How should we govern ourselves?

[The Feral Underclass]

It is impossible to determine right now every detail of how we will govern ourselves in a communist society. Moreover, we shouldn't even seek to do that. Any attempt to make such determinations is counter-revolutionary in that it dis-empowers the class before it is even liberated itself. It presupposes our right to prescribe how people should live.

That said, we all probably have different ideas that we would want to input in a debate and I would be interested to hear other people's thoughts. How should we govern ourselves?

By that, I mean how do we manage and administer the day-to-day life of our society, from distribution of goods, the management of services, public protection, regulation of social behaviour and so on.

[RedWorker]

By the revolutionary workers' state lacking the quality of statehood as understood in Marxism, a natural result of the continued existence of the former.

[The Feral Underclass]

By the revolutionary workers' state lacking the quality of statehood as understood in Marxism, a natural result of the continued existence of the former.

That doesn't really answer the specificity of my questions. I'm looking to understand the structures that will be used to manage the things I mentioned.

[RedWorker]

What's wrong with some good ol' soviets?

[Speaks for the people]

I tend to favor consensus based and temporary institutions and councils, that come into being for specific needs, and that do not stick around long enough after to become institutionally inert or permanent power structures.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

It seems to me that the chief problem is to ensure effective social control - that is, control by the entire society, not individual persons or groups of persons - of the process of production. Anything else is negotiable but this - social control - is the very point of socialism.

I suppose the various social organs will tend to be (1) collegial, (2) elected, and (3) working bodies. That is, they will as a rule consist of several people, they will be elected by the population or by superior organs and their members will be subject to immediate recall if the population feels they are not doing a good job, and their members will participate in the administration of the socialist society; these will not be talking-shops that leave administration to various chanceries and ministries, as Marx put it (talking about bourgeois parliaments).

Since it is slightly impractical for seven billion people to be in continuous session, presumably some sort of central collegium would be elected by the population to serve as the supreme administrative body. This central council would in turn delegate some of its work to subordinate bodies, for example the planning commission, the educational commission, etc. etc.

Among the functions of the central council and directly-subordinated bodies would be planning production, organising distribution and dealing with logistical matters, gathering and making available to the public statistical and other scientific data about the world, organising education, the academia and so on, establishing standards in workplace safety, healthcare, education, socialised housework etc., overseeing the work of other bodies, negotiating with the mantis-people from the Earth's core, inspecting workplaces, distribution centres and so on, and probably a million other things.

Work would be purely voluntary, of course, but that does not mean there would be no management or workplace discipline. The work of management would presumably be done by designated managers and overseers, whether elected by the workers, appointed by the central bodies, or by the trusts and economic centres that would form the transmission belt from the central council to the individual production units. Or all of the above. Workplace discipline would most likely be kept by workplace committees - that is, if you doze off on the job too many times and ruin too many batches of the final product, other workers would probably tell you to go do something else.

Services would be provided by people who want to provide services, with approval from the administrative organs of course (so people who are into homeopathy would not receive any sort of official recognition, although nothing could stop them from flogging their water from their own apartments or rooms or wherever people in the future will live), and these would ensure that service providers have the things necessary to preform their service, that they are clearly designated, and listed somewhere so that people can find the service easily.

Some functions would probably be preformed by bodies of a more local scope - also elected and recallable - for example the ornamentation of a city would probably be the task of the city commune, as would spatial planning (up to a degree and pending approval by the central council, i.e. the New Leningrad commune couldn't single-handedly decide to dump raw sewage into the Neva), provision of socialised housework (creches, laundries, restaurants etc.), the maintenance of purely recreational woodland and wetland would be left to raion councils and so on.

I don't think the socialist society will, can, or should "regulate social behaviour". If you try to hurt someone else without their consent, people will stop you as a matter of habit. If you aren't doing that, knock yourself out doing whatever you're doing. In those rare cases where someone needs to be, for example, physically removed from a factory because, I don't know, they're drunk and are endangering other workers, there would probably be a purely voluntary militia trained to do that sort of thing.

