Against Gradualism

The Road to Socialism

The Socialist Party’s conception of revolution is often criticised for its lack of credibility since it is assumed that people have to wait for the overwhelming majority necessary to “enact” socialism before doing something about their immediate problems. The Party does argue that the work for socialism must be the building up of a majority of socialists who will then be in a position to remove the capitalist features from production as a conscious political act and that until a socialist majority is achieved, the class monopoly of the means of production, the wage-labour/capital relationship, commodity production, the operation of the market, and the state, will continue to be both the form of social production and its administration by governments. The Party’s theory of revolution  insists that socialism can only be established by the democratic, conscious political actions of a majority of socialists and it is not just any theory culled from a textbook of bourgeois sociology. The theory is based both on the class struggle as the motor of social change and on an understanding of the economics of capitalism and the limits it places on what can be done within the framework of the capitalist system.

Members of the Left reject the Party’s theory of revolution as “impossible”. Their argument was that without a majority of socialists, and prior to the formal enactment of common ownership, a working class government could set society on a course of change in the direction of socialism. In control of the state and all legal processes, such a government would grant the widest freedom of action to the trade unions and thus set up a partnership with the trade unions pursuing working class interests on the industrial field and a government doing the same on the political field.

The unions would maximise the workers’ share of the social product at the point of production. The government would provide housing, health care and education, etc. At the same time, such a working class government would begin the process of establishing common ownership through the nationalisation of the means of production and through “taxing the rich out of existence”.

The Party rejected this gradualist policy at the beginning of the century and this rejection has been vindicated by experience and has led to the Party’s traditional case for abolishing class ownership by one short, sharp political act.

The Socialist Choice

It is frequently claimed, not just by apologists for capitalism but so-called avowedly socialists, that it is impossible to have an economy which excludes such things as wages, prices and money, and that any society’s economy is necessarily going to include those concepts, particularly wages and prices. Sorry to say but it is well documented by anthropologists, that there has been many societies which has not involved a monetary economy – in fact some exist even today in isolated parts of the world. Dollars and cents, salary checks, and price tags on goods are not an intrinsic part of the human essence as such statements imply

According to capitalist economic theory, prices are the means for determining the rational allocation of resources in a money economy. But, in fact, prices are not intended for the purpose of organising production. The function of pricing is to fix costs with a view to making profit. In practice, costing and pricing are ultimately about calculating the exploitation of labour, enabling the capitalist class to live and accumulate capital from the wealth that the working class produces but does not consume. The problem of rationally allocating productive resources in an economy is common to all human societies at least as long as these resources remain relatively limited compared to needs. However, there is no need to assume that this allocation could be effected rationally only through the exchange of resources taking the value -”price”- form. Labour power, your ability to work, is a commodity that is sold on the open market like anything else, the `price’ you get for it is your wage. If you have special natural skills or a training to perform a particular kind of labour which is in high demand then like everything else you can command a higher price for it, as well as good working conditions

A monetary economy gives rise to the illusion that the “cost” of producing something is merely financial. Money is the universal unit of measurement, the “general equivalent” that allows everything to be compared with everything else under all circumstances—but only in terms of their labour-time cost or the total time needed on average to produce them from start to finish.
Such non-monetary calculation of course already happens, on the technical level, under capitalism. Once the choice of productive method has been made (according to expected profitability as revealed by monetary calculation) then the real calculations in kind of what is needed to produce a specific good commence so much raw materials, so much energy, so much labour…
In socialism it is not the case that the choice of productive method will become a technical choice that can be left to engineers, as is sometimes misunderstood by critics, but that this choice too will be made in real terms, in terms of the real advantages and disadvantages of alternative methods and in terms of, on the one hand, the utility of some good or some project in a particular circumstance at a particular time and, on the other hand, of the real “costs” in the same circumstances and at the same time of the required materials, energy and productive effort.

Production- for- use would operate in direct response to need. These would arise in local communities expressed as required quantities such as grammes, kilos, tonne, litres , metres, cubic metres, etc, of various materials and quantities of goods. These would then be communicated as required elements of productive activity , as a technical sequence, to different scales of social production, according to necessity.
Each particular part of production would be responding to the material requirements communicated to it through the connected ideas of social production. It would be self -regulating , because each element of production would be self-adjusting to the communication of these material requirements . Each part of of production would know its position. If requirements are low in relation to a build-up of stock , then this would an automatic indication to a production unit that its production should be reduced . If The register of needs and the communication of every necessary element of those needs to the structure of production would be clear and readily known . The supply of some needs will take place within the local community and in these cases production would not extent beyond this , as for example with local food production for local consumption.

Other needs could be communicated as required things to the regional organisation of production. Local food production would require glass, but not every local community could have its own glass works. The requirements for glass could be communicated to a regional glass works. These would be definite quantities of required glass . The glass works has its own suppliers of materials , and the amounts they require for the production of 1 tonne of glass are known in definite quantities. The required quantities of these materials could be passed by the glass works to the regional suppliers of the materials for glass manufacture . This would be a sequence of communication of local needs to the regional organisation of production, and thus contained within a region .
Local food production would also require tractors, and here the communication of required quantities of things could extend further to the world organisation of production . Regional manufacture could produce and assemble he component parts of tractors for distribution to local communities .These would be required in a definite number and , on the basis of this definite number of final products, the definite number of component parts for tractors would also be known . The regional production unit producing tractor would communicate these definite quantities to their own suppliers, and eventually this would extend to worl production units extracting and processing the necessary materials.

This would be the self-regulating system of production for need , operating on the basis of the communication of need as definite quantities of things throughout the structure of production . Each production unit would convert the requirements communicated to it into its own material requirements and pass these on to its suppliers . This would be the sequence by which every element of labour required for the production of a final product would be known.
This system of self-regulating production for use is achieved through communications . Socialism would make full use of the means communications which have developed These include not only transport such as roads, railways, shipping etc. They also include the existing system of electronic communications which provide for instant world-wide contact as well as facilities for storing and processing millions of pieces of information. Modern information technology could be used by socialism to integrate any required combination of different parts of its world structure of production.

Simpler is Better

Socialists desire to abolish economics. No exchange, no economy.

Socialism, being based on the common ownership of the means of production by all members of society, is not an exchange economy. Production would no longer be carried on for sale with a view to profit as under capitalism. In fact, production would not be carried on for sale at all. Production for sale would be a nonsense since common ownership of the means of production means that what is produced is commonly owned by society as soon as it is produced. The question of selling just cannot arise because, as an act of exchange, this could only take place between separate owners. Yet separate owners of parts of the social product are precisely what would not, and could not exist in a society where the means of production were owned in common.

However, socialism is more than just not an exchange economy; it is not an economy at all, not even a planned economy. Economics, or political economy as it was originally called, grew up as the study of the forces which came into operation when capitalism, as a system of generalised commodity production, began to become the predominant mode of producing and distributing wealth. The production of wealth under capitalism, instead of being a direct interaction between human beings and nature, in which humans change nature to provide themselves with the useful things they need to live, becomes a process of production of wealth in the form of exchange value. Under this system, production is governed by forces which operate independently of human will and which impose themselves as external, coercive laws when men and women make decisions about the production and distribution of wealth. In other words, the social process of the production and the distribution of wealth becomes under capitalism an economy governed by economic laws and studied by a special discipline, economics.

Socialism is not an economy, because, in re-establishing conscious human control over production, it would restore to the social process of wealth production its original character of simply being a direct interaction between human beings and nature. Wealth in socialism would be produced directly as such, i. e. as useful articles needed for human survival and enjoyment; resources and labour would be allocated for this purpose by conscious decisions, not through the operation of economic laws acting with the same coercive force as laws of nature. Although their effect is similar, the economic laws which come into operation in an exchange economy such as capitalism are not natural laws, since they arise out of a specific set of social relationships existing between human beings. By changing these social relationships through bringing production under conscious human control, socialism would abolish these laws and so also the economy as the field of human activity governed by their operation. Hence socialism would make economics redundant.

What we are saying, in effect, is that the term exchange economy is a tautology in that an economy only comes into existence when wealth is produced for exchange. It is now clear why the term planned economy is unacceptable as a definition of socialism. Socialism is not the planned production of wealth as exchange value, nor the planned production of commodities, nor the planned accumulation of capital. That is what state capitalism aims to be. Planning is indeed central to the idea of socialism, but socialism is the planned (consciously coordinated) production of useful things to satisfy human needs precisely instead of the production, planned or otherwise, of wealth as exchange value, commodities and capital. In socialism wealth would have simply a specific use value (which would be different under different conditions and for different individuals and groups of individuals) but it would not have any exchange, or economic, value.

In socialist society productive activity would take the form of freely chosen activity undertaken by human beings with a view to producing the things they needed to live and enjoy life. The necessary productive work of society would not be done by a class of hired wage workers but by all members of society, each according to their particular skills and abilities, cooperating to produce the things required to satisfy their needs both as individuals and as communities. Work in socialist society could only be voluntary since there would be no group or organ in a position to force people to work against their will.

Socialist production would be production solely for use. The products would be freely available to people, who would take them and use them to satisfy their needs. In socialism people would obtain the food, clothes and other articles they needed for their personal consumption by going into a distribution centre and taking what they needed without having to hand over either money or consumption vouchers. Houses and flats would be rent-free, with heating, lighting and water supplied free of charge. Transport, communications, health care, education, restaurants and laundries would be organised as free public services. There would be no admission charge to theatres, cinemas, museums, parks, libraries and other places of entertainment and recreation. The best term to describe this key social relationship of socialist society is free access, as it emphasises the fact that in socialism it would be the individual who would decide what his or her individual needs were. As to collective needs (schools, hospitals, theatres, libraries and the like), these could be decided by the groups of individuals concerned, using the various democratic representative bodies which they would create at different levels in socialist society. Thus production in socialism would be the production of free goods to meet self-defined needs, both individual and collective

To advocate monetary calculation, is to advocate that only one consideration—the total average production time needed to produce goods—should be taken into account when making decisions about which productive methods to employ. This is patently absurd but it is what is imposed by capitalism. Naturally, it leads to all sorts of aberrations from the point of view of human interests. In particular it rules out a rational, long-term attitude towards conserving resources and it imposes intolerable conditions on the actual producers (speed-up, pain, stress, boredom, long hours, night work, shiftwork, accidents).

Socialism, because it will calculate directly it kind, will be able to take these other, more important, factors than production time into account. This will naturally lead to different, in many cases quite different, productive methods being adopted than now under capitalism. If the health, comfort and enjoyment of those who actually manipulate the materials, or who supervise the machines which do this, to transform them into useful objects is to be paramount, certain methods are going to be ruled out altogether. The fast moving production lines associated with the manufacture of cars would be stopped for ever ; night work would be reduced to the strict minimum; particularly dangerous or unhealthy jobs would be automated (or completely abandoned). Work can, in fact must, become enjoyable. But to the extent that work becomes enjoyable, measurement by minimum average working time would be completely meaningless, since people would not be seeking to minimize or rush such work.

The supply of some needs will take place within the local community and in these cases production would not extent beyond this .Other needs could be communicated as required things to the regional organisation of production. Local food production would require glass, but not every local community could have its own glass works . The requirements for glass could be communicated to a regional glass works . Some organisation for such as mining for raw material sources would require world co-ordination . When socialism is established it will be necessary to set up councils at local , regional and global levels for the administration of social affairs in every aspect of productive activity . Also there will have to be councils whose functions will be to co-ordinate the work of the various specific councils . The majority of the people in a local area will make decisions affecting that area specifically , the people in a certain region will make decisions for that region and everyone will make global decisions .

The problem with a centrally-planned model of socialism is amongst other things its inability to cope with change. It lacks any kind of feedback mechanism which allows for mutual adjustments between the different actors in such an economy. It is completely inflexible in this regard. A decentralised or polycentric version of socialism, on the other hand, overcomes these difficulties. It facilitates the generation of information concerning the supply and demand for production and consumption goods through the economy via a distributed information .Stock or inventory control systems employing calculation in kind are absolutely indispensable to any kind of modern production system.

In a “free access” socialist economy income or purchasing power would, of course, be devoid of meaning. So too would the notion of status based upon the conspicuous consumption of wealth. Because individuals would stand in equal relation to the means of production and have free access to the resultant goods and services

Marx saw the communist administration as a federation of self-governing groups largely concerned with their internal affairs and collaborating for the comparatively few purposes that concern all the groups. The association of free producers , not a centrally planned State whose roots go back to “Bismarckian State-Socialism” and Lassalle , so readily endorsed by Lenin and his Bolsheviks yet so rarely acknowledged by his pupils .

How are these needs communicated? What allocation mechanism do you use? Certainly they won’t be by getting those individuals needs allotted to them .

Decisions involving choices of a general nature, such as what forms of energy to use, which of two or more materials to employ to produce a particular good, whether and where to build a new factory, there is a technique already in use under capitalism that could be adapted for use in socialism: so-called cost-benefit analysis and its variants. Naturally, under capitalism the balance sheet of the relevant benefits and costs advantages and disadvantagesof a particular scheme or rival schemes is drawn up in money terms, but in socialism a points system for attributing relative importance to the various relevant considerations could be used instead. The points attributed to these considerations would be subjective, in the sense that this would depend on a deliberate social decision rather than on some objective standard. In the sense that one of the aims of socialism is precisely to rescue humankind from the capitalist fixation with production time/money, cost-benefit type analyses, as a means of taking into account other factors, could therefore be said to be more appropriate for use in socialism than under capitalism. Using points systems to attribute relative importance in this way would not be to recreate some universal unit of evaluation and calculation, but simply to employ a technique to facilitate decision-making in particular concrete cases. The advantages /disadvantages and even the points attributed to them can, and normally would, differ from case to case. So what we are talking about is not a new abstract universal unit of measurement to replace money and economic value but one technique among othersfor reaching rational decisions in a society where the criterion of rationality is human welfare.

