“Money Must Go”: Letter from the authors (1946)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

The authors of “Money Must Go” write the following letter about the review published in our July issue : —

Dear Comrades,

We were pleased to see the review of our book, “Money Must Go,” in the July issue of the Socialist Standard. May we draw attention to several statements made by the reviewer, L.J., which might give a wrong impression?

(1) The book is not intended to be “an attempt to simplify some of the fundamental ideas on Socialism,” if by this is meant the critical analysis of Capitalism, etc., which is the basis of Scientific Socialism and constitutes the bulk of its teaching. It is intended to suggest to the Socialist propagandist a different mode of approach to the problem of interesting workers in fundamental social change. It does this by (a) giving a general picture of Socialist society in order to induce interest in Socialism as a practical project; and (b) by emphasising the moneyless character of that society, which factor sharply demarcates the Socialist aim from those of all pseudo-socialist factions. On the other hand it provides a means of implanting the idea of Socialism as a working system of society in the mind of the non-socialist without using “that blessed word.” We are of the opinion that the word “Socialism” has become so debased through constant use by reformist organisations and “political tricksters” that the use of the word can well be delayed until the idea has sunk in. For the use of the term “World Commonwealth” we have a precedent in the Socialist Standard of May, 1922.

(2) We think that the charge of “over-insistence that money is ‘the root of all evil'” is unjustified. This dictum is referred to but once (p. 15), and there we merely point out that such an idea was current about a hundred years ago. We do refer to the ownership of the means of wealth production by a small minority as the cause of the poverty of the majority (p. 7) and to the class division of society as the source of social evils (p. 13). Neither do we “make a direct attack on money” nor propose its simple abolition. We advocate, and in this book supply a positive approach to the idea of a world without money and in which goods are produced solely for use and/or free distribution as an alternative to the present system of production for profit (p. 16). That with the achievement of such a system the means of production would simultaneously become commonly owned by the whole of the community is implied in unorthodox fashion on page 17. Nevertheless, the statement at the top of page 17 (incompletely quoted by L.J.) is quite true. A statement of the same nature which accords with L.J.’s version is given on page 132. We have found that this approach induces interest, whereas the use of the economic and more precise terminology does not. Interest precedes desire. Workers can themselves easily see the possibilities of life in such a world organisation. It is so simple to visualise a world in which all capable of working take their part in the world’s work and in which all the goods produced are distributed to stores and warehouses from which the people will take according to their needs without payment of any kind. True, money is a medium of exchange. Then surely if there is to be no exchange there will be no need for a medium of exchange. Is not this as simple to understand as the four characteristics of capitalism, given by L.J. ?

(3) We do not define Socialism—we explain it. We conceive it as a system of society. On page 25, and again on the back cover, we concisely sum up the essential characteristics of a Moneyless World Commonwealth. The term “common ownership” may be precise in meaning to those who know what it really means. This did not prevent the Common Wealth Party from using it—to mean something quite different.

(4) To most workers the State appears as an abstraction, an intangible power above society, but controlling it and manifesting itself through the individuals that compose it. Similarly the “heavy hand of ‘the law,'” referred to by L.J. To them, more concrete is the heavy hand of the policeman, and later, the heavier hand of the gaoler. As a “public power of coercion” we do explain the State adequately on page 121.

(5) We deny our “misreading of the class struggle.” In its first and present phase the class struggle is only over the question of the division of the workers’ product. The “wages, hours of labour, conditions of work, etc.,” referred to by L.J. are essentially aspects of this. There is hardly as yet a “political struggle over the ownership of the means of wealth production.” That is yet to come, and we show its necessity in Chapter 18.

(6) “Clarity is essential in explaining Socialism.” We do that. But almost all Socialist propaganda is devoted to explaining capitalism and neglects to explain the features of Socialism as an alternative system of society. It is that we deplore, and we have tried to show how this shortcoming can be made good. The important question directed to Socialist propagandists to-day is, “How will Socialism work?”, and this should be seized upon as a potent means of agitation. Explaining capitalism can well come later.

(7) “Confusion plays into the hands of those who defend capitalism.” Again true. And it is for this reason we avoid the use of those precise terms, “capitalism,” ”working class,” “Socialism,” “class struggle.” In spite of their precision in use by Socialists these words have been and still are used by every confusionist party claiming working-class support. Every schoolboy “knows” what Socialism means—so does the Evening Standard ! Precise terms can be used by opponents to spread confusion. We have found mental pictures more useful for our purpose.

(8) “The word Commonwealth is not synonymous with Socialism.” In “Money Must Go!” we do not once refer to “Commonwealth” alone; always to “World Commonwealth,” and at least once in each chapter we add the adjective “Moneyless.” The comment that “its use by all sorts of political tricksters should have warned the writer of its vague and confusing character” therefore does not apply to “World Commonwealth.” The comment as it stands can be applied aptly to the word “Socialism.” Even Hitler used it !

Fraternally,

PHILOREN.

Philo—

—Ren.

Reply:

“Philoren” has swopped horses. In his preface to “Money Must Go” he says that the “main purpose” and the “only justification” for the book is that he is sure that the “great mass of the people” will accept the ideal of World Commonwealth, “would they but take the trouble of understanding the barest essentials of the idea.” His suggestion that it was intended to show Socialist propagandists a different “approach” is only an afterthought. We are answering paragraphs 1, 3, 7 and 8 in one section as they deal largely with the same subject matter.

He does not deny that he avoids using definite terms; on the contrary, he states, “Precise terms can be used by opponents to spread confusion.” Is that a good reason for substituting confusing and vague terms in place of words that have a definite meaning? Why do political parties which serve capitalist interests use such words as “the people” or “the Commonwealth”? Simply because they are vague, abstract and indefinite terms. In 1940-41 a “People’s Convention” was organised, which demanded a “People’s Peace”; others described the war as a “people’s war”; an ex-Liberal formed a “Commonwealth Party,” while apologists refer to the Empire as the “British Commonwealth of Nations”; many other instances could be given of this use of abstract Language, which hides more than it reveals. That “Philoren” had to go to a Socialist Standard of 24 years ago to find the term “World Commonwealth” is a sign that it has fallen out of use with Socialists, while it is increasingly used by non-socialists. Socialism is clear enough without using the ponderous “Moneyless World Commonwealth.” If others use the name of Socialism to spread confusion, that is all the greater reason for us to insist on its real meaning and to increase our efforts to get it understood by workers. The task of doing “long and persistent” educational work cannot be evaded by dropping scientific methods and using the slovenly jargon of our enemies.

(2) If words mean anything, then we are right in saying that “Philoren” insists on money being the cause of social problems. He describes the present system as a “money-based system.” On page 96 he says, “Think of all the misery, the worry and the illness all caused by these funny pieces of metal,” while later, we are told that, “In a sense woman is doubly enslaved—to man and to money” (page 99). We showed that money is not the basis of capitalism and he has not troubled to answer that point. He claims that he refers to the class division as the source of social evils (page 13), but, as a matter of fact, it is the “ever-widening division of the people into rich and poor” that he states gives rise to social problems; a view held by the Labour Party and other reformists who seek to narrow the gulf between rich and poor. “Philoren” knows that nothing was omitted from the quotation from Page 17, which altered its meaning.

(4) Because, it is claimed, most workers regard the State as an “abstraction,” are we to call it that? A feeble reason to give for an incorrect view. The explanation on Page 121 is not adequate but most sketchy. He merely deals with the State as a deterrent to “crime” ; its function as a power holding in check the disruptive force of class struggles is not touched upon.

