Redefining Work, Time, and Value in a New Social Order

From economic compulsion to human flourishing: a proposal for Volume II of A New Social Order in the Age of Consciousness

Hamid Akhavi

September 22, 2026

Abstract

Capitalism has made work a condition of survival: to obtain food, housing, healthcare, education, and security, most people must sell their labor power and a large share of their lifetime in a market whose dominant purpose is not to meet human needs but to increase profit and accumulate capital. The issue, therefore, is not merely low wages or a long working day. The more fundamental issue is the appropriation of human time, capacities, and the possibility of self-determination. Developing the argument of Volume II of A New Social Order in the Age of Consciousness, this article argues that the socialization of production, democratic ownership of infrastructure, an unconditional guarantee of basic needs, a radical reduction in necessary working time, and the transparent use of artificial intelligence can transform work from an economic compulsion into conscious, creative, and social activity.

This transition rests neither on a naive image of “human beings without conflict” nor on the rule of a central state or algorithm. A new social order is a polycentric network of workplace and neighborhood councils, accountable specialist institutions, direct decision-making, and mechanisms for review. Technology has no right to decide in this order: it collects data, simulates consequences, and makes options visible, while citizens determine goals and priorities. Freedom of expression, association, strikes, political parties, and the press, together with privacy and minority rights, are conditions for the system to function, not privileges that may be suspended in the name of planning.

1. The Starting Point: The Economy Exists for People, Not People for the Economy

The capitalist economy creates an inverted relationship. Rather than production serving a decent life, life becomes a means of sustaining profitable production. Workers purchase food, housing, and rest today so that they can work again tomorrow. Education is often reduced to “investment in marketability”; healthcare is assessed in terms of returning people to the work cycle; and free time becomes a market for consumption, advertising, and data extraction. Within this system, human beings are treated not as ends in themselves but as “human resources,” “labor costs,” and sets of predictable behaviors.

This critique does not deny the scientific and technical achievements of the capitalist era. Capitalism has enormously expanded productive forces while placing the social product of the cooperation of millions under the command of private ownership. Here lies the fundamental contradiction: production becomes increasingly social, networked, and knowledge-based, yet decisions about its purpose, data, investment, and distribution remain in the hands of a minority of owners and managers. Artificial intelligence brings this contradiction to a peak: it rests on society’s collective accumulation of knowledge, language, images, behavior, and visible and invisible labor, while its benefits and power remain largely private.

The first principle of a new social order is this: access to basic needs—adequate food, secure housing, healthcare, education, communication, mobility, and culture—is a right of citizenship and must not depend on obedience to an employer or success in the market. Freedom from the fear of hunger and homelessness is not the end of human activity; it is the beginning of genuine choice. Only someone who can say “no” without the threat of poverty can freely say “yes.”

2. How Capitalism Turns Work into Compulsion

On the surface, an employment contract is a free agreement between two individuals. But legal freedom is insufficient under materially unequal conditions. Someone without means of production, land, housing, or financial reserves must sell their labor power to survive. Capitalists, in turn, purchase labor power not directly to meet society’s needs but insofar as the value produced exceeds the cost of wages. This difference underpins profit and accumulation. Pressure to intensify work, expand surveillance, reduce labor costs, outsource, and replace people with machines is therefore not an individual moral aberration; it is the structural logic of competition among capitals.

Capitalism appropriates not only the product of labor but also time and attention. Commuting, constant availability, anxiety about dismissal, training for marketable skills, unpaid family care, and physical recovery from exhaustion are all part of the hidden costs of reproducing labor power. Even technology that could reduce working hours often becomes a means of speeding up work, measuring performance continuously, and eliminating jobs. The issue is therefore not the machine itself but its ownership, purpose, and the power to decide how it is used.

Capitalist ideology attributes this compulsion to “human nature,” as if human beings were inherently lazy, selfish, and motivated only by financial rewards. Yet this claim turns behavior within a particular structure into an eternal human essence. People competing under the threat of deprivation do not necessarily prove that competition and fear are humanity’s unchanging core, just as prisoners’ behavior cannot fully define a free human being.

