Posted by Roy Fischler in Socialist Webzine:
I’d like to tell about a variety of socialism that doesn’t even seem to have a name, despite the fact that many socialists such as myself advocate it. I call it automation socialism.
Probably the most common criticism of socialism is that if people are given equal wealth whether they work or not, few people will do the necessary work without economic incentive, so everyone will wind up equally poor. The dysfunctional economies of such countries as the Soviet Union and Cuba are supposedly proof that socialism doesn’t work, and that maximizing disparities of wealth works best. Never mind that the hybrid capitalist – socialist Scandinavian countries have the highest standards of living on earth.
Socialists typically blame the poor economies of Cuba and other countries on our economic blockade and other efforts by the capitalists to sabotage attempts at socialism. While that sabotage is surely part of the problem, I don’t believe those countries’ economies would do very well even if left alone.
The bad news is that those critics of socialism are probably correct. People probably wouldn’t do much necessary work without economic incentive. The good news is that we could have socialism anyway, as long as enough work is automated away, so that we could find enough people to do the remaining work, voluntarily.