(5) Because the working class is not class conscious in the sense of understanding the full implications and significance of the class struggle, “Philoren” assumes that the “present phase” of the struggle is only over wages, etc. This, we repeat, is a misreading of the class struggle. The class struggle exists, otherwise how could a political party whose purpose is to end the private ownership of the means of wealth production come into existence? What is the Socialist Party but the expression of the class struggle on the political field. He states that he advocates political action in Chapter 18, but it is after suggesting political action that he refers to the class struggle as “no more” than a struggle over a “bone.” In any case, to state that political action is “yet to come” is simply ignoring the existence and activities of the S.P.G.B.

(6) Both here and in the latter part of section 2 (Workers can themselves easily . . . without payment of any kind) he shows that he is nothing more than an Utopian Socialist. He wants us to cut down our criticism of the ugly economic system under which we live and draw up beautiful schemes of the new society in the hope that they will attract workers. Many Utopian Socialists did this in the past and their beautiful schemes are infantile in relation to modern conditions. Not merely that; Socialists are not building a “brave new world” from any “blue prints”; they have, in the words of Marx, “to set free the elements of the new society with which the old bourgeois society itself is pregnant.” Capitalism fetters the free production of goods—and it is through explaining the nature of those fetters, the economic laws of capitalism, that we create amongst workers the desire to break those fetters. The problems that face workers are the problems of capitalism, and we concentrate on explaining capitalism in order to pave the way to Socialist understanding. Workers who understand capitalism, generally desire and work for Socialism; they want no fanciful dreams to stimulate them to play their part in ending the hideous reality of capitalism.

L. J.

Socialism and the Co-Operative Movement (1935)

From the August 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Report of an address by an S.P.G.B. speaker on July 9th at Co-operative Hall, Seven Sisters Road to members of the Islington Co-operative Guild) 

S.P.G.B. address: There is to-day a crying need for Socialism. In the depressed areas of northern England, in the heavy industries, such as coal, iron and shipbuilding, we behold the usual scene of the wholesale dismissal of workers under capitalism. Coal miners with no work while mines stand idle; textile workers unemployed while mills are closed; shipwrights despairing for the future while many ships ply the seas in a state of disrepair, and with the minimum of comfort for the crew. Men and women are denied all these, as well as other means of living, though they could themselves produce their own means of existence if allowed access to the means of production.

These facts were observed by Utopian Socialists more than a century ago. But they were groping in the dark; they did not fully understand the working of the capitalist system. Fourier, for example, was very enthusiastic over a system of co-operative colonies, which, he said, would grow with great speed. Robert Owen also confidently expected that co-operative productive societies would sweep the country within his own lifetime. Why, then, is it that more than a century after co-operative productive and distributive societies began to work, no great impression has been made on the capitalist system?

After one hundred years of striving, the Co-operative Societies employ only a quarter of a million people in their productive concerns, where the average wage is a mere £3 per week. In the distributive side of the Co-operative Societies the average wage of employees is even less—£2 15s. per week. The Co-operative movement has departed from the ideals of Fourier and Robert Owen, and as its supporters themselves admit, it has to I compete with other firms run on capitalist lines. That is why Co-operative employees have to strike against bad conditions of employment, taking part in the class struggle just as workers in other firms do. Many Co-operators still believe that the Co-operative Societies will be the means of emancipating the working class. But the conditions prevailing in the Co-operative Societies expose this hope as baseless. The facts go to show that the Co-operative movement is perfectly content to run on capitalist lines. For that reason its directors invested large sums in War Loan, and helped the capitalist class to continue the Great War, though it probably meant the murder or maiming of Cooperative members in the fighting forces. In spite, however, of the Co-operative Societies' willingness to be patriotic, people like Lord Beaverbrook attacked them. Therefore, the Co-operative movement, in self-defence, set up its own political party to make itself a political force in the country. Not with a view to getting rid of the wage-slave system, but only to continuing capitalism—and the Co-operative Societies. This is made dear by their statement (in the People's Year Book, 1932), that their Party will strive for more Public Utility Boards, such as the London Passenger Transport Board—which was recently faced with a strike of thousands of its *bus drivers and conductors.

The action of the Co-operative Societies in trying to get political power is an admission of the supreme importance of that power, and shows that the Co-operative movement is beginning to realise that the working class cannot get its emancipation while the Government is in the hands of the capitalist class.

(This concluded the address.)

Many questions were asked and apparently almost every member of the audience wanted to take part in the discussion, but the divergence of opinion shown within this Co-operative Guild is astounding in an organisation which claims that it will transform society. One member said that Parliament was no good; another said that the Co-operative Societies must seek protection in Parliament. It was maintained, on the one hand, that the Co-operative Societies would expand and overthrow the capitalist system; while another member declared that big finance was the greatest power in the world, and admitted, when questioned, that it could destroy the Co-operative movement. Another participant in the discussion said that it was not true that the members of the Cooperative Societies were interested only in the dividend; but went on to say that though possibly most of their members did buy at Co-operative stores because of the “divi," that was because we were living under capitalism.

Many other mistaken ideas were expressed, as for example, that the S.P.G.B. is in opposition to Trade Unions. As regards the Trade Unions, we point out that the working class must organise to resist the encroachments of their masters, but that such organisation cannot achieve Socialism.

D. S.

Cooking the Books: An electronic labour-exchange bazaar (2025)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peter Joseph, the person whose 2007 film Zeitgeist inspired the Zeitgeist Movement, has moved on or, rather, has moved backwards. The Zeitgeist Movement at least spread the idea of a world based on no ownership and open access for all to what they needed without having to pay and in which modern technology would be used to provide plenty for everybody on a world scale. True, what it envisaged was technocratic and it offered no clear way of how it might come into being.

Joseph is now arguing that capitalism can be gradually replaced by the spread of a network of cooperatives that don’t use money:

‘Integral is a federated, post-monetary cooperative economy designed to incrementally replace capitalist market systems and hierarchical governance with a cybernetically coordinated, commons-based model of labor reciprocity ( …) It is not a set of ideals waiting for institutional permission or mass awakening—it is a system that can be lived into, node by node, creating tangible post-capitalist capacity without coercion, ideology, or dependency on state actors’ (integralcollective.io/faq/).

Because this will be operating within the wider capitalist economy, it would not be possible to practise free, open access. People working within the alternative economy would be allocated labour-time credits which they could use to obtain what they need:

‘Rather than using money, Integral employs a non-transferable time-credit system as a reputation-based ledger of contribution, enabling individuals to access the collective goods and services produced across a network of autonomous cooperatives. (…) Integral functions by tracking voluntary labor contributions through time credits, which are not spent like money but act as symbolic tokens of one’s participation. These credits entitle individuals to access the outputs of other cooperatives within the network’.

A similar scheme was discussed by Marx in 1847 in The Poverty of Philosophy, his polemic against the French anarchist Proudhon. Proudhon proposed that products should be priced directly as the amount of time it had taken to make them. Marx pointed out that others had proposed this before and that it had even be tried. ‘Equitable-labor-exchange bazaars’, he wrote, ‘have been set up in London, Sheffield, Leeds and many other towns in England’.

The one in London, opened by the utopian socialist Robert Owen in 1832, ‘used a new currency which was based on labour. Workers could exchange goods for notes according to the time they had taken to make the goods. The notes were measured in hours. The notes could then be exchanged for goods of equal “time value”’ (atom.aim25.com/index.php/equitable-labour-exchange-2).

In the 1860s Proudhon’s followers envisaged the exchangers being worker cooperatives rather than individual artisans and that these would eventually, gradually and peacefully replace the capitalist production-for-profit economy and its wages system. Others, in England and America, saw this as the way to the ‘Cooperative Commonwealth’ that was once an alternative name for socialism.