[Decolonize The Left]

It is impossible to determine right now every detail of how we will govern ourselves in a communist society. Moreover, we shouldn't even seek to do that. Any attempt to make such determinations is counter-revolutionary in that it dis-empowers the class before it is even liberated itself. It presupposes our right to prescribe how people should live.

That said, we all probably have different ideas that we would want to input in a debate and I would be interested to hear other people's thoughts. How should we govern ourselves?

By that, I mean how do we manage and administer the day-to-day life of our society, from distribution of goods, the management of services, public protection, regulation of social behaviour and so on.

Presuming worker's control of the means of production and a dictatorship of the proletariat, I would say that, quite simply and coherently, these questions will ultimately be determined by the workers at the appropriate time. I would like to add to this that the conditions which will give rise to such decisions are unknown to us and we cannot truly speak to the quality of such decisions given that we cannot know the context within which they will take place.

However, I am a worker and if I was to speculate I'd say only the following:
- Decentralized decision-making processes is a must. 870's idea above of a large central decision making body with extensive administrative arms is, in my opinion, utopian, naive, and terribly short-sighted. Without getting into an argument, I see it as a perfect recipe for consolidation of power and subsequent abuse. It's fascism waiting to happen.
On the other hand, given the advent of modern communications technologies, I would argue that the shop floor ought be the independent body of decision-making. Each shop would communicate with all other shops on an even terrain of digital communication in order to coordinate all production and distribution of goods and services.
- The periphery of distribution would be local. Shops would be grouped according to nothing other than local proximity and desires of the local population. If one area needed something which they couldn't produce there, they'd reach out to the nearest area producing that item and coordinate distribution. If there was enough interest and need, they'd build a new shop for this purpose. There would be no things being manufactured across the world and shipped back to be painted then shipped back to be distributed. This is terribly inefficient and destructive.
- Likewise, management of communities would occur almost exactly in the same way that the shop floors would. Take, for example, your fire department. This would be considered a shop floor. Same for water treatment, etc... Localized, decentralized, fully democratic decision-making on a small scale. Mini-Soviets, if you will.
- Public protection would be a volunteer militia, with an attempt to draw from each shop floor in order to maintain diversity. These locals would stack, like the shop floors in the economic sphere, to form a larger force composed of a multitude of smaller cells.
- Regulation of social behavior isn't a topic of discussion, really. If we are speaking of a full-fledged proletarian democracy then the conditions are in place to determine the consciousness of the population. If women are truly equals under this society then patriarchy will be abolished by their hands, and quickly too, I'd imagine. Likewise for other inequalities and undesired behaviors.

All this said, I think it's important to focus on what's happening now, not argue over what we think things should be like. This process will be a long and arduous one, and many voices will contribute to this discussion. I imagine that we will be shocked and pleasantly surprised at how little our theorizing today on these issues will matter later.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

- Decentralized decision-making processes is a must. 870's idea above of a large central decision making body with extensive administrative arms is, in my opinion, utopian, naive, and terribly short-sighted. Without getting into an argument, I see it as a perfect recipe for consolidation of power and subsequent abuse. It's fascism waiting to happen.

Fascism is a particular form of bourgeois dictatorship in the epoch of decaying capitalism. If the prerequisites for fascism exist (for example a large and ruined petite-bourgeoisie), that is problematic in itself.

What you describe is - to be honest - both incompatible with modern, large-scale industrial production (I mean, building new factories to meet demand instead of coordinating production over global scales?) and it hints at a pretty suffocating form of localism - an obsession with "your" community, as if the highest accomplishments of human civilisation are not already global, and as if there can be any freedom in one community.

