Those who cannot work?

[u/Outrageous_Big_9136]

I'm fairly new to Socialist thought, but if everyone is contributing what they can... how are those taken care of who are of retirement age or are too disabled to work?

[u/linuxluser]

This is something all productive modes have to deal with, not just socialism.

All societies have people who are classified as non-workers. The sick, the disabled, the elderly, children, etc. These people exist in society and have social ties with others in society who are workers. Those social ties bind the whole of society together, workers and non-workers.

This, inevitably, means that the workers must produce more than what they themselves consume. Whatever the mode of production is, it depends on the society unpinning it to exist and continue to exist. Thus, all modes of production requires the workers to produce enough for both workers and non-workers in society so that the society can reproduce itself, thus, reproducing the conditions necessary for the mode of production itself.

Marx calls the amount of labor done in excess to what the workers require, the surplus of production. Thus, the non-workers subsist off of the surplus of labor.

Under capitalism, however, there's one class of individuals who are non-workers who takes an extraordinary amount of the surplus for themselves that far excedes what they require to exist: the bourgeoisie. In fact, the bourgeoisie will actively take surplus away from those other groups (sick, children, elderly, etc) and even cut into the portion that workers produce for themselves. They are actively cutting away at every form of value in society and undermining the very conditions that make their own existence possible.

So the best way to think about what this all might look like under a new, socialist society is simply to realize that once we cut out the leeches (the bourgeoisie), we will find an incredible amount of surplus we didn't realize existed before because it was being horded. This surplus would be put to use to rebuild society from the ills that remain due to the capitalist mode.

As socialism develops, it will utilize automation better and, thus, fewer and fewer workers will be needed to reproduce society. Socialism does not depend upon profits, so it can sustain itself easily all while diminishing the number of people that must work. Capitalism cannot do this because its profits depend on the value produced by labor. Diminishing the number of workers under capitalism actually devalues their profits and causes economic crisis within the capitalist system.

Socialism is, therefore, the solution to the problems of labor and automation that capitalism is incapable of fixing.

[u/Outrageous_Big_9136 → u/linuxluser]

Thank you so much for this extremely thorough response. You definitely helped me understand, I appreciate you!

[u/linuxluser → u/Outrageous_Big_9136]

Yes. I think it's best to take the morality aspects out of the problem first. Understanding the issues of workers vs non-workers from purely a labor perspective helps clarify the problem better, I think.

If we start with moral problems in the analysis instead, we will get trapped and confused in our thinking. We'll be left with having to figure out who is worthy and who is unworthy to receive the products of labor in society. That's not a road we should go down. Within a capitalist society, this thinking leads people to fascism.

It's a scarcity mindset, where the products of labor are seen as scarce resources that we need to be careful who gets it and who doesn't. This leads to people inventing reasons to not give some groups things or to over-give other groups things. It really plays on the human condition and leads to division.

This is what Marx and Engels set out to completely avoid in there formulation of what they called "scientific socialism" in the 19th century. Their point was that instead of approaching these problems as idealists (morality is an idealist framing), we should ground everything in something more objective. In the case of scientific socialism, that objective ground is materialism.

So scientific socialism became also known as material dialectics which later got shortened to the single term Marxism (which Marx himself did not appreciate).

EDIT: Material dialectics was first, actually, and then Marx and Engels tried to call it scientific socialism to differentiate it from, essentially, anarchist tendencies within socialism at the time. But the order isn't important, the point is that these are (mostly) synonymous terms.

If you are new to this thinking, I encourage you to read Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels. It clarifies all of these things very well and helps us today orient our thinking correctly about problems like "What about people who can't work?".