find no lack of volunteers. Since it would be essential to human society that it be done it is not conceivable that, having established socialism, people will then damage that society by refusing to do necessary work.

Paul Weston's questions are interesting and worthwhile. He would be welcome at The Socialist Party branch in his area, where he could discuss his ideas more fully.

Editors