Communism = free time?

[Comrade #138672]

I have heard a Communist repeatedly claim that Communism is merely free time. Because, he says, only time that is not free, can be exploited. There is no wage slavery in free time. He also connects people having more free time with people developing Communist consciousness.

In a way he is not completely wrong, but I would like to know whether this argument is new, where it originally came from, etc. He is not very clear about what is needed, what needs to be done, etc. Only that more free time is required and that workers want to hear this.

What do Marxists have to say about this?

[Q]

Philosophically speaking the whole concept of "free time" hinges on the fact that we know "non-free time" in the form of wage-slavery and all that. Thus we "spend" our free time economically, speak of "quality time" with our children, consume goods and services in our free time to meet certain expectations we have of free time.

Without wage-labour, the whole concept of free time becomes redundant and will transform. "Labour time" and "free time" would no longer be separate concepts.

I'm not sure workers would want to hear this. When I'm at work there is a certain "slacking" culture, but on the other hand fellow workers have no interest in messages like "the right to be lazy (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1883/lazy/)". So there is an interesting duality here.

But anyway, your friend has a point, but it would at best be a tangent in a discussion, not a good way of describing things in itself.

[Ele'ill]

I have heard a Communist repeatedly claim that Communism is merely free time. Because, he says, only time that is not free, can be exploited. There is no wage slavery in free time. He also connects people having more free time with people developing Communist consciousness.

In a way he is not completely wrong, but I would like to know whether this argument is new, where it originally came from, etc. He is not very clear about what is needed, what needs to be done, etc. Only that more free time is required and that workers want to hear this.

What do Marxists have to say about this?

maybe think about what else would change regarding 'jobs' in communism like are you still gonna be stuck working a boring shitty job (previously min wage) that you hate, is that job actually going to exist anymore or how will it change? Where will you go in the world, what do you actually want to do? I think some people are genuinely interested in the field of work they're in but not in their actual job, what would stop them from obtaining education to pursue something more advanced in their field?

[tuwix]

I have heard a Communist repeatedly claim that Communism is merely free time. Because, he says, only time that is not free, can be exploited. There is no wage slavery in free time. He also connects people having more free time with people developing Communist consciousness.

In a way he is not completely wrong, but I would like to know whether this argument is new, where it originally came from, etc. He is not very clear about what is needed, what needs to be done, etc. Only that more free time is required and that workers want to hear this.

What do Marxists have to say about this?


There are much more free things than free time. All is free. If there is no money, everything is free.

[Palmares]

Yeah, there is a tricky semantic game here.

There will still be "work", or whatever word you choose to describe thus actions of the post-revolutionary proletariat. The structure and composition of it will be different.

So using these words in contemporary conditions, since "free time" refers to activities outside of (or simply there lack of) work, I would say no to the original question.

Of course, reworking the definitions and concepts to better suit the changed conditions, I think it could be somewhat true.

But then again, I'm an anarchist, and a non-syndicalist one at that. :blackA:

[o well this is ok I guess]

Philosophically speaking the whole concept of "free time" hinges on the fact that we know "non-free time" in the form of wage-slavery and all that. Thus we "spend" our free time economically, speak of "quality time" with our children, consume goods and services in our free time to meet certain expectations we have of free time.

Without wage-labour, the whole concept of free time becomes redundant and will transform. "Labour time" and "free time" would no longer be separate concepts. WoooOOOOooooooOOOOOoooo, no wage labour. Then again, time spent working and time spent without obligations remains, wage or not.
I'm of course not saying that time spent working ought to be abolished or anything like that, but it's pure silliness to suppose that the only thing dividing working time and leisure time is wages.

[Comrade #138672]

Here is some of his writings: http://therealmovement.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/the-coming-storm/#more-104


Most of the stuff I read on Marxism today seems to miss a very significant point: The entire context of the debate has changed.

These writings can be divided into two groups:

1. Those who continue as if nothing has changed, and
2. Those who state everything before was a failure.

In the first group are the Leninists, soc-dems, assorted types, who approach the problem of social emancipation more or less the way the generation immediately following Engels approached it. The second group really emerges out of the interwar period and after. It is probably easier to think about this if I just state what I am thinking here.

Capitalism develops the productive power of the total labor power of society. What Marx and Engels realized is that ultimately this improvement would lead to the reduction of necessary labor for all of society. When they realized it, this idea was in its infancy, but it became the commonsense assumption of everyone. Even Keynes, the intellectual godfather of fascism, made this assumption.


Capitalism is basically constantly trying to outrun this long-term imperative: it is constantly seeking ways to expand production and overcome the effects of constant improvement in the productivity of labor by the export of capital to the outlying field of production within the world market. At first it is really easy to overcome the improvement of productivity, but over time it becomes increasingly more difficult. Once machines are employed to build improved machines, of course, the productivity of labor rockets. At some point along this trajectory, expansion of the employment of labor power itself becomes the problem that must be addressed.

Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, this point was reached on Monday, October 28, 1929. I am not arguing this was what actually happened on that day. I only want to supposed it did for the sake of this argument. On this day, then, Monday, October 28, 1929, the problem labor theory sought to solve, flipped on its head.

And what problem might this be?

There are two distinct problems actually: the proletarian revolution and the historical trajectory of the capitalist mode of production. These are not the same problems, but we tend to lump them together in our minds. Elmar Flatschart, in his speech before the Platypus conference explained that the abolition of value is not itself social emancipation. The abolition of value is one problem, the social emancipation of the working class is another problem.

Before, Monday, October 28, 1929, it was thought the social emancipation of the working class would be realized before value was abolished. After Monday, October 28, 1929, it appears likely value would be abolished before the social emancipation was realized.

We tend to treat the proletarian political revolution and the abolition of value as one and the same thing, but wertkritik says otherwise. The poles of the relation between the proletarian revolution and the abolition of value flipped, but nobody noticed it. And when it flipped the old Marxism became obsolete. By Marxism, I mean the politics of working class emancipation from capitalism.

