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't
own 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&e
already been assigned a &alue, that ha&e already been commodified and moneti'ed. !s (radley has
already shown, nature is a 'free gift' to the capitalist accounts) money is an expression of &alue, that
is 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 towards
enriching the world's wealthiest 8.4% + $ust 3,3 million people. To put that in perspecti&e, the rest
of the population #$ust under - billion people% is supported by $ust .-% of all labour. #This does not
account 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 treat
socialism 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 catch
their ca&iar. 3e also build the factories, the e/uipment, mine the coal, dig the wells, etc. 3e not
only wor the means of production, we also produce the means of production. 3e produce them,
the bosses own them. 3hich supposedly is what gi&es them the right to the things we produce using
the machines that we also produced. 4ri&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 hoard
them $ust as they please. These are what 5arxists refer to as the 0social relations of production2
under capitalism.
6ngels argued 0that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the
exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure7 ... in e&ery society that has appeared
in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society di&ided into classes or orders is
dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged.2 *n
other words, that the relations of production play a strongly determining role in the shape and
structure of society. To change society, therefore, necessarily means changing the social relations of
production.
The relations of production under capitalism means that we are forced to spend the ma$ority of our
waing hours woring for bosses we dislie in $obs that we hate + e&en our sleep belongs to the
bosses) how often do we say 0* gotta get to bed early tonight, * ha&e lots of wor to do in the
morning82 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
.
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 as
pri&ate indi&iduals from other pri&ate indi&iduals. !nd as such, we are pri&ately responsible for
becoming successful pri&ate consumers.
4erhaps the best example of the ind of ideology this system encourages comes from 5argaret
Thatcher, 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 casting
their 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 expect
us 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 with
4.< 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 also
that 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 or
another, 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 these
ideologies 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 human
liberation + 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 last
be 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 this
communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of =people> on a
mass 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
4anther 4arty, a group which when it first started was notorious for its sexism and homophobia but
which ended with women's liberation and anti;homophobia as basic principles. The (lac 4ower
mo&ement is often caricatured as super macho, typified by the foolish claim of Ftoely Aarmichael
in .,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 as
blac oppression necessarily includes the oppression of blac women, or blac /ueer people, so the
struggle against blac oppression necessarily also mobilised more than $ust straight blac men. The
mobilisation of the blac community was also the occasion for an internal de&elopment in which
blac women and /ueers demanded to be recognised and won their right to participate in the
struggle. The success of this internal struggle was a necessity for the mo&ement as a whole + which
could not possibly ha&e won anything if it had excluded the ma$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 our
society 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 their
rule. The woring class therefore must o&ercome these di&isions in order to win anything. The
woring class contains much more than $ust straight, white, cis; dudebros. *t includes all those
doubly oppressed by capitalist bigotry. The struggles of the class are therefore sub$ect to the same
pressures which were so transformati&e for the (lac 4anther 4arty. This is why the struggle for the
economic emancipation of the woring class is coterminous with the struggle for human liberation
generally. !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 proletarian
mo&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, cannot
raise 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 only
tae 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 the
conditions 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, what
does that mean1
3hen people thin about socialism two images come to mind. The first is this ind of impo&erished
world 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 + simply
because 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. 3e li&e in the ind of society
where such di&isions are relati&ely permanent) someone who farms is a farmer, anything else that
she 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't
the 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, a
herdsman, 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 and
thus 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, $ust as * ha&e a mind, without
e&er becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.2
(ut there is one di&ision of labour which exists only in class societies. *n class societies one group
of people produce the goods while another class + the ruling class + administers o&er the production
process. The ruling class decides how we wor, what we produce and how surpluses are in&ested.
5arx called this di&ision #somewhat imprecisely, * admit% the di&ision between manual and mental
labour. :n the side of the producers, capitalism has socialised the labour process to an
unprecedented degree. The production of goods actually in&ol&es a staggering degree of
cooperation and coordination. 3hat that means is that production comes to included greater and
greater interconnectedness and dependencies within the whole of society. Aontrary to the opinion of
5argaret Thatcher, capitalism is uni/ue in that it has drawn the ma$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 competitors
the 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 lot
of 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 approximately
3 metric fuc;tonnes of money bailing out the financial sector by basically throwing money at the
ma$or bans. The hope was that this would get bans to start lending again. *t didn't. Mears and
years of see&y lending practices had left all the bans with toxic debts + they all new that much.
3hat they didn't now was exactly @:3 5LA@ toxic debt each of their ri&als were left with.
3ithout this nowledge, they would not ris lending.
Fuch corporate secrecy and competition are the stoc and trade of capitalism. *magine the world we
might li&e in if pharmaceutical companies pooled their research and data together rather than hid it
behind copyright and intellectual property laws. *magine how much could be sa&ed if food
producers weren't all tryng to swipe maret share from one another, but were instead coordinating
rationally to produce the best food in the amounts that were actually needed. 3e moan a lot about
food wasted at homes or restaurants + that is by pri&ate consumers + but the &ast ma$ority of food is
wasted 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 the
terms 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 about
how 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 a
filet;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 in
the 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 the
slowest and shallowest since the second world war.
*n place of this conspiracy of chaos, socialism offers rational, democratic planning. *n the place of
the sham democracy offered by capitalism which maintains the dictatorship of the bosses o&er all of
the most &ital aspects, socialism demands the complete democrati'ation of social production. To
paraphrase 6ngels, in place of the domination of persons, socialism offers the administration of
things, and the conduct of processes of production. 3e see the beginnings of such democratic and
collecti&e planning more often then you might thin. To use 6gypt again, thin about the way the
demonstrators 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 organi'ed 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 was
housed ;; 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 idle
and 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/uire
them ;; a child would thin this ob&ious, but to capitalism, if a profit cannot be made then let people
and materials $ust rot. 4erhaps what * am proposing sounds impossible, but we manage such
miracles e&eryday. 5ost ma$or corporations are massi&e economies unto themsel&es, in&ol&ing the
distribution 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) they
manage 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 forcing
e&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. :ne
of 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 $ust cut up a
modern worplace into self sustaining bits. Fo their labour is inescapably cooperati&e. "ie any
exploited class, the proletariat ha&e an interest in first impro&ing the conditions of their exploitation
and finally of ending it completely. Their indi&idual weaness and their shared class interests also
mae their forms of resistance spontaneously cooperati&e in a uni/uely democratic way.
Fe&eral things can get in the way of this spontaneous democratic impulse, union bureaucracy for
example. Ie&ertheless, this ind of democracy has been a feature of almost e&ery ma$or social
con&ulsion that worers ha&e been in&ol&ed in. This is because when worers organise
independently for their own interests they can only do so as e/uals #that is they are e/ually
dispossessed of the means of production%. 3orers' councils ha&e therefore, historically, been the
characteristic 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 to
eep themsel&es fed, to organise the defence against the police and strie breaers, or e&en the
military. 3eK&e seen such councils arise in 9rance, ?ussia, Nermany, Ahile, 4oland, @ungary,
4ortugal, Fpain, 9inland, *ran, The Lnited Ftate, and in embryo, in 6gypt.
The capitalist organisation of production has meant that worers must struggle together, not only
within 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. 3orers
councils 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 it
themsel&es. 3orers 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.
C
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, wait8 There's more. Fo far, we'&e only taled about taing o&er the means of production from
the 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.
3e 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 meeting
the 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 of
maing 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 and
feel 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 half
our 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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