"I've got bills to pay!"

That one statement lays bare the whole system of wage slavery, and the way that the wage system ties us to a way of thinking that puts our individual household ahead of the working class as a whole.

We've got bills to pay, and the bosses know it. Those bills—and the fact that the necessities of life have price tags—keep us tied to our jobs. They make us afraid to put our jobs on the line, to speak up, to defend a fellow worker, even to fight for a few more dollars in pay or benefits. What if I lose my job? What if I can't find another one? We may not be slaves to any particular boss, but we sure are slaves to the wage system.

The pay check—the wage system—means that we always have to think about the survival of our individual households. And it made the failure of socialism in the Soviet Union inevitable. Although the Russian communists were committed to the fight for a collective way of life and a new world, socialism kept the wage system. Every Soviet worker collected a pay check and had to pay bills. Every Soviet worker had to think about her/his individual family, knowing that it was up to her/him to keep her job and pay the bills.

We have learned from history that to win the fight for collectivity once and for all we have to put an end to the wage system. In a communist society, the survival of each individual will be the responsibility of the entire collective. When we say "to each according to needs" we mean that it will be the responsibility of the whole society to make sure that everyone has healthy food, appropriate clothes, state-of-the-art medical care, secure housing, communist learning and collective, meaningful work. No more will anyone say, "I've got to look out for my family, because nobody else will." Never again will anyone say, "I've got bills to pay."

—Red Reader