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Chapter 4: SKETCH OF COMMUNIST SOCIETY --  ADMINISTRATION

In a communist society, even the state familiar to us will be abolished. Why is that, and how will a society without a state be administered?

1. It is possible to abolish state as a political entity.

1.1. Lamentation of Engels

Since a communist society is a society of social cooperation=mutual aid, the national authority that towers over us, governs us as citizens of a nation, and protects us will be abolished.

To get into the theory a little more, the abolition of the monetary economy discussed in the previous chapters means that from the perspective of the state, the sovereignty of the currency as the monopoly power to mint and issue the official currency to be used within the territory of the state is denied. Among national sovereignty, this currency sovereignty is the most important economic power alongside political territorial sovereignty, and its denial is almost synonymous with the abolition of the state.

However, conceptually, it is not impossible to imagine a "state without currency sovereignty". But it is just an empty notion, like a mobile phone without a battery.

Putting that aside, you might ask whether it is possible to abolish the state as a practical matter. In this regard, Marx's collaborator Engels also lamented that people are led from childhood to believe that the common affairs and interests of society cannot be managed without the state and its bureaucrats.

This kind of "state worship" has become even stronger today, as the nation-states that began to form in the western europe in the days of Marx and Engels have spread all over the world. It seems that the conviction that a state is essentially a benign institution and that we can only be happy when we become citizens of some nation- state is widely and deeply permeated among the masses.

However, are the citizens of the nation-state really such happy beings? In the following, let us take a more realistic look at the true state of the "citizens of the nation-state." It should be noted that here we do not assume a specific existing nation-state, but rather a modeled general state system.

1.2. Citizens as tax serfs

Today's nation-state is firmly tied to capitalism and plays the role of a political guarantor of capitalism. What is that nation-state?

It is a body of power that collects taxes, which today are mostly monetary taxes, from the inhabitants of a land called a territory. Therefore, while it is called a  "nation-state," it actually collects taxes from foreigners residing in its territory. 

On the other hand, the general rule is that foreigners are not guaranteed the right to vote because they are not citizens. Take what you take, but don't give what you give. No taxation without representation is an empty phrase as far as foreigners are concerned.*

*In reality, tax-free states also existed or exist. However, it is either a pre-modern private state that is privatized by a ruler such as a monarch and is operated by that private property, or a collectivist system in which the state controls production and distribution activities comprehensively as a total capitalist. In any case, it is nothing more than an anomaly for a modern nation.

Then, are citizens, who, in return for being taxed, graciously given the right to elect political representatives, have the full potential to decide how their tax money is spent? 

In the first place, taxes are not limited-use donations, so once they are collected, the state can decide how to spend them. It can even be spent for nefarious purposes. 

Even if such "misconduct" is unluckily discovered, the people involved are rarely punished severely. Insightful voters will probably recognize that checking the use of tax money through the exercise of the right to vote is nothing more than empty phrases.

Nevertheless, the nation-state binds its citizens to the legal framework of nationality, and confines them inside the tangible and intangible barbed wire called national borders. A nation-state, whether large or small, is like a gigantic human cage. It is also a stable device for the state to bind the people to the state for generations and make them the targets of tax-grabbing.

If we conclude so far, the nation-state may refute that it is the nation-state that grants nationality to the people and protects them within their borders. However, a nation that talks about "protecting the people" on a daily basis will easily abandon the people, especially when the existence of the nation is in danger. There are countless examples of such cases, both large and small, but we often see victims of disasters left unattended both at home and abroad, and it is not uncommon for people to be abandoned during wars, especially defeats.

Why would a nation-state abandon its people if necessary? The answer is simple. That is because the state is not an institution to protect its people, but a community of interest between tax-parasitic officials and politicians, and their biggest customers, the capitalists, that is, none other than the “committee in charge of the joint affairs of the whole bourgeoisie"(Marx).

In a word, the people of a country are tax serfs, and in that sense they are also the proletariat, whether rich or poor. However, since much of the proletariat today is wage earners, or wage serfs (including pensioners who were former wage serfs), this is where the formula "wage serfs≒tax serfs" holds true.

1.3. Citizens as  soldier serfs

Nation-states that expropriate their people are also, almost without exception, sovereign states. What is that sovereign state?

It refers to nations that have exclusive territories and compete with each other over the territories themselves or the economic interests related to them. Since the ultimate conflict between nations is war, sovereign statss are also war states. Territory and sovereignty are the political-legal notions that together are the stakes of war.