Planning in socialism is essentially a question of industrial organisation, of organising productive units into a productive system functioning smoothly to supply the useful things which people had indicated they needed, both for their individual and for their collective consumption. What socialism would establish would be a rationalised network of planned links between users and suppliers; between final users and their immediate suppliers, between these latter and their suppliers, and so on down the line to those who extract the raw materials from nature. There is no point in drawing up in advance the sort of detailed blueprint of industrial organisation that the old IWW and the Syndicalists used to , but it is still reasonable to assume that productive activity would be divided into branches and that production in these branches would be organised by a delegate body. The responsibility of these industries would be to ensure the supply of a particular kind of product either, in the case of consumer goods, to distribution centres or, in the case of goods used to produce other goods, to productive units or other industries.

Since the needs of consumers are always needs for a specific product at a specific time in a specific locality, we will assume that socialist society would leave the initial assessment of likely needs to a delegate body under the control of the local community (although, other arrangements are possible if that were what the members of socialist society wanted). In a stable society such as socialism, needs would change relatively slowly. Hence it is reasonable to surmise that an efficient system of stock control, recording what individuals actually chose to take under conditions of free access from local distribution centres over a given period, would enable the local distribution committee (for want of a better name) to estimate what the need for food, drink, clothes and household goods would be over a similar future period. Some needs would be able to be met locally: local transport, restaurants, builders, repairs and some food are examples as well as services such as street-lighting, libraries and refuse collection. The local distribution committee would then communicate needs that could not be met locally to the bodies charged with coordinating supplies to local communities.

The individual would have free access to the goods on the shelves of the local distribution centres; the local distribution centres free access to the goods they required to be always adequately stocked with what people needed; their suppliers free access to the goods they required from the factories which supplied them; industries and factories free access to the materials, equipment and energy they needed to produce their products; and so on. Production and distribution in socialism would thus be a question of organising a coordinated and more or less self-regulating system of linkages between users and suppliers, enabling resources and materials to flow smoothly from one productive unit to another, and ultimately to the final user, in response to information flowing in the opposite direction originating from final users. The productive system would thus be set in motion from the consumer end, as individuals and communities took steps to satisfy their self-defined needs. Socialist production is self-regulating production for use.

To ensure the smooth functioning of the system, a central statistical office would be needed to provide estimates of what would have to be produced to meet peoples likely individual and collective needs. These could be calculated in the light of consumer wants as indicated by returns from local distribution committees and of technical data (productive capacity, production methods, productivity, etc) incorporated in input-output tables. For, at any given level of technology (reflected in the input-output tables), a given mix of final goods (consumer wants) requires for its production a given mix of intermediate goods and raw materials; it is this latter mix that the central statistical office would be calculating in broad terms. Such calculations would also indicate whether or not productive capacity would need to be expanded and in what branches. The centre (or rather centres for each world-region) would thus be essentially an information clearing house, processing information communicated to it about production and distribution and passing on the results to industries for them to draw up their production plans so as to be in a position to meet the requests for their products coming from other industries and from local communities. The only calculations that would be necessary in socialism would be calculations in kind. On the one side would be recorded the resources (materials, energy, equipment, labour) used up in production and on the other side the amount of the good produced, together with any by-products.

Stock or inventory control systems employing calculation in kind are, as was suggested earlier, absolutely indispensable to any kind of modern production system. While it is true that they operate within a price environment today, that is not the same thing as saying they need such an environment in order to operate. The key to good stock management is the stock turnover rate – how rapidly stock is removed from the shelves – and the point at which it may need to be re-ordered. This will also be affected by considerations such as lead times – how long it takes for fresh stock to arrive – and the need to anticipate possible changes in demand.

A typical sequence of information flows in a socialist economy might be as follows. Assume a distribution point (shop) stocks a certain consumer good – say, tins of baked beans. From past experience it knows that it will need to re-order approximately 1000 tins from its suppliers at the start of every month or, by the end of the month, supplies will be low. Assume that, for whatever reason, the rate of stock turnover increases sharply to say 2000 tins per month. This will require either more frequent deliveries or, alternatively, larger deliveries. Possibly the capacity of the distribution point may not be large enough to accommodate the extra quantity of tins required in which case it will have to opt for more frequent deliveries. It could also add to its storage capacity but this would probably take a bit more time. In any event, this information will be communicated to its suppliers. These suppliers, in turn, may require additional tin plate (steel sheet coated with tin), to make cans or beans to be processed and this information can similarly be communicated in the form of new orders to suppliers of those items further down the production chain. And so on and so forth. The whole process is, to a large extent, automatic – or self regulating – being driven by dispersed information signals from producers and consumers concerning the supply and demand for goods and, as such, is far removed from the gross caricature of a centrally planned economy.
It may be argued that this overlooks the problem of opportunity costs .For example, if the supplier of baked beans orders more tin plate from the manufacturers of tin plate then that will mean other uses for this material being deprived by that amount. However, it must be born in mind in the first place that the systematic overproduction of goods that Marx talked of – i.e. buffer stock – applies to all goods, consumption goods as well as production goods. So increased demand from one consumer/producer, need not necessarily entail a cut in supply to another – or at least, not immediately. The existence of buffer stocks provides for a period of re-adjustment.

Liebig’s Law of the Minimum – states is that plant growth is controlled not by the total amount of resources available to a plant but by the particular factor that is scarcest. This factor is called the limiting factor. It is only by increasing the supply of the limiting factor in question – eg nitrogen fertiliser – that you promote plant growth.
Liebig’s Law can be applied equally to the problem of resource allocation in any economy.It makes sense from an economic point of view to economise most on those things that are scarcest and to make greatest use of those things that are abundant.To claim that all factors are scarce (because the use of any factor entails an opportunity cost) and, consequently, need to be economised is actually not a very sensible approach to adopt.You cannot treat every factor equally – that is, as equally scarce – or, if you do, this will result in gross misallocation of resources and economic inefficiency.The most sensible basis on which to make such a discrimination is the relative availability of different factors and this is precisely what the law of the minimum is all about.When a particular factor is limited in relation to the multifarious demands placed on it, the only way in which it can be “inefficiently allocated” (although this is ultimately a value judgement) is in choosing “incorrectly” to which particular end use it should be allocated . Beyond that, you cannot misuse or misallocate a resource if it simply isn’t available to misallocate (that is, where there are inadequate or no buffer stocks on the shelf, so to speak). Of necessity, one is compelled to seek out a more abundant alternative or substitute .

To determine priorities Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” would be a guide to action. It would seem reasonable to suppose that needs that were most pressing and upon which the satisfaction of others needs were contingent, would take priority over those other needs. We are talking here about our basic physiological needs for food, water, adequate sanitation and housing and so on. This would be reflected in the allocation of resources: high priority end goals would take precedence over low priority end goals where resources common to both are revealed using the earlier discussed “points” system of cost benefit analysis.

To sum up , a communist steady-state equilibrium, will have been reached. Gradual change, growth, will be simple and painless. The task of planning becomes one of simple routine; the role of economics is virtually eliminated.

 Marx said in communism it is now society’s free (disposable) time and no longer labor time that becomes the true measure of society’s wealth.

When Michael Albert of Parecon  state that “from each according to abilities, to each according to needs” is an unachievable utopian and unpractical demand, it proves just how non-radical he is. In Parecon webpages Paul Mattick and Anton Pannekoek feature as influences yet it should be remembered that when they were being ostracised by the orthodox left and the libertarian left, it was the small World Socialist Movement that were still offering them an outlet to express their views when they had little opportunity to do so. They shared the real socialist demand for free access and the end to wage slavery an one the problems with participatory economics (parecon) is that it continues with prices and wages and money, instead of abolishing them all. It is NOT impossible that such a society offered by free-access socialiststo be feasiblebut is in fact more desirable than the alternative  present within the Parecon model.

Unlike Parecon, many socialists caution against the creation of blueprints (“recipes for the cook-shops of tomorrow” as Marx called them ). There is no point in drawing up in advance the sort of detailed blueprint of industrial organisation that the old IWW and the Syndicalists or the Guild Socialists used to do and what Parecon now does . For a small group of socialists , as we are now , to do so would be undemocratic. It would also be dumb. Socialists don’t have crystal balls to determine what the conditions will be when socialism is established. As the socialist majority grows, when socialism is within the grasp of the working class, then will be the proper time for making such important decisions. It is imprudent for today’s socialist minority to be telling people how to administer a socialist society. When a majority of people understand what socialism means, the suggestions for socialist administration will solidify into an appropriate plan. It will be based upon the conditions existing at that time, not today.

We also recognise that there may not be one single way of doing things, and precise details and ways of doing things might vary from one part of the world to another, even between neighbouring communities. Of course, we can reach some generalised conclusions based on basic premises – that socialism will be necessarily democratic, for example – and can outline broad principles or options that could be applied. That is, we do not have to draw up a plan for socialism, but simply and broadly demonstrate that it is possible and therefore refute the label of “utopianism”.

We look to the real world to see how it is, and how it could be. Socialist society is not starting from a blank sheet and we are inheriting an already existing economic system. Workers with all their skills and experience of co-operating to run capitalism in the interests of the capitalists could begin to run society in their own interest. We do not need to build the new society in the womb of the old, that is here already.


 Marx cautioned – “Instead of the conservative motto, A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work! they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, Abolition of the wages system!”


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scarcity or abundance and allocation of resources


Abundance is not a situation where an infinite amount of every good could be produced . Similarly, scarcity is not the situation which exists in the absence of this impossible abundance. Abundance is a situation where productive resources are sufficient to produce enough wealth to satisfy human needs, while scarcity is a situation where productive resources are insufficient for this purpose. "Unlimited wants " is an abstraction of Capitalism . Needs are indeed finite .

Not all resources are available in sufficient supply to meet all uses for them. Land is an obvious case in point: a piece of land cannot be used at the same time for housing and for farming . Some criteria will indeed have to be developed for deciding what use to put them to .Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” , perhaps . Needs that were most pressing and upon which the satisfaction of others needs were contingent, would take priority over those other needs, high priority end goals would take precedence over low priority end goals where resources common to both are revealed to be in short supply .
Cost benefit analysis is an elaborate skill in capitalism and could be a neutral tool based on a “points system” to evaluate a range of different projects facing society.

Allocation calculations in socialism will not be economic but technical . In socialism calculations will be done directly in physical quantities of real things [calculation in kind ] , in use-values , without any general equivalent unit of calculation ie money and prices

Socialist Administration

There is a danger that plans produced today describing a socialist society will only bear the hall mark of the author’s own preference rather than how future socialists will democratically organise themselves. While it is of interest to speculate on a future socialist we are not obliged to produce detailed models to show how socialism will work, how it will solve the problems bequeathed by capitalism and the democratic administrative structure to ensure the rapid development of the forces of production once they are released from the constraints currently imposed by commodity production and exchange for profit..

A popular view is that it will involve centralisation, takeing as its model the United Nations, a world central administration which will plan everything, everywhere and carry it out irrespective of the views of local people throughout the world. Socialists see this as both impractical and undemocratic.

There are also questions about the relationship between the community and individual industries. The view of the Socialist Party is that the community democratically decides what to produce not self-controlled industries as proposed by syndicalism. This does not mean that workers within these industries will not have a democratic say in how production takes place; the quality of the environment and health and safety, but it does not mean that they will have sole say of what and how is produced and for whom. There will be disagreements and these will have to be dealt with democratically. The experts will also disagree as they often do now under capitalism such as over the choice of energy, e.g. nuclear power, coal, oil, gas, electricity, tidal, wind power and solar energy and decisions will have to be made committing labour and resources, but it will be for the community to democratically decide on the basis of transparent information, facts and reasonable argument, not the experts. The Socialist Party long ago rejected the technocrat view of administration.

 In socialist society the community will have to take major decisions about the allocation of labour and finite resources. While production will be much greater than it is now, labour and resources will not be unlimited. There are many people whole would like a return to manne moon missions. The cost in voluntary labour, much of it specialist, and the material resources required would be enormous, and if allocated to that project, it would mean that labour and resources cannot be allocated to other industries that other people favour. The community will have to democratically decide between them.

The advocates of centralisation say that as there will be one world community sharing a common interest, the decision-making about what shall be produced and where and how it shall be produced will be made by a world central administrative organisation, and they will carry it out. They will make the decisions and what they decide will apply all the way down to local levels. This appears unnecessary, undesirable and impracticable.

There is first the factor of size and complexity. As organisations become larger – larger in the number of people covered and larger geographically - its ability to handle centrally all the problems that arise decreases and because they are more remote from local needs their decisions and actions are more likely to be wrong.

We see in the multi-nationals, formed by amalgamations and takeovers, experience led to the need to give greater autonomy to functional and geographical divisions. Rigid, top-down planning and direction was dismantled and given greater autonomy to their local boards.

But as regards socialist administration of things there is a more important criterion. People will not want their local issues to be settled by the dictates of some world administrative organisation. Such a bureaucracy would result in the destruction of much of local institutions and imitative. It seems likely, therefore, that socialist administration will not be decision making by a central world organisation, with people regionally and locally falling into line. Instead people at a regional and local level will just get on with the task of ensuring production and distribution meets human needs in what form it takes where they live.

So what use would a world organisation of production and distribution have in a future socialist society?

There are four areas where a world administration would have a useful role; first, a clearing-house of information about production, transport and communications all over the world; second, a repository of expert technical information; third, that it would arrange co-ordination between surplus products in some areas and deficiencies in other areas; and fourth, they would extend some of the functions already existing at a world level, like health, energy, food and agricultural organisations and so on.

