A Radical Statement

I'm going to make a rather radical statement, so brace yourself.

The reason that Socialism has failed to take hold is because Marx didn't go far enough: his theory did not include the abandonment of money.

I haven't finished reading Marx's Capital yet (it's a very tough read), but there is one other book published in the US that's a lot easier to understand and that takes into account subsequent developments. It's Socialism by Michael Harrington. In fact, it's the only book I could find on Amazon that looked at Socialism in a positive way. Still, the thing is much more complicated to implement if you don't abandon money first.

The two most important maxims in canonical socialism seem to be "The workers control the means of production" and "To each according to his/her needs; from each according to his/her abilities". Of course that's a VAST oversimplification.

Let's look at the first statement. If money is not in the picture and we start from the very basic, pre-technological level, the Workers ARE the means of production. The next level up would be the technology the workers create: one's own tools. The next level up would be machinery, specialized tools or general-purpose ones like computers that would need to be made by specialists. This level is the stumbling block that makes any transition to socialism difficult and why most radical socialists advocate seizing these means of production. Of course, this sort of strategy tends to provoke backlashes. They represent a large investment, whether one sees that as money or as time. In a capitalist system, normally the owners of the company, whether it's privately or publicly held, would be those owners, would view those items as their exclusive property, and would have a considerable stake in retaining ownership.

In some cooperatives, these assets are actually owned by the workers, and it should be noted that usually these owner/workers have strong motivation for the company to succeed as a result--stronger, in fact, than wage-earners, whose only interest in the company's success may be only so that they can keep their jobs.

It's possible, therefore, to envision the beginnings of a money-less society as modeled on the communes that began in the 60s and 70s in this country. Enterprises could be built up by people cohabitating while contributing their skills and assets to the project. The assets would be held in common, but anyone wishing to return to the money economy would be compensated on exit, if those assets are retained by the project. That's only a germ of an idea, but if enterprises could be started this way, a money-less society could be created (without "seizing" anything) in our midst by linking these projects together.

No capitalists were harmed during the making of this society :)