3. Motivation Beyond Wages: Autonomous, Capable, and Connected Human Beings

Research in self-determination theory has shown that the enduring quality of motivation is connected to three psychological needs: autonomy, a sense of competence, and meaningful connection with others. External rewards can motivate certain short-term or unpleasant tasks, but strong control and conditional rewards undermine intrinsic motivation in many situations. These findings challenge the myth that “without money, nobody does anything,” while not claiming that every necessary task will automatically become enjoyable. The more precise conclusion is that people act more responsibly and creatively when they have choice, opportunities to learn, social meaning, and a real share in decision-making.[1]

Everyday life also abounds in work that the logic of profit cannot explain: caring for children and older people, volunteering, artistic creation, scientific research, free software, relief efforts, political activity, and the production of shared knowledge. Much of society already reproduces the world outside a direct relationship between wages and profit; capitalism often renders this work invisible or devalues it.

The aim of a new social order is not to abolish effort but to abolish subjugation. People will continue to learn, build, heal, farm, write software, and care for others. But motivation can develop beyond the fear of deprivation into a richer combination: a sense of making a difference, social respect, mastery, curiosity, solidarity, beauty, responsibility, and satisfaction in solving problems. Freedom from wage labor does not mean freedom from social responsibility; it means making responsibility democratic and reciprocal rather than imposed from above.

4. Necessary Work, Free Activity, and the Right to Refuse

To avoid ambiguity, three spheres must be distinguished:

First, “guaranteed needs.” No one should have to prove their worthiness or sell their labor power to receive food, housing, healthcare, education, and basic communications.

Second, “necessary social work”: activities such as food production, maintaining water and energy networks, care, healthcare, transportation, waste management, and infrastructure repair. Until automation has eliminated all these tasks, a fair share must be distributed among members of society who are able to undertake them. That share should be brief, safe, capable of rotation, suited to individual abilities, and under workers’ direct control. Difficult or unpopular work should first be addressed through technology, better design, shorter hours, task rotation, and benefits that do not create class divisions—not by creating a stratum condemned to subordinate work.

Third, “free and creative activity”: science, art, sport, education, invention, nurturing, voluntary care, civic activity, and any effort that people regard as part of their flourishing. This sphere must not be colonized by permanent financial incentives or algorithmic rankings. Society provides resources and infrastructure, and people choose their paths individually or through free associations.

The right to refuse is also essential. If people cannot refuse a task that is unsafe, humiliating, or incompatible with their conscience, calling it “social” does not change its coercive character. Independent dispute-resolution councils, unions, the right to strike, and opportunities to move between fields of activity are institutional safeguards for this freedom.

5. The Economic Architecture of a New Social Order

The new order is neither today’s capitalist market nor the bureaucratic command of a single center. Its architecture is multilayered and polycentric:

1. Universal commons: natural resources, energy, infrastructure networks, public data, and foundational AI systems are managed as society’s common assets and cannot be privately bought and sold.
2. Workplace councils: workers decide how work is organized, safety measures, the division of tasks, technology, production plans, and the selection of executive managers. Management is a specialist, recallable function, not ownership over others.
3. Neighborhood and city councils: these determine needs, local budgets, public services, and environmental priorities.
4. Regional and nationwide networks: for matters beyond local capacity—energy networks, public health, transportation, climate, and strategic industries—mandated, accountable, and recallable representatives coordinate under public oversight.
5. Independent legal and knowledge institutions: an independent judiciary, free media, self-governing universities, unions, and civic associations must be able to criticize and halt decisions by councils and planning bodies. The majority has no right to abolish fundamental freedoms or the rights of minorities and protected groups, including women, ethnic and religious minorities, and the LGBTQ+ community.

This structure replaces temporary concessions distributed from above with “participation in power.” Citizens do not merely vote every few years; through workplaces, neighborhoods, and transparent public platforms, they participate continuously in shaping decisions. The aim is not to eliminate expertise but to make it answerable to society’s informed will.

