Ameic,

Once socialism has been established social conditions will have changed,
most notably in two respects. First, individual humans will no longer have
any problem of material provision. Everybody will have free access to the
things they need to live and enjoy life, such as food, clothing, housing,
health care, transport and entertainment. Considering what a constant worry
this is for all but the very rich today and how much of our time and energy
it takes up, this will represent a great change in the conditions in which
we live.

Second, with the abolition of the division of society into two classes with
antagonistic interests, with the one trying to exploit the labour of the
other as much as possible and with the other resisting, there will be, for
the first time since the break-up of the primitive tribal communism in which
humans lived for tens of thousands of years, a genuine community with a
genuinely common social interest. This, too, will represent a great change
of social conditions compared with today.

Humans are not "naturally lazy". Quite the opposite. We need to exercise our
physical and mental energies but, quite naturally, want to do this in a
creative, pleasurable or at least meaningful way. What people object to is
work that is boring, over-tiring or meaningless, but this is the only kind
that capitalism has to offer most people in return for selling their mental
and physical energies to an employer for a wage or salary. It is such work
for an employer that people seek to avoid and which gives rise to the
"humans are naturally lazy" argument. Yet even under capitalism, if people
think work is creative or useful they will undertake it, even without
requiring payment as witness the time and energy that many people put into
voluntary work and into their hobbies and pastimes. In a socialist society,
freed from exploitation and working for wages, work will of course still
have to be performed to produce the goods and services to which people will
have free access, but this will be a question of organisation, of fitting
together the work that needs to be done and the people willing to do it in
the quite different working conditions that will then prevail.

The coming of socialism will not require great changes in the way we behave,
essentially only the accentuation of some of the behaviours which people
exhibit today (friendliness, helpfulness, cooperation) at the expense of
others which capitalism encourages. Capitalism has an all-pervading culture
of violence, competitiveness and acquisitiveness, and people are under
pressure to adapt their behaviour to this. In socialism this culture will
disappear and people’s behaviour will no longer be shaped by it.

Of course, sometimes people will get frustrated and annoyed and this will
occasionally find expression in an act of aggression, but this would be the
isolated act of an individual. Social acts of violence such as war, training
for war, terrorism, violent crime, vandalism and the like will disappear, as
the social conditions that generated and sustained them will have
disappeared.

Nor does socialism require us all to suddenly become altruists, putting the
interests of others above our own. In fact socialism doesn’t require people
to be any more altruistic than they are today (a behaviour which is greater
than biological determinists like to admit and which presents them with the
insoluble theoretical problem of how a gene for such behaviour, which they
have obliged themselves to believe in, could have evolved). We will still be
concerned primarily with ourselves, with satisfying our needs, our need to
be well considered by others as well as our material and sexual needs. No
doubt too, we will want to “possess” our toothbrush, our clothes and other
things of personal use, and to feel secure in our physical occupation of the
house or flat we live in, but this will be just that—our home and not a
financial asset.

Such “selfish” behaviour will still exist in socialism but the
acquisitiveness encouraged by capitalism will no longer exist. Under
capitalism we have to seek to accumulate money since the more money you have
the better you can satisfy your material needs, and as an insurance against
something going wrong (like losing your job) or as something to hand on to
your children or grandchildren. People are therefore obliged by their
material circumstances to seek to acquire money, by fair means or foul and
if need be, when push comes to shove, at the expense of others. This is why
capitalism has earned the name of “the acquisitive society”.

Socialism won’t be an "acquisitive society" and won’t need to be, as
everybody will be able to satisfy their material requirements as of right
and without needing to pay money. In fact, because productive resources and
the social product will be owned in common there won’t be any need for
money; just products—useful goods and services—ready to be distributed for
people to take and use. And, because people could always be sure that the
stores will always be stocked with the things they need, there would be no
incentive to grab and hoard; that would be an irrational and pointless
behaviour in the new social conditions.

Adam

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