What was this old Marxism? It can be seen in the Communist Manifesto:

“We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.”

In this passage, Marx suggested the working class should win the political struggle and proceed to abolish all labor. Winning the political struggle — social emancipation — was not the same as abolition of labor itself; it was only the means to that end. Social emancipation in this form was provisional, i.e., the emancipation of labor from capital had to be followed by the emancipation of all society from labor.

On Monday, October 28, 1929, the Communist Manifesto programme became obsolete.

What replaced it?

Well, notice in the Manifesto Marx says the working class would win the “battle for democracy”. Notice he does not say, the working class would overthrow democracy, it would win the battle for it. By simply winning democracy the working class had to win in the long run because it would become the largest single class in society.

The peasants would over time be thrown into the ranks of the working class by capitalism itself. A democratic society would, of necessity, become a working class society. Winning “the battle for democracy” is nowhere near as exciting as it sounds, since all capitalism does is throw all other classes into the proletariat. Over any given period of time, the majority of society had to become working class — it’s the way capitalism works. Not only this, capitalism also constantly reduces the number of capitalists. So the way the mode of production works is that almost everybody in 19th century society was going to end up in the working class. The “battle for democracy” would be won mostly because no one else would be left but the working class and a handful of capitalist exploiters — and we could out-vote them on every public policy issue.

Winning the battle for democracy, however, is not the important part — although in contemporary Marxist literature you would think this was the beginning and end of all history. Ask a Leninist what she thinks we should be doing and she will tell you we need to replace the present state with a new one. Why? Since the working class is already the only real class in the present state, why can’t we just take control of this one? What is to stop the working class from completely controlling the present state by democratic means.

The Leninist has no answer for this. Or else, she recycles Lenin’s insane argument that the working class is dominated by bourgeois ideology in some form. Bullshit. Everyone is an adult here. If you can’t figure it out, then you deserve to be a slave. The fact is feudal society was dominated by its very own peculiar ideology, but this never prevented the formation of bourgeois ideology or a bourgeois state. The Leninist argument on this is complete hogwash, and they know it. And if they don’t know it, why would you trust them in political power — they clearly are idiots.

Winning the battle for democracy is just a matter of the impact capitalism has on the demographics of society: we all become working class. In other words, even if the working class did not seize power outright, the development of the capitalist mode of production would give them the political power.

The really significant part of the quote from the Manifesto is what they would do with this power when handed it.

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.”

So, with power in their hands, outright or effectively, the control of the total capital of society would be concentrated in the hands of the state. This would happen, mind you, even if society was completely unaware of the significance of these actions. There is nothing in Marx’s argument to suggest society is even aware of what it is doing as it is doing it — it is driven to these actions solely by necessity.

Just as the working class is completely unaware that it is effectively the rulers of society, by reason of its mass, so society is driven to wrest control of the total capital from the capitalists without this ever being understood as a communistic impulse.

Marx has no concern that we are or are not aware of the significance of our actions, since he is only addressing what we must do because of who we are. His argument is always grounded in who we are materially and, based on this, what we will find it necessary to do — no matter how we justify it in whatever bizarre ideologies that prevail at any moment.

A society of individuals engaged in directly social production must, of necessity, manage their activities cooperatively. How they justify this cooperation is of no concern to historical materialism whatsoever. People will do what they have to do, and then they will try to explain why they are actually doing something else altogether. You don’t focus on the explanation, you have to look at what they are doing.

Going back to our event horizon, Monday, October 28, 1929: As I stated, on this day the poles of the relation between social emancipation and the abolition of value flipped. In the Communist Manifesto, the working class first seizes power outright and proceeds to abolish value, to abolish socially necessary labor time. Now, after that Monday, the task is different: the abolition of value precedes social emancipation.

Why does this happen?

Remember: Capitalism is always trying to outrun the long-term imperative to reduce hours of labor. On that particular Monday, capitalism finally lost that race — the productive forces of society acquired the capacity to outstrip any and all needs for productive employment of labor power. In Marxist parlance, the directly social productive forces burst their capitalist private property integument. The point was reached, as predicted by labor theory, that labor time had to be reduced.

This was because, no matter to what capitalist ends labor power could be put, it would necessarily produce more than could be productively consumed in the capitalist production process. To be clear: we are only speaking of the capitalist production process, not production of material wealth itself. The production of material wealth encountered no limits by this event, however the further increase in the production of material wealth would no longer be profitable. Any attempt to increase the production of material wealth at this point, would result not in the expansion of the total social capital, but in its contraction. This contraction was nothing but the contraction of productive employment of labor power — of the expenditure of labor, of hours of labor.

To say an increase in the production of material wealth would result in the contraction of capital was to say it would result in a reduction of hours of labor. The contraction of the total capital of society would be a negative rate of profit — which means all further increase in the productivity of labor must lead to a further reduction in the mass of profits. On Monday, October 28, 1929, society encountered the point where all further increase in the productivity of labor had to lead to a fall in the mass of profits.

If as a Marxist this argument is new to you, the reason this is so is simple: there is almost no trace of this event in Marxist literature. For the most part, Marxist theorists never even noticed it, and no one recognized its significance. Henryk Grossman predicted it (in theory) in a paper in 1929, on the eve of the event:

“Beyond a definite point of time the system cannot survive at the postulated rate of surplus value of 100 per cent. There is a growing shortage of surplus value and, under the given conditions, a continuous overaccumulation. the only alternative is to violate the conditions postulated. Wages have to be cut in order to push the rate of surplus value even higher. This cut in wages would not be a purely temporary phenomenon that vanishes once equilibrium is re-established; it will have to be continuous. After year 36 either wages have to be cut continually and periodically or a reserve army must come into being.”

