What makes communism possible? The self-realisation interpretation

Abstract

In the Critique of Gotha Programme, Karl Marx famously argues that a communist society will be characterised by the principle, ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!’ I take up a question about this principle that was originally posed by G.A. Cohen, namely: what makes communism (so conceived) possible for Marx? In reply to this question, Cohen interprets Marx as saying that communism is possible because of limitless abundance, a view that Cohen takes to be implausible for ecological reasons. I develop a new interpretation of Marx's position. On this interpretation, people in communist society achieve self-realisation through providing others with the goods and services required for their self-realisation. Coupled with a reasonably high (but not immense) development of productive power, self-realisation generates conditions in which people can produce according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. I defend this view as an interpretation of Marx and I argue that it represents a more plausible account of what makes communism possible than Cohen's interpretation in which technological advance and limitless abundance play the predominant role.

Introduction

In the ‘Critique of the Gotha Programme’ (hereafter CGP), Karl Marx argues that the transition from capitalism to communism will involve two phases. In the ‘lower phase of communism’ workers collectively own the means of production and distribution is calibrated to duration and intensity of labour contribution. In Marx's view, the lower phase is a necessary means to the higher phase. As is well known, Marx suggests that the higher phase will be characterised by the principle, ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!’ (CGP: 87).

This fascinating text raises many questions. In what follows, I take up a question that was originally posed by G.A. Cohen (Cohen, 1995: 127–143). Suppose that communism is a society in which people produce according to their abilities and resources are distributed on the basis of human need. The question is, what makes communism (so conceived) possible for Marx? How is it possible that there may exist a society in which people can produce according to their abilities? And how is it possible that there may exist a society in which people can receive according to their needs? In reply to these questions, Cohen considers two answers. It could be that the first part of the principle, ‘from each according to his abilities’, is a legally enforced duty, that is, a coercively enforced norm governing the organisation of labour to which individuals have to conform. Since people must produce in this way, we can suppose that sufficient resources are generated to ensure that distribution according to needs is possible. Cohen doubts that this is Marx's view. Alternatively, it could be that communism is brought about by a ‘technological fix’. On this view, technological advance issues in limitless abundance that ensures that people can produce as they please and take whatever they may want from the common stock of resources. Cohen argues in favour of this interpretation. However, he argues that it represents an untenable view because it is inconsistent with ecological constraints. Consequently, Cohen concludes that Marx lacks a plausible account of what makes communism possible. Faced with our loss of faith in limitless abundance, Cohen urges Marxists to adopt an egalitarian account of what makes communism possible, according to which communism is possible when and because people freely serve each other out of egalitarian duty (Cohen, 1995: Ch. 5; Cohen, 2000: Ch. 6; Cohen, 2008: Ch. 5). ¹

In this paper, I return to the question of what makes communism possible for Marx. I agree with Cohen that what makes communism possible for Marx is not the coercive enforcement of a legal duty, and that unlimited abundance is untenable. However, I argue that Cohen excludes a third possibility: what I call the self-realisation interpretation. ² According to this interpretation, people in a communist society achieve self-realisation through providing others with the goods and services they need for their self-realisation. Coupled with a reasonably high (but not immense) development of productive power, the nature of human self-realisation, and individuals’ motivation to achieve it, generates the conditions under which people can produce according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. The ‘fix’ ³ is thus primarily motivational not technological. I argue that this interpretation accords with the texts and presents a more plausible account of what makes communism possible than Cohen's interpretation in which limitless abundance plays the predominant role. Since the question of what would make communism possible remains a live one, not least because of Cohen's subsequent work, my discussion of the self-realisation interpretation is not merely an exercise in Marx interpretation. It also sets out for political philosophy an overlooked account of the basis of a communist society.

Before I develop this interpretation, let me clarify my question by distinguishing it from two others in its vicinity. First, in asking, ‘what makes communism possible?’, I am not asking about Marx's views about the accessibility of communism, that is, of how we will get to communism from capitalism. In reply to the question of accessibility, Marx would talk about things like the development of class consciousness, revolution, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. But my question is not, ‘how, in Marx's view, do we get there from here?’, but rather: ‘how is it possible that we may have a society in which each can produce according to their abilities and receive according to their needs?’ Second, notice that the question, ‘what makes communism possible?’ is distinct from the question: ‘is communism possible?’ The former question looks for a property (or set of properties) that, if achieved, would make communism possible. It is a Marxist variant on the question Rawls asks at the outset of Political Liberalism. ⁴ The latter question, by contrast, asks whether that property (or set of properties) is desirable and feasible. My focus is in the former question. However, the answer we give to the former has implications for the latter. For example, if what makes communism possible is limitless abundance or a huge change in human psychology – say involving an elimination of self-interest – then we may reasonably doubt whether communism is desirable or feasible. As we shall see, my interpretation of Marx makes neither claim.