[Illegalitarian]

Before this discussion develops further please just refer to this thread:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/some-questions-t190993/index.html?p=2798248#post2798248

870 and I have almost covered every inch of the "centralized council" v. decentralization debate haha

[consuming negativity]

let's say you and four friends are getting drunk as fuck and you want to order a pizza

how do you decide to order a pizza?

you probably just see what everybody wants, see how much money you've got, and come to an agreement that is agreeable enough to everyone

there is no structure needed... you just figure shit out and move on with it

yeah, on a larger scale, you can't have 7 billion people all packed into a room deciding on who has to order a pizza, but i don't think the principle of "how about we just figure it out and come to an agreement" necessarily has to be scrapped

in fact, i'd probably just call it democracy, for lack of a better word to describe it

it sounds like a cop out, but it's basically a layman-word version of what manoir said. you just... figure shit out. i dunno it just seems kind of obvious to me. perhaps there will be some bureaucratic structure of rules, but really, that would only exist insofar as it would prevent us having to rehash teh same old arguments by just writing down what everybody agreed on before

i know, it sounds just like what we already do, but it's just not spoiled with capitalism and bullshit

but hey the rest of it seems good enough so why throw the baby out with the bath water?

maybe things will be different. maybe they'll be a lot different. but i don't have a crystal ball handy atm so unfortunately i can't tell you the future

[Illegalitarian]

Yeah it's pretty paternalistic and asinine to assume that people have to be herded like sheep or else the planet will regress into eating its own feces and burning everything to the ground, as, dare I say, statists do


We've been figuring out how to get by long before capitalism. We'll be figuring out how to get by long after it I'd imagine.

[Decolonize The Left]

Fascism is a particular form of bourgeois dictatorship in the epoch of decaying capitalism. If the prerequisites for fascism exist (for example a large and ruined petite-bourgeoisie), that is problematic in itself.

I am aware of the contextual necessities of fascism, one of which is a large, centralized, bureaucratic, and authoritarian state. You're willing to provide everything except the last ingredient and claim that it's merely due to historical context that things won't go awry? Not only can historical context change as fate would have it, making previously 'historically obvious' things become quite the contrary, but the other ingredients of fascism, such as the created existence of an "other" can occur on a whim if the populous is frustrated and impoverished enough.


What you describe is - to be honest - both incompatible with modern, large-scale industrial production (I mean, building new factories to meet demand instead of coordinating production over global scales?) and it hints at a pretty suffocating form of localism - an obsession with "your" community, as if the highest accomplishments of human civilisation are not already global, and as if there can be any freedom in one community.

You are clearly incapable of reading what I wrote so I will not bother responding further. I, in no form, advocated "my" community as being any better than another; in fact, I was quite clear that decentralized, localized, decision-making process involves all communities being entirely equal (you know, communism and all) on the plane of economic production and distribution of goods and services.

Furthermore, your Western-centric, European bias towards "global" as good is disconcerting and telling of a deep lack of understanding regarding different cultures and peoples. I believe that you, and others who support your naive, technocratic, view of the future, will find yourselves more and more marginalized until your absurd futurism becomes, as many thinkers (most notably Paul Virilio) have argued, a steady slide into fascism as you are required to 'enforce' your centralized-obsession on others (like me) who just can't 'understand' why it's what 'will work.'

What matters is now: the conditions on the ground. Utopian fantasies of production being under the control of the proletariat and also yet globalized and magically smooth are distractions at best, and counterproductive at worst. The idea that a global economy could even be centralized in some manner is, at best naive and simplistic, and at worst the recipe for global hegemony. There is simply no way in which six billion (maybe ten billion in due time) people can all be sovereign rulers of the Earth. There can only be one sovereign; that's why it's called a sovereign. You are not this sovereign. Neither am I.

We need to accept that difference and conflict are conditions of our existence as animals on this planet and work towards liberating ourselves and as many of our fellows as we can so that we can all talk about how best to proceed.

[Illegalitarian]

No, see, 870 thinks that there would be a democratically elected council of people who would coordinate production and distribution for the entire earth. This sounds like authoritarian technocracy but actually anyone would be able to carry out these tasks (except for those workers handling production and distribution apparently, because I guess they're too stupid and uncoordinated even though a small group of people can do it for the entire world. It couldn't be done on a decentralized level without price signals, which sounds like an Austrian baby capitalist argument but actually it isn't somehow) and the idea that those producing goods could coordinate distribution and production among themselves is for some untold reason unworkable and nightmarish, because, well, reasons.

also the development of the productive forces doesn't exist and distribution networks being built now are capitalist markets that are actually a part of capitalism itself. You know, like how distributing agricultural goods and the city-country networks of feudalism were a part of feudalism itself and had nothing to offer for emerging mercantilism.