Joseph is in effect reviving this, but in a modernised form with the backing of computer technology. Marx had warned: ‘These bazaars have all ended in scandalous failures after having absorbed considerable capital.’ We can’t say that this will be the fate of Joseph’s scheme (if it gets off the ground) but it will involve the investment of considerable capital in the computers needed to operate it and in paying for the electricity to power them. That, in itself, indicates that the alternative economy wouldn’t be independent of its capitalist environment, quite apart from the zero chance of it being able to ‘incrementally replace’ capitalism by outcompeting economically the corporate and state enterprises that currently dominate wealth production.

Joseph dismisses the need for a ‘mass awakening’, but a higher degree of consciousness would be required of those prepared to abandon working for wages in the capitalist economy to take part in his blueprint than for political action by an ‘awakened’ working class to establish socialism.

The "Transition Period" (1946)

From the January 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are many people who cannot shake themselves clear of the Labour Party because they believe that Socialism cannot be established as a complete and revolutionary revolution change. They believe that between Capitalism and Socialism lies a period of State ownership which, they contend, will be neither Capitalism nor Socialism. Consequently they pin their faith to the Labour Party as the party which will inaugurate this “transition period”.

The idea of a transition period, during which some fundamental features of capitalism would still remain, is old, and was taken for granted by the reform parties that sprang up during the second half of the last century and the idea has persisted until to-day.

The Utopian Socialists of the early part of last century proposed a complete break with capitalism by building a new society upon an entirely different basis. But this society, instead of growing out of the old, was to be built within present society but without having any connection with it at all. They were to be communistic oases in the desert of capitalism that would serve as an example and an inspiration to the world at large. This was Robert Owen’s early idea. When, later, it was found impossible to build these groups inside highly developed Western civilisation, attempts were made to set them up upon the relatively virgin soil of America and Australia. But even there they were failures; capitalism was too strong for them. Co-operative societies still remain a pale and stunted reflections of those grand old fantasies.

When the Utopian approach to the abolition of capitalism gave place to the scientific, and it became generally accepted that Socialism was a system that must grow out of capitalism and not be imposed upon it, the new attitude took three different forms, for which the low standard of education of the workers was partly responsible. One form was that capitalism must be subjected to repeated reforms until finally it was reformed out of existence and Socialism introduced without the mass of the people being aware of what was happening. The second form consisted of building up small, vigorous groups which would lead the workers into Socialism by a frontal attack upon capitalism. This was later the basis of the Russian Bolshevik movement and its early popularity as the Blanquist movement in France. The third and final form was one propagated by Marx and Engels in which the Socialist revolution was to be accomplished by a working class that realised the source and nature of the antagonisms within capitalism, and also the nature of the new social order they intended to build out of the ruins of the old.

From the beginning the two earlier methods were afflicted with the same old disease; an acceptance of the idea that the mass of the people are incapable of properly understanding the meaning of Socialism and therefore, in its early days, Socialism would be fraught with difficulties to solve which some forms of organisation similar to what we have to-day would persist for some time after the accomplishment of the revolution. The principal, and almost overwhelming, difficulty anticipated was how to get people to produce and distribute the needful things when private ownership of the means of production, and therefore wages, no longer existed. How would an equal share of work be performed and a fair share of needful things be provided without some principle analogous to what exists under capitalism? It was agreed that when Socialism had been firmly established and a new generation had grown up under free social conditions then no such arbitrary principle would be necessary, but until that time this hangover from capitalism must  remain.

This period between the overthrow of capitalism and the final establishment of a fully developed Socialist society has been called “the transition period”. Limited space will only permit us to discuss one aspect of the question here.

The troubles of the early Bolsheviks, who were endeavouring to build Socialism out of an undeveloped capitalist base, led them to exaggerate the nature and the importance of this transition period and their followers have given to State capitalism the unwarranted distinction of being the transition period. In defending their claims the early Bolsheviks—Lenin, Trotzky and their associates—appealed to the writings of Marx and Engels, and particularly to Marx’s criticism of the Gotha Programme of 1875.

In his criticism Marx argues that during the transition period between capitalism and Communism a worker will withdraw from the common pool a value in hours of labour equal to the hours of labour he has worked minus the contribution to the reserve for the aged, the sick, future production and repair. Whether this period will be long or short Marx does not say; in fact, it is not even clear that he accepted more than there will be a period of difficulty to be met by temporary expedients, as his statements are arguments against erroneous assumptions in the Gotha Programme, and he is showing that where there is unequal distribution their phrase “just distribution of the proceeds of labour” in that programme is meaningless wind. We may add that taking the most extreme view of what Marx says it certainly could not produce conditions that would give rise to anything approximating to Soviet millionaires!

Let us now consider what are likely to be the conditions existing, as far as the distribution of products is concerned, at the time when the new society is being born out of the present, as far as we can envisage it to-day. We must bear in mind that the change will not come “like a thief in the night”, but in full daylight with the understanding and agreement of nearly the whole of society.

First of all, people will be accustomed to receiving wages with which to buy what they produce.

Secondly, the means of production and distribution will have been converted into Social ownership by an immediate act. This must be so as there cannot be any gradual or partial transformation.

The problem, then, is how will production be arranged when people will not receive any wages for working, and how will distribution be arranged when people will have no money to buy?

Finally, what will be the position of those who work in unnecessary occupations that will be abolished, and also of those who have never worked at all?

Before answering these questions let us first clear some of the ground.

We have absorbed what Marx and his co-workers gave to the world from their painstaking studies and we have added a good deal ourselves from our own studies since Marx, seventy years ago, criticised the Gotha Programme. We have profited from the development that has gone on since his day. One of the most important things we have learned is that the mass of people are essentially reasonable, once they understand a problem. For instance, workers will put up with considerable hardship and privation during strikes if they are convinced that the strike is necessary.

Our appeal is to all types of workers and our ranks include people from all occupations. In our propaganda we make it clear that the abolition of capitalism means the common ownership of the means of production which in turns involves from each according to his capacities, to each according to his needs. We point out that the workers must capture political power for the immediate purpose of introducing Socialism; and we further insist that there must be a majority of people understanding and desiring Socialism before it can be established.

Our propaganda, therefore, solves the problems of the transition period. From the outset the majority of workers will be satisfied with the meeting of their elementary needs; they will not expect everything at once. Furthermore workers inspired with the desire for Socialism will not be worried whether they are doing more work than somebody else. The enthusiasm for the change will spur many to work harder than they have ever done for capitalism. If for a time the tradition of capitalism weighs so heavily upon some that they shirk doing their best, what will it matter? Time itself will soon iron out this problem. At the worst there are very few people thick-skinned enough to be content to remain permanently objects of scorn.

When the movement reaches the point when Socialism is imminent it will contain within itself the organisation and the people capable of assessing the various needs of the population and how and where to organise production to meet those needs. At first the road may be rough, but it will be rapidly smoothed with the powers of production society will have at its disposal.

It is the nature of production, or the productive form, that determines the nature of the distribution. A freely associated productive form will involve a free distribution.

At first some occupations that are unpleasant may have to continue until there is time to remould the whole of production from top to bottom and eliminate what is burdensome and unpleasant. Thus some people may have unpleasant jobs for a while and others pleasant. But our propaganda will have made the necessity of this clear before the change takes place.

Thus the transition period will not be another social form but only the difficult time of reorganising production and distribution on a Socialist basis; settling down to Socialism. There will be no need for labour tickets or anything of that kind, as the workers as a whole are intelligent people.

The progress of Socialist understanding in the advanced countries proceeds at about the same pace. A revolutionary change in one of them will inspire a similar change in the others. Consequently there need be no lack of essential products or break in international supplies.

