50 Years Ago: Do you like your work? (1973)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

How many working-class children follow
the occupations to which they are adapted and which would hold their interest?
 . . .

. . .   The working-class child is born into a system that at a certain period puts before him the problem of finding a master or starving. He must obtain employment of some kind regardless of his aptitude or desires. The family at home is growing; father’s wages no longer suffice to meet the needs, and consequently the child must accept the first job that offers, and if he is lucky (!) that means following the same trade until industry has sapped all his energy and eventually thrown him out upon the scrapheap to beg or find a place in the workhouse.

The private ownership of wealth, with consequent dependence on wages of the vast majority of the population is the cause of this maladaptation.

When wealth becomes common property and is democratically controlled by the whole people there will be such an abundance of workers available that the necessary work of society will not be able to absorb all this energy. It will then be possible for ail the members of society to experiment in occupations until they find the one that suits them best.

(From an article “Square Pegs in Round Holes”, by G. McClatchie. Socialist Standard, June 1923.)

A Man or a Tool. (1960)

From the April 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Understand this clearly: You can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision; and to find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool.

"And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cogwheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be bent upon the finger-point, and the soul's force must fill all the invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last—a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in this world is concerned; saved only by its Heart, which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, after the ten hours are over, into fireside humanity.

“On the other hand, if you make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth dong; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dullness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark, there will be transfiguration behind and within him.”

*  * *

“We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men—divided into mere segments of men—broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece' of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin, or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished—sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is—we should think there- might be some loss in it also.

"And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this—that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages.” 

John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice.
 Extracted from Volume 2, The Nature of 
the Gothic.

A Brief Exposition of Socialist Theory. (Continued.) (1920)

From the February 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

The example of the difference of the relations between men getting their livelihood by means of simple instruments of labour (typified by the threshing flail) and those producing their sustenance by means of more advanced means of production (typified by the threshing machine) which we have given by no means exhausts the field. Just as the social structure consists of much more than these primary and personal relations, so much more in the social life takes shape from the character of the instruments of labour and the methods in which they are used. Man stands not only in relations with his fellow men, but also with the world about him, and as far as these relations are within society they have their base in the conditions of wealth production.

In the classic age of the flail, for instance, the general means of producing wealth were about on a par with that implement. It was the day of the windmill, the spinning wheel and distaff, and the primitive loom. In the towns the smith's hammer rang out, without a rival in the production of ferrous ware. Everywhere was handwork, everywhere tools. Machinery, if not unknown, was of so little importance as to have practically no influence upon the method of production.

In such conditions as this what was the relation of men toward the world ? We have already seen that the instruments of labour in general belonged to those who operated them. Among the artizans of the towns, possibly, were many exceptions, but the lower we descend in the scale of the development of the instruments of labour, the more do we find the energies of the workers occupied in the production of the primary necessaries, food, shelter, and clothing. Therefore, in the period of which we are speaking, the production of these things were the predominating industries, and it was the general conditions prevailing in these industries which determined the general social relations.

It was not, therefore, the handicraft of the towns which determined the social form, but the economic conditions of rural industries.

Ignoring, then, the seeming contradictions of the towns, where goods were certainly produced for sale, let us turn to the countryside.

The worker of the Middle Ages, owning the simple means by which he produced his living, had an outlook upon the world entirely different from that of the modern worker. This difference commenced with his relation to the product of his toil. His very object was different when he took his instruments of labour in hand. The modern worker starts out to produced wealth which shall be the property of the owner of the implements he operates, but the feudal worker, owning the tools with which he worked, laboured to produce wealth for himself. Hence while the modern worker realises that his function in life, and therefore the reason he is permitted to live, is to work, the mediaeval worker could not take this view of himself and his relation to the world.

He worked to live. The product of his labour was a different thing at the moment of its production, from the product of the toil of his present-day prototype. The latter, producing wealth which, on production, belongs to someone else, necessarily produces what that other requires, and he cannot escape the conviction that he is only permitted to work (and therefore to live) in order to produce it. The feudal worker, on the other band, producing wealth for himself, produced those things which he required to satisfy his own needs, hence he saw himself only working to live, and took an opposite view of his place in the world to that of the wage worker of our present system.

A. E. Jacomb

(To be Continued.)

Work. (1923)

From the September 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are told we do not work hard enough nor long enough.

Unemployment, and the evils resulting from it, are said to be due to the fact that the workers will not work. Stagnation in business is supposed to be due to the workers’ dislike for work. This is the piffle continually coming from the master class and their agents. Facts, however, prove the contrary to be true. The more we work, the greater our poverty becomes; the more we work, the greater the wealth of the master class becomes. We look back into the past history of society and see that there was a time when the people were only able to produce sufficient for their subsistence; thus it was essential that all should work.

As recently as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there was no such thing as unemployment through lack of work. Yet, in the days of feudalism, feudal slaves did not work so hard as wage slaves do to-day. Although working less, the people were better off; in recent times, though the workers work harder, poverty and its resultant evils have become greater. If we do not work hard, society would be short of the necessaries of life, ’tis said; but we know that food, clothing, shelter, and luxuries exist in great abundance.

The problem which the capitalist class cannot solve is how to dispose of the whole of the vast amount of goods produced. Factories, warehouses, stores, and shops are crowded with goods, and until these are sold, more will not be wanted. These goods can be bought with money only; money can be obtained by the workers only through working. Goods unsold mean no work for many; no work means no money. This state of affairs is brought about by overproduction, which proves that the workers have been working too much. But the irony of the position is that the workers, who have produced this vast wealth, are denied access to it. Why? Because it belongs to the capitalists. How have the latter gained control of this wealth? By robbing the producers. By this means the capitalist class have become the private owners of the means of living, i.e., factories, land, railways, etc., and they have made laws and raised armed forces to protect their property from the attacks of the workers.

Now, workers, you have the power to alter all this; you have the power to make life well worth living, by gaining control of the means of living. You have this power because the numbers of the working class far exceed those of the capitalist class. Riots, strikes, and bloody revolutions of the past have not given workers control of the means of living. To-day, these methods are still useless. But we have one method which is a sure method—the vote. To be able to use the vote to advantage requires knowledge. Workers, study Socialism, fight for Socialism, and bring about the Socialist Commonwealth which will free you from your chains and give a full and happy life to all.

E. W. C.

Pathfinders: Stars Like Us (2018)

The Pathfinders Column from the August 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

 Stars Like Us

Last month a black woman was ‘crowned’ Miss Universe Great Britain, a first in the beauty contest’s 66-year history, and called it ‘a great achievement’. Somehow, apparently, being selected as the country’s showpiece exhibit in an annual sexist meat parade is to be considered a success for black women everywhere. 