Central planning worked well for the USSR too and actually there were never any shortages and it's collapse was entirely political.

I for one welcome our council of proletariat globalist overlords :laugh:

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I am aware of the contextual necessities of fascism, one of which is a large, centralized, bureaucratic, and authoritarian state. You're willing to provide everything except the last ingredient and claim that it's merely due to historical context that things won't go awry? Not only can historical context change as fate would have it, making previously 'historically obvious' things become quite the contrary, but the other ingredients of fascism, such as the created existence of an "other" can occur on a whim if the populous is frustrated and impoverished enough.

Well, I imagine that J. F. Kennedy would have been president of the US in 1964, were it not for "one ingredient". That one ingredient, namely that he was pining for the fjords, was decisive however. You are asking us to believe that a classless society - and a stateless one for that matter, as against your fantasies about a "large bureaucratic and authoritarian state" - would become a state society? Really?

But on the other hand it is clear from your references to "the created existence of an 'other'" that you think fascism is not the result of material conditions but bad people thinking bad thoughts. This sort of liberal idealism is par for the course on the modern "left", unfortunately.


Furthermore, your Western-centric, European bias towards "global" as good is disconcerting and telling of a deep lack of understanding regarding different cultures and peoples.

Ah, yes, of course, I don't understand "different cultures". Because of course every culture except the "Western", "European" one is all about decentralisation and ecology and crying Indians and people holding hands singing Kumbaya because it takes a village and so on, and so on.

And of course, China, the Arab world, and so on - the Roman Empire in the East too - all of these were "Western" and "European".

In fact I would say it is you who show a deep lack of understanding regarding different cultures and peoples by reducing them to the stereotype of the noble (decentralised ecological etc. etc.) savage, and ignoring the actual culture of the various societies.


I believe that you, and others who support your naive, technocratic, view of the future, will find yourselves more and more marginalized until your absurd futurism becomes, as many thinkers (most notably Paul Virilio) have argued, a steady slide into fascism as you are required to 'enforce' your centralized-obsession on others (like me) who just can't 'understand' why it's what 'will work.'

There would be no need to enforce anything "on you". If you don't like the global process of production, tough luck. Don't work then. No one is going to force you. But what really cracks me up is the self-confident reference to Virilio. I mean, yeah, communists are a minority now, but we're enormous compared to people who think Virilio is important, original or interesting (unless you count the inability of someone to distinguish velocity and acceleration as interesting).


What matters is now: the conditions on the ground.

And talking about these things helps us to distinguish those who are going to fight for a global socialised society from those localists, fetishists of the petite-bourgeoisie and so on, who are just going to be dead weight at one point.

[Illegalitarian]

Well, I imagine that J. F. Kennedy would have been president of the US in 1964, were it not for "one ingredient". That one ingredient, namely that he was pining for the fjords, was decisive however. You are asking us to believe that a classless society - and a stateless one for that matter, as against your fantasies about a "large bureaucratic and authoritarian state" - would become a state society? Really?

Paint it as ridiculous all you want, but what you advocate would certainly create the conditions for such a thing to happen.



But on the other hand it is clear from your references to "the created existence of an 'other'" that you think fascism is not the result of material conditions but bad people thinking bad thoughts. This sort of liberal idealism is par for the course on the modern "left", unfortunately.



This is material determinism, not material conditions. If you don't think that people themselves can change the material conditions and that material conditions are simply some mystic force that change for no reason, I'm afraid you don't quite understand the concept.



Ah, yes, of course, I don't understand "different cultures". Because of course every culture except the "Western", "European" one is all about decentralisation and ecology and crying Indians and people holding hands singing Kumbaya because it takes a village and so on, and so on.


In fact I would say it is you who show a deep lack of understanding regarding different cultures and peoples by reducing them to the stereotype of the noble (decentralised ecological etc. etc.) savage, and ignoring the actual culture of the various societies.