The paper proceeds as follows. I begin with a brief discussion of communism in the CGP. I then discuss Cohen's limitless abundance interpretation, explaining why it fails to provide a tenable account of communism's possibility. Having shown the problems with Cohen's interpretation, I develop the self-realisation interpretation. Finally, I consider objections to the self-realisation interpretation.

The Critique of the Gotha Programme

To prepare the ground for discussion of what makes communism possible, I begin with a brief discussion of communism in the CGP.

The CGP is Marx's response to the Gotha Programme, a document written by German socialists following the Gotha Unity Conference of 1875. Marx is critical of the programme. However, his criticism of the document leads him to providing some important insights into his own views on a future society.

A key claim of the Gotha Programme is that ‘the proceeds of labour belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society’ (CGP: 81). After highlighting unclarities in this formulation, Marx points out that the undiminished proceeds of labour cannot be paid to all members of society, for deductions must be made for economic necessities and the meeting common needs, such as education, healthcare, and provision for those unable to work.

Having identified this oversight, Marx proceeds to consider how the remainder of the social product should be distributed. It is here that he introduces the idea of a lower phase of communism that immediately follows the revolution. In the lower phase, resources are distributed ‘proportional to the labour they [i.e., future individuals] supply’ (CGP: 86). The guiding principle is thus, ‘to each according to their work’. Call this the contribution principle.

In Marx's view, the lower phase offers a considerable improvement on capitalism, for exploitation is abolished: workers receive, after the various deductions mentioned above, the remaining value of their labour contribution. However, the contribution principle is still ‘encumbered with a bourgeois limitation’ (CGP: 86). Marx makes two criticisms. First, the contribution principle unfairly rewards people's innate natural abilities. Unlike capitalism, the contribution principle no longer discriminates on the basis of class position. But by calibrating pay to labour contribution, ‘it tacitly recognises the unequal individual endowment and thus productive capacity of the workers as natural privileges’ (CGP: 86).

Second, the contribution principle ignores the fact that people have different needs and circumstances: ‘one worker is married, another not; one has more children than another, and so on’ (CGP: 86). So, equal treatment in one respect will not yield equality in another more relevant sense: ‘given an equal amount of work done…one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another’ (CGP: 86).

Marx claims that these shortcomings are inevitable in the lower phase of communist society, which has only just emerged from a prolonged struggle with capitalism, and is ‘thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth-marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges’ (CGP: 86). Given that motivations have been shaped by capitalism, it would be unreasonable to expect a more thoroughgoing form of communism at this stage. ⁵

In time, however, Marx thinks that the lower phase will move towards higher phase, which he describes as follows.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and thereby also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime need; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! (CGP: 87)

Before I consider what makes communism possible, two comments. First, the principle articulated in the final sentence of this paragraph – call this the needs principle – was not original to Marx. To his audience, it would most likely have been associated with Louis Blanc. However, versions of the principle were widespread in the socialist movement. Its roots may lie in the New Testament (Bovens and Lutz, 2019).

Second, the CGP the text is not the only place that one finds Marx affirming a version of the needs principle. In The German Ideology, written in 1845–1846, Marx and Engels criticise the distributive principle ‘to each according to his abilities’ on the ground that differential labour contribution ‘does not justify inequality, confers no privileges in respect of possession and enjoyment’ (GI: 537). As such, they argue that the principle ‘must be changed…into the tenet “to each according to his need”’ (GI: 537). Thus, a version of the needs principle can be traced back to Marx's earlier writings.

The limitless abundance interpretation

Let us now turn to our core question. Suppose that communism is a society in which people can produce according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. What makes that possible?

In reply to this question, Cohen begins by considering what may initially seem like a plausible interpretation. According to this interpretation, the first part of the needs principle, ‘from each according to his abilities’ is a legally enforced duty governing the organisation of labour to which individuals have to conform. ⁶ Since people must produce in this fashion, it is reasonable to assume that sufficient resources would be generated to ensure that distribution according to needs is possible. Call this the legal interpretation.

Cohen admits that what communist society inscribes on its banners may initially appear to support the legal interpretation. Does ‘from each according to his abilities’ not suggest that people must develop their abilities for the good of the community? The difficulty for this view as an interpretation of Marx is that it involves compulsion to work. However, in Marx's account of a communist society, people develop themselves ‘freely…without any such constraint’ (Cohen, 1995: 126). Cohen thus rules out the legally enforced duty interpretation on the grounds that it is inconsistent with Marx's commitment to freedom. ⁷

So, how should we understand the first part of the needs principle? In Cohen's view, we should understand it, not as legally enforced duty that specifies what individuals ought to do, but as a prediction of how people under communism will behave. On this view, ‘from each according to his abilities’ is:

simply part of communism's self description: given that labour is life's prime want, that is how things go here. People fulfil themselves in work which they undertake as a matter of unconditional preference rather than in obedience to an imperative rule (Cohen, 1995: 126–127).