The Socialist movement is a working class movement, a movement in the interests of the great majority. Workers support each other internationally on the industrial field during strikes. There will be no lack of mutual assistance when the greatest working class movement of all, the movement to free the toilers for ever from the domination of a master class, reaches the point that it can call upon them for international solidarity in striking the final blow.

Gilmac.

Socialism or Utopia? (1915)

From the December 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the present writer’s experience there still appears to be a considerable number of people who regard the Socialist as a Utopian—a kind of mystic idealist who spends his time dreaming about a beautiful New World, weaving all manner of fanciful details from that ethereal entity, imagination. Yet why ?

If we turn to the official Declaration of Principles of the Socialist Party we find no trace of this fantastic frame of mind. It expresses nothing but the relations of forces actually existent at the present time, and only asserts anything concerning the future as the direct outcome of these relations. To the “genuine idealist” this attitude must appear “grossly materialistic,” while even the “practical man” is invariably found criticising it for the very reason that it is devoid of any detailed elaboration.

Seeing, however, that all erroneous notions must reflect some facts albeit in a distorted out-of-focus fashion, it is well to discover such modicum of truth as may exist in anti-Socialist criticism before considering the case settled. While the modern Socialist, following the scientific method of Marx and Engels, can effectually clear himself of the charge of Utopianism, so much cannot be said of the forerunners of the movement such as Owen, St. Simon and Fourier. Our opponents are welcome to all the satisfaction they can get out of this, considering that we now-a-days recognise the efforts of the above named thinkers to be getting on for a century out of date so far as their ideal reconstruction of society is concerned. Their criticisms of existing society, however, still hold good, and have been preserved by the analysis of Marx and placed upon “the solid rock” as Engels terms it.

The law of evolution holds good in the realm of theory no less than in the physical world ; consequently Socialism could hardly be expected to spring itself on the world full-fledged and complete. Its germ came into being as the result of certain definite historical events, and has developed alongside of the full fruition of other results of these events.

About the middle of the eighteenth century mechanical industry took its rise, seized upon trade after trade until by now it has revolutionised the entire character of the production of wealth, converting isolated groups of workers into a vast economic network, and replacing competition between a large number of small manufacturers by that between a small number of Titanic concerns.

Early on it commenced to intensify the poverty of the workers and widen the gulf between them and their employers, and it was these facts, following on an increase of wealth produced, that gave the Utopists the data for their criticisms. Hard on the heels of the industrial revolution in England followed the political upheaval in France which, in its turn, left the workers there worse off than before. Thus almost simultaneously the application of science to production and the establishment of “liberal institutions,” so far from improving the condition of the majority of the people, brought increased misery for them.

This glaring contradiction could hardly fail to arouse the curiosity of such members of he educated class as had not completely prostituted their intellectual faculties to the service to the new capitalist order of society, and out of the genuine research thus developed arose certain definite critical opinions which extended to the conventionalities of society, religion, the state, marriage, etc., in addition to its economic basis, i e private property.

As yet, however, the class antagonism had only manifested itself in spasmodic conflicts such as the machine smashing riots, consequently these original critics of society had nothing to point to as the factor which was to supplant the existing structure by a new one. The organised revolt of the workers against exploitation was quite foreign to their notions. Hence they had to imagine some way out and started experiments according to elaborate schemes for the regulation of communal affairs. They ignored the fact that it was the new industrial change that made a social change possible, and cut themselves off from that change by forming small groups of co-operators and endeavouring to be independent of the rest of society. Such ventures were foredoomed to failure, not because of some imaginary innate individualism of mankind as some self-styled “practical people” insist, but by reason of their insufficient economic basis. To these ideal fantasies the term “Utopian” can correctly be applied. Curiously enough, however it was the further development of industry and the growth of the class-war which simultaneously scotched them and gave birth to the scientific Socialism of the Communist Manifesto.

In the early half of the nineteenth century the workers commenced to organise for the conflict with capital. Trades Unions sprang up and the movement for political rights, Chartism, came into being. The fact that these first efforts did not realise the sanguine aspirations prompting them rendered necessary a scientific analysis of the conditions of the field of battle, in other words, the pressing of critical research to fundamental issues. This led to the discovery of the method by which the workers are exploited and condemned to poverty, and of the necessary outcome of the consequent struggle, i.e., the conquest of political power by the workers and the abolition of exploitation by the conversion of the implements of social production into common property.

The key to the future was obtained not by imagination but by science. The class-war, which is the basic fact upon which modern Socialism as a theory rests, is no mere fantasy but bitter truth.

Socialism, i.e., the criticism of existing society and speculations concerning the future was only Utopian so long as the class-war between wage-earners and capitalists was in its rudimentary stages. No sooner did this struggle develop into the most vital and glaring phenomenon of social life than Socialism became a science. On the other hand, Utopianism, i.e., the deliberate attempt to plan beforehand a social ideal, while it became obsolete, nevertheless persisted in a new form. Instead of being part of an honest criticism of society it became a phase of capitalist politics. The more the workers commenced to chafe against their fetters, the more necessary it became from the capitalist view-point to provide them with visions of economic improvement. The “practical” class, which had scorned the earlier Utopists’ plea for social harmony on the ground that struggle was the law of life, now became anxious that the workers should not put this notion into practice. Hence the “brotherhood of capital and labour” became a most respectable doctrine, and all capitalist legislation took on the form of measures for “the amelioration of the lot of the masses.” Every blessed section of the ruling class developed its own special kind of social policy. The Tory landowners boomed factory legislation, the Radical manufacturers went in for anti-Corn-Law agitation, all apparently for the benefit of the class they were mutually plundering, i.e., the working class. All the latter had to do was to allow the masters to continue to wield the political machine.

So soon as the workers acquired the franchise (as a result of the competition of different sections of the masters for their support) a new aspect of the question arose. In spite of all the promises of Tory and Radical, the onward march of machine industry rendered life ever more burdensome to the workers and the class conflict more acute. The science of revolution spread, much to the rulers’ dismay. A more elaborate Utopia became necessary to play the will-o’-the wisp; and the more nearly it caricatured the revolutionary policy the better.

“Advanced wings” of the capitalist parties composed of “middle-class” parasites, journalists, lawyers, parsons, professional intellectuals of every description arose with a “new Socialism” which had the advantage of not being revolutionary—oh! dear no !—while it appeared on the surface to grant all that the “extremists” asked for. All that was done was to substitute the capitalist “State” for the “community” in the revolutionary formula.

From the standpoint of the capitalist, of course, there is no difference between the words. What community does he know of other than the organisation of his class ? A community of organised workers is to him something outside the realm of “practical politics.”

To the genuine Socialist, however, the gradual purchase by the State of various concerns is but a phase of capitalist evolution. There is in it nothing more Socialistic than in the transformation of “private firms” into joint stock companies. In each case the transaction is conducted on approved business lines, the nominal ownership of material things being exchanged for interest hearing credit. Which means, for the worker, continued exploitation. Practical—isn’t it?

Parties whose political prestige is based on the boosting of this sham Utopia can never be anything but the catspaw of the master class;—of this the compromise-stained records of the I.L.P. and B.S.P. are sufficient proof.

They may pretend to be building the future “step by step,” but their imaginations, like everyone else’s, are limited to the experience of the past and present. To try and project a detailed castle in the air as “the ideal State” is, therefore, nothing more than wandering round in a circle, for their “details” are all derived from the capitalist system itself, and can, therefore, never get them out of it, and the Socialist Party of Great Britain is following the only scientific course in opposing their endeavour to get the workers to indulge in such peregrinations.