With the establishment of a sovereign state system, the concept of nationality and national borders became more restrictive, so citizens needed the legal permission of the state even to take a step outside the country, and the people were more and more tightly bound to the cage called a sovereign state. This made it difficult for the people of each country to get to know each other, and even turned them against each other for the sake of the cause of "national interest." It facilitates warfare between nation-states.

In the event of a war, the nation would mobilize the nation as soldiers and engage in battle. People who do not become soldiers must also cooperate with the war at the home front. This so-called total war was only possible under the nation-state. The two world wars in the first half of the 20th century are the great results of this.

During the total war, the people are used by the state as soldier serfs, even if they are not slaves - although the position of the lowest level soldier can be seen in the bondage of slavery. Moreover, since most of the military funds invested in military forces and weapons as tools of war are taxpayers, there is an inevitability that a tax serf is also a soldier serf at the same time. Citizens will be forced to work in wars with the tax money they are forced to contribute.*

*In reality, there are countries that do not have armed forces. However, these countries are almost without exception small countries that are financially unable to maintain a permanent military force, and instead entrust their defense to large powers. By the way, although Japan is constitutionally declared not to have armed forces, it is a well-known fact internationally that it actually has de facto defense forces.

This kind of serdom is irrespective of whether the method of mobilizing soldiers is conscription or volunteers. Even under the volunteer system, the most dangerous front line soldiers are almost without exception young men from the working class, and the volunteer system even serves as a kind of unemployment countermeasure project. On the other hand, the tightly guarded high-ranking officials and generals of the ruling class will not be injured even in the event of a war, and they will be able to watch the battle on TV.

This is the solemn truth of "total war." However, human society has somewhat learned from the two great wars of the first half of the 20th century, which brought too tragic sacrifices to be glorified as total wars, and from the second half of the 20th century onwards, wars that fall under the category of total war has no longer occured. 

However, as long as the nation-state=sovereign state system is maintained, no matter how much peace is disguised, it will only mean a temporary suspension of the state of war, and there will never be a conflict that will spark a war from the world. Local wars can and do occur anywhere at any time and it is actually occuring.

Moreover, as discussed in the final chapter, war is also a major business opportunity for the munitions industry. For this reason, they need to make large contributions to the political world to support their biggest customers, the sovereign states, and sometimes to get them to go to war.

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Chapter 3: SKETCH OF COMMUNIST SOCIETY --  LABOR

5. "Gender equality" will have already been regarded as an old-fashioned slogan.

5.1. Factors of gender disparity

While mentioning family issues in the previous section, I would like to touch on so-called gender issues, which are deeply related.

It is well known that there is a persistent wage gap between men and women as a phenomenon that is almost common in the capitalist world. But why is the wage gap still continuing when "gender equality" is being called for as a principle?

One traditional hypothesis is the theory of feminism, which points to the persistence of patriarchal male domination. However, this view is becoming less applicable in capitalist countries where nuclear families have advanced. This is because there is no "patriarch" in the nuclear family, though it cannot be ruled out that within a production organization such as a capital company, something like a patriarchy still exists.

But a more plausible explanation would be as follows. As long as capitalism expects the marriage family to function to reproduce the labor force, women = wives must be "birthing machines" and are still expected to become housewives and devote themselves to the production of the next-generation labor force (childbirth and childcare) as mothers rather than working equally with men in capital companies.

With some exceptions, female workers are temporary labor forces who are scheduled to retire after marriage or childbirth, or are treated as part-time labor forces as side job workers. This is why the wage gap between men and women does not shrink.

Today's "sophisticated" capitalism accepts gender equality as a concept, but in reality male domination is firmly adhered to. This is conceivably the result of the nature of capitalism mentioned above.

5.2. Communism and gender

In contrast, apart from the fact that wage disparity between men and women would not exist in a communist society because the wage labor system itself would be abolished, communism no longer puts its hopes into the marriage family. There is no such expectation, so there is no need to expect a woman to play the role of a “birthing machine.” Whether or not to have children is merely a matter of life planning between partners.

Especially in a notarized partnership, even the defined role of husband/wife disappears, and since the partnership is just a relationship between couples who share a living, there are no full-time housewives who serve their husband and child. 

Therefore, the life pattern in which the male partner M goes to work for 4 hours in the morning and after he returns home, the female partner F goes to work for 4 hours in the afternoon will no longer be an exception. In this case, if there is a minor child C between the couple, M and F will be able to take turns taking care of C.

In a communist society, slogans such as "gender equality" will likely be remembered as classics from a time when it was just an empty phrase. But a skeptical feminist might ask: Even in a communist society, isn't there still a gender disparity in social status, such as the male predominance in executive positions in companies and the other organizations?