What makes it possible for people to produce this way? And what ensures that people can receive according to their needs? It is here that Cohen famously argues that Marx resorts to a ‘technological fix’.

In what I understand to be Marx's account of how voluntary equality is possible, a plenary abundance ensures extensive compatibility among the material interests of differently endowed people: that abundance eliminates the problem of justice, the need to get what at whose expense, and a fortiori, the need to implement any such decisions by force (Cohen, 1995: 127).

So, in Cohen's view, a technological fix makes communism possible. On the productive side, limitless abundance ensures people can produce as they please without considering whether anyone wants or needs their service. And on the distributive side, the transcendence of material scarcity ensures that people can simply take what they want from the common stock of resources, without depriving others of what they need. In this society, each can produce and consume just as they have a mind; and what they are minded to do is to produce according to their abilities and consume according to their needs.

However, Cohen argues that this technological fix is an untenable position. For the idea of limitless abundance is inconsistent with ecological constraints.

While it may have been excusable, a hundred years ago and more, to ground the possibility of voluntary equality on an expectation of limitless productive power, it is no longer realistic to think about the material situation of humanity in that pre-green fashion. What Marx calls the “springs of cooperative wealth” will never “flow” so “abundantly” that no one will be under the necessity of abandoning or revising what he wants, because of the wants of other people (Cohen, 1995: 127–128).

Cohen takes this to be a sufficient reason to reject Marx's view of communism's possibility. However, it is worth nothing that Cohen's interpretation lumbers Marx with two additional problems.

First, Cohen's interpretation of Marx involves a transcendence of other-regarding concern that is undesirable as such. In Cohen's interpretation of Marx, individuals produce without considering whether anyone wants or needs their service. There is something unattractive in this radically unconstrained view of labour. As Rawls writes, ‘[t]o act always as we have a mind to act without worrying about or being aware of others’ claims, would be a life lived without an awareness of the essential conditions of a decent human society’ (Rawls, 2000: 372). Rawls's point is not that a society of limitless abundance is implausible, but that such a society, insofar as it involves a transcendence of concern for others, is undesirable.

Second, Cohen's interpretation of Marx relies on a sexist view of labour. Cohen presents limitless abundance as sufficient for communism. However, limitless abundance can only count as sufficient for communism if one excludes the whole swathe of work that has overwhelmingly been performed by women. ⁸ For even with unlimited abundance, there would still be an enormous amount of work to do, caring for the young, the elderly, and the ill. For this type of work a technological fix is not a serious prospect.

These are serious problems. However, I believe that they are not problems for Marx but for Cohen's interpretation of him. In the next section, I develop an alternative interpretation of what makes communism possible that accords with the texts and avoids these problems.

The self-realisation interpretation

My interpretation begins with some themes of Marx's 1844 writings. In those writings, Marx provides an account of alienated labour under capitalism. Alongside that account of alienated labour, he also provides an account of what it would be like to produce in a unalienated manner under communism. If I had produced in a human way:

1) In my production I would have objectified my individuality, its specific character, and therefore enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also when looking at the object I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective, visible to the senses and hence a power beyond all doubt. 2) In your enjoyment or use of my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need by my work, that is, of having objectified man's essential nature [Wesen], and of having thus created an object corresponding to the needs of another man's essential nature. 3) I would have been for you the mediator [der Mittler] between you and the species, and therefore would become recognised and felt by you yourself as a completion [Ergänzung] of your own essential nature and as a necessary part of yourself, and consequently would know myself to be confirmed both in your thought and your love. 4) In the individual expression of my life I would have directly created your expression of your life, and therefore in my individual activity I would have directly confirmed and realised my true nature, my human nature, my communal nature (CJM: 227–228). ⁹

In this passage, Marx associates three goods with unalienated labour. ¹⁰ The first is straightforward. If I had produced in an unalienated fashion, I would enjoy both the act of labour itself and looking upon my completed product or service. As Marx puts it, I would enjoy an ‘individual manifestation of my life during the activity’ but ‘also when looking at the object I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective’. This is in marked contrast to alienated labour under capitalism, in which work is experienced as a torment and the worker's objectification in the product of their labour ‘appears as loss of realisation for the workers…as loss of the object and bondage to it…as estrangement, as alienation’ (EPM: 272).

The second good is the satisfaction of another's need. For Marx, unalienated labour not only involves making a product or service that one enjoys and sees as a manifestation of one's individuality; it involves doing so through providing others with goods or services they need.

