The Real Reason for the 20th Century Revolutions Failures

[Kiev Communard]

Originally posted in this thread - http://www.revleft.com/vb/fidel-castro-cuban-t141386/index2.html

This was originally posted as an answer to The Anarchist Tension:


I am merely saying that socialism (and communism for that matter) is incompatible not only with the market and the private property of the means of production, but also with the whole hierarchical system of industrial management, with the workers, professionals/managers and owners/top managers comprising the top-down pyramide of hierarchy.

In that context,the main reason why all the previous revolutions failed is not for the alleged "corruption" of certain individuals, or the "elitism" of vanguard parties - these were mere symptoms - but for the fact that industrial relations of production at that time were still progressive and therefore, as with peasants' rebellions of Middle Ages that were doomed to recreate the very landowners' aristocracy and landowners' state they fought against (the Chinese history provides a lot of examples of this), the 20th century revolutionaries were doomed by the objective material conditions to recreate first Industrialism as the system of hierarchic division of labour and alienation of the immediate producers from the means of production, and then, as the development of Industrialism led to the demands of giving "free rein" to market forces to allow for the better unfolding of "growth for the sake of growth" - and to make the non-hereditary positions of state managers hereditary - to recreate the full-fledged capitalism, as well.

At that time that was inevitable, though regrettable, but now the development of productive forces (automation, biotechnology, hints at nanotechnology breakthrough, etc.) has achieved such a level that it would be possible in future to abolish not only private property-based capitalism but also the hierarchic social division of labour - the very source of the existence of the class society and the State. Therefore, all the future revolutions, if they are to be successful, should focus on these precisely developments in breakthrough areas, because it is the nature of productive forces that determine the character of the society, and not vice versa, as the Maoists' commendable but futile attempt at abolishing the Industrialist system of hierarchical division of labour during the Cultural Revolution showed. One can't have socialism and even less Communism under Industrialist society - that is the main lesson of the 20th century failures and defeats.

I hope you have understood my stance on that issue.

Please, discuss.

[Red Monroy]

You make a good observation. Mike Macnair made a deep analysis of this problem back in June in which he talks about the problems of the continued existence of the middle class and higher end working class (knowledge and skills monopolies) within socialist society. I'll post the article here for convenience:


Socialism is a form of class struggle

Why can’t the proletariat abolish capitalism immediately on taking power? The answer lies in the need for transition, argues Mike Macnair

This is a rather belated reply to Paul Cockshott’s critique of my book Revolutionary strategy.[1] In spite of the lapse of time it is worth replying, because Cockshott’s is in a certain sense the most serious and substantial criticism of the book so far offered. It has the great merit of (mostly) addressing my actual arguments, rather than simply assuming that I am a Kautskyite, as several reviewers have. Comrade Cockshott makes some serious and valid points about the question of democracy and concludes with a point with which I entirely agree: “to abolish the wages system we must first win the battle of democracy.”

Comrade Cockshott makes, in substance, three general criticisms of my book. The first concerns its “the lack of a theory of socialism” - meaning both a theory of the USSR and similar regimes, and a theory of the economic forms we should be fighting for as the immediate replacement of capitalism. In this connection, he disagrees with my characterisation of bureaucrats, managers and so on, as a section of the social class of petty proprietors.

The second, which appears to be a small point but is actually much larger, concerns the theory of the bourgeois state: he says that my account of this misses the power to tax, the (connected) “monopoly of armed force” and the parliamentary form. A connected issue is that of the existence of an international hierarchy of capitalist states: he points to Sweden as a counter-example to the connection I make between the ability to grant reforms and state status in the global pecking order of states.

The third criticism and the most elaborated in his article is that - like Kautsky - I buy into the parliamentary form. This, he argues, is a form of oligarchy; and the word republic means a Roman-style oligarchy, as opposed to what communists should be fighting for, which is an Athenian-style democracy.

There is a fourth, underlying theoretical issue which affects all these questions. This is about how to understand the historical transitions between different social formations: antiquity to feudalism, feudalism to capitalism, capitalism to communism. In my view humanity’s experience of previous historical transitions should affect our understanding of the last of those listed, the historical transition now in process; and this understanding has implications for present programmatic proposals.

My response will be in two parts. Comrade Cockshott’s first criticism, the “lack of a theory of socialism”, is partially legitimate, but shows a misunderstanding of what the book is basically about. However, one of his points under this head - the question of the class character of the labour and Soviet bureaucracies - is a really important question. To respond to it demands addressing my fourth issue, the general nature of historical transitions between modes of production and social formations; then the question of the petty-proprietor class, and its general implications for proposals for post-capitalist economic order. From this follows the question why I call bureaucrats and managers ‘petty proprietors of intellectual property’, and the implications of this analysis for understanding the Soviet and similar regimes.

At this point it is necessary to return - in the second part - to comrade Cockshott’s second point, the issue of the nature of the capitalist state and the hierarchy of capitalist states. In this context and that of what has gone before it is finally possible to address the issue of present proposals for political order to replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

Theory of socialism

Comrade Cockshott complains that my book is characterised by “a failure to have any positive theory of socialism. This lack of a theory of socialism is first evident in the non-treatment of the history of the USSR and China, and later in a failure to spell out what sort of economy the socialist movement should be fighting for.”

It is quite true that the book has not much to say about the USSR and its satellites and imitators, less about their economic arrangements than their politics, and still less about “what sort of economy the socialist movement should be fighting for”.

However, the reason for this is that I was not attempting in the book to write a general theory of everything. Rather, in the series of articles which formed the basis of the book, I was originally responding to the debate on strategy in the French Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire. This response developed into an attempt to discriminate the minimum elements of Marxist strategy which could form the basis of practical unity of the Marxists: as opposed, on the one hand, to sects formed on the basis of a theory of everything and, on the other, to ‘broad left’ formations which end up as tails of the social-liberals.

I am extremely cautious about creating a schema of “what sort of economy the socialist movement should be fighting for”. There are two reasons for this. The first I argued in an article three years ago on the maximum-minimum form of programme.[2] The point was drawn from a letter of Marx to Sorge in 1880 on the Programme of the Parti Ouvrier, which appears to be the first use of “minimum programme”.

Marx wrote: “With the exception of some trivialities ... the economic section of the very brief document consists solely of demands that have spontaneously arisen out of the labour movement itself”.[3] Why did Marx insist on the ‘economic section’ consisting of “demands that have spontaneously arisen out of the labour movement itself”? The answer is that this approach is counterposed to utopian schemes about the nature of the organisation of the future communist society and about the transition which were then current.

The essence of the ‘Marxist’ policy was that the working class needed to take political power, and for that purpose to struggle for the democratic republic - as opposed to the Proudhonists’ fetishism of cooperatives, the Lassalleans’ state-sponsored cooperatives, and the Bakuninists’ fetishised general strike. Given that the proposal was that the working class take over the running of society, it was the working class itself which had to decide on economic and other policy priorities.

This was the approach of the First International: it was founded on a minimal set of claims about the need of the working class to organise, and the First International itself then discussed what concrete working class policy should be in relation to several areas.

We are obviously not in this situation today: there are mass working class trade unions, parties and so on, but they are controlled by bureaucracies loyal to the capitalist state. Hence Marxists are forced to organise independently of the pro-capitalist labour bureaucracy. So, while we cannot substitute for the decisions of the working class as a whole on how to reshape the economy, we are forced to put forward our own proposals for discussion in the workers’ movement.

