Utopia: Take what you need and give what you can
What would an ideal world look like? I’m not ordinarily drawn to political theory to any level deeper than a brief musing. But a friend, Nathan Peirce, described his idea of Utopia the other day and I found myself engrossed in something more like cogitation. What indeed would that place be like?
Nathan’s ideas on the subject are significantly more dressed out than what I’m going to consider here, which at its heart is simple. It requires only that you turn your head around 180 degrees from your normal way of looking at things. Some might argue that you may also need to throw in a backflip or two. It is this: Take what you need and give what you can.
That simple aphorism is the conclusion of this grand political theory. And I’ll start with the conclusion and return to it periodically, as I can’t pretend to know how we’d get there from here.
And yes, if it sounds familiar, it’s akin to the quote attributed to Karl Marx: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Per the Google machine, that’s a slogan Marx popularized in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program. Whatever that is.
I’m ill-equipped to discuss Marx’s four stages of development relating to production: primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, and capitalism. Except to say that they all sound like brutal, bloody, back-breaking systems that have played out in modern civilization (and still are, perhaps not in any neat chronological order but in parallel tracks at various stages) leading to this current place, which is less than utopian, in my opinion. Marx thought that capitalism is unsustainable, by the way. And I, sitting here in the America of 2021, tend to agree with him.
Take what you need and give what you can. It works just like it sounds. And it’s based on the fact (which seems to be obvious) that there is plenty enough of everything to go around. But this Utopia can only work if everyone simultaneously (or within a reasonable period of time) acknowledges the same thing. At some indefinite point after some undefined set of circumstances, people will go forward with their lives taking only what they need and gladly offering forth all that they do not need.
There may be people who insist on taking more than they need. Indeed, our Utopia would rely on a population consisting largely of mentally healthy people. A person who insists on hoarding today is offered mental health assistance. And people in our Utopia who insisted on possessing an unreasonable or unusual amount of things would likewise be offered mental health care. Importantly, this person would be seen by the community at large as someone needing mental health care.
A well-balanced, mentally healthy person would continue to be as active and productive in this system as in our current capitalist system because work itself would be redefined. In a world where all basic needs are met, work becomes a creative exercise devoted to goals we can only imagine. New creative methods will be directed toward even the most mundane products and services.
And people in our Utopia who insisted on possessing an unreasonable or unusual amount of things would likewise be offered mental health care. Importantly, this person would be seen by the community at large as someone needing mental health care.
Let’s be more specific: You need a loaf of bread and you go to the store. You pay what you can for the bread (if, indeed, you live in a community that still uses money). If you can’t afford to pay, the store gives you the bread. The store knows that it can replace that bread with more bread from the bakery, which pays what it can to the farmer, who pays what she can to the seed supplier, and on it goes.
None of these businesses need to pay for labor, which is the lion’s share of the cost of goods. And the globalization of trade probably means that some sort of monetary exchange will need to persist in order to keep supply chains open worldwide. And I can’t be more specific than that, because our current system reaches deep into my very veins, and I can’t fathom how my landlord might be convinced to lower my rent to better suit my ability to pay, if indeed my landlord is a human being.
Again, the exercise requires me to start with the conclusion: There is plenty enough for everyone to go around if we all take what we need and give what we can. Even billionaires must wonder what they might be doing better with everything they have that they do not need. The mechanism for the creation of Utopia, I suppose, does not so much depend on a 180-degree turn of the head as it does on an opening of the heart. Because it is obvious that this Utopia would engender healthier people leading happier, more productive lives around the world. It would and could do this. Around the world. If we could start with the conclusion.
There’s the very real obstacle of greed. Our Utopia, of course, would offer universal health care, where hoarders could find the therapy they needed. And as Camus wrote about the behavior of human beings during one of our previous plagues: “There is more to admire in men than to despise.” In the proletariat as well as the bourgeoisie.
Originally published at http://kcroes.wordpress.com on September 8, 2021.
