Imagine a world where all banks and the energy industry are nationalised and under management by workers’ committees.   A world with more  public housing and rent control.   One where existing student debt is cancelled and  price controls are used to combat inflation.   Imagine too equal pay for equal work along with raised social security benefits.    Consider also a world with state as opposed to private prisons and the end of overseas military bases.  And, of course, a world in which  Ukraine’s sovereignty and right to defend itself is upheld.   

This is the state-capitalist dystopia put forward by the so-called Freedom Socialist Party in their ten point programme.   For more on the FSP see Socialist? Feminist? and Workers have no country.

Kate Hoey: I was once part of Marxist group that apparently called for ‘victory to the IRA’

 “Changing the world, one Bitcoin at a time” is a mantra that fits into the picture of socialism, the greatest social experiment of the 20th century. But the question is, would Karl Marx, the father of socialism, embrace Bitcoin if he were to be alive today?

Marx held as early as 1843 that mankind could only be emancipated through the abolition of money and the State.

‘Money, then, appears as this overturning power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc.,which claim to be essences in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence and intelligence into idiocy’

The related essay below is one of 38 just posted on the Socialist Standard Past & Present blog.   They first appeared in  the special 300th issue of the World Socialist Party of the United States old journal, The Western Socialist, in 1974.

In order to understand why such an act will be not only unnecessary, but impossible, it is all important to comprehend why a medium of exchange, money, is necessary within the present system. Production, under capitalism, is carried on primarily for the purpose of sale on a market with view to profit and, as a result, we have an exchange or a circulation of commodities. Now it stands to reason that if eggs, shoes, whisky, houses, automobiles and all the other commodities exchange on a market in certain proportions there has to be a medium for effecting the circulation. This medium must be, itself, a commodity and one that is universally acceptable as an equivalent of the values of all commodities. So we have the commodity gold acting as the universal equivalent behind the various nominal monies of the world. And unless some other commodity with the necessary properties and the universal acceptance of gold comes along, gold will continue to act as real money.

Besides acting as a medium of circulation, money must exist, then, as a means of payment and as a measure of the values of commodities. Much of this may even be learned in a college economics course.

But the system, today, in the whole world is one of production for sale on a market with view to profit whereas the system advocated by socialists is something quite different. In a socialist world there will be no production of commodities. Goods and services will be produced only for the purpose of satisfying the needs and wants of the population. Eggs, shoes, whiskey, houses, automobiles and whatever else is wanted by society will be produced only because these things are wanted and not to sell. There will be no buying and selling at all and in such a situation there could be no need for anything to act as money.

Two questions might immediately leap to mind. First: do socialists advocate a return to simple barter? and Secondly: when has a moneyless system ever existed, at least in recorded history. The answer to the first question is “No” and to the second. “Never!” But with a but.

Obviously, barter could not exist under socialism any more than could money exist. There is just no need to exchange goods. We produce and we consume and the only difference that would be really noticeable from what takes place today would be the absence of cash registers and private or state ownership of the means of production. Should production of a particular item be inadequate to satiety the needs of the population, production of the item would be increased. If more than enough, it would be decreased.

As for the point that money always existed throughout recorded history: Yes, but not for most of the population. In previous social systems most people never had occasion to require money. Production was mainly geared to the needs of a slave or serf population and their masters. Money appeared only among a minority of the population, in trade.

And NO! We do not advocate a return to slavery or serfdom. We urge the abolition of all slavery, the end of wage slavery, the establishment of world socialism — a system in which the need for money will vanish.

 “Current nuclear arms control and nonproliferation efforts are inadequate to protect the world’s population against the threat of nuclear war by design, error, or miscalculation,” the editorial reads.

‘To oppose nuclear weapons requires a fundamental change in our attitude to life. Clarity of purpose and utter opposition is the only chance to reverse the threat that hangs over all our lives. What we want to change is immense. It’s not just getting rid of nuclear weapons, it’s getting rid of the whole structure that created the possibility of nuclear weapons in the first place. If we don’t use imagination nothing will change. Without change we will destroy the planet. It’s as simple as that’ (Boon, C., Social Movements and Political Power Emerging Forms of Radicalism in the West, Temple University Press, 1986, bit.ly/3a2S6Up).

 ‘It is very difficult to estimate the extent of their [fission products] effect especially as the most important substances would be those of long life, which are the hardest to study under laboratory conditions. It does however seem certain that the area devastated by the explosion would be dangerous to life for a considerable time’ (Maud Committee report, 1941).  

The following articles have been added to the Jack Fitzgerald Internet Archive:

November 1911: Asked & Answered: Prices and Values.

November 1914: Birds of a feather.