Within this framework, however, a second and less fundamental point remains. Today’s splintered, self-identified Marxist left argues for the overthrow of capitalism. It does so in diverse ways, often ones which abandon Marx’s and Engels’ class-political conception in favour of popular frontism. But there are also entirely legitimate differences within the self-identified Marxist left about political economy issues. These affect the immediate economic implications of the overthrow of the capitalist power. My book is - as I said before - about the potential minimum basis of Marxist unity: not about a global alternative on everything.

In relation to the USSR and its satellites and imitators, this same point about the book meant that I drew two, and only two, very basic lessons from their failure. The first lesson is that the proletariat needs to take power on a scale which can defeat a centralised imperialist financial and military blockade. I think that this point - that the proletariat needs to aim to take power on a continental scale, not in a single country which can be blockaded until it is forced to give in - is agreed with comrade Cockshott.

The second lesson is that - contrary to the ideas propagated by Lenin, Trotsky and others in 1918-21 - the proletariat needs political democracy if it is to control a state. I think this point is agreed, too, though we have significant differences on what is meant here by ‘political democracy’.

Beyond this point, in my opinion a wide range of opinions as to the nature of the Soviet regime and its satellites and imitators is consistent with a common party affiliation. For example, I personally think that ‘Cliff state capitalism’ involves false conceptions of both classes and capitalism which are corrosive of the theoretical fundamentals of Marxism. But I would not dream of arguing that holding this theory is inconsistent with membership in a common party.

That said, the question of the bureaucracy is not just a matter of the fate of the USSR and its satellites and imitators. It also concerns the fate of the Second International and of the trade union movement, and is a burning question affecting the left today. The larger question of the class nature of the professional and managerial ‘employed middle class’, and the question of the place of the petty proprietors in general, also has major implications for what we should be fighting for as the immediate successor of capitalist rule.

Social transitions

In another polemic posted on the Reality home page he maintains, comrade Cockshott remarks that his view of historical materialism is influenced by the fact that he is by profession an engineer.[4] I make no criticism at all of this. Rather, I have to admit that my view of historical materialism is also affected by my profession: that is, that I am a ‘lawyer legal historian’. This background means that I am not, as ‘proper historians’ mostly are, a ‘period specialist’. I routinely work with the longue durée (long-term historical phenomena as distinct from the play of short-term events).

This background means that I have never been even slightly tempted by what is now the very common ‘academic Marxist’ view that pre-capitalist social formations of class rule, though very varied in superstructural forms, are all one at the base - ‘tributary’ - and do not develop the forces of production. This view is in reality simply flatly inconsistent with the evidence available both from archaeology and from surviving records of lawsuits, and so on.

The converse is that I also reject the view that capitalism is so different and inherits so little from pre-capitalist development that the phenomena of capitalism can be fully explained by the abstract laws of motion of capital developed in Marx’s critique of political economy. Historical materialism - or at least the Mediterranean-European historical sequence from slaveowner urbanism, through feudalism, to capitalism - is essential to understanding ‘real existing capitalism’.

The pure forms of the abstract dynamics of a society of slaveowners and slaves, or of landowners/clerics and serfs, or of capitalists and workers, are never found in any actual society. They are abstractions from the complexity of real, historical social orders, which are essential to grasping the fundamental dynamics of these social orders, not direct descriptions.

Firstly, what is found in the historical evidence is rising slave-based urbanism mixed with earlier social forms; declining slave-based urbanism mixed with proto-feudalism; risingfeudalism mixed with survivals of slave-based urbanism; declining feudalism mixed with proto-capitalism; risingcapitalism mixed with feudal survivals; and declining capitalism mixed with proto-communism. It is only at its apogee moment that a class regime looks close to its abstract conception; even then, the social order is one dominated by slavery, feudalism, capitalism ... not one purely characterised by these relations.[5]

This is because, secondly, petty family production for immediate consumption is a feature of all societies after hunter-gatherer ‘primitive communism’. In the imperialist countries it is marginalised into the forms of supplementation of market provisioning through housework, vegetable gardens/allotments, and the ability of rural producers to take for consumption a portion of a product mainly intended for market for direct consumption.

Going along with this, gift exchange persists as an element of the organisation of production in class societies, and remains an important social form at the base even in the imperialist countries.[6] And petty family commodity production for sale into localised markets is an important element of all societies having money or proto-money forms. Again, in those imperialist countries that have not artificially preserved small peasants and artisan food producers (eg, Britain, US and the Netherlands, as opposed to France, Italy ...) it is a relatively marginal element.

Petty bourgeoisie

The objective, long-run tendency of capitalism is to marginalise petty family production, and this is a contrast with previous forms of class society. It is this tendency which forms the objective basis for both the possibility of communism and the necessity of communism. Capitalism actually socialises the means of production in its own way: dominance of corporate businesses, etc. It thus tends to render transparent the fact that these are actually common assets, worked by forms of cooperation between large numbers of workers, and the capitalists merely thieving managers pilfering from the collective till. This transparency appears precisely when basic or infrastructural firms are at risk of general bankruptcy - as with the banks in the ‘credit crunch’.

However, this long-term tendency of capitalism is a long way from being completed. This is because of the global scale of the question: still hundreds of millions of Chinese and of Indian peasants, for example. It is also because of counter-tendencies within capitalist dynamics. Luxury and niche markets are occupied by petty bourgeois. And (especially in the countries of the periphery) severe unemployment leads to deproletarianisation, as people abandon hope of finding jobs and scrape a living from gardening, as petty pedlars, from theft, and so on. There is also in every imperialist country substantial state intervention to preserve and promote the middle classes as a political bulwark against the proletariat.

Britain is historically perhaps the country in which capitalist development has gone furthest. Yet there are above 4.5 million small businesses, so that the ‘classic’ petty bourgeoisie and small capitalists together amount to at least 14.5% of the working-age population. This leaves aside altogether for the moment the question of skills as intellectual property rights and the employed middle classes. For reasons of differences of fertility and mortality between classes, the percentage of children and youth of the petty bourgeoisie is lower, and the percentage of petty bourgeois of pensionable age is higher.

In addition, by virtue of the occupational pensions arrangements in this country, both retired ‘classic’ petty-bourgeois and retired members of the employed middle class and the upper (skilled) working class become rentiers living on the proceeds of savings and investments. Hence in terms of social self-identification the percentage of pensioners identifying as small rentiers, as opposed to identifying as retired workers, is considerably higher than the combined percentage of ‘classic’ petty bourgeois and of small rentiers in the working-age population.

This is a minority, but it is a non-trivial minority. And the ‘classic’ petty bourgeoisie and small capitalists together have practical control of significant segments of the means of production which have as yet not been concentrated and thereby ‘socialised’ by capitalist development. Though the businesses in question are largely interstitial, there is considerable potential for economic disruption - ie the reduction of available use-values - if their owners were to take to sabotage, or even merely to abandon them, as a response to being expropriated or subjected to forced collectivisation.

Agriculture is on the edge of this sector. British ‘family farmers’ cannot be characterised as peasants or petty bourgeois, since agriculture is now characteristically operated by family members with very small numbers of permanent workers, but very large amounts of capital in the form of land values, farm buildings and machinery. Only some forms of agriculture - particularly market gardening and fruit-farming - use substantial amounts of casual migrant labour in the harvest period. Again, however, the absence of concentration and the potential for serious economic disruption if a policy of simple expropriation or forced collectivisation were to be adopted is clear.

Once we go beyond Britain to continental Europe, there are in several countries substantial real peasantries and groups of artisan producers, so that the problem is sharper than it is in Britain.