Recently there have been a lot of stories about female and minority representation in ‘the arts’ (meaning TV and cinema). Huge excitement came earlier this year with the first all-black superhero film, which proved that you can make money out of utter bollocks regardless of ethnic considerations. This followed the success of a female-led superhero film, and UK viewers can soon look forward to the first female Doctor Who and the first lesbian Batgirl TV series, all of which prove that . . . anyway, you get the picture.

Where this gets a bit weird is the ongoing discussion about ‘representation’ in the arts. The broadcasting watchdog Ofcom reported last year that "lots of people feel there are not enough programmes on TV that "authentically portray their lives and communities".

 Why is this weird? Because in expecting, nay demanding, that made-up stories should be ‘authentic’ people seem to have lost sight of the essential difference between fiction and reality. This is not to belittle the genuine human need for social affirmation. We all crave a sense that we are not some lonely isolated freak in a hostile and indifferent world, and that others like us exist. Socialists know that feeling too, indeed it’s behind a lot of the things that we do as an organisation. If you’re reading this magazine, you probably feel the same way at times. But one thing we definitely don’t do is go round complaining about our ‘under-representation’ in the arts and demanding our own superhero. It would never occur to us that the ‘arts’ were anything other than a fictional construct owned and controlled by the capitalist class and used mainly for the oppression and psychological manipulation of the working class. If it ever tried to ‘represent’ a socialist character it would not be as a superhero  but more likely a stoned 1970s hippy or else an unhinged Bond villain. Much as we all love artistic creativity, we should not lose sight of the fact that capitalist art is generally a weapon used against us, even when it’s just for entertainment.

 So, not only is this question of ‘representation’ a fundamental illusion – as if the success of some black beauty queen can ever be an achievement for you – it is also a hopeless expression of passivity, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome where we love the thing that enslaves us so much that we want it to look like us too. 

This is what the capitalists want – a population of brainwashed automatons who don’t know what’s real anymore. They want us to sit indoors and let the capitalist TV construct our world for us, removing every jarring trace of cognitive dissonance that might alert us to the fact that we are in dream-mode. 

Entertainment is supposed to be escapist, to give us a break from reality. By dressing our entertainment in faux-liberal credentials we’re not affirming our ‘liberty’ or ‘diversity’, we’re fusing reality with fantasy and locking ourselves more inextricably into a prison of our own making. Better to get out there and construct our own world, for real, and with the TV off.

Voting for the Electric Chair

Here’s a work-place experience not unfamiliar to many. The meeting grinds on, chaired by a boss too clueless to be any use but too senior to be challenged, while the air is filled by the drone of tedious gobshites who love to hear themselves talk. The agenda lies forgotten, the plot lost, the will to live gone, and still another hour before anyone can go home. Not surprisingly, a recent informal BBC study discovered that many people doodle during such meetings, or write haiku, or play ‘meeting bingo’, a secret competition to throw in as many pre-agreed random words as possible. Imagine, the article goes on to suggest, if all this were not so, the meeting made effective, and the bores told to shut up. What would it take to effect such a miracle? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if an artificially intelligent meeting bot could take over?

Wait. What? An AI bot? An electric chair? Yes indeed, says a computer scientist quoted in the article, ‘if no new points are made after a while, the AI could suggest to wrap it up’. Apparently this is an ability which humans don’t have, according to a meetings consultant: ‘while it’s a lovely idea to think everybody will be fabulous at running meetings, everybody is not’. 

 This will be news to socialists, who have been running their own meetings, fabulous or otherwise, for over a hundred years, and have never yet felt the compulsion to introduce an artificial robot to chair any of them. How is this miracle possible? Because, despite what the ‘experts’ think, humans are perfectly capable of learning how to do things like running meetings, even, dare we say it, whole democratic societies. We do these things with the help of what are known as ‘rules’ and then by following these ‘rules’, more or less strictly according to circumstance and preference, we manage to get through a whole list of ‘decisions’ that need making. Really, it works surprisingly well. These AI enthusiasts ought to try it some time. They might be amazed what humans are capable of, especially when the useless boss is removed from the picture. 

Paddy Shannon

Work — the Only Hope (1943)

From the August 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

The January, 1943, issue of Time (New York) divulges the contents of a hitherto secret Memorandum prepared by the Allied Governor of Tunisia, General Giraud, presented last Spring to Marshal Petain. After deploring the reduction of working hours in France, before the War, as the explanation of France's "failure," General Giraud speaks most enthusiastically of the German regime.

  Admittedly, he says, the Germans have not perhaps got liberty, but there is certainly neither disorder nor Anarchy. Everywhere it is work, the only hope for a people who wish to live and live happily. May France remember and profit by it.

How on earth the French worker can he expected to support General Giraud, who quite openly expresses his admiration for Hitler in Germany, is hard to understand—to be consistent—he might just as logically be expected to support Hitler himself.

But then, quite a number of other people have said almost the same thing in days gone by; among them Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Croft, Lord Londonderry—and Mr. Churchill.

So, incidentally, did Mr. Charles Bedaux, whom lots of British workers will remember as originator of the notorious "Bedaux" system of speed-up. He said : "I am an out-and-out-Fascist"—he has now been charged with trading with the enemy (in this case, Germany).

It is said that he tried to buy the North Africa orange crop for the Nazis. He was a friend of the Duke of Windsor. He now faces ten years’ imprisonment.

The correspondent of the New York Times, nevertheless, considers that "90 per cent. of Frenchmen here still believe democracy can work."

Chas. Bedaux—like General Giraud—is a self-appointed authority on the great subject of work. So is Sir William Beveridge and Ernest Bevin, and Harry Pollit, with his appeals to the miners. The Socialist Standard is not the first to notice that the one thing all these experts on work never dream of doing is a spot themselves, of the kind they urge on others,

Horatio.

Work under Socialism (1967)

From the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

However man organises society, be it chattel slavery, feudalism, capitalism or Socialism, work is necessary to provide his basic requirements of food, shelter and clothing. How he produces and distributes his requirements determines that society’s attitude to work.

For example the ancient Greeks considered that mechanical work, which was mainly performed by slave labour, made man unfit for the practice of higher, more civilised cultural activities.

Early Protestantism justified and made pre-eminent the conduct and feeling about work necessary for modern capitalist society. Luther thought that work was “the base and key to life".

As capitalism has developed it has been realised that constant work does not maintain the efficiency of the worker— ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy'—and so concepts of leisure and recreation have in recent years been much discussed. The use of leisure under capitalism must make the worker fit for the continuation of toil, and so there have been recurring complaints against leisure activities which are considered frivolous or degrading.

