3. Socialist Production

The abolition of the present system of production means substituting production for use for production for sale. Production for use may be of two forms:

First, individual production for the satisfaction of individual wants; and,

Second, social or co-operative production for the satisfaction of the wants of a commonwealth.

The first form of production has never been a general form of production. Man has always been a social being, as far back as we can trace him. The individual has always been thrown upon co-operation with others in order to satisfy some of his principal wants; others had to work for him and he, in turn, had to work for others. Individual production for self-consumption has always played a subordinate part; today it hardly deserves mention.

Until the present system of production (production for sale) was developed, co-operative production for common use was the leading form; it is as old as production itself. If any one system of production could be considered better adapted than any other to the nature of man, then co-operative production must be pronounced the natural one. In all probability for every thousand years of production for sale, cooperative production for use numbers tens of thousands. The character, extent and power of co-operative societies have changed along with the instruments and methods of production which they adopted. Nevertheless, whether such a commonwealth was a horde or a tribe or any other form of community, they all had certain essential features in common. Each satisfied its own wants, at least the most vital ones, with the product of its own labor; the instruments of production were the property of the community; its members worked together as free and equal individuals according to some plan inherited or devised, and administered by some power elected by themselves. The product of such co-operative labor was the property of the community and was applied either to the satisfaction of common wants, whether these were occasioned by production or consumption, or were distributed among the individuals or groups which composed the community.

The well-being of such self-supporting communities or societies depended upon natural and personal conditions. The more fertile the territory they occupied, the more diligent, inventive and vigorous their members, the greater was the general well-being. Drouths, freshets, invasions by more powerful enemies, might afflict, or even destroy, them, but there was one visitation they were free from, the fluctuations of the market. With this they were either wholly unacquainted, or they knew it only in connection with articles of luxury.

Such co-operative production for use is nothing less than communistic or, as it is called today, socialist production. Production for sale can be overcome only by such a system. Socialist production is the only system of production possible when production for sale has become impossible.

This fact does not, however, imply that it is necessary to revive the dead past or to restore the old forms of community property or communal production. These forms were adapted to certain means of production; they were, and continue to be, inapplicable to more highly developed instruments of production. It was for that reason that they disappeared almost everywhere in the course of economic development at the approach of the system of production for sale, and wherever they did resist the latter, their effect was to interfere with the development of productive powers. As reactionary and hopeless as were the efforts to resist the system of production for sale, would be today any endeavor to overthrow the present by a revival of the old communal system.

The system of socialist production which has become necessary, owing to the impending bankruptcy of our present system of production for sale, will and must have certain features in common with the older systems of communal production, in so far, namely, as both are systems of co-operative production for use. In the same way, the capitalist system of production bears some resemblance to the system of small and individual production, which forms the transition between it and communal production; both produce for sale. Just as the capitalist system of production, as a higher development of commodity production, is different from small production, so will the form of social production, that has now become necessary be different from the former systems of production for use.

The coming system of socialist production will not be the sequel to ancient communism; it will be the sequel to the capitalist system of production, which itself develops the elements that are requisite for the organization of its successor. It brings forth the new people whom the new system of production needs. But it also brings forth the social organization which, as soon as the new people have mastered it, will become the foundation stone of the new system of production.

Socialist production requires, in the first place, the transformation of the separate capitalist establishments into social institutions. This transformation is being prepared for by the circumstance that the personality of the capitalist is steadily becoming more and more superfluous in the present mechanism of production. In the second place, it requires that all the establishments requisite for the satisfaction of the wants of the commonwealth be united into one large concern. How economic development is preparing the way for this by the steady concentration of capitalist concerns, has been explained in the foregoing chapter.

What must be the size of such a self-sufficing commonwealth? As the socialist republic is not an arbitrary creation of the brain, but a necessary product of economic development, the size of such a commonwealth cannot be predetermined. It must conform to the stage of social development out of which it grows. The higher the development that has been reached, the greater the division of labor that has been perfected, the more intercourse has developed between the producers – the larger will be the size of the commonwealth.

It is now nearly two hundred years since a well-meaning Englishman, John Bellers, submitted to the English Parliament a plan to end the misery which even then the capitalist system, young as it was, spreading through the land. He proposed the establishment of communities that should produce everything that they needed, industrial as well as agricultural products. According to his plan, each community needed only from two hundred to three hundred workmen.

At that time handicraft was still the leading form of production; the capitalist system was still in the manufacturing stage; as yet there was no thought of the capitalist concern with its modern machinery.