It is true that we cannot give a clear answer to this question at this time. As I suggested earlier, it depends on whether or not communism can wipe out the patriarchal legacy that may remain within modern capitalist society.

However, in a communist society, where the big goal of earning money and pursuing profit, which males in the capitalist world have been crazy about, will completely disappear, males' way of thinking will also change, and they will be moving away from corporate activities. There may be more males trying to find their own way. Such a shift in masculine values conceivably facilitate the possibility of closing the gender gap in social status.

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Chapter 3: SKETCH OF COMMUNIST SOCIETY --  LABOR

4. Marriage gives way to notarized partnership.

4.1. Fluctuations in the model of marriage and family

Here, I would like to take up family issues related to labor. This is because the state of the family of the common people is closely related to the state of labor.

For example, in the days of feudal serfdom, serf families were agricultural groups, so it would have been convenient for them to be large families with many children. However, under the capitalist wage-serfdom system, the family is at the same time a "workshop" that produces the next generation's labor force, and is also a unit of everyday consumption. Therefore, the family no longer needs to be a large family, a small nuclear family is sufficient, and it can be argued that the nuclear family is more convenient for capital as a target for consumption exploitation.

However, the shift to the nuclear family model inevitably leads to a declining birthrate, and it also harbors a contradiction that could lead to the loss of the Going Concern for total capital, which is to secure the next-generation labor force. 

On the side of capital companies, although it is no longer necessary to mobilize a large amount of labor due to improvements in productivity after the electric motor revolution and the computer revolution, serious labor shortages have led to soaring wage levels. It pushes down the profit rate of capital enterprises, and eventually causes a long-term recession. Therefore, the business world is requesting the political world to take measures against the declining birthrate.

By the way, the proletariat originally meant "those who produce offspring and serve the state," but the proletariat in capitalist society means more than that, "those who produce offspring and serve capital."

However, the "countermeasure against the declining birth rate" will never be successful in the long term. The reason is that capitalism is essentially incapable of overcoming the old marriage-family-centredism, despite the rising rate of non-marriage, which has been brought about by the increase in the number of men and women who do not marry because the trend toward the nuclear family has been accompanied by the spread of free marriages and has almost eradicated customs such as arranged marriages set by parents.

Capitalism's fixation on marriage family system is not a vestige of pre-modern feudalism, even if some of these elements are recognized in societies with a conservative climate. Rather, it stems from the fact that the significance of the marriage family as the most secure reproduction factory of the next-generation labor force in capitalist society remains unchanged.

4.2. Notarized partnership system

In contrast, in a communist society, the wage serfdom system will be abolished, so the marriage family will no longer be expected to reproduce the labor force. Instead, new communal livelihood models such as the notarized partnership system, which does not have the reproduction of labor as an important purpose, will emerge in place of the marriage family system.

This is not a "heavy" relationship like traditional marriage. It is a union system that is established only by a notarized agreement between the couple who want to live together for the time being, and is a highly versatile model that can be used by elderly couple who have been bereaved, and by couple of the same sex.

This shift from married families to partnerships has advanced considerably in recent years within the framework of capitalism in Western societies, but communism will push that direction even further.

4.3. Solution to the population problem

The direction of moving away from marriage family system has the potential to put a brake on the declining birthrate. For example, children born to notarized partners are legally given legal status, making it easier for them to have children without getting married, which in turn increases the possibility of having children.

In addition, in a communist society where commodity-money exchange is abolished, medical care and education will be completely free, so the phenomenon of restraining child-bearing in consideration of the burden on households will also disappear.

In contrast, communism has the potential to put a brake on population growth in the Global South where the population explosion is occurring, which is also a factor in serious food shortages. This is because by abolishing the commodity-money exchange, the fertility due to structural poverty that increases the number of workers in the family will disappear.

However, it is said that the population explosion is also mediated by customary factors such as contraception for religious reasons and the custom of polygamy. In traditional areas where such factors are strong, new joint livelihood systems such as a notarized partnership may not easily spread. Even so, it would be a great step forward if at least the trend toward high births due to economic factors could be curbed.

Although excessive optimism cannot be tolerated, it can be said that communism has the potential to be a solution to the world's immediate population problems - declining population in the North and increasing population in the South.

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Chapter 3: SKETCH OF COMMUNIST SOCIETY --  LABOR

3. Is it possible to establish a completely voluntary working system?

3.1. Anthropological questions

In the previous section, we discussed the premise of compulsory labor, but from the original communist ideal, it would be better if we could build a system of completely voluntary and unpaid work without compulsory labor. 