Now, this second good might be thought to obtain under capitalism, for in a capitalist society people also produce goods and services for others’ consumption. However, Marx argues that in capitalist society people do not produce goods and services in order to satisfy others’ needs. Each labours to satisfy their own ‘dire needs’ (CJM: 220). ¹¹ By this Marx does not mean that workers create products for their own consumption. He rather means that, although we aim to satisfy each other's need, each is ultimately motivated by their own needs. ‘I have produced for myself and not for you, just as you have produced for yourself and not for me’ (CJM: 225). In a communist society, by contrast, our production is partly motivated by the satisfaction of another's needs. ¹² Thus, in making something that you use, I would have the ‘direct enjoyment’ of knowing that I have satisfied a human need by my work.

The third good is the appreciation of one's labour contribution by the recipients of one's labour. Suppose that I had produced a product or service for you in the way just described: my labour is an exercise and objectification of my individual powers, and it is undertaken with the motivation of satisfying your needs. Suppose also that this is common knowledge: you know (and I know that you know) that the goods and services you use are the product of human labour, and that other human beings had made those products with the motivation of satisfying your needs. In these circumstances, it would be natural for you to feel grateful to me. Moreover, knowing that you feel grateful to me would provide me qua producer with an additional form of fulfilment: I ‘would know myself to be confirmed both in your thought and your love.’

How does this description of unalienated labour in the 1844 writings relate to the description of communism in the 1875 CGP? My claim is that we should see Marx's 1844 account of unalienated labour as explaining a significant part of what makes communism possible. The 1844 writings provide an account of self-realisation in work. According to this account, people realise themselves through providing others with the goods and services they need for their (i.e., others’) self-realisation. This makes communism possible. That is, the reason why I can produce according to my abilities is because your self-realisation has provided me with the goods and services I need to produce in that fashion. And the reason why I receive according to my needs is because you have deliberately provided me the goods and services that I need. Hence my claim that the fix is primarily motivational not technological: the reason why I can produce according to my abilities and receive according to my needs is not only or even primarily because advances in technology have resulted in limitless abundance but because others’ self-realisation has deliberately made that society – a communist society – possible.

It follows that our ends under communism would be interlinked (Brudney, 1998: Ch. 5). As a producer I have a need to develop and express my individuality, and I have a need to satisfy another's need. Since satisfying your needs is one of my needs, your use of my good or service not only satisfies your need (for X) it also satisfies one of my needs (to provide you with X). But by satisfying your need for X, I also enable you to produce Y, thereby also helping you to satisfy your need for unalienated labour. And since your unalienated labour involves satisfying others’ needs, the satisfaction of your need to produce Y not only satisfies another's particular need (for Y), it also helps that other satisfy their need for unalienated labour (producing Z). Under communism, we would be mutual enablers of each other's flourishing; moreover, our flourishing would partly consist in that mutual enablement.

Before we continue, let me first forestall two objections that one may have with this account of communism's possibility. First, some may doubt that satisfying others’ needs is a necessary condition of unalienated labour. They may say that it is morally virtuous to produce for others, but deny that it necessarily makes someone's life go better. But consider a carpenter who produces a table. She finds fulfilment both in the construction of the table itself and at looking at her completed product, at the way it embodies her talents and abilities, her thoughts and ideas, her personality. Now suppose that, as a result of a miscommunication at a shipping company, her tables are used for firewood. Although her activity had provided her with important forms of fulfilment, the activity will now surely strike her as less worthwhile, maybe even pointless. Even though she would have never met the recipients of her labour, the knowledge that she was providing something useful for others gave her activity a meaning that it now lacks. ¹³

Second, it might be objected that there is a tension within the conception of self-realisation that I have attributed to Marx. ¹⁴ We can see self-realisation as having individual and communal aspects. ¹⁵ The individual aspect consists in the exercise and development of my powers, and the objectification of those powers in my product or service. The communal aspect consists in the production of goods and services that satisfy and are motivated to satisfy the needs of others, as well as in the recognition from those others for having satisfied their needs. Self-realisation in work consists in both aspects: in realising oneself through providing others with the goods and services they need to pursue their self-realisation.

Simply put, the problem is that it is highly unlikely that the work that best serves the individual aspect of self-realisation is simultaneously the work that best serves the communal aspect of self-realisation – or to put it another way, highly unlikely that the work that best fulfils me qua individual is the work that concurrently provides others with the goods and services they need. In response, it has been argued that Marx is imagining that there is a fortuitous congruence between what is best for me and what is required for social reproduction. ¹⁶ But if this is the case, then the possibility of communism would appear to rely on an enormous stroke of luck.

