What Would Socialism Look Like?

7/27/2019 What Would Socialism Look Like?

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The richest 8.4% own more than 83% of the world's wealth = this does not exactly mean that they

own 83% of the world's things, because we measure wealth not in things but in money. They don'town the atmosphere, but that doesn't stop them from choing it in smoe. They don't own !"" the

forests #$ust yet, but that doesn't stop them from spilling oil all o&er them. To say that the richest

8% own 83% of the world's wealth is to say that they own 83% of the &alue of things that ha&ealready been assigned a &alue, that ha&e already been commodified and monetied. !s (radley has

already shown, nature is a 'free gift' to the capitalist accounts) money is an expression of &alue, thatis to say of labour time. To the extent that capitalist's measure their wealth in money, they are

measuring the amount of our labour that they ha&e appropriated. *n other words, if capitalists own,

say, 83% of the world's wealth, that means that 83% of all woring hours ha&e gone towardsenriching the world's wealthiest 8.4% + $ust 33 million people. To put that in perspecti&e, the rest

of the population #$ust under - billion people is supported by $ust -% of all labour. #This does notaccount for the 'free labour' of home maers or interns.

The /uestion 0what would socialism loo lie12 is first and foremost a /uestion of what might be

done if that tremendous producti&e energy were redirected for the benefit of humanity in general

rather than for this tiny minority.

(ut * do not want to $ump the gun. The /uestion is inherently speculati&e and tends to lead in the

direction of fantasy rather than solid analysis. The only way to a&oid utopianism is to treatsocialism as emerging from capitalism itself and the characteristics it forces upon those who

struggle against it.

The richest 8.4% own 83% of the wealth. (ut the rest of us don't $ust build their houses and catchtheir ca&iar. e also build the factories, the e/uipment, mine the coal, dig the wells, etc. e not

only wor the means of production, we also produce the means of production. e produce them,

the bosses own them. hich supposedly is what gi&es them the right to the things we produce usingthe machines that we also produced. ri&ate property in the means of production also means pri&ate

property in the products themsel&es) the bosses ha&e the 'right' to sell them, dump them, or hoardthem $ust as they please. These are what 5arxists refer to as the 0social relations of production2

under capitalism.

6ngels argued 0that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, theexchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure7 ... in e&ery society that has appeared

in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society di&ided into classes or orders isdependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged.2 *nother words, that the relations of production play a strongly determining role in the shape and

structure of society. To change society, therefore, necessarily means changing the social relations ofproduction.

The relations of production under capitalism means that we are forced to spend the ma$ority of our

waing hours woring for bosses we dislie in $obs that we hate + e&en our sleep belongs to thebosses) how often do we say 0* gotta get to bed early tonight, * ha&e lots of wor to do in the

morning2 9airly often we wor to produce, mo&e, or sell shit that we don't e&en want. (ut we do it

to get paid a wage so that we can buy things we need) food, clothes, entertainment, etc. :ften


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enough these things are shit too, but we learn to get by. (ut we 0get by2 as pri&ate consumers. :f

course, because the things we need are not part of the general wealth of society, we ac/uire them aspri&ate indi&iduals from other pri&ate indi&iduals. !nd as such, we are pri&ately responsible for

becoming successful pri&ate consumers.

erhaps the best example of the ind of ideology this system encourages comes from 5argaretThatcher, who famously claimed) 0* thin we'&e been through a period where too many people ha&e

been gi&en to understand that if they ha&e a problem, it's the go&ernment's $ob to cope with it. '*

ha&e a problem, *'ll get a grant.' '*'m homeless, the go&ernment must house me.' They're castingtheir problem on society. !nd, you now, there is no such thing as society. There are indi&idual men

and women, and there are families.2

*ts a familiar attitude) people who need help are so&ereign indi&iduals and ha&e no right to expectus to bail them out. The idea that e&en outside of emergency situations, we might share in each

others' li&es, tae responsibility for and with each other is totally foreign to this ind of thought. 9or

such people, e&en families are really $ust a ind of super;indi&idual7 a consuming household with4.< mouths. The result is a society more atomised + more anti;social + than any other historical

formation. :ne of the results of this, historically, is a fairly strict di&ision of labour within families.The one with the mammaries and uterus probably has a $ob, but also raises the ids, coos and

cleans and in general wors to reproduce not only the labour power of the next generation, but alsothat of the current one embodied in their spouse #the primary bread winner. The effecti&eness of

this set;up is maximised if a norm of heterosexuality is enforced.

