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Thursday, July 29, 2021

Post-capitalism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-capitalism

Post-capitalism is a state in which the economic systems of the world can no longer be described as forms of capitalism. Various individuals and political ideologies have speculated on what would define such a world. According to some classical Marxist and some social evolutionary theories, post-capitalist societies may come about as a result of spontaneous evolution as capitalism becomes obsolete. Others propose models to intentionally replace capitalism. The most notable among them are socialism, anarchism, and degrowth.

History

In 1993, Peter Drucker outlined a possible evolution of capitalistic society in his book Post-Capitalist Society.

In 1993, Peter Drucker outlined a possible evolution of capitalistic society in his book Post-Capitalist Society. The book stated that knowledge, rather than capital, land, or labor, is the new basis of wealth. The classes of a fully post-capitalist society are expected to be divided into knowledge workers or service workers, in contrast to the capitalists and proletarians of a capitalist society. In the book, Drucker estimated the transformation to post-capitalism would be completed in 2010–2020. Drucker also argued for rethinking the concept of intellectual property by creating a universal licensing system. Consumers would subscribe for a cost and producers would assume that everything is reproduced and freely distributed through social networks.

In 2015, according to Paul Mason the rise of income inequality, repeating cycles of boom and bust and capitalism's contributions to climate change has led economists, political thinkers and philosophers to begin to seriously consider how a post-capitalistic society would look and function. Post-capitalism is expected to be made possible with further advances in automation and information technology – both of which are effectively causing production costs to trend towards zero.

Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams identify a crisis in capitalism's ability and willingness to employ all members of society, arguing that "there is a growing population of people that are situated outside formal, waged work, making do with minimal welfare benefits, informal subsistence work, or by illegal means"

Variations

Anarchism

Heritage check system

Robert Heinlein

Heritage check system, a socioeconomic plan that retains a market economy, but removes fractional reserve lending power from banks and limits government printing of money to offset deflation with money printed being used to buy materials to back the currency, pay for government programs in lieu of taxes, with the remainder to be split evenly among all citizens to stimulate the economy (termed a "heritage check" for which the system is named). As presented by the original author of the idea, Robert Heinlein, in his book For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs, the system would be self-reinforcing and eventually result in a regular heritage checks able to provide a modest living for most citizens.

Economic democracy

Participatory economy

In his book Of the People, By the People: The Case for a Participatory Economy, Robin Hahnel describes a post-capitalist economy called the participatory economy. The book ends with the proposal of the Green New Deal, a package of policies that address climate change and financial crises.

The participatory economy focuses on the participation of all citizens through the creation of worker councils and consumer councils. Hahnel emphasizes the direct participation of worker and consumers rather than appointing representatives. The councils are concerned with large-scale issues of production and consumption and are broken into various bodies tasked with researching future development projects.

In a participatory economy, economic rewards would be offered according to need, the amount of which would be determined democratically by the workers council. Hahnel also calls for "economic justice" by rewarding people for their effort and diligence rather than accomplishments or prior ownership. A worker's effort is to be determined by their co-workers. Consumption rights are then rewarded according to the effort ratings. The worker has the choice to decide what they consume using their consumption rights. Hahnel does not address the idea of money, currency, or how consumption rights would be tracked.

Planning in a participatory economy is done through the councils. The process is horizontal across the committees as opposed to vertical. All council members, the workers and consumers, participate directly in planning unlike in Soviet-type economies and other democratic planning proposals in which planning is done by representatives. Planning is an iterative procedure, always being changed and improved upon, that is accomplished at the level of either work or consumption. All information and proposals are freely available to everyone, those inside and outside of the council, so that the social cost of each proposal can be determined and voted on. Long-term plans such as structuring public transportation, residential zones and recreational areas, are to be proposed by delegates and approved by direct democracy (i.e. voting by the population).

Hahnel argues that a participatory economy will return empathy to our purchasing choices. Capitalism removes the knowledge of how and by whom a product was made: "When we eat a salad the market systematically deletes information about the migrant workers who picked it". By removing the human element from goods, consumers only consider their own satisfaction and need when consuming products. Introducing worker and consumer councils would reintroduce the knowledge of where, how and by whom products were manufactured. A participatory economy is expected to also introduce more socially oriented goods, such as parks, clean air, and public health care, through the interaction of the two councils.

