Communism: an alternative world
Communism (or socialism, the same thing as far as I'm concerned) is the only system within which the problems that now face workers can be solved?but what will it be like? Communism is a system in which the means for producing and distributing wealth will be owned by society as a whole. Communism will end the class monopoly of the means of production that exists in capitalism, converting what is now the class property of a few into the common property of all. Communism will be a genuinely classless society in which the exploitation and oppression of human by human will have been abolished. All human beings will be social equals, freely able to co?operate in running social affairs.
Drawing up a detailed blueprint for communism is premature, since the exact forms will depend upon the technical conditions and preferences of those who set up and live in communism, but the features essential to a communist society can be broadly outlined.
A full democracy.
Communism can only be democratic. At one time communism was also known as "social democracy", a phrase which shows well that democratic control would extend to all aspects of social affairs, including the production and distribution of wealth. There is an old communist slogan which speaks of "government over people" giving way to "the administration of things", meaning that the public power of coercion, and the government which operates it, will have no place in communism. The state, which is an organisation staffed by soldiers, the police, judges and jailers charged with enforcing the law, is only needed in class society for in such societies there is no real community of interest, only class conflict. The purpose of government is to maintain law and order in the interests of the dominant class. It is in fact an instrument of class oppression. In communism there will be no classes and no built?in class conflicts: everyone will have the same basic social interest. In these circumstances there is no need for any coercive machine to govern or rule over people. The phrase "communist government" is a contradiction in terms. Where there is communism there can be no government and where there is government there is no communism.
Those who wrongly assume that government and administration are one and the same will have some difficulty in imagining a society without government. A society without administration would indeed be impossible since "society" implies that human beings organise themselves to provide for their needs. However, a society without government is both possible and desirable. Communism will in fact mean the extension of democratic administration to all aspects of social life on the basis of the common ownership of the means of living. There will be administrative centres that will be clearing?houses for settling social affairs by majority decision.
But will the administrators become a new ruling class? Democratic organisation does indeed involve the delegation of functions to groups and individuals. Such people will be charged by the community with organising necessary social functions. They will be chosen by the community and will be answerable to it. Those who perform the administrative functions in communism will be in no position to dominate. They will not be regarded as superior persons, as tends to be the case today, but as social equals doing an essential job. Nor will they have at their command armies and police to enforce their will. There will be no opportunity for bribery and corruption since everybody, including those in administrative occupations, will have free access to the stock of wealth set aside for consumption. In short, the material conditions for the rise of a new ruling class would not exist.
Production without money
The purpose of communist production will be simply and solely to satisfy human needs and desires. Under present arrangements production is for the market with a view to profit. This will be replaced with production solely and directly for use. The production and distribution of sufficient wealth to meet the needs of the communist community as individuals and as a community will be an administrative and organisational problem; it will be no small problem but the tools for solving it have already been created by capitalism.
Capitalism has developed technology and social productivity to the point where plenty for all can be produced. A society of abundance has long been technically possible and it is this that is the material basis for communism. Capitalism, because it is a class society with production geared to profit making rather than meeting human needs, cannot make full use of the world?wide productive system it has built up over the last two hundred or so years. Communism, making full use of the developed methods of production brought in by capitalism, will alter the purpose of production entirely. Men and women will be producing wealth solely to meet their needs and desires, and not for the profit of a privileged few.
Unlike capitalism with its profit?driven economy, a communist system of production for use would operate in direct response to needs. Monetary calculation would be replaced by calculation in kind?that is, calculation in real quantities?and the market could be replaced by a self?regulating system of stock?control, a system initially built up by supermarkets and other retail outlets in capitalism. This system could work in the following way, without the need for a price mechanism. Real social?rather than monetary?demand would arise through individual consumers exercising their right of free access to consumer goods and services according to their self?defined needs, constrained only by what could be made available. Such needs would be expressed via the network of consumption outlet to units of production as required quantities such as grams, kilos, cubic metres, tonnes, etc, of various materials and quantities of goods requiring productive activity from the different scales of social production. There would be no need for a bureaucratic pre?determined allocative plan.
This system would be self?regulating in that each element of production would be self?adjusting to the communication of these material requirements. Each part of production would know its position. If requirements were low in relation to a build?up of stock, then this would be an automatic signal to a production unit that production should be reduced. Conversely, if requirements were high in relation to stock then this would be an automatic indication that production should be increased. Where particular factors of production were scarce or difficult to obtain for some reason, this would constitute a signal to economise on the use of that factor and to turn instead to more readily available substitutes. Any overproduction of goods, should it occur, would be in relation to real needs and not market demand and could be adjusted without the threat of slump. Clearly, planning and co?ordination of production in real communism would be nothing like the type of planning that existed in the former state capitalist dictatorships such as Russia.
Once the required amounts and kinds of goods and services have been produced, everyone will be able to take from the common store what they need to live and to enjoy life according to their individual choice and without payment of any sort. This is what was called above "free access" (and which Raoul has suggested be called "gratuitisme"). There will be no buying and selling and, consequently, no need for money.
The abolition of money, a non?market society, that's what communism means, or socialism or whatever you want to call it, even though these two terms have been so misused that it is tempting to abandon them.
A world without money (and not just without money of course, but without prices, wages, profits or banks either) is logical in that production is already collective and capable of supplying plenty for all. Such a society will be a truly human society in which people will relate to each other as people, and not as buyers and sellers, employers and employees, landlords and tenants?isolated atoms colliding in the market?place?as under the commercial and market society that is capitalism.
Who will do the dirty work?
