DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE

In the transition period between capitalism and socialism, the basic contradiction within society is between the socialised and planned relations of production, on the one hand, and the survival of capitalist norms of distribution of consumer goods, on the other. The latter are made unavoidable by the inheritance from capitalism of a level of development of the productive forces (reflected in the level of social productivity of labour) that is insufficient to assure the satisfaction of material wants through distribution according to need. In the transition period consumer goods therefore retain their commodity character, with each producer exchanging their labour-power for a wage which constitutes a certificate for the appropriation of a strictly limited but undifferentiated fraction of the whole mass of consumer goods produced by society. This, however, will not necessarily be true for services: Depending on the resources the transitional society is able and prepared to devote to these services, distribution can be effected on the basis of need in health care, education, urban transport, housing, and the supply of electricity, gas, water, etc.

In the final analysis, the basic contradiction of the transitional society can only be transcended through a substantial rise in the social productivity of labour. Historical experience, in both capitalist and transitional societies, has shown that techniques which increase productivity by improving the technical level and organisation of labour ultimately give far better results than those aimed at increasing individual productivity. Moreover, such techniques call for little use of individual material incentives. They are furthered at most by collective benefits to society as a whole or the workforce of a given enterprise. Such types of incentives, moreover, have the advantage from the viewpoint of building socialism, that they favour the cohesion and internal solidarity of the working class — insofar, that is, as enterprise parochialism is resolutely combated.

However, the social productivity of labour cannot be increased without the promotion of an increase in the administrative and technical knowledge and skills of the producers. Theoretically, this education ought not to be the source of material advantages once society has taken over its expense, that is, once this expense is no longer financed by the individual producer or their family. In practice, the total absence of individual benefits for the acquisition of such skills would become counterproductive, if only because of the additional effort involved in attempting to gain them. Thus, the socialist state is compelled to maintain the capitalist system of monetary payment according to work, with skilled labour being given a higher remuneration than unskilled, and therefore to uphold inequality in access to consumer goods. However, this unavoidable difference in remuneration between unskilled and very skilled labour, between manual and intellectual labour, brings with it certain dangers, including the danger of bureaucratisation of the functionaries of the socialist state.

In conditions where the supply of consumer goods is inadequate to meet everyone's needs but sufficient to give significant privileges to a minority, there is a tendency for the functionaries of the socialist state, who are in charge of administering and enforcing the inequality of access to consumer goods that flows from capitalist norms of distribution, to become bureaucrats, i.e., privileged officials who monopolise decision-making power.

This tendency is particularly accentuated in an isolated and economically backward socialist state (or group of socialist states). Here, the lack of administrative knowledge and skills within the working class inevitably forces the socialist state to utilise the skills of former capitalists, their managers and state officials, most of whom can only be persuaded to serve the socialist state by being granted high salaries and privileged access to consumer goods. This creates the danger of corruption and bureaucratic degeneration among those revolutionary workers who become functionaries of the socialist state.