However, Marx is not imagining a fortuitous congruence between the individual and communal aspects of self-realisation. The idea is not that everyone chooses what most fulfils them qua individual and this just happens to provide others’ with what they need. The idea is rather that people pursue forms of self-realisation in light of what others’ need. Consider a simplified example. Suppose that what is best for the individual aspect of my self-realisation is being an architect. But suppose that there is a glut of architects in my community. So if I practice architecture no one will want or need my service. By contrast, suppose that that there is a dearth of doctors, social workers, and teachers. So if I choose one of these occupations, I will be doing much-needed work. That being the case, I choose to practice as a doctor, for this is my preferred option from the required occupations.

At issue here in this simple example is not whether the choice to be a doctor is one that people would plausibly make, though I believe it is. ¹⁷ The issue is whether that choice represents an enormous stroke of luck. It does not. For the fact that I choose to develop certain abilities that my community needs (those required to practice medicine) rather than others that they do not (those required to practice architecture) is not a matter of happenstance. The occupational choice is itself informed by a consideration of what my community needs. ¹⁸

Self-realisation and abundance ¹⁹

I have been arguing that the nature of self-realisation, which involves realising oneself through producing for others, and which becomes widespread under communism, creates the conditions under which people may produce according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. Does this mean that abundance plays no role in my account of what makes communism possible? If so, this would make my view problematic as Marx interpretation, for Marx is unequivocal that abundance is an ‘absolutely necessary practical premise’ for communism (GI, 49). However, my interpretation does have material prerequisites. These prerequisites plausibly constitute ‘abundance’.

To begin with, we should note that the idea of abundance is ambiguous. Cohen takes Marx to be predicting a ‘material abundance so great that anything anyone needed for a richly fulfilling life could be taken from the common store at no cost to anyone’ (Cohen, 2000: 104). ²⁰ He describes this abundance as ‘limitless’, ‘plenary’, ‘super’, ‘fluent’, ‘overflowing’, ‘Utopian’, and ‘conflict-dissolving’. However, Marx's texts do not licence Cohen's extravagant interpretation (Geras, 1984: 74–77). In the CGP, Marx says that it is only after ‘the springs of common wealth flow more abundantly’ that society can inscribe the needs principle on its banners. This clearly signals that Marx considers abundance to be necessary for communism. However, it provides no evidence that he conceived of abundance as limitless. The claim that the springs of wealth will flow ‘more abundantly’ is relative to the status-quo. The springs of common wealth could flow ‘more abundantly’ than nineteenth century capitalism and yet still fall well short of a ‘material abundance so great that…everyone could have everything they might want to have’.

In support of his interpretation of Marxian abundance, Cohen also cites textual evidence from The German Ideology, written thirty years before the CGP in 1845–1846. ²¹ There, Marx and Engels argue that a ‘great increase in productive power’ is ‘an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced’ (GI 49). This passage reiterates Marx's view that abundance is a necessary condition for communism, and that there will be greater productive power under communism than capitalism. However, it provides scant support for Cohen's interpretation. In fact, Marx's reference to ‘want’, ‘destitution’ and ‘necessities’ suggests an altogether more modest conception of abundance: a state of affairs in which people no longer lead a hand-to-mouth existence and in which the anxiety of whether they will be able to heat their homes, pay the bills, and feed their children is overcome.

To be clear, I am not denying that Marx was committed to abundance. The issue is what that commitment entails. Cohen argues that Marx was committed to limitless abundance. Such abundance enables Marx to sidestep difficult questions of justice and coordination. This sidestepping is illegitimate because it is based on a material plenty that we now know can never be a serious prospect. Cohen's interpretation coheres with a certain reading of Marx's theory of history, according to which history is, fundamentally, the development of human productive power ²² ; and it fits a historical context in which ecological constraints were less salient. However, the textual evidence for the limitless abundance interpretation is weak. In this regard, I find it telling that Cohen concedes that he gets the interpretation ‘not just from poring over texts but from remembering how bourgeois objections to communism were handled in my childhood and youth’ (Cohen, 1995: 133). ²³

Having rejected limitless abundance, I now sketch an alternative view of abundance that accords with the texts and is more independently defensible. On this view, abundance is not a matter of everyone having whatever they may want but of everyone having access to what they need in order to pursue their self-realisation. What people need to achieve self-realisation is expansive: Marx talks of how, in place of the wealth and poverty of capitalism, will come the ‘rich human being’ and ‘rich human need’ (EPM: 304). His examples make it clear that he has in mind not merely physical necessities but non-basic social and cultural needs, including the need for unalienated labour. ²⁴ We also know that what is needed to pursue one's self-realisation is individually specific, depending on one's needs, circumstances, and self-realisation activity. On this view, people who need more in order to pursue their self-realisation, for example as a consequence of a disability, get more. Finally, we also know that what is required to pursue one's self-realisation is likely to expand over time, along with changes in social, cultural, and economic conditions. Yet even with these qualifications, what people need to pursue their self-realisation is far from limitless.