Confronted by the idea of a communist system of production for use without the coercive state, money and the market, people are often sceptical. What about the lazy person? Or the greedy person? Who will do the dirty work? What will be the incentive to work? These are objections communists hear time and time again. These are perhaps understandable reactions to what seems, to those who have never thought about it, a startling proposition. As a matter of fact, behind these objections is a carefully cultivated popular prejudice as to what "human nature" is. But this prejudice has been repeatedly refuted by the findings of biological and social science and anthropological research which conclusively show that so?called human nature is not a barrier to the establishment of a co?operative society such as communism will be.
Work, or the expenditure of energy, is both a biological and social must for human beings. We must work to use up the energy generated by eating food. We must work also to provide the food, clothing and housing we need in order to live. So in any society, be it feudal, capitalist or communist, men and women must work. The point at issue is how that work should be organised. A very strong argument against capitalism is that it reduces so central a human activity as work to the drudgery it is for most people, instead of allowing it to provide the pleasure it could, and would, in a communist society.
To suggest that work could be pleasant often raises a laugh; but this only shows how much capitalism has degraded human life. Most, but certainly not all work under capitalism is done in the service of an employer so that people almost without thinking identify work with employment. Working for an employer is always degrading, often boring and unpleasant and sometimes unhealthy and dangerous. But even under capitalism not all work, as defined above, is done in the course of employment. Men and women are working when they clean their cars, dig their gardens, or pursue their hobbies?and enjoy themselves at the same time. So close is the misleading association of work with employment that many would not even regard such activities as work. They think that anything that is pleasant cannot by definition be work!
There is no reason at all why the work of producing and distributing useful things cannot be as enjoyable as are leisure?time activities today. The physical conditions under which work is done can be vastly improved. So can the relationships between people at work. Human beings, as free and equal members of a communist community, will no longer be selling their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary. The degrading wages system will be abolished so that there will be no such thing as employment. Instead, work will be done by free men and women co?operating and controlling their conditions of work, getting enjoyment from creating things and doing socially useful tasks. The waste, duplication of resources and unproductive labour that is characteristic of life in capitalism will cease?without a financial system and coercive state machine tens of millions of workers will be freed from performing tasks necessary only to private property society, and will be able to contribute to communism in a truly productive way.
In communist society there will be no social stigma attached to any kind of work. Nor will there be pressures, as exist at present, to continue industrial processes that are harmful or dangerous to those engaged in them. In any event, with human needs and enjoyment as the guiding principle, there will be no need for anybody to be tied to the same job continuously. The opportunities for men and women to develop and exercise their talents and to enjoy doing so will be immense.
Communism must be world?wide because the productive system which capitalism has built up, and which a communist society will take over, is already international. There will be no frontiers and people will be free to travel over the whole world. Communism will mean an end to all national oppression?and, indeed, in its current political sense to all "nations"?and to discrimination on the grounds of race, sex or sexuality. All the people of planet Earth, wherever they live, whatever their skin colour, whatever language they speak, really will all be members, at long last, of one vast human family.
Utopia?
So communism will be based on everything that is in and on the Earth having become the common heritage of the whole of humanity. Production will be carried on for the sole purpose of satisfying people's needs and no longer for sale or profit, and the principle "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" will apply. This idea is not something thought up by present?day communists but has been a dream of humanity ever since the dissolution of the "primitive communist" societies humans originally lived in.
Such a society is often dismissed as "utopian". But why be afraid of this word? There is no solution to today's social problems within capitalism, so we need to envisage a different society to replace it.
It is true that for a long time communism was only a good idea, an ideal society described by writers such as Thomas More without any relation to the possibility of its being able to be realised in the conditions of the time. Since the industrial revolution, however, communism has become a real possibility because its material basis is a productive system capable of producing enough goods and services to eliminate poverty and hunger everywhere in the world.
Here, then, is a first precondition that must be met before communism can be established: the development of the means of production to the point where they can supply plenty for all. This point was reached by the beginning of the last century with the internationalisation of production (which under capitalism took the form of imperialism) and with the electrification of industry. Every technological advance since then has only made communism more and more possible from a material point of view.
But communism is not just a question of technology. Far from it. An advanced technology is its material basis but it also depends on human will. Here also, capitalism has paved the way for communism by bringing into being a class of people whose interest it is to reorganise society on a communist basis.
This class is the class of wage and salary workers, of all those who are obliged to sell their labour power to live, i.e. with their dependants over 90 percent of the population in the industrialised parts of the world and including office workers, teachers, civil servants and other white?collar workers as well as manual workers (the "working class" in the inadequate, restricted sense). In other words, communism is in the interests of the vast majority of the population as being the only framework within which the problems that they face today can be tackled and permanently solved.
But it is for this majority itself to discover this, and to understand and want a communist society. Another communist principle says that "the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself" and in fact the establishment of communism could only be the conscious act of a conscious majority. This follows from the very nature of communism as a non?coercive, stateless society based on voluntary cooperation. So here is the second precondition for the establishment of communism: a communist majority which wants communism and understands its implications.
Of these two preconditions?a sufficiently developed world?wide productive network and a communist majority?the first has been in existence for a long time now but the second is far from existing. The tragic fact is that today the great majority of people accept capitalism (including in the form of the state capitalism that used to exist in Russia).
How, then, to reach a situation where a majority wants communism, thereby making its immediate establishment possible? What can be done today to hasten this process? That's the whole question. Spreading the idea of communism?evoking the vision of a different world?is surely a part of the answer.
Adam June 2002