It should be noted that leisure in the re-creational sense expends energy, and in that sense is work. The opposite to work, idleness, could not be continued for long for it becomes insufferably boring. Work is necessary to meet mankind’s basic requirements. Also it is necessary to maintain the full health of man’s body, physically and mentally.

One of the objections to Socialism is often framed in terms of man's laziness. Given the opportunity to have his basic needs met, it is argued that man would be lazy or idle.

It should be realised that man must exercise his body, or make it work, in order that various organs and parts—muscle, brain, heart, continue to function efficiently.

Man is essentially a social being, not merely because he enjoys the companionship of his fellows, but out of sheer necessity. This social bond shows at times of great disasters. Without society there could be no man. The reason mankind has gained the control over nature that we know at present is due to his developing social organisation. The various problems throughout his evolution have been met by a changing society. Capitalist society throws up problems which are not soluble in its own terms. Those regarding work are principally: no work unless you can find an employer, alienation from the means of production and the product of labour, debasement of quality, trivialised craftsmanship, and specialisation which results in the worker being an extension of the machine. These are some of the conditions of work that Socialism will remove.

Socialism will be a democratic, classless society. All mankind will stand in the same relationship to the means of production. Production will be organised to meet the needs of society, and science will be used to remove work that the community finds distasteful. All labour will be useful. That is, it will be concerned with the production and distribution of goods and services. Commodity production with its requirement of numerous commercial workers, adding nothing useful to meet mankind’s needs, will be no more. Leisure will be idleness or recreation as the individual desires. There will not be any pressure to conform to any given pattern of work and recreation. Men who are working in their own interests do not have to be driven, coaxed, or cajoled. Work under Socialism will be inspired by the greatest of all incentives— the knowledge that the function required of workers will enable each and every human being to have “according to his needs”.

In Capitalist society life is compartmentalised into Infancy, Training, Work and Retirement. Under Socialism people will endeavour to work their bodies to maintain their maximum efficiency in order to gain the greatest enjoyment from life. When young much of the work process will be educational, but the learning process will not cease at any given age. All people will have the opportunity to further their knowledge, ability and interests whatever their age. There will be no such thing as compulsory retirement.

As people get older they will desire to play a greater and eventually a smaller part in society. This will be demonstrated by greater and later a smaller participation in the productive process.

Work will be a pleasurable activity of free men and women, taken up consciously by them and continued as long as the effort is rewarding. There will be no time wasting as today, for time wasting is a reflection of the fact that there is no satisfaction in the work being done. Under Socialism when work becomes distasteful the worker will seek activities more in line with his need and ability.

Production under Socialism will design and produce goods to meet the needs of man in the best way possible. When the products of labour are the best possible, when production is organised to meet the needs of mankind, when man can demonstrate his interest in constructive work, when the alienating conditions of work experienced under Capitalism are gone—then the social constructiveness of work will have removed the cause of much mental ill-health and work neurosis experienced under Capitalism.

Man will then be free to pursue recreational games and pastimes. The do-it-yourself leisure activities of today—man’s limited opportunity to express himself through work and take pride in his achievement—will be part of the production of goods and services that society will require. This means that man will bring the standards of craftsmanship to production, which can be contrasted with today’s cheap shoddy goods with built-in obsolescence designed to meet the requirements of the market.

The historian and his observations today can tell us much, with considerable detail, about the conditions of work under earlier societies and present day capitalism. We cannot be as specific with regard to work under Socialism, for the problem when looking into the future is that we do not know the scientific and technological tools, instruments and machines that will be available. The means of production will obviously strongly influence the method of organisation. Nevertheless knowing the social conditions it can be said that work will be necessary, that man will gain pleasure from creative work, that the free time he will enjoy will enable him to widen and deepen his interests—all in the knowledge that by co-operative efforts the welfare of all mankind will be furthered.

Man, a social being, will recognise that his first vital need is work.

Ken Knight

Poetry Work (1999)

Book Review from the March 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Work: An Anthology. Edited by Dinah Livingstone with the Common Words Group, Katabasis, 1999, pb. £12.95 

Call me a philistine if you wish, but I find much contemporary poetry boring. Poets, lacking anything significant to say about change, retreat into reflective abstractions and introspective indulgence. I am not hoping for all literature to be "politically meaningful", but neither should it be precious, remote from the world and proud in its inaccessibility. Poets should seek to be understood. 

Work is an anthology by poets who clearly want to be understood. As importantly, they clearly understand what it is they are writing about. This is not an observer's view of work but the testimony of people who have themselves had to work in order to live. The book breathes experience. It is a superb collection, comprising new works by writers who have a record of publication and reputation and others who were hitherto unpublished. 

The anthology begins with an extract from Morris's How We Live and How We Might Live which serves as a political foreword to the volume, rooting it explicitly in a political recognition of how employment turns the worker into "but an appendage to profit-grinding". Poems within the anthology return to this again and again, few more powerfully than Christopher Hampton's exposure of "the leash" of wage slavery; Sandra Smith's wonderful comparison between workers and birds; and Dilys Wood's moving evocation of a miner's life. There is much more: short, sharp pieces on odd jobs such as the chiropodist by Anna Robinson and Dinah Livingstone's brilliant "assistant birdman of Regent's Park". Mimi Khalvati writes beautifully on the work of being a poet. And these are just some. There are prose pieces, including direct reports from the Hillingdon hospital workers (Asian women who were on strike for four years for refusing to take a pay cut; their employer is a member of Blair's Low Pay Commission) and an account of a young worker killed by casualisation. Ernest Fischer, whose The Necessity of Art remains probably the finest Marxian analysis of the role of art, describes how poetry began in the rhythm of the work song, itself produced by the repeated movements of physical work. So it is appropriate that this fine anthology of poetry should return to the subject of work—to its frustrations, its creativity, its rhythms and its pitiful rewards. The next Katabasis anthology will be on the theme of Home. I'm looking forward to it already.

Steve Coleman

Square Plugs In Round Holes. (1923)

From the June 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

How many working-class children follow the occupations to which they are adapted, and which would hold their interest? One could almost count them on the fingers of one hand.

One boy is of a mechanical turn of mind and is fond of the working of machinery and contriving crude mechanical toys; he becomes a baker’s boy. Another loves the open air and the things that grow in the fields and hedges; the mechanism of plants and the ways of the bee, the butterfly and the bird are intensely interesting and wonderful to him; he becomes an office boy. The sea and the lands beyond the sea calls yet another; he longs to haunt the lonely spaces of the earth; he becomes a grocer’s boy in a shop in a populous city. Such are the instances that teem around us.

The cause of this maladaptation is the source of the many evils that are constantly with the working class.