For those that call the participatory economy utopian, Albert and Hahnel counter:

Are we being utopian? It is utopian to expect more from a system than it can possibly deliver. To expect equality and justice—or even rationality—from capitalism is utopian. To expect social solidarity from markets, or self-management from central planning, is equally utopian. To argue that competition can yield empathy or that authoritarianism can promote initiative or that keeping most people from decision making can employ human potential most fully: these are utopian fantasies without question. But to recognize human potentials and to seek to embody their development into a set of economic institutions and then to expect those institutions to encourage desirable outcomes is no more than reasonable theorizing. What is utopian is not planting new seeds but expecting flowers from dying weeds.

Socialism

Paul Mason
 
Michael Albert

Helpful definitions surrounding socialism:

Socialism often implies common ownership of companies and a planned economy, though as an inherently pluralistic ideology, it is argued whether either are essential features. In his book PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future, Paul Mason argues that centralized planning, even with the advanced technology of today, is unachievable. Rejecting central planning as both technically unachievable and undesirable, Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel argue that democratic planning provides a viable basis for creating a participatory economy.

In UK politics, strands of Corbynism and the Labour party have adopted this 'postcapitalist' tendency.

Permaculture

Permaculture is defined by its co-originator Bill Mollison as "The conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive systems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems," and combines elements of socialism, anarchism, and home-based economics to envision and create a society that can persist and thrive in a world where capitalist ideologies have been abandoned.

Technology as a driver of post-capitalism

Much of the speculation surrounding the proposed fate of the capitalist system stems from predictions about the future integration of technology into economics. The evolution and increasing sophistication of both automation and information technology is said to threaten jobs and highlight internal contradictions in Capitalism which will allegedly ultimately lead to its collapse.

Automation

David Graeber

Technological change which has driven unemployment has historically been as a result of 'mechanical-muscle' machines which have reduced the need for human labour. Just as horses were once employed but were gradually made obsolete by the invention of the automobile, humans' jobs have also been affected throughout history. A modern example of this technological unemployment is the replacement of retail cashiers by self-service checkouts. The invention and development of 'mechanical-mind' processes or “brain labour” is thought to threaten jobs at an unprecedented scale, with Oxford Professors Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne estimating that 47 percent of US jobs are at risk of automation. If this leads to a world where human labour is no longer needed then our current market system models, which rely on scarcity, may have to adapt or fail. It is argued that this has been a factor in the creation of many of what David Graeber calls 'bullshit jobs', where, in large bureaucracies, production of anything is not the goal, but exist solely for reasons such as providing sociological benefit to the manager employing them.

Information technology

Post-capitalism is said to be possible due to major changes information technology has brought about in recent years. It has blurred the edges between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages. Significantly, information is corroding the market's ability to form prices correctly. Information is abundant and information goods are freely replicable. Goods such as music, software or databases do have a production cost, but once made can be copied/pasted infinitely. If the normal price mechanism of capitalism prevails, then the price of any good which has essentially no cost of reproduction will fall towards zero. This lack of scarcity is a problem for our models, which try to counter by developing monopolies in the form of giant tech companies to keep information scarce and commercial. But many significant commodities in the digital economy are now free and open-source, such as Linux, Firefox, and Wikipedia.

 

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Compassionate conservatism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassionate_conservatism

Compassionate conservatism is an American political philosophy that stresses using conservative techniques and concepts in order to improve the general welfare of society. The philosophy supports the implementation of policies designed to help the disadvantaged and alleviate poverty through the free market, envisaging a triangular relationship between government, charities and faith-based organizations. The term entered more mainstream parlance between 2001- 2009, during the administration of US President George W. Bush. He used the term often to describe his personal views and embody some parts of his administration's agenda & policy approach.

The term itself is often credited to the American historian and politician Doug Wead, who used it as the title of a speech in 1979. Although its origins lie mostly in accepted economic principles, some applications of it have been criticized as paternalism. This label and philosophy has been espoused by Republican and Democratic politicians since then.

Other American Presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Dwight D. Eisenhower have also been described as Compassionate Conservatives. The term has also been used in the United Kingdom by former Prime Minister David Cameron, and in New Zealand by former Prime Minister John Key.

The term compassionate conservatism has been applied to the Christian democratic political parties. However, Christian Democrats are far more interventionist in the economy.

Origins of the term

Historian and presidential advisor Doug Wead may have been the first person to use the phrase compassionate conservative. In 1977, Wead wrote a book about Kolkata, India, entitled The Compassionate Touch. In 1979, he gave a popular speech entitled "The Compassionate Conservative" at the annual Washington Charity Dinner. Tapes of the speech were sold across the country at corporate seminars.

Wead contended that the policies of Republican conservatives should be motivated by compassion, not protecting the status quo. And Wead declared himself to be "a bleeding heart conservative," meaning that he cared for people and sincerely believed that a free marketplace was better for the poor.