As an example we can turn to the example of the Universal Postal Union. At present they handle three kinds of processes; financial, technical and organisational. The financial question will disappear, i.e. what the different organisations pay each other. Postal authorities in each country meet together and draw up conveyances which, when agreed, they all separately carry out. What the U.P.U does not do is to carry on the postal services themselves. They have no hand in it. But there is now and will continue to be agreement of all the postal services about weights and sizes of what they send abroad. There is agreement about safety – exclusion of dangerous articles, and so on. There is agreement about forms of addresses, postal codes and evidence of parcels causing difficulties for workers on sorting work.

Power and politics

The truth of the class struggle has been driven home with more than ever during the last few years since the latest recession. The glaring growing income inequality, the wide-spread job-losses , the numerous strikes, the cruelty of the state toward their rebellious slaves all over the capitalist world, has induced even capitalist authorities to “lament” the growth of class strife.

Why do you think our ruling class spends so much time and money to bring their influence to bear upon Parliament or Congress? Because that is where the decision making resides in our governmental system. It is where the capitalist class get their tax breaks, subsidies, bailouts contracts, and the loopholes in the enforcement of the laws against them. It is where the masses get nothing other than roll-backs of the previous protections of our economic well-being, our health and safety, our unions and our jobs, pay and pensions.

The capitalist class rule because they have possession of the means of life, the land and the factories. It is true as Shakespear's Shylock says: “He owns my life who owns the means whereby I live.”. But it doesn’t complete the picture. Capitalist rule would be an empty phrase without them having some power to enforce their ownership and is by it is by controlling Parliament. Those who control the forces of "law and order", the police and the courts, and who control the military forces, actually and in reality control society itself, because having those powers at their command, they can and do use them for any desired purpose. he control and manipulation of these forces are carried on by the various political officers, and it is through these departments that instructions come with regard to their direction. Parliament and Congress make laws and alter them as in their wisdom they determine; they appoint the officers controlling the executive departments and they have at their disposal the means of ensuring that these laws are carried out. Those holding this power are in possession of the means whereby they can dominate society. The control, therefore, of political power means the control of society.

But the picture is still not complete. The workers to-day possess an overwhelming majority of the votes and it is these working-class votes that return the capitalists and their representatives into control of Parliament and thereby the continuance of the capitalists' domination. To-day the working class are largely unconscious of what constitutes their own interests and so they are misled by the paid agents of the capitalist class to use the political power they possess against their real interests. The working class class have already within their reach the first step toward their emancipation when they understand how to use the vote they possess. But to use this vote effectively they must understand that, not only do they already possess political power, but that they must use this power for the purpose of getting rid of the class which dominates them. They must use their power to obtain control the political machinery, so as to enter into possession of the wealth they, and they alone create, and so rid themselves of the problems of misery, poverty, degradation, insecurity, and hopeless toil which press so heavily upon them to-day.

The anarchist teaches that the workers should avoid and oppose political action. Why should the working class support any political party at all, argue anarchists? Why should they enter into politics in any shape or form? It means, so far as they are concerned, so much time wasted. The Socialist Party, on the other hand, draws attention to past history and present circumstances to show how the ruling classes maintained their position of dominance. The salvation of the working class lies through organisation for control of the political power. It is only after and by the political expropriation of the capitalist class that its economic expropriation can be achieved. But will it be the only means? Far from excluding each other, electoral action and revolutionary action complete each other. The vote is revolutionary when it is cast by a class-conscious electorate for class-conscious candidates. Workers, once they had come to want and understand socialism will more than likely organise in workplace committees or councils; but they will at the same time be organising politically. Not doing so would invite a violent head-on clash with a state machine still controlled by the supporters of capitalism. Why take this risk when the existence of universal suffrage and albeit limited political democracy make it unnecessary? Why not organise, democratically and without leaders, with a view to using the potential weapon that is the vote to win control of the state, so neutralising it? This is the Socialist Party position - based on an analysis of today's political circumstances and not on any dogma. And once the masses get moving they are hard to stop.

Engels' Preface to the 1890 German edition of the Communist Manifesto: “For the ultimate triumph of the ideas set forth in the Manifesto Marx relied solely and exclusively on the intellectual development of the working class, as it necessarily had to ensue from united action and discussion.”
Marx held that the working class should take political action to end politics and the state and that one of the forms this could take was democratic electoral action.

Capitalism cannot be abolished by a political revolution prepared, organised and led by an elite of professional revolutionaries claiming to act and think in the name of the exploited majority. The proletariat, formed into a class and a party under the conditions of bourgeois democracy, liberates itself in the struggle to conquer this democracy; it turns universal suffrage, which had previously been "an instrument of dupery", into a means of emancipation.

We observe that the parties in the political field are as numerous as their different labels, but the essential question for us as workers is: Whose interests do they stand for? Whom do they in reality represent? They stand no matter how they may describe themselves as, for the essentials of the present system, for the maintenance and perpetuation of capitalist domination. Universal suffrage has not failed. What has failed is the reformist use of it. To reject universal suffrage because reformist electoral action has failed is to throw out the baby with the bath water. We understand criticism of political parties calling themselves "socialist" having as their aim a mixed- economy or state-capitalism and those parties have essentially only sought to exploit working class discontent with a view to coming to power and installing themselves as a new ruling class in place of the private capitalists. They have always seen the working class as having a subordinate role as followers and as passive electors. But that cannot be held against our position of working class democratic self-organisation into a political party based on socialist understanding, with a view to taking political, including electoral, action to abolish capitalism. That the earth's resources should become a common storehouse for the benefit of all must emerge as a real political demand. The idea of political action and the visionary power of utopians must be combined to powerful effect.

Socialist Blueprint - Part 2

The Buddha said: “Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared”

Introduction

It is the main job of socialists not to theorise about the exact workings of a future economy, but to educate people on the main principles that might underpin a future communist society in its lower and higher phases, and then give them the tools - in the form of socialist democracy - to do the work themselves. Unless we say more about the goal we are striving for, we relinquish the future to those who insist that all there is an eternity of capitalism. If you dont have an alternative to capitalism you are stuck with capitalism. It is all very well to criticise capitalism - thats easy! - but the really hard thing is to put forward a viable alternative to put in its place. Its only through speculatiing about alternative in more and more details that we can begin to put more flesh on the bare bones on the idea, that we can invest with more credibility. It is important not to confuse two quite different things: 1) A basic statement of the core features of a future communist/socialist society 2) Speculative commentrary about the finer details of life inside such a society. Free access socialism is the shortest and most effective route to meeting human needs. It immediately cuts out all the kind of work that performs no socially useful fiunction whatsoever but only keeps capitalism ticking over. If anything , given current levels of productivity, We can even envisage there being a shortage of socially useful work for people to do in free access communism. It will be able to produce so much more with so much less

Free access socialism, or higher phase communism as Marx called it is not some futuristic science fiction scenario bit has existed as a potentiality within capitalism itself from at least since the beginning of the 20th century. It is not predicated on some "super-abundance" of wealth being made available to people but rather on the very real possibilty of being able to meet our basic needs. We dont say free access communism (socialism) will be a world without scarcities. Free access communism is not based on the assumption that we stand on the threshold of some kind of comsumerist paradise in which we can all gratify our every whim.We refer to the very real possiblity of society being able to satisfy the basic needs of individuals today, to enable us all to have a decent life. The elimination of capitalism's massive strucutural waste is the prime source of productive potential; it will make huge amounts of resources available for socially useful production in a society in which the only considertation is meeting human needs, not selling commodities on a market with a view to profit. In higher communism there is no exchange. None whatsoever. Consequently there is no "bartering" of each other's abilities or needs. You freely give according to your abilities and you freely take according to your needs. Its as a simple as that.

Scarcity in the technical sense, in the notion of opportunity costs, will of course always be with us, by definition. If you decide to use a particular resource for a particular end that means you fore-go the opportunity to use it for some other end. You cannot satisfy both ends and you have to chose which end you will satisfy. But opportunity costs would be incorporated in the very process of resource allocation in a communist society.

Despite what the bourgeois economists and sociologists assert, our demands are not insatiable. They are conditioned by the society we live in and in a free access communist society much of what we falslely consider to be essential to our well-being - the pursuit of status via conspicuous consumption - will be rendered totally meaningless. Scarcity (or abundance for that matter) are a function of both supply and demand and these are both influenced by the kind of society we live in. In capitalism the logic of competition and the self expansion of capital without limit is reflected in the bourgeois notion that as individual consumers our demands are "infinite". This notion serves as an apology for capitalism, in other words. In free access communism the only way logically you can gain the respect and esteem of your fellows is through your contribution to society and not what you take out of it. Nobody should ever underestimate the potency of this particular motive. It is astonishing that some on the Left seem to have discarded altogether the idea of free access communism and what is even more astonishing is the grounds on which they do so. They have bought lock stock and barrel into the bourgeois myth of "human nature" to defend their anti-communist position.

Marx and Engels, used the terms socialism and communism to mean the same thing - a moneyless wageless stateless society - as did numerous others, including the early Social Democrats. People have seem to have fogetten about this in their ill-informed attempt to dismiss free access communism. They have failed to see just how much their own perspective is imprisoned within narrrow horizon of bourgeois rights and bourgeois behaviour patterns It is perhaps difficult now to appreciate but, in the late 19th century/early 20th century, when people talked about a socialist society they meant basically a communist society. In fact, earlier on, when Marx and Engels drew up their "Communist Manifesto", they explained why, at the time, they did not call it the Socialist Manifesto - because of the association of the term socialism with certain political currents they did not favour - but increasingly over time they shifted over to using the term socialism rather than communism - particularly Engels. Large numbers of writers in the late 19th century-early 20th adopted this practice. One thinks of people like William Morris, Hyndman, Kropotkin, Kautsky and many others. Even the Russian Social Democrats before they split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks used the term "socialism" in this way and Stalin wrote a pamphlet in 1906 in which he defined socialism as a moneyless wageless society. In fact, this is how these terms were generally understood up until the early 20th century - as synonym. The distinction between socialism and communism primarily emerged with Lenin - it was never found in Marx identifying the former with what we would call "state capitalism" but even Lenin was not consistent in this and in an interview with Arthur Ransome in 1922 reverted to the old usage.

In the Critique of the Gotha Programme it is clear that Marx was equating the higher stage of communism with free access communism (No, we do not forget that the Critique of the Gotha programme is a primary source of theoretical support for the advocates of labour vouchers). In the Critique he talks of the right of producers being proportional to the labor they supply; and how these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

“In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”

That last phrase did indeed originate with Louis Blanc but as a revision of Saint Simon's argument that individuals should be rewarded according to their labour input. In other words it specifically repudiates the notion of payment for work - whether in cash or labour vouchers or whatever

People who argue against the "Impossibilist" perspective on the grounds that we cannot really know what a socialist society will be like until we live in it are taking up a rather absurd and extreme position which incidentally traps them in Catch 22 situation - how are we ever going to get to live in a socialist society if we dont know what it is in advance of creating it? Indeed, how would we even know that what we created was socialism at all! Socialism is obviously impossible without workers having some idea of what socialism is beforehand but all that is needed is a basic idea, a rudimentary mental model of a classless wageless stateless society. It does not require a theoretical grasp of the organic composition of capital or the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

Lenin talking quite explicitly of a communist society without labour vouchers:

"Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society, labour performed not as a definite duty, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not according to previously established and legally fixed quotas, but voluntary labour, irrespective of quotas; it is labour performed without expectation of reward, without reward as a condition, labour performed because it has become a habit to work for the common good, and because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good—labour as the requirement of a healthy organism.
It must be clear to everybody that we, i.e., our society, our social system, are still a very long way from the application of this form of labour on a broad, really mass scale.
But the very fact that this question has been raised, and raised both by the whole of the advanced proletariat (the Communist Party and the trade unions) and by the state authorities, is a step in this direction." From the Destruction of the Old Social System, To the Creation of the New

We have the evidence of ABC of Communism by the Bolshevik Bukharin that he was not alone.

"Distribution in the communist system:
The communist method of production presupposes in addition that production is not for the market, but for use. Under communism, it is no longer the individual manufacturer or the individual peasant who produces; the work of production is effected by the gigantic cooperative as a whole. In consequence of this change, we no longer have commodities, but only products. These products are not exchanged one for another; they are neither bought nor sold. They are simply stored in the communal warehouses, and are subsequently delivered to those who need them. In such conditions, money will no longer be required. 'How can that be?' some of you will ask. 'In that case one person will get too much and another too little. What sense is there in such a method of distribution?' The answer is as follows. At first, doubtless, and perhaps for twenty or thirty years, it will be necessary to have various regulations. Maybe certain products will only be supplied to those persons who have a special entry in their work-book or on their work-card. Subsequently, when communist society has been consolidated and fully developed, no such regulations will be needed. There will be an ample quantity of all products, our present wounds will long since have been healed, and everyone will be able to get just as much as he needs. 'But will not people find it to their interest to take more than they need?' Certainly not. Today, for example, no one thinks it worth while when he wants one seat in a tram, to take three tickets and keep two places empty. It will be just the same in the case of all products. A person will take from the communal storehouse precisely as much as he needs, no more. No one will have any interest in taking more than he wants in order to sell the surplus to others, since all these others can satisfy their needs whenever they please. Money will then have no value. Our meaning is that at the outset, in the first days of communist society, products will probably be distributed in accordance with the amount of work done by the applicant; at a later stage, however, they will simply be supplied according to the needs of the comrades. It has often been contended that in the future society everyone will have the right to the full product of his labour. 'What you have made by your labour, that you will receive.' This is false. It would never be possible to realize it fully. Why not? For this reason, that if everyone were to receive the full product of his labour, there would never be any possibility of developing, expanding, and improving production. Part of the work done must always be devoted to the development and improvement of production.
If we had to consume and to use up everything we have produced, then we could never produce machines, for these cannot be eaten or worn. But it is obvious that the bettering of life will go hand in hand with the extension and improvement of machinery. It is plain that more and more machines must continually be produced. Now this implies that part of the labour which has been incorporated in the machines will not be returned to the person who has done the work. It implies that no one can ever receive the full product of his labour.But nothing of the kind is necessary. With the aid of good machinery, production will be so arranged that all needs will be satisfied.