We are not keen on drawing pictures of the future. Shall slaves imagine freedom they have not known ? We are concerned with the vital present—the oppression of our class and our struggle to end it. There is only one way—to unite and seize the actual means whereby we live.

There is nothing Utopian about this. All that is lacking is the consciously revolutionary organisation powerful enough to effect the change ; and this is growing, slowly, maybe, but surely, as the results of the present relations between the workers and the tools they use, force themselves upon our attention, along with the means by which these relations are maintained, i.e., the forces of government.

Every Socialist principle is but the actual reflection of existing circumstances which, when correctly analysed and grasped in their entirety, provide us with the essential programme of a working-class political party.

Eric Boden

Unscientific emotionalism. (1914)

From the December 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

The widespread misery of workers in modern times has brought forward two main classes of people claiming to hold the remedy for the social evil. On the one side you have those who, horrified at the miserable conditions everywhere, preach brotherly love, a return to Feudalism, and similar things as a solution for the problem; on the other hand you have the scientific Socialists who, studying societies from the point of view of modern science, regard them as undergoing a process of growth and decay. Thus, instead of attacking the superficial relations in society, the Socialists concern themselves with the centre, the pivot on which the system turns, i.e., the method of producing and distributing wealth, the relation between the masters and the workers, because from this relation springs all the other relations that appear so prominently and make such a show.

Socialists recognise that the technical development (development of the tools) in society has made it possible for small groups to operate large masses of machinery and turn out vast quantities of wealth with a small expenditure of energy ; and that these powerful means of production, if commonly owned, could be economically used for the turning out of only just that amount of wealth required for the needs of all the members of society, and to provide the necessary new means of production for the future. This would necessitate a comparatively insignificant expenditure of energy on the part of each, and leave a great deal of leisure for the cultivation of Science, Art, and so on.

The private ownership of wealth is not only uneconomical, but, owing to the fact that the ruling idea is the enriching of the owners regardless of the consequences to the rest, so soon as the wealth of the owners does not continue to increase, production slackens down, even though this slackening down is the cause of untold misery among the workers. When the ruling idea will be the comfort of all, production will be regulated accordingly.

This view of the “social question” has been forced into the minds of Socialists by the every¬day facts of working-class life which they meet when performing their particular functions in the various industries of the world.

When our method of reasoning is applied back through history, we find that man’s thoughts have always been governed by his inherited notions and the material conditions surrounding him ; and as these conditions have centred around the obtaining of food, clothing, and shelter, so at each period of social history the more or less clear relations that were built up on this basis (the particular relations that existed at the particular time, between the various producers and distributors, of the social wealth) have been reflected in the mind in a correspondingly more or less clear manner. After the break up of the early tribal communities society was split into various classes, and history since then has been the record of the struggles of each class in its turn to control society for its own advantage. When the progress of the method of producing wealth had reached a certain point the class in society that was taking the principal part in production, found the old laws (that were suitable to the existing governing class) placed a restriction on their further development. The problem of the removal of all these restrictions therefore constantly occupies them, and it is then forced home to their minds that the only solution to the problem of the removal of these restrictions is the control of society by themselves, and the alteration of existing laws to suit the new conditions. Just as at present the spectacle of the workers doing all the work of the world forces home to the minds of men the Socialist view that, if the workers produce and distribute all the wealth of society they therefore should own it, and reap the benefit of their work themselves, instead of supporting a group of idlers and good-for-nothings. The solution of the problem is constrained within the problem itself. “Therefore mankind always takes up only such problems as it can solve” (Marx).

This matter of fact view of the question is not palatable to the “Red Revolutionists,” who like a great deal of noise (“Full of sound and fury, signifying—nothing”) ; and the soft-hearted and soft-headed, who think the problem can be solved by reverting to antiquated, out of date societies, and whose views of brotherly love cause them to raise their hands in pious horror at the misery they see among workers, and—thank God for his loving kindness in not placing them in a similar position.

The thinking human mind reasons from particular facts to general conclusions. That is to say, we form in our minds abstract pictures drawn from practical experience. The thinking faculty is an instrument for separating the world of things into groups and sub groups, according to likenesses and differences, in order to gain as complete a picture of the world as possible. For instance, the general picture we have in our minds of a horse (the idea of a horse) is derived from practical experiences of different kinds and colours of horses. Abstract ideas of all kinds are produced in the same way, by everyday experience. The difference between the scientific and the unscientific (who are typified by the emotionalists) is that the former recognise this fact and act upon their knowledge, while the latter (owing to the fact that this reasoning is done partly subconsciously in ordinary affairs) imagine the general conclusions existed first and from all time—that the “Idea” is the thing par excellence. The Socialists reason from the practical affairs of everyday life to general conclusions, while the emotionalists set out with a plan formed in accordance with certain abstract ideas true for all time (!) without taking account of the historical development of society. They try to organise society according to the Idea instead of recognising that the shape their particular ideas take has been formed by society.

The emotionalists and their followers play upon those latent ideas of equality that have lain dormant in the minds of human beings since tribal communism disappeared. Thousands of years of life under this form of society fixed in the mind of man these views of equality, and the development that followed, through Patriarchalism, Feudalism, and Capitalism, although it has driven these ideas into the background, has not eradicated them. During periods of revolution these equalitarian views are used as a bait to entice the mass of the oppressed to the side of the particular class that is struggling for supremacy. During the French Revolution these ideas gave the rising commercial class the slogan with which to arouse the down-trodden serfs to assist them in their battle. Their much-vaunted pleas for equality, however, were afterwards shewn to be the equal right to oppress, the freedom of capitalist enterprise from Feudal bonds, and the liberty of the wage workers to starve.

The emotional school, who come forth with their battle-cry of freedom and equality, are merely reproducing the old ideas of primitive tribal equality, instead of examining the constitution of present society and its historical tendencies, and thus arriving at the correct scientific standpoint. The introduction of private property broke up the old societies ; with the abolition of private property, therefore, and the advent of Socialism, these ideas of equality will again have a chance to appear on the stage—but in fact, and not merely in imagination, and in a much higher form than in the ancient societies, owing to the marvellous development in the control of natural forces, or rather, the knowledge of nature’s laws, that has taken place since those societies broke up.

The forerunners of scientific Socialism : Fourier, St. Simon, and Robert Owen—the first who attempted a scientific explanation of social problems—failed in their constructive efforts, and gave merely Utopian solutions, because (as Engels has so clearly shewn in “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific”) society had not yet advanced to that stage when it could exhibit its historical tendency, machinery being in its infancy, and steam not having yet shown its potencies for revolutionising production.

Once our way of looking at the matter (reasoning from facts and not fantasies) is recognised by the workers, they will no longer be prey for the supporters of capitalism with their metaphysical notions, but will see that there is only one hell about which to worry and that is the hell in reality, the hell of capitalist production in which the wealth producers of the world already find themselves.

Those who adopt the sentimental attitude are of all types, and their views generally are of a very noisy character. The individuals of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Anarchist, the Syndicalist, the “Daily Herald” League (or Leagues !), and similar varieties, believe that the Social Revolution will come along to-morrow or the day after, if you will only kick up a row and run your nose up against police batons, bullets, maxim guns, and such “harmless” instruments of coercion. Others follow the showy method in other directions, as, for instance, the Party that at present goes under the name of the British Socialist Party. This party, not making a great show of numbers, followed the method of changing its name, thinking to emulate the proceedings of a conjuror. This same party recently came to the conclusion (after the failure of its policy of “Swell the ranks and never mind who enters ! Let ’em all come, Syndicalists, Political Actionists, Anarchists, and any old rubbish, what matters so long as we get a crowd”) that they had better consider the advisability of joining the Labour Party (very sound conclusion !) whom they have been denouncing for so many years.