6. Democratic Planning and the Limited but Powerful Role of Artificial Intelligence

Friedrich Hayek rightly emphasized that knowledge is dispersed throughout society: no single center possesses all local information, preferences, and changing circumstances.[2] This is a serious criticism of centralized command planning, but it does not establish that private ownership and a profit-driven market are the only possible means of coordination. Market prices compress some information, but they equate purchasing power with need, conceal environmental costs and care work, and say nothing about who has the right to decide.

The response of a new social order to the knowledge problem is not greater concentration but “distributed, feedback-based planning.” Production units and local bodies report necessary information according to the principle of data minimization; citizens express preferences and priorities through multiple channels; public systems calculate options, shortages, capacities, and environmental consequences; and elected councils and citizens’ assemblies decide the goals. Decisions are provisional, testable, and reversible.

Project Cybersyn in Chile under Allende was a historical and unfinished example. With extremely limited computing resources, it attempted to communicate information from public enterprises more rapidly and balance the autonomy of individual units with overall coordination. Its experience demonstrated both the potential of feedback-based planning and the dangers of technocracy from above and the exclusion of shop-floor workers’ knowledge. The appropriate lesson is not to create a myth: a cybernetic system can be emancipatory only when workers and citizens have real power over defining indicators, owning data, interpreting results, and rejecting recommendations.[3]

In the new order, AI can facilitate demand forecasting, energy optimization, bottleneck detection, scenario simulation, and the synthesis of public views. But it must be subject to five firm limits: its code and criteria must be open to scrutiny; personal data collection must be minimized; human appeal must be possible; no single social score may be created; and final political decisions must not be delegated to algorithms. The algorithm is an adviser, not a ruler.

7. Value, Distribution, and the Question of “Labor Tokens”

The initial version of this article presented expiring labor tokens as the principal solution. Such an instrument may be useful during a transition for certain scarce goods or for recording contributions to necessary work, but it must not become the organizing principle of all life. If every human activity is scored, society may move from the tyranny of the market to the tyranny of constant measurement. If tokens expire quickly, personal security, long-term planning, and individual independence suffer. If an opaque algorithm allocates them, discrimination and bureaucratic power are reproduced.

A more defensible proposal distinguishes three levels of distribution: basic rights and needs; abundant goods and services; and genuinely scarce goods and opportunities. This distinction is an institutional proposal for democratic discussion and testing, not a claim to possess a final blueprint for all societies. Its purpose is to ensure that no one’s life depends on earning points, that abundance is not unnecessarily restricted, and that scarcity does not become the permanent privilege of those with wealth or power.

7.1. The First Level: Basic Goods and Services as Rights

At the first level, basic goods and services are free or guaranteed on the basis of rights. There are no labor tokens or participation tests at this level. Safe drinking water, adequate food, secure housing, essential energy, education, essential healthcare and medicines, basic communications, and the mobility required for everyday life are examples. Care for children, older people, and those who need assistance to live independently must also be understood within this framework.

For example, someone who has lost a job or cannot work because of illness does not lose the right to food, housing, or healthcare. Someone caring for an ill family member must not first prove the economic value of that care to a system in order to enjoy basic rights. Nor may these rights be conditional on political beliefs, council membership, or voting participation.

Guaranteeing a right does not mean unlimited consumption of every resource. The right to water means access to sufficient, safe water; it does not imply an unlimited right to fill a private swimming pool during a drought. The right to energy includes heating, cooling, and other essential needs, but recreational or luxury consumption must be assessed separately in light of environmental capacity.

Equality at this level does not mean an identical numerical share for everyone. It means an equal opportunity to live with dignity, taking different needs into account. A person who uses electrically powered medical equipment may require more energy; a person with a disability may need adapted housing or specialized transportation. The assessment of these needs must be limited, respectful, confidential, and open to appeal, without turning into a test of moral worthiness or economic participation.

Quality is also part of the right. The existence of a clinic or school on paper does not guarantee real access. Waiting times, geographical distance, service quality, and usability for people with different needs must be assessed. The scope of basic rights should be reviewed through public participation and specialist input, and expanded as society’s capacities grow.