The conclusion from these points is that, assuming the proletariat takes political power in the next 40-50 years, there will still be a substantial period of transition which falls between the complete overthrow of the global capitalist state system and the fully collective appropriation of the means of production (communism). This period of transition is properly the dictatorship of the proletariat, the class rule of the proletariat over the surviving petty bourgeoisie and small capital, in a contradictory economic order in which those means of production which the capitalists have already ‘socialised’ are collectively appropriated, but the participants in this collective appropriation have to trade with substantial groups of petty bourgeois and some small capitalists, who are politically subordinated to the proletarian majority.

The period can also be called for short-hand ‘socialism’, as we do in the CPGB Draft programme, provided it is clear that by ‘socialism’ we mean this transitional period of working class rule over other subsisting classes, and not a separate stage standing between the dictatorship of the proletariat and communism. ‘Dictatorship of the proletariat’ is in my opinion scientifically superior because it expresses the fact that the petty bourgeoisie and small capital continue to exist in this period, but are institutionally subordinated to the proletariat as a class.

Knowledge can be power

The same is true of the employed middle classes - and with sharper immediate political consequences. I characterise this group as a segment of the class of petty proprietors (or, traditionally but less scientifically, petty bourgeois): ‘petty proprietors of intellectual property’. I argue that the state, corporate and labour (trade union, co-op, party and left group) bureaucracies - including the Soviet bureaucracy - are part of this class segment.

In the book I wrote of the USSR: “What happened instead was to render concrete the 1850s warnings of Marx and Engels against the premature seizure of power in Germany, which formed the basis of Kautsky’s caution in the 1890s and 1900s. By choosing to represent the peasantry and other petty proprietors (especially state bureaucrats), the workers’ party disabled itself from representing the working class, but instead became a sort of collective Bonaparte.”

Comrade Cockshott responds: “... so long as petty peasant production existed, it created wings within the CPs which defended its interest: Bukharin, Gomulka, Deng. But these were just one wing, and in most cases they did not come out on top.” And: “The crisis of the socialist system, Poland aside, was not generally precipitated by the demands of petty proprietors in agriculture, and the identification of state bureaucrats with petty proprietors is an unconvincing throwaway phrase, not justified by any argument.”

I did not write about this issue at length in the book for the reasons given above. But I have written about it elsewhere: in a review of some books on intellectual property rights in 2003, as a small point in a reply to John Robinson’s critique of the Strategy book in 2008, and most particularly in a review of David Priestland’s Stalinism and the politics of mobilisation, also in 2008, which formed part of a three-part reply to comrade Tony Clark’s defence of Stalinism.[7] Part of the last is worth repeating; but I would also refer readers to the whole series.

A substantial class of information and skills are part of the means of production. Going back to the stone age, knowing how knap flint gives you variety of tools once you can find a flint. Conversely, if someone gave me a capstan lathe, it would be - to me - a heap of junk, not a means of production, until I learned how to work it. Some ‘managerial’ skills, of coordinating the work of others, fall into this category: for example, in a car factory, if nobody works out how many screws need to be ordered from the supplier, the factory will run out of screws and cease production.

Capitalism tends to socialise information and skills - through general education, through publishing, through replacement of skills by machines and so on. But to the extent that information and skills are not socialised they are private property.

Large property in information takes the form of technical monopolies which receive technical rents (usually patents and other intellectual property rights; but there are also unpatented ‘trade secrets’ in many machines, which require ‘reverse engineering’ by skilled engineers to allow duplication of the machine). The tsarist empire specialised in exporting raw materials, mainly grain, in the hope of gaining access to Dutch and British, and later French, intellectual property in various forms. The USSR had to break its back exporting in 1928-31 in order to gain access to US intellectual property in the form of machines.[8]

Under capitalism, small private property in skills or information can in some cases be used to run a small business (like plumbers, dentists or practising lawyers). Similarly, a family farm (or peasant holding) does not just consist of land. It also involves movable capital (animals, etc) and a very wide range of skills. Adam Smith made the point that the farmer or farmworker needs more skills than the urban specialist artisan.[9]

In other cases, the collective monopoly of the skill held by a group of people allows them in wage bargaining to insist on some sort of premium over the wage. This premium can be in money; or it can be in better working conditions (white-collar workers), in partial freedom from managerial control, or in managerial control over others.

The classical petty bourgeois “self-exploit”: that is, they and their family members often work longer hours for less reward than employed workers. They do so partly in the hope of making the breakthrough to getting rich - for most as illusory as buying lottery tickets. But also, and perhaps mainly, they prefer the (limited) control which “running their own business” gives them to the subordination of working for wages. This includes control over family members who help in the business - hence petty bourgeois patriarchalism; it also involves the exclusion of others from decision-making.

The employed middle class share the classical petty bourgeois aspiration to ‘make it big’, in this case the hope of climbing the career pyramid to one of the few places at the top. They also share the preference for control over subordination. In their case, however, control is immediately exercised over others - their subordinates. And what others are to be excluded from is access to information and decision-making. Bureaucrats and managers defend their ‘turf’ against all-comers. Marx commented on the point in the Critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right.[10] The US government has found it expressed in the ‘war on terror’ in ‘turf wars’ between intelligence agencies.[11]

The proletariat as a class can only defend its interests by collective organisation. If bureaucracy and management are not to be instantly abolished - ie, everyone to take their turn for a month or two as chief of general staff, national statistician and so on - the proletariat needs to subordinate the employed middle class to itself. To do so it requires freedom to organise against the officials, ‘cadres’, and so on.

Under capitalism, ownership/possession of information and skills is subordinate to ownership/possession of money liquidity. (This is, in fact, also true of ownership/possession both of land and of ships, machinery and so on).

If we take away the capitalist market when there has not already been extensive socialisation of intellectual property (and other small production), we take away with it the dynamic which tends to socialise intellectual property rights, etc. The possessors of small property then confront the rest of the society as monopolists. Unless they are coerced, they will refuse to work until they get what they want - whether it is money, working conditions or being in charge.

Russian Revolution

This is part of what happened to the Russian Revolution. The Russian revolutionaries thought in October 1917 that they were starting the European revolution. When the German workers had not come to their aid by February-March 1918, they were in a situation like cartoon characters who have walked off a cliff and suddenly notice that nothing is holding them up: the economy was collapsing because the possessors of specialist information - whether they were civil servants and army officers, technicians, managers or peasant farmers - were withholding their services from the general economy. To meet this problem the Bolsheviks used coercion (Cheka, hostage-taking and so on). But they also had to provide a carrot: and this carrot was concessions to the spetsy, which meant the end of workers’ control and a return to the subordination of the working class to the managers.

They had also sucked most of the members of the Bolshevik Party into the new state apparatus. As of October 1917 the party had around 250,000 members, mostly workers. As of 1921 it had a slightly larger membership, but now two-thirds composed of state officials.[12] The ‘cadres’ had become a new section of the intelligentsia - petty private proprietors of information and skills.

Over 1918-21 the freedom of the working class to organise against the ‘cadres’ was taken away by successive bans on parties and then the ban on factions in the Communist Party. As long as formally illegal organising was still possible, the removal of power from the proletariat was not complete. Once the bans were actually carried into practical operation from the later 1920s and enforced by the new economic regime of the plans, nothing was possible but ‘court intrigue’ within the bureaucracy. Subsequent satellites and imitators of the Soviet regime copied this political order.

Of course - as comrade Cockshott says, citing J Arch Getty - sections of workers could mobilise behind one or another court clique and obtain at least temporary sectional gains by doing so. The same was true in the Chinese ‘cultural revolution’.[13] But that is no more workers’ political power than the similar ability of medieval peasants to play off parson against squire and so on was peasant political power.

Modern Europe

In modern Europe the level of capitalist socialisation of production is massively higher than in the early 20th century, and still more so than in Russia in 1917. The same is also true of the socialisation of information and skills. Literacy and some degree of formal education are pretty much general. Skills are made available through formal education and training more than by apprenticeship. Much is codified in books or available online.