Thus do the emotionalists gain a following and safely pilot them over to the enemy.

As for us who are members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, our ranks may not appear to grow so fast, we do not lay out our stock in fantastic and alluring drapery, but we deal with the hard facts of working-class life from the scientific standpoint banded down to us by previous workers in the same field. We know that in spite of the apparent slowness of our growth, underneath the surface our work is creating among the members of our class, the working class, a growing knowledge of their position in society, and the line along which to act to achieve their freedom. Only those who build, as we do, on the solid rock, can expect the edifice to stand. Those who build on sand will see their work continually obliterated. In any case we have every reason to be satisfied with, our work up to the present, and that knowledge,, combined with the spectacle of the continual downfalls (the re-actionary attitude of all the self-styled “Revolutionaries” on the present capitalist war in Europe is the latest manifestation) of those who sneer at our attitude, will nerve us to still greater exertions in the future.

“For while the tired waves vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent flooding in the main.

“And not by Eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light ;

In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly,

But Westward, look, the land is bright !”

G. McC.

Blogger's Notes:

'G.Mc.' was Gilbert McClatchie. For the majority of his writing life in the Standard he used 'Gilmac' as his pen-name, but like his close comrade, Edgar Hardcastle, ('H.' in the Standard), he didn't not settle on his better known pen-name for a couple of years.

The poem quoted at the end of this article is 'Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth' by Arthur Hugh Clough. It must have been a popular poem in socialist circles in the early days of the SPGB, as this is not the first time I've seen it quoted in the Standard. See here and here.

Are socialists utopians? (1981)

From the November 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Look at the world around you. Millions starving while food is destroyed. Mass unemployment and an arms race which threatens human survival. Many murderous regimes overshadowing hints of democracy. But how should change be directed? How should society be organised? Socialists have a clear vision of the way forward, and for this are often branded as utopian dreamers. But Utopians base schemes for a future society on abstract principles such as “freedom” or “justice”, without suggesting how society can be transformed.

The Utopians

For most of human pre-history people lived in communal groups, sharing their food. Conditions were harsh, but hardships were shared. With the advent of slavery, people were forced to become the property of others, to be treated like cattle. The first utopias were romantic visions of a harmonious life, and were placed in the past, For example, this passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, written in the first century BC:

In the beginning was the Golden Age, when men of their own accord, threat of punishment, without laws, maintained good faith and did what was right . . . the peoples of the world, untroubled by any fears, enjoyed a leisurely and peaceful existence, and had no use for soldiers. The earth itself, without compulsion, untouched by the hoe, unfurrowed by any share, produced ail things spontaneously, and men were content with foods that grew without cultivation . . . it was a season of everlasting spring.

This tradition continued through the Middle Ages in poems such as The Former Age by Chaucer

What would have been the point of war?

There was no profit, no property;

But cursed was the time, I dare well say,

When men first did their sweaty business

To dig up bits of metal, lurking in the darkness

Looking for gems in the rivers 

With the development of capitalism, the search for a utopia became popular and urgent, and took on a more realistic element by being placed in the present instead of the past. Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) was located in the “New World” across the ocean. By the nineteenth century, utopias were being placed in the future. Edward Bellamy, who[se] Looking Backward in 1887, said that “The Golden Age lies before us and not behind, and it is not far away”. But as early as 1652, Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger, had tried to combine action with vision. His protest took the form of over the land at St George’s Hill near Cobham for common use, while his hopes were expressed in The Law of Freedom:

If any man or family want corn or other provision, they may go to the storehouses and fetch without money. If any want food or victuals, they may either go to the butchers' shops, and receive that they want without money; or else go to the flocks of sheep, or herds of cattle, and take and kill what meat is needful for their families, without buying and selling.

The eighteenth-century French ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity were seen as the essence of the 1789 revolution Five years later, Buonarotti and Babeuf organised the “Conspiracy of Equals”. They planned an armed insurrection as the way to communism, which they saw as an ideal to be put into practice at any time regardless of the historical conditions, with the help of Spartan asceticism and moral restraint. In the early nineteenth century, utopian socialists drew up detailed schemes as alternatives to the unbearable conditions under which rapid industrialisation was taking place. Saint- Simon envisaged a technocracy, with bankers directing production by the regulation of credit. He wrote of a time when the “administration of things” would replace “government over people”. Fourier explained how “Under civilisation, poverty is born of superabundance itself” and urged the formation of communal groups which he called phalansteres. At New Lanark in Scotland, Robert Owen directed a cotton mill as a “model colony” of co-operative efficiency.

Political action

The socialist movement became practical about a hundred years ago, with the formation of political parties such as the Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist League. The latter was founded by William Morris, whose vision of socialism, News From Nowhere, was published in 1890. This work tells of an activist from the Socialist League arriving home after a political meeting and dreaming of the kind of society his party sought to establish. It ends as the people in the dream tell their visitor to go back and see

people engaged in making others live lives which are not their own, while they themselves care nothing for their own real lives — men who hate life, though they fear death. Go back and be the happier for having seen us, for having added a little hope to your struggle.

Socialism was placed on a practical footing when social development was to be based on the interplay of material forces and the class struggle. This was largely accomplished through the work of active socialist speakers and writers such as Marx and Engels. Capitalism was seen to be a struggle between owners of capital and their workers, the sellers of labour power; a struggle ultimately over control of all the productive resources of society. Marx showed how capitalist employers were able to accumulate the “surplus value” produced by their workers because the ages paid, merely enough to keep us fit for more work, are worth less than the the total value we produce. Previous revolutions have taken place when the forces of production (for example, factories) had grown to a point where further development was prevented by the old-fashioned relations of production (such as lord and serf). The contradiction in capitalism which Marx pointed to remains. Wealth is produced by millions of workers across the world, but appropriated by a small minority. This leads to further contradictions such as mass starvation alongside the destruction of food and the universal desire for peace alongside wars.

The end of scarcity

A report produced by the United Nations in 1970 stated that “the surface of the earth has hardly been scratched”. In 1976 the United Nations Food and Agricultural Yearbook showed that “enough grain is now produced to provide everyone on earth with more than 2 lb. (3000 calorics) per day”. In Bangladesh, where half the people are starving, enough grain is produced to provide 2,600 calories a person each day, but it is exported to be sold.

The Head of Policy Planning at the World Bank referred recently to twenty million tons of “surplus grain” guarded by soldiers in India, while chronic hunger continues. In 1966, the US President’s Science Advisory Committee reported that less than half of the world’s arable land was being cultivated, while in 1978, the EEC destroyed almost 200,000 tons of fruit and vegetables (The Times 14/11/ 78). In Nairobi in 1967 about a million coffee plants were burned (The Times 12/5/67). And in 1962, the Director of the International Agricultural Aviation Centre estimated that “the earth could support a population of 28,000 million if food production were organised on lines now known to be practicable” (The Times 24/9/62). (Present world population in 24/9/62 is about 4,000 million.) In September 1976, Robert Loomis declared in Scientific American that current resources could feed more than twelve times the present population. In the same issue, W.D. Hopper explains that

The world’s food problem does not arise from any physical limitation on potential output or any danger of unduly stressing the environment. The limitations on abundance are to be found in the social and political structures of nations and in the economic relations among them. The unexploited global resource is there.

The problem is that, from Moscow to Washington, production is based on the profit of a few rather than the needs of all.