The working class child is born into a system that a certain period puts before him the problem of finding a master or starving. He must obtain employment of some kind regardless of his aptitude or desires. The family at home is growing; father’s wages no longer suffice to meet the needs, and consequently the child must accept the first job that offers, and if he is lucky(!) that means following the same trade until industry has sapped all his energy and eventually thrown him out upon the scrapheap to beg or find a place in the workhouse.

The private ownership of wealth, with consequent dependence upon wages of the vast majority of the population, is the cause of this maladaptation.

When wealth becomes common property and is democratically controlled by the whole people there will be such an abundance of workers available that the necessary work of society will not be able to absorb all this energy. It will then be possible for all the members of society to experiment in occupation until they find the one that suits them best.

This will be better for society, as work that is loved is better performed than toil that is hated. It will be better for the members of society because they will be carrying out functions that will be a fruitful means of happiness. It will be better for the generations that follow because the ideas that teem in the minds of millions will have ample opportunity to be put into operation and provide stepping stones for yet greater happiness in the aeons that are to come.

Let us then join together to root out the cause of maladaptation, and bring in the new society that is full of such promise

Gilmac.

A Nervous Breakdown? (1956)

From the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quite recently this writer had a nervous breakdown. He was not alone. Many suffer from nervous breakdowns, anxiety-neurosis strain and the like. The stresses and strains of our present way of life are just too much for many of us.

At six or seven in the morning we are awakened by the continuous jarring of the alarm bell; after a hurried breakfast (if we have one; and many do not), we rush out of the house on to a crowded bus or even more crowded tube train—or both. In many cases before we even start work we feel exhausted and tired out An hour on bus and tube train is enough for one day . . . but then the day has not really begun. We still have seven, eight or more hours in the office, in the shop, or at the factory bench; and then an hour on the bus and train again at night. . .

Rush . . . rush ... rush ... day and night. And for what? For the worker, a wage or a salary; for the employer, profit.

Most of us rush our lives away; and yet we achieve very little. We come into the world with next to nothing, and go out in much the same condition!

This continual striving to “make ends meet” throughout our lives also contributes to nervous illnesses and breakdowns. Our wages and salaries never seem to keep up with prices. There is never quite enough to go round. Should we blame the employer? Hardly. He does not employ us just to give us work; to make us happy; to give us money in order that we can buy everything we want. He employs us (to get to work at eight o'clock or nine) so that we. in co-operation with our mates, will make a profit for him. The more he can get out of us the better it is for him. And he is not particularly concerned, as an individual, if we do get tired on the tube train if we do have a job “making ends meet." or in most cases if we have a nervous breakdown—so long as we do not stay away from work too long. In most firms the real employer—the shareholder, the Capitalist—never sees us. He does not know us. He has his “problems" of profit; and yet more profit. That is the way our society goes round. It is the "dog eat dog" world of capitalism. It is the world that Socialists wish to replace by a different world—the world of Socialism. A world with a different basis; with a different motive—not of profit and the continual rush to “make ends meet” We want a world without nervous breakdowns, insecurity and anxiety. We are working (in our own small way) for such a world. Moreover, we would like you to work for one also. How about it?

Peter E. Newell

2. Incentive to Work (1952)

The Common Questions Answered series from the August 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Q: Since there will be no money and no payment of any kind under Socialism what will be the incentive for people to do the necessary work?

A: It’s true that most of us at present have to go to work to get money, but this is not an end in itself being only the means of obtaining some of the things we produce. Capitalism puts a price tag on everything, including workers’ energies which are bought by the employer for wages. To the capitalist class “having money” means having the means of exploiting the labour of others. Far from ensuring that all necessary work is done. Capitalism sacrifices the needs of human beings to the demands of markets. Textile mills are not closed because nobody needs textiles, but because not enough have the money to buy what they want. In contrast under Socialism the incentive for all to work will be the direct satisfaction of human needs. Everybody will have equal access to the wealth of the world, to which they will contribute to the best of their ability, and they will need no incentive other than the knowledge that they will be helping themselves and others to live full and happy lives.

Q: If people weren’t forced to work if they didn't want to wouldn't most of them very quickly give it up and just take what they want without putting anything in?

A: The mistake you make is in thinking that work under Socialism will have the same objectionable features—low pay, long hours of boring routine, needless risk to health and limb, etc.—that employment has under Capitalism. When freed from conditions associated with exploitation work will not be looked upon as a necessary evil but as the normal activity of mankind. Hobbies, voluntary work and often an unwillingness to be pensioned off disprove the theory that people will only work for money. The cash incentive may now be strong but it is also very anti-social, since it results in many useless and harmful acts, from the stupidity of ticket-clipping to the monstrosity of world war. Under Socialism only useful work will be done and those whose labour is now wasted or employed for anti-social purposes will be free to help. In those circumstances it is difficult to imagine anybody refusing to put something into the common pool, though individual contributions will neither be forced nor will any attempt be made to relate them to consumption.

Q: Under Socialism we should presumably all choose the work we like doing, if any. But suppose a lot of us decided to do one job and nobody would do another?

A: What makes you think such a state of affairs would exist? It's true there will be the need for organisation and division of labour, but the scope for utilising all the varied human talents will be far greater than exists today. More people will be able to do more things and will be free to express themselves in ways which property society denies them. Of course if the work is harmful to doer then society will either go without the product or find some other way of obtaining it. Remember that Socialism is only possible when a majority of people understand the need for it and what it entails. The fact that people will be free to do the work they like means that there will be nothing to make them do otherwise—but, being sensible folk, they will not insist upon doing something the result of which nobody wants. Since everyone will be encouraged to use his particular abilities to meet society’s needs, the question of certain social-needed work not being done will not arise.

Q: Who’s going to decide how much of everything each of us needs'? Wouldn't there be difficulties in allocating those things which are bound to be short occasionally?

A: Who will decide how much you need? The answer is—you will! Nobody can tell you now how much food will satisfy you since you are the best judge of that. Even capitalists do not keep on eating just because they can afford to. Under Socialism the whole productive and distributive machinery will be geared to satisfying self-expressed human needs. It’s very unlikely that people who have succeeded in building a society free from war, poverty and the other evils of Capitalism will be baulked by the problem of distribution. A temporary shortage of a certain type of goods or service will be the cue for those who are willing and able to change their contribution to the work of society, to do so.

Q : What incentive would there be for the ordinary hard-working chap to produce things which a few anti-social types could monopolise. Wouldn't he refuse to do so mid so wreck the whole system ?

