A-Infos (en) Claaacg8 Journal No.2: When capitalism and paid labour are abolished

[CLAAAC G8! <claaacg8@claaacg8.org>]

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 > WHEN CAPITALISM AND PAID LABOUR ARE ABOLISHED!
We will rebuild an egalitarian society to which everyone will
bring their contribution and from which each will get the
satisfaction that they desire. A mode of social organization
where everyone participates in decision-making to the extent of
their involvement in the consequences of those decisions; where
everyone gets the education they need and share in the common
knowledge. According to an ethic where everyone is conscious
that the freedom of the other is the guarantee of their own
freedom. A mode of production, distribution and consumption
where everyone receives everything they need, and where everyone
participates in the production and consumption, according to
their abilities, their needs, their will.

It is clear that the present economic system must be dismantled,
based as it is on the private ownership of the means of
production and the resulting inequalities which generate social
classes. And it is from our ideals that we must rebuild a
totally new society, with an economy based on social equality,
liberty, solidarity, and the self-organization of each one in
association with all.

As for production, we need to redefine the social roles of each
contributor. By having access to education and the common
knowledge, everyone will be able to make the decisions that
concern them in the full knowledge of reason. Everyone,
according to the needs and wishes of the others as well as their
own, will be able to decide together with others what
contribution they have to make in order to fulfil their social
role as producer, and what they are entitled to as consumer. Our
role as contributors to production may include some undesirable
restraints that we would accept insofar as we would share them
equally with everyone else and that we judge them necessary for
the satisfaction of all.

Such a reorganization of production, consumption and
distribution will entail a new way to assess the goods produced.
Instead of taking demand and supply and the law of the market as
the basis, the effort required for production could be taken
into account as well as the impact that the production would
have on those who produce it and on the environment. No-one will
have the same desires or the same needs, and not everybody will
want to make the same contribution to the well-being of all and
themselves. If the organization of society is not able to
satisfy all the desires of everone, it will be necessary to find
a new coherent and egalitarian distribution system. Some will
estimate that it would be better to restrict one's wishes, to
consume less and to produce less and better; others will be
ready for a greater effort in production on order to satisfy
more wishes. Some needs, shared by a large number if not by all,
will be necessary for the good working order of society as a
whole.

It will be the task of associations of residents, consumers and
producers, federated between each other, to determine the needs
that will be necessary to satisfy so that everyone can live in a
comfortable manner. This will also be the case regarding
supplies of water and energy for dwellings and production
centres, for infrastructures concerning health, education
services, scientific research institutions, for collective
transport and communications means and infrastructures, and to a
certain extent for certain foods and other basic consumer goods.
If we want to construct an egalitarian society, these
possessions and services must be at the disposal of everyone,
without restriction other than their availability, with everyone
contributing to their provision.

With regard to individual wishes, it could be egalitarian that
everyone consume according to the work that they are willing to
provide. There again we will need to redefine the way we assess
the work that everyone provides. In the present system indeed,
the work income is based on supply and demand, on the physical
and intellectual capacities of each, on access to knowledge and
education and/or on the quantities produced. This is the system
which generates unegalitarian social classes. Those who share
the education and knowledge with those who hold the capital
dominate the others. Neither does the amount of time spent
working seem a good means of assessment, with some preferring to
work more intensely for shorter periods, with others on the
contrary preferring to distribute their effort over time.
General rules for evaluating work are not required, and in this
case too it will be a matter for the federated associations of
producers to evaluate everyone's work in their own way.

At present we live in a system where physical work is often
separated from intellectual work, and where the latter is
overvalued. The system of social organization creates a class
inequality as regards access to education and knowledge. Those
who develop their intellectual capacities through education and
who for this reason have greater access to knowledge, take
advantage of this benefit to guarantee themselves a better place
in society and to free themselves of laborious manual work. In
an egalitarian society the manual tasks and the intellectual
tasks will have to be better distributed.

The planning of production, consumption, distribution and the
contribution of each will be developed from below in every
association of producers, consumers and inhabitants, through
dialogue with the other federated associations, and finally
settled by the grassroots associations. Each participant enjoys
equality in the tasks necessary for production, means of
mechanization and automation of laborious labour will be
developed, the part of life that each will dedicate to the
well-being of all will be reduced in relation to that which
everyone currently dedicates to one's social roles, allowing
everyone more leisure time in order to blossom individually and
collectively. There will be more time to party!


Text taken from Claaac Journal No.2
May 2003 - 1 euro - 8 pages

Convergence des luttes antiautoritaire et anticapitaliste contre
le G8 - CLAAACG8
(Convergence of Anti-Authoritarian, Anti-Capitalist Struggles
Against the G8)

CLAAAC G8
c/o La plume noire,
19, rue Pierre Blanc
F - 69001 Lyons

website: http://www.claaacg8.org
e-mail: claaacg8@claaacg8.org


[translation - nmcn/ainfos]


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