We must here carefully distinguish between practical identities and mere social roles. All practical identities (e.g., parent, philosopher, political activist) are social roles, but not all social roles we take on count as practical identities for us. Only the social roles with which we identify as ends in themselves are practical identities for us, whereas other social roles merely serve as means to an end. To be clear, even a mere social role has normative criteria that we can seek to fulfill or transform in light of an end to which we are committed, as when we participate in sanitation work for the sake of the common good. However, to the extent that sanitation work is understood as a means to an end—rather than as an end in itself—we are also committed to reducing the socially necessary labor time it requires.
To grasp the relation between the realm of freedom and the realm of necessity, the distinction between practical identities and mere social roles is crucial. The realm of freedom is defined by our practical identities—and their internal relations of priority in the form of our respective existential identities—which are expressed by the activities we pursue for their own sake. To expand the realm of freedom, we must increase the quantity and improve the quality of our socially available free time (the time available to pursue, question, and transform our practical identities). The realm of necessity, by contrast, is defined by the mere social roles we have to fulfill to meet the needs of our society at the current stage of its development. To reduce the realm of necessity, we must therefore decrease the quantity and improve the quality of our socially necessary labor time (the time required to meet our needs).
In light of the first principle of democratic socialism—the measure of our wealth in terms of socially available free time—we are committed to reducing our socially necessary labor time through technological innovation. For example, the living labor time required for street cleaning can be dramatically reduced by a machine that only requires the push of a button to operate. Even if the machine is not more efficient than a human being but requires the same amount of time to clean the street (say thirty minutes), a clean street now contains only one minute of socially necessary labor time (to get the machine started) and twenty-nine minutes of nonliving production time through which no one is exploited. If someone enjoys cleaning a street as an end in itself, he or she is of course free to do so, but the labor is no longer socially necessary. Moreover, since we have overcome the capitalist measure of value, the reduction of socially necessary labor time is directly converted into socially available free time, which we can use to engage the question of what we should do with our lives and pursue the activities that matter to us. The more time we can spend on what we count as ends in themselves—and the less time we have to spend on what we count as socially necessary labor—the wealthier we are as individuals and the better off we are as a society.
To be sure, what should count as belonging to the realm of necessity (socially necessary labor time) and what should count as belonging to the realm of freedom (socially available free time) is not given and demands an ongoing democratic conversation. The point, however, is that we are in a position to pursue such a conversation only if our measure of wealth reflects a commitment to socially available free time (democratic socialism) rather than a commitment to exploiting socially necessary labor time (capitalism). Only the revaluation of value can allow us to own our collective commitment to increasing the realm of freedom and decreasing the realm of necessity. The first principle of democratic socialism is therefore required for us to build and maintain a free society.
The second principle of democratic socialism is that the means of production are collectively owned and cannot be used for the sake of profit. The second principle is entailed by the first, since collective ownership of the means of production is the material condition of possibility for recognizing socially available free time as the measure of our wealth. As long as the means of production are privately owned and used for the sake of profit, the measure of our wealth is the amount of surplus value derived from the exploitation of living labor. Efficient technologies of nonliving production cannot generate any value for us by virtue of their own operations. Only if we produce for the sake of socially available free time can we acknowledge the value generated by operations of nonliving technology. This practical revaluation requires collective ownership of the means of production. Because we own the means of production collectively, we can engineer technologies with the aim of generating as much surplus time as possible for everyone. We are not forced to convert surplus time into the surplus value of capital, but can freely pursue the reduction of the need for living labor in the process of production. Increased efficiency of production is not a problem that we have to try to “solve” by finding new ways of exploiting surplus labor. Rather, increased efficiency of production is an opportunity to liberate more time for all members of society to lead their individual lives.
Collective ownership of the means of production does not mean that we are prevented from having private property in a concrete sense. We can have our own houses, our own computers, our own books, and so on, in the sense that we can use them for our own ends and no one has the right to take them away from us against our will. While we can have private property in a concrete sense, however, we cannot have private property in the abstract sense that transforms property into a commodity that can be bought and sold for profit. The recognition of your property as your property is not based on your right to its abstract value as a commodity (or as a means for producing commodities), but on your right to its concrete specificity as valuable to you and as useful for you in leading your life.