A: Your views on what Socialism will be like are coloured by your accepting capitalist standards, which prevents your understanding what the world will be like when they are replaced by socialist ones. There will be no anti-social behaviour such as you suggest because there will be no incentive to it. Nobody wants to monopolise what is freely available—capitalist markets are only “cornered” to make a profit, not out of greed for the commodities themselves. We've never met one of these anti-social types (it’s always “the other chap”) who wants to stockpile free goods. Even if there are a few human magpies when Socialism is in its infancy, the novelty of hoarding will soon wear off.

Q : Knowing people as they are today, with all their faults, do you really think they will in fact work for the good of society even though they agree to have Socialism?

A: Your question assumes that in a socialist world people will have the same anti-social habits and tendencies that are bred in a capitalist one. To question that they will do the work required to meet all reasonable needs is to question their understanding of Socialism. But why doubt the willingness of your fellow-men to shoulder burdens which will be far lighter than those they shoulder under any form of Capitalism? What really stands in the way of the growth of socialist understanding is not this question of incentives, but the fact that most people accept Capitalism as the only possible system. The incentive socialists have is that they are helping to build a world which will at last be for the greatest good of the greatest number.

Stan Parker

Tolstoy On Work (1930)

From the May 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was always astonished at the accepted opinion (current especially in Europe) that work is a kind of virtue. I always felt that it was only excusable in an irrational animal, such as the ant in the fable, to elevate work to the rank of a virtue and to make a boast of it. M. Zola assures us that work makes men kind; the contrary has always been true in my experience. Without considering selfish work, which is always bad, the object of which is the well-being or aggrandisement of the worker, even “work for its own sake,” the pride of the worker, renders both ants and men cruel. Which of us does not know these men, untouched by considerations of truth and kindliness, who are always so busy that they not only never have time to do good, but cannot even ask themselves whether their work is not harmful? You say to these people: "Your work is useless, perhaps even pernicious, for the following reasons; pause and consider them for a moment.”

They will not listen to you, but scornfully reply: "You men have leisure to reason about such matters, but what time have I for discussions? I have worked all my life and work does not wait; I have to edit a daily paper with a circulation of half-a-million ; I have the army to organise, the Eiffel Tower to build, Chicago Exhibition to arrange, to cut through the Isthmus of Panama, to make investigations on the subject of heredity, telepathy, or to find out the number of times such and such a word occurs in the works of such and such a classic author.”

The most cruel of men, the Nero’s and the Peter the Great’s, have been constantly active, never pausing or giving themselves a moment free from occupation or distraction. Even if work is not a vice it can from no point of view be looked upon as a merit. Work can no more be considered a virtue than can nutrition; work is a necessity of which one cannot be deprived without suffering, and to elevate it to the rank of a merit is as monstrous as it would be to do the like for nutrition. The only explanation of this strange value attributed to work in our society is that our ancestors regarded laziness as an attribute of nobility, almost of merit, and that people in our time are still influenced by the reaction from that prejudice.

In my opinion, not only is work not a virtue, but in our defectively organised society it is more often a means of moral anaesthesia, just as are tobacco, wine and other means of drowning thought and hiding from ourselves the disorder and emptiness of our lives.

Leo Tolstoy

Do you like your work? (1991)

From the April 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Work is a very important part of our lives, but only a fortunate few find satisfaction in it. We know that we have to work, otherwise there would be no food, no houses, and no furniture to put in them. But that is not the reason we work today. We do it in order to get money to buy food, a house, furniture.

It may seem obvious, but we are not ants or bees; we are human beings with the capacity for enjoyment, for experiencing pleasure, but rarely do we do so in work. This, considering how much of our lives is spent working, must be a condemnation of the economic system we live under. Part of the problem is that we neither expect, nor are expected to enjoy work— we are expected to get it done as quickly and cheaply as possible. It is for this that we are hired and paid. We have to fulfil orders, production quotas, sales quotas. These have nothing to do with work, but work has everything to do with them. Work today is characterised by an intense pressure which is destructive of work as a creative activity. This is because it is not the work itself that is the objective but rather its result.

This is our present work culture, the work culture of capitalist society into which we are born. We may not like it, but see nothing strange, no contradiction in it; this is just how things are. But things can be different. Otto Klineberg in the UNESCO pamphlet Race And Psychology gives some interesting examples of how behaviour is determined by culture which illustrate this. In a performance test, he gave to a group of Yakima Indians the task of placing pieces of wood of various shapes into a wooden frame. The subjects were told to put the pieces in their correct place “as quickly as possible”:

These children . . . never hurried. They saw no reason to work quickly. Our culture places a premium on speed, on getting things done in as short a time as possible; the Indian children had not acquired this attitude. They went at their task slowly and deliberately, with none of the scrambling impatience . . . found among American children.

Klineberg also noted they made fewer errors. The point is that for them the doing was more important than its completion. This is not how we view work. Our whole view of life is infected with the “scrambling impatience” to succeed. Speed has become a neurosis, a disease. Watch people in the street, buses, trains; they can do nothing slowly or considered. Rushing in most cases for its own sake without thinking. Dashing across a road to beat a car; not because there is a need, but because they have to. People play as they work. Going on holiday is an enervating experience from which we often need time to recover.

In terms of human needs and welfare—from the vantage-point of a sane society—most of the work we do is useless anyway. What, for instance, have banking, insurance, law, and government, got to do with human need? They have everything to do with capitalism, because the bureaucratic superstructure of a society based on property constantly expands as the activities required to run it become more and more complex. Think of all that effort going into running this system of extravagant waste. Effort that few enjoy and many find tolerable only until they succumb to the increasing incidence of physical or mental breakdown, which the health service struggles to cope with.

How stupid to have intelligent, talented people driven by an economic system that is served first, and them last. The only reason and justification for taking this critical view of work today is the confidence that we have it within our power to arrange for people to come first, always. Would it not be more sensible—and better for us—if we were to organise work for the benefit of people, rather than people for the benefit of work?

Ian Jones

The Work Test (1997)

From the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The profit system offers us work that is at best useless and at worst harmful.

Governments are elected to run capitalism. They don’t like paying "benefit" to people who could be employed turning capital investment into profit. Men and women who receive "benefit” (whether unemployment, sickness, invalidity, or whatever) are a drain on the profit system. Never mind that the owners of the means of wealth production are themselves a drain on the rest of us who do all the world's useful work.

To save money for the taxpayer the previous government introduced a test to weed out what it called benefit cheats. According to an unpublished report quoted in the Big Issue (2-8 June), 198,500 out of 785,000 people examined were denied benefit between April 1995 and September 1996. Many claimants failed the “all work" test.

In capitalism there are three kinds of work, only one of which will be needed in socialism. First there is work that is harmful to those who do it or against whom it is done. Second there is work that is "useful" to the profit system but useless in any human need sense. And third there is work that has a purpose, whose result does meet some human need.