In 1981, in a perhaps-unrelated usage, Vernon Jordan of the National Urban League said, of the Reagan administration,

I do not challenge the conservatism of this Administration. I do challenge its failure to exhibit a compassionate conservatism that adapts itself to the realities of a society ridden by class and race distinction.

— Vernon Jordan

In 1982, Wead co-authored with Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, James G. Watt, the book The Courage of a Conservative and developed his ideas further in chapter five of the book, which was entitled "The Compassionate Conservative."

In 1984, U.S. Representative James R. Jones (D-OK) told The New York Times:

I think we should adopt the slogan of compassionate conservatism...We can be fiscally conservative without losing our commitment to the needy and we must redirect our policy in that direction.

— Rep. James R. Jones

Earlier the same year Republican Ray Shamie proclaimed that "I believe in a visionary and compassionate conservatism"

In June 1986, Wead wrote an article for the Christian Herald, describing then-vice-president George H. W. Bush, to whom he served as an aide, as a "compassionate conservative."

According to journalist Jacob Weisberg, George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush's son, first picked up the term "compassionate conservative" from Wead, in 1987.

In 1992, when Doug Wead ran for U.S. Representative from Arizona, he wrote a campaign book entitled Time for a Change. The first chapter was called "The Compassionate Conservative" and outlined Wead's philosophy that the masses didn't care if Republican policies worked if the attitude and purpose behind the policies were uncaring.

Some insist the doctrine was invented by Dr. Marvin Olasky, who went on to memorialize it in his books Renewing American Compassion (1996) and Compassionate Conservatism: What it is, What it Does, and How it Can Transform America (2000), and Myron Magnet of the Manhattan Institute. Olasky has been called the "godfather of compassionate conservatism".

The phrase was popularized when George W. Bush adopted it as one of his key slogans during his 2000 presidential campaign against Al Gore. Bush also wrote the foreword to Olasky's Compassionate Conservatism. Olasky said others had come up with the term first.

As a political descriptor

Use in the 1990s

Compassionate conservatism has been defined as the belief that conservatism and compassion complement each other. A compassionate conservative might see the social problems of the United States, such as health care or immigration, as issues that are better solved through cooperation with private companies, charities, and religious institutions rather than directly through government departments. As former Bush chief speechwriter Michael Gerson put it, "Compassionate conservatism is the theory that the government should encourage the effective provision of social services without providing the service itself."

Magnet and Olasky said 19th century compassionate conservatism was based in part on the Christian doctrine of original sin, which held that “Man is sinful and likely to want something for nothing. … Man’s sinful nature leads to indolence.”

In the words of Magnet,

Compassionate conservatives [...] offer a new way of thinking about the poor. They know that telling the poor that they are mere passive victims, whether of racism or of vast economic forces, is not only false but also destructive, paralyzing the poor with thoughts of their own helplessness and inadequacy. The poor need the larger society's moral support; they need to hear the message of personal responsibility and self-reliance, the optimistic assurance that if they try – as they must – they will make it. They need to know, too, that they can't blame "the system" for their own wrongdoing.

— Myron Magnet, The Wall Street Journal

Compassionate conservative philosophy argues for policies in support of traditional families, welfare reform to promote individual responsibility (cf. workfare), active policing, standards-based schools (cf. No Child Left Behind Act), and assistance (economic or otherwise) to poor countries around the world.

U.S. president George W. Bush said:

"It is compassionate to actively help our citizens in need. It is conservative to insist on accountability and results."

— President George W. Bush

Bush began his presidency hoping to make compassionate conservatism his centerpiece. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, he focused less on this theme, but, according to professor and author Ira Chernus, its fundamental ideas became central in his rhetoric about the War on Terrorism.

Reception and criticism

Nicholas Lemann, writing in New Yorker magazine in 2015, wrote that George W. Bush's "description of himself, in the 2000 campaign, as a 'compassionate conservative' was brilliantly vague—liberals heard it as 'I'm not all that conservative,' and conservatives heard it as 'I'm deeply religious.' It was about him as a person, not a program."

In a July 1999 speech to the Democratic Leadership Council, then-President Bill Clinton criticized Bush's "compassionate conservative" self-description, saying: "This 'compassionate conservatism' has a great ring to it, you know? It sounds so good. And I've really worked hard to try to figure out what it means... I made an honest effort, and near as I can tell, here's what it means: It means, 'I like you. I do. And I would like to be for the patients' bill of rights and I'd like to be for closing the gun show loophole, and I'd like not to squander the surplus and, you know, save Social Security and Medicare for the next generation. I'd like to raise the minimum wage. I'd like to do these things. But I just can't, and I feel terrible about it.'" Similarly, in December 2005, then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, speaking in the House of Commons, said: "the only difference between compassionate conservatism and conservatism is that under compassionate conservatism they tell you they're not going to help you but they're really sorry about it."

