Envisioning Another World: Creating a socialism that meets human needs

Thanks for that. One of the few attempts (apart from us) to describe how a non-market socialism might work. He doesn't think much of labour-time vouchers either.  I see it was originally published here and rejects the so-called "market socialism", the oxymoron put forward by other named critics of capitalism.

I think the author, Sam Friedman, is associated with the "Marxist-Humanists".

I know it is a bit different but I came across some stuff about capitalist utopia’s eg by Gillete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_C._Gillette it looks as if his second book might be more interesting I was wondering if anyone knew anything about it? This is what a Stalinist said of it  …..the capitalistic Utopias of Carver, Gillette and others for the workers directly to buy out the capitalist industries (expressed in their books respectively, The Present Economic Revolution in the United States and The People’s Corporation); the fatalism of Veblen who, in The Price System and the Engineers, maintains that capitalism will eventually, through the working of its inner contradictions, get into such a chronic and devastating crisis that in desperation society will spontaneously call upon the engineers to take over the operation of the industries and the government.  https://www.marxists.org/archive/foster/1932/toward/05.htm It is selling on Amazon for  $2500

 Its a good article – quite thought provoking – although I think possibly a little over prescriptive in places.  One of the points that perhaps needs developing is the balance between community needs and individual needs which has implications for a socialist democratic "praxis" – something I alluded to on the thread on "socialism and democracy".   I would be slightly concered about the idea of a “society based on socially-validated need" if this covers every conceivable need that individuals might entertainI think it is important to stress that in a future socialist society there needs to be quite a substantial component of automaticity about needs fulfilment and the need for demcratic decision making really arises in the contect of collective needs – that is to say where needs take a collective form and have a collective impact.  There is a balance to be struck between individual  "freedom" (implied in free access/volunteer labour) and "democracy".  Too much of one at the expense of the other can be harmful to socialist society in the long run. Has this guy been contacted by the SPGB? Its great to a come across articles like this…..

Hi Vin I doubt want to derail this thread, perhaps I need to start another. But what I found interesting about it. Was that a capitalist was analysing capitalism in pretty much the same way as the Marxists were. His central tenet was the increasing concentration of ownership and control of, say industrial production, which was bad, eg the 99.9% thing And the increasing alienation of the workers themselves being turned into cogs in machine which he appears to describe in ways that would be a credit to any Marxist. However he was not a ‘reactionary’ as he accepted the Marxist notion of necessary historical progress and the benefits of industrial production re productivity etc. Eg Masons post capitalism stuff?   And seemed to attack or criticise the increasingly dysfunctional nature of commercial or finance ‘capitalism’. Not only that he appears to be central to or part of a whole genre of mostly American thought from around 1880 including books that sold 2 million copies and others with several print runs, as well as H. G Wells Things to Come Technocratic utopia and engineers and scientists running the show re our Zietgiest friends H. G Wells Time Machine Bellamy’s Looking Backwards. Film Metropolis, written by Thea von Harbou and directed by her husband, Fritz Lang And reactions to it like William Morris.  I think a bod called Henry George was probably quite influential a started the ball rolling on that side of the pound. .. His most famous work, Progress and Poverty(1879), sold millions of copies worldwide, probably more than any other American book before that time. The treatise investigates the paradox of increasing inequality and poverty amid economic and technological progress, the cyclic nature of industrialized economies………. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George There is an element of disappearing up your own arsehole a bit with historical discussion of the development of ideas etc. And it does look like state capitalist bolshevism coming from the capitalist class instead of other pseudo ‘socialists’. Although it appears at least that Gillete was a democrat advocating a “World Syndicate”. Apparently Gilletes second expensive book was co written with Upton Sinclair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair Below is an analysis of Gillete;  The Human Drift which outlined in detail his belief that the traditional structuresof democracy were being slowly crushed by the tyrannical power of modern industry, and that the only way to prevent the calamity of a hostile corporate takeover on a national or global scale was to overthrow the existing world order and preemptively replace it with what he called a United Trust. This trust would be a single, all-powerful corporation that specialized in absolutely everything —the monopoly to end all monopolies. Its role would be to provide the whole population with meaningful employment and every necessity of life from the cradle to the grave. The trusts character and destiny would be controlled by its legions of employees, whose right to vote in company matters lay in their status as stockholders —this would be the new citizenship. Every company and government in the United States would be destroyed by this giant. All of their former employees and citizens would be folded into the corporate monolith’s swelling ranks until nothing and nobody else was left. At last the wasteful, brutal competition of the capitalist era would be replaced by cooperation, and corporate industrialism would be guided to achieve its full potential as the compassionate but supremely powerful liberator of humanity: “United Intelligence, Material Equality. And a Gilllete quote from  1910: Corporations will continue to form, absorb, expand, and grow, and no power of man can prevent it. [They] are the actual builders of a cooperative system which is eliminating competition, and in a practical business way reaching results which socialists have vainly tried to attain through legislation and agitation for centuries.To complete the industrial evolution, and establish a system of equity, only requires . . . support of “World Corporation”.

On the same theme I don't know if anyone has come across this site:https://communistleaguetampa.org/points-of-unity/