Will such a purely voluntary labor system be established in a developed communist society in the future - a situation in which generations ignorant of capitalism make up the majority of the population? If a completely unpaid and purely voluntary labor system can be established on a global scale, it may mean that the human species has entered a new evolutionary stage.

According to the current common sense of labor, it is said that humans will not work without some kind of incentive or sanction - including the de facto sanction that they will not be able to make a living. On the other hand, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm clearly states that not only material stimuli are stimuli for work, but also stimuli such as self-esteem, social recognition, and the joy of work itself. He argues that humans would go insane without a job.

Which one is the truth? Perhaps the truth lies at the intersection of the two opposite arguments.

3.2. Obligation of 3D labor?

The popular occupations which surely bring pride, social recognition, and the joy of work itself that Fromm points out, can provide a sense of fulfillment even without material rewards, so even under the purely voluntary labor system, it will remain popular as ever, and there will be no worries about labor shortages.

What about so-called 3D (dirty, dangerous and demeaning) occupations, which are generally unpopular? Would these occupations cause serious labor shortages without material incentives, that is, rewards?

One hypothesis is that even if the social recognition is low and the work itself does not bring joy, the people who are engaged in it do so with pride and a sense of mission. If so, it can be predicted that such 3D jobs will still attract people even under the purely voluntary labor system, and that there will not be a serious labor shortage. However, this may be an overly optimistic prediction.

In the first place, modern capitalism has a structure in which jobs that people do not want to do are forced on specific people, usually low-educated people, unemployed people, and migrant workers. Examples include cleaning and construction work, dangerous work in factories, nursing care, and so on. If the labor shortage in these fields becomes decisive under the purely voluntary labor system, the structure of the forced 3D jobs that we have acquiesced under capitalism will be clearly exposed.

If you think about it, there are many 3D jobs that are essential to maintaining society. Forcing such highly public jobs onto a specific class can be called modern slavery, and cannot be morally justified.

Then, even under the purely voluntary labor system of a developed communist society, such highly public 3D jobs may be removed from the framework of normal labor and imposed on all members of society as an obligation. This may not be very happy news.

3.3. Freedom to originate occupations

There is also good news. That is, under the purely voluntary labor system, the possibility of each person originating new jobs on their own will expand.

Even now, there are many "self-proclaimed" occupations, but there are very few that can make a living just by doing so, and we can only apply ourselves to one of the existing occupations. The reality is that most of them are wage workers, especially "company workers" who are employees of joint-stock companies. This is the truth of the “freedom to choose a job” that capitalism boasts.

In contrast, in a communist society, being freed from the imperative to find a job that will earn a living will open up the possibility of job origination. This will become possible by drastically shortening working hours and expanding the scope for side jobs, even while labor is unavoidably compulsory in the nascent communist society.

In this way, the concept of occupation will change in a revolutionary way. Under capitalism, an occupation is a iterative and continuous job that brings wages for a living. But occupation in a communist society means all legal jobs that one considers to be "occupations" and are actually engaged in.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, people will eventually realize that capitalism was the most monolithic social system in history, which forced the majority of people into the very wage serfdom.

3.4. Super-robotized society

Let me add one more piece of good news. That is, a communist society will push the robotization of labor to the highest degree. 　

Such super-robotization may be perceived as a sad news that could lead to mass unemployment in a capitalist society. In fact, it would not be surprising if a anti-robotization movement like the Luddite movement, in which craftsmen and workers who were at risk of losing their jobs due to the introduction of machinery during the Industrial Revolution, took action to destroy machines, could emerge.

In a communist society with a purely voluntary labor system, super-robotization, which is nothing more than a convenient means for capitalists and managers who want to save labor costs to the utmost, also be greatly promoted as a technological trump card for securing necessary productivity while shortening working hours. In particular, if robot work can replace a considerable portion of simple labor, which is common in 3D jobs, the sad news of compulsory 3D labor will not have to be heard, and if complicated labor is advanced to robotization, humans will be further liberated from labor.

However, the development of next-generation robots with built-in artificial intelligence that can handle such complex labor requires a large amount of money. In a communist society that does not rely on a monetary economy, it is possible to promote technological development without being constrained by monetary costs.

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Chapter 3: SKETCH OF COMMUNIST SOCIETY --  LABOR

2. Will labor become a duty for everyone?

2.1. Labor obligations and ethics

In a communist society, if the money economy-wage labor system was abolished and people could obtain goods and services to meet their needs independently of labor, wouldn't people withdraw from labor itself?