To sum up, at the outset products will be distributed in proportion to the work done (which does not mean that the worker will receive 'the full product of his labour'); subsequently, products will be distributed according to need, for there will be an abundance of everything. In a communist society there will be no classes. But if there will be no classes, this implies that in communist society there will likewise be no State. We have previously seen that the State is a class organization of the rulers. The State is always directed by one class against the other. A bourgeois State is directed against the proletariat, whereas a proletarian State is directed against the bourgeoisie. In the communist social order there are neither landlords, nor capitalists, nor wage workers; there are simply people - comrades. If there are no classes, then there is no class war, and there are no class organizations. Consequently the State has ceased to exist. Since there is no class war, the State has become superfluous. There is no one to be held in restraint, and there is no one to impose restraint.

But how, they will ask us, can this vast organization be set in motion without any administration? Who is going to work out the plans for social production? Who will distribute labour power? Who is going to keep account of social income and expenditure? In a word, who is going to supervise the whole affair? It is not difficult to answer these questions. The main direction will be entrusted to various kinds of book-keeping offices or statistical bureaux. There, from day to day, account will be kept of production and all its needs; there also it will be decided whither workers must be sent, whence they must be taken, and how much work there is to be done. And inasmuch as, from childhood onwards, all will have been accustomed to social labour, and since all will understand that this work is necessary and that life goes easier when everything is done according to a prearranged plan and when the social order is like a well-oiled machine, all will work in accordance with the indications of these statistical bureaux. There will be no need for special ministers of State, for police and prisons, for laws and decrees - nothing of the sort. Just as in an orchestra all the performers watch the conductor's baton and act accordingly, so here all will consult the statistical reports and will direct their work accordingly. The State, therefore, has ceased to exist. There are no groups and there is no class standing above all other classes. Moreover, in these statistical bureaux one person will work today, another tomorrow. The bureaucracy, the permanent officialdom, will disappear. The State will die out. Manifestly this will only happen in the fully developed and strongly established communist system, after the complete and definitive victory of the proletariat; nor will it follow immediately upon that victory. For a long time yet, the working class will have to fight against, all its enemies, and in especial against the relics of the past, such as sloth, slackness, criminality, pride. All these will have to be stamped out. Two or three generations of persons will have to grow up under the new conditions before the need will pass for laws and punishments and for the use of repressive measures by the workers' State. Not until then will all the vestiges of the capitalist past disappear.

Though in the intervening period the existence of the workers' State is indispensable, subsequently, in the fully developed communist system, when the vestiges of capitalism are extinct, the proletarian State authority will also pass away. The proletariat itself will become mingled with all the other strata of the population, for everyone will by degrees come to participate in the common labour. Within a few decades there will be quite a new world, with new people and new customs."

Then there was Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed, Chapter 3, Socialism and the State that says it all:

“The material premise of communism should be so high a development of the economic powers of man that productive labor, having ceased to be a burden, will not require any goad, and the distribution of life’s goods, existing in continual abundance, will not demand – as it does not now in any well-off family or "decent" boarding-house – any control except that of education, habit and social opinion. Speaking frankly, I think it would be pretty dull-witted to consider such a really modest perspective "utopian."

What Trotsky is advocating here is the abandonment of the idea of material rewards or remuneration as a so-called incentive to produce. And if that is not enough we also have Trotsky saying:

"True, Abramovich demonstrated to us most learnedly that under Socialism there will be no compulsion, that the principle of compulsion contradicts Socialism, that
under Socialism we shall be moved by the feeling of duty, the habit of working, the attractiveness of labor, etc., etc. This is unquestionable.
Only this unquestionable truth must be a little extended. In point of fact, under Socialism there will not exist the apparatus of compulsion itself, namely, the State: for it will have melted away entirely into a producing and consuming commune. None the less, the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the State. And you and I are just passing through that period. Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the State, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form of State, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction. Now just that insignificant little fact – that historical step of the State dictatorship – Abramovich, and in his person the whole of Menshevism, did not notice; and consequently, he has fallen over it."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/ch08.htm

And Kautsky too:

"Besides this rigid allocation of an equal measure of the necessaries and enjoyments of life to each individual, another form of Socialism without money is conceivable, the Leninite interpretation of what Marx described as the second phase of communism: each to produce of his own accord as much as he can, the productivity of labour being so high and the quantity and variety of products so immense that everyone may be trusted to take what he needs. For this purpose money would not be needed.
We have not yet progressed so far as this. At present we are unable to divine whether we shall ever reach this state. But that Socialism with which we are alone concerned to-day, whose features we can discern with some precision from the indications that already exist, will unfortunately not have this enviable freedom and abundance at its disposal, and will therefore not be able to do without money."
The Labour Revolution III. The Economic Revolution X. MONEY

Finally, the Anglo-Marxist HM Hyndman
"A much more serious objection to Kropotkin and other Anarchists is their wholly unscrupulous habit of reiterating statements that have been repeatedly proved to be incorrect, and even outrageous, by the men and women to whom they are attributed. Time after time I have told Kropotkin, time after time has he read it in print, that Social-Democrats work for the complete overthrow of the wages system. He has admitted this to be so. But a month or so afterwards the same old oft-refuted misrepresentation appears in the same old authoritative fashion, as if no refutation of the calumny, that we wish to maintain wage-slavery, had ever been made."

The Left Apologists

So perverse are the arguments presented by critics of free access communism that they uncritically project into communism the same kind of atomistic self- interested outlook that prevails in capitalism forgetting that we are talking about quite a different kind of society altogther. In fact, free access communism is the most complete example of what is called a “gift economy" in anthropological terms. It is based on the principle of “generalised reciprocity” and the clear recognition of our mutual inter-dependence. It is not economic restrictions in the form of some kind of rationing that we should be focussing on but, rather a radical reconfiguration of the relationship between the individual and society and the realisation of human beings as truly social individuals ( a social individualn is an individual who realises his or her needs are part of a collective process of development and stimulation and thus has no need to hoard, monopolise, accumulate objects, articles for purposes other than that of use.). Critics of free access communism need now to fundamentally question and reassess the assumptions upon which they base their criticisms. The time is long overdue to restore and reassert the vision of higher communism as the explicit goal of revolutionaries everywhere. Anything short of that has either failed dismally or been found wanting. Revolutionaries today, 150 years after Marx, should NOT be advocating questionable stop-gap measures that have long been rendered obsolete by technological development. We should be hell-bent on getting the real thing - a society based on the principle "from each according to ability to each according to need"!

Of course, we cannot have socialism right now because the conscious majoritarian support for such a system simply does not yet exist. You can't have socialism without a large majority wanting and understanding it. The ends and the means have to be in harmony. There is absolutely no way you can force communism on a reluctant population that doesnt want or understand it. They are required to understand what it entails. They will realise very well that with a system of voluntary labour we will each depend upon one another for a communist society to function properly. The point is that in communism, unlike in capitalism, we shall have a genuine vested interest in promoting the well-being of others - if for no other than reason than that our own welfare is bound up with theirs. Socialist writer Keith Graham has written:
"...the very nature of the future society is such that it must be sustained by people clearly aware of what they are doing, actively and voluntarily cooperating in social production. It is literally unthinkable that a population should organise its affairs according to such principles without being aware that this is what they are doing. People can be coerced or duped into doing what what they themselves do not comprehend or desire but they cannot be coerced or duped into doing what they voluntarily choose to do"
When we meet these preconditions then people will fully appreciate, their mutual interdependence and the need to pull together for the common good.

You cannot just simply project into a communist society the same kind of behavioural assumptions that underlie this dog-eat-dog capitalist society. Human behaviour and human thinking is at least in part a product of the kind of society we live in. Critics illegitimately project into communism, the behaviour patterns and modes of thinking that pertain to capitalism - including, its atomised individualistic way of looking at things. Capitalist competition fosters egoism. This is why narrow economically-focussed criticisms of a communist society fail miserably every time because they take no account of the fundamentally different sociological framework within which a communist society will operate. Free-access communism eliminates the need for greed and removes the rationale for acquiring status through the accumulation of material wealth. The only way in which one can acquire status and the respect of one's fellows - a hugely powerful motivator in any society - would be through one's contribution to society, not what one takes out of it. Critics of free access or higher communism have fallen into the same erroneous way of looking at the matter as the bourgeois economists with their taken-for-granted assumptions about human nature being inherently lazy or greedy. Remember the myth about The Commons? How The Commons were destroyed by the ignorance, the democracy of the commoners, ruining the land through over-grazing; without taking proper steps to conserve fertility; through, according to our mythologists, that combination of greed, stupidity, and laziness that the bourgeoisie project unto everybody else when in fact it describes them to a T? But it was a myth. The Commons were not destroyed by either ignorance, abuse, or laziness of the commoners-- they were managed quite well, and democratically by the commoners, who willingly worked out the terms of shared use, and proper conservation. The argument that says "Oh, if human beings can just have free access to things, they'll act like locusts" has at its base, a version of that same myth

Socialism
The goal of social ownership and democratic control of production and distribution has to be articulated directly.To seek political improvements to the capitalist system is a distraction from what needs to be done. When we insist that the working class has to be educated before it can make progress, some people on the left who have good intentions say that they "don't want to wait that long." But this isn't an option. A "revolution" carried out by people who are angry at the injustices of the old social system, but unclear about what to replace it with, or not sufficiently dedicated to the democratic structure of the new system, is the road to a new dictatorship. The working class who will create a socialist society must also know how to operate it. They need to understand what the basic rules of the game are, so to speak. There needs to be a widespread consensus about what to expect of people if a socialist society is to properly function. "Anti-capitalism" in itself can never succeed in overthrowing capitalism. To bring capitalism to an an end we need to have a viable alternative to put in its place. And this is an alternative that we need to be conscious and desirous of before it can ever be put in place. A class imbued with socialist consciousness will be far more militant and empowered than any amount of mere "anti-capitalism". Socialist consciousness is class consciousness in its most developed sense. The idea that such an alternative could somehow materialise out of thin air without a majority of workers actually wanting it or knowing about it is simply not realistic. Such an alternative can function if people know what it entails. In itself, engaging a workplace struggles within capitalism - important though this is - doesnt take us much forward since capitalism can only ever be run in the interest of capital. The capitalist system isn't a failure due to bad leaders or bad policies, but because of the kind of system that it is.

Socialism in other words meant a moneyless wageless stateless commonwealth. This was the general understanding of what socialism meant. Marx didn't talk about a "transitional society". he talked about the lower phase of communism. It was still communism...that is, a classless society. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”

Who decides what your ability or need is? It would take some sort of position of power to determine who is in need and who has ability. Power naturally corrupts and tends to find ways to increase and consolidate power. After time, you are left with those who have consolidated power to abuse, and those who don't. Therefore who decides? The answer, you do! This is the whole point of the communist slogan "from each according to ability to each according to need". The autonomy of the individual is maximised and as a result, we all benefit. As the Communist Manifesto put it:

"In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all"

Specifically a communist (aka socialist) society - or at least what Marx called the "higher stage" of communism - exhibits two key features:

1) Free access to goods and services - no buying and selling. No barter. You simply go to the distribution point and take what you require according to your self determined needs. This depends on there being a relatively advanced technological infrastructure to produce enough to satisfy our basic needs. Such a possibility already exists. Capitalism, however, increasingly thwarts this potential. In fact, most of the work we do today in the formal sector will be completely unnecessary in a communist society - it serves only to prop up capitalism. What possible use would there be for a banking system under communism, for example? We could effectively more than double the quantities of resources and human labour power available for socially useful production by scrapping capitalism. Communism will destroy the need for greed and conspicuous consumption

2) Volunteer labour. Your contribution to society is completely voluntary. There is no wage labour or other forms of co-erced labour. You can do as little or as much work as you choose. And you can do as many different kinds of jobs as you want, too. The presumption is that people would freely choose to work under communism for all sorts of reasons:

- the conditions under which we work will be radically different, without an employing class dictating terms work will become fulfilling and pleasant
- we need to work, to express ourselves creatively
- with free access to goods, conspicuous consumption will be rendered meaningless as a way of gaining respect and social esteem. Which leaves only what we give to society as a way of gaining the respect of our peers. This should not be underestimated; it is one of the most important motivational drives in human beings as numerous studies in industrial psychology have confimed
- Communism depends on people recognising our mutual interdependence. There is, in other words, a sense of moral obligation that goes with the territory
- Communism will permit a far greater degree of technological adaptation without the constraints of the profit system. Intrinsically backbreaking or unpleasannt work can be automated. Conversely some work may be deliberately made more labour intensive and craft based.
- Even under capitalism today most work is unpaid or unremunerated - the household economy, the volunteer sector and so on. So it is not as if this is something we are unaccustomed to. Volunteers moreover tend to be the most highly motivated as studies have confirmed; they dont require so called external incentives
- We will get rid of an awful lot of crappy and pointless jobs that serve as a disincentive to work
- since we would be free to do any job we chose to what this means in effect is that for any particular job there would be a massive back-up supply of labour to cover it consisting of most people in society. In capitalism this cannot happen since labour mobility is severely restricted since if you have a job you cannot just choose to abandon it for the sake of another more urgent job from the standpoint of society

With these two core characteristics of a communist society - free access to goods and services plus volunteer labour - there can be no political leverage that anyone or any group could exercise over anyone else. The material basis of class power would have completely dissolved. What we would be left with is simply human beings being free to express their fundamentally social and coooperative nature

Free access communism is not going to be brought to the point of collapse by the fact that we cannot all have a Porshe or Ferrari parked outside our front door. Imagine what it could be like without a boss class on our backs? Imagine what our workplaces could become without the cost cutting constraints of capitalism and having the freedom to decide on these matters ourselves. Imagine not being tied tdown to one single kind of job all the time but being given the opportunity to experiment with different jobs, to travel abroad to work in new places, to taste new experiences. Imagine a moneyeless wageless communist world in which most of the occupations that we do today - from bankers to pay departments to arms producers to sales-people - will simply disappear at a stroke releasing vast amounts of resources and, yes, human labour power as well for socially useful production. Kropotkin was quite right. We dont need the whiplash of the wages system to compel us to work. The mere fact that we recognise our mutual interdependence in a society in which we will fully realise our social nature will suffice to impose upon us a sense of moral obligation to contribute to the common good of our own free will. Indeed we already, to some extent, do this today even under capitalism, given that fully half of all the work that we do today is completely unremunerated. How much more conducive will a communist moral economy be to the perforance of unremunerated work is not hard to see.


