Die Neue Zeit
12th July 2009, 09:46
Why We Need a New Human Emancipatory Communism (http://thecommune.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/why-we-need-a-new-human-emancipatory-communism/) by Allan Armstrong
Therefore, if we are to proudly proclaim ourselves as communists, it is vital that we outline a genuine new human emancipatory communism, which takes full stock of the failings of both ‘official’ and ‘dissident Communism’, and which can persuasively show that human liberation can still be achieved. This means a break with both reformist and ‘revolutionary’ social democracy, i.e. social democracy calling itself Communism. The main purpose of this article will be to show that a genuine new communism, based on real trends in capitalist society, can form an operational politics
Although I disagree with their reject of neologisms, I like the mention of "revolutionary social democracy" at the beginning, which is a hint of things to come. In fact, it's the very next section!
Marx and the abolition of wage slavery versus ‘Revolutionary’ social democracy and the continuation of the wages system
I wrote a pamphlet on this. Although I recognize the need for neologisms in place of “communism” (even “commonwealth-ism” would be more accurate about Marxist political economy), this social-proletocrat (social-abolitionist and proletarian democrat) likes the critique of revolutionary social democracy. I say “revolutionary” without the quotation marks because, despite fundamental theoretical errors, the central premise of organizing the working class around revolutionary economic goals and around revolutionary political goals (not just one or the other) is sound.
Yet, when we examine the society that ‘revolutionary’ social democrats want to build immediately after their Revolution, it is most peculiar. The wages system is to be retained under socialism. This is a bit like the black slaves of pre-Civil War USA rising up against their slave masters – but once they have expelled them, not proceeding to abolish slavery! Instead, slavery would remain, but the slaves would elect and emancipate a select few of their number to manage the affairs of the plantation. The job of this new management would be to organise the slaves with a view to increasing production, promising a much fairer distribution of the resulting produce afterwards!
The abolition of wage slavery, which formed the core of the genuine communist project, was relegated to an increasingly distant utopian ‘Communist’ future. In the meantime a new middle class was to be in control. ‘The Party’ was to fuse with the state to provide a new class with the political power the traditional capitalists enjoyed through private ownership and control of capital.
As long as our labour power ends up producing their capital, we remain wage slaves.
But Marx clearly understood that wage slaves aren’t merely victims. We also represent the creative pole of the capitalist relationship. Yet the essence of this relationship appears to be reversed, making the capitalist owners and controllers seem to be the initiators of all production and distribution. This has helped to imbue them with legitimate political power too. However we, as workers, create all new value and wealth. We create both ourselves as living labour and capital as dead labour. We produce not only all our means of subsistence and the luxuries of the capitalist class, but the capital – the factories, offices, machinery, technology, raw materials and commodities – through which they try to control us, but never completely succeed. It is literally a constant life and death struggle between living and dead labour.
During the nineteenth century, when workers first successfully struggled to shorten the working day, capitalists responded with the introduction of machinery to intensify labour. They reduced their workers to ‘hands’. Discipline was imposed by the regular working of the machine and by the supervision of the chargehand. Today, call centres have become the modern sweatshops, with discipline imposed jointly by embedded computer programmes and by floor managers. It is the capitalist owners and controllers who gain the benefits of technological ‘progress’, since it is they who appropriate our dead labour to invest and create further rounds of surplus labour.
One part of the effective transition to the upper phase of communism, is where distribution is solely on the basis of need and no longer on the basis of labour hours worked. However, the conditions for the upper phase of communism must directly develop from the lower phase.
Crucially, in the lower phase of communism, there is no necessity for the intervention of a centralised administration of ’socialist’ planners to allocate consumption items according to some ‘socialist’ wages, taxation and pricing policy. Therefore, the significance of planning production and distribution on the basis of the measurement of labour hours is also political for it underlines workers’ real, rather than the nominal control of production and distribution, which occurs when these functions are separated.
But Marx’s second condition for the setting up of the first phase of communism – the production and distribution of goods and services on the basis of labour time – is as alien to today’s ‘official’ and ‘dissident’ Communists, as Marx’s first condition – the smashing of the capitalist state and its replacement by the Commune semi-state – was to Second International Social Democracy, even its self-declared revolutionary wing.
I do disagree with the somewhat Stalinist argument made here:
This is why the hoary old story pedalled by today’s ‘revolutionary’ social democrats’ needs to be constantly challenged. They claim that any attempt to begin the abolition of the wages system, when workers have only seized power in one or a few countries, is doomed to fail. Yes, workers can have their workers’ councils, but they must confine their activities to helping to formulate The Plan for more efficient production and more equitable distribution, whilst they continue to earn their wages. Workers can’t be trusted to take full and direct responsibility for planning, production and distribution on the basis of labour hours until the World Workers’ Republic is achieved. They need to have all of the planet’s resources to achieve this.
And also with this ultra-left liquidationism:
Marx was quite ruthless in his attitude to political organisations, especially communist parties. When the movement of wage slaves welled up and challenged their capitalist masters in a revolutionary manner, whether in the 1848 Revolutions, or during the Paris Commune of 1870, Marx was at the forefront of helping to create a new communist party. However, when the revolutionary wave ebbed, Marx made sure that the communist party didn’t give way to ‘The Party’. It was only the ‘revolutionary’ charlatans and would-be ‘revolutionary’ dictators who saw the need to hold on to their Party after such conditions had passed.