Some critics of George W. Bush criticized the phrase "compassionate conservatism" as simply sugarcoating, an empty phrase to make traditional conservatism sound more appealing to moderate voters. Liberal commentator Joe Conason, noting Bush's policy of tax cuts, wrote in 2003 that "so far, being a 'compassionate conservative' appears to mean nothing very different from being a hardhearted, stingy, old-fashioned conservative." Others on the left have viewed it as an effort to remove America's social safety net out of the hands of the government and give it to Christian churches. "Liberals make a big mistake if they dismiss 'compassionate conservatism' as just a hypocritical catch phrase," wrote University of Colorado religion professor Ira Chernus. "For the right, it is a serious scheme to give tax dollars to churches through so-called 'faith-based initiatives.'"  Nobel Prize–winning Keynesian economist and columnist Paul Krugman has called it a "dog whistle" to the religious right, referencing Marvin Olasky's The Tragedy of American Compassion, who believed the poor must help themselves and that poverty was the fault not of society but of the poor and of social workers. Krugman endorses Digby's analysis that right-wing compassionate 'charity' assumes that the giver has the right to investigate and dictate the life of the receiver, even for the smallest charity.

Conversely, the phrase has also been attacked from the right. John J. DiIulio, Jr. wrote that Bush's "Duty of Hope" speech, delivered in Indianapolis in May 1999, drew a "negative reaction from his party's right wings. ... Many Republican conservative activists hated the center-hugging 'compassionate conservative.' Others favored it, but only as a rhetorical Trojan Horse. If a 'compassionate conservative' was actually a government-shrinking libertarian in religious drag, then fine. But, if Bush really meant what he said, Gore-like, about volunteerism not being enough .... or about rejecting as 'destructive' the Reagan-tested idea that government itself is the main problem, then many conservative Republicans would not suffer it." Herman Cain criticized the idea of "compassionate conservatism" as leading to the Bush administration's increased government spending, saying that it "completely betrayed conservative voters and their decades of grassroots activism," and "alienated the party's conservative base," noting Bush policies such as the Medicare prescription-drug benefit, which increased the size of the Medicare program by around $500 billion.

In 2006, conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg has written that compassionate conservatism as implemented by George W. Bush differs markedly from the theoretical concept: "As countless writers have noted in National Review over the last five years, most conservatives never really understood what compassionate conservatism was, beyond a convenient marketing slogan to attract swing voters. The reality — as even some members of the Bush team will sheepishly concede — is that there was nothing behind the curtain." Similarly, conservative commentator Fred Barnes wrote: "Bush has famously defined himself as a compassionate conservative with a positive agenda. Almost by definition, this makes him a big government conservative."

Decline

The phrase and the idea of compassionate conservativism declined after the Bush administration left office. In December 2011, Christian commentator Jim Wallis of Sojourners, citing harsh rhetoric toward the poor and immigrants from candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, wrote that "the compassionate conservative agenda has virtually disappeared from the Republican Party." In January 2012, commentator Amy Sullivan wrote that "Just three years after George W. Bush left the White House, compassionate conservatives are an endangered species. In the new Tea Party era, they've all but disappeared from Congress, and their philosophy is reviled within the GOP as big-government conservatism." Sullivan noted that Republican presidential candidates "have jostled to take the hardest line in opposing government-funded programs to help the poor." The Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson made similar observations.

Other Usage

United Kingdom

According to a 2006 report by the British think tank Policy Exchange, "compassionate conservative" was "one of the most prominent themes" of the Conservative Party under David Cameron. In speeches and the party's statement of aims and values around 2005 and 2006, Cameron and other senior Conservatives emphasized a "modern, compassionate conservatism" theme. At the 2011 Conservative Party Conference, the party released a pamphlet titled Modern Compassionate Conservatism, which senior leaders such as Cameron and foreign secretary William Hague claimed had pushed for "compassionate" and "cuddly" policies. In 2015, Michael Gove claimed David Cameron was "a modern, compassionate Conservative." The "compassionate conservative" idea was supposed to be a way for the Conservatives to distance themselves from their "Nasty Party" image.

Christian democracy

Political commentator Jane Louise Kandur has used the term "compassionate conservatism" to describe Christian democratic political parties, with their support of labour unions and church-established schools and hospitals. While Christian democrats uphold social conservatism, they advocate for human rights and social justice, being in support of the welfare state. However, unlike the American philosophy, Christian Democratic parties are far more supportive of government intervention in the economy.

