"Every child knows that a nation which ceased to work, I will not say for a year, but even for a few weeks, would perish. Every child knows, too, that the masses of products corresponding to the different needs require different and quantitatively determined masses of the total labour of society. That this necessity of the distribution of social labour in definite proportions cannot possibly be done away with by a particular form of social production but can only change the mode of its appearance, is self evident. No natural laws can be done away with. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws assert themselves." Marx's letter to Kugelmann, July 11, 1868
Why not produce for use and need and distribute goods and services on the basis of how much socially necessary labour time we have put into them, matching that with how much a person puts in to the productive process?
"If we conceive society as being not capitalistic but communistic, there will be no money-capital at all in the first place, nor the disguises cloaking the transactions arising on account of it. The question then comes down to the need of society to calculate beforehand how much labour, means of production, and means of subsistence it can invest, without detriment, in such lines of business as for instance the building of railways, which do not furnish any means of production or subsistence, nor produce any useful effect for a long time, a year or more, while they extract labour, means of production and means of subsistence from the total annual production. In capitalist society however where social reason always asserts itself only post festum great disturbances may and must constantly occur. On the one hand pressure is brought to bear on the money-market, while on the other, an easy money-market calls such enterprises into being en masse, thus creating the very circumstances which later give rise to pressure on the money-market."
Capital, Vol. II (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1967), pp. 318-319.
Once we socially own and democratically manage the productive/distributive apparatus (which we have created through our own social labour), we can begin to question our work time (indeed, we should be doing that now):
Do we need yellow dye number 5 in our pickles?
No.
Subtract that time from the social necessary total.
Do we need ungodly amounts of ads to communicate what we, as an association of free producers, have created?
No.
Subtract that time from the socially necessary total.
And so on, until we realize the four hour day or less and along with that, a cleaner healthier planet and personal lifestyle. The rest of the time we have "on our hands" will be for us to play with, devils that we are, to create our own expressions of beauty, science, industry and self-mastery. We can argue about whether to socially or privately produce this or that use-value. That is part of the "administration of things". Private production? Yes, like parachute packing services for sky-divers.
Regards, Mike B)
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