Therefore, if we are to proudly proclaim ourselves as communists, it is vital that we outline a genuine new human emancipatory communism, which takes full stock of the failings of both ‘official’ and ‘dissident Communism’, and which can persuasively show that human liberation can still be achieved. This means a break with both reformist and ‘revolutionary’ social democracy, i.e. social democracy calling itself Communism. The main purpose of this article will be to show that a genuine new communism, based on real trends in capitalist society, can form an operational politics
Although I disagree with their reject of neologisms, I like the mention of "revolutionary social democracy" at the beginning, which is a hint of things to come. In fact, it's the very next section!
Marx and the abolition of wage slavery versus ‘Revolutionary’ social democracy and the continuation of the wages system
I wrote a pamphlet on this. Although I recognize the need for neologisms in place of “communism” (even “commonwealth-ism” would be more accurate about Marxist political economy), this social-proletocrat (social-abolitionist and proletarian democrat) likes the critique of revolutionary social democracy. I say “revolutionary” without the quotation marks because, despite fundamental theoretical errors, the central premise of organizing the working class around revolutionary economic goals and around revolutionary political goals (not just one or the other) is sound.
Yet, when we examine the society that ‘revolutionary’ social democrats want to build immediately after their Revolution, it is most peculiar. The wages system is to be retained under socialism. This is a bit like the black slaves of pre-Civil War USA rising up against their slave masters – but once they have expelled them, not proceeding to abolish slavery! Instead, slavery would remain, but the slaves would elect and emancipate a select few of their number to manage the affairs of the plantation. The job of this new management would be to organise the slaves with a view to increasing production, promising a much fairer distribution of the resulting produce afterwards!
The abolition of wage slavery, which formed the core of the genuine communist project, was relegated to an increasingly distant utopian ‘Communist’ future. In the meantime a new middle class was to be in control. ‘The Party’ was to fuse with the state to provide a new class with the political power the traditional capitalists enjoyed through private ownership and control of capital.
As long as our labour power ends up producing their capital, we remain wage slaves.
But Marx clearly understood that wage slaves aren’t merely victims. We also represent the creative pole of the capitalist relationship. Yet the essence of this relationship appears to be reversed, making the capitalist owners and controllers seem to be the initiators of all production and distribution. This has helped to imbue them with legitimate political power too. However we, as workers, create all new value and wealth. We create both ourselves as living labour and capital as dead labour. We produce not only all our means of subsistence and the luxuries of the capitalist class, but the capital – the factories, offices, machinery, technology, raw materials and commodities – through which they try to control us, but never completely succeed. It is literally a constant life and death struggle between living and dead labour.
During the nineteenth century, when workers first successfully struggled to shorten the working day, capitalists responded with the introduction of machinery to intensify labour. They reduced their workers to ‘hands’. Discipline was imposed by the regular working of the machine and by the supervision of the chargehand. Today, call centres have become the modern sweatshops, with discipline imposed jointly by embedded computer programmes and by floor managers. It is the capitalist owners and controllers who gain the benefits of technological ‘progress’, since it is they who appropriate our dead labour to invest and create further rounds of surplus labour.
One part of the effective transition to the upper phase of communism, is where distribution is solely on the basis of need and no longer on the basis of labour hours worked. However, the conditions for the upper phase of communism must directly develop from the lower phase.
Crucially, in the lower phase of communism, there is no necessity for the intervention of a centralised administration of ’socialist’ planners to allocate consumption items according to some ‘socialist’ wages, taxation and pricing policy. Therefore, the significance of planning production and distribution on the basis of the measurement of labour hours is also political for it underlines workers’ real, rather than the nominal control of production and distribution, which occurs when these functions are separated.
But Marx’s second condition for the setting up of the first phase of communism – the production and distribution of goods and services on the basis of labour time – is as alien to today’s ‘official’ and ‘dissident’ Communists, as Marx’s first condition – the smashing of the capitalist state and its replacement by the Commune semi-state – was to Second International Social Democracy, even its self-declared revolutionary wing.
I do disagree with the somewhat Stalinist argument made here:
This is why the hoary old story pedalled by today’s ‘revolutionary’ social democrats’ needs to be constantly challenged. They claim that any attempt to begin the abolition of the wages system, when workers have only seized power in one or a few countries, is doomed to fail. Yes, workers can have their workers’ councils, but they must confine their activities to helping to formulate The Plan for more efficient production and more equitable distribution, whilst they continue to earn their wages. Workers can’t be trusted to take full and direct responsibility for planning, production and distribution on the basis of labour hours until the World Workers’ Republic is achieved. They need to have all of the planet’s resources to achieve this.
And also with this ultra-left liquidationism:
Marx was quite ruthless in his attitude to political organisations, especially communist parties. When the movement of wage slaves welled up and challenged their capitalist masters in a revolutionary manner, whether in the 1848 Revolutions, or during the Paris Commune of 1870, Marx was at the forefront of helping to create a new communist party. However, when the revolutionary wave ebbed, Marx made sure that the communist party didn’t give way to ‘The Party’. It was only the ‘revolutionary’ charlatans and would-be ‘revolutionary’ dictators who saw the need to hold on to their Party after such conditions had passed.