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Communist society

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society

In Marxist thought, a communist society or the communist system is the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of communism. A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless and stateless, implying the end of the exploitation of labour.

Communism is a specific stage of socioeconomic development predicated upon a superabundance of material wealth, which is postulated to arise from advances in production technology and corresponding changes in the social relations of production. This would allow for distribution based on need and social relations based on freely-associated individuals.

The term communist society should be distinguished from the Western concept of the communist state, the latter referring to a state ruled by a party which professes a variation of Marxism–Leninism.

Economic aspects

A communist economic system would be characterized by advanced productive technology that enables material abundance, which in turn would enable the free distribution of most or all economic output and the holding of the means of producing this output in common. In this respect communism is differentiated from socialism, which, out of economic necessity, restricts access to articles of consumption and services based on one's contribution.

In further contrast to previous economic systems, communism would be characterized by the holding of natural resources and the means of production in common as opposed to them being privately owned (as in the case of capitalism) or owned by public or cooperative organizations that similarly restrict their access (as in the case of socialism). In this sense, communism involves the "negation of property" insofar as there would be little economic rationale for exclusive control over production assets in an environment of material abundance.

The fully developed communist economic system is postulated to develop from a preceding socialist system. Marx held the view that socialism—a system based on social ownership of the means of production—would enable progress toward the development of fully developed communism by further advancing productive technology. Under socialism, with its increasing levels of automation, an increasing proportion of goods would be distributed freely.

Social aspects

Individuality, freedom and creativity

A communist society would free individuals from long working hours by first automating production to an extent that the average length of the working day is reduced and second by eliminating the exploitation inherent in the division between workers and owners. A communist system would thus free individuals from alienation in the sense of having one's life structured around survival (making a wage or salary in a capitalist system), which Marx referred to as a transition from the "realm of necessity" to the "realm of freedom". As a result, a communist society is envisioned as being composed of an intellectually-inclined population with both the time and resources to pursue its creative hobbies and genuine interests, and to contribute to creative social wealth in this manner. Karl Marx considered "true richness" to be the amount of time one has at his disposal to pursue one's creative passions. Marx's notion of communism is in this way radically individualistic.

In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labor which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production.

—Capital, Volume III, 1894

Marx's concept of the "realm of freedom" goes hand-in-hand with his idea of the ending of the division of labor, which would not be required in a society with highly automated production and limited work roles. In a communist society, economic necessity and relations would cease to determine cultural and social relations. As scarcity is eliminated, alienated labor would cease and people would be free to pursue their individual goals. Additionally, it is believed that the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" could be fulfilled due to scarcity being non-existent.

Politics, law and governance

Marx and Engels maintained that a communist society would have no need for the state as it exists in contemporary capitalist society. The capitalist state mainly exists to enforce hierarchical economic relations, to enforce the exclusive control of property, and to regulate capitalistic economic activities—all of which would be non-applicable to a communist system.

Engels noted that in a socialist system the primary function of public institutions will shift from being about the creation of laws and the control of people into a technical role as an administrator of technical production processes, with a decrease in the scope of traditional politics as scientific administration overtakes the role of political decision-making. Communist society is characterized by democratic processes, not merely in the sense of electoral democracy, but in the broader sense of open and collaborative social and workplace environments.

Marx never clearly specified whether or not he thought a communist society would be just; other thinkers have speculated that he thought communism would transcend justice and create society without conflicts, thus, without the needs for rules of justice.

Transitional stages

Marx also wrote that between capitalist and communist society, there would be a transitory period known as the dictatorship of the proletariat. During this preceding phase of societal development, capitalist economic relationships would gradually be abolished and replaced with socialism. Natural resources would become public property, while all manufacturing centers and workplaces would become socially owned and democratically managed. Production would be organized by scientific assessment and planning, thus eliminating what Marx called the "anarchy in production". The development of the productive forces would lead to the marginalization of human labor to the highest possible extent, to be gradually replaced by automated labor.

Open-source and peer production

Many aspects of a communist economy have emerged in recent decades in the form of open-source software and hardware, where source code and thus the means of producing software is held in common and freely accessible to everyone; and to the processes of peer production where collaborative work processes produce freely available software that does not rely on monetary valuation.