Capitalism
The Left-wing tend to be nothing more than the reformist advocates of some kind of state-administered capitalism, paying lip service to authentic socialism but in practice obstructing any real movement towards socialism. The Left-wing by and large does not stand for socialism and persistently misrepresents what socialism is all about by identifying it with some kind of state involvement in the economy. To suggest that free access communism would be less efficient than capitalism ignores among other things that at least half the work done under capitalism serves no socially useful purpose whatsoever and contributes nothing to human wellbeing in any meanihgful way - it is merely done to keep the capitalist monetary system ticking over. For instance, most of the work carried out today in the formal sector of the capitalist economy will no longer be needed in communism. What useful work does a banker or pay-roll official do today, for instance? Absolutely nothing. When production for sale on market ceases to exist and we produce simply and and solely for need, a huge and growing chunk of the work we do today will no longer be required. Conservatively speaking, we can at least double the available manpower and material resources for socially useful production. If that is not a huge advance in efficiency then what is? In free access communism we will be able to do more with far less becuase we will producing directly for use and not for sale. The capitalist monetary system is the most extraordinary wasteful form of economic organisation but we are sure the capitalists will be gratified to learn that someon the left should spring to the defence of their system against the communist alternative.

The notion that capitalism can only be defined as a system where capital is owned privately for a profit is absurd. Doesn't capital owned by the state for example count as capitalism? Doesn't the very fact that means of production take the form of capital, irrespective of who owns it, make the system capitalist ? The theory of state capitalism does not require there to be a class of private owners of capital, for there to be capitalism. This is a legalistic de jure approach to capitalism whereas a historical materialist approach looks instead at the de facto relations of production. It argues that there was a capitalist class in the Soviet Union that collectively owned the means of production as a class by virtue of their complete control of the state - the nomenklatura. Ownership and control are in fact inseparable. Ultimate control IS ownership. We are not saying there were no differences between the state capitalism and the private or mixed-economy capitalism but in their essentials they were the same. In Socialism Utopian and Scientific Engels noted how capitalism was rapidly evolving away from private ownership of capital for profit by individual capitalist to joint stock companies and on to ownership by the state. Here is what he said concerning the latter

"The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head." Socialism Utopian and Scientific"

This does not seem to be compatible with the notion of "private profit" or ownership by private individuals but, clearly, what Engels is saying here is that state ownership is still very much capitalism. Of course you can chose to define it in whatever way you want but in the Marxian tradition the relation between "capital" and "wage labour" is absolutely pivotal to any real understanding capitalism. Hence statements like these.

“Capital therefore presupposes wage-labour; wage-labour presupposes capital. They condition each other; each brings the other into existence.” (Wage Labour and Capital)

and

“To say that the interests of capital and the interests of the workers are identical, signifies only this: that capital and wage-labour are two sides of one and the same relation. The one conditions the other in the same way that the usurer and the borrower condition each other."

So, no, its not essentially to do with "private" ownership and profit. This is misleading. This idea that capitalism rests on de jure legal ownership of capital by private individuals is essentially an idealist notion which defines a mode of production in terms of its legal superstructure. With state ownership your have in effect collective ownership by the capitalist class via their control of the state apparatus itself. From the point of the view of the worker it makes absolutely no difference whether their employers is the state or a "private" business. From the point of view of the consumer too state property is private property and for which reason a payment is required.

"The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution."

Engels is saying is that by bringing the scattered means of production under state ownership this will facilitate the transformation of these means into common property. So instead of having to deal with many separate individual capitalists we would have only to deal with the "national capitalist" as it were. This is what is meant by the "technical conditions" Engels speaks of - the centralised structure of decisionmaking that socialism would inherit from (state) capitalism

As opponents of central planning we would disagree strongly with Engels on this particular point. Neverthless, Engels is clearly NOT suggesting that state ownership of the means of production , even though it faciilitates centralised decisionmaking (which he seems to have thought would be important and useful for a socialist society) is anything other than a form of capitalist ownership.

It was Kropotkin who said:
"No hard and fast line can be drawn between the work of one and the work of another. To measure them by results leads to absurdity. To divide them into fractions and measured them by hours of labour leads to absurdity also. One course remains: not to measure them at all, but to recognise the right of all who take part in productive labour first of all to live – and then to enjoy the comforts of life" (The Wage System)

Communism is not about "setting prices at zero". It is about doing away with the whole notion of price and exchange value so that the very concept of "setting prices at zero" is a meaningless one as far as communism is concerned. To talk of setting prices at any level presupposes still a capitalist framework If the supermarkets tomorrow said 'All cans of beans are free' the shelves would be cleared in hours. But if they said the same the next day, and the next, it would become pointless to go and fill your arms with cans of beans, and easier to just go and take a reasonable stock to keep close to hand. That is, money (likewise price) is not abolished, but the need for money is rendered redundant. Just because individuals in a free access economy are not restricted by money lor labour vouchers from taking what they want does not mean they will want to take everything they can possibly lay their hands on. As for labour vouchers. Similiarly just because these same individuals will not be externally compelled to work by the fact that their consumption is explicitly linked to their work contribution does not mean they will not contribute to the work. The point about a communist society proper - or higher communism - is that there is no objective or external econonomic mechanism - like money or labour vouchers - mediating beween the individual and his or her needs or wants. This includes the desire to work which would become as Marx put it in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, "life´s prime want". A means by which we express ourselves, our individuality. Kautsky has the right take on that, why bother mimicking the pricing mechanism when there is already a perfectly good way of doing that?

Money is a social relationship. It links buyers and sellers in a market and therefore presupposes these things. But communism implies common ownership of the means of production. Where everybody owns the means of production it is not logically possible to have economic exchange. Exchange implies owners and non owners. When I exchange something with you I am exchanging property title to this thing for some other thing. If you own a factory producing widgets you can sell these widgets on because you own them by virtue of owning the factory that produced them. It follows that if everyone in society owned the factory there would be no one to whom these widgets could be sold or exchanged. If there is no economic exchange then there is no reason to have a means of exchange - money. Money is a mean of exchange amongst other things and what it implies is the existence of an exchange economy which is completely incompatible with the idea of your "public" owning the means of production. Exchange denotes a transfer of ownership rights of the things being exchanged. This cannot happen where everyone owns the means of production, common ownership rules out the exchange of products and hence money. Logically then if you advocate the use of money and hence exchange, this means you advocate a system based on sectional or private ownership of the means of production - not common ownership. Money is not some kind of neutral tool of administration; it is fundamentally a social relationship between people. Of course, money existed before capitalism but, in its generalised usage, it corresponds to , and demonstrates, the existence of capitalist relations of production as a monetised economy par excellance. Since there will be no economic exchange transactions in socialism - socialism being based on common ownership of the means of production - this reason falls away along with the need for money.

This is why socialists totally reject the idea of using money not only - obviously - in a communist society but in any supposed transition to such a society. A transitional stage that continiued to use money would not be a transition at all. It would still be a capitalist society based on generalised commodity production. That is why Marx advocated labour vouchers - which we reject as too as both unnecessary and far too cumbersome - precisely because it was not money.

Many leftists have aligned themselves with the argument of the arch pro-capitalist Ludwig von Mises in asserting the need for a common universal unit of accounting. According to this argument, only by means of such a unit can we directly compare different bundles of inputs and thus supposedly select the "least cost "combination. For Mises this unit is money; for some so-called leftists labour values. The purpose of a common unit of account is to expedite economic exchange - what communism will lack - rather than the actual efficient deployment of resources as such. Having a common unit of account has nothing to do with the technical organisation of production itself and everything to do with capitalism's own priorities such as the need to determine profitability and the rate of exploitation.

Free access communism is a form of "generalised reciprocity" par excellance, a “gift economy”, which as the term itself suggests denotes the absence of any kind of quid pro quo set up.

1) The amount of work that needs to be done by comparison with today will be much less because of the elimination of all that socially uselsss labour that only serves to prop up the capitalist money economy - from bankers , pay to tax collectors and a thousand and one other occupations. Less work means a much reduced per capita workload on average which, in turn, means less resistance to working since our attitutde to work is partly conditioned by how much time we are required to do it. If you only have to do 2 hours per week on a boring job you are going to regard it differently than if you have to do it for 20 hours

2) A volunteer economy means that we are not stuck with just one job but can try a variety so there is a labour reservoir in depth for any particular job - even the most onerous or boring - and to an extent that is simply not possible under capitalist employment.

3) With free acess to goods and services there is only one way in which you can acquire status and the respect and esteem of your fellows - through your contribution to society. Conspicuous consumption and the accumulation of private wealth would be rendered meaningless by the simple fact that all wealth is freely available for direct appropriation

4) The terms and conditions of work will be radically different without the institution of capitalist employment. It is often these terms and conditions - in particular the authoritarian structure of the capitalist workplace - that are the real problem rather than the work itself

5) Without the profit motive there will be far greater scope to adapt technology to suit our inclinations. Some work might be subject to greater automation; other work might be made more artisan or skilled-based

6) In a communist society our mutual interdependence will be much more transparent and the sense of moral obligation to give according to one's ability in return for taking according to one's need will correspondingly be much more sharply defined and enhanced as a motivating factor

7) A communist society cannot be introduced except when the great majority understand and want it. Having struggled to achieve it can it seriously be maintained that they would willingly allow it to be jeopardised? The reductio as absurdum argument

8) Work, loosely defined as meaningful productive activity is actually a fundamental human need, not simply an economic requirement. Try sitting around on your ass for week doing nothing and you will soon find yourself climbing up the wall out of sheer boredom. Prison riots have been known to break out on occasions when frustrated prisoners are denied work opportunities and even under the severe conditions they have to contend with.

9) Even under capitalism just over half of the work that we do is completely unpaid and outside of the money economy. This is by no means just confined to the household sector - think for example of international volunteers such as the VSO - and it gives the lie to the capitalist argument that the only way you can induce people to work is paying them to do it

Since you dont have a quid pro quo set up with free access communism, individuals are free to do whatever work they chose. What work needs to be done as explained can be readily communicated through the appropriate channels such as job centres, online facilities and so on. You dont have the same kind of dichotomous view induced by a quid pro quo set up which pits your self interest against the interests of others. So social opinion become becomes a much more powerful force in society. Work that needs to be done most urgently and is not perhaps being done to the extent required - e.g. garbage collection - gains in status to the extent that it remains undone. People work for all sorts of reasons not just becuase they "like it". This is why we find the usual objections to free access communism being trotted out to be simplistic and reductionist. Labour at this higher stage is no longer co-erced labour in the sense that an individual's access to goods (via their "income") is made dependent upon his or her contribution. On the contrary, the labour of freely associated individuals becomes life's "prime want". It becomes entirely voluntary labour, freely offered. The compulsion to produce without which human life could not continue will then operate exclusively on the social plane and not directly upon individuals who, neverthless, will have realised their fully social nature in a communist society and respond accordingly to the requirements of society to produce and reproduce its own means of existence. This is what constitutes the essence of communism - the realisation of our true social nature and of the need to contribute to society's maintenance and wellbeing - and it is why I have long argued that communism needs to be conceived as what is technically called a "moral economy"

The problem for the notion of apportioning labour time according some single vast society wide plan. Because production is a socialised process, because everything is interconnected - you need to ensure a certain amount of input X is produced in order to ensure that a certain amount of consumer good Y is produced - the ratios of millions upon millions of inputs and outputs have to be worked out in advance and the relative proportions or amounts have to be produced precisely in accordance with the Plan because the knock on consequences of any shortfall, say, will ramify thorugh the whole economy and upset the carefully worked out calculations of the central planners. So finally on to the question of labour time allocation within the context of a definite social plan. It seems to me that if you are going to allocate labour in this predetermined a priori fashion then, in order for the definite social plan to be effectively implemented to the letter, you would need some way of ensuring that labour in its multiple forms is suppled in precisely the quantities needed in order to ensure that the technical ratios of inputs and outputs embodied in the plan are complied with. How can this can this be done without the most resolute and coerceive central direction of labour and the conception cannot possibly accommodated to the principle "from each according to ability to each according to need". It cannot be done and the fact that it cannot be done points to the need for a radically different perspective on the nature of a communist society to the one he is proposing. Actually even Marx's speculations on the nature of work and the abolition of the division of labour in communism directly contradict this notion in the famous quote from the German Ideology:

“For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now.”


Allocation and rationing and planning

“We can produce enough to satisfy everyones need but not their greed” - Gandhi

The technological capacity to satisfy the basic needs of everyone on this planet for food, shelter, sanitation and so on exists today. However, it is capitalism that is increasingly thwarting and dissipating this potential. There is, for example, absolutely no reason why anyone today should starve. Do you realise just how monumentally wasteful is the whole food prpduction system we have today? Do you realise just how much scope there is for increased output per hectare and we are not talking here of capital intensive inputs (such as terminator seed technology which is all about what benefits agribusiness) rather than the peasant farmer in the Third World?

