Imagining a communist mode of production

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

There seems to be, on the left, a certain poverty of the imagination with regards to the material basis of communist forms of life. Often, descriptions of communism, or, more regularly, allusions to communism, simply present themselves as capitalism-run-by-the-workers, or, at least, something which is indistinguishable outside the sphere of "social relations" in the vaguest sense of the term. Why is this? Can we not possibly concieve of a "post-industrial" communism? Why do discussions of technology seem to inexorably imagine a path of technological development that parallel's capitalism own, albeit with a certain emphasis on "humane" and "green" directions?
It seems to me as though, for one, underlying this is a certain limit - an internalization of bourgeois notions of science and technology that are linear, moving forward toward increasing production relative to labour time, increasing "quality of life" understood in terms that are unabashedly quantitative.
Technology, of course, doesn't exist exclusively within this discursive framework - consensus decision making, permaculture, human waste composting systems, just to name a few, all constitute technical developments that don't "fit" within naratives that end with flying cars, computer projections on our eyelids, and space exploration.
So, while predicting the future is maybe a better game for fiction writers than revolutionaries, I think the question has to be raised - what are our existing assumptions (our "predictions of the future" dressed up as common sense), and how might they be destabilized in service of a revolutionary project?

I figured this warranted a discussion.

(Sorry if this is riddled with spelling mistakes - this computer speaks French, so spellcheck is pretty useless right now)

[doesn't even make sense]

It might seem totally unrelated and out from left-field, but I think this entry from a blog I enjoy is at least a little bit relevant to this discussion: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/10/futuristic-physicists/

[Q]

For a true appreciation of that question, you first ought to understand how capitalism works. You're right that most leftists see socialism/communism as "capitalism, ruled by workers", as they simply haven't the faintest clue of how to look beyond commodity production, money relations, etc. To be honest, I'm barely starting to become aware of this fundamental point myself now that I've started studying Capital. Most self-proclaimed leftists don't study how our society works and therefore remain at platitudes like "nationalisations under workers control" (whatever that means).

How does a communist mode of production look like is indeed a very good question and I wonder if there are useful scientific endeavors to this around. Would, for example, exchange value still exist (use value would obviously still exist) and if not, how would we distribute social necessary labourtime?

[Blake's Baby]

...Most self-proclaimed leftists don't study how our society works and therefore remain at platitudes like "nationalisations under workers control" (whatever that means)...

It means that the Co-operative Stores is probably the most radical experiment in workers' power that will ever exist, and we are all suffering from the collective delusion that the 1970s were shite, as in fact they must have been the greatest decade since the Second World War (which must also have been very groovy, all those enterprises under government control, lovely).


...How does a communist mode of production look like is indeed a very good question and I wonder if there are useful scientific endeavors to this around. Would, for example, exchange value still exist (use value would obviously still exist) and if not, how would we distribute social necessary labourtime?

Well, for some of us, no of course it wouldn't. How can you have exchange value in socialism? There's no 'money' or even 'money equivalent'. I don't even support labour-time vouchers.

For others - and there's a massive thread somewhere where I argue with Cockshott and Kotze about this - of course we'd have wages and buying and selling and commodities and differentials and all that stuff. What I call 'capitalism'.

[Rafiq]

For a true appreciation of that question, you first ought to understand how capitalism works. You're right that most leftists see socialism/communism as "capitalism, ruled by workers", as they simply haven't the faintest clue of how to look beyond commodity production, money relations, etc. To be honest, I'm barely starting to become aware of this fundamental point myself now that I've started studying Capital. Most self-proclaimed leftists don't study how our society works and therefore remain at platitudes like "nationalisations under workers control" (whatever that means).

How does a communist mode of production look like is indeed a very good question and I wonder if there are useful scientific endeavors to this around. Would, for example, exchange value still exist (use value would obviously still exist) and if not, how would we distribute social necessary labourtime?

Is it not possible that we could insist on what communism could perhaps not be, but refrain from attempting to predict or make grand claims as to what it would be? Yes, there will be no commodity production. What will replace it? We do not know.