9orms of oppression lie sexism, homophobia, trans;phobia, racism, abelism + all in one way oranother, allows the ruling class to exploit this section or that more than the a&erage, to pay the

oppressed poorer wages, in worse woring en&ironments, perhaps ghettoise them in the worst parts

of the cities, places where the ruling class can pollute or dump with greater impunity. (ut theseideologies also set worer against worer, one section of the oppressed against another, one section

of the exploited against another. The goal that we should ultimately set oursel&es is full humanliberation + that ought to mean a world free of oppression.

:ppression is constantly being produced by capitalism, so a different society offers at least the

possibility for such ideologies along with the structures and institutions that enforce them to at lastbe completely dismantled. (ut if people are as bigoted and debased as all that, how can we e&er

mae a better society1 !s 5arx pointed out ages ago) 0for the production on a mass scale of thiscommunist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of people> on amass scale is, necessary.2

The /uestion, therefore, is) how is this transformation to tae place. The 5arxist answer to this is

that the struggle for a better world itself transforms people. * thin all of us ha&e seen this lately.!cti&e struggle against oppression creates the best opportunities for the de&elopment of solidarity.

?adicalisation and anti;oppression sentiments are contagious. Thin about the occupation of Tahrir.:r thin of :ccupy + it began as a protest against corporate greed, how /uicly did it turn into a

breeding ground for resistance against e&ery ind of oppression1 @ere in Aanada, the struggle for

nati&e so&ereignty has immediately been in&ol&ed with struggles for en&ironmental $ustice, the

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social position of women, especially indigenous women, and e&en how we should relate to migrant

labourers. !nd perhaps the greatest period of radicalisation in li&ing memory + the late CDs +in&ol&ed struggles against racism, sexism, imperialism, colonialism, and ga&e birth to the Eueer

?ights mo&ement7 as well as lines of solidarity forged between all of these. Aonsider the (lac

anther arty, a group which when it first started was notorious for its sexism and homophobia butwhich ended with women's liberation and anti;homophobia as basic principles. The (lac ower

mo&ement is often caricatured as super macho, typified by the foolish claim of Ftoely Aarmichaelin C4 that 0The only position for women in the struggle> is prone.2 (ut if that sort of thing was

tolerated in C4, by C, two thirds of the blac panthers were women and they had de&eloped a

close relationship with one of the greatest blac feminists still li&ing) !ngela Ga&is.

There are se&eral pressures which lead to the de&elopment of this ind of consciousness. The most

basic is that when one group of people struggle against their oppression, it can inspire other groups

to do the same. 5ore importantly, almost e&ery form of oppression intersects with others. Hust asblac oppression necessarily includes the oppression of blac women, or blac /ueer people, so the

struggle against blac oppression necessarily also mobilised more than $ust straight blac men. The

mobilisation of the blac community was also the occasion for an internal de&elopment in whichblac women and /ueers demanded to be recognised and won their right to participate in the

struggle. The success of this internal struggle was a necessity for the mo&ement as a whole + whichcould not possibly ha&e won anything if it had excluded the ma$ority of the blac community. (lac

people who had absorbed not only a degree of self hatred, but also the rest of the bigotries that oursociety teaches ne&ertheless were capable of change. Their ideas were being shaen by the world

that they were changing and they were often con&inced of the rightness of the claims of blac

women and /ueer people.