In the literature between the time Engels died and the Great Depression, this is the single instance I can find of anyone actually predicting what is now called “capitalist breakdown”. And no one I know of has ever understood the connection between this “breakdown” and hours of productive labor: that the two are identical.

What Grossman was predicting, in the simplest possible words, is that from the point of capitalist breakdown forward, hours of labor had to be continuously reduced. The problem in his particular formulation is that he sets this reduction entirely in the form of capitalist relations of production. So rather than saying ‘hours of labor had to be reduced’, he says, “wages have to be cut continually and periodically or a reserve army must come into being.”

After Grossman is where things get entirely confused: people (Marxists) never realize Grossman’s event has happened. And these Marxists are themselves divided into a group of folks who think things are still the same as they were before the Great Depression and a group who thinks things were always the same as they were after the Great Depression.

This is somewhat confusing for me, since when I am reading someone’s argument, I have to first figure out which group they are in. You get people like David Harvey, Dumenil and Levy, or Chris Harman who are clearly in the pre-Great Depression mode of analysis. These are the people who think the task of the day is to seize political power and establish a proletarian dictatorship or something like that. Then you have folks like Holloway, Postone, Kurz, Flatschart, who warn seizing political power is a pointless dead end.

The latter group are in the post-Great Depression mode of analysis, but falsely think this mode of analysis also applies to the earlier period. These post-Great Depression thinkers believe it was always a mistake to focus on seizing state power and Engels was a revisionist.

Okay, whatever.

So you have these two schools of Marxism existing side by side — one thinks we are still living in the 19th Century and the other thinks Marx and Engels lived in the 20th century. Neither side recognizes that the conditions of the 19th century are not at all the same as the conditions of the 20th century. Capitalism has moved on, while theory lags behind — as usual. And not just theory — the consciousness of the working class also lags behind the development of the mode of production too.

Is this unusual? Of course not. We should expect this lag in the consciousness of society, since it is predicted by historical materialism. What this means is that there is a huge gap between the real progress of social production and the recognition of this practical progress in the consciousness of society. If historical materialism has any truth in it at all, this gap must and will be closed in a rather shocking leap of social consciousness.

This event will be staggering and will, in a matter of days or weeks, sweep aside everything we think we know right now.

And here: http://pogoprinciple.wordpress.com/

Not sure what to think of it. I don't like the way he keeps bashing Marxists.

[Luís Henrique]

Here is some of his writings: http://therealmovement.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/the-coming-storm/#more-104

And here: http://pogoprinciple.wordpress.com/

Not sure what to think of it. I don't like the way he keeps bashing Marxists.

Well. I think he deals in some important stuff, and that he has some interesting insights. But he seems to fall into confusion to the end of the text.


Most of the stuff I read on Marxism today seems to miss a very significant point: The entire context of the debate has changed.

These writings can be divided into two groups:

1. Those who continue as if nothing has changed, and
2. Those who state everything before was a failure.

That's an interesting distinction, and one that doesn't seem completely mistaken. But I would say it is a bit more complicated than that. One of such complications is that capitalism was significantly transformed more than once since Marx's days (indeed, at least once during Marx's life).


In the first group are the Leninists, soc-dems, assorted types, who approach the problem of social emancipation more or less the way the generation immediately following Engels approached it. The second group really emerges out of the interwar period and after. It is probably easier to think about this if I just state what I am thinking here.

So the first group seems already reasonably defined and described. But I would argue that it is much more ample than "Leninists and social-democrats"; it would have to include Trotskyists, left-communists, and, unless we are talking exclusively about Marxian people (but then, why to include social-democrats?), most if not all anarchists. In sum, the bulk of what we consider to be either "the left" and/or "the working class movement".


Capitalism develops the productive power of the total labor power of society. What Marx and Engels realized is that ultimately this improvement would lead to the reduction of necessary labor for all of society. When they realized it, this idea was in its infancy, but it became the commonsense assumption of everyone. Even Keynes, the intellectual godfather of fascism, made this assumption.

Hm. I see no other use for the phrase "Keynes, the intellectual godfather of fascism" other than cheap intellectual slander. Fascism is a much more complicated phenomenon than mere State support for aggregate demand, and most if not all of its other components cannot be find in Keynes at all. It is almost as calling Marx "the intellectual great-godfather of fascism" because the fascists drew on Sorel, and Sorel was a Marxist.

But yes, the idea that the development of productive power would eventually lead to the reduction of necessary labor for all of society originates with Marx, and to a certain extent became commonsensical. But we know that there are strong counter-tendencies, which have not been missed even by foolish Marxists like Leninists, or even social-democrats. One of them is the extraordinary expansion of social consumption from Marx's times to today; the other is the extraordinary expansion of means of destruction in the same time frame.

Indeed, I would say that the greater delusion of the last 100 years is not that "the development of productive power will eventually lead to the reduction of necessary labor for all of society", but that the development of the consumption power of all of society would normally and on the average be enough for accommodate the contradictory goals of full-employment without labour-time reduction and continuous expansion of productive power. (As a matter of fact, labour hours did fall during Marx's time, and up to the beggining of the 20th century, but this movement stalled wherever we reached the magic figure of 8x5, even giving cause for some "naturalist" arguments that this would be the "natural" labour time.)


Capitalism is basically constantly trying to outrun this long-term imperative: it is constantly seeking ways to expand production and overcome the effects of constant improvement in the productivity of labor by the export of capital to the outlying field of production within the world market. At first it is really easy to overcome the improvement of productivity, but over time it becomes increasingly more difficult. Once machines are employed to build improved machines, of course, the productivity of labor rockets. At some point along this trajectory, expansion of the employment of labor power itself becomes the problem that must be addressed.

I have some difficulty with "once machines are employed to build improved machines, of course, the productivity of labor rockets"; the productivity of labour rises when machines are introduced to production, but I am not sure the introduction of machines into the production of other machines (which I suppose took on quite early, with the sector of "capital goods" being usually the one with a higher capital composition) marks a turning point. But otherwise I tend to agree with the argument, and to think that "expansion of the employment of labor power itself becomes the problem that must be addressed" is a quite correct way to put it.


Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, this point was reached on Monday, October 28, 1929. I am not arguing this was what actually happened on that day. I only want to supposed it did for the sake of this argument. On this day, then, Monday, October 28, 1929, the problem labor theory sought to solve, flipped on its head.

I won't argue that this didn't happen in 28/10/1929 (British date), of course, because the author realises that, and is proposing it for the sake of the argument. But I will argue that this didn't happen at any time before WWII, nor indeed at any time before the Yom Kippur War, and I would regard as quite dubious that it ever happened, and even if it can actually happen. (This isn't to say that there isn't a very strong tendency to that point, of course.)


And what problem might this be?

There are two distinct problems actually: the proletarian revolution and the historical trajectory of the capitalist mode of production. These are not the same problems, but we tend to lump them together in our minds. Elmar Flatschart, in his speech before the Platypus conference explained that the abolition of value is not itself social emancipation. The abolition of value is one problem, the social emancipation of the working class is another problem.

That's interesting, and I think that the distinction is necessary. Abolition of value and social emancipation are different things. That said, I am not very sure that we can stop at that level of realisation. Indeed, value is constantly plunging into crisis; the increasing production of value undermines the conditions for the further production of value, so, human actions put aside, value tends to "abolish" itself. Human actions considered, the increased production of value is supported and renewed by the increase of social consumption, particularly by the degenerate form of military consumption. This means, in the general case, the increased production of value runs against the natural limits of the planet (which I think are however still far away), and, in the particular case, that the increased production of value relies in the increased production of improductive commodities at best, and at wors in the systematic destruction of value through military confrontation (which however does not, and can not, take the form of Bordiga's simplistic idea that destruction is the conscious aim of the bourgeoisie). Social emancipation on the other hand is only possible through human deliberate actions; but without emancipation, the increased production of value tends to restart anew, after the provisory "abolition of value" by a given crisis recreates its conditions, though arguably with an ever increased difficulty directly connected to the ever increased ease in rebuilding the previous state of affairs. So while abolition of value and social emancipation are different things, it doesn't seem to me that the former is possible without the latter (except in the very undesirable form of an ecological disaster or war so destructive as to erase not only the possibility of increased production of value, but of any production of value at all).

And if such is the case, then "the problem labor theory sought to solve" not only did not flip on its head, nor it can actually do so.


Before, Monday, October 28, 1929, it was thought the social emancipation of the working class would be realized before value was abolished. After Monday, October 28, 1929, it appears likely value would be abolished before the social emancipation was realized.

Again ignoring the arbitrary date, what is being said is that there is an "event" (the point at which, let's remember, "expansion of the employment of labor power itself becomes the problem that must be addressed") before which social emancipation could be thought as preceding the abolition of value, but after which the abolition of value must be thought as preceding the social emancipation. As I have argued before, I don't think it this is possible, because I believe that, under the conditions of social emancipation not being attained, either value will resurrect like Christ from the cross, or the conditions for social emancipation will be abolished altogether with the conditions for the production of value. But let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that such thing is possible, and that one day we realise that the production of value has been abolished, without the simultaneous destruction of civilisation, human race, or the whole Earth as an ecosystem. In such a case, what is the task that remains, if not social emancipation?

So, either the permanent abolition of value (without disaster, that is) is only possible through social emancipation (which is my position) or attaining the abolition of value leaves us with only one task, that of social emancipation. Aside tactical and strategic considerations (attaining social emancipation in conditions of continued value production might require different actions than attaining social emancipation after the abolition of value), it seems we are still stuck with the issue of social emancipation.


We tend to treat the proletarian political revolution and the abolition of value as one and the same thing, but wertkritik says otherwise. The poles of the relation between the proletarian revolution and the abolition of value flipped, but nobody noticed it. And when it flipped the old Marxism became obsolete. By Marxism, I mean the politics of working class emancipation from capitalism.

Well, but I don't think it is reasonable to reduce "Marxism" to "the politics of working class emancipation from capitalism". Certainly, Marxism includes a theory of revolution that is based upon the possibility and necessity of the working class, at some moment, rising against capital and capitalism; but it also includes a theory of capitalism that points to its ultimate unsustainability. In Marx, both things are intimately related; one of the reasons that the working class can rise against capital and capitalism is exactly that capitalism is unsustainable, and will predictably hit the wall of a crisis of overaccumulation. In other authors, those things become separated, with some tending to believe that the working class can and should rise against capital even if this doesn't necessarily undergo overaccumulation crises, and others believing that the overaccumulation crisis substitutes for the working class uprising. (And this seems to me a more correct or at least more important distinction than that between "those who continue as if nothing has changed, and those who state everything before was a failure".)


What was this old Marxism? It can be seen in the Communist Manifesto:


“We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.”

In this passage, Marx suggested the working class should win the political struggle and proceed to abolish all labor. Winning the political struggle — social emancipation — was not the same as abolition of labor itself; it was only the means to that end. Social emancipation in this form was provisional, i.e., the emancipation of labor from capital had to be followed by the emancipation of all society from labor.

On Monday, October 28, 1929, the Communist Manifesto programme became obsolete.

Marx's (and Engels') text is a description, of course, of a proletarian revolution, or social emancipation, long before "abolition of value" in any absolute sence. But if we now are on the era of abolished value or imminent abolition of value, what changes? Arguably, it is no longer necessary to "increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible"; they have rather to be redirected, from serving military and conspicuous consumption into forms of consumption better suited a society of equal men and women. But this means exactly focusing in social emancipation - whereas "increasing the total productive forces as rapidly as possible" would be related to the task of "abolishing value". So it seems the author is sliding into confusion; while the "new conditions" require increased emphasys on social emancipation, he somehow concludes the exact opposite.