7.2. The Second Level: Abundance and Open Access or Equal Consumption Credits

The second level includes goods and services whose sustainable supply meets ordinary demand or whose use by one more person incurs little additional cost. E-books, software, and educational materials that can be freely distributed are clear examples: one person reading a digital book does not remove a copy from anyone else. Producing the work, compensating its creator, and maintaining infrastructure still require resources, of course. These costs can be met through public budgets, cooperatives, and cultural institutions so that access to each copy does not require a separate payment.

Ordinary clothing, stationery, and some durable goods may also belong at this level if sustainable production is sufficient. Libraries, parks, shared workshops, and sports facilities during periods of adequate capacity are service examples. Abundance here is not an assumption about every good. It is a condition to be assessed in each field using real information about supply, demand, and environmental costs.

Wherever open access is practical, there is no need to create a credit account. A tool library, for example, can lend drills, sewing machines, or gardening equipment to residents. If demand rises at particular times, reservations and limits on loan duration may be sufficient. There is no reason to build a complex system of scoring and surveillance around every everyday use.

If quantities of consumption must be managed, equal consumption credits can be one option: credits that do not depend on employment or social rank and whose design accommodates special needs. In a hypothetical scheme for distributing ordinary clothing, for example, people could choose how to use their consumption share among the items they want; the additional needs of a growing child or essential specialized clothing should be met separately. Such a credit is a means of choice within a limited sphere, not a measure of human worth.

Abundant production is not the same as the sustainability of unlimited consumption. Water, energy, raw materials, and waste-disposal capacity are limited. Where necessary, democratic and transparent ceilings must first guarantee basic needs and then regulate additional consumption. Increasing the output of short-lived goods, if it wastes resources and creates more work, conflicts with the aim of freeing time. Repairability, durability, and shared use can improve well-being while placing less pressure on resources.

7.3. The Third Level: Real Scarcity and Allocation Suited to Need

The third level includes opportunities whose number or capacity is limited and whose supply cannot easily, immediately, or desirably be expanded: housing in a highly sought-after location, seats at a live performance, holiday accommodation during peak travel periods, time on specialized research equipment, and permits to visit a sensitive ecosystem. Some constraints are temporary and can be overcome; others, such as the capacity of a natural site, must be maintained to protect the resource itself.

Allocation must suit the nature of the opportunity and applicants’ needs. For tickets to a popular performance, a lottery among valid applications, combined with limits on repeated awards, can spread opportunity more widely. For public holiday accommodation, rotating turns can give greater opportunity to those who did not use it in the previous period. For research equipment, competence to use it, accountable scientific assessment, and transparent scheduling matter; personal connections with a manager must not replace published criteria.

A transparent queue is appropriate when chronological priority is justified. Online-only registration at a single specified moment can favor those with better connections and more free time. An adequate application window, in-person and telephone channels, and the ability to track a request are part of fair queue design. Lotteries likewise suit claims that are broadly equivalent; they must not hide substantial differences in need behind an apparent equality of chance.

Participatory budgeting serves a different purpose: people decide how to allocate shared resources, not necessarily whose turn it is to consume. Neighborhood residents, for example, may prioritize library expansion, sports facilities, or green space. This choice should take place after basic obligations and the rights of smaller groups have been secured; accessibility for people with disabilities must not depend solely on its popularity in a vote.

Scarcity must not become a market for buying influence. Rules on permit transfers, reservation cancellations, and repeated use must be clear enough to discourage hoarding slots or selling opportunities informally. If limited credits are used to choose recreational facilities, people must not be able to purchase others’ credits and capture all desirable times. Measures against abuse must also be proportionate and open to appeal, without becoming extensive surveillance of private life.

7.4. Shifting Boundaries: One Good, Several Rights and Uses

These three levels are not fixed, mutually exclusive categories. Being basic concerns a need’s importance for life; being abundant or scarce concerns supply. An essential medicine may be scarce without leaving the sphere of basic rights. In that situation, allocation must follow specialist, needs-based, and publicly accountable criteria, while society acts to resolve the shortage; purchasing power or participation scores must not be the criterion.

Housing provides a clear example: safe, adequate housing is a universal right, while a large home with a particular view in a highly desirable neighborhood is a scarce opportunity. Limits on the latter do not remove the responsibility to provide the former. Proximity to an essential service may also be necessary for someone with particular needs, so the desirability of a location should not always be treated as a luxury.