In fact, this was the biggest bottleneck problem in communism, and it seems that it was the hidden reason why Marx proposed the labor certificate system as a labor system in the early stages of communism. 

The reason is that workers in "a communist society that has just emerged from capitalism," based on their experiences in the capitalist era, will be accustomed to the world of selective forced labor, where people work out of necessity to live, or, conversely, not to work unless life requires it. 

However, if a system like labor certificates is not practical, it may be necessary, at least in the early stage of communism, to require all members of society to work with penalties. If so, it is likely that communist society will be criticized as an archipelago of camps for forced unpaid labor.

That said, if we think about it, even in capitalism, work is not necessarily a duty, but diligence is still considered the most important ethic. Max Weber connected this with the ethics of Protestantism, but the situation is the same in societies where Protestantism is not dominant. 

In the world of capitalist "hard work", labor (wage labor) is effectively forced as long as it is necessary for living, while if it is not necessary - for example, inheriting a huge inheritance from relatives, there is no punishment for living idle without working.

Then, isn't the ethic of diligence in a capitalist society nothing more than a mobilization order for labor service to the general public who should provide the labor needed by capital?

In contrast, in the early stage of communist society, the labor obligations that are unavoidably imposed are not economic mobilization orders, but the social obligations of everyone derived from the fact that the essence of communism lies in social cooperation (mutual help). But basically it will be imposed on the core working generation, specifically those between the ages of 20 and 60.

In this respect, Keynes' description of the communist ethos as "service to society" in contrast to the capitalist ethos of "love of money" is not entirely untrue, although he may have overemphasized the "service" aspect.

2.2. Occupation allocation system

At this point, there may be concerns that if labor is made compulsory, there will be a uniform distribution of occupations, depriving workers of the freedom to choose their occupation.

However, this capitalist thesis of "freedom to choose a job" is tricky. Despite the term "freedom," it is the capital side (management side) that always holds the initiative in the labor market. In addition, so-called mismatches due to discrepancies between job seekers' aspirations, aptitudes/skills, and the content of their work are becoming commonplace.

In contrast, in a communist society, regardless of whether or not labor is made compulsory, the role of public employment agencies will be strengthened and a system of systematic job allocation will be established. But it does not lead to forced allocation. Rather, it goes beyond formal mediation of simply collecting job listings and introducing them to job seekers, like job placement in a capitalist society. This is because it will be possible to provide scientific counseling-type employment placements that give full consideration to each person's aspirations, aptitudes and utilize psychological tests.

In this system, all members of society of the core working generation are registered with local public employment agencies and are devised so that they can find suitable jobs within the vicinity of their residence as much as possible through the agencies. The daily rush hours will be gone.

However, if labor is an obligation with penalties, the minimum necessary intervention measures may be unavoidable, such as having registrants who have not worked at all for a certain period of time be investigated by the public employment agency to see if there is a valid reason for not working. 

On the other hand, as we will see in Chapter 6, vocational training will be enhanced through systems such as "multi-purpose colleges" for adults, which will prevent so-called NEET（Not in Education, Employment or Training）and long-term unemployment.

2.3. Reduction of working hours

The introduction of such a planned occupational allocation system would also make possible a drastic reduction in working hours. This is because work sharing, which under capitalism might be seen as an excuse for lowering wages, will become such a basic form of labor that there will be no need for such special phrases.

Thus, by working much shorter hours than they are now - even if mandated - people will have more free time to devote to their own hobbies and dreams. Wouldn't it be fair to say that it is a society with far more "freedom" than a society that is overwhelmed by forced labor to make a living?

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Chapter 3: SKETCH OF COMMUNIST SOCIETY --  LABOR

1. People are freed from wage labor.

1.3. The emancipation of wage serfs

In a situation where working conditions are deteriorating as a result of capital supremacist policies that are spreading around the world in recent years, there are calls for wage workers to step away from wage labor, start their own businesses, and become capitalists. In other words, it is a shift from the exploited side to the exploiting side.

It is true that there are successful people who make a spectacular transition from mere workers to capitalists. However, if all wage workers become capitalists, capitalism will lose its labor force and collapse. Therefore, the majority of people should be made to have no choice but to continue to be wage laborers. It is inevitable that the majority of new entrepreneurs will not last five years.

In fact, in the capitalist commodity-money exchange system, all goods and services, including daily necessities, are required to be exchanged for money as commodities. Without income, survival itself cannot be maintained. In that sense, it can be said that capitalist wage labor is exactly a kind  of "forced labor."