Just like previously "social emancipation" was only provisional, and had to be followed by the emancipation of all society from labour (and its capitalist counterpart, value), lest it was revoked by value reasserting its rights (which is the tragedy of 20th century socialist States), now the supposed abolition of value has to be followed by "social emancipation", ie, by revolution - lest production of value restarts from the ruins of its own provisional abolition. And so, while the Communist Manifesto may have become obsolete in its description of the tasks of a dictatorship of the proletariat, it seems to have only become more up to date in its urge for proletarian revolution.


What replaced it?

Well, notice in the Manifesto Marx says the working class would win the “battle for democracy”. Notice he does not say, the working class would overthrow democracy, it would win the battle for it. By simply winning democracy the working class had to win in the long run because it would become the largest single class in society.

The peasants would over time be thrown into the ranks of the working class by capitalism itself. A democratic society would, of necessity, become a working class society. Winning “the battle for democracy” is nowhere near as exciting as it sounds, since all capitalism does is throw all other classes into the proletariat. Over any given period of time, the majority of society had to become working class — it’s the way capitalism works. Not only this, capitalism also constantly reduces the number of capitalists. So the way the mode of production works is that almost everybody in 19th century society was going to end up in the working class. The “battle for democracy” would be won mostly because no one else would be left but the working class and a handful of capitalist exploiters — and we could out-vote them on every public policy issue.

This, of course, is Kautsky's strategy - we will eventually win elections and seize State power, and then use such State power "to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible". Of course, the supposed "orthodoxy" of Kautsky's strategy relies on whether "winning the battle for democracy" simply meant workers forming political parties and those parties winning elections. But in 1848 (and that was the year Marx and Engels wrote the Manifesto), the idea of workers forming political parties and winning elections without a previous revolution - to abolish censitary vote and the outright prohibition of socialist or working class parties, as well as of unions, at the very minimum - was completely far-fetched; "bourgeois democracy", at that time, was firmly based in the exclusion of workers, both by forbidding their organisations and by denying them vote. Indeed, universal suffrage was one of the planks of the 1848 revolutions; and if we read Marx on the subject (Class Struggles in France, The 18th Brummary), it seems that he viewed the abolition of universal suffrage as the natural and obvious consequence of the bourgeoisie reasserting its power over the working class.

And so Kautsky's strategy seems to be an anachronistic interpretation of the Manifesto.


Winning the battle for democracy, however, is not the important part — although in contemporary Marxist literature you would think this was the beginning and end of all history. Ask a Leninist what she thinks we should be doing and she will tell you we need to replace the present state with a new one. Why? Since the working class is already the only real class in the present state, why can’t we just take control of this one? What is to stop the working class from completely controlling the present state by democratic means.

Here our author is embarking in plain confusion. If in contemporary Marxist literature you would think that this was the beginning and end of all history, or story, what is the hypothetical Leninist doing here, if not exactly denying such supposed hegemony?

Of course, the derision of the Leninist idea of a "new State" is completely unwarranted. What it means is that the existing bourgeois State cannot be redirected to the ends stated in the Manifesto; that it will reassert its own logic, and impose it into any socialists, never mind how well intentioned they are, in practice transforming them into working class supporters of capitalism. And, unfortunately, history gives Leninists reason; this is exactly what happened to all working class governments of bourgeois States. So to put it shortly, what stops the working class from controlling the present State by democratic means is the State itself, in its essential undemocratic nature.


The Leninist has no answer for this. Or else, she recycles Lenin’s insane argument that the working class is dominated by bourgeois ideology in some form. Bullshit. Everyone is an adult here. If you can’t figure it out, then you deserve to be a slave. The fact is feudal society was dominated by its very own peculiar ideology, but this never prevented the formation of bourgeois ideology or a bourgeois state. The Leninist argument on this is complete hogwash, and they know it. And if they don’t know it, why would you trust them in political power — they clearly are idiots.

And here we get lower, from confusion to childishness. The working class - as everybody else - is dominated by bourgeois ideology; bourgeois ideology is the dominant set of ideas in any capitalist society. Which doesn't evidently mean that workers do not resist and fight against bourgeois domination; we do it, but by trying to turn bourgeois ideology against itself (and as bourgeois ideology is necessarily contradictory, that is not that difficult). It is the conditions of such struggle that may eventually destroy the grip of bourgeois ideology upon workers (and the Leninist mistake is not to believe that workers are dominated by bourgeois ideology, but to believe that what can destroy such domination is a bureaucratic arrangement within working class parties that would ensure the eternal preponderance of a somehow "pure" proletarian ideology within them).


Winning the battle for democracy is just a matter of the impact capitalism has on the demographics of society: we all become working class. In other words, even if the working class did not seize power outright, the development of the capitalist mode of production would give them the political power.

Well, if power was merely an issue of counting votes, no doubt. But there is something as economic power, which is, among other things, able to buy political power.


The really significant part of the quote from the Manifesto is what they would do with this power when handed it.


“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.”

So, with power in their hands, outright or effectively, the control of the total capital of society would be concentrated in the hands of the state. This would happen, mind you, even if society was completely unaware of the significance of these actions. There is nothing in Marx’s argument to suggest society is even aware of what it is doing as it is doing it — it is driven to these actions solely by necessity.

This is a curious interpretation. Most readers (I suppose; me certainly) understand "when the proletariat takes power, it will use its political supremacy" as a political recommendation, as in "that is what the proletariat should do, if it doesn't want its power to be unconsequential"; but our author interprets it as a prediction. Predictions like that seem something that Marx or Engels would refrain from, though.


Just as the working class is completely unaware that it is effectively the rulers of society, by reason of its mass, so society is driven to wrest control of the total capital from the capitalists without this ever being understood as a communistic impulse.