There is only one social position whose struggles are expansi&e enough to include the struggles of

people of colour, of women, /ueer people, the disabled, etc. and that is the woring class. The

woring class is di&ided by these bigotries + and the di&ision helps the capitalist class maintain theirrule. The woring class therefore must o&ercome these di&isions in order to win anything. The

woring class contains much more than $ust straight, white, cis; dudebros. *t includes all thosedoubly oppressed by capitalist bigotry. The struggles of the class are therefore sub$ect to the same

pressures which were so transformati&e for the (lac anther arty. This is why the struggle for the

economic emancipation of the woring class is coterminous with the struggle for human liberationgenerally. !s 5arx and 6ngels wrote in the Aommunist 5anifesto) 0!ll pre&ious historical

mo&ements were mo&ements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarianmo&ement is the self;conscious, independent mo&ement of the immense ma$ority, in the interest of

the immense ma$ority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannotraise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.2

5ore importantly)

0(oth for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of

the cause itself, the alteration of people> on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can onlytae place in a practical mo&ement, a re&olution7 this re&olution is necessary, therefore, not only

because the ruling class cannot be o&erthrown in any other way, but also because the class

o&erthrowing it can only in a re&olution succeed in ridding itself of all the shit> of ages and become

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fitted to found society anew.2 repeat last clause>

The struggle for socialism cannot be won without also being, for example, anti;sexist + it follows

that a socialist world would be that much "6FF sexist right from the get;go, and creates theconditions for sexism and the patriarchy to finally be dismantled. Fo the struggle for socialism lays

the basis for a world free of bigotry and oppression. (ut what about economic emancipation, whatdoes that mean1

hen people thin about socialism two images come to mind. The first is this ind of impo&erishedworld where e&eryone wears blue;gray $umpsuits, has one child, and dri&es a tractor. The second,

more optimistic one, in&ol&es a world with a better social safety net and less income ine/uality. The&ision of socialism which * want to gi&e is much grander than either of these. (y socialism * mean a

world without classes, where e&eryone controls the means of production collecti&ely and therefore

also shares in the fruits of social production collecti&ely.

:nce again, to get a glimpse of what such a world would loo lie, we ha&e to first loo at

capitalism. !ny society that is sufficiently complex will in&ol&e certain di&isions of labour + simplybecause we can't all be doing e&erything all of the time. !t any gi&en moment, somebody has to be

producing crops, somebody has to be preparing food, writing songs, designing buildings,constructing them, somebody has to be minding the children, etc. e li&e in the ind of society

where such di&isions are relati&ely permanent) someone who farms is a farmer, anything else thatshe does is $ust a hobby. The reason that capitalism maes such roles relati&ely permanent is

because we ha&e to pay to gain new sills, and typically while we are learning new sills we are

earning a smaller income. Ie&ertheless it is at least possible to imagine a society where this wasn'tthe case. !s 5arx wrote, under capitalism, 0each man has a particular, exclusi&e sphere of acti&ity,

which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. @e is a hunter, a fisherman, aherdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of

li&elihood7 while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusi&e sphere of acti&ity but each

can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production andthus maes 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 e&ening, criticise after dinner, $ust as * ha&e a mind, withoute&er becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.2

(ut there is one di&ision of labour which exists only in class societies. *n class societies one groupof people produce the goods while another class + the ruling class + administers o&er the production

process. The ruling class decides how we wor, what we produce and how surpluses are in&ested.5arx called this di&ision #somewhat imprecisely, * admit the di&ision between manual and mental

labour. :n the side of the producers, capitalism has socialised the labour process to anunprecedented degree. The production of goods actually in&ol&es a staggering degree ofcooperation and coordination. hat that means is that production comes to included greater and

greater interconnectedness and dependencies within the whole of society. Aontrary to the opinion of5argaret Thatcher, capitalism is uni/ue in that it has drawn the ma$ority of the species into a single

massi&e directly interdependent society. Ie&ertheless, because the woring class produces and the

ruling class o&ersees, worers do not ha&e a good &iew of the total production process.

(ut from the perspecti&e of o&erseeing that production, on the other hand, the capitalist class,which, together with its managerial assistants, is meant to o&ersee the administration of this great

di&ision of labour has next to no understanding of the actual concrete re/uirements of the labour

process, and, because of competition, conspires to horde information, acti&ely pre&enting itself as a

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class from fully accessing the nowledge which is really a&ailable to it. *n fact, because there is

&ery little centralised planning and companies #largely confront each other as hostile competitorsthe precise nature of the social relations that mae up Jthe economyK is inherently mysterious. !

maret economy is made up of so many complex interactions that itKs not possible to understand

exactly whatKs going on, e&en though a great many economists, in&estment bans etc. de&ote a lotof energy to doing so and ris a lot of money on bets about what is liely to happen.