However, unlike pre-modern slaves, wage workers are not directly subject to human trafficking, and in the labor market job seekers are free to choose which employer to contract with. On the other hand, however, the wage-earners must repeatedly appear in the labor market to make ends meet, find an employer willing to buy their labor-power. Even if they succeed in finding an employer, they will inevitably be exploited in some way and must accept that their wages will be reduced or they will be dismissed for their employer's convenience.

If they are not evaluated as a useful labor force by any employer, they will be forced into long-term unemployment and joblessness. Such "exclusion from labor", which has become a problem in recent years, is actually a phenomenon of exclusion as the flip side of exploitation.

In other words, from the perspective of capital, unemployment is the ultimate means of saving labor costs in the direction of not even exploiting the labor force in the first place. Since capitalists are wary of hoarding surplus workers even in boom times, there is no literal "full employment" in a capitalist economy, and a capitalist economy is an "uemployment economy" with a certain amount of unemployment even in boom times.

In this way, from the perspective of capitalists, wage workers are living commodities that provide a unique intangible service of labor that includes a certain level of knowledge and skills. As such, wage workers are beings reused through the labor market, and conversely, kept away from labor by total capital. In this sense, Marx solemnly called the wage laborer a "wage slave."

Nonetheless, considering that legal wage laborers in modern times are not traded like literal slaves and are not bound to not escape, it would be more appropriate to call them "wage serf" as they resemble medieval serfs, who were similarly guaranteed relative personal freedom.

As such, the capitalist economy can be said to be an economic system of "wage serfdom" from the perspective of labor. In contrast, in a communist society, this wage-serfdom economy is abolished, so this means "emancipation of wage serfs." Indeed, this is the most revolutionary aspect of true communism.

1.4. Separation of labor and consumption

Wage workers invest the wages they receive as a result of labor exploitation into their living expenses. Then in the form of consumption, a considerable portion of wage income is spent in exchange for various goods and services, and is exploited further.

Marx focused exclusively on the first stage of labor exploitation, but did not pay much attention to the second stage of exploitation - consumption exploitation. However, for capital, which today is constrained by labor laws and regulations from exploiting labor freely, consumption exploitation is essential as a means of supplementing it. On the other hand the hardships and poverty of wage workers are the result of two-stage exploitation: labor and consumption. 

Thus the capitalist economy can be said to be a very rational system for ambitious and efficient money making, but it is an unreasonable system for a frugally satisfying life.

In contrast, in a communist society, labor and consumption are separated by the abolition of the monetized economy and the wage labor system. The problems of hard living and poverty due to wages and unemployment will disappear. This is truly a lifestyle revolution.

However, a question may arise here. If people were able to obtain as much goods and services as they wanted free of charge, completely unrelated to labor, it would lead to monopolization and frequent shortages of goods due to a flood of demand.

In order to answer this question, Marx proposed a mechanism called "work certificate." To give a simple example, a worker W who works 8 hours a day and has been issued a labor certificate for 8 hours can obtain the product P manufactured by also working 8 hours in exchange for the certificate.

This labor certificate resembles a gift certificate, but unlike a simple exchange ticket, it has the properties of a type of securities that incorporates the right to claim exchange based on working hours. In short, it is the idea that workers can acquire goods corresponding to the working hours they have worked. Labor and consumption are thus linked, but instead of being mediated by wages as under capitalism, working time itself is directly linked to consumption and exchanged for equivalents.

This is theoretically possible, but is a highly hypothetical theory. In the first place, is it possible to strictly measure how many hours of labor the product P correspond to?

Even if we set a rough figure for the average labor hours required to produce P, for example, the labor required for W is simple labor that even beginners can handle, whereas the labor required for the production of P is complicated labor that requires skill. Thus, because they are qualitatively different, the 8-hour labor required for W and the 8-hour labor required to manufacture P cannot simply be regarded as equivalent.

It can be said that it is practically impossible to build an elaborate work certificate system that reflects such qualitative differences in labor. However, Marx sees this work certificate system as a transitional system peculiar to "a communist society that has just emerged from capitalism," and states that the higher stages of communist society, where the principle of "each man according to his ability, each man according to his needs," allows for a complete separation of labor and consumption.

Ultimately, however, a communist society, regardless of its stage of development, has no choice but to accept the separation of labor and consumption. In order to prevent the first one wins everything basis that might arise, it is necessary, as suggested in the previous chapter, to regulate the quantity of goods that each person can obtain, such as how many pieces or how many grams each person can obtain. This acquisition quantity can be confirmed by a procedure equivalent to accounting in the current store.