[Q]

Is it not possible that we could insist on what communism could perhaps not be, but refrain from attempting to predict or make grand claims as to what it would be? Yes, there will be no commodity production. What will replace it? We do not know.

Well that's not a great filling in of the maximum programme, is it? "Oh, take power, yes that is essential. We should throw over the state and instate collectivist rule. After that... eh, we'll figure something out".

That might be as anti-strategy as it gets, regarding the "then what?" question.

I know your point is that we don't have to make blueprints for future society and I'm all with that. That is not the point. My point is much more fundamental: It is a scientific question regarding "what are the basic conditions for communism and is that even possible?".

@Blake's Baby: That is all fair enough. You dodged however the most impportant question of my post: how would we distribute social necessary labourtime? Under capitalism that is done in a certain way, where exchange value is essential. To reach communism we need a better way to do that, one that can transcend capitalism.

I'm just at the start of my journey of what a viable communist political-economy might look like and I'm not holding much answers. Just asking questions for now. And for that I aim to be self-critical which is something I regard as essential for a scientific endeavor. So, before we see more defensive reflexes, I just want to make that clear.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

To me, Communism is simply abolishing all existing contradictions within society.

[Blake's Baby]

...
@Blake's Baby: That is all fair enough. You dodged however the most impportant question of my post: how would we distribute social necessary labourtime? Under capitalism that is done in a certain way, where exchange value is essential. To reach communism we need a better way to do that, one that can transcend capitalism...

Yes... I dodged it because, though I understand all of the words, what I don't understand is what they mean to you when you put all of them togther.

Which 'we'? The whole of society? The working class? The workers' councils? The Vanguard Party sitting in our Supreme Soviets? The Bureaucratic Comrade Technicians of the Glorious People's Future and Moustaches?

'socially-necessary labourtime'... do you mean 'jobs' (as in 'jobs of work', 'jobs' to do', 'tasks', rather than 'careers')?

So, are you asking 'how does the post-revolutionary society decide who does what tasks'?

[Dave B]

Ironically perhaps I think one of the best succinct statements around of what communism is comes from Lenin.




Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society, labour performed not as a definite duty, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not according to previously established and legally fixed quotas, but voluntary labour, irrespective of quotas; it is labour performed without expectation of reward, without reward as a condition, labour performed because it has become a habit to work for the common good, and because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good—labour as the requirement of a healthy organism.


It must be clear to everybody that we, i.e., our society, our social system, are still a very long way from the application of this form of labour on a broad, really mass scale.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/apr/11.htm


Ignoring possible roads and paths to get their etc etc it was still an objective and “end”, as beyond the 'narrow horizons of bourgeois right', and as a motif to still be written on revolutionary banners, as a sort of ;



From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! Rejecting the idea of 'valueless principle', a Bernstienist banner has on it;



“To me that which is generally called the ultimate aim of socialism is nothing, but the movement is everything”, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1899/evsoc/ch04-conc.htm

And that is the almost universal position of the modern far left.


The former ultimate aim is now the communism that dare not speak its name.

Of course Lenin and Mao for that matter, maybe, aimed at arriving a communism by traveling along the road of state capitalism reforming it as they went along.

A mere variation on the Bernstien path of reforming orthodox capitalism.


I am not sure whether or not Mao knew what communism was- not read all of his stuff.


I think it might be a bit mean spirited in retrospect and with hindsight to be overly critical of both former experimental attempts.

There should be no excuse now; as we have before us the demonstrable failure of both along with a not too difficult to understand analysis of the why’s and the how’s.

But lets do it one more time, and ‘conjure up the battle slogans and spirits of the past’ and dress them up in ‘different costumes’ so it doesn’t look like we are ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’.


With ‘great world-historic facts and personages appearing , so to speak, twice and thrice.

As tragedy morphs to farce and then, suitably costumed, as insanity.


How else can you describe what comes after farce?

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm

I am not a primitivist myself but I do personally have some sympathy with the idea of the consumerist decadence as it affects probably in fact a small proportion in the ‘first world’ of the economically stratified global working class.

From the old model capitalism would incidentally and almost accidentally, from its own dynamics, increase the potential technological productivity humanity to the point that a few hours of labour each a week could produce all a workers ‘mundane’ needs.