That could be a reasonable interpretation if history had somehow stopped in the late 60s or early 70s. But the 80s came, and with them the realisation that the drive "to wrest control of the total capital from the capitalists without this ever being understood as a communistic impulse" as exemplified by European social-democratic governments was by no means a structural feature of modern capitalism, and that, on the contrary, reprivatisation was quite possible and could characterise a period as long as that of the previous social democratic hegemony - all that while capital was still transforming peasants and petty bourgeois into workers, and reducing the actual number of capitalists. So, if such interpretation was what Marx had in mind, then he was, no doubt, very wrong.


Marx has no concern that we are or are not aware of the significance of our actions, since he is only addressing what we must do because of who we are. His argument is always grounded in who we are materially and, based on this, what we will find it necessary to do — no matter how we justify it in whatever bizarre ideologies that prevail at any moment.

A society of individuals engaged in directly social production must, of necessity, manage their activities cooperatively. How they justify this cooperation is of no concern to historical materialism whatsoever. People will do what they have to do, and then they will try to explain why they are actually doing something else altogether. You don’t focus on the explanation, you have to look at what they are doing.

Well, if we focus on that "they" are doing, we have been seeing, from at least 1980 into at least 2008, they doing exactly the opposite of "wresting by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State". So if this is the interpretation, we must now have moved into a phase in which either capitalism is no longer automatically producing the political supremacy of the working class, or in which the working class is no longer doing what Marx predicted it would do. In either case, it seems Marx was simply wrong, and we would need to find a completely new theory to explain this phenomenon.


Going back to our event horizon, Monday, October 28, 1929: As I stated, on this day the poles of the relation between social emancipation and the abolition of value flipped. In the Communist Manifesto, the working class first seizes power outright and proceeds to abolish value, to abolish socially necessary labor time. Now, after that Monday, the task is different: the abolition of value precedes social emancipation.

But what does that mean? How are we going to "abolish value", and moreover, how are we going to do it before social emancipation? Because here what has flipped wasn't merely he relation between social emancipation and the abolition of value; we have flipped from a historic explanation in which the proletariat becoming the majority of the populace would be the same as social emancipation and automatically produce the policies described/commended/predicted in the Manifesto, into a more common sence description of reality, in which social emancipation is still to come, nevermind the fact that the proletariat is already, and for a long time now, the majority of the population. But if the previous interpretation was valid, then social emancipation would no longer be an issue, and the already attained political supremacy of the working class would make the abolition of value just a matter of time (and, of course, if such mechanistic interpretation of Marx was true, there would be no question of "tasks" at all, but I digress); if, conversely, we are now in times in which the wresting by degree of all capital from the bourgeoisie and the centralisation of all instruments of production in the hands of the State are being reversed, then the abolition of value would be no longer possible. Or, if it is still possible, even if now its phenomenic consequences (privatisation, liberalisation, deregulamentation, etc.) are reversed, then it again poses the question of social emancipation, not that of the abolition of value...


Why does this happen?

Remember: Capitalism is always trying to outrun the long-term imperative to reduce hours of labor. On that particular Monday, capitalism finally lost that race — the productive forces of society acquired the capacity to outstrip any and all needs for productive employment of labor power. In Marxist parlance, the directly social productive forces burst their capitalist private property integument. The point was reached, as predicted by labor theory, that labor time had to be reduced.

That, if expansion of social consumption, particularly of military consumption, was arrested, which it certainly wasn't until at least 1970.


This was because, no matter to what capitalist ends labor power could be put, it would necessarily produce more than could be productively consumed in the capitalist production process. To be clear: we are only speaking of the capitalist production process, not production of material wealth itself. The production of material wealth encountered no limits by this event, however the further increase in the production of material wealth would no longer be profitable. Any attempt to increase the production of material wealth at this point, would result not in the expansion of the total social capital, but in its contraction. This contraction was nothing but the contraction of productive employment of labor power — of the expenditure of labor, of hours of labor.

That, seems to be the case. The system now has to be rebooted periodically, in order to restart the increased production of value, and such rebooting seems to imply widespread destruction of productive forces, so that value can be created anew. And this within conditions in which world-wide scale war might easily put an end not just to overaccumulation, but to accumulation, capital, civilisation, human life and life in general. In other words, the tangle grows more and more convoluted.


To say an increase in the production of material wealth would result in the contraction of capital was to say it would result in a reduction of hours of labor. The contraction of the total capital of society would be a negative rate of profit — which means all further increase in the productivity of labor must lead to a further reduction in the mass of profits. On Monday, October 28, 1929, society encountered the point where all further increase in the productivity of labor had to lead to a fall in the mass of profits.

There are some mistakes here.

It would result in a reduction of total labour hours; whether this results in a reduction of the labour hours for each individual depends on whether such hours are politically reduced, or, as it has been the general case, unemployment increases. The contraction of the total capital of society would certainly not be a negative rate of profit, nor even imply it: a negative rate of profit is a rate of loss, not a rate of profit; it may be the author was thinking of a negative rate of profit growth, which on the other hand isn't anything that spectacular; but as he continues by saying that the mass of profits must also fall, it seems he wasn't.

The mass of profits, evidently, has not fallen since 1929; it raised steadily from the recovery of the 1929 crisis, into WWII, into the "golden era" of the post-war, and if it fell in the late 60s and early 70s (which is dubious), it resumed growth in the 80's, and remained in the rise up to 2008. Now, 2008 was certainly a turning point in that, from then on, the usual and common sencical recipes of neoliberalism have proven unable to raise or even maintain the profit rates; but whether this is a failure of a given line - neoliberalism - that might be solved by a new line of economic policies, or a symptom of the final demise of capitalism, it remains to be seen.

For now.

Tomorrow, if possible, I may address the rest of the article.

Luís Henrique

[Comrade #138672]

Thank you, Luis Henrique. I appreciate your long and detailed post. It clears a lot up.

[Luís Henrique]

Thank you, Luis Henrique. I appreciate your long and detailed post. It clears a lot up.

You are welcome!

Now let me try a look at the rest of the article.