March 1915: The Confusion of the “Clarion” “Economists”.

June/July 1915: Capitalist economics.

March 1918: Working Harder for the Capitalist.

That completes all the articles in the Socialist Standard signed by him

During a life cut tragically short, Sinead came to the attention of socialists for advocating the need to abolish money.   

The article below is taken from the January 1993 edition of the Socialist Standard.

The music business certainly contains some odd contrasts. On 5 November, the world’s biggest music publishing company, Time Warner, handed a cheque for £26 million to Elton John and Bernie Taupin for the future marketing rights to all their songs from 1974 onwards, including the next six future albums. This was the largest advance ever paid in music history. It reflected the safety of investing in the popular material involved.

Around the same time, a fairly successful but somewhat more controversial singer hit the headlines, not just of the music press, but also in the tabloids and elsewhere. Sinead O’Connor had torn up a picture of the Pope, live on camera on the “Saturday Night live” American network comedy show. This only added to an already radical reputation, which had polarised opinion between the “moral majority”, particularly in the States, who see her as a public enemy and figure of hate, and the few who have been intrigued by the passionate protests she has pursued.

On an earlier occasion, she had refused to participate in a concert which was to have ended with a rendition of the Stars And Stripes, and for this Frank Sinatra was quoted as eloquently saying that he would like to “kick her butt”. The Sun did an excited expose about her alleged support for the IRA, which later turned out to be unfounded. She horrified the music industry by refusing to collect her “Brits” and US “Grammy” awards in 1991 as she disagreed with the acquisitive and competitive ethos it represented. Then, at the time of the Gulf War, this popular singing star again distinguished herself from her musical colleagues by nailing her colours to the mast and going on record as being emphatically opposed to the war.

Ugly scenes

In the USA, ugly scenes ensued in which piles of her records have been destroyed in public (no doubt in the name of freedom of expression). In Britain, she has been ridiculed instead, through the somewhat limp wit of radio DJs, attempting pathetically to stray into the vocal exposition of their insipid conservatism.

Matters came to a head last October, when she was violently shouted off the stage at a special New York concert held to commemorate thirty years of records produced by Bob Dylan. How ironic that this smug party held for the protest singer of a previous generation should have displayed such brutal intolerance for someone who had spoken out with views which had protested against certain sacred cows in the 1990s. Did they think that the sixties had been so successful in liberating humanity that “protest” could be quietly laid to rest?

It was in the aftermath of that concert that she announced her resignation from her singing career, stating that she had striven to achieve fame only in order to obtain a platform for certain strongly-held views. She then explained these views in some detail through various press interviews. It was subsequently announced that her record company had then persuaded her to reconsider her decision, and she was therefore included in the bill for an Amnesty International concert.

So what were the ideas which lay beneath this wave of controversy?

The opposition to Sinead O’Connor’s pronouncements about the need to abolish money had a tiresomely familiar ring to socialists. In supposedly radical journals like New Musical Express and supposedly liberal organs like the Guardian the tired old arguments in defence of the money system were trotted out with religious devotion, as if kept permanently ready, to use at the first signs of any heretical statements made against the money god:

“Take away money, then you take away the pillars of society…Money may well be the root of all evil. but what choice do we have? Right now. no money equals no power. No power equals a voice in the wilderness. Sad, but that’s the real world. (NME. 14 November).

So you don’t accept that human nature is essentially competitive and that money is just part of this? … But what about you, Sinead? You must have a few quid stacked away somewhere? (NME. 31 October).

“Mad Woman in the Artic, Part II”; “I’m not a raving loony”. Sinead O’Connor told the Sun last week. “My biggest aim is to get rid of money”, she continued. “If everyone agreed to do it at the same time, it could happen”. Unsold piles of the last Sinead CD could be the new currency.”(Guardian, 31 October).

Revolutionary socialists, who have been working for many years for the creation of a moneyless system of society, have grown used to these inane defences of the money system. They confuse the notion of a fixed “human nature” with the wide variety of human behaviours which have evolved through the conditions of various social systems.

It was of note that in the main NME interview involved, O’Connor made no fewer than fifteen separate references to the urgent need to abolish the money system. Whilst socialists will want to question some of the religious commentaries which were woven in with this, it was very heartening nevertheless to see this proposal receiving this unexpected platform:

“So the only solution to all of the problems in the world – starvation, homelessness, joblessness, etc – is to get rid of money… A survey has to be conducted. Let’s have a vote and see…”If everyone else was going to do it, would you be prepared to live without money?” Let’s see how people feel about it – -supposedly we live in a democracy. I bet you that people will be able to do it…as long as there exists the system of money, there will always be people who have some and those who haven’t… Ninety-five per cent of the world’s wealth is owned by five per cent of the world’s population. That’s the whole problem…We can do it, but there’s no point unless everyone’s gonna do it, it just can’t work… Look at our lives, how they’re run by money… get rid of money. In one foul swoop, you get rid of the whole thing. With love, and our supposed belief in God…Have the faith to go through the rocky part and believe that God’s gonna help us out. (NME, 31October).