In order to deal with shortages that may nevertheless occur, as was also pointed out in the previous chapter, in the field of FMCGs, it is necessary to oblige production organizations to produce surpluses and create a system of relative overproduction (with sufficient stockpiles) system.

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Chapter 3: SKETCH OF COMMUNIST SOCIETY --  LABOR

In a communist society, wage labor is abolished. Will people no longer work as a result? Or will there be a completely new way of working?

1. People are freed from wage labor.

1.1. Abolition of wage labor

In the previous chapter, we argued that in a communist society, commodity production would be abolished, and thus the monetary economy would be abolished. Inevitably, it is easy to foresee that the wage labor system, in which the reward for labor is given in the form of money (wage), will be abolished. Transitioning to a communist society means the abolition of the wage labor system from the point of view of labor.

In order not to give grounds for the popular anti-communist propaganda which claims that communist society is an archipelago of forced unpaid labor, I would like to contrast the communist labor system with the capitalist labor system.

1.2. The structure of capitalist exploitation

What is the capitalist wage labor which is currently spreading around the world? As many people have experienced, this is a process in which job seekers are recruited through a hypothetical labor market in response to job offers from employers (capitalist companies as well as public institutions). Under this system, if an employee is hired, he/she concludes an employment contract, provides the specified work within the working hours set by the employer, and receives wages as compensation for that work.

Here, wages, which are the most important resource for workers' livelihoods - so to speak, "capital" for workers - are the trickiest things. Wages are legally interpreted as remuneration for labor, and the workers themselves may be aware of this, but few workers are paid the full amount for the hours they actually work. This is because if the employer were to make such a big deal, the business would ceases to operate.

The essence of capitalist management is the exploitation of low wages and long working hours by saving workers' wages by even one dollar and extending working hours by one minute. However, as a result of the labor movement, countries today have labor legal regulations that are onerous for capital (for example, legal minimum wages and legal working hours), so it is not always possible to achieve exploitation in the literal sense.

Therefore, various evasive tactics have been "invented", including legal and illegal gray zones, such as demanding high performance within legal working hours (high-density work), encouraging competition for higher performance while guaranteeing relatively high wages and encouraging customary overtime work (unpaid overtime), conversely, allowing workers only short-time/partial work commensurate with low wages , etc. On the other hand, if you become a senior management level worker who is just one step away from being an executive, you may be guaranteed a high wage with a premium that exceeds the amount of actual working hours.

Nonetheless, there is no doubt that, in general, capitalist companies make workers work for free in excess of the working hours for which they are actually paid wages.

For example, even if you work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and is doing high-intensity work equivalent to $60 hourly wages, it is possible that you are actually only paid for 4 hours of work. In this case, you should have received a monthly salary of {($60x 8 hours) x 5 days} x 4 weeks = $9,600, but in reality it was cut off to half that amount, $4,800. 

The employer saved the remaining $4,800 that had not been paid, and you were made to work for free for 4 hours out of your 8-hour work day. In other words, you were "exploited." Workers' dissatisfaction with pay levels within the legal range stems from this structure of exploitation.

In this way, the thrifty exploitation of capitalist enterprises is reflected in the earnings from their product sales, which are accumulated and reproduced as profits, While repeating this cycle with total capital, capitalism is rotating. 

From the capitalist's point of view, they must sell their own products so that the gains obtained through parsimonious exploitation are secured as profits. If sales are sluggish due to the economic crisis, they will have to cut wages further or lay off workers to survive. It is a tough world indeed.

I have no intention to defend the capitalists here, but the capitalists who work hard to exploit - though greedy - are by no means spiteful or ruthless. As long as they are subject to the laws of capitalist economics, they cannot go against those laws. Marx saw through that the capitalist was "mere one driving wheel" in the social system, and this statement is completely correct.

On Communism:Page14

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Chapter 2: SKETCH OF COMMUNIST SOCIETY --   PRODUCTION

6. The Great Energy Revolution is realized.

6.1. New energy system

The communist environmentally sustainable planning economy will also have a major change in the way of energy supply that supports production activities.

In terms of energy, the sustainable planning economy realizes a low-energy economy, therefore it is certain that the dependence on fossil fuels, especially petroleum fuels, which has supported the capitalist production system since the industrial revolution, will decrease dramatically. Instead, a new energy system is built based on renewable energy.