Similarly, quality public education must be guaranteed, digital learning materials can be freely accessible, and use of a particular laboratory may require scheduling and proof of competence. In transportation, essential mobility can be guaranteed, spare network capacity made available to all, and leisure trips to a sensitive area subject to environmental limits. Decisions must concern the type of use, need, and actual capacity, rather than merely the name of a good.

7.5. Credits, Privacy, and the Right to Appeal

Every credit must have a clear purpose, scope, and set of rules. Credits for reserving recreational facilities must not become a condition for obtaining food or healthcare, nor must recording contributions to necessary work turn into a comprehensive citizenship score. Tying every sphere of life to one number reintroduces the danger of constant measurement that this proposal seeks to avoid.

People must know how credits are allocated, what their limits are, and how to challenge errors. Appeals must be considered by an accountable body independent of the original decision. An equivalent alternative must be available to people without smartphones, digital literacy, or internet access. A system error must not deprive anyone of a basic necessity.

Transparency does not mean publicizing people’s private lives. Allocation rules, aggregate statistics, and audit findings can be public while medical information, family circumstances, and individual consumption patterns remain confidential. Data collection must be limited to what is necessary. AI can reveal shortages and allocation options, but defining rights, hearing appeals, and making final decisions remain the responsibility of accountable human institutions.

7.6. Personal Savings and the Boundary Between Wealth and Domination

Personal saving should not be prohibited insofar as it does not create domination over other people’s labor. Someone may wish to set aside part of their consumption share for a musical instrument, a durable item, or a future trip. The ability to plan over time is part of individual independence; hurried credit expiration can push people into rushed consumption.

At the same time, retaining a consumption share must be distinguished from hoarding common resources. In a hypothetical model, someone could save recreational credits across several periods for a longer trip, but could not buy other people’s rights of use and then make their access conditional on paying rent or working for that person. Rules on accumulation and transfer must be defined by sphere: keeping a personal possession is not the same as monopolizing resources on which others’ livelihoods depend.

Receiving resources without current employment is not, in itself, exploitation. Child support, retirement pensions, provision for people with disabilities, and support for caregivers are legitimate forms of social solidarity. What must be eliminated is the conversion of wealth into ownership power and the appropriation of others’ labor through exploitation—not personal security or support for people outside the labor market.

7.7. From Fairly Sharing Shortages to Reducing Shortages Themselves

Fair management of scarcity is insufficient. A long queue for a basic service should lead to a plan to expand capacity, train personnel, and remove bottlenecks. Repeated tool shortages at a local center, for example, may justify buying additional tools or establishing another center; a shortage of adequate housing requires a housing provision program, not a permanent queue. By contrast, a ceiling on visits to a sensitive ecosystem may need to be maintained.

Local institutions, service workers, users, and specialist bodies should periodically review the place of each sphere and the performance of its allocation method. Waiting times, unmet needs, quality, disparities in access among groups, environmental pressures, and the experience of those making appeals can inform this review. Success is not measured by increasing the number of tokens and accounts. It is measured by actually meeting needs, expanding freedom of choice, reducing necessary working time, and limiting the power to dominate.

Social value must likewise not be reduced to raw hours or a “complexity coefficient.” Caring for a patient, teaching a child, cleaning up the environment, making a scientific discovery, and repairing a water network create different kinds of value that no single number can fully express. Planning must use multiple criteria: need, sustainability, time, skill, physical and psychological strain, long-term effects, and public judgment.

8. Free Time as the Infrastructure of Democracy

Without free time, democracy becomes merely formal. Citizens exhausted by long hours of work, commuting, and care have no opportunity to examine budgets, participate in councils, study, or criticize power. Reducing necessary working time is therefore not merely a welfare policy; it is a transfer of political power.

Research by the International Labour Organization shows that long hours are generally associated with lower hourly productivity, fatigue, and greater harm, and that intelligently reducing working time can be compatible with maintaining or increasing productivity.[4] Automation should likewise lead to shorter working time for everyone, rather than unemployment for one group and overtime for another. Productivity gains must be socialized as free time, better services, and reduced environmental pressure.

