Could the working class really run society for itself?

Factory workers debating during the Russian Revolution (Pic: Wikimedia Commons)

The system is driving us to disaster. But can we be confident the working class could do better? Any new society will emerge from the changes that flow from mass struggle.

In past revolutions, workers created new institutions based on forms of direct democracy. In some, they were able to wrest production from the bosses and start to run it themselves.

Is this possible in today’s complex, high-tech economies?

Apologists for capitalism argue that only the free market can register what people want and allow companies to meet demand.

But the market means production is shaped by the demands of the rich. And bosses compete to manipulate us with advertising.

The free market is irrational, chaotic and profoundly unfree. Workers produce commodities they will never enjoy.

Capitalist production already depends on high levels of meticulous planning that allows goods to be transported around the world.

But planning is locked into competition which leads to disastrous economic and environmental crises. And corporations must plan for a future market they cannot predict.

In a democratically planned society, we can develop the planning mechanisms that exist now—but liberate them from the bosses.

We can decide collectively how our social needs are met. Coordination and cooperation will replace competition. It is workers who really know how to run things, not bosses.

In capitalism, technology boosts efficiencies, but threatens jobs. In a socialist society, there would be every incentive to produce as efficiently as possible.

Some forms of planning can be “top-down.” Governments take over sectors of the economy that are too big to fail—but state ownership is very different from democratic control.

Truly democratic planning depends on workers being able to decide what is produced, how resources are used and how technologies are developed.

Democratic planning is the only way we can resolve the deepening climate crisis.

A socialist society would create new forms of economic and ecological cooperation, connecting local areas with whole regions.

Cooperation means the sharing of scientific, medical and technological knowledge which are today used as weapons in commercial war.

It is easy to envisage rapid decarbonisation and a transition to green energy being the priorities of a planned economy.

A socialist society would have no need to spend billions on war, fast fashion or advertising. We could phase out harmful practices like private car ownership.

Capacities and resources could shift to support health, public transport, farming and the care sectors.

Priorities would be established through debates that would put human interests at the centre of decision making.

Friedrich Engels explained, “In making itself the master of all the means of production to use them in accordance with a social plan, society puts an end to the former subjection of men to their own means of production, the marketplace.”

Imagine expropriating networks like Amazon. It has an incredibly efficient distribution system. But it depends on exploitation, climate catastrophe and ever‑expanding consumer “needs”.

Yet Amazon provides a glimpse of the technologies that could be harnessed to support global planning, communication, shared learning and innovation.

Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky argued that in a socialist society, there would be huge debates over questions like the distribution of oases in the Sahara desert, regulation of the weather, over chemical hypotheses and different tendencies in music and sport.

Karl Marx believed that socialism would allow workers to develop the capacities crushed under capitalism—including the ability to consciously plan and coordinate what they produce.

Marx saw the ability to plan as a “slumbering power.” We all have that power, but we need a social transformation to exercise it together.