The issue of promoting the introduction of renewable energy itself has long been called out in the backdrop of the problem of global warming. But it tends to end up as a slogan under capitalism. The reason is that renewable energy such as natural energy alone cannot meet the high energy demand that covers the capitalist mass production-mass distribution-mass disposal cycle, and the technological development and practical application of renewable energy is costly. 

However, in the essentially low-energy communist economy, the use of renewable energy will be significantly promoted. And the abolition of the monetary economy will eliminate the "problem" of the cost associated with the technological development and commercialization of renewable energy - in other words, the problem of money.

The above-mentioned energy revolution will be promoted on a global scale, combined with the development of sustainable natural resources in transnational dimensions mentioned in the previous section.

In accordance with these changes in the energy system, the development and innovation of new energy supply systems, such as cogeneration, will progress further than in capitalism.

In this regard, it is often said that communism must stagnate the technological innovation that capitalism has boasted, but capitalist innovation is biased towards developing technologies exclusively for productivity gains, not a few of which have harmful environmental consequences. In contrast, communist technological innovation will rather make more significant progress than capitalism in terms of environmental technology, as exemplified by new energy technologies.

6.2. Criticism of the Nuclear Renaissance

Here, we must touch on nuclear power generation, a major issue that cannot be avoided when considering energy issues.

In recent years, against the background of global warming, the significance of nuclear power as a means of generating electricity that does not emit carbon dioxide has been reassessed. As a result, a phenomenon known as the "Nuclear Renaissance," in which plans to build and expand nuclear power plants, which had been stagnant since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster (1986) at the end of the former Soviet Union, were revived worldwide. Just then the "Renaissance seemed to hit by the Fukushima nuclear accident (2011) in Japan, which had been shrouded in "nuclear safety myths."

However, just like Chernobyl, Fukushima is also fading with the passage of time, and signs of a "Renaissance" are beginning to emerge. In such cases, advances in safety measures and technology are used as an excuse.

Still, no matter how much technological innovation progresses, there is no 100% guarantee of safety. The disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, caused by the earthquake and tsunami, made this point vividly clear to the world. This is the first problem with nuclear power.

Second, there is the issue of processing and disposal of nuclear waste. In many cases, the stabilization of the various radioactive materials emitted by nuclear power plants takes a historically significant amount of time. In addition, the plutonium emitted from the reprocessing of spent fuel is highly carcinogenic and is said to have an adverse effect on the ecosystem over an extremely long period of time. The policy of reusing MOX fuel (mixed oxide fuel), which is a mixture of uranium and plutonium (so-called plu-thermal), is also criticized for not being highly effective in reducing plutonium, despite the high cost.

The third is the danger of military use of plutonium. In particular, the proliferation of nuclear power plants to militant nuclear-weapon states and countries with ambitions to develop nuclear weapons would increase this danger, and in the worst case, the nuclear material could be distributed through the black market to civilian armed groups, including terrorist groups, drug cartels and other criminal organizations. The dreadful situation of "nuclear privatization" that even individuals have small nuclear-weapons is not an unreasonable concern.

Fourth, from the perspective of a planned economy, the characteristic of nuclear power generation, which makes it difficult to finely adjust electrical output in response to electricity demand, means that it is not suited to a planned economy - on the other hand, since mass output is easy, it may be suited to a mass-production, capitalist energy source.

6.3. The road to "nuclear power abolition"

 That said, as long as we maintain an essentially high-energy capitalist mode of production, if renewable energy alone cannot meet our electricity needs, and we cannot rely on carbon-intensive thermal power generation, there is an inevitability that there will be a tendency toward nuclear power. Thus the nuclear power problem cannot be discussed regardless of the mode of production.

If we really want to go beyond "nuclear power phase-out" and think about “nuclear power abolition”, we need to be prepared to break away from capitalism once and for all. Subsequently, shifting to a low-energy, communist mode of production would allow all production activities to be covered by renewable energy, natural gas, and minimal thermal power.

Even if that is impossible, all production activities must be kept within the range that can be covered by means of power generation other than nuclear power. This is because energy, which is merely a means of production under the capitalist market economy, itself becomes a strict condition for production under the environmentally  sustainable communist planned economy.

Thus communism is the path to "nuclear power abolition," but since nuclear power plants have already spread all over the world, the path must be constantly explored through a plan to phase out nuclear power plants on a global scale. 

To that end, it is necessary to establish a transnational agency such as the World De-nuclear Monitoring Agency to formulate and implement a nuclear phase-out plan on a global scale. It also depends on the creation of the World Commonwealth as we will see in the final chapter.