Still, we may ask: why do we need even this more modest level of abundance? Why is communism not possible under less favourable conditions? We stipulated that communism is a society in which people can produce according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. I have been arguing that what makes communism possible is that people realise their nature through providing others with the goods and services required to realise their nature. However, the motivation to achieve self-realisation is not sufficient for communism. To see why, imagine an economically primitive society in which the productive forces are underdeveloped. Suppose that people in this society want to satisfy others’ needs. ²⁵ Communism is not possible under these conditions. In this scenario, people will not be able to focus on anything beyond physical subsistence. They will have to work flat out in ways that they are unlikely to choose to satisfy their basic needs. Hence they will not be able to produce according to their abilities. Likewise, needs will go unmet. In such a society people may produce enough to satisfy basic physical needs, but satisfying the rich set of (social, cultural, intellectual, etc.) needs that Marx takes to be characteristic of human beings will be impossible.

So it is only when the motivation to produce for others is conjoined with advanced technology that communism is possible. That conjoining means that people can focus on something beyond subsistence, enabling them to contribute in ways that befit their individual nature. And it ensures that needs can be met: where ‘needs’ refers not only to physical subsistence but to the ‘rich human need’ of communism.

However, it might be objected that the requirement of abundance generates a problem for the self-realisation interpretation. For it might be argued that the only way in which abundance can be achieved is via the use of productive technologies and division of labour that thwart self-realisation in work.

Two points in reply. First, recall that my interpretation requires modest rather than limitless abundance. It might be true that creating the conditions for limitless abundance requires endless toil. But this is less obviously true of modest abundance in which we are only providing people with the goods and services they need for their self-realisation. Second, we should be wary of the idea that the use of productive technologies and division of labour necessarily thwarts self-realisation in work. ²⁶ No doubt they can. But productive technologies can also ameliorate human labour (think of how domestic labour has been improved by dishwashers, washing machines, electric ovens, etc), and some highly specialised jobs can be very fulfilling (think of medicine). The problem is not with productive technologies/division of labour per se, but how they are utilised. ²⁷

The distinctiveness of the self-realisation interpretation

To get a handle on my interpretation of what makes communism possible, I now contrast it with Cohen's interpretation.

On Cohen’s interpretation of Marx communism is made possible by limitless abundance. With limitless material abundance, people enjoy great freedom to produce as they please and take what they want from the common stock. In either the productive or distributive side of life, the transcendence of scarcity ensures that individuals need not take others’ needs into account.

Now, in my interpretation as in Cohen's, communism promotes self-realisation: my interpretation thus concurs with Cohen's in interpreting Marxian communism as Aristotelian in the sense that it ‘places emphasis on individual self-realization’ and not ‘self-realization-independent moral obligation’ (Vrousalis, 2015: 147 n.6). ²⁸ However, in my view, people achieve self-realisation through providing others with the goods and services they need for their self-realisation. And this explains why communism is possible. People can produce according to their abilities and receive according to their needs, not because limitless abundance ensures that they can produce and consume in whatever way they please, but because others have provided them with the goods and services required for their self-realisation.

This basic difference between our views on what makes communism possible generates a further difference on the nature of a future communist society. Consider The Communist Manifesto's famous description of communism as a society in which ‘the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all’ (CM: 506). In an interesting gloss on this passage, Cohen writes:

One way of picturing life under communism, as Marx conceived it, is to imagine a jazz band in which each player seeks his own fulfilment as a musician. Though basically interested in his own fulfilment, and not in that of the band as a whole, or of his fellow musicians taken severally, he nevertheless fulfils himself only to the extent that each of the others also does so, and the same holds for each of them (Cohen, 1995: 122).

In my interpretation of communism, as in Cohen's, people provide one another with the conditions for their self-realisation. There is an interdependence of self-realisation that means that I cannot realise my nature unless you do the same, and vice versa. However, in Cohen's interpretation, individuals do not value promoting the self-realisation of others: ‘If a saxophonist, a bass player, a drummer and one or two others form a jazz band, because it is the heart's desire of each to develop his own talent by playing in one, they are not actuated by altruism, and no one joins the band in order to promote another's self-realization’ (Cohen, 1995: 137). On this view, it is just a fact about human beings, given the kind of dependent creatures we are, that we need others to flourish in order to flourish ourselves. By contrast, in my interpretation, people realise themselves through providing others with the goods and services required to realise their nature. So if communism is a jazz band it is not only one in which ‘each player in which seeks his own fulfilment as a musician’ but one in which each player's fulfilment partly consists in providing his fellow musicians with the conditions for their self-realisation, and in contributing, alongside one's fellow musicians, to the creation of music that satisfies the needs of their audience.

