Free Access: I want ten Ferraris!
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Further to Vin's other post, another argument we often hear against a world of free access is that it would enourage greed. Would everyone rush out 'the day after the revolution' to grab as many sports cars, jacuzzis, gold-plated toilets etc as they wanted? Here, we've argued that greed is a capitalist construct, and comes from a culture of enforced scarcity. But 'greed' is quite close to 'wanting more', and surely a big motivator for a revolution is to want more. I think production would have to increase a lot in the early stages of socialism to satisfy demand, even taking into account that a lot of work and resources used up in capitalism would no longer be needed.
This leads on to considering whether or not there would be enough resources for everyone worldwide to have access to enough goods, services etc to have a comfortable lifestyle. How would this be environmentally sustainable? How would socialism cope with distributing goods which are inherently scarce (as oil might be by then?).
Gandhi had a saying “The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed.”However, it is how you define greed that is the questionThere is a Situationist-influenced pamphlet called the Right to be Greedy (word-play on Paul Lafargue's Right to be Lazy)https://libcom.org/library/right-be-greedy-theses-practical-necessity-demanding-everything"Greed in its fullest sense is the only possible basis of communist society. The present forms of greed lose out, in the end, because they turn out to be not greedy enough."Free access and the accompanying argument that distribution will be to each according to self-defined needs, i think has been pointed out by Robbo and others on another thread that this is not actually literally true.It will be society as a whole which will define what needs are that are to have free access, not the individual. What is consumed will be socially decided in what and how much and even where production of various things will take place.We are of course not talking about a central command economy imposing limitations but social democracy being applied to allocation of necessities.
alanjjohnstone wrote:It will be society as a whole which will define what needs are that are to have free access, not the individual. What is consumed will be socially decided in what and how much and even where production of various things will take place.We are of course not talking about a central command economy imposing limitations but social democracy being applied to allocation of necessities.[my bold]I couldn't agree more with you, alan.But I think many posters here wouldn't agree with you, if pressed.There is a political conflict between 'each individual deciding their own personal needs and abilities', and 'society democratically deciding its members' social needs and abilities'.I interpret the famous statement of communism to mean the latter. Production means democracy.
Quote:we often hear against a world of free access is that it would enourage greed. Would everyone rush out 'the day after the revolution' to grab as many sports cars, jacuzzis, gold-plated toilets etc as they wanted? Here, we've argued that greed is a capitalist construct, and comes from a culture of enforced scarcity. But 'greed' is quite close to 'wanting more', and surely a big motivator for a revolution is to want more. I think production would have to increase a lot in the early stages of socialism to satisfy demand, even taking into account that a lot of work and resources used up in capitalism would no longer be needed.The aspiration for a world without war, by deed or proxy and poverty, absolute or relative, capitalism's twin inevitable concomitants, will be the motivational driving force for the socialist revolution and surely swamp conspicuous consumption excesses.
Engels wrote:We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.[…]Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.[…]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.So the individual demands will condition what is collectively made available.
Mike Foster wrote:This leads on to considering whether or not there would be enough resources for everyone worldwide to have access to enough goods, services etc to have a comfortable lifestyle. How would this be environmentally sustainable? How would socialism cope with distributing goods which are inherently scarce (as oil might be by then?).Needs will be self-defined at the individual and community level. Therefore, its safe to presume that free acess will be determined by the resources available at a regional level. As for goods which are inherently scarce the global community would have to decide on what alternatives are suitable and what form of rationing would be needed on resources which are scarce.Also not everybody will be seeking a comfortable lifestyle.