There are, unfortunately, plenty of examples today of the first kind of work. There is the legally authorised killing and injuring of "the enemy" by members of the armed forces and the whole paraphernalia of occupations and "enterprises" which have violence as their end product or reason for existence: the arms manufacturers, the arms dealers, the plotters and planners, the spies and counter-spies, the propagandists, the war correspondents, and so on. Apart from a few psychopaths drawn to such destructive occupations, the people involved are mostly ordinary, respectable citizens, honest, law-abiding, kind to children and animals. It is the profit system, organised within potentially if not actually hostile nation-states, that requires such work to be done.

Besides work that is harmful to others, there is work that causes harm to those who engage in it. Coal-mining is a greatly reduced industry in Britain, but many miners in other countries still have to risk their lives and their health in dangerous working environments. Ironically, some work undertaken by members of the ruling class can be harmful to them if indulged in excessively. The Evening Standard (25 June) reported that the Duke of Westminster, with his estimate £1.65 billion mega-fortune, had been ordered by his doctors to take three months off from "running his business affairs and his work for 160 charities". Of course the big difference between the Duke and the millions of real workers is that they have to find an employer or rely on state charity, whereas he can choose whether or not to work shuffling money around.

The third kind of work is that which is really useful, producing goods or services which people actually need: producing and distributing food, making clothes and furniture, building and repairing homes, schools and hospitals, teaching, healing the sick, and so on. It is difficult to estimate what proportion of all employment in capitalism is useful—work that would still be done in a socialist world. A generous estimate would be half, but the true figure may be 20 percent or less. In our pamphlet Socialism as a Practical Alternative we discuss how we can eliminate the waste of capitalism and choose productive methods appropriate to socialism.

People who have to do harmful or useless work for a living are encouraged to believe that they have no choice in the "real world", dominated by the system that is endorsed by the voters at periodic elections. A first step towards socialism is to stop believing that this capitalist “real world" is inevitable. It’s a good idea to make the best of any job you have to work at, whether its end-product or service is worthy or worthless. But it's not a good idea to pretend that a "nothing" job—doing it only in the service of capital—is any better than it is.

Some years ago— 1968 to be precise— Ronald Fraser edited a book on Work: Twenty Personal Accounts. The accounts make fascinating reading, many of them offering a powerful indictment of the waste of life involved in capitalist employment. Take the night-watchman, for example. He describes his job as "guarding the sleep of capital". Producing nothing, this labour exists to make nothing happen, its aim is emptiness. The night-watchman has the sensation of being turned into an object, a labouring material thing. Demanding no part of himself, the job in fact demands everything, on the lowest possible level.

Studs Terkel, an American writer, is best known for his book on Working, subtitled "people talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do". Listen to the automobile salesman: "The public thinks the automobile salesman is a rat. Some of the customers arc the real animals . . . They don’t have to be animals. It's the whole system that makes 'em animals".

The productive potential of modern industry is immense, and so is its potentiality for human liberation. In a rationally and humanly organised socialist world it could be used not only to meet basic and imaginative human needs but also to create more humane and satisfying conditions of work.

Capitalist employment offers much work that is at best useless and time-wasting and at worst harmful and destructive. The profit system treats the working abilities of men and women as commodities useful only to create marketable goods and services. It pays for workers’ skills, but everything also they are or have or want is subordinated to their "efficient” employment. It wastes them in unemployment—when no profit can be seen from employing them—and it wastes them in much of what they have to do only in the service of capital.

There is. however, an alternative. Today we have to be employed or unemployed, but tomorrow—or at least as soon as we can dissuade our fellow workers from continuing to support capitalism—we can have truly human work. As Ray Pahl put it in his book On Work: "the value system that encourages competition or greed at the expense of collaboration and altruism may not ultimately succeed”.

Stan Parker

Oil and Slaves. (1913)

From the February 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The oil age is coming. Year books, financial journals, the sharks of Throgmorton Street, together with the rest of the interested, "far seeing" exploiters and worshippers of the golden calf, are eagerly discussing the possibilities of oil as a motive force, and how much more profit they can grab by its use.

It behoves the working class to consider the question also, because it is they who are going to suffer, as usual, from what would be a boon and a blessing to all were the toilers sufficiently enlightened and determined to make it such.

The "Diesel" engine has already proved itself capable of propelling ocean going steamers, and will doubtless be in general use in the near future. Look at this: "The engine room staff of the 'Selandia' consists of eight men and two boys. No firemen required. No boilers needed. No loading with bunker coal for the voyage."

How our masters must rub their hands with delight when they think of the saving of wages, extra cargo space, cheaper ships, and many other advantages. How the thoughtful fireman must curse when his job disappears, and the boilermaker when he reads: "No boilers required." How joyous the coal-porter must feel when, instead of fifty men engaged in coaling a ship, he see the engineer turn on the oil cock and fill his tank in a few hours! Oh! the unspeakable happiness of the lightermen and railwaymen at the thought of not having to transport any more dirty coal to the docks! What joy dwells in the heart of the miner as he thinks of the near future when oil competes fiercely with coal, and thousands of him are saved the trouble of squabbling over "abnormal places," having gained the displaced wage-slave's normal place—the gutter.

The "Selandia" saved on her first voyage to Bangkok a sum of £1,200 for fuel alone. She is only a small ship. The saving on great liners will be commensurably greater, as will the numbers of "hands" displaced. Great is oil!

A Royal Commission with Lord Fisher at its head was appointed in July last to enquire into the possibilities of oil-driven "Dreadnoughts" (many torpedo craft already use oil), and the remarks of "The Times" were significant when announcing its appointment. "If," said that paper, "oil as a fuel and oil-driven engines were adopted exclusively as the result of the Commission's enquiries, not only might great economy be effected, but fewer men would be required to attend the engines and there would be economy in space and weight." Yes! indeed. It will be splendid they sack half the "black squad" of the navy, and what an inspiring sight it will be when the enemy's shells drops into the oil tanks!

Already it is announced ("Lloyd's Newspaper," Jan. 12) that a large tract of oil land in New Brunswick has been acquired for the Admiralty at a cost of £2,000,000, to supply oil fuel for the Navy, and that a chain of storage depots is being built round the coasts. Mr. Keir Hardie will now be satisfied, I anticipate.

Then, again, the railway companies are going in for oil from sheer necessity, having been badly hit by the motor lorries. Sir Sam Fay, manager of the Great Central Railway, declares that "we shall soon see oil-driven cars running on all the railways and supplanting the steam engines." Of course, he says nothing about the supplanted firemen—doesn't interest him a great deal.