Even so, however, we are not yet in a position - if capitalist rule was by a miracle overthrown tomorrow - to do without bureaucratic and managerial spetsy altogether: that is, for everyone to take their turn for a month or two as chief of general staff, national statistician and so on.

More immediately, there are many more people who are perfectly capable of doing managerial and bureaucratic jobs, of holding political leadership positions and so on than there are jobs for them to do. In the far left, the result is that people are less willing to defer for long periods to bureaucratic dictatorship. But the result is paradoxically negative: the endless splintering of the left groups and the cacophony of ‘independent’ voices. As long as we do not find ways to overcome this problem we will not even approach the ability to overthrow capitalism.

In sum. Suppose the working class takes power in Europe in the next period. The result will not be an immediate overcoming of class. It will be a contradictory regime. Though big capital will be collectivised, there will remain class conflict between the proletariat and what are now the middle classes: both the ‘classic’ petty bourgeoisie and small capital, and employed middle class. The political forms we fight for as the immediate alternative to capitalist rule have to be able to reflect that continuing class conflict and to allow the proletariat to organise for it - including against ‘its own’ state.

Notes


P Cockshott, ‘Democracy or oligarchy?’ Weekly Worker October 8 2009. A slightly variant version is also available at reality.gn.apc.org/polemic/notesonmcnair.pdf
‘For a minimum programme!’ Weekly Worker August 30 2007.
Marx to Sorge, November 5 1880: marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/letters/80_11_05.htm
‘Historical materialism and the repudiation of subjectivism’: reality.gn.apc.org/polemic/op-phil.htm
The appropriate Marxist method for approaching class orders is thus that of GEM de Ste Croix The class struggle in the ancient Greek world New York 1991.
M Mauss The gift (1923-24) London 2001; M Sahlins Stone age economics Chicago 1972; RM Titmuss The gift relationship New York 1972; F Adloff, S Mau, ‘Giving social ties, reciprocity in modern society’ (2006) 68 European Journal of Sociology 93-123. I do not mean to endorse the general theoretical method of any of these texts, but only to rely on the point of the existence and persistence of gift exchange.
‘A bridge too far’ Weekly Worker December 18 2003; ‘Against philosopher kings’, December 11 2008; ‘Bureaucracy and terror’, September 11 2008 - to be read with ‘Taking Stalinism seriously’, September 4 2008, and ‘Stalinist illusions exposed’, September 18 2008.
See B Kagarlitsky Empire of the periphery London 2008.
A Smith Wealth of nations book 1, chapter 10, part 2: adamsmith.org/smith/won-b1-c10-pt-2.htm
K Marx Critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right Cambridge 1970, pp41-54.
For example, ‘Obama sacks intelligence chief after turf wars’ Financial Times May 21 2010.
E Acton Rethinking the Russian Revolution London 1990, pp193-94, 207.
D Priestland Stalinism and the politics of mobilisation Oxford 2007 (pp200-210) goes beyond Getty; cf also EJ Perry, Li Xun Proletarian power: Shanghai in the Cultural Revolution Boulder 1997.

[ComradeOm]

Medieval jacqueries failed because they could not look past the narrow horizons of the village or the reality of their existence. They were not struggling to create some future utopia only to be thwarted by an absence of technology or other 'material conditions'. They lacked anything approaching a coherent class conciousness needed to transform society

Today's proletariat (or that of a century ago for that matter) is not in the same situation. The past century and a half has seen the emergence of real mass movements that have carried explicit calls for the establishment of a socialist society. These movements would not have emerged, could not have emerged, if the circumstances were not ripe to do so. Or as Marx put it, rather more elegantly than myself, "Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation"

The presence of a mass socialist movement is therefore an indication in itself that the material conditions are in place (or forming) for the creation of a socialist society. The revolutions of the past century, or some of them at least, were expressions of this determination. That they failed is not due to the failure of some technological prerequisite (or other deterministic factor) to simply slot into place*; but rather an imbalance of class forces that quashed each revolt at birth or shortly afterwards

*If it was then we all might as well give up now

[Kiev Communard]

Medieval jacqueries failed because they could not look past the narrow horizons of the village or the reality of their existence. They were not struggling to create some future utopia only to be thwarted by an absence of technology or other 'material conditions'. They lacked anything approaching a coherent class conciousness needed to transform society

Today's proletariat (or that of a century ago for that matter) is not in the same situation. The past century and a half has seen the emergence of real mass movements that have carried explicit calls for the establishment of a socialist society. These movements would not have emerged, could not have emerged, if the circumstances were not ripe to do so. Or as Marx put it, rather more elegantly than myself, "Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation"

The presence of a mass socialist movement is therefore an indication in itself that the material conditions are in place (or forming) for the creation of a socialist society. The revolutions of the past century, or some of them at least, were expressions of this determination. That they failed is not due to the failure of some technological prerequisite (or other deterministic factor) to simply slot into place*; but rather an imbalance of class forces that quashed each revolt at birth or shortly afterwards

*If it was then we all might as well give up now

Or we might try not to focus on the development of old-style heavy industry after the next revolution, focussing instead on the areas I have mentioned in the OP, effectively creating the new technological base for the new society. Something tells me that such a heterodox approach would succeed where the past ones failed.

And no, you are wrong on the peasants' movements "that could not look past the narrow horizons of the village or the reality of their existence". See actions of Thomas Muenzer during the Great Peasants' War of 1524-1526, Taiping Tiangguo and its degeneration during the 19th century peasants' war in China, the Qarmatians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qarmatians) and their movement's degeneration into slave-owning society, etc. Even Stepan Razin in Russia, despite his Tsarist illusions, led the movement that called for "Cossack freedom for every peasant". All these movements - and many similar ones - clearly set the "utopian" goals that were "past... the reality of their existence" but every time when they were not slaughtered by the rulers' armies, they inevitably degenerated into the new set of landowners' states after their victory - just as happened to the absolute majority of the 20th century Communist-led revolutions - and for precisely the same reason.

And you are wrong either on the assumption that peasants "lacked anything resembling coherent class consciousness" - in fact, the contrary is true, as due to the system of official class segregation (the Estates systems of Medieval Europe or Indian caste system are the most vivid examples of it) they tended to be more conscious of their inequal position in the society and more likely to revolt against the system of class oppression than the majority of the workers in modern Imperialist countries are now - to whom your criticism of "lacking anything approaching a coherent class conciousness needed to transform society" could be attached as well (but only by some Third Worldists whose obsession with "non-Western is revolutionary" is hardly rational).

[Dean]

This is true to an extent, but I would focus much more on the expansionist character of capital and its rejection - and therefore devaluation - of more equitable organizational structures:


Frame it a different way: more equitable redistribution of wealth in specific localities will have the effect of capital flight and decreased confidence by nature of the fact that it reduces the profits for the capitalist class. So, in effect, 'sound fiscal policy' will always be represented by those policies which create a favorable atmosphere for capital and financial accumulation.

More equitable distributions will always weaken the local economy since it lowers the capability for profits on finance and capital.

Add to that the effect of finance capital which devalues production...

[Dimentio]

The real reason for their failures is really multiple reasons, most of them boiling down to that A) nobody know exactly how a post-capitalist system would work, B) most of these revolutions happened in regions which were underdeveloped, developing or devastated by total war, C) the revolutionary parties in power never instituted a transparent system with checks and balances, leading to either autocracies or oligarchies being established and D) pressure from the surrounding world. I think C) was the most crucial reason. Constitutionalism is essential in safe-guarding a modern society.