Ray Kurzweil posits that the goals of communism will be realized by advanced technological developments in the 21st century, where the intersection of low manufacturing costs, material abundance and open-source design philosophies will enable the realization of the maxim "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

In Soviet ideology

The communist economic system was officially enumerated as the ultimate goal of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in its party platform. According to the 1986 Programme of the CPSU:

Communism is a classless social system with one form of public ownership of the means of production and with full social equality of all members of society. Under communism, the all-round development of people will be accompanied by the growth of the productive forces on the basis of continuous progress in science and technology, all the springs of social wealth will flow abundantly, and the great principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" will be implemented. Communism is a highly organised society of free, socially conscious working people a society in which public self-government will be established, a society in which labour for the good of society will become the prime vital requirement of everyone, a clearly recognised necessity, and the ability of each person will be employed to the greatest benefit of the people.

The material and technical foundation of communism presupposes the creation of those productive forces that open up opportunities for the full satisfaction of the reasonable requirements of society and the individual. All productive activities under communism will be based on the use of highly efficient technical facilities and technologies, and the harmonious interaction of man and nature will be ensured.

In the highest phase of communism the directly social character of labor and production will become firmly established. Through the complete elimination of the remnants of the old division of labor and the essential social differences associated with it, the process of forming a socially homogeneous society will be completed.

Communism signifies the transformation of the system of socialist self-government by the people, of socialist democracy into the highest form of organization of society: communist public self-government. With the maturation of the necessary socioeconomic and ideological preconditions and the involvement of all citizens in administration, the socialist state—given appropriate international conditions—will, as Lenin noted, increasingly become a transitional form "from a state to a non-state". The activities of state bodies will become non-political in nature, and the need for the state as a special political institution will gradually disappear.

The inalienable feature of the communist mode of life is a high level of consciousness, social activity, discipline, and self-discipline of members of society, in which observance of the uniform, generally accepted rules of communist conduct will become an inner need and habit of every person.

Communism is a social system under which the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all.

In Vladimir Lenin's political theory, a classless society would be a society controlled by the direct producers, organized to produce according to socially managed goals. Such a society, Lenin suggested, would develop habits that would gradually make political representation unnecessary, as the radically democratic nature of the Soviets would lead citizens to come to agree with the representatives' style of management. Only in this environment, Lenin suggested, could the state wither away, ushering in a period of stateless communism. 

In Soviet ideology, Marx's concepts of the "lower and higher phases of communism" articulated in the Critique of the Gotha Program were reformulated as the stages of "socialism" and "communism". The Soviet state claimed to have begun the phase of "socialist construction" during the implementation of the first Five-Year Plans during the 1930s, which introduced a centrally planned, nationalized/collectivized economy. The 1962 Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, published under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, claimed that socialism had been firmly established in the USSR, and that the state would now progress to the "full-scale construction of communism", although this may be understood to refer to the "technical foundations" of communism more so than the withering away of the state and the division of labor per se. However, even in the final edition of its program before the party's dissolution, the CPSU did not claim to have fully established communism, instead claiming that the society was undergoing a very slow and gradual process of transition.

Fictional portrayals

The Culture novels by Iain M Banks are centered on a communist post-scarcity economy where technology is advanced to such a degree that all production is automated, and there is no use for money or property (aside from personal possessions with sentimental value). Humans in the Culture are free to pursue their own interests in an open and socially-permissive society. The society has been described by some commentators as "communist-bloc" or "anarcho-communist". Banks' close friend and fellow science fiction writer Ken MacLeod has said that The Culture can be seen as a realization of Marx's communism, but adds that "however friendly he was to the radical left, Iain had little interest in relating the long-range possibility of utopia to radical politics in the here and now. As he saw it, what mattered was to keep the utopian possibility open by continuing technological progress, especially space development, and in the meantime to support whatever policies and politics in the real world were rational and humane."

The economy and society of the United Federation of Planets in the Star Trek franchise has been described as a communist society where material scarcity has been eliminated due to the wide availability of replicator technology that enables free distribution of output, where there is no need for money.

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Utopian socialism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

Utopian socialism is the term often used to describe the first current of modern socialism and socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Étienne Cabet, and Robert Owen. Utopian socialism is often described as the presentation of visions and outlines for imaginary or futuristic ideal societies, with positive ideals being the main reason for moving society in such a direction. Later socialists and critics of utopian socialism viewed utopian socialism as not being grounded in actual material conditions of existing society and in some cases as reactionary. These visions of ideal societies competed with Marxist-inspired revolutionary social democratic movements.

As a term or label, utopian socialism is most often applied to, or used to define, those socialists who lived in the first quarter of the 19th century who were ascribed the label utopian by later socialists as a pejorative in order to imply naiveté and to dismiss their ideas as fanciful and unrealistic. A similar school of thought that emerged in the early 20th century which makes the case for socialism on moral grounds is ethical socialism.