For the same reason, collective ownership of the means of production does not commit us to a top-down model of central planning. On the contrary, collective ownership of the means of production is a necessary condition for the reciprocal determination of part and whole in the economy, which Hayek mistakenly thinks can be achieved under free-market capitalism. An instructive example is Internet service. Under democratic socialism, everyone would have Internet access at the maximal speed enabled by our currently available technology, with a collective commitment to create technology that makes Internet access even faster and possible to maintain with even less socially necessary labor. While our democratic state provides the Internet service, the actual use and applications of the Internet are not restricted by the dictates of a central planning committee. Rather, we have both the material resources and the socially available free time to develop applications that resolve problems which emerge in “the particular circumstances of time and place”—to recall Hayek’s language—allowing for “the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality” and drawing on “unique information of which beneficial use might be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to [the individual] or are made with his active cooperation.”
Such concrete utilization of knowledge is facilitated under democratic socialism, since the incentive to create or distribute an application is not to make a profit. Rather, the recognition of a problem as a problem and a need as a need are themselves the incentive to provide an application that can resolve a problem and satisfy a need. Moreover, since technological applications are not proprietary under democratic socialism, they are taken up and become socially general to the extent that they prove helpful beyond the contexts in which they emerged, thus demonstrating their social worth by virtue of their concrete use value rather than their abstract exchange value.
In a capitalist free market, by contrast, Internet service will always be provided by regional monopolies that operate for profit. Contrary to what Hayek assumes, monopolies tend to form naturally in a free market, since private ownership of the required technological infrastructure makes it harder and harder to compete with the company that has built the dominant network. Given the profit motive, a company has no inherent interest in offering us general Internet access at the maximal speed possible. Sl
ower and partial access will be preferred if that is more profitable. Likewise, given the profit motive, the development of technological applications is not primarily guided by the attempt to resolve actual problems and satisfy actual needs. The capitalist mode of production is conducive neither to the efficient allocation of our available resources nor to the progressive development of our technological possibilities. Only by removing the profit motive can we have a reciprocal determination of our evolving resources (the whole) and our evolving demands (the part).
Collective ownership of the means of production, then, does not mean that we are subjected to an undemocratic control of our economic life. Collective ownership of the means of production is rather the material condition of possibility for actual economic democracy. Because we own the means of production collectively, we can decide through democratic processes how and what we produce, based on which abilities we seek to cultivate and which needs we have to satisfy.
Such a collective determination of which abilities we cultivate and which needs we satisfy is already at work under capitalism. The difference, however, is that under capitalism the process of collective self-determination is profoundly undemocratic. The purpose of our collective social production is already decided: to generate profit for corporations and a “growth” of capital in the economy, despite the exploitation, unemployment, and crises of overproduction that follow from such an alienated conception of value. Given that the value in question is not the value of our time and our lives but the value of accumulated profit, we cannot see ourselves in the social whole of which we are a part. Rather, we come to see ourselves as essentially self-interested, atomically constituted individuals, who have no inherent motivation to care for the common good.
Under democratic socialism, by contrast, our technological innovations, our political debates, our evolving legislation, and our elections can actually be concerned with the purposes of our economic life and the collectively held values that we seek to sustain. How to define our ends and how to achieve them are the political questions that can be continually engaged under democratic socialism. Because we own the means of production collectively we can develop these means—technology in a broad sense—with the aim of both producing the goods that we take ourselves to need and increasing the amount of socially available free time for everyone to explore their abilities.
Hence, the third principle of democratic socialism is the one formulated by Marx: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”57 Marx does not develop the meaning of the principle, but in light of the first two principles of democratic socialism we can elaborate the implications. The aim of democratic socialism is to allow us not only to live our lives by satisfying our needs but also to lead our lives by cultivating our abilities. We are collectively committed to producing the necessary means of subsistence, as well as the means and institutions for each one to pursue the activities that matter to him or her (painting, writing, music, athletics, theater, and so on).