It is a corollary of Cohen's interpretation of Marx's view of the good society that nothing would be lost if our dependence on others was transcended. Suppose artificial intelligence rendered the need to form jazz bands superfluous; each could seek his ‘own fulfilment as a musician’ without cooperating with others. Cohen's Marx would be neutral on that score. For my Marx, by contrast, the replacement of human beings with AI would represent a loss, for we would no longer be providing the conditions for others’ self-realisation (Brudney, 1998: 187).

Objections

I have been distinguishing the self-realisation interpretation from the limitless abundance interpretation. It is now time to consider the merits of the former as an account of what makes communism possible.

To begin with, note that the self-realisation interpretation avoids the three problems that beset the limitless abundance interpretation. First, consider limitless abundance. Cohen argues that limitless abundance is untenable because it is inconsistent with ecological constraints. However, the self-realisation interpretation does not require limitless abundance. It requires a more modest profusion of goods and services.

Second, the self-realisation interpretation avoids the problem identified by Rawls: that a society in which we produce as we please without considering others is unattractive. Rawls's criticism is a powerful objection to Cohen's Marx. However, it has no force against the self-realisation interpretation, for an awareness and appreciation of others’ needs is central to it. Indeed, it is through the satisfaction of others’ needs that people realise their nature.

Third, the self-realisation interpretation does not rely on a sexist view of labour. Recall that limitless abundance is only sufficient for communism if one excludes the work that has overwhelmingly been performed by women. That exclusion is unjustifiable. However, the self-realisation interpretation makes no such exclusion. In fact, given that care work centrally involves the satisfaction of another's need, it would appear to be a good candidate for self-realisation.

And yet, while the self-realisation interpretation avoids these objections, it faces other objections – objections that are bypassed when Marx's vision of a future society is read in Cohenite fashion. In what follows, I consider three: that the self-realisation interpretation involves an undesirable transcendence of individualist motivation; runs up against the problem of expensive tastes; and faces coordination problems.

The transcendence of individualist motivation

Unlike the limitless abundance interpretation, the self-realisation interpretation appears to involve a big transformation of human psychology. For on the account I have been developing, people realise themselves through the satisfaction of others’ needs. One might question whether this transformation is possible. However, one may also question whether it is desirable. Indeed, describing what may initially appear to be a similar view to the one I have been developing, Cohen argues that the transcendence of individualist motivation ‘denotes a pretty hair-raising prospect’ (Cohen, 1995: 135). ²⁹

Two points in reply. First, the change in human psychology should not be overstated. For it does not involve the development of motivation that is unknown to us, but the strengthening of a motivation – to satisfy others’ needs – that is familiar to many of us. Second, it is false that the self-realisation interpretation requires a ‘transcendence of individualist motivation’ (Cohen, 1995: 134–135; my italics). After all, people in the higher phase of communism are concerned with self-realisation. The point is that their self-realisation is consistent with, indeed promotes, the self-realisation of others. I agree that the complete transcendence of individualist motivation denotes a ‘hair-raising prospect’. The self-realisation interpretation does not require it.

Expensive tastes

Since the self-realisation interpretation disavows limitless abundance, it might be thought to run up against the problem of expensive tastes (Dworkin, 1981). According to the self-realisation interpretation, people under communism will provide others with the goods and services they need in order to pursue their self-realisation. However, as Jon Elster writes:

Some ways of self-actualization are inherently more expensive than others. To write poems requires little by way of material resources, to direct epic films a great deal more. If free rein was given to the development of the need for self-actualization…expensive preferences might emerge in a quantity that would make it only possible to satisfy them very partially (Elster, 1985: 232).

Elster is right that some forms of self-realisation are more expensive than others. However, this does not present a problem for the self-realisation interpretation. First, remember that on my interpretation of self-realisation, people do not realise themselves by engaging in purely personal projects, but by providing others with the goods and services required for their self-realisation. That being so, self-realisation is not purely a drain on valuable resources but the process through which valuable resources are created. Second, we should also remember that, while we are not imagining limitless abundance, we are imagining favourable material conditions. These conditions enable us to take a somewhat relaxed attitude towards ‘expensive’ forms of self-realisation. Third, expensive tastes would only ‘emerge in a quantity that would make it only possible to satisfy them very partially’ if people deliberately cultivated such tastes (as in Dworkin's original example), or choose to develop them without consideration of the cost they impose on others. However, either scenario is at odds with the motivation Marx attributes to individuals in a future communist society, a motivation which sees people as having a concern with the self-realisation of others. In such a society, people do not choose which of their abilities to develop in a purely individual way. They choose which of their abilities to develop in light of the costs those decisions place on others.