The resulting chaos is what is typically referred to as the 0genius of the maret.2

*n BDD8, for example, at the start of the last financial crisis, the LF go&ernment spent approximately3 metric fuc;tonnes of money bailing out the financial sector by basically throwing money at the

ma$or bans. The hope was that this would get bans to start lending again. *t didn't. Mears andyears of see&y lending practices had left all the bans with toxic debts + they all new that much.

hat they didn't now was exactly @: 5LA@ toxic debt each of their ri&als were left with.

ithout this nowledge, they would not ris lending.

Fuch corporate secrecy and competition are the stoc and trade of capitalism. *magine the world we

might li&e in if pharmaceutical companies pooled their research and data together rather than hid itbehind copyright and intellectual property laws. *magine how much could be sa&ed if food

producers weren't all tryng to swipe maret share from one another, but were instead coordinatingrationally to produce the best food in the amounts that were actually needed. e moan a lot about

food wasted at homes or restaurants + that is by pri&ate consumers + but the &ast ma$ority of food iswasted because too much is produced to be sold in the first place. Too much is produced to be

profitably sold, but people go hungry.

The ideologues of the ruling class lie to tell us that the maret is the most efficient form of

economic coordination. *n fact capitalism is the most wasteful society in history. Iot only in theterms of the staggering amounts of stuff it produces that ne&er gets consumed, but also in terms of

the staggering amount of resources thrown at stupid bullshit lie war, paying A6:s, the elaborate

and bloated system of brutal repression that eeps us all in our place, and Hersey Fhore. Thin abouthow much money is spent 0rationalising2 production + that is, in forcing worers to labour at the

maximum pace, lie robots or machines. Thin about how much research goes into this ind of'managerial science,' how much 'consultants' are paid to 'restructure' worplaces + maximising the

output of single factories, throwing worers out of $obs, sucing the $oy out of labour from those

who eep their $obs + all for what1 Fo that companies lie 5cGonalds can turn a C4C% profit on afilet;o;fish while paying their worers star&ation wages. They tell us that they need to exploit us so

hea&ily to eep the economy running + but they cannot e&en eep that promise. Io ruling class inthe de&eloped world has been as successful in eeping wages down than the !merican ruling class +

that did not stop the recession in BDD8, and it hasn't pre&ented the current 'reco&ery' from being theslowest and shallowest since the second world war.

*n place of this conspiracy of chaos, socialism offers rational, democratic planning. *n the place ofthe sham democracy offered by capitalism which maintains the dictatorship of the bosses o&er all of

the most &ital aspects, socialism demands the complete democratiation of social production. To

paraphrase 6ngels, in place of the domination of persons, socialism offers the administration ofthings, and the conduct of processes of production. e see the beginnings of such democratic and

collecti&e planning more often then you might thin. To use 6gypt again, thin about the way thedemonstrators more or less spontaneously organised for food, security, first aid, and the lie. :r

thin about factory occupations. :r e&en co;ops. *n these situations people get what they need not

because they can pay for it, but because their fellows ha&e organied to mae what they need


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a&ailable. @ow simple this is. The economy of such a set up is completely transparent. Aompare

this to BDD8 where more homes stood empty than there were homeless people, but nobody washoused ;; why1 Aertainly not because the police were throwing people out of their homes, chal it

up to the mysteries of the maret. To the problem of homelessness, socialists propose a radical

solution) put the homeless into the homes. @ow many people lost their $ob while factories stood idleand raw materials were dumped or allowed to rust1 !nother extremist solution) open the factories,

let the worers in. "et them mae the things that people need, let the people who need them ac/uirethem ;; a child would thin this ob&ious, but to capitalism, if a profit cannot be made then let people

and materials $ust rot. erhaps what * am proposing sounds impossible, but we manage such

miracles e&eryday. 5ost ma$or corporations are massi&e economies unto themsel&es, in&ol&ing thedistribution of parts, the mo&ement of materials, the coordination of extensi&e networs of labour)

does one side of a factory sell to another1 Goes one 9ord plant sell to another1 :f course not) theymanage production (69:?6 their cars get to the maret the same way a household does ;; by

figuring out what supplies are needed, what tass ha&e to be done and by when and then getting

them done. ! capitalist enterprise is lie a family with an abusi&e and dictatorial patriarch forcinge&eryone else to do his bidding ;; we should do to the bosses what we should do to abusi&e

husbands or fathers) ic em to the curb, and organise our li&es along lo&ing and practical

cooperation.

