Why Marx Was Right Read Online Free PDF

occupation. As
Michael Albert puts it, "The doctor working in a plush setting with
comfortable and fulfilling circumstances earns more than the assembly worker
working in a horrible din, risking life and limb, and enduring boredom and
denigration, regardless of how long or how hard each works.'' 10 There is, in fact, a strong case for paying those who engage in boring, heavy,
dirty or dangerous work more than, say, medics or academics whose labours are
considerably more rewarding. Much of this dirty and dangerous work could
perhaps be carried out by former members of the royal family. We need to
reverse our priorities.
    Since I have just
mentioned the media as ripe for public ownership, let us take this as an
exemplary case. Over half a century ago, in an excellent little book entitled Communications, 11 Raymond Williams outlined a socialist plan for
the arts and media which rejected state control of its content on the one hand
and the sovereignty of the profit motive on the other. Instead, the active
contributors in this field would have control of their own means of expression
and communication. The actual ''plant'' of the arts and media—radio stations,
concert halls, TV networks, theatres, newspaper offices and so on—would be
taken into public ownership (of which there are a variety of forms), and their
management invested in democratically elected bodies. These would include both
members of the public and representatives of media or artistic bodies.
    These commissions, which
would be strictly independent of the state, would then be responsible for
awarding public resources and ''leasing'' the socially owned facilities either
to individual practitioners or to independent, democratically self-governing
companies of actors, journalists, musicians and the like. These men and women
could then produce work free of both state regulation and the distorting
pressures of the market. Among other things, we would be free of the situation
in which a bunch of power-crazed, avaricious bullies dictate through their
privately owned media outlets what the public should believe—which is to say,
their own self-interested opinions and the system they support. We will know
that socialism has established itself when we are able to look back with utter
incredulity on the idea that a handful of commercial thugs were given free rein
to corrupt the minds of the public with Neanderthal political views convenient
for their own bank balances but for little else.
    Much of the media under
capitalism avoid difficult, controversial or innovative work because it is bad
for profits. Instead, they settle for banality, sensationalism and gut
prejudice. Socialist media, by contrast, would not ban everything but
Schoenberg, Racine and endless dramatized versions of Marx's Capital. There would be popular theatre, TV and newspapers galore. ''Popular'' does not
necessarily mean ''in-ferior.'' Nelson Mandela is popular but not inferior.
Plenty of ordinary people read highly specialist journals littered with jargon
unintelligible to outsiders. It is just that these journals tend to be about
angling, farm equipment or dog breeding rather than aesthetics or endocrinology.
The popular becomes junk and kitsch when the media feel the need to hijack as
large a slice of the market as quickly and painlessly as possible. And this
need is for the most part commercially driven.
    Socialists will no doubt
continue to argue about the detail of a postcapitalist economy. There is no
flawless model currently on offer. One can contrast this imperfection with the
capitalist economy, which is in impeccable working order and which has never
been responsible for the mildest touch of poverty, waste or slump. It has
admittedly been responsible for some extravagant levels of unemployment, but
the world's leading capitalist nation has hit on an ingenious solution to this
defect. In the United States today, over a million more people would be seeking
work if they were not in