SOCIALISM is premised on the idea of fundamental inversion of the labour process that exists in capitalist societies. In capitalism, the worker is subject to the condition of production where the worker is alienated from the means of production, the process of production and the outcomes of productive process. This is articulated through the crude division between mental and physical labour and the worker is supposed to follow the rules of capital relations which naturalises this separation. The same process however is related to the creation of a worker who sees these requirements of capital as self-evident natural laws. This labouring subject is historically created through the process of production.

Changing society is a result of a dual process of changing production structures and processes and creating human beings capable of reproducing the evolved production relations. This self-creation is not a movement of idea self-correcting itself by acting upon mind alone as Hegel might have thought; neither is it about discovering and realising Feuerbach’s ‘essence of man’ devoid of its surrounding realities and engagements. Marx theorised it as a continuous process of self-learning and self-creation through the material practice of productive activities.

This invokes the dialectics of changing circumstances and changing labouring subjects through the same process. This is precisely what Marx indicated to the workers in 1850 saying “you will have to go through 15, 20, 50 years of civil wars and national struggles not only to bring about a change in society but also to change yourselves and prepare yourselves for the exercise of political power’ (ME Collected Works 11). The production of the new subject occurs through the struggles against capital by which the labour realises its collective self-hood, its existence as part of the broader network of social labour. The estrangement of labour from its self-hood that capital relations impose creates the atomised, crippled, deformed labour who internalises the objectivity of exploitation but at the same time through struggles build the stock of capabilities and imaginations necessary to create a new society.

Marx makes a distinction between two phases of social change; the first phase where the new society emerges with the birth marks of the old, when the requirements of the new are imposed upon the old structure. This is a phase of protracted struggle between the old and the new. The possibilities of retrogression are very much real in this phase as vested interests to retrieve the earlier production relations continue to remain active. The second phase or the matured phase is the phase when the new evolves as an organic system when the premise and effects of every reality mutually constitute each other. Undoubtedly, the retreat of capitalism in erstwhile socialist countries marks a phase of defeat of socialist practice within the larger trajectory of social change. There is ample evidence however, of such episodic setback of capitalism also in the larger span of transition from feudalism. But what is important is that productive forces and human capabilities change in a direction where the old relations of production act as fetters to the development of productive forces and the progress of humanity at large. True that socialist practice suffered a setback at the end of the past century, but it is equally true that realisation of collective labour and the need for coordinated production and distribution has also become an imperative for human progress more than ever before.

NEW TECHNOLOGY

The production process with the use of new technology and communication is increasingly socialised. Information and knowledge flow from across the world has immensely increased mutual dependence among people beyond borders. As the share of knowledge or mental inputs acquire a larger share in the value added, knowledge assumes importance in the process of accumulation. The division between mental and physical labour although is replicated in the new division of labour between global south and north but they are much more integrated today. The critical feature of knowledge is that unlike other inputs it accumulates by sharing and communicating within peers. Most importantly the huge data that is been created through human transactions and interactions everyday is propertied by few tech companies who process and analyse big data using AI, machine learning and other technologies to comprehend consumer behaviour in its minute details. They use them not only to control current markets but to colonise human minds by influencing their future choices. Using new technology processing of human needs and preferences for consumption and production at various levels can be easily done and that could feed into coordinating and planning production and distribution in a dynamic setting. But such a process is possible only when the means of production which includes data and knowledge is socialised and not been propertied by few global tech firms. Such use of technology then must be embedded in a political process of debate, discussion and negotiation among associated producers. At any point in time, optimal social choices may not be one, there can be many, and this must be determined by ensuring participation of people in the planning process.

The more production is socialised the individual dimension of measuring productivity is becoming obsolete. In a particular period if labour overseeing the robots can produce say ten times compared to a scenario when everything was done manually, then saying that the individual labour has become ten times more productive doesn’t make sense. The social wisdom and knowledge that creates robots increases the individual capability of the human being. The individual centric measures of productivity are gradually becoming irrelevant as production contains higher proportions of social labour in human activities. Capitalism is insensitive to such changes and fails to acknowledge the fact that progress of social wisdom and knowledge increasingly demands the recognition of collective labour. Instead capitalism imposes the rule of capital and profit upon every human endeavour and thereby restricts the progress of collective wisdom by establishing property rights on knowledge.

HUMAN AND NATURE

Most importantly the rule of private property and profiteering is completely inimical to sustain the interdependence between human beings and nature. Climate change and ecological disasters and consequent challenges to human livelihoods are marking the advent of a planetary crisis. The capitalist myopia tries to address the environment question as a case of market failure and aims to resolve it by internalising costs of negative externalities to the producer’s price. But since competition among capitalists is largely driven by reducing costs of production and hence undervaluing both labour and nature, there is hardly any incentive to internalise extra costs for pollution control or adhere to processes that turn out to be costly in the short run.

It is far more evident today that capitalist levers of markets and incentive structures grossly fail to arrest carbon footprint. Socialism is the answer to recreate the balance between human and nature as private gains in socialism become subservient to collective good. Production and creation of value involves both nature and labour and this mutual relation is expressed by Marx saying nature is the ‘inorganic body’ of the human being. The relation is dialectical: humans act upon their surroundings or nature using labour to make it more comfortable for their lives but by the same process they change themselves. True, that humans are ahead of other species because they could consciously change their surroundings but the balance between the two is destabilised when humans see nature as an object to be appropriated and colonised for the purpose of private profit. Only in socialism humans can see nature as the essence of their collective self as against an object external to their existence. Therefore, the social metabolism that includes production and reproduction of our life process comes under crisis under capitalism and socialism is not only the alternative but an imperative to human existence and civilisation.