In that "The Economics of Freedom" published by SolFed it says:    ".......in a society without money. People work as a social duty;  wages are unnecessary – ‘from each according to their ability’; and cash is no longer needed to acquire goods – ‘to each according to their need’.

Good Marxist policy, but rather dated. Technology has now advanced so far that most people in employment are working handling money -insurance and buying and selling. - That was coming about even before so much real work was exported to 3^rd world.    

On iww-list Michael et al put “Talking of changing everything can someone recommend a text  that explains "abolishing the wages system" in basic terms?“     There has been no reply. This Forum needs much more use.

Real useful productive work is so scarce there just is not enough to go around. It will have to be tightly rationed, that is, if we gain our objective before the Capitalists totally destroy the Earth's ability to support Life.

"In that "The Economics of Freedom" published by SolFed it says: ".......in a society without money. People work as a social duty; wages are unnecessary – ‘from each according to their ability’; and cash is no longer needed to acquire goods – ‘to each according to their need’.

Good Marxist policy, but rather dated. Technology has now advanced so far that most people in employment are working handling money -insurance and buying and selling. - That was coming about even before so much real work was exported to 3rd world."

That statement is not dated at all! What it means is that all the people currently working in jobs directly related to the upkeep of the profit system will be able to work on things directly related to fulfilling peoples needs.

The SPGB produce a few short pamphlets about abolishing the wages system "From Capitalism to Socialism" would be a good place to start.

 A few of us wob's will be discussing "economics of freedom" check it out here:

www.theoryandpractice.org.uk/forum

DP, you beat me to it, but, yes, I agree, everyone come join us on theory and practice (props to DP!!)

I have a comment on the following section of "Economics of Freedom" p. 17 'Working class communal life up until the 1950s & 1960s involved a great deal of mutual aid..." True, but this was also a time of segregation - and I am not just talking about the US. I am specifically taking about Western Europe, about citizenship laws in the UK, about the way immigrant workers were treated, and about the relationship between what was going on in Western Europe and decolonization struggles. This was also 10-20 years after the Holocaust. These idealized societies of Western Europe at the time were mostly white, and very homogeneous.

It is a real mistake to look back nostalgically to Europe's past without making the connection between this past and Europe's relation with the rest of the world. It is a mistake to idealized past societies that were homogeneous and ignore the fact that many people in those societies were intolerant of anyone who wasn't like them. If it was so simple to go back to the past or if the past was so great we would not be in the current messed up situation we are in now.

Another question has to do with the size of communities, decision making processes and decentralization vs. centralization. I think that the most practical way of answering these questions is to deal with them non-ideologically. That is rather than labeling something centralist or decentralist, totalitarian or libertarian we should look at the issue at hand and then debate whether it makes sense to handle it on a local, regional or continental etc. level. Some issues can be decided among small groups of people other issues will need to be handled by larger bodies, and how decisions are made, consensus, direct or representational democracy, also would need to be decided in practice based on the issue. Of course all of this would take time and involve a lot of arguments, disagreements, debates before decisions would be made. That is how things often work now in our organizations as we try to make decisions about how to run them and how to put our theories into practice.

It is not going to be easy to try to create the new world from the ashes of the old. I don't think we should underestimate what it is going to take. But that doesn't mean we should give up. The current system is unsustainable and if we don't try to create a better one we will not survive. But at the same time we should not oversimplify the enormity of the task.