Mostly, but not entirely, the productive possiblities at our disposal are not being realised , and are increasingly failing to be realised, because of the huge and ever growing proportion of work undertaken today that is entirely socially useless (and in fact diverts human labour and resoruces away enhancing human well-being) but is nevertheless indispensable to the operation of the capitalist system itself. It has been conservatively estimated that, with the abolition of the capitalist money system and the introduction of a system based on direct production for use, we could probably double the productive capacity to satisfy our basic needs globally by freeing up all that labour and material resoruces currently tied up in socially useless , but systemicallly necessary, activities of all kinds. Think of a world without arms producers, bankers, insurance companies, salespeople, tax collectors, wage departments and a thousand and one other such occupations and you will begin to see what wemean.

Critics of socialism often seem wedded to this strange strawman notion of socialism as some kind of cornucopian society of absolute superabundance - all the more easy to knock it down. But this is not what is being proposed. What is being proposed is something rather more modest and reasonable - that we can today adequately meet our human needs (which are not infinite but finite) but increasingly capitalism gets in the way of this happening. Thus, a vast and steadily growing proportion of the work carried out today does not in any meaningful sense enhance human wellbeing and welfare but merely exists to serve the functional needs of the system itself. We dont actually need socialism to develop the technology of abundance in this reasonable sense. We already have the capacity to produce enough to satisfy our reasonable needs and this is, among other things, why your system of labour vouchers is now completely irrelevant. The irony is that the potential of modern computer technology which yourself have attached such importance to, is one of the things that now make "real socialism" eminently practical.

Every economy involves planning. Even the most ultra extreme free market capitalist economy you can think of is full of plans at the level of business enterprises. These millions of separate plans relate and adjust to each spontaneously. Central planning in its classic sense is the proposal to coordinate and plan the relationships between these separate plans rather than permit them to spontaneously adjust to each other. In effect, that means the disappearance or dissolution of all these separate plans and their replacement by one single "society wide" plan . That is the only meaningful way I can think of in which you can talk about a planned economy because there is no such thing as an economy that does not entail planning or "plans". In theory yes but in the real world deviations from the plan by the bucketload will always happen and all the time. The Plan will never get the opportunity to be implemented ; it will constantly need reconfiguring and updating. Instead of the single society wide plan moulding economic reality according to the intentions of the planners, the opposite will be the case. The plan will end up being hardly being worth with the paper it is written on. We are not the ones who are advocating some mega society-wide plan that seeks to coordinate all the inputs and outputs of the economy. The problem really lies with those who, inadvertently or not, advocate such a crazy idea. They simply haven't thought it through.

It is a bit of myth to suppose that state capitalist regimes like the Soviet Union were organised in quite the top-down, authoritarian fashion that is sometimes suggested. There was a very considerable degree of decentralised decisionmaking in the Soviet Union at the state enterprise level - far more than is sometimes realised. People often make the mistake of confusing the political rhetoric of central planning, and the fanfare accompaning GOSPLAN's latest 5 year plan or whatever, with what actually happened on the ground. No plans were ever actually really fulfilled. What happened is that the targets were routinely modified and revised to make it look like they were fulfilled. Instead of the Plan moulding economic reality, economic reality moulded the Plan. Often the plans were not even made available into well into the implementation period. The Soviet Union was very far from being a centrally planned economy in the classic sense of society wide planning and competition was rife at every level of the decisionmaking structure. Heads of industries were encourage to over-fulfil their part of the Plan (which goes against the idea of having a rational planned economy if people are constantly trying to change it), so they'd be competing with each other for resources (including labourers). There'd be competition between these heads for privileged access to materials and resources. Usually because there'd be a bonus involved. Within each ministry, enterprises competed fiercely for a privileged status, for reasonable quotas, and for easy orders. The same sort of competition existed on a lower level within each enterprise and on a higher level among ministries. The jungle of liberal capitalism of the past looks like a fencing tournament in comparison with this sordid infighting for influence interspersed with negotiations, shady deals and blackmail.

As for money not being a universal equivalent, at the end of the day, state enterprises had to keep profit and loss accounts expressed obviously in monetary terms. Though the state nominally owned the means of production, the legal posession and operation of these was in the hands of the state enterrprises and trusts that existed as legal entitites in their own right with responsibility for production. Crucially, their relationship with each other took the form of legally binding contracts for raw materials and productive machinery which were paid for by credits (money) in the central banks. State agencies like GOSSNAP (State Commission for Materials and Equipment Supply) operated essentially to facilitate horizontal links between these state enterprises. In its essentials, the Soviet Union was a capitalist economy albeit of a particular kind. However it is not quite correct to characterise the relationship between the state and the economic system as a whole as being analogous to the relationship between capitalists and the particular enterprises they own as in the West - the notion of "Soviet Union Inc". This is becuase of the role of the state enterprises outlined above which makes the situation a lot more complicated than the simpliustic idea of everyone working for one big firm called the state. While the system did have a rather more slack in it and greater scope for overriding the imperative of profit compared with western capitalism, ultuimately it had to fall in line with the law of value. Losses incurred by state enterrpises might revert to the state itself but there was a limit to how much these losses incurred by some enterprises could be sustained or compensated for by the profits creamed off by the state from other enterprises. Much of the subsequent reforms were really about devising better indicators of economic performancee and as such confimed the fundamental, if not immediately apparent, importance of the law of value in the Soviet economy and of course the need to accumulate capital out of surplus value. There was a labour market in the Soviet Union. A regulated one admittedly but a market all the same. Labour power was as commodity that was bought and sold at a price which was the wages which Russian workers received. If you argue that there was no laboutr market you might as well argue there were no wages which is absurd. Ditto profits. In fact state enterprises were obliged to keep profit and loss accounts and there was certainly pressure exerted on managers fron on high to ensure profitability without which the the funding of the state apparatus itself would have been problematic. Nevertheless it is a myth to suppose that wage levels were not influenced by supply and demand. State enterprises did retain a not inconsiderable degree of flexibility particularly in the area of adjusting wage levels (so called central planning notwithstanding)and there was often fierce competition between enterprises over supplies of labour especially skiiled labour with vacancies frequently being advertised at factory gates. The attempt to reduce labour mobility - for a while during the Stalin years it was illegal to change jobs with official permission - proved futile in the end and caused rising resentments "socialist" economy labour was not a commodity. It certainly was! You had employers and employees. The relationship between them was a commodified one, a quid pro quo market transaction. The fact that the price of this commodity is not established via the normal market interplay of supply and demand is neither here nor there. As I said before, even in overtly capitalist countries, there are regulatiory factors that come into play such as minimum wage laws. In state capitalist countries, this regulatory approach is taken somewhat further. However a regulated market is still a market and a fixed price is still a price. There is still the fundamental buying and selling relationship at the bottom of it all. Despite the fact national wage rates might be established centrally, enterprises could and did exercise a considerable degree of discretion in the hiring of wage labour and in offering employment benefits. Competition between enterrpises was particularly fierce in relation to skilled labour and various ruses might be used to attract and hold onto such labour. We need to distinguish between the abstract theoretical model of the so-called socialist economy and the empirical reality of what actually went on.

There is not, and never can be, some single vast plan devised a priori fashion which is then handed over to the producers to implement. It does not matter whatever refinements you introduce - like the notion of "material balances". It cannot possibly work. And the reason why it cannot work has nothing really to do with whether or not modern computers have the number crunching capacity to make it work.

It cannot work, quite simply, because for this vast single plan to work, all the millions upon millions of inputs and outputs that comprise the raw data upon which the plan is constructed , need to be held constant, need to remain linked together in the ratios exactly intended by the plannners themselves. Any all alteration to any part of the plan has ripple consequences for every other part of the plan which will undermine the coherency of the plan itself. But change happens all the time. It is unavoidable. Thus central planning in this classic sense of apriori society-wide planning must iinevitably founder. The plan devised by the planners will never ever get a chance to be implemented - even assuming it could be put togther in the first place. There is , in fact, no alternative but to incorporate some kind of feedback mechanism into the economy. This means acknowleging once and for all that the overall pattern of production is not, and never can be, something that can be consciously planned but rather is something to be arrived at through the interaction of many plans.

It is not the lack of computing power that is the problem; it is the inherently problematic relation between the real world out there and the Plan itself. This is not simply a matter of natural calamities or logistical bottlenecks happening . It is also a matter of having to enforce targets to ensure delivery of inputs or consumer goods in the quantitites required as well as impose the strictest rationing

If that is the case - if a planned economy means a single society-wide plan in which every conceivable input and output is coordinated and predetermined in advance - then it is obviously a non starter. Becuase everything is intercoonected all it takes is for the supply of even one input to fall short of what was planned and you would have to recalculate all the inputs and outputs once again. In the real world the one thing you can predict is that life will be unpredictable.

So you are left with the only other option on table - an economy that has many plans instead of just one. The question is - do you allow these many plans to adjust spontaneously through the market or do you allow then to adjust spontaneously through mechanisms established by a non-market and non-statist communist economy? The basic infrastructure of a commmunist system of resource allocation already exists today under our very noses.

Free access entails - amongst other things , a self regulating system of stock control which of its very nature is capable of responding very rapidly to shifts in demand. If people come to reduce their demand for a particular product this will manifest itself in a build up of surpluses, prompting distribution points to cut back their orders from suppliers who, in turn, will reduce their inputs for said good from their own suppliers and so on further back along the production chain. The opposite would happen if people increased their demand for a good. This would automatically trigger a signal for more of such a good and hence the inputs for such a good. The point is all this is perfectly possible today and more so now with the development of computerised system of stock control. A self regulating system of stock control which responds directly and promptly to changes in the pattern of demand from both production units and consumers provides the necessary data we need relating to stocks of inputs. It then becomes a matter of economising most on what is scarcest. The "relative scarcity" of any input is a function of the demand for the end product of which it is a component and of the technical ratio of input to output (or product itself). In this way it is quite possible to rank the relevant inputs in terms of their relative scarcity. So selection of the least cost combination is entirely practicable in a communist society. Only the method of doing it is quite different to what happens with a common unit of accounting. It is what I call a "lateral" approach to cost accounting rather than a "vertical" approach. We select technical combinations of inputs that minimise as far as possible our reliance upon scarce inputs in favour of more abundant alternatives. This is not an exact science but its the orientation of decisionmaking that counts - the fact that we are operatiing within a systemic constraint that pushes us always in the direction of economising most on what is most scarce - which makes it an eminently sensible and reasonable principle to apply.

We never claim we will have totally free access to everything. Hypothetically it may be possible but we should not assert that it will be the case. However, we now have the technological capacity to ensure the production of most things in sufficient quantities to enable them to be made available on a completely free access basis, As for the other things that cannot be produced in sufficient quantities, we can have a form of rationing but a form of rationing totally different from Marx's labour voucher scheme. Those goods that need to be rationed will tend to be those goods deemed to be of low prority within some form of socially agreed hierarchy of production goals. The effect of such a scheme will be to systematically skew the allocation of resources in favour of high priority end uses wherever and whenever bottlenecks arise. That does not mean the discontinuation of production of low priority goods , it just means that it might requre casting around for other more abundant alternative inputs. In the meantime shortages and delays will likely result. So some goods will be in short supply and others not. It is the former that need to be rationed in some way and the question then arises - what criterion are you going to use to ration goods with? A rationing system (perhaps,for instance, required for air travel tickets) that would be straightforward and simple to operate is required. A first-come-first-served arrangement may be appropriate in some situations but maybe unacceptable for all sorts of reasons in others. What might be the criteria that such a system of rationing could use to distribute those goods in short supply? Firstly, let us remind ourselves again that we are talking only of some goods - most likely, non necessities - and only insofar as they are in short supply which may or may not turn out to be the case. So, clearly, this in itself would rule out the idea of labour vouchers as a mean of rationing which would have to be a generalised approach applying to all goods, or not at all, and which we have already rejected, in any case, on other grounds. Secondly, it is important to note that the transformation of society from capitalist to communism will not immediately transform the material legacy that the former will leave to the latter. In other words, from the point of view of individuals themselves, the immediate material circumstances they find themselves in will still differ strikingly from one person to the next.
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If there is one thing that encapsulates such a difference it has to be the quality and nature of housing stock. This is a hugely important material consideration for anyone - one's accomodation. The houses that we live in are a massively important component of our quality of life. In capitalism, we see an enormous variation in housing stock - from the tin shacks of some shanty town Favela, clinging perilously to a hill's steep slopes, to the luxurious splendour and spacious comfort of some stately home. Clearly, there are some things we can do more or less immediately about remedying such material inequality. For instance, individuals do not have to live in run down shoddy accommodation if they do not wish to when there is already an abundance of empty but reasonably sound housing stock lying around and waiting for someone to move into. But it is not just empty housing stock that we are talking about either - there are many offices, shops warehouses and so on that could be more or less easily converted into suitable accommodation. This is quite apart from taking steps to immediately improve and upgrade what one's existing home. That stately mansion, for example, with it twenty bedrooms could provide accommodation for several people who could then help to maintain and revitalise it . Far better that than allow it to gradually go to seed in the hands of its two aging incumbents who can no longer afford the servants to do the cleaining or the repairs to prevent the dry rot from spreading.

Because the housing stock we will inherit from capitalism will be highly variable in quality and while no doubt every effort will be made to improve the quality of the houses that people live it will take a while before everyone can expect to be housed decently. Hence the notion of "compensation". Of necessity, some people will continue to live in substandard for some unspecified time - we cannot just magic decent homes out of thin air (although it needs to be said in capitalism there are millions and millions of empty and perfectly habitable homes.) Huge variations in the quality of housing stock could prove a source of much social friction. This needs to be recognised and dealt with and the most apprpriate way of doing that is by compensating individuals who have to put up with poor quality housiing in the meantime by giving them priority - perhaps time-limited - access to rationed goods.