This is most evident in what Kennedy referred to as “planned and subsidised under-production”, when he was US President. The quota system is a huge and barbarically anachronistic fetter on the production of wheat, rice, sugar, rubber, tin and copper. And all this to defend the dividends of shareholders in companies like Nestlés, which has a higher turnover than the Swiss government’s budget (Swiss Information Groups for Development Policy; Nestles Report 1976) and spends more on advertising each year than the entire budget of the UN World Health Organisation.

All this proves that talk of a problem of over-population is a dangerous lie. People’s impressions of population are distorted by living in small areas of absurdly concentrated population. Of 213 million people living in the USA in 1975, nearly three-quarters lived in cities which occupy only 1.5 per cent of the land. The world’s population could be fitted in theory into an area the size of the Isle of Wight with one square foot each. If overpopulation caused hunger, there would be a link between population density and the level of malnutrition. But according to the 1977 FAO Yearbook, France has the same number of people per cropped acre as India, but far less malnutrition. The US Department of Agriculture has estimated that there are about 16 billion acres in the world, as much as four acres per person.

Socialist visionaries

It takes some imagination to envisage a world cleared of the insanity which dominates it today. Alongside the relentless process of debate, persuasion and struggle in the movement for socialism, there is a need for some vision. Not a religious vision of a perfect “Golden Age” or a utopian, detailed plan for life in a future society. What is needed is the kind of passion with which William Morris portrayed work as the great pleasure when under conditions of democratic control, and creation as the driving force to end the destruction inherent in the profit system. Society will be transformed through people understanding capitalism and desiring socialism. Such consciousness inevitably involves strong human feeling.

About a hundred years ago, Paul Brousse boasted of being a “possibilist”. In other words, he was prepared to compromise politically with the system he claimed to oppose. Like thousands who have followed him since, from the SDF to the SWP, he supported what Karl Popper has called “piecemeal social engineering”. To campaign for mere modifications of capitalism is to be absorbed and swallowed by the very prejudices socialists have to fight against. When the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed, it was dubbed “impossibilist” because of its determination to stand openly and consistently for a system of society which is yet to be established. In that sense only, can socialism be called “utopian”: utopia is the Greek word for nowhere, and socialism does not yet exist anywhere, although the forces bringing it about are present everywhere within capitalism. Problems which are fully grasped contain their solution within them. Only humans can think conceptually, envisaging something before building it. This capacity can be used to look at history scientifically. By predicting and organising, we can assert control over the constant process of social change.

Anatole France said that “Without the Utopians of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked”. It is because of the misery which still prevails that people are interested in the elusive utopias over the seas and far away. But the time has come to reject the American Dream of “free enterprise” and the Russian Dream of dictatorship flattering itself with the false name of “socialism”. To leave the nightmare of the present, all of the tools are to hand. The raw materials, the machinery, the organisation. The rest is up to you. 

Clifford Slapper

Diggers Festival in Wigan (2024)

From the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Diggers Festival in Wigan

‘True commonwealth’s freedom lies in the free enjoyment of the earth‘ (Gerrard Winstanley 1652).

Stripped of his religious, patriarchal views, Winstanley is still relevant today. He saw that:

Freedom has an economic basis and is impossible in a property-based society.

Society is structured to maintain the privilege of a few. Laws are made essentially to defend property and official religion is designed to terrify us into submission.

Buying/selling causes war and keeps us poor.

Winstanley’s answer was much like ours. A society where things are produced purely to meet human need (no form of exchange), where production and distribution are based on democratic, informed consent, and everyone can achieve their full potential.

This is what we mean by socialism. Everyone can have a life of material security – provided the majority takes control of the world’s resources from the capitalist minority.

Even if you came today just for a pint and the music, you might want to consider joining with us to put things right at last.

Leaflet to be distributed at this year’s Diggers Festival in Wigan in September.

Levellers or Diggers? (1995)

From the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the end of April a few hundred demonstrators occupied the site of the old Wisley airfield near George’s Hill, in Surrey. This was where, in 1649, the Diggers had set up a communist community with the aim of starting a movement to make the Earth “a common treasury for all” again. The demonstrators called themselves the “New Levellers”. this was appropriate because, like the original Levellers (but unlike the original Diggers), they were demanding a reform of the laws governing land ownership and use rather than the abolition of private property, as the leaflet we distributed pointed out.

Many of the Levellers of the 1640s, being inexperienced in rebelling against the injustices of the market, and yet to recognise the incompatibility between FREEDOM and PROPERTY, sought to reform and make just property relationships. For example, the Leveller leader, Lilburne, in March 1648 wrote that the Levellers had “been the truest and constantest asserters of liberty and property (which are quite opposite to communitie and levelling)”.

THE TRUE LEVELLERS were the Diggers. Their ideas can serve as an inspiration to those of us in the 1990s who detest and reject the iniquities of the commercial system. The Diggers stood not for state ownership but COMMON OWNERSHIP: “The earth with all her fruits of Corn, Cattle and such like was made to be a common Store-House of Livelihood, to all mankinde, friend and foe, without exception” (A Declaration From the Poor Oppressed People of England).

Where all wealth is commonly owned there will be no need for money. In the above-quoted Declaration the Diggers proclaimed that “we must neither buy nor sell. Money must not any longer . . . be the great god that hedges in some and hedges out others . . .” Production must be solely for use and all people able to take from the common store on the basis of FREE ACCESS. As Winstanley explained in his Law of Freedom: “As everyone works to advance the Common Stock so everyone shall have a free use of any commodity in the Storehouse for his pleasure and comfortable livelihood, without buying and selling or restraint from any”. This is a wonderful and compelling socialist vision of a society where all things in and on the Earth are the common property of all; where all people give according to their abilities and take freely according to their needs; where money and other time-wasting features of property relationship are done away with. It is a practical alternative to capitalism’s property mania.

Modern Tory defenders of property assert that owning things makes us free. This false equation between liberty and property was spread by the 17th defenders of property power, and was also accepted by several well-intentioned Levellers, just as it has been by subsequent leftists who have feared to break with the ideas of THE MONEY SYSTEM. In truth, property and money make us unfree. As Winstanley stated: “True freedom lies where a man receives his nourishment and preservation, and that is in the use of the Earth”. Those in Britain living beneath the poverty line and the millions in the world dying from starvation should see the sense of that.

Socialists must learn from the wisdom of our Digger predecessors and have the boldness to state the case for A MONEYLESS WORLD SOCIETY – a case now more materially feasible and globally urgent than ever.

Worker co-operatives in the capitalist system (2024)

From the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Proponents of capitalism would have you believe that there is no alternative, that the free market provides the most efficient system of exchange and that any deviation risks endangering freedom and prosperity. This is a falsehood, for humans have demonstrated throughout history a remarkable capacity to co-operate without private ownership and the insatiable need for profit. Closer examination of worker co-operatives, despite their long-standing orientation towards generating wealth within the capitalist system, offers a glimpse at how humanity may one day succeed in recasting incentivisation to meet people’s needs rather than to make a profit.

The history of worker co-operatives and self-management is deeply rooted in the 19th-century efforts to address the socio-economic challenges brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Robert Owen, a visionary social reformer and industrialist in the early 1800s, laid the groundwork for the co-operative movement. Owen championed the idea that workers should collectively own and manage the means of production to ensure fair wages and better working conditions. His experiments at New Lanark in Scotland and later at New Harmony in the United States provided early models of co-operative living and working. Others like Charles Fourier, a French social theorist, contributed to the co-operative movement by proposing the concept of phalansteries—self-sustaining communities where individuals could live and work co-operatively. Although Fourier’s ideas were not widely implemented, they inspired later developments in the co-operative movement.