This free time expands opportunities for direct participation, lifelong learning, care, art, friendship, and experiencing nature. A society that measures success only through gross output and greater consumption impoverishes human wealth. Indicators for the new order must also assess health, free time, equality, trust, environmental quality, access to knowledge, and citizens’ actual power.

9. Examining Opposing Views

First Objection: “If Livelihoods Are Guaranteed, People Will Not Work”

This objection points to part of the reality: unpleasant tasks exist, and intrinsic motivation alone is insufficient. But that does not establish that the threat of poverty is necessary. Finland’s basic income experiment showed that unconditional receipt, contrary to predictions of a collapse in motivation, did not lead to an appreciable reduction in employment, while improving reported well-being and subjective security. The experiment was limited, however, and was not equivalent to a post-capitalist order.[5] The institutional response includes automation, rotation, shorter hours, improved conditions, training, and a fair division of necessary tasks. Society has no right to create a deprived class to perform difficult work.

Second Objection: “Competition and Inequality Drive Innovation”

Competition sometimes stimulates effort, but cooperation, curiosity, scientific recognition, problem-solving, and social commitment are also powerful drivers of innovation. Much fundamental knowledge has been produced in universities and public institutions, and many digital infrastructures rest on shared knowledge. The issue is not to eliminate differences, distinction, or peer judgment; it is to prevent achievement from becoming a right to rule over others. The new order can recognize scientific and artistic excellence without turning it into inherited wealth and class domination.

Third Objection: “Collective Ownership Leads to Free Riding and Inefficiency”

This risk is real, but it is not exclusive to collective ownership; hierarchical corporations also face demotivation, secrecy, and poor management. A review of more than a hundred studies of employee ownership generally shows a positive relationship with productivity, employment stability, and enterprise survival, although causality is not established in every case and ownership without genuine participation has limited effects.[6] Elinor Ostrom’s research has also shown that communities can manage shared resources through clear rules, mutual monitoring, graduated sanctions, and the right to self-organize. The choice between “the market or a central state” is incomplete.[7]

Fourth Objection: “No Algorithm Can Plan a Complex Economy”

Correct: no single algorithm should hold that power. The proposed order is not “a supercomputer that issues every command.” Planning is a political, multilevel process that can combine limited markets, public reserves, negotiation, rationing during crises, real-time data, and local judgment. Hayek’s critique of centralized knowledge is precisely a reason for networked, polycentric design, not a reason to hand society over to the owners of capital.

Fifth Objection: “This Proposal Ends in Despotism”

The experience of twentieth-century bureaucratic states is a serious warning. Legal nationalization without workplace democracy, political freedom, and control from below is not genuine socialization. A new social order can be defined only through freedom of political parties, the press, expression, assembly, unions, and strikes; judicial independence; rotation of responsibilities; budget transparency; the right to information; and the ability to recall representatives. Data concentration must also be constrained through data federalism, local storage, encryption, minimization, and a ban on mass surveillance.

Sixth Objection: “Capitalist Culture Is Unchangeable”

Culture is not the product of fixed genes; it is formed through institutions and everyday experience. A system that constantly ranks individuals, creates insecurity, and measures success through wealth reproduces competition and violence. But abolishing private ownership alone does not create a new culture. Cultural transformation requires critical education, gender equality, the practice of dialogue, free art, recognition of care work, restorative justice, and the ongoing experience of self-government. A conscious and responsible citizen develops through participatory practice, not by command.

10. Cultural Change: From “Having” to “Being”

Capitalism entwines human needs with endless consumption. Many desires are real, but the advertising industry ties status and identity to commodities. People consequently work to purchase things intended to compensate for the suffering of work. The new order must change the definition of well-being: security, belonging, health, time, understanding, love, creativity, nature, and the ability to make a difference in the world.

This transformation cannot be achieved through sermons against consumerism. As long as social security is absent, individual accumulation may be a rational response to fear. Fear of illness, old age, unemployment, and homelessness must first be removed; the possibility of a culture of trust and material sufficiency can then expand. Economic and cultural change therefore proceed together: new structures make new behavior possible, and new behavior consolidates those structures.