So there is certainly much that can be done immediately to ameliorate the housing situation but equally, it has to be said, there is much that cannot be done immeidately . It will take time - perhaps many years - to overcome capitalism's huge structural legacy of material inequality in respect of housing. And it is precisely housing that could furnish the criterion upon which a system of rationing might operate which can be dubbed the "compensation model of rationing", using the term "compensation" advisedly because this is indeed what it would entail. Since it is not logistically possible for everyone in a full blown communist society to take possession of good quality accommodation all at once, and from the word go, then it would seem only right and proper that those who cannot should, in some sense, be "compensated" for having to put with less than satisfactory accommodation in the meantime. This would accord with egalitarian ethos of a communist society and with a sense of natural justice. It would serve to heal and to bring harmony rather than sow dissent and social friction.

How such individuals could be compensated could? It could take the form of granting them priority accesss to those goods that are subject to rationing. This could conceviably be a graduated scheme with different levels of priority access corresponding to the assessed ranking of the housing stock in which people are living. The beauty of such a scheme is that it is flexible, straightforward and relatively simple to implement. Certainly, it would not require some vast sprawling bureaucracy to administer. For instance, distribution stores stocking goods that are often difficult to get hold of and thus need to be rationed, could reserve such items for a specified period of time during which time only those with priority access rights and able to present the appropriate documentation to prove it, would be entitled to take them. Upon expiry of that time period any remaining goods could then be made available to the general public at large to take as they see fit on the basis of free access.

The technical or administrative process of mapping out this inequality and calibrating a system of rationing to match, is eminently achievable. In the UK, for instance, there is a system whereby every property is placed in one of several bands for local taxation purposes. Of course in communism there won't be council taxes to be raised but there is no reason why properties could not be similarly banded according to a number of objective criteria. A rough points system which assessed properties on the basis of objective criteria such as size, facilities, overall condition and so on could be applied to facilitate the banding process and the occupants of the property in question could then be issued a certificate indicating the band it fell under. This information which would also be useful to local communities in their efforts to upgrade housing stock could then be utilised for the purpoise of implementing a system of priority access to rationed goods which would tend by the very nature of things to be low prority goods such as luxury items.
This is merely a suggestion - to illustrate one possible practical way in which the scheme might be operated. No doubt there are any number of other ways in which it might be operated and far be it from us to specify and set in concrete the precise details of any arrangement to be adopted. Rather, it is the underlying principle or rationale of such a proposed scheme that we wish here to elucidate. Its purpose is to signal or make transparent society's recognition of the fact of material inequality and its intention to do something about it and, most importantly, in accordance with its egalitarian values. The basic mechanism of such a rationing system is certainly something that is open to discussion but administratively speaking , however it is organised, it would be far simpler and more straightforwad than, say a labour voucher system whiich is itself would be dependent upon a generalised and massively complicated system of labour time accounting

The proposal to institute some form of rationing for some goods - non-rationed goods would, by definition, be distributed on the basis of free access so that you would have, in effect, have two parallel distribution systems operating side by side - presupposes some way of prioritising the goals of production and the allocation of inputs generally. This is an integral part of a larger system of production whose different components are will be functionally interconnedted. In exploring the nature of these connections we shall at last bring to the light and systematically explicate the inner workings of a post capitalist alternative to contemporary capitalism

Vertical cost accounting in terms of a common unit of accounting is itself inherently more costly because it is predicated on a complex bureaucratic apparatus that seeks to cost factors of production in these terms. This has opportunity costs: the more bureaucracy you require, the more effort and resources you draw away from direct production for human need. Labour time accounting will require a massive bureaucratic apparatus to be fully effective on its own trerms. Laibman has distinguished between two forms of planning - "project planning" and "systemic planning", the latter being an attempt to bring the different sectors of the economy within a single centralised planning framework. I have no real problem with labour time accounting in the first sense. Accouting for, or factoring in, labour requirements alongside a communist system of calculation in kind makes sense. It is however an entirely different proposition to seek to centrally direct anbd allocate social labour according to imputed labour values. This is where labour time accounting becomes central planning in the classic sense of a single society wide planning and that is a complete non starter.


Critics say labour is finite but so too is the demand side of the equation effectively limited and will be particularly so in free access communism since many goods serve today as status goods which will no longer be needed. Free access makes it pointless wanting such goods when everyone can freely avail themselves of them. The only way logically that you can gain status in free access communism is through your contribution to society and not what you take out of it. Indeed, there will simply be no point in taking more than you need. Its like taking water from a public fountain. You dont take more than you need just becuase its free and available in abundance, do you? That would be silly

On the question of priorities - X or Y. If it is obvious to you that grain is more important than flat screens then why will others not see this as well? Wedo not think we need a particularly detailed or elaborate schema regarding social priorities. For the most part we think it can be left to commonsense and an intuitive feel for what is more important. Such prorities would come into the play in the allocation of resources only where there are material constrains in the sense of a shortage of a particular input to meet the multiple demands for such an imput. Then it would make sense to allocate said in put according to some notion of society's priorities. But that does not prevent lower priority goods from being produced by resorting to technological substitition and the like.

Supply and demand can be pretty easily matched up through what is called a self regulating system of stock control using "calculation in kind" ("in kind" or "volumetric" calculation, is where actual human needs are quantified concretely by use and need without the mediation of value is essential to communism) which is in fact what happens today - except that alongside calculation in kind (counting physical stock and the rate at which they are removed from the shelves), what we have today also is a system of monetary accounting. In fact the computer technology that we have today makes this all eminently feasible

In capitalism there is a need to compare different bundles of factors with a view to arriving at the least cost combination. This implies commensrability and hence a single unit of account to which all factors can be reduced - price. This reasoning will not form a part of a socialist economy. In socialism, commensurability will actually no longer be an issue. What you would be looking at instead is relative availabity or scarcity of any particular input. This is a function of 1) the technical ratio or make up of the product of which that factor is an input and 2) the total demand for that product. Seen from this ppoint of view, the relative scarcity of any factor within any given bundle or combination of factors can be compared to the relative scarcity of any other compoment factor, that factor being the most scarce in these terms being called the limiting factor. It is called the llmiting factor becuase it determines the limits of how much of a given product you can produce. In agricultural science where the term was originally introduced (by Justius von Liebig) the traditional limiting factor inhibiting agricultural output was nitrogen fertiliser. The development of alternative artifical sources of fertiliser tended to mean some other factor (e.g. water supply) becoming the limiting factor.

This briefly hints at the way in which a socialist society will approach the question of economising on resources - by economising most on what is most" relatively scarce" within any combination of factors- and not by approaching the matter via some form of aggregate decision making with a view to arriving at some overall least cost combination between different combinations. The latter is in fact a very blunt approach which conceals more information than it reveals. . Think of how the use of money as a single unit of account - the same would appliy to labour values - overlooks external costs( or "externalities") for example.

There will be some role for labour time accounting in a communist society but it would be a much more modest and restricted role than that envisaged in the centrallised apportionment of social labour in accordance with a definite social plan . It would be more along the lines of indicative planning with rough estimates of the amount and types of labour required for specific projects. And above all, it would supplement, rather than replace, communism's primary mode of calculation - calculation in kind .

Labour Time Vouchers

Labour vouchers were advocated by Marx as a form of rationing in lower communism. They are not at all based on the wages system because, as Marx explained in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, the workers do not exchange their products. There is no commodity production. Wage labour implies the separation of the producers from the means of production whereas in lower communism, the means of production are owned by everyone.

We don't favour labour vouchers - it is far too cumbersome as a mechanism for rationing. If you are going to have rationing, at least for some goods, there are far more effective and straightforward mechanisms than this. There is now no reason why most goods could not be distributed as free goods as would be the case generally in Marx's higher stage of communism. Marx put forward this proposal somewhat half heartedly merely as a way of getting to grips with, and responding to, what he called the "unavoidable defects" of the first phase of a communist society where the means of prpduction were not yet fully developed to permit full blown communism. In other words, labour vouchers were a form of rationing. It is pretty clear that he envisaged them being abandoned as society moved into the higher phase of communism - free access communism - as goods and service became more and more abundantly available. In the Critique of the Gotha Programme he talked of the principle " from each according to ability to each according to need " coming to apply in higher communism . This expression, which I think was first coined by Louis Blanc, was deliberately framed in opposition to the doctrine of the followers of Saint-Simon, "Let each be placed according to his capacity and rewarded according to his work" with the clear implication that work should be unremunerated and voluntarily undertaken.

There are numerous problems associated with LTVs and the allied proposal of pricing goods in labour time units. To cite just one, Marx talked of the producer getting back from society "exactly" what he put into it (after variuous deductions had been made) but how exactly do you determine what someone has contributed? How do you compare the productivity of a dentist and a steel worker for example. Do you treat each skill exactly the same and what does that mean in terms of incentives (for which reason advocates of labour vouchers propose such a scheme in the first place - on the grounds that workers need to be "compelled" to work by linking consumption to pay). Not all workers of a given skill level accomplish the same work in an hour

This is just one of many problems. The labour voucher scheme would, in the end, prove to be hugely bureaucratic and wasteful of human labour, nothwithsanding all that computer power at our finger tips will quite likely create conditions that will enable the restoration of petty commodity production and eventually capitalism itself.

Engel's remarks to Schmidt in 1890 reinforces Marx that when the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly, the principle "from each according to ability to each according to need" can the be implemented. Meaning none other than free access communism where wealth no longer needs to be rationed and where labour is freely and voluntarily undertaken - the one thing logically implying the other and vice versa. The quote is interesting also in view of the discussion on what was meant by a future "socialist society" i.e. communism:

"There has also been a discussion in the Volks-Tribune about the distribution of products in future society, whether this will take place according to the amount of work done or otherwise. The question has been approached very "materialistically" in opposition to certain idealistic phraseology about justice. But strangely enough it has not struck anyone that, after all, the method of distribution essentially depends on how much there is to distribute, and that this must surely change with the progress of production and social organization, so that the method of distribution may also change. But everyone who took part in the discussion, "socialist society" appeared not as something undergoing continuous change and progress but as a stable affair fixed once for all, which must, therefore, have a method of distribution fixed once for all. All one can reasonably do, however, is 1) to try and discover the method of distribution to be used at the beginning, and 2) to try and find the general tendency of the further development. But about this I do not find a single word in the whole debate." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...s/90_08_05.htm

Against Labour-Time Vouchers

To summarise our opposition to Labour Time Vouchers:

1) Many advocates of labour vouchers support the idea of differential payments according to labour contribution. This raises the problem of how you measure one person's contribution in relation another's.

2) Any kind of quid pro quo or exchange set up raises motivational issues and fosters egoism. If you pay people differently people will disagree with the pay rate assigned to them. If you pay them the same, a nuclear scientist will contend that her work is of far greater import than a garbage collector and she should be paid much more. Friction and discontent are almost guaranteed. Not only that, you have no way of ensuring that people will not gravitate towards the most congenial work if all work attracts the same rate. This is because quid pro quo set ups enocourage one to think in terms of what is in one's own interest and not the interests of the larger society. It promotes an atomised individualistic perspective. Garbage will remain uncollected. You can of course restrict labour mobility and centrally allocate labour but then you are back to the capitalist state and that in itself creates more problems than it solves. Any kind of quid pro quo set - "I give you something in return for you giving me something else" - has a built in conflict of interests that orientates individuals to adopt an egoistic or self interested approach vis-a-vis others. You are advocating an exchange economy of some type - though I still fail to see any substantive difference between your system and capitalism other than the fact that you want to wave a magic wand and make every one get paid the same, despite economic competitition. You have already admitted that managers would be held accountable and that there would be incentives for firms to become more efficient. That can only mean they would be differentially remunerated according to their performance. Managers will want to reduce labour costs for example presumably by reducing hours worked or even laying off workers. How else, after all, is "efficiency" to be measured in your system other than by net income - the difference between revenue and costs. In pursuit of net income, managers incentivised by the competitve desire for higher remuneration will soon enough pit themselves against the workers.

3) A labour voucher scheme will require a huge bureaucracy to administer - on the one hand to administer, police and record labour inputs and on the other to administer police and record purchases. Labour vouchers will require labour time accounting across the board which is massively complicated. You might pay people the same but for planning/allocative purposes you certainly cannot treat labour inputs as equal. The stock argument that we can do all this with the super duper computer technology we have is no argument at all. Computerisation certainly helps with calculation but this is much more than a problem of calculation. Its also one of evaluation and enforcement. Whats to stop people abusing the system. Who is going to monitor the monitors? And so on.