One key difference between utopian socialists and other socialists such as most anarchists and Marxists is that utopian socialists generally do not believe any form of class struggle or social revolution is necessary for socialism to emerge. Utopian socialists believe that people of all classes can voluntarily adopt their plan for society if it is presented convincingly. They feel their form of cooperative socialism can be established among like-minded people within the existing society and that their small communities can demonstrate the feasibility of their plan for society.

Definition

The thinkers identified as utopian socialist did not use the term utopian to refer to their ideas. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were the first thinkers to refer to them as utopian, referring to all socialist ideas that simply presented a vision and distant goal of an ethically just society as utopian. This utopian mindset which held an integrated conception of the goal, the means to produce said goal and an understanding of the way that those means would inevitably be produced through examining social and economic phenomena can be contrasted with scientific socialism which has been likened to Taylorism.

This distinction was made clear in Engels' work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1892, part of an earlier publication, the Anti-Dühring from 1878). Utopian socialists were seen as wanting to expand the principles of the French revolution in order to create a more rational society. Despite being labeled as utopian by later socialists, their aims were not always utopian and their values often included rigid support for the scientific method and the creation of a society based upon scientific understanding.

Development

The term utopian socialism was introduced by Karl Marx in "For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything" in 1843 and then developed in The Communist Manifesto in 1848, although shortly before its publication Marx had already attacked the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in The Poverty of Philosophy (originally written in French, 1847). The term was used by later socialist thinkers to describe early socialist or quasi-socialist intellectuals who created hypothetical visions of egalitarian, communalist, meritocratic, or other notions of perfect societies without considering how these societies could be created or sustained.

In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx criticized the economic and philosophical arguments of Proudhon set forth in The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty. Marx accused Proudhon of wanting to rise above the bourgeoisie. In the history of Marx's thought and Marxism, this work is pivotal in the distinction between the concepts of utopian socialism and what Marx and the Marxists claimed as scientific socialism. Although utopian socialists shared few political, social, or economic perspectives, Marx and Engels argued that they shared certain intellectual characteristics. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote:

The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favored. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see it in the best possible plan of the best possible state of society? Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary, action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and endeavor, by small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel.

Marx and Engels associated utopian socialism with communitarian socialism which similarly sees the establishment of small intentional communities as both a strategy for achieving and the final form of a socialist society. Marx and Engels used the term scientific socialism to describe the type of socialism they saw themselves developing. According to Engels, socialism was not "an accidental discovery of this or that ingenious brain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle between two historically developed classes, namely the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Its task was no longer to manufacture a system of society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historical-economic succession of events from which these classes and their antagonism had of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict". Critics have argued that utopian socialists who established experimental communities were in fact trying to apply the scientific method to human social organization and were therefore not utopian. On the basis of Karl Popper's definition of science as "the practice of experimentation, of hypothesis and test", Joshua Muravchik argued that "Owen and Fourier and their followers were the real 'scientific socialists.' They hit upon the idea of socialism, and they tested it by attempting to form socialist communities". By contrast, Muravchik further argued that Marx made untestable predictions about the future and that Marx's view that socialism would be created by impersonal historical forces may lead one to conclude that it is unnecessary to strive for socialism because it will happen anyway.

Since the mid-19th century, Marxism and Marxism–Leninism overtook utopian socialism in terms of intellectual development and number of adherents. At one time almost half the population of the world lived under regimes that claimed to be Marxist. Currents such as Saint-Simonianism and Fourierism attracted the interest of numerous later authors but failed to compete with the now dominant Marxist, Proudhonist, or Leninist schools on a political level. It has been noted that they exerted a significant influence on the emergence of new religious movements such as spiritualism and occultism.

In literature and in practice

Perhaps the first utopian socialist was Thomas More (1478–1535), who wrote about an imaginary socialist society in his book Utopia, published in 1516. The contemporary definition of the English word utopia derives from this work and many aspects of More's description of Utopia were influenced by life in monasteries.

Saint-Simonianism was a French political and social movement of the first half of the 19th century, inspired by the ideas of Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825). His ideas influenced Auguste Comte (who was for a time Saint-Simon's secretary), Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill and many other thinkers and social theorists.

Robert Owen was one of the founders of utopian socialism.

Robert Owen (1771–1858) was a successful Welsh businessman who devoted much of his profits to improving the lives of his employees. His reputation grew when he set up a textile factory in New Lanark, Scotland, co-funded by his teacher, the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham and introduced shorter working hours, schools for children and renovated housing. He wrote about his ideas in his book A New View of Society which was published in 1813 and An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilized parts of the world in 1823. He also set up an Owenite commune called New Harmony in Indiana. This collapsed when one of his business partners ran off with all the profits. Owen's main contribution to socialist thought was the view that human social behavior is not fixed or absolute and that humans have the free will to organize themselves into any kind of society they wished.