[Kiev Communard]

This is true to an extent, but I would focus much more on the expansionist character of capital and its rejection - and therefore devaluation - of more equitable organizational structures:



Add to that the effect of finance capital which devalues production...

Yes, but the real question is: how to negate the power of capital as a social relations? In my opinion, if the technological and organizational breakthrough, especially in nanotechnology field, is to be achieved after the revolution, then the revolutionary state (commune) will be perfectly shielded against these effects, because, as even such apolitical scientist as Eric Drexler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Drexler) argued,




Capital. Assembler-based systems, if properly programmed, will themselves be productive capital. Together with larger robotic machines, they will be able to build virtually anything, including copies of themselves. Since this self-replicating capital will be able to double many times per day, only demand and available resources will limit its quantity. Capital as such need cost virtually nothing.

http://e-drexler.com/d/06/00/EOC/EOC_Chapter_6.html#section03of04

And that, notwithstanding Drexler's own mildly Keynesian views, would mean that capital and profit as economic categories would become pretty as much obsolete as the need for collective hunt after the agriculture invention.

[ComradeOm]

Or we might try not to focus on the development of old-style heavy industry after the next revolution, focussing instead on the areas I have mentioned in the OP, effectively creating the new technological base for the new society. Something tells me that such a heterodox approach would succeed where the past ones failedWhich is simply gross economic/technological determinism. Neither the German or Russian Revolutions failed because the revolutionaries lacked access to the internet. The social base of a socialist society does not hinge on inventing a completely new technological form of production that would suddenly render capitalism obsolete, but on the reorganisation and enhancement of society's productive forces

The steam engine played a role in the emergence of capitalism in that it permitted the creation of the proletariat and thus the expansion of the capitalist class on whom its profits depend. No such development is required for the development of socialist society, based as it is on the rule of the producers rather than the exploiters


And you are wrong either on the assumption that peasants "lacked anything resembling coherent class consciousness" - in fact, the contrary is true, as due to the system of official class segregation (the Estates systems of Medieval Europe or Indian caste system are the most vivid examples of it)...The Estates/castes/whatever were categories employed by the ruling class. They certainly did not emerge organically from the peasantry and nor did the latter

Indeed prior to the 20th C almost all European peasant jacqueries (from, say, 1381 to 1905) were framed as pleas to benevolent rulers to cast aside their corrupt advisers and fulfil their feudal obligations to the peasants. Naturally the purpose of this was not to create a new society but was rather, in the words of Connolly, "a morbid idealisation of the status of their fathers... [and to] reconstruct the past". Even the most extreme of the peasant revolts, which were characterised by religious dissent, drew heavily on the language and imagery of the Church in lieu of any sort of plan for post-revolution society. Or indeed the very concept of revolution. Peasant movements typically sought to recreate some mythical past or a religious heaven on earth; not transcend feudal economic relations in any real sense

[Zanthorus]

I think Marx had it right on this issue:


If the Russian admirers of the capitalist system denied the theoretical possibility of such a development [skipping over the capitalist phase of development to socialism], I would ask them this question: In order to utilise machines, steam engines, railways, etc., was Russia forced, like the West, to pass through a long incubation period in the engineering industry? Let them explain to me, too, how they managed to introduce in their own country, in the twinkling of an eye, the entire mechanism of exchange (banks, credit institutions, etc.), which it took the West centuries to devise?http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm

Which makes the key issue the importing of productive forces from outside, which would have been possible in the event of a socialist revolution in western europe.

[Dimentio]

I think Marx had it right on this issue:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm

Which makes the key issue the importing of productive forces from outside, which would have been possible in the event of a socialist revolution in western europe.

Reminds me of an idiot who wanted to begin building up the future post-capitalist society by beginning with reinventing fire and the wheel (seriously) just so we could start for real XD

[Kiev Communard]

Which is simply gross economic/technological determinism. Neither the German or Russian Revolutions failed because the revolutionaries lacked access to the internet. The social base of a socialist society does not hinge on inventing a completely new technological form of production that would suddenly render capitalism obsolete, but on the reorganisation and enhancement of society's productive forces

The steam engine played a role in the emergence of capitalism in that it permitted the creation of the proletariat and thus the expansion of the capitalist class on whom its profits depend. No such development is required for the development of socialist society, based as it is on the rule of the producers rather than the exploiters

The Estates/castes/whatever were categories employed by the ruling class. They certainly did not emerge organically from the peasantry and nor did the latter

Indeed prior to the 20th C almost all European peasant jacqueries (from, say, 1381 to 1905) were framed as pleas to benevolent rulers to cast aside their corrupt advisers and fulfil their feudal obligations to the peasants. Naturally the purpose of this was not to create a new society but was rather, in the words of Connolly, "a morbid idealisation of the status of their fathers... [and to] reconstruct the past". Even the most extreme of the peasant revolts, which were characterised by religious dissent, drew heavily on the language and imagery of the Church in lieu of any sort of plan for post-revolution society. Or indeed the very concept of revolution. Peasant movements typically sought to recreate some mythical past or a religious heaven on earth; not transcend feudal economic relations in any real sense

But was the capitalism as we know it possible without the creation of machine production? Without the Industrial Revolution capitalism would remain just one of the components of the Absolutist simple commodity production dominated by agriculture, and would hardly achieve the economic integration of the world economy within its boundaries.

As to "reorganization and enhancement", you fail to see that I essentally propose this very thing, but I try to see beyond the sorry tendency on the Left to look disdainfully on many modern scientific promising areas (such as nanotechnology) that leads to these leftists conceiving socialism as something inherently similar to the industrial capitalist model of late 19th - first half of 20th century, but run by the workers. Such issues as abolition of the classes and the division of labour which are crucial are hardly even discussed seriously within such approach. And, most frankly, why do you think that revolutionaries should not try to overcome the industrial production via automation and molecular engineering, just as the capitalism rendered handicraft production obsolete via industrialization? Such technological advances as I have mentioned are more and more close to their mature implementation in the production processes and it would be extremely stupid if the capitalists would master them, monopolising them and entrenching themselves even deeper, while the revolutionaries would say dogmatically: "No, this is all deterministic crap, we don't need new technologies for our victory, the old industrial production is good enough, let's just reorganise it". That's what I am trying to say.

[Kiev Communard]

Some more thoughts on these matters in the essay I have found on the Web. Although I do not agree with many of its author's positions (especially on "the State retention" and "following the will of the majority even if anti-Socialist"), I think it would be interesting to read through it.




In the essay below I will attempt to outline, in a very rough and unpolished form, my conception of a new political philosophy: transhumanist socialism.

This philosophy can be distinguished from all other presently-existing forms of socialism in two key respects:

While it concurs with the communists that advanced industrial capitalism is creating the conditions which are ripe for its own destruction, it asserts that advanced molecular nanotechnology will be a giant step forward in creating conditions ripe for socialism to take root.
It argues for a critical appraisal - not a dismissal - of the potential for "transhumanist" science and technologies to enhance the human condition - and in particular to enhance levels of compassion, solidarity and social cohesion.


The Long-Term Socioeconomic Effects of Advanced Molecular Nanotechnology

While it is difficult to predict the long-term effects of MNT (molecular nanotechnology) this early in the game, three plausible key considerations can still be identified at this early stage:

1. Just as today, any common general-purpose computer can in principle be used to create a destructive computer virus or worm, in the future, general-purpose nanotech assemblers will be capable in principle of creating highly destructive nanoweapons. The possibility of a mentally-disturbed individual using an assembler to create a weapon and killing large numbers of people will necessitate very high physical and information security requirements for general-purpose assemblers. They will not be, and should not be, freely available to members of the general public (for the same reasons that nuclear weapons should not be freely available). However, this should not prevent sufficiently-secured "pre-programmed" assemblers, which would only manufacture a finite range of "relatively safe" artifacts, from being made available to the general public and to organisations and businesses. The programming of these special-purpose devices will also have to be very highly regulated and secured, at some level, for the very same reasons.