Altogether, the advent of oil as a fuel will have a far-reaching effect upon the working class, and its moral effect for them is obvious. Every great labour-saving invention or discovery—and the use of oil as a propelling agent has been made possible by the invention of Dr. Diesel—spells unemployment for thousands while capitalism lasts. Many are flung "out" to accentuate the competition of those "in". When the workers will it the work will be flung out instead, lessening the labours and adding to the leisure and pleasure of all.

We call it Socialism, this condition of affairs wherein every invention will contribute only to the comfort and happiness of the whole people. Work for it, for there is no hope for the slave class in any other direction.

Wollie.

The Company Men (2011)

Film Review from the April 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Company Men, directed by John Wells

This was at first a personal matter for writer and director, John Wells. Having seen his brother-in-law, an electrical engineer, struggle after being laid-off, the plot follows the misfortunes of three executives employed at G.T.X. a major shipbuilding company, whose head honcho, Jim, played by Craig T. Nelson, made $22 million bucks in bonus payments the previous year. “We work for the stockholders now,” Jim reminds his underlings as he prepares to fire thousands of workers.

Tommy Lee Jones is Gene, Jim’s old college room mate who helped him build the company up from scratch. Gene thinks of G.T.X.’s employees as if they were family and it hurts him deeply when he’s required to inform “relatives” their services are no longer required. In an early scene, Jim’s wife requests the use of the company jet, a luxury she won’t enjoy for much longer, to go from Boston to Palm Springs to get in some shopping.

Most of the movie deals with the struggle of 37-year-old hot shot salesman, Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck). At first Bobby cannot come to terms with being unemployed, whereas his wife, Maggie (Rosemarie De Witt) suggests selling the Porsche and the house. Bobby is convinced he’ll soon find employment at his old salary of $120 grand a year, not realising there are few such jobs available and the competition for them is ferocious.

We watch Bobby’s gradual disillusionment; being expelled from the country club because he can’t afford the fees, watching the new owner drive off his Porsche and being forced to live with his parents. In desperation, he accepts a job in construction, working for his brother-in-law, Jack (Kevin Costner), who delights in Bobby’s downfall and lets him know it.

There is a surreal scene when Bobby attends a placement workshop, which Wells himself did. The manager has a roomful of unemployed constantly reciting, “I will win because I have faith, courage and enthusiasm.” When Wells asked the manager if she was embarrassed, she replied, “I’m dealing with people who feel like they’ve been in a car accident.”

The finest acting is by Chris Cooper as Phil, a sixty year-old who worked his way up from a welder to the number three man at G.T.X. Cooper takes the viewer right into the heart of a man tortured by insecurity, fear and anxiety. Phil is bewildered by the new and real world he finds himself in. One job placement officer advises him to quit smoking, on the premise that, “The employers don’t want a guy with health problems, it will push up the insurance.” When applying for an international sales position he finds how age goes against one; “It’s a demanding job, I wouldn’t offer it to anyone older than thirty,” the boss tells him.

Though the acting, direction and dialogue are good and the movie absorbing, it doesn’t tell the viewer anything new. By now most unemployed labourers, truck drivers and factory workers, are aware that getting the axe isn’t any easier for the middle-of-the-road managers than it is for them. Whatever bitterness the ex-execs feel is directed primarily at G.T.X. and a little at America itself. Nowhere is there any suggestion there is something fundamentally wrong with capitalism.

A reviewer should not give the ending away, so suffice it to say, it’s capitalist propaganda at its most desperate. Company Men is just another movie that tells its audience, “There’s nothing terrible about the economic system we live under. So what if times are sometimes hard, with faith courage and enthusiasm, things will get better.” In that respect, perhaps the most significant comment is when Bobby glares at the personnel manager, who has delivered the bad news and uses the well-known and delightful, “P.O.” expression. What would be more delightful is when a Socialist majority says that proverbially to capitalism.

Steve Shannon

Editorial: Socialism and work (1986)

Editorial from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Paul Lafargue wrote his well-known pamphlet The Right to be Lazy he chose this title to parody the demand, still current today, for "the right to work", In one sense he was right. The "right" to be employed by a capitalist is not something worth fighting for (quite apart from being unachievable). Given the demeaning and exploitative nature of employment it would indeed be better to demand the right not to work, the right to be lazy. In another sense, however, this title is misleading in that it suggests social life could continue without work, not in the sense of employment but in the sense of productive activity.

The sixties and seventies saw the growth and circulation of the idea of "the abolition of work", of a work-less society in which production would be fully automated leaving human beings free to engage in "play" or "leisure" or "creative activity" as it was variously put. This was reflected not only in the number of books, pamphlets and articles on this theme but also in the extraordinary popularity, mainly on the strength of its title, of Lafargue's pamphlet which went through edition after edition in nearly every West European language.

The spread of the idea of the abolition of work was positive in that it reflected the rejection, in practice also, of the capitalist "work ethic" by an increasing number of people. But it eventually became clear that the idea had not been fully worked out. Was it work as such — the expenditure of human physical and mental energy — that was being objected to, or was not the objection rather to work as employment, to work for an employer, to wage-labour? Was it not possible that the exercise of humans physical and mental faculties might even be a basic human need? Was, in any event, a fully-automated society a desirable objective? Would it be compatible with the need to conserve resources and to maintain a sustainable balance between human society and nature?

These reflections led some to conclude that the objection was indeed to wage-labour rather than to human productive activity as such and that the aim should not be to automate all productive activity but rather to achieve a society in which productive activity would become enjoyable and "creative". This was in fact the position taken up by Lafargue's contemporary, William Morris. And of course Fourier too had argued that work could and should be made attractive and that this was the answer to the questions, aimed at advocates of a free society, "what will be the incentive to work?" and "why would anybody want to work?".

Some of those who came to this conclusion then went to the opposite extreme and rejected not just the aim of full-scale automation but all modern technology, suggesting that the solution was to go back to a "simple life" based on handicraft production. But this is to make a fetish of "machines" and "technology", to attribute to them a consciousness and a will which, as inanimate objects, they don't have. Machines and technology don't and can't do anything on their own. The type of machines that are constructed and the use to which they are put depend on the social context. Machines in a society geared to maximising profits will be used differently (and will tend to be different) than in a society geared to serving human needs, including the need to engage in satisfying, creative activity.

Achieving the goal of turning the necessary task of production into creative, enjoyable activity does not have to involve rejecting all modern machinery and industrial techniques; it will be attained if production, both its aims and its methods, is brought under full human control. This can only be done through the abolition of property (private and state), production for sale and profit, and working for wages. In other words, through the establishment of socialist society, which wiIl not have to abandon industrial production, but adapt it to serving human needs.

A strong case can be made out for seeing satisfying, creative work not just as a desirable aim but as a vital human need. In any event some kind of activity, some physical and mental exercise, is necessary from a purely biological point of view since the chemical energy we acquire in the form of food must be used up in ways other than merely maintaining body temperature. So it is in the nature of humans to expend their physical and mental energies, to exercise their faculties, to work.