5y proposal depends primarily upon the struggle of the woring class for self;emancipation. :neof the reasons that the woring class is in a position to wage and to win such a struggle is that the

things that they do their wor on are not easily di&ided for personal use. Mou can't $ust cut up amodern worplace into self sustaining bits. Fo their labour is inescapably cooperati&e. "ie any

exploited class, the proletariat ha&e an interest in first impro&ing the conditions of their exploitation

and finally of ending it completely. Their indi&idual weaness and their shared class interests alsomae their forms of resistance spontaneously cooperati&e in a uni/uely democratic way.

Fe&eral things can get in the way of this spontaneous democratic impulse, union bureaucracy for

example. Ie&ertheless, this ind of democracy has been a feature of almost e&ery ma$or social

con&ulsion that worers ha&e been in&ol&ed in. This is because when worers organiseindependently for their own interests they can only do so as e/uals #that is they are e/ually

dispossessed of the means of production. orers' councils ha&e therefore, historically, been thecharacteristic form of such independent self;organisation. These councils, arising more or less

spontaneously from the practical re/uirements of the struggle are what worers use to coordinate

that struggle, to deliberate and mae political decisions, and to share information but also simply toeep themsel&es fed, to organise the defence against the police and strie breaers, or e&en the

military. eK&e seen such councils arise in 9rance, ?ussia, Nermany, Ahile, oland, @ungary,ortugal, Fpain, 9inland, *ran, The Lnited Ftate, and in embryo, in 6gypt.

The capitalist organisation of production has meant that worers must struggle together, not onlywithin a worplace, but across worplaces. Aapitalism fre/uently maes it both necessary and

possible for the woring class to offer a single united front against the ruling class. orerscouncils therefore become the instrument of woring class power and an alternati&e structure by

which to manage society + democratically, and from below.

*n the course of this, we often see capitalist use loc;outs against worers. (ut this is a double

edged sword. :ccasionally, worers respond to locouts by taing o&er the factories and running itthemsel&es. orers control + organised through such councils + cuts against the di&ision of

material and intellectual labour and maes the worers both producers and o&erseers of the

production process. !nd this potential is ultimately the basis of socialism.

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This ind of thoroughgoing democracy is what socialism offers in place of capitalism. The /uestion,0what would socialism loo lie12 is unanswerable concretely because people will for the first time

be empowered to freely, collecti&ely, and consciously shape society + socialism will loo lie,

whate&er a liberated humanity wants it too loo lie.

(ut, wait There's more. Fo far, we'&e only taled about taing o&er the means of production fromthe capitalists. (ut it has to be understood that these are not simply neutral instruments. 5ost of the

time they are designed to reduce the part played by the worer to the most minimal contribution. To

reduce the actions of the worer to the most robotic, repetiti&e, mo&ements set at an inhuman pace.e ha&e already seen that most of the 83% of the world's production has gone to enrichingf the

&ery rich. *f we got rid of those parasites and redirected all that time and resources towards meetingthe needs of e&eryone generally, we could all wor far less. There could be so much more time for

play, self de&elopment, and leisure. (ut with the democratic control of the means of production

comes the opportunity to transform labour processes. To maximise the satisfaction we get out ofmaing things, interacting with people, feeding people, caring for people. The sorts of rewards that

pre&ail in art and craft) the sense of concretely expressing your creati&e powers, of collaborating

producti&ely with people who share your interests, and of maing things that you yourself &alue andfeel proud of + that could become true for all production.

*magine a world where labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want + not only

a means of gaining satisfying goods, but satisfying in its own right. Lnder capitalism, we waste halfour waing day frustrating our creati&e powers, degrading our abilities, and $ust plain bored. !ll our

li&es are spent shacled to the profits of others. *magine a world dedicated instead to human $oy.

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What Would Socialism Look Like?