Competition also does not disappear entirely; its place changes. Sporting contests, artistic competition, or testing alternative solutions can be enjoyable and productive, provided that failure does not lead to hunger, denial of healthcare, or social subordination. Violence and domination cease to be conditions for access to life’s necessities and consequently lose a large part of their material basis.

11. The Path of Transition: Neither an Overnight Decree nor Endless Postponement

The transition to a new social order is not an administrative leap imposed from above. It can advance along several paths simultaneously:

1. Immediately guaranteeing basic rights and expanding universal public services;
2. Gradually and continuously reducing the working week without lowering living standards;
3. Transferring large enterprises and strategic infrastructure into social ownership under council management;
4. Supporting cooperatives and converting abandoned or bankrupt enterprises to worker ownership;
5. Establishing participatory budgeting in neighborhoods and cities;
6. Recognizing data and foundational AI models as public infrastructure;
7. Establishing public algorithmic auditing, a right to explanation, and a right to appeal;
8. Developing local networks of production, repair, care, and education;
9. Setting environmental ceilings and translating productivity gains into shorter working time;
10. Guaranteeing political and social freedoms as mechanisms for correcting errors.

During the transition, money, limited markets, and income differences may remain. The measure of progress is not a formal declaration that “the market has been abolished,” but an actual reduction in economic compulsion, wealth concentration, necessary working time, and the power gap between decision-makers and the public. Any reform that does not socialize ownership and power can be absorbed by capitalism; any radical transformation that suspends freedom and review can produce a new bureaucracy.

12. How This Discussion Relates to Volume II of A New Social Order in the Age of Consciousness

Volume II must move from the critique of capitalism to institutional design. The principal question is no longer simply “what must be negated,” but how people manage production, distribution, technology, and power every day. Work and time lie at the heart of that design: without freeing time, direct participation becomes a privilege of the advantaged, and without guaranteed livelihoods, political freedom is hollowed out under market pressure.

This chapter can connect four areas of Volume II: an intelligently organized economy and feedback-based planning; workplace and neighborhood councils; social ownership of data and AI; and the development of conscious, responsible citizens. Human dignity is their unifying principle. Dignity means that no one is an instrument of someone else’s profit, no one is deprived of basic needs, and no important decision about people’s lives is made without their ability to participate, be informed, and object.

Conclusion: Freedom from Work or Freedom in Activity?

The aim of a new social order is not “a society without effort,” but a society that frees human effort from the command of profit. Once freed from economic compulsion, people do not become passive. For the first time, they can choose among activities, explore their abilities, fail without being destroyed, and contribute consciously to building a shared world.

Capitalism says that to survive, you must sell yourself, and to be valuable, you must be profitable. A new social order replies that human worth precedes the market and is independent of productivity. Society is obliged to guarantee the conditions for flourishing, and free people stand in relation to it not as servants, but as responsible partners.

Technology can reduce necessary working hours, but only social struggle and democratic institutions determine whether the result is freedom or unemployment and surveillance. AI can coordinate dispersed knowledge, but only citizens can define the meaning of progress. A human future begins when social production is aligned with social ownership and power: when the time of life is reclaimed from its status as a commodity, and work is transformed from a mark of subjugation into a sphere of creation, solidarity, and self-realization.

Sources and Suggested Reading

[1] Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, “Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being,” American Psychologist, 2000.

[2] Friedrich Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review, 1945.

[3] Raúl Espejo, “Cybersyn, Big Data, Variety Engineering and Governance,” 2022; also Eden Medina’s historical research on Project Cybersyn.

[4] International Labour Organization, “The Effects of Working Time on Productivity and Firm Performance,” and the report Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World.

[5] Government of Finland, evaluation of the 2017–2018 basic income experiment.

[6] Douglas Kruse, “Does Employee Ownership Improve Performance?” IZA World of Labor, updated version; and research meta-analyses on employee ownership and firm performance.

[7] Elinor Ostrom, “Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems,” Nobel lecture, 2009.