There is another reason why humans must expend physical and mental energy and that is to obtain from nature the food, clothing and shelter they need to survive. Since transforming nature to satisfy needs is the definition of production, this activity is productive activity and is a necessary human activity in any system of society, socialist as well as capitalist.

Etymologically, productive and creative should mean the same: the transformation of materials found in nature into something useful to human life. When something is produced by transforming nature something new, that didn't exist before, is created. Productive activity and creative activity should therefore be synonyms but it is a measure of the extent to which productive activity has come to be debased that we should be raising the demand that it be converted from the unsatisfying, externally-imposed burden that it is for the great majority of people into a satisfying, freely-chosen activity, that productive activity should once again become "creative".

The term "once again" is appropriate in this context since the evidence from the anthropologists is that in the original propertyless, classless - communist - condition of humanity productive activity was creative in the sense of being a satisfying, freely-chosen activity. It only became the unsatisfying, externally-imposed burden it has been for most people throughout history with the corning of propertied, class society where it became forced labour, an activity imposed by ruling classes to serve their needs.

In the sense that this original situation with regard to productive activity can be regarded as being the natural human condition then satisfying, freely-chosen productive activity ('creative activity'') can be regarded as being just as much a human need which human society ought to satisfy as food, clothing and shelter are - and the various class societies of history, including existing capitalist society, which denied this need must be regarded as being contrary to human nature and the kind of productive activity they have imposed (slave labour, serf labour, wage-labour) as unnatural, alienated labour.

This means that there cannot be any question of distinguishing in socialist society between a "realm of necessity" (of externally-imposed activity) and a "realm of freedom" (of freely-chosen activity), where the aim would be to reduce supposedly externally-imposed productive activity to a minimum in order to have a maximum of "free" time to engage in other activities. All time must be free, otherwise society will not have escaped from the tyranny of having to economise labour-time — which is precisely the economic logic of capitalism and what is meant by the term "externally-imposed". All productive activity, including the most routine, must become freely-chosen, work in a socialist society must be entirely voluntary.

In a society where humans are free to choose both the pace and the length of time they work, not only would the blind pressure to reduce to a minimum the labour-time needed to produce a product no longer exist, but it would become perfectly meaningless to measure the "value" or the "cost" of a product in terms of the labour-time socially necessary to make it. A society based on voluntary work would be free from such considerations. And if productive activity is enjoyable how can it be regarded as a cost?

Production for use (1983)

From the February 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

What determines the nature of work is its social context. With the change from capitalism to socialism, the social form of labour will change. Under capitalism labour functions within an exchange relationship of economic values — labour time for wages. With socialism, labour will simply be carried on as an expression of cooperation within a direct relationship between productive activity and needs.

Work itself is an important human need, and by reducing it to a mechanical function and an economic category within an exchange economy, capitalism destroys this vital aspect of work. It makes it a time serving activity, drained of human meaning. As a result, people wish to avoid it.

Capitalist production is enclosed within an exchange economy. It does expand, but only as the self-expansion of capital takes place through the exploitation of the working class—through the use of wage labour. The capitalist's use of labour power results from an exchange of wages with the worker's labour time. This is the investment of portions of capital as variable capital. It is this portion of total capital which is "self-expanding". Labour power is variable capital because, when it is put to use by an employer, it creates values over and above its own value (surplus value). These surplus products of labour power, commodities, then enter into a general relationship of value on the markets, where, as a result of sales, these values have realised in money form. Thus we have an enclosed system of exchange, the key element of which is the self-expansion of variable capital, which is the worker put to work through the exchange of wages for labour time.

With socialism, on the basis of common ownership, the producers are elevated to a social existence which is formed by direct relationships of co-operative activity about mutual needs. In breaking out of the capitalist relationships of value, labour will express a direct productive relationship between people, and will be released for human need. Socialism will abolish all economic relationships of exchange. With production for human need no significant economic relationship will exist between items of wealth, and there will therefore be no need to compare or measure their methods of production in terms of any common factor such as labour time.

The capitalist exchange relationships between commodities themselves, including the human commodity, labour power, will be replaced by a direct relationship in the line of productive activity; items of wealth, and human need. This direct relationship of wealth to need replaces the capitalist relationship between things. The price mechanism which transmits an economic message throughout capitalist production, to do with cheapness and competitive, profit-making success, will be replaced in socialism with a direct relationship of production to human needs.

Production of use will be the organisation of necessary production in line with consciously chosen levels of consumption with no intervening economic factors between the two activities. The organisation of production therefore will resolve itself as a problem of quantity analysis. These will be absolute quantities of things in relation to need, not relative quantities of labour time in the things themselves. Socialism will quantify its needs and then organise production in direct response.

The choice of production methods would not resolve itself simply as the selection of the most efficient method of production, that is, the method which embodies the least amount of labour time. The capitalist market pressure to embody the least amount of labour time. The capitalist market pressure to embody the least amount of labour time in production will be replaced in socialism by all the requirements of need. These will include material necessity, work itself as a human need, social safety, care of the environment, conservation, animal welfare, and so on.

For example, the massive release of pollutants into the atmosphere may be part of the cheapest and most efficient way of converting fossil fuels into electricity, but socialism would not do it. The confinement of animals for long periods in cramped spaces may be part of the cheapest and most efficient method of converting cereals into animal protein, but socialism would not do it.

Paradoxically, socialism will make more economical use of resources and labour, because it will strip away all functions which are irrelevant to the direct relationship of activity to need. This fact was recognised by Marx. "The capitalist mode of production, while on the one hand, enforcing economy in each individual business, on the other hand, begets. by its anarchical system of competition, the most outrageous squandering of labour power and of the social means of production, not to mention the creation of a vast number of employments, at present indispensable, but in themselves superfluous." (Capital, Vol. 1, p.540, Allen & Unwin.)

Socialism will enjoy the latitude to combine different methods of production where this might be considered necessary by the community. It will deploy all its resources more freely according to practicality and desirability regardless of possibly different rates of working efficiency.

Socialism will enjoy more people available for the production of useful wealth; without the limits of market capacity it will enjoy greater use of production methods; without price competition it will enjoy wider selection of production methods; with the ending of national barriers it will enjoy a more rational deployment of world resources; and without capital investment it will enjoy greater adaptability of social production.

Socialism will combine all these practical advantages with all the criteria for the selection of production methods according to need, such as material necessity, the enjoyment of work, safety, care of the environment, conservation.

In this context work is no longer a mechanical function but the satisfaction of vital human need.

Pieter Lawrence