Let us submit the following proposition for consideration: the essence of socialist construction lies in the bid to appropriate the future and is therefore expressed politically, in the organised manipulation of time. What we ordinarily take to be the sine qua non of socialist relations, namely central planning, totalitarian rule and the abolition of private property are, in fact, epiphenomena. They exist as real influences on people's lives in the presently existing socialist societies, but they derive in esse, from the basic organising principle of socialist relations which is to restructure the popular experience of time.