4) To ensure that goods are cleared at the stores at an efficient rate you have to ensure that the sum total of the face value of vouchers issued equals the sum total of labour inputs in the sphere of priduction. Otherwise you risk incurring huge structural shortages or surpluses. This applies not only at the macro level but for specific goods too. One proponect, Cockshott, in his book suggested selling goods at above or below their labour content in order to influence consumer spending habits but already this is a significant departure from the strict labour voucher scheme. Equally significantly it opens up the path for speculative buying and selling of goods and hence corruption. what happens to goods after they have been purchased from the public stores. It is in this respect that a role for speculative buying and selling of goods on the black market exists as a very real possibility


5) People under a labour voucher scheme are reputedly paid according to their labour contribution but what about those who cannot work. The very old, the very young, the infirm and the disabled. This was the point made by Marx in the Critique of the Gotha Programme - that it is absurd talking about workers getting the full value of their contribution. Necessarily the working population would have to get less than the value of what they produce and the value of their labour vouchers would have to be adjusted according. All this incidentally would add yet another of unproductive bureaucracy to administer this social welfare scheme

6) There is nothing to prevent a black market emerging alongside and undermining a system of labour vouchers ex post facto Informal commodity transactions can arise making use of goods purchased with vouchers - particularly if , as is the case with most advocates of labour vouchers it is suggested that vouchers are for specific goods. But even if they were not and with your voucher you could buy any good that still does not stop a black market coming into being. Whats to stop you for example growing stuff in you backyard and bartering it for other goods. Whats to stop you combing with others to form an agricultural collective to do the same on a much large scale? Eventually as we know bater will give way to money and in due course this could quite conceivably lead back to capitalism

From the point of view of administration, free access communism would be immeasurably more efficient and streamlined - bureaucracy will be reduced to a bare minimum. The motivational issues will not arise either. People would not be compelled to do just one particular job but would be free to diversify meaning that for any particular job there would be a massive reservoir of labour provided by almost everyone. Social opinion would also play a decisive role in all this. You would no longer acquire status through conspicuous consumption which would be meaningless in a free acess society. The respect and esteem of others - a hugely important motivational factor in any society - would derive from your actual contribution to society and social opinion would directly influence one's choice of work in a dynamic way. Thus, work that was considered most pressing and urgent would, other things being equal, be precisely the kind of work that would attract most prestige and in a dynamic responsive fashion. If people neglected garbage collection the prestige of garbage collecting would rise accordingly as the piles of riubbish mounted. Supply and demand of social prestige in other words would step in to resolve the problem. Lastly of course there would be no reason for a black market to emerge. There is no way a distribution system of paid for goods can outcompete a system of free goods. There is much more to the sociology and economics of free access communism - Marx's higher communism - than some people seem to realise and is betrayed by their knee-jerk responses. Quite simply they havent really given the idea the serious consideration it merits.

Deciding Choice

The whole point of a feedback mechanism is precisely to inform producers of the need to produce and deliver more stock when specific stock levels start running low at the distribution centres/stores. How in those circumstances do you decide which ones to put the labour resources into replenishing? About which end uses to direct labour, or indeed, material resources into, that rather depends on whether or not there is a sufficient supply of the resource in question to meet the multifarious quantified demands placed on it. If there is then this is not really a problem to deal with. If there is not, then I suggest what is needed is some rule of thumb to guide the allocation of resources under these constrained conditions of scarcity and according to some notional idea of society's priorities - something like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, for example. What it means is that high priority goods take precedence over low priority goods. That does not mean the discontinuation of low priority goods, it just means that the production of such goods may requre turning to other perhaps more plentiful substitute inputs - technological substitution - as revealed through a computerised feedback mechanism. This is not an exact science but nor does it need to be. Providing the tendency is to allocate resources firstly to socially determined high priority end uses as opposed to low priority end uses then that is a tendency working in the right direction. Its outcome is rational allocation. A production system needs to know which things to produce more urgently, or as a matter of priority, vis a vis others. This is something that must logically arise at the point at which resources or inputs are allocated. In other words, it has to do with intermediate goods not final goods. It is at this stage, should overall demand for what they produce exceed supply, that production units need to be able to operate wth some kind of sorting procedure when it comes to having to deal with the multifarious requests for the inputs they supply to the producers of final goods and upon which the latter are dependent. This is precisely where the idea of some kind of hierarchy of production priorities comes into play. It provides a rough and ready rule of thumb in a communist society about who gets what first and how much. It doesnt need to be perfectly precise - perfection is unobtainable under any system - but a guideline of some sort is still needed even if subject to constant negotiation.

No system whatsoever can register strength of desire because "strength of desire" is a subjective matter. You dont need to know the "strength of desire" (an idea is rooted in a capitalist "willingness-to-pay" perspective) for items expressed by individuals as far as the communist production system is concerned. A production system does not need to know this nor, indeed, can it know this. "Strength of desire" is, in fact, irrelevant but preferences are not. It is the aggregate pattern of appropriation/consumption that you are interested in from a systems point of view and this is something that will be expressed through a self regulating system of stock control. The feedback mechanism within such a system will reveal consumer preferences automatically and relay or transmit this information to the pruduction units themselves. The "strength of desire” for X will vary from person to person. That means you have to look at the aggregate patten of demand and as far as this aggregate pattern is concerned, it is quite untrue to claim under free distribution there is no way for the system of production to be calibrated by measures of strength of desire or preferences. Shifts in demand from away from cans of beans to meatballs in tomato sauce can very readly be picked up by the stock control system so that the pattern of output can be modified to take into account this shift in demand. Production units are not set up to cater to the needs of you or I as a particular individuals with your own idiosyncratic needs and preferences and cannot be an individual matter in the sense that the production system has to consult you or I as individuals on a one-by-one basis on what needs to be produced. The production system is simply an impersonal construct , a machine like arrangement, that responds to signals that represent aggregate patterns of demand that are constantly shifting and changing It is the self regulating stock control system that mediates the desires wants and whims of consumers and transmit the necessary information to producers in the form of specific orders/requests for fresh stock and so on. "Preferences" so to speak reveal themselves indirectly in the rate and volume in which at different kinds of stock are thus ordered. The production systems are set up to cater to aggregate demand by masses of individuals. All it needs to know is what it has to produce and this iinformation is something that is transmitted to it via a self regulating system of stock control that links production units with each other and with distribution centres to which final goods are destined. So individuals will reveal their preferences via their consumption choices and it is completely iirrelevant from the point of view of producers how strongly these individuals consumers feel about their own preferences. What matters only is a that a preference is expressed as part of an aggregate pattern of demand. No modern production system can ever be calibrated to what particular individuals may want or desire or the intensity with which they want or desire something. That is a myth. Production today is a social process and therefore it follows so must what guides or directs it be social. The question of preferences, the distribution of products and resources must align with the distribution of preferences within a heterogenous population since this was precisely the point - that what the production system has to deal with is an aggregate pattern of demand or preferences - not the “strength of desire” for a product which is a subjective and therefore a personal individual matter.

The opportunity costs of people's consumption choices to some extent this would be taken care of via the social hierarchy of production priorties which would tend to ensure that high priority end uses are catered for first and foremost. Otto Neurath, an advocate of calculation in kind and opponent of any form of common unit of account, made the telling point that with calculation-in- kind you have a much more direct and immediate sense of, and sensitvity towards, the opportunity costs of your decisions. He was particularly concerned about environmental issues and the way in which capitalist cost asccounting tended to externalise environmental costs. In a free access socialist economy people are likely to be more, not less, sensitive to opportunity costs of their actions when these are no longer mediated through the distorting prism of some common universal unit of account - be it market prices or, for that matter, labour time values

Free access communism is all about individuals expressing their individuality. More than any other arrangement, it makes this possible. It is not a question of the community formally appoving or disapproving of your consumption habits but rather of it asserting its own priorities in which you as an individual have a say. It is not a question of some committee formally sanctioning or vetoing a request for some product Rather it is a case of a community setting its priorities in terms of how resources get to be allocated. If a community regards the construction of a health clinic as being a higher priority than a pizza outlet that does not have to mean the latter will not be built. It simply means that in the event that some of the material inputs each have in common (e,g,. certain building materials) are scarce then priority allocation will be to health clinic, That in turn might mean delays in building the pizza poutlet or perhaps switching to alternative building materials, There are many possibilities. But the point is that the construction of the health clinic is quite rightly secured. This is rational allocation

That may or may not have a bearing on what you as an individual might wish to consume insofar as it would influence the allocation of resources. For instance your desire for a luxury yacht may simply not be realisable because other things are deemed much more important. That doesnt mean luxury yachts wont be built; it just means they will have to wait at the back of the queue resource-wise and it does not preclude producing a boat for fishing or indeed recreational purposes, the debate is not about whether or not to build a fishing boat - there might well be ample resources to build it anyway - but rather about the commnity’s priorities in the first place. A free association of producers will make available what people are willing to work to produce. A vote to determine what an individual can have is totalitarian, yes, but a vote to determine what goes into the common store is hardly so. That goods should be provided, on an on demand basis and if everyone wanted to have a high-performance sports car, collectively, everyone would have to understand what was given up in terms of lost activity to achieve this - and, it would be observable, as stocks and production of other goods were run down. It would also be totalitarian to demand you work to produce a sports car, it would only be something that could be achieved by the free consent of labour.
"I want to have a sports car."
"We can do it, but my baby won't get a kidney machine."
"Oh well, i won't have a sports car, then."

How are new products introduced? Through the equivalent of what is today called "market research". Once a demand for a new product is estabished it then becomes a question of sourcing the inputs. Thats where the system of stock control comes in! the only way preferences can be expressed is in demand over the counter - if someone wants a newspaper, they want a newspaper - there is no way if they would be more or less disappointed than another person if they didn't get it. What we could measure, would be people prepared to demand scarce articles (i.e. those with a high demand:supply ratio), since we could infer that if they are prepared to wait/deny it to others, etc., then they must want it quite a lot. But that really is simple measuring supply/demand, and prioritising items with high demand ratios. Labour time is just a useful rough stick, a resource we could measure also in supply demand terms - if a branch of activity were taking a huge amount of the total undifferentiated social effort, we might want to look at it and make some collective decisions about it. You don't have to start out producing millions of units. You make a few thousand prototypes and measure how rapidly consumers take them from the store. Whether the individuals whose job is to develop new products (chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, etc.) can decide on their own to submit the requision to the manufacturing line, or whether some degree of management signoff is also needed, will be society's policy choice. From that point on, it shouldn't be the workers' choice whether or not they want to make them. It should be part of their job requirements to make the quantity needed to keep the orders filled. You can choose your career, but, within each career, you have to do the job that was socially planned. If you don't, you get no credit for showing up at work and you have no income. You can't have the problem of investing in a new product. If all socially owned industries are subdepartments of one organization, resources would come from interdepartment transfers, not investment. The number of people needed in each department would fluctuate when something new is invented, but then the problem becomes one of how to attract more people to work in the sectors where they are needed most, not a problem of investments.

Getting There

Capitalism is not going to collapse. It is not going to implode. There is no internal mechanism that would make this happen. Capitalism may be "catastrophic" in its consequences but the existence of a such consequences does not in itself signify that capitalism is about to "collapse". It is important to keep this distinction in mind. Some have tried demonstrate that there is a falling rate of profit and this will cause the system to grind to a halt. But this prediction has been thwarted, time and time again, by the action of Marx's famous counteracting tendencies. Since the early 19th century people have been confidently predicting capitalism would collapse. It hasnt happened and it wont happen.By not regarding the "proletariat" as something to be manipulated and socially engineered into agreeing with us and by recognising that we ourselves are simply workers and not some vanguard which has to take it upon itself to emancipate the rest of our class. it is our role to put across the case for socialism openly and honestly and not try to engineer our fellow workers into joining with through the advocacy of so called "transitional demands" and the like. The only way capitalism will come to an end is if a majority of workers decide to consciously replace with it non market-non statist-alternative. That, or the system is brought to an end by some external factor - a visiting comet from outer space, perhaps, or some catastophic world war

The first thing to be said here is that working class consciousness and socialist consciousness are not two separate things. It is a totally false dichotomy to suppose that they are. Marx differentiates between a class-in-itself and a class-for-itself. The consciousness of a class-for-itself corresponds, in my view, to a socialist consciousness. To put it differently, socialist consciousness is the awareness of a class of its own wage-slave status. It is important to understand that there is a kind of unresolved tension between the need to develop class unity within capitalism and the revolutionary desire to escape our status as wage slaves. The worker-ist attitude which celebrates the working class for its own sake, which sees socialism as being nothing more than working class empowerment, can be a reactionary belief which ironically keeps workers chained to capitalism. Instead of calling on workers to unite to abolish ourselves as a class, it remains simply at the level of calling on workers to unite for its own sake.

APPENDIX
The question of primitive communist societies in relation to a future moneyless socialist society is not unimportant. Specifically it ties in with the bourgeois claims about "human nature" that has often been raised against the possibility of socialism/communism. If 95% of our existence on this planet was without money it cannot reasonably be asserted that our human nature forbids us to abandon money.

The other point specifically about primitive communism is the claim, for example that it " ensured absolutely atrocious living standards because it was so unbelievably ill-equipped to deal with scarcity" This Hobbesian myth, effectively demolished by the likes of Marshall Sahlins, serves as an ideological prop for capitalism because the sub-text is that only by organising into class society and especially capitalism can we ensure an improving standard of living Empirically this is highly questionable. For one thing, Hunter-gatherer societies did not readily relinquish their way of life to embrace settled agriculture. Many Hunter-gatherer societies co-existed and interacted with settled agriculturalist or pastoralist societies over long stretches of time (for example, the San & Bantu-speaking tribes in Southern Africa, like the Xhosa, whose language interestingly enough showed the influence of the San by incorporating the distinctive "click" sound of the latter). So it was a matter of choice and preference as far as Hunter-gatherer societies were concerned. Insofar as their standard of living dropped or became precarious this was often as not as a result ofthem being marginalisied and forced out of their hunting territories onto more ecologically fragile land.

We have to be wary of the underlying assumptions of this whole modernist paradigm that what is the most "modern" and advanced - meaning capitalism - is the best and most productive and can ensure the highest possible standard of living and that what socialism has got to do is just go one better than capitalism in that respect. With regard to agriculture for example there has been a lot of recent literature reassessing the importance and productivity of traditional techniques and stressing the point that there is a lot we can learn from such techniques. We should not just assume modern equals better. In some cases, it is not. There are many example in the literature where traditional agriculture not only produces more per hectare than moder capitalist farming but is also a lot more sustainable Obviously we accept there is no way we can return to a hunter gathering society of primitive communism in a world of 7 billion + and rising. However we need to put the question of primitive communism in its proper context and not allow it to be usurped by the bourgeois mythmakers for their own ideological purposes

The above is a re-edited collection of posts on the discussion website RevLeft from Robin Cox of the World In Common group.