Coordination problems

By stipulating material plenty, the limitless abundance interpretation sidesteps questions of economic coordination. The self-realisation interpretation does not. One such problem is the matching problem. Marx emphasises that work in a future communist society will be freely chosen. Yet if we produce freely according to our abilities, how can we ensure that we collectively generate the right mix of necessary outputs?

I agree that it is unrealistic to imagine that our individually chosen activities will generate the right mix of goods and services that society requires. However, I have argued that this is not Marx's view. In Marx's view, people are motivated to provide others with the goods and services needed to realise their nature. So the fact that our productive activities satisfy the needs of others is not a stroke of luck. It is the direct outcome of the motivation that Marx takes to be widespread under communism.

However, critics might point out that a different coordination problem remains. ³⁰ This is the information problem: how can people know what to produce, at any given time, in order to satisfy needs? My answer to the matching problem does not answer the information problem, for even if people are motivated to provide others with the goods and services they need, they cannot do so if they lack access to information about what others’ need.

Now, in capitalist society, the information problem is solved through the market and the price mechanism: people produce on the basis of where they stand to gain, but this also provide others with what they need. Or so its defenders claim. ³¹ The problem is that Marx argues that producing for the market encourages us to view our fellow human beings as a mere means for the achievement of our ‘selfish aims’ (CJM: 224), that is, as generating alienation. So the question is: can the information problem can be solved in a way that does not rely on the market?

Now, the failure of central planning has led many to conclude that the information problem presents an insurmountable obstacle to the possibility of (non-market) communism. ³² In the face of that pessimism it is worth reminding ourselves that significant areas of our economic life have been, and continue to be, organised outside the market. Examples include healthcare, education, and caring for the young, elderly, and ill. So it is not as if there is no successful precedent for non-market provision. In fact, capitalist societies themselves rely on – maybe could not function without – a non-market sector in which vital goods and services are supplied without monetary gain. Moreover, we should also not conclude that the failure of central planning necessitates an embrace of markets, for central planning is not the only alternative to the market. ³³ Such non-market proposals deserve careful consideration.

Let us suppose, however, that the information problem does represent an insurmountable obstacle: there is no alternative to the market as a means of providing people with the information they require to satisfy others’ needs. What then for the possibility of communism? ³⁴ Assuming that we must have some (not necessarily overriding) concern with economic efficiency, it follows that the possibility of communism – a society in which each produces according to their ability and receives according to their needs – depends on a reconciliation with the market. ³⁵ More specifically, the possibility of communism depends on preserving the information function of the market but eliminating, or at least mitigating, its alienating consequences. The trick here would presumably rely on citizens’ taking a dual perspective on their work and their relations to the others: on the one hand, each would act on market signals; on the other hand, each would recognise that their acting on such signals ultimately represents a mediated contribution to others’ needs. ³⁶ Whether that dual perspective would be stable requires further examination.

Conclusion

What makes communism possible? In this essay, I have identified four possible answers:

The Legal Interpretation. Communism is possible because people have a legally enforced duty to produce according to their abilities.

The Limitless Abundance Interpretation. Communism is possible because limitless abundance ensures that people can produce according to their abilities and receive according to their needs.

Cohenite Egalitarianism. Communism is possible because people freely serve each other out of egalitarian duty.

The Self-Realisation interpretation. Communism is possible because, under conditions of modest abundance, people realise themselves through providing others with the goods and services they need for their (i.e., the others’) self-realisation.

Cohen rejects the legal interpretation on the grounds that it is inconsistent with Marx's (and his own) commitment to freedom. He argues that Marx was committed to limitless abundance. However, for ecological reasons, limitless abundance is untenable. Consequently, Cohen argues that the only hope for communism is if people freely serve each other out of egalitarian duty. This was not Marx's view of what makes communism possible, but it is the view Marxists ought to adopt, Cohen says, because the loss of faith in limitless abundance means it is the only game in town.

However, Cohen's conclusion is too quick, for as I have shown in this paper, there is an alternative answer to the question. According to this answer, people in communist society achieve self-realisation through providing others with the goods and services required for their self-realisation. On this view, the nature of self-realisation, coupled with a reasonably high development of productive power, creates a society in which it is possible for people to produce according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. This answer puts self-realisation and concern for others – not limitless abundance or egalitarian duty – front and centre. I have argued that this view accords with the texts and represents a more plausible position than Cohen's interpretation of Marx in which technological advance and limitless abundance play the predominant role. Future work must examine whether the self-realisation interpretation represents a preferable alternative to Cohen's egalitarian account of what makes communism possible. ³⁷