2. Worldwide voluntary relinquishment of nanotechnology, at any level, is not a realistic possibility in our present capitalist-oriented world system. The military (and industrial) competitive advantages will simply be too great to ignore.

3. Just as today the large US music corporations (represented by the RIAA) perceive (perhaps correctly) Internet file-sharing as a threat to their business model, in the future all kinds of large suppliers of physical goods (including perhaps food, drinks, drugs, fossil fuels, electronic devices, etc.) will see in MNT a threat to theirs.

MNT could both massively reduce energy requirements for the meeting of basic human needs, and massively increase decentralised and/or renewable energy production, by making extremely cheap solar panels available in large volumes.

Ironically, the established fossil fuel industries may be torn between supporting MNT to reduce their operating costs, and shooting themselves in the foot by supporting the development of a technology which will slash demand for their own products! Their best bet for survival might turn out to be giving in to progress and reinventing themselves and what they do - and thus moving away from fossil fuels as a source of revenue. This can only be good news in terms of reducing C02 emmissions, and emissions of other pollutants generated from burning fossil fuels.

On the more speculative end, MNT assemblers could even one day be used to mass-produce food and drink - not by growing plants or raising animals, but simply by assembling the end-product molecule by molecule, with a far more efficient "production process". In effect, it would be mass-replication of original food items, which would be specially selected for tastiness. This would have a number of fantastic potential benefits:

1) Given that this type of nanotech food would be far cheaper than the old-fashioned, "slow-grow" stuff, and yet still taste just the same as the original specimen, demand for slow-grow food would decline. This would save untold numbers of animals from the barbaric cruelty of factory farming and modern production-line slaughterhouses, and it would make the moral arguments for a "cruelty-minimised lifestyle" (a spot presently occupied by veganism) even harder to cogently rebut. One could no longer even reply "But real meat tastes better than 'no-cruelty' meat" - since they could be made to taste just the same!

2) By the same token, the environment (and thus human health) would benefit, due to a long-term reduction in meat-based agriculture which causes such havoc in terms of water pollution, deforestation and global warming (to name just three effects).

3) Initial food specimens could be selected and engineered to minimise health risks, improving life expectancies by reducing the risks inherent in a meat-based diet.

4) New food types could be created and devised to improve human health by taking a "prevention comes first, cure second" approach.

5) Finally - and in one sense most significantly for the development of socialism - MNT-based, decentralised production of basic human needs such as food and drink holds out the potential for the abolition of wage-slavery, and the freeing of the people from the dual tyranny of multinational corporations and their client states! Clearly, the multinationals will bitterly oppose this outcome - indeed the foregoing is a considerable understatement - but their hands will be tied to some extent by the fact that MNT will be so essential to remaining competitive by cutting production costs.

On the labor side of the equation, MNT could also lead to an enormous loss of jobs worldwide. However, as with all unemployment, this is not a necessary eventuality, but rather a product of a brutal system which organises production around profit rather than human need.

(Note, however, that these predictions are based on the assumption that MNT lives up to the promises of its most optimistic scientific proponents, such as K. Eric Drexler.)


Wage-Slavery and the Socialist Alternative

The problem of work, and of wage-slavery in particular, must be seen as an absolutely central challenge of our time, both because of the inherent wickedness of wage-slavery and because of the evil capitalism system it props up. Millions of people around the world today work for a living, not at a job (or jobs) which they love and enjoy and gives them value in life, but in a job (or jobs) which bores them or stresses them out or eats them up and spits them out - simply because they have to - or feel they have to. A few people are lucky enough to have high job satisfaction, but many are not. More than this, though: contemporary capitalism condemns millions of people - who, even though they may be not enormously discontented with their jobs, are prevented from exploring their full potential as a human being - to a life lacking in freedom, opportunity, and social inclusion.

Another world is possible. Another world is necessary!

A world in which work is shared between one person and another, and between person and machine, such that no person is stuck with doing all unpleasant work, all the time. That which no-one wants to do should be automated, as far as it is feasible and safe to do so. That work which remains which is unpleasant, or unfulfilling, or unregarded, should be given to those who honestly and freely volunteer to do it full-time, and/or shared out between people as far as is sensible, in order that everyone may have time to fairly participate in work/leisure which is pleasant, fulfilling, or well-regarded.

In a socialist society such as this, the society would ensure that no person's basic material needs went unmet - food, drink, housing, heating would be provided for free where necessary. Rates of pay would be collectively set, according to, primarily, the approximate social value of the work, and secondarily, the approximate amount of effort put in. (This would be hard to gauge in some cases, but for example, present-day schoolteachers would almost all be given a high rate of pay due to both factors).

Corporations would have their material assets un-confiscated - i.e. returned to public ownership. There would be legal caps on both personal wealth and income to prevent dangerous inequalities of wealth (and therefore power) re-emerging. It would be illegal to hoard means of production to the detriment of society, or to hoard basic needs like food when others were in dire need of it.

This balance between pay differentials to provide incentives (in some sectors, such as maybe teaching, pay differentials would not usually be used between the same type of workers, but only between them and other types of workers) and democratic controls on wealth and power, satisfies the core values of socialism (loosely-defined) without leading to stagnation. Both socialists and their opponents must recognise that both extrinsic rewards (e.g. money) and intrinsic rewards (e.g. job satisfaction) have their place in motivating people, and neither one should be ignored to the detriment of the other.

MNT as a Facilitator of the Socialist Revolution

There will be a Nanotechnology Revolution matching or exceeding the scale and impact of the Industrial Revolution. But MNT could also bring the world tantalisingly closer to a political revolution - a socialist revolution. This is because, as mentioned above, MNT offers the possibility of ultra-cheap, convenient, and decentralised production and replication of many types of goods. Once we have this, we won't need the corporate multinationals any more. We won't need to be wage-slaves. And with large corporations fought back and withering away, the stage will be set for the fight to take back democracy and return it to the people.

Intellectual property would still be an obstacle to decentralisation and democratisation, and would become an increasingly important weapon in the multinational's arsenal. But in the nanotech future - even more so than now in the time of Napster and the like - the public should start to see the speciousness of intellectual property:

1. There should be no "intellectual property" (whether copyrights, patents or trademarks) taken out on "blueprints" of living things - whether we are talking about DNA or about digital representations of the physical structure of a thing for the purposes of replicating it via nanotechnology.
2. "Intellectual property" and other anti-competitive laws should not be used - as it has already been used with "anti-HIV" drugs - to deny basic needs - food, healthcare, shelter etc. - to people in need. In particular, neither IP nor new anti-competitive measures should be used to deny non-profits the opportunity to produce "open source blueprints" for MNT assemblers, which is what otherwise would happen.

Moreoever, nanotechnology offers us an even more mind-blowing and revolutionary vision. If a large number of manufactured goods become almost "too cheap to charge for", two things will happen (at least in a quasi-capitalist world such as ours). (1) Massive economic dislocation. (2) To a quite fine level of approximation, only services and real estate - and a few physical exceptions like perhaps uranium - will end up having any "inherent cost" (that is, with the costs of "intellectual property royalties" and other needless corporate baggage stripped out).

(2) implies that wealth will become valuable only in virtue of its inherent value to its possessor (if any), and its exchange value in terms of exchanging it for services (and land). There will be no longer much point in exploiting poor countries by forcing them to grow cash crops to pay off huge debts.