If as a Marxist this argument is new to you, the reason this is so is simple: there is almost no trace of this event in Marxist literature. For the most part, Marxist theorists never even noticed it, and no one recognized its significance. Henryk Grossman predicted it (in theory) in a paper in 1929, on the eve of the event:


Beyond a definite point of time the system cannot survive at the postulated rate of surplus value of 100 per cent. There is a growing shortage of surplus value and, under the given conditions, a continuous overaccumulation. the only alternative is to violate the conditions postulated. Wages have to be cut in order to push the rate of surplus value even higher. This cut in wages would not be a purely temporary phenomenon that vanishes once equilibrium is re-established; it will have to be continuous. After year 36 either wages have to be cut continually and periodically or a reserve army must come into being.

In the literature between the time Engels died and the Great Depression, this is the single instance I can find of anyone actually predicting what is now called “capitalist breakdown”. And no one I know of has ever understood the connection between this “breakdown” and hours of productive labor: that the two are identical.

What Grossman was predicting, in the simplest possible words, is that from the point of capitalist breakdown forward, hours of labor had to be continuously reduced. The problem in his particular formulation is that he sets this reduction entirely in the form of capitalist relations of production. So rather than saying ‘hours of labor had to be reduced’, he says, “wages have to be cut continually and periodically or a reserve army must come into being.”

So what jehu seems to be saying is that the crisis caused by the fact that the development of the productive power of the total labor power of society by capitalism eventually leads "to the reduction of necessary labor for all of society" is characterised by a necessary reduction of labour hours (and that Grossman misstates that as wages have to be cut continually and periodically or a reserve army must come into being”, and that because Grossman is reasoning within capitalist relations of production). But, of course, in a capitalist (or otherwise) society, a reduction of labour hours can only take two forms: either the number of hours each individual labourer toils is reduced (ie, the labour journey is reduced), or the number of individual labourers toiling is reduced (ie, unemployment expands, or, less likely, the population contracts). But cuts in wages do not translate immediately as a reduction of labour hours, though it can of course be argued that one thing will necessarily result in the other, because lower wages mean a lower aggregate demand, etc.

But, anyway, the alternative between less labour hours for each worker and less jobs is not neutral at all: it entails a political dispute, within which the bourgeoisie pushes for greater levels of unemployment (which in turn make an offensive agains wages viable), whereas the working class pushes (if it has some sence) for a reduction of the working day (or working week, or working year, or working life - through earlier retirement or later entrance into the work force). And so this is an issue in class struggle.

The point is, however - the capitalists' push for higher unemployment is not a matter of mere preference; for capital, it is a matter of survival. Reducing the labour hours of each individual workers results necessarily in higher wages (through reducing competition between individual workers), to a point in which it leads to profits being squeezed. That was what happened at the end of the "golden age" of 1945-1973, and is what explains "1968" as a political phenomenon. Consequently, the bourgeoisie had no option (besides of course surrendering, which is the unlikeliest thing) than going on the offensive, and attempting to systematically erode and undo whatever gains the working class had made from the WWII to the general rehearsal of 1968. That, of course, is the point of neoliberalism, and the reason it systematically displaced Keynesianism both in government and academy.

But then the reduction of labour duration becomes the key not only to abolition of value, but also to social emancipation, and not only to social emancipation, but also to the abolition of value - and the two issues, that we have separated for the end of analysis, are glued back into each other by practice.

What remains true, however, is that "the working class" (and "Marxism" as an expression of it) has made of "work" or "labour" a badge of honour, and seems to think of its "emancipation" as a reaffirmation of "labour" as an ethical value. Evidently, this is not possible (not as in "no longer possible", but as in "was never possible"); the emancipation of the working class is its self-abolition not only as "a class", but as a "working" set of people of any nature; it is the abolition of labour itself. But in not realising such impossibility, and in upholding "labour" as an ethical value, the working class is hindered in its fight for reductions of labour hours.


After Grossman is where things get entirely confused: people (Marxists) never realize Grossman’s event has happened. And these Marxists are themselves divided into a group of folks who think things are still the same as they were before the Great Depression and a group who thinks things were always the same as they were after the Great Depression.

Of course, is such division applies, it is not a division between equivalent mistakes. Being wrong about the past is by no means as serious and dangerous as being wrong about the present and the future. But I don't think the division relates to "Grossman's event": it was there before that, and while certainly the "Marxist" vanguard of the working class (and its non-Marxist vanguard, and the class as a whole) from the last quarter of the 19th century on "forgot" that the emancipation of labourers is not Labour's emancipation, but an emancipation from labour, that phenomenon was an innovation or an import (from Lassalianism, which is very clearly an ideology of hypostasised capital-initial "Labour" as an opposing force to Capital), which cannot be found in Marx himself (or, for instance, in Lafargue). And so, "Grossman's event" is immaterial for the issue of Marxism, or "the left", or the working class as a whole, ignoring or downplaying the struggle for shorter hours of labour (as is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that the labour day duration was indeed the centre of the strategy of the working class in its first half century of struggle); ignoring labour duration was already mistaken before 1929 no less than after.


This is somewhat confusing for me, since when I am reading someone’s argument, I have to first figure out which group they are in. You get people like David Harvey, Dumenil and Levy, or Chris Harman who are clearly in the pre-Great Depression mode of analysis. These are the people who think the task of the day is to seize political power and establish a proletarian dictatorship or something like that. Then you have folks like Holloway, Postone, Kurz, Flatschart, who warn seizing political power is a pointless dead end.

I think it is somewhat simplist to reduce Harvey, for instance (I haven't read Dumenil, Levy, or Harman, so it is difficult to me to defend them) to someone who "thinks the task of the day is to seize political power and establish a proletarian dictatorship". As well, I am not sure that Postone or Kurz can be read as merely "warning that seizing political power is a pointless dead end". Nor I would agree that "seizing State power" became outdated after 1929; the point is elsewhere (in how to "seize power", and in what to do with power once it is seized), and in that Kurz or Postone have invaluable contributions: we don't want to recreate the automatic subject out of attempting to "catch up to and surpass" the imperialist system (but I also don't think that this is what Harvey is up to either).