The key feature here is that democratic socialism enables us to live our lives in the realm of necessity in light of the way we lead our lives in the realm of freedom. The realm of necessity and the realm of freedom cannot be separated, but everything hinges on distinguishing between them in the right way. In the realm of necessity, we have to produce the social goods that are required to satisfy our needs: water, food, clothes, houses, and so on. Thus, in the realm of necessity, we are primarily concerned with the quantity of labor time that is socially necessary to sustain our lives. Under democratic socialism, we are committed to sharing the socially necessary labor time, but also to reducing it as much as possible through technological innovation.
Based on our different abilities, we participate in the social labor that we recognize as necessary for the common good (food production, construction, health care, childcare, education, science, political deliberation, and so on). Yet under democratic socialism no one is forced to participate in social labor, since each one is provided for in accordance with his or her needs just by virtue of being part of society. The idea, however, is that we will be intrinsically motivated to participate in social labor when we can recognize that the social production is for the sake of the common good and our own freedom to lead a life. Capitalist wage labor is inherently alienating, since we are not part of deciding the purpose of what we are producing and our work is conceived for the sake of a profit that is posited as an end in itself rather than as a means to our freedom. Democratic social labor, by contrast, is inherently free, since we are working on the basis of our commitment to leading a life and for the sake of a form of life that we can recognize as committed to our freedom. Even tedious work we do in the realm of necessity—e.g., participating in the garbage removal in our neighborhood on a weekly basis—can be seen in light of the realm of freedom, since the work is geared toward reducing socially necessary labor time and increasing socially available free time. Unlike under capitalism, we can make sense of why we are doing what we are doing, through education and democratic deliberation regarding the form of life we are sustaining.
Those who object that we will not be motivated to work unless we have to secure our survival—or have the chance to make a monetary profit—should consider their lack of faith in our spiritual freedom. Their argument assumes that we need to be commanded by a single ought of survival or profit in order to work and cannot be allowed to engage the double ought of our spiritual freedom. A single ought of survival or profit alienates us from our spiritual freedom, since it commands us to work on the basis of a perceived necessity rather than in light of a responsibility to which we have bound ourselves. Only if we are granted the material, social, and institutional resources to exercise our spiritual freedom can we actually identify with what we are doing as our own activity. To make an activity or an identity our own, it cannot be imposed as a necessity. We must be free to ask ourselves if we ought to do what we do and if we ought to be who we take ourselves to be. This requires the resources that allow us to work for the sake of something other than our own survival and the free time that allows us to adopt a different purpose than profit. In short: we must be able to see how the way we lead our lives in the realm of freedom determines how we live our lives in the realm of necessity.
We can thus further specify how to understand the relation between the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom under democratic socialism. In the realm of freedom, we have socially available free time to engage the question of who we are, which cannot be answered once and for all. Who we are is inseparable from the practical identities we sustain and their order of priority in our life (our existential identity). In the realm of necessity, by contrast, we share the socially necessary labor time that is required to sustain the material life that is inseparable from our spiritual life and the material conditions that are inseparable from our spiritual activities. Because we are fragile, embodied beings, we need shelter, nourishment, and health care not only to survive but also to maintain our spiritual commitments. Likewise, we need tools and various forms of infrastructure to pursue our spiritual projects. The strength of our bodies is finite and needs to be regenerated, while our tools and our infrastructures are worn down by use and have to be replaced or repaired. All these necessary material conditions cost labor time to sustain. How much labor time they cost, however, is a matter of our technological development and the way we organize our labor.
Under democratic socialism, we have three ways of reducing and qualitatively transforming socially necessary labor time.
First, large parts of our socially necessary labor can be done in the realm of freedom, insofar as it is performed by persons who are committed to the occupation as an end in itself and thus take up the required social role as a practical identity in light of which they lead their lives. For example, architecture is a socially necessary form of labor, since we cannot live our lives without inhabiting spaces that are conducive
to our activities. Yet if the work of planning buildings is valuable in itself for the architect, the time she devotes to architecture does not count as a negative cost of socially necessary labor time but as a positive access to socially available free time. Her socially necessary labor as an architect is being done in the realm of freedom rather than in the realm of necessity.
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