There will no longer be much point, in fact, in monopolising the ownership of almost any physical goods. They'll be so cheap to produce that scarcity will become a non-issue! Capitalists could still try to hoard massive quantities of wealth to obtain more and better services (including custom-designed products), but massive quantities of wealth simply wouldn't be needed where mass-produced goods were concerned.

The programming of highly-general nanotech assemblers would still have to be tightly controlled to prevent terrorism and mass murder, but this in itself does not necessitate or even motivate the retention of the present-day quasi-capitalist system. It does, however, probably necessitate the retention of some form of State - but a truly democratic State that serves the people would not be a bad thing.

Democracy, Pluralism and "Counter-Revolutionary Forces"(the most problematic part of the article, in my view - Kiev Communard)

True socialism has pervasive democracy at its core - which means democracy not only in a highly-devolved government, but also in workplaces and educational institutions, for example. That is why even Cuba, despite its many good points, is not truly socialist, because of course it is run by a dictatorship. Still less so was the Soviet Union, or Maoist China, or any of the other undemocratic regimes (such as Saddam Hussein's brutal regime) that have called themselves "socialist" at one time or another.

However, a fully-democratic socialist society opens up the possibility of the people voting against socialism and for a reactionary regime. If this happens, the will of the majority must be honored, and those who still wanted socialism would have to either begin advocating again for a return to socialism, or secede as a separate socialist state if a certain region wanted to remain socialist, or move to a separate socialist state elsewhere, if any. The possibility of socialism leading to its own demise cannot be ruled out by dismissal or by fiat, but it can be thought highly unlikely given the way in which socialism democratises wealth and opportunity.

A full-blown commitment to democracy cannot have any exceptions where we arbitrarily decide that "we know better than the majority of the people and therefore we take precedence" - or rather, we can believe that we know better, but we cannot unilaterally impose this belief on the majority. That way lies tyranny and repression - and other less blunt anti-social political tendencies.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/10/27/134818/22

As I have mentioned earlier, I disagree with the author on many issues, but I agree with him on this one: the MNT would at least facilitate the more speedier, smoother transition to the new revolutionary forms of social life than was ever possible under old industrial model of production that necessarily implies bureaucratic management.

[Paul Cockshott]

he overestimates some impacts of MNT. MNT ALREADY EXTENSIVELY used, we just call it agriculture. Need for physical transport and laws of themodynamics not abolished.

[hammer&sickle]

[QUOTE=ComradeOm;1861672]. The social base of a socialist society does not hinge on inventing a completely new technological form of production that would suddenly render capitalism obsolete, but on the reorganisation and enhancement of society's productive forces

The ECONOMIC base of a socialist society is emerging from the new production technologies. We have a situation developing where you have production without human labor..this production will soon be the predominant mode of production as more and more industries automate. However this situation presents the capitalists with a conundrum..production without wages demands distribution without money. If you can't distribute the necessities of life with money on what basis can they be distributed? They must be distributed on the basis of need.

In addition, these labor REPLACING technologies are creating a new class. this new class of permanently unemployed cannot survive by reforming capitalism. Once the marriage of the state and corporations is fully consumated this new class must confront that very same state. This sets the stage for revolution

[Kiev Communard]

he overestimates some impacts of MNT. MNT ALREADY EXTENSIVELY used, we just call it agriculture. Need for physical transport and laws of themodynamics not abolished.

I meant the use of MNT in production of industrial goods.

[Kiev Communard]

One more article that touches upon the possible application of the MNT in overcoming market model of distribution:




One of the first definitions of Economics I came across in my life was “the study of scarce resources and unlimited wants.” That is, how choices are made with regards to which of the unlimited wants are to be met and not, or in other words, how resources are allocated. Here, markets come in as one of many possible mechanisms for making such choices socially.

In the context of Technology Governance, another way of understanding economics appears. That is, in recognizing that in the presence of innovation and changing technology, economic systems are not static, the extent to which resources are scarce depends on our ability to produce. As such, economics in this context can be better described as the study of how humans mitigate scarcity of resources by means of technology. Here, the core questions do not so much relate to allocation of scarce resources but to our changing capacity to make available those resources.

However, technology does not only change which resources or goods are available in which quantities, they also strongly influence the market (or other) mechanisms by which they get distributed. The unfolding of the current ICT paradigm has provided us with ample examples of this. For one thing, it has become increasingly difficult to monetize web-based content, such as online news, etc. And – to the great dismay of many former entertainment industry giants, more and more previously offline content is moving online. Here, music was an early mover as the MP3 music format emerged. Moving on, as bandwidths have increased dramatically, movies and TV series have proliferated dramatically on online file-sharing networks and live-streaming websites. Additionally, the book printing industry is also being hit as .pdf versions of printed works become available freely online. In spite of iTunes, Kindle, and other valiant attempts at keeping market power in the same hands as in the last paradigm, the free online sharing of content appears unstoppable. In particular, this is the case because consumers appear less and less willing to pay for online content at all. Demographics tend towards making this feature of development even more important, as young people are the least willing of all to pay for content. The important point here is that we are seeing a total change in the workings of some large markets, not because the modes and means of production have changed (even though they have), but because the means of distribution have changed.

In parallel to the de-monetizing of some industries, the unfolding of the ICT paradigm has also brought with it a plethora of non-market production of intellectual content. This includes the vast open-source encyclopedia project Wikipedia (along with a host of other wiki’s), the renowned (and supposedly super-stable) open-source operating system Linux, a vast “blogosphere” of (amateur or professional) journalists and analysts publishing for free, open-source resources for warfare primarily produced and made use of by loose networks of guerillas and/or terrorists, as well as a huge number of other open-source software for basically any use in direct competition with a range of monetized products (Mozilla Firefox and Open Office are examples of this).

In explaining both of these developments, the central feature of ICT as enabling copying and movement of information at incredibly low cost is critical. Instead of distributing music on CD’s, which are very cheap but require physical transportation and handling – making it conducive to being distributed through monetized transactions (in for example shops) – online file sharing is as if it were invisible, and can move through space across rivers, forest, mountains, and oceans without ever changing hands. As such, the nebulousness of its physicality makes its distribution almost impossible to monetize.

The open-source movement shares ease of copying and dissemination as the basis for its existence. People have been writing letters to the editor or participating in town-hall meetings for a long time without expecting any payment. People have also shared their knowledge on motorcycle repair or botany with their friends and neighbors long before the internet came around. Offline “open-source” design and development on a small scale has also taken place on a day-to-day basis, in local communities and to some extent within organizations. The vast proliferation of online versions of these same activities makes a lot of sense, precisely because the process of sharing is so cheap and easy. Again, the production itself is arguably not the primary driver of the development, but rather the changing mechanisms of distribution.

With this in mind, the emergence of nanotechnology begs the question of whether a very similar market breakdown may occur on a much more vast scale, as one of the core features of the technology in question is that “copying” of physical things; machines, buildings, clothes – even food – is one of the core features offered by the new field. In a primitive, Solowian sense, this will show up as tremendously increased productivity. And of course, an important feature of nanotechnology will be just that – tremendously increased productivity. However, to the extent that nanotechnology makes possible extremely small machines with the ability to self-replicate and manipulate matter down to a sub-atomic level, we may expect – if not in the first generation – that infinite-purpose nano-robots may easily become available to consumers at large. At this point, the market-devastating possibility of nonphysical distribution of every kind of physical good becomes possible. What if one can download an open-source car design and have nano-robots build such a car in your garage overnight? Would there be a market for cars left? Would there be markets for anything left?