Elsewhere, the Rochdale Society of Pioneers, formed in 1844 in England, played a pivotal role in shaping the co-operative principles that persist today. They established a successful consumer co-operative, emphasising open membership, democratic control, and distribution of surplus based on patronage. Indeed, the so-called ‘Rochdale Principles’ became a blueprint for subsequent co-operative endeavours.

The modest successes of the co-operative movement led Marx to pronounce that worker self-management proved the superfluousness of capitalist managerialism; a statement ostensibly corroborated decades later during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Worker co-operatives and self-management gained prominence across the Republican zone as a means for labourers to assert control over their workplaces. In Catalonia, particularly in the city of Barcelona, workers took over factories and implemented self-management practices. Notable examples include the textile industry with enterprises like Fabrica de Hilaturas Fabra i Coats and the metal industry with companies like Talleres Roca. These initiatives were characterised by worker assemblies, decision-making through consensus, and the elimination of hierarchical structures. The success of these worker co-operatives during the Spanish Civil War was evident in increased productivity and improved working conditions. The textile co-operative, Fabra i Coats, for instance, not only maintained production levels but also witnessed enhanced efficiency under worker control. Similarly, in the metal industry, Talleres Roca thrived under self-management, showcasing the viability of co-operative principles in sustaining economic activity during a tumultuous period.

Contradictions

However, the existence of worker co-operatives within a capitalist system has inevitably led to certain contradictions. Notwithstanding the inculcation of workplace democracy and equality, the necessity to compete and accumulate in the broader system persists, and in face of these structural demands, worker co-operatives have often proven ineffective and unreliable.

Despite his visionary ideals, Owen’s experiments at New Lanark and New Harmony faced internal strife and financial difficulties. The co-operative model struggled with issues of governance, as decision-making by consensus often led to slow and inefficient processes. In New Harmony, the lack of a clear organisational structure and the imposition of Owen’s communal ideas contributed to the ultimate failure of the experiment.

Similarly, during the Spanish Civil War, worker co-operatives in Barcelona faced both internal and external challenges. While some co-operatives thrived, others struggled with management issues, as decision-making by assembly sometimes hindered effective responses to rapidly changing circumstances. Even the relatively successful Fabrica de Hilaturas Fabra i Coats faced difficulties due to disagreements among workers on key decisions, highlighting the challenges of implementing democratic practices in high-stakes situations. External factors too, such as wartime pressures and political instability, also impacted the sustainability of these initiatives. The Barcelona co-operatives, despite notable successes, faced challenges in the broader socio-political context of the Spanish Civil War, ultimately contributing to their limitations and demonstrating the complexity of implementing worker self-management in tumultuous times.

Mondragon

That said, worker co-operatives endure today. The Mondragon Co-operative Corporation, based in the Basque region of Spain, is an often-cited example. Founded in 1956 by a group of visionary individuals led by Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, Mondragon has grown into one of the world’s largest and most successful co-operative networks. Proponents point to the active participation of employees in decision-making processes through a system of co-determination, where major decisions are made collectively by the workers and management, as well as the commitment to equality of income. While wage differentials exist based on skills and responsibilities, the ratio between the highest and lowest-paid worker is significantly lower than in traditional corporations. This approach promotes a more equitable distribution of wealth among the co-operative members. In terms of profit distribution, a portion of the profits is reinvested in the co-operative, another portion is allocated to social and cultural activities, and the rest is distributed among the members.

Critics, however, argue that Mondragon, while often lauded as a successful worker co-operative, still operates within the broader capitalist system, raising concerns about its limitations and contradictions. One major criticism is that, despite its co-operative structure, Mondragon has adopted certain hierarchical elements, resembling a conventional corporation. While the co-operative members elect management, there exists a professional managerial class that holds considerable decision-making power, potentially diluting the essence of true workplace democracy.

Additionally, Mondragon’s global expansion has led to accusations of replicating conventional corporate practices, including outsourcing and wage differentials, especially in its international subsidiaries. Critics contend that this compromises the co-operative’s commitment to equality, as the wage gaps between the highest and lowest-paid workers have widened in some instances.

Furthermore, the co-operative has faced challenges in maintaining its founding principles as it expanded. In certain situations, Mondragon has implemented cost-cutting measures and layoffs, contradicting the ideal of job security within a co-operative framework. The co-operative’s financial structure has also been a subject of scrutiny, with some arguing that it still operates within the capitalistic framework, reliant on traditional banking and financial institutions. These criticisms highlight the complexities and challenges of attempting to establish a fully co-operative model within the capitalist system, revealing that Mondragon, despite its successes, does not represent a complete departure from capitalist structures and practices.

World co-operative commonwealth

Thus, it is evident that simply introducing a system of worker co-operatives cannot expunge capitalism. The worker co-operative in its current form is not a panacea. Like other workplaces it is geared towards the generation of wealth within the capitalist system. However, the worker co-operative endures as an ideal, an alternative framework where decision-making is collective and understanding one’s role in a larger societal context becomes paramount, fostering a spirit of co-operation and shared responsibility.

If humans across the globe were to adopt worker co-operatives within the confines of capitalism, it would likely serve to mitigate some of the exploitation associated with the current economic system by redistributing wealth and cultivating workplace democracy. That said, an integral component of the capitalist system would remain in the form of surplus value and money exchange, and so there would persist a means to profit through the exploitation of workers. The ideal of a global system of co-operatives could only reach its full potential on the basis of world socialism, a system in which production is geared not towards sale and the accumulation of private wealth but towards using one’s abilities to meet both individual and community needs.

John Elliston

End of work? (2009)

Book Review from the December 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Critical Social Theory and the End of Work. By Edward Granter. Ashgate, 2009. £55.

The main theme of this book (adapted from a PhD thesis) is that work is being eliminated through the use of advanced production technology. The Critical Social Theory in the title refers to the publications of the Frankfurt School (notably Adorno, Horkheimer, Lowenthal and Marcuse) but the views on work of other critical social theorists such as Marx and Gorz are also included.

Sensibly Granter devotes a few pages to definitions of work, but the results are disappointing. The author wastes space telling us that someone thinks work is “picking something up and putting it down somewhere else because you have to”. Gorz is more helpful in pointing out that “‘work’ nowadays refers almost exclusively to activities carried out for a wage”. Curiously Granter writes of work hundreds of times but hardly mentions employment. He doesn’t seem at all clear that although all employment involves work, not all work is employment.

The chapter on utopians and the end of work summarises what More, Fourier and the little-known Etzler had to say on the subject. Apparently Etzler though that the ‘powers in nature’ (wind, solar, tidal energy) could be developed to replace all human labour. The two pages devoted to William Morris correctly note that his News From Nowhere was a reaction to Bellamy’s Looking Backward, but fail to convey much of the richness of Morris’s imagination about what work will be like in socialist society.

Granter’s discussion of Marx quotes from no less than 14 of his works and the author believes there are “many Marxisms”. He confuses the issue by referring to “the erstwhile superpower that many saw as operating on Marxist principles…” It is also misleading to say that “The idea of the end of work is at the centre of Marx’s vision of a future society…” Granter is however on stronger ground when he writes that Marx was not in any way against work and did advocate its “radical transformation”.

Prior to a short concluding section, the final chapter is about globalisation and work. This is by far the most opinionated and forceful chapter, offering the most devastating critique of capitalism. Starting with Marx’s “It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connection everywhere,” Granter goes on to show that the impetus for globalisation “comes primarily from the need of the expanding capitalist system to maximise profit”. The worst victims are Britain’s underpaid, easy to sack, second class workforce of migrant labour, ‘a world of gangmasters, zero hour contracts, the minimum wage [or less] and eventually no employment rights.”

Stan Parker