And then the workers, as with Rousseau, could enjoy their ‘realm of freedom’ playing music on crude musical instruments, or maybe electronic pianos or something.

However at that point we would have gone beyond ‘wrestling with Nature to satisfy our wants’; unless you want to for fun , or as couch potato entertainment as with BearGrylls, Ray Mears and I am a celebrity get me out of here etc.

But there is a choice anyway.

Anyway from Karl;






In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production.

Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production.

With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm

What is perhaps unique to modern capitalism is the creation of spurious artificial demand through advertising bling more often than not as status symbols of commodity fetishism.

A transfer of the culture and a fixation of the former bourgeoisie on to the working class. And the decadent consumerism of some of them is quite depressing with their obsession holiday villas in Turkey with private swimming pools etc.

Having stayed at one recently, it was OK for a change I suppose, but still prefer reading a book and wrestling with nature I think.




I am, fortunately for me, just a fairly well paid factory worker with no dependents.

[sanpal]

You're right that most leftists see socialism/communism as "capitalism, ruled by workers", as they simply haven't the faintest clue of how to look beyond commodity production, money relations, etc. To be honest, I'm barely starting to become aware of this fundamental point myself now that I've started studying Capital. Most self-proclaimed leftists don't study how our society works and therefore remain at platitudes like "nationalisations under workers control" (whatever that means).

How does a communist mode of production look like is indeed a very good question and I wonder if there are useful scientific endeavors to this around. Would, for example, exchange value still exist (use value would obviously still exist) and if not, how would we distribute social necessary labourtime?

Indeed, it is very important question, I'd say archi-important question.
Absence of the decision of this question in 20-th century has led to falling of the USSR and other socialist countries. It depends from this question how the economic model of transition period (DotP) would look like and accordingly what a programme of communist party might be written.

[Paul Cockshott]

To me, Communism is simply abolishing all existing contradictions within society.
Perhaps so, but that does not mean that there will not be new ones.

[Paul Cockshott]

Which 'we'? The whole of society? The working class? The workers' councils? The Vanguard Party sitting in our Supreme Soviets? The Bureaucratic Comrade Technicians of the Glorious People's Future and Moustaches?
What ever political form the communist community has fills in here, so whilst that it an interesting topic in its own right, it is not what was being asked about.



'socially-necessary labourtime'... do you mean 'jobs' (as in 'jobs of work', 'jobs' to do', 'tasks', rather than 'careers')?

So, are you asking 'how does the post-revolutionary society decide who does what tasks'?
Allocating socially necessary labour time is not the same as deciding who does what tasks. It is a feature of humans that we are adaptable. It does not make a great deal of difference exactly who does a job, but it does make a big difference whether there are 1000 people or 10000 people working on a task. So what is being asked here is how society allocates numbers of people to different types of activity.

[Avanti]

for me, communism is a road towards anarchism, not the other way around.

soviet socialism was claiming to be revolutionary, but continued with the same puritan bourgeois ideals and even surpassed the west on boring intellectual news pieces, high regard for boring "classical authors" and on lawfulness, moderation and frugality - all calvinist virtues.

real socialism is a sensation, a sense of togetherness, love and belonging with the kin of humanity, a state of the mind when you love all people like your lovers and you never feel excluded or looked down at and where your sense of individuality is transformed into a sense of a flow of continuous explosions of sensations through your body and mind.

i see communism as transforming the world, as a projection of a collective inner reality towards the outside world, where we together destroy and trash this shitty reality in return for a reality which is colourful, bright, loving, surrealistic, crazy and completely liberated.

it represents the destruction of linear rational chains of information, goods and services, of square industrialism and quaint social role-playing games for a supra-reality where all of humanity are like brothers and sisters. it will not be a static experience of bliss, but a continuous ever evolving, ever self-regenerating state of mental and spiritual orgasms.

for a concrete example, imagine a group of friends going out just to laugh and run around in the grass, dress in outrageous outfits and laugh like loonies until the sun sets.

production will be automated and all of humanity can become eternal children who are surrounded by the love of one another.

and yes, i am a litte high now...