Child abuse

She holds the view that most modern social problems had their origin in the rise of the Catholic Church and “Roman Empire” based in the Vatican, with its sanctioning of various invasions and imperialisms, and its imposition of repressive moral codes over millions of people. In her own country of origin, Ireland, she describes how alcoholism, drug-abuse and, in particular, child abuse have in her view been the inevitable legacy of that historical process. She makes no secret of the fact that her own childhood there was plagued by persistent sexual abuse. It might readily be seen that her theorising about the key historical role of the Vatican in the rise of a globally exploitative system is a reflection of her own experiences and is too narrowly based on one interpretation of the development of certain, mainly European countries and in particular of Ireland. She fails to take a broader world view of the ruling class which in fact encompasses all religions, and in many cases none. On the other hand, these arguments are soon tied in with sounder lines of economic criticism:

“We’re all trapped in a society that has been very, very carefully orchestrated and structured to control us by people who want power over us, for money…they took us away from the truth, brutalised us and then only offered us one God, a God outside and above us, unattainable. They made our God into money.” (NME, 31 October).

She goes on to explain that the people who did all this were the Catholic Church, especially with reference to their role in Irish history. Again, this is a peculiarly narrow definition of the minority class enemy which exploits us, and leaves out of account the quite separate evolution of ruling groups in other ways in other parts of the world. Her proposed solution, however, of abolishing the social system which is based on money, is both universally applicable and urgently needed. There is an international ruling class which certainly does impose moral codes and supervise institutionalised poverty and abuse.

Regardless of the reservations referred to above. Sinead O’Connor is to be applauded for these specific proclamations which she has pursued so single-mindedly. The profusion of panic, misunderstanding and venom with which her comments were greeted is in fact testimony to the refreshingly different and viable ideas involved.

 Yes, “sex work is…work”  and  employment is prostitution!   Marx saw sex work as ’only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the labourer’ (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, 1844).    Prostitution along with female genital mutilation, misogyny, virginity tests, being taught that menstruation is unclean, circumcision for non-medical reasons, caste/class, homophobia, marriage to children, as well as blasphemy as a crime, non-evidence based medicine & cock and dog fighting – all of them should be thrown in the dustbin of history! 

The dehuminization of those involved will only end when the terms buyer and seller become redundant with the establishment of socialism.

Thw historian, biographer and political commentator. Geoffrey Roberts states in an interview today:  ‘The most important thing to understand about Stalin is that he was an intellectual, driven by his Marxist ideas, a true believer in his communist ideology. And he didn’t just believe it, he felt it. Socialism was an emotional thing for Stalin.  His often-monstrous actions stemmed from his politics and ideology, not his personality.’

In the 1930s Stalin outlawed abortion and homosexuality and  pursued state capitalist industrialisation, at the cost of millions of lives, and in 1936 announced that Russia was ‘socialist’.   That very year, on 28 August, Pravda proclaimed him divine: 

O Great Stalin, O Leader of the Peoples,

Thou who didst give birth to man,

Thou who didst make fertile the earth,

Thou who dost rejuvenate the Centuries,

Thou who givest blossom to the spring…

 The same year, a mere mortal observed: ‘There are in the U.S.S.R. privileged and exploited classes, dominant classes and subject classes. Between them the standard of living is sharply separated. The classes of travel on the railways correspond exactly to the social classes; similarly with ships, restaurants, theatres, shops, and with houses; for one group palaces in pleasant neighbourhoods, for the others wooden barracks alongside tool stores and oily machines. .It is always the same people who live in the palaces and the same people who live in the barracks. There is no longer private property, there is only one property – State property. But the State no more represents the whole community than under preceding régimes’ (What the Russian Revolution Has Become, Robert Guiheneuf, 1936).

Ironic considering 30 years earlier Stalin’s understanding of socialism was sound:

‘Future society will be socialist society. This also means that with the abolition of exploitation, commodity production and buying and selling will also be abolished and, therefore, there will be no room for buyers and sellers of labour power, for employers and employed—there will be only free workers… Where there are no classes, where there are neither rich nor poor, there is no need for a state, there is no need also for political power, which oppresses the poor and protects the rich. Consequently, in socialist society there will be no need for the existence of political power’ (Anarchism or Socialism? 1906).