Also Engels wrote:But these, gentlemen, are far from being all the consequences of free competition. Since each man produces and consumes on his own without concerning himself much about what others are producing and consuming, a crying disproportion between production and consumption must, of necessity, quickly develop.[…] what is the real reason of this deplorable state of affairs? What gives rise to the ruin of the middle class, to the glaring contradiction between rich and poor, to stagnation in trade and the waste of capital resulting therefrom? Nothing else than the divergence of interests. All of us work each for his own advantage, unconcerned about the welfare of others and, after all, it is an obvious, self-evident truth that the interest, the well-being, the happiness of every individual is inseparably bound up with that of his fellow-men. We must all acknowledge that we cannot do without our fellow-men, that our interests, if nothing else, bind us all to one another, and yet by our actions we fly in the face of this truth: and yet we arrange our society as if our interests were not identical but completely and utterly opposed.[…] In communist society, where the interests of individuals are not opposed to one another but, on the contrary, are united, competition is eliminated. As is self-evident, there can no longer be any question of the ruin of particular classes, nor of the very existence of classes such as the rich and the poor nowadays. As soon as private gain, the aim of the individual to enrich himself on his own, disappears from the production and distribution of the goods necessary to life, trade crises will also disappear of themselves. In communist society it will be easy to be informed about both production and consumption. Since we know how much, on the average, a person needs, it is easy to calculate how much is needed by a given number of individuals, and since production is no longer in the hands of private producers but in those of the community and its administrative bodies, it is a trifling matter to regulate production according to needs.Defenders of capitalism have offered 'Ferrari's for All' in this bookhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Ferraris-All-Defence-Economic-Progress/dp/1847423469I'm still waiting on mine to be delivered.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Gandhi had a saying “The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed.”However, it is how you define greed that is the questionThere is a Situationist-influenced pamphlet called the Right to be Greedy (word-play on Paul Lafargue's Right to be Lazy)https://libcom.org/library/right-be-greedy-theses-practical-necessity-demanding-everything"Greed in its fullest sense is the only possible basis of communist society. The present forms of greed lose out, in the end, because they turn out to be not greedy enough."Free access and the accompanying argument that distribution will be to each according to self-defined needs, i think has been pointed out by Robbo and others on another thread that this is not actually literally true.It will be society as a whole which will define what needs are that are to have free access, not the individual. What is consumed will be socially decided in what and how much and even where production of various things will take place.We are of course not talking about a central command economy imposing limitations but social democracy being applied to allocation of necessities.I think you need to make a distinction between the procedure by which we set about meeting our needs in a socialist society and how we define these needs, Alan.. I am quite happy to go along with the argument that consumption patterns in socialism will be heavily socially influenced. We are after all social animals and in a socialist society where the mutual interdependecne of everyone is fully recognised of course individuals will take cognisance of the needs of others and adjust their own conusumption to some extent to allow those needs to better met. This does not even have to happen in quite the calculated and conscious fashion Ive described; people tend to adapt to the norms established by social practice in quite unconscious ways as a matter of course . It becomes just second nature so to speak,However it is one thing to say our individuals needs will be socially influenced and determined; it is quite another to say that society will decide what each of us gets to consume as individuals i.e. we will be all be rationed and allocated a fixed amount of goods as determined by "society as a whole". That would be moving towards the totally preposterous and unworkable idea of society wide central planning. The only way any kind of large scale society can function is if it has some kind of feedback mechanism. That of necessity rules out central planning and rules in some kind of mechanism of spontaneous adjustment of supply and demand to each other
i I appreciate the use of hyperbole etc but you have to sensible about this kind of thing and going too far spoils the analysis a bit. But to get one part out of the way as regards ten Ferraris. People do that kind of thing as it provides some kind of social status perverted as it maybe in capitalism. Having ten Ferraris in communism would work then, and would carry all the social status, of being caught with child porn on your PC. Perhaps we wouldn’t have Ferraris and gold toilet seats in communism because; Either we would democratically decide not to make them. Or what amounts to the same thing no-one would volunteer to work in factories making Ferraris and gold toilet seats. Gold miners, having some decentralised control about what happened to their work? might refuse to supply it to people who wanted to turn it into toilet seats. [If these things are still around I would suggest allocating them according to trial by combat to death.] However greed when it comes to consumption can be a bit subjective. I would define it as consuming a lot more than you produce, as measured by labour time. If people want to have, or actually more importantly use, a 25 foot yacht, a Ferraris or something like £15,000 superbike or something. And are prepared to ‘work’ for it in communism by doing 40 hours a week when the rest of us are doing 10 hours then that would be fair enough with me. Flipping over to the decadent consumption type people, should they exist in communism. We presume that the amount of stuff anyone can actually consume or use up is limitless in confounding it with possession. Even the infamous Imelda Marcos with her seven thousand per of shoes fortunately only had two feet and could if she tried use them up. If they insist on that kind of thing I would suggest letting them do it and ‘have’ seven thousand shoes. Without police and property rights etc of course there would be nothing to stop people turning up and taking them to use for themselves. Under such circumstances we would understand their distress and suggest that they take a careful note of what was taken and let us know and we would promise to replace them as soon as possible. They might like that idea and so should we as they would be happy then running community stores and performing a useful social function. When stuff is glorious and relatively unobtainable or has limited attainability it is easily imagined than given abundance and free access enough will never be enough etc. I loved Cadbury’s chocolate fingers and chocolate chip cookies when I was young. Then miraculously I went to work in the factory that made them in 1979. This place as it was in 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-12173304 Started off in the biscuit section and the fingers line; you could eat as much as you want as it came off the line. As well as the line that made the chocolate chips for the cookies, which was the best bit. It took about 1 week before I was sick of it and three before the smell of chocolate made me want to puke I asked for a transfer to the ‘tea house’, they made Typhoo tea bags as well. Never got sick of the tea though, even though you would think it was worse as there was so much tea dust your snot was brown. It used to settle on the floor like snow and the swept it up to sell to people who made vending machine instant tea stuff. So Neelix with water and replicators in star trek voyager had a kind of resonance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDPHW21R13E
You can only have free access to what has been made available…and even then it is limited. I'm not going to have free access to a locomotive engine, am i?What people individually want, is already roughly known today. How much groceries and of what. Socialism is going to do away with the scrimping and saving and the best will be available. And again the best is roughly known today from consumer surveys and users groups. (The Ferrari isn't going to be popular or anywhere near the top of demand for a vehicle but i think the recognition and recommendation of its quality built will be.)What i feel socialism will do is to fine-tune the demands that market researchers have already broadly determined and reduce the waste by ending the shoddy manufacture. Goods will be made by the three Rs, re-cyclable repairable and re-usable.Local customs and traditions that have existed despite capitalism will vary and be applied in a democratic process of decision-making. As i said not every production plan requires the approval of a central board. But there will be necessary world and regional administration to acquire what is needed and ensure they are delivered at local and community level.Again we have a sophisticated logistics and supply chain to inherit from capitalism. The field to fork is adaptable to our needs. I have been around the world and off the beaten tourist path – and never had a problem getting a cold coke…where coke went, so did the chill cabinet or ice maker.Yes we need to spell out it out more fully….but whenever i suggested it on this forum …i'm told we do not do blue-prints of future socialism
On re-reading my last post, it may seem that i envisage a socialism that is merely capitalism – but only better.In a sense that is correct. Capitalism has already organised production socially – but it is not socially owned or controlled, remaining in the hands of a few individuals and acting in their interests of them and not society's.But i fully take on board what others have said that our attitudes and psychology to what we consider to be our needs will change.This was brought out in the Marxist Animalism thread. Our ideas will change but what that topic also brought out – those will develop and evolve inside socialism and cannot be imposed on cultures that are not ready to adjust.Certainly, a lot of change will take place in the process of revolutionary action to establish socialism and the transformation of our belief-systems will have to undergo great changes for us to succeed in the class war. Doesn't Marx talk about the process of revolution is required to rid us of the shit of the past? Even today, membership of the SPGB is based on the conscious rejection of racism, nationalism, sexism and the other isms.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Yes we need to spell out it out more fully….but whenever i suggested it on this forum …i'm told we do not do blue-prints of future socialismWith all due respect its not a question of spelling it out more fully but trying to partially figure it out. So that human needs are democratically decided and enriched by the re-direction of wealth production. We have already figured out the decision making process more or less here: http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2016/no-1346-october-2016/what-could-socialism-beIt may be fruitful if we made a distinction between extravagent needs and 'normal' needs. In this respect we have stated human needs consist of: food, shelter, clothing, education and leisure.
I'm not blowing my own trumpet, Brian, but as you see from this forum topic, i have tried to focus our case on what is possible and how it can be made possible.Apart from yourself with an example of practical application and LBird, nobody else seemed much interested in adding his or her thoughts about the matterhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/blueprints-and-projections
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