Charles Fourier (1772–1837) rejected the Industrial Revolution altogether and thus the problems that arose with it. Fourier made various fanciful claims about the ideal world he envisioned. Despite some clearly non-socialist inclinations, he contributed significantly even if indirectly to the socialist movement. His writings about turning work into play influenced the young Karl Marx and helped him devise his theory of alienation. Also a contributor to feminism, Fourier invented the concept of phalanstère, units of people based on a theory of passions and of their combination. Several colonies based on Fourier's ideas were founded in the United States by Albert Brisbane and Horace Greeley.

Many Romantic authors, most notably William Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley, wrote anti-capitalist works and supported peasant revolutions across early 19th century Europe. Étienne Cabet (1788–1856), influenced by Robert Owen, published a book in 1840 entitled Travel and adventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria in which he described an ideal communalist society. His attempts to form real socialist communities based on his ideas through the Icarian movement did not survive, but one such community was the precursor of Corning, Iowa. Possibly inspired by Christianity, he coined the word communism and influenced other thinkers, including Marx and Engels.

Utopian socialist pamphlet of Swiss social medical doctor Rudolf Sutermeister (1802–1868)

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) published Looking Backward in 1888, a utopian romance novel about a future socialist society. In Bellamy's utopia, property was held in common and money replaced with a system of equal credit for all. Valid for a year and non-transferable between individuals, credit expenditure was to be tracked via "credit-cards" (which bear no resemblance to modern credit cards which are tools of debt-finance). Labour was compulsory from age 21 to 40 and organised via various departments of an Industrial Army to which most citizens belonged. Working hours were to be cut drastically due to technological advances (including organisational). People were expected to be motivated by a Religion of Solidarity and criminal behavior was treated as a form of mental illness or "atavism". The book ranked as second or third best seller of its time (after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben Hur). In 1897, Bellamy published a sequel entitled Equality as a reply to his critics and which lacked the Industrial Army and other authoritarian aspects.

William Morris (1834–1896) published News from Nowhere in 1890, partly as a response to Bellamy's Looking Backwards, which he equated with the socialism of Fabians such as Sydney Webb. Morris' vision of the future socialist society was centred around his concept of useful work as opposed to useless toil and the redemption of human labour. Morris believed that all work should be artistic, in the sense that the worker should find it both pleasurable and an outlet for creativity. Morris' conception of labour thus bears strong resemblance to Fourier's, while Bellamy's (the reduction of labour) is more akin to that of Saint-Simon or in aspects Marx.

The Brotherhood Church in Britain and the Life and Labor Commune in Russia were based on the Christian anarchist ideas of Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) and Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) wrote about anarchist forms of socialism in their books. Proudhon wrote What is Property? (1840) and The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty (1847). Kropotkin wrote The Conquest of Bread (1892) and Fields, Factories and Workshops (1912). Many of the anarchist collectives formed in Spain, especially in Aragon and Catalonia, during the Spanish Civil War were based on their ideas. While linking to different topics is always useful to maximize exposure, anarchism does not derive itself from utopian socialism and most anarchists would consider the association to essentially be a marxist slur designed to reduce the credibility of anarchism amongst socialists.

Many participants in the historical kibbutz movement in Israel were motivated by utopian socialist ideas. Augustin Souchy (1892–1984) spent most of his life investigating and participating in many kinds of socialist communities. Souchy wrote about his experiences in his autobiography Beware! Anarchist! Behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) published Walden Two in 1948. The Twin Oaks Community was originally based on his ideas. Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) wrote about an impoverished anarchist society in her book The Dispossessed, published in 1974, in which the anarchists agree to leave their home planet and colonize a barely habitable moon in order to avoid a bloody revolution.

Related concepts

Some communities of the modern intentional community movement such as kibbutzim could be categorized as utopian socialist. Some religious communities such as the Hutterites are categorized as utopian religious socialists.

Classless modes of production in hunter-gatherer societies are referred to as primitive communism by Marxists to stress their classless nature. A related concept is that of a socialist utopia, usually depicted in works of fiction as possible ways society can turn out to be in the future and often combined with notions of a technologically revolutionized economy.

Notable utopian socialists

Notable utopian communities

Utopian communities have existed all over the world. In various forms and locations, they have existed continuously in the United States since the 1730s, beginning with Ephrata Cloister, a religious community in what is now Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Owenite communities
Fourierist communities
Icarian communities
Anarchist communities
Others
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