A transition towards socialism through strengthening the working class is key to challenge capitalism

This way of thinking about socialism rejects the simple dichotomous view of capitalism vs socialism. It implies that capitalist societies differ in how “socialistic” they are – to use an old right-wing expression – and that, with respect to the values and emancipatory aspirations of socialists, it is better to be in a capitalist society with strong socialist elements than in a capitalist society without those elements. This leaves open the question of how far these principles can be pushed, how narrow are the limits of possibilities imposed by capitalism, and whether or not at some point a sharper rupture with capitalist institutions would be necessary for further advance. I do not know if a long sequence of socialist moves within the institutional spaces allowed in capitalism could cumulatively lead to a metamorphosis of capitalism itself, or whether in the end such a process will reach untransgressable limits. I don’t know how to answer such questions and I suspect that they are not really answerable. In the absence of a compelling answer, then, the best we can do is chart the principles that yield a direction of progressive change without a clear destination.

If you agree that this is a good way to think about the idea of a socialist challenge to capitalism, the question, then, becomes what are the principles which tell us if we are moving in the right direction, and how basic income might contribute to this movement.

Three principles of a socialist challenge to capitalism

There are many possible principles defining the socialist compass. Here I will focus on three:

1. Strengthening the power of labor relative to capital. This is one of the central themes of socialist thought, especially in its Marxist incarnation: socialism is a system of production within which the working class is the dominant class; capitalism is a system within which the capitalist class is the dominant class. Within capitalism, then, social changes which strengthen the power of labor can be thought of as moving in the direction of socialism even if this does not immediately threaten the dominance of capital as such.

2. Decommodifying labor power. This is also a familiar theme in discussions of socialism. One of the hallmarks of capitalism is that people who do not own means of production must sell their labor power on a labor market to an employer in order to acquire their means of subsistence. This is sometimes referred to as the commodification of labor (or perhaps, more precisely, of labor power) since people’s capacity to work is being treated as if it were a commodity. To the extent that workers are able to have their needs met outside of the market through some process of social provision, their labor power is decommodified. Commodification is thus a variable and one can speak of the degree of commodification and decommodification of labor power. If socialism is an economy directly oriented to the satisfaction of needs rather than the maximization of profit, then such decommodification of labor power can be thought of as a movement in the direction of socialism.

3. Strengthening the power of civil society to shape the priorities for the use of the social surplus and the organization of economic activity. This third point is less familiar, and perhaps more controversial. It implies a contrast between what I would call Statism, and Social-ism. Both are forms of non-capitalist economic organization. In Statism, state power plays the primary role in allocating the social surplus to alternative priorities and directing process of production. The clearest examples were the highly centralized bureaucratic systems of command economy in places like the Soviet Union. In contrast, in socialism what might be loosely termed “social power” plays this role. This is a much less clear idea than statism, and indeed many people use the term “socialism” to describe what I am here calling socialism. The idea of a socialism rooted in social power involves two crucial notions. First, the idea that social power shapes the use of the social surplus means that at the macro-level investment priorities are set through a process of vigorous public, participatory democratic deliberation rather than either through the exercise of private economic power in the market or the exercise of authoritative bureaucratic command through the state. Second, at the more micro-level, collective associations in civil society are directly engaged in economic activity to satisfy needs. Such needs-oriented production is not organized through markets or by state bureaucracies, but through the self-organization of collective actors in society. This corresponds to what, in some discussions, is referred to as the “social economy”. This would include things like childcare, eldercare and home healthcare services, recreational services, and a wide array of cultural and arts activities. The production of these services in the social economy, it must be emphasized, is social, not private: the issue here is not moving childcare or eldercare services from market or the state provision back to the family. Rather, the social economy is built around the public provision of such services by collective association rather than by the state or market. Socialism, them, combines democratic deliberation over broad investment allocations with self-organized voluntary associational organization of economic activity. As in the other two principles, the strength of social power over the economy is a variable and thus we can speak of moving in a socialist direction when such power increases.