A hundred years later the same idea was taken up anew, but considerably deepened and perfected, by socialist thinkers. By that time the present factory system of mills and machinery had already begun; handicrafts were here and there disappearing; society had reached a higher stage. Accordingly, the communities which the socialists proposed at the beginning of the nineteenth century for the purpose of removing the ills of the capitalist system were ten times larger than those proposed by Bellers (for instance, the phalansteries Fourier).

In comparison with the economic conditions of the time of Bellers, those which Fourier knew seemed wonderfully advanced; but from the point of view of a generation later these, in their turn, had become trivial. The machine was restlessly revolutionizing social life; it had expanded capitalist undertakings to such an extent that some of them already embraced whole nations in their operations; it had brought the several undertakings of a country into greater dependence upon one another so that they virtually constituted one industry; and it constantly tends to turn the whole economic life of capitalist nations into a single economic mechanism. The division and subdivision of labor is carried on further and further; the several industries apply themselves more and more to the production of special articles only; and what is more, to their production for the whole world; and the size of these establishments, some of which count their workmen by thousands, becomes constantly larger.

Under such circumstances, a community designed to satisfy its wants and embracing all the requisite industries, must have dimensions very different from those of the socialist colonies planned at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Among the social organizations in existence today there is but one that has the requisite dimensions, that can be used as the requisite field, for the establishment and development of the Socialist or Co-operative Commonwealth, and that is the modern state.

Indeed, so great is the development that production has reached in some industries and so intimate have become the connections between the several capitalist nations that one might almost question whether the limits of the state are sufficiently inclusive to contain the Co-operative Commonwealth.

Nevertheless, there is something else to be taken into account. The present expansion of international intercourse is due, not so much to the existing conditions of production as to the existing condition of exploitation. The greater the extension of capitalist production in a country and the intenser the exploitation of the working class, the larger also, as a rule, is the surplus of products that cannot be consumed in the country itself and that, consequently, must be sent abroad. If the population of the country have not themselves the means to buy the staples which they produce, the capitalists go with their products in search of foreign customers, whether or not the population of their own country stand in need of the products. The capitalists are after purchasers, not after consumers. This explains the horrible phenomenon that Ireland and India export large quantities of wheat during a famine; recently, during the frightful famine in Russia, the exportation of wheat by the Russian capitalists could be checked only by an imperial order. When exploitation shall have ceased, and production for use shall have taken the place of production for sale, exportation and importation of products from one state to another will fall off greatly.

The existing commerce between the several nations will not entirely disappear. The division of labor has been carried on so far, the market which certain giant industries require for their products has become so extensive, and, on the other hand, so many commodities, – supplied only by international commerce, – coffee, for instance – have become necessities, that it seems impossible for any Co-operative Commonwealth, even though co-extensive with a nation, to satisfy all its wants with its own products. Some sort of exchange of products between one nation and another is sure to continue. Such exchange will not, however, endanger the economic independence and safety of the several nations so long as they produce all that is actually necessary and exchange with one another superfluities only. A co-operative commonwealth co-extensive with the nation could produce all that it requires for Its own preservation.

This dimension would by no means be unalterable. The modern nation is but a product and tool of the capitalist system of production; it grows with that system, not only in power, but also in extent. The domestic market is the safest for the capitalist class of every country. It is the easiest to maintain and to exploit. In proportion as the capitalist system develops, so also grows the pressure on the part of the capitalist class in every nation for an extension of its political boundaries. The statesman who maintained that modern wars are no longer manifestations of dynastic, but of national, aspirations was not far from the truth, provided one understands by national aspirations the aspirations of the capitalist class. Nothing so much injures the vital interests of the capitalists of any nation as a reduction of their territory. The capitalist class of France would long ago have pardoned Germany the $1,250,000,000 which she demanded as an indemnity for the war of 1870, but can never pardon the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine.

All modern nations feel the necessity of extending their boundaries. This is easiest for the United States, which will soon actually control all America, and for England, which is enabled by its sea power to expand the extent of its colonies without interruption. Russia also enjoyed at one time great advantages in this respect, but the limits of her aggrandizement seem to have been reached; she is bounded on all sides by nations which resist her advancement. Worst off are the nations of continental Europe in this respect; they, as well as others, require territorial expansion, but they are so closely hemmed in by one another that none can grow except at the expense of some other. The colonial policy of these states affords inadequate relief to the need of expansion caused by their capitalist system of production. This situation is the most powerful cause of the militarism which has turned Europe into a military camp. There are but two ways out of this intolerable state of things: either a gigantic war that shall destroy some of the existing European states, or the union of them all in a federation.

This is enough to show that every modern state has the desire to expand in response to the demands of economic development. In this way each is seeing to it that its boundaries become sufficiently extensive to satisfy the needs of the coming co-operative commonwealth.