Not only markets for replicable physical goods could possibly be obliterated by advanced nanotech. Service industries too, would be profoundly affected. It would be no matter serving you automatically in a restaurant with (literally) flying saucers. Not to mention fixing your car. But even in highly advanced services such as medicine could humans be largely replaced by advanced nanotech. Who needs a doctor when one is being kept in tip-top shape by an army of tiny nano-robots?

An unlikely model for a post-nano economy can perhaps be found in the work of William Morris, the British anti-technological socialist. In his main literary work, News from Nowhere, he describes a socialist economy based on arts, crafts, and voluntarism. Notably, there is no money, and not even barter in a strict sense. Rather, everyone works for the sake of working – working with something worth working on, that is – not mind-numbing and exploitative industrial work which produces garbage-like goods totally removed from any sense of eigentlichkeit. In the Morris economy, the carpenter builds houses – beautiful houses – because he takes pride in his work and derives pleasure from seeing the results of it, the farmer grows high quality vegetables for the same reason, and the baker bakes wonderful artisan bread because he wants to.

Now, one might ask why not then, if it is free, the first few people to arrive at the bakery in the morning would not take with them 20 loaves of bread each, such that the last ones would be left wanting. Morris’ striking answer is “why would they?”; after all nobody would be hungry enough for it to make any sense. Such notions, Morris argues, are but a result of the absurd ideas propagated by a sick industrial society, where one produces nothing but garbage and everyone is poor because of it. In the Morris-economy, competition would not be about who can make things “a little worse and sell a little cheaper”, as in an industrial setting, but rather centered on artisanal pride and good workmanship.

There are some striking problems with the Morris model. A modern economist would immediately point out that with no prices affecting production choices, the Morris economy would be frightfully inefficient. That is, one would tend to see (potentially huge) overproduction of things that a lot of people like to make but not so many want much of (beautifully carved tobacco pipes?), and underproduction of things that a lot of people want a lot of but not so many people like to produce.

Moreover, with no real mechanism for trade, one would hardly be able to enjoy any goods from foreign countries. For example, the happy and harmonious people populating William Morris’ utopia – which presumably is set in Britain – are enjoying wine, although they do not appear to have means of obtaining such or any other goods from abroad (and if the wine they were drinking was made from British grapes they would be neither happy nor harmonious). Of course, one could perhaps argue that one could more than contently enjoy pale ale and porter in Morris’ utopia.

The most important problem with Morris’ anti-technological utopia, however, appears to be that it is only possible for it to support a very small population – which begs the question of what happened to all the Brits who were around before the revolution. Arguably the only adequate (and morbid) answer is that they died in it – a holocaust-like solution Morris himself hopefully would not be very satisfied with.

Now, while not enabling an economy built around arts and crafts, nanotechnology in its fullest sense could perhaps both enable and necessitate an economic structure very similar to that envisioned by Morris. Firstly, by potentially breaking down the ability of firms to monetize transactions of hardly any goods, and by replacing humans in many or even most service industries, the stage is set for a spreading of the ICT “open-source” system throughout the economy. Already, “open-source” as it exists today is astonishingly similar to that of the voluntarist William Morris-economy. Participants contribute their time and knowledge toward common goals apparently because they enjoy doing so. Again, as in Morris’ utopia competition is not based around who can do things “a little worse and a little cheaper”, but around who can do things better. In a very real way, a high-tech artisanal pride is a driving force.

With nano-robot as a pervasive tool throughout the economy, and raw materials not being a problem as such robots in their most advanced form potentially would be able to rearrange not only atoms but electrons (so that any material could be created from anything else, like air or sand), one could easily imagine global, online, open source communities producing and disseminating downloadable designs for almost any product; food, cars, even spaceships; with little grounds left for markets as we know them today to stay alive. Even the market for land would not necessarily stick around when it becomes more than possible to build one’s own continents, either on this planet or new ones, and at the same time travel and communicate so quickly and efficiently that being based in the same place no longer is very valuable. While there may of course remain numerous tasks left that have to be done by humans on a professional basis – public administration and education comes to mind – the lack of markets and monetization in most of the economy would still leave one with the problem of how to pay those who already have everything. As such, it is not inconceivable that those jobs that would still have to be filled by people would be done so either on a voluntary basis, or on a rotating compulsory “community service” basis.

Nanotech would also in large part solve the main problems of Morris’ original utopia. That is, the efficiency problem would no longer be relevant in a scenario with near infinite abundance of resources. Furthermore, one major difference between the open-source nanotech-utopia and the William Morris utopia is that while in the latter production of goods happens on a voluntary basis, in the former production of design happens on a voluntary basis; while production of actual goods happens on everyone’s private initiative, using freely available designs and self-reproducing infinite-purpose nano-robots. That is, in the nanotech-utopia, consumers produce their own end-user goods, effectively eliminating the need for prices to steer production and allocation of goods. For the same reason, the population problem of Morris’ utopia is not an issue in the nanotech-utopia. Nor is international trade – British villagers can easily download great Italian wine instantly. And if you are worried about the wine’s eigentlichkeit, imagine the countless hours spent perfecting it by the thousands of wine-loving Italian nano-engineers.

Of course, the nanotech-utopia is hardly what Morris envisaged. Its economic structure however, may fit better to that of Morris’ utopia than any anti-tech utopia could ever have done.



By Stephan Andreas Jensen

http://www.evolution-revolution.org/2010/03/will-nanotech-kill-markets/

[hammer&sickle]

Thanks to Kiev for the nanotechnology link.

For all comrades interested in the subject I suggest Jim Davis' collection of essays. I see I can't post a link as yet so google Jim davis + Cutting Edge..that will get you there.


The book is inexpensively available from Amazon and if you care to search long enough you can find some of the essays online.

[La Comédie Noire]

I agree with your post Kiev. I think 1917 finished what was started on the continent in 1789, albeit, much more radical because of the development of the Russian working class and the international capitalist class. It's interesting what humans can conceive of the future, in this respect I feel Marx was way ahead of his time.

[Paul Cockshott]

I meant the use of MNT in production of industrial goods.
I gathered that, but that would be a thermodynamiically limited process just like the growth of living organisms and there is no reason to suppose it will be inherently more efficient or productive.

[Kiev Communard]

I gathered that, but that would be a thermodynamiically limited process just like the growth of living organisms and there is no reason to suppose it will be inherently more efficient or productive.

Of course, but it would still be more efficient in comparison with the current industrial production and would free the post-revolutionary society from the necessity of hard physical labour.

[Kiev Communard]

I agree with your post Kiev. I think 1917 finished what was started on the continent in 1789, albeit, much more radical because of the development of the Russian working class and the international capitalist class. It's interesting what humans can conceive of the future, in this respect I feel Marx was way ahead of his time.

Yes, that what I meant. I didn't try to say that the 20th revolutions were unnecessary or "pointless", on the contrary - they were instrumental in overthrowing the most reactionary tendencies of the capitalism, did away with the remnants of Absolutist simple commodity production in Central and East Europe, provided the impetus for the overthrowal of colonialism and, for a fairly large period of time, managed to free the vast segments of global population and territory from the subordinate peripheral status within the framework of global capitalist economy. I just raised that issue because I believe that the traditional (Anarchist/Left Communist/Trotskyist, etc.) approaches towards the adjudication of reasons for 20th revolutions' degeneration are oversimplistic and tend to ascribe their failures merely either to some external factors or to the "wrong" organizational strategy, while my approach tries to take into account such objective factors inimical to the establishment of Socialism in the 20th century as the fundamentally hierarchical character of Taylorist mass production that was adopted even by the most radical regimes as something "progressive" and the inadequacy of the systems of economic calculation at that time (as opposed to Misesists that claim that rational economic calculation is "always" impossible), which together with material scarcity factor led to the rise of the new class structures of "Soviet-style" societies.