The latter group are in the post-Great Depression mode of analysis, but falsely think this mode of analysis also applies to the earlier period. These post-Great Depression thinkers believe it was always a mistake to focus on seizing state power and Engels was a revisionist.

Well, I haven't read Holloway or Flatschart, and only a small amount of (perhaps decontextualised) quotations of Postone; but what I have read of Kurz doesn't seem to me to point to any of that. His analysis of the events in the Soviet Union and East Germany is quite different from that, and is indeed based in the fact that there was little chance that the Soviet leadership could do anything else than purposefully subordinate every political task they envisioned to the construction of a modern economic apparatus that could serve as a material base for "building socialism".


So you have these two schools of Marxism existing side by side — one thinks we are still living in the 19th Century and the other thinks Marx and Engels lived in the 20th century. Neither side recognizes that the conditions of the 19th century are not at all the same as the conditions of the 20th century. Capitalism has moved on, while theory lags behind — as usual. And not just theory — the consciousness of the working class also lags behind the development of the mode of production too.

So, what dire consequences does the fact that they don't recognise the specificity of the 19th century bring to Kurz, or Holloway, or Postone, or Flatschart analyses? Even if they are lousy historians of the 19th century, how does this hamper their positions on the 20th and 21st centuries?

And if they think Marx lived in the 20th century, and they consider themselves Marxist, and uphold Marx's analyses in high steem, how are they exactly misinterpreting Marx (or misbelieving he could understand the outline of the future history of capitalism at a time when the material basis of society should have made such task impossible)?


Is this unusual? Of course not. We should expect this lag in the consciousness of society, since it is predicted by historical materialism. What this means is that there is a huge gap between the real progress of social production and the recognition of this practical progress in the consciousness of society. If historical materialism has any truth in it at all, this gap must and will be closed in a rather shocking leap of social consciousness.

This event will be staggering and will, in a matter of days or weeks, sweep aside everything we think we know right now.

This is of course a strong possibility, and one we should be anticipating rather than fearing. But history should teach us to be circumspect about such possibility. Unless we want to be disillusioned, we shouldn't give ourselves into illusions.

A leap of social consciousness is only likely if made possible by patient, unrelenting and uncompromising political work; otherwise economic apocalypse will most probably only produce newer, and more, and more violent and disturbing, forms of "false conscience" or "ideology", or whatever we want to call that. Looking at the history of the time around when "Grossman's event" supposedly happened shows exactly those "newer and more violent and disturbing" ideologies arising, instead of magical clarification.

That should disabuse us of any hopes that "History" will do our homework for us.

Luís Henrique

[Decolonize The Left]

I have heard a Communist repeatedly claim that Communism is merely free time. Because, he says, only time that is not free, can be exploited. There is no wage slavery in free time. He also connects people having more free time with people developing Communist consciousness.

In a way he is not completely wrong, but I would like to know whether this argument is new, where it originally came from, etc. He is not very clear about what is needed, what needs to be done, etc. Only that more free time is required and that workers want to hear this.

What do Marxists have to say about this?

I find it's often best to abandon terminology like "free time." The whole notion of freedom involves numerous assumptions and axioms. Better to think of communism as possession of the means of production; i.e. an evolution in the power structure whereby, as a class, the working class takes power. Forget notions of 'free time' and think in terms of 'our labor' and 'our space.' These are tangible concepts which relate directly to human life as opposed to an abstract framework where action is, or is not, actually yours, etc...

[Luís Henrique]

I find it's often best to abandon terminology like "free time." The whole notion of freedom involves numerous assumptions and axioms. Better to think of communism as possession of the means of production; i.e. an evolution in the power structure whereby, as a class, the working class takes power. Forget notions of 'free time' and think in terms of 'our labor' and 'our space.' These are tangible concepts which relate directly to human life as opposed to an abstract framework where action is, or is not, actually yours, etc...

"Free time" as a phrase has little, if anything, to do with philosophical conceptions of "Freedom".

Luís Henrique

[DOOM]

Sorry for pushing, but this is an interesting topic for me.
Haven't Wertkritiker advocated this concept of "free time"? That labor as we know it ceases to exist and that "work" turns into something we do, because we want to do it (basically turning work into "fun", "free time") and not because of the capitalist machinery?
I've been thinking about this concept before I even heard about Wertkritik. I just recently read about Wertkritik by coincidence and it seems to be a rather appealing concept, for me at least.

[John Lennin]

I recommend you to read the Manifesto against Labour (http://www.krisis.org/1999/manifesto-against-labour), written by the german Wertkritik-group Krisis.

It's also avaliable in:
French (http://www.krisis.org/1999/manifeste-contre-le-travail)
German (http://www.krisis.org/1999/manifest-gegen-die-arbeit)
Italian (http://www.krisis.org/1999/manifesto-contro-il-lavoro)
Portuguese (http://www.krisis.org/1999/manifesto-contra-o-trabalho)
Spanish (http://www.krisis.org/1999/manifiesto-contra-el-trabajo)
Persian (http://www.krisis.org/wp-content/data/in-persian-manifesto-against-labour.pdf)

[DOOM]

I recommend you to read the Manifesto against Labour (http://www.krisis.org/1999/manifesto-against-labour), written by the german Wertkritik-group Krisis.

thx, found it in german. Gonna read it later :)

[Rafiq]

I'm not sure workers would want to hear this. When I'm at work there is a certain "slacking" culture, but on the other hand fellow workers have no interest in messages like "the right to be lazy (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1883/lazy/)". So there is an interesting duality here

It is for the same reason that those who are the most promiscuous (Youth) have no interest in sexual liberation