You just used the words "noble savage", it's pretty clearly you who doesn't understand that, indeed, the focus on localism and decentralization in these cultures is very real. If you knew much about many African and Latin American, as well as SEA cultures, you would know this rather than dabbling in old imperialist whipping boy phraseology.



There would be no need to enforce anything "on you". If you don't like the global process of production, tough luck. Don't work then. No one is going to force you. But what really cracks me up is the self-confident reference to Virilio. I mean, yeah, communists are a minority now, but we're enormous compared to people who think Virilio is important, original or interesting (unless you count the inability of someone to distinguish velocity and acceleration as interesting).


"if you don't like this country why don't you leave"

Come come now, you can't advocate for a single world economic unit and then berate people for rightfully pointing out the inherent dictatorial nature of it.



And talking about these things helps us to distinguish those who are going to fight for a global socialised society from those localists, fetishists of the petite-bourgeoisie and so on, who are just going to be dead weight at one point.


Indeed, this will help up distinguish between those who want a socialized society where the working class control the means of production and manage production and distribution based on need and that small minority of people who still fetishize constrictive vanguardism and failed notions of central planning.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Paint it as ridiculous all you want, but what you advocate would certainly create the conditions for such a thing to happen.

What some people who presume to call themselves materialists apparently can't grasp is that the superstructure of society depends on the relations of production. The only way for a classless society to return to a previous phase of social development is a massive destruction of the productive forces.


This is material determinism, not material conditions. If you don't think that people themselves can change the material conditions and that material conditions are simply some mystic force that change for no reason, I'm afraid you don't quite understand the concept.

Material conditions don't change "for no reason". At the same time, they don't change because someone thought they should change. Being determines thought - that is the shortest possible statement of materialism. "The created existence of an 'other'" is critical theory-speak that implies that the way people think about other people calls fascism into being, which is ludicrous. People of the other Chinese states during the Warring States period considered the people of Qin an 'other'; does that make the duke Kang of Qi a fascist dictator? It's ridiculous, and it's just this sort of abstract, idealist thinking that leads the modern left down the blind alley of neurotically dissecting words instead of addressing the material conditions.


You just used the words "noble savage", it's pretty clearly you who doesn't understand that, indeed, the focus on localism and decentralization in these cultures is very real. If you knew much about many African and Latin American, as well as SEA cultures, you would know this rather than dabbling in old imperialist whipping boy phraseology.

I used the phrase "noble savage" to comment sarcastically on Manoir de mes reves's claims. Just as Rousseau assigned to his "savages" the opposite of everything he despised about contemporary Europe, so MDMR assigns to "non-Western cultures" the opposite of his hated centralism, internationalism etc.

Which is absurd. And you don't appear to be thinking this through either. South-East Asian cultures, for example, include the Khmer culture, fairy famous, or notorious as the case may be, for the highly centralised Khmer Empire whose rulers saw themselves as universal kings. The Chinese culture, likewise, divided the world into the civilised, organised Middle Realm and the barbarians on the periphery who needed to be civilised and brought under the rule of the Chinese state. The first centralised states, arising in the river valleys of Asia and Africa, were far from "Western" or "European". The Roman Empire in the Balkans and Asia Minor, which is called the Byzantine Empire by those who can't go of their Western Bias, again far from Western, rivaled the Khmer Empire of Angkor in the centralist and despotic zeal of its official ideology. And so on. To say that centralism is "Western-centric" is to betray a truly Western-centric ignorance of the history of other cultures.



"if you don't like this country why don't you leave"

Come come now, you can't advocate for a single world economic unit and then berate people for rightfully pointing out the inherent dictatorial nature of it.

Well, no, it's more a case of "if you don't like working in the steel foundry don't work in the steel foundry".

I do love the constant complaints about "dictatorship", though, they raise the level of the "argument" from the merely annoying to the blatantly hypocritical. When it comes to purely personal affairs, such as who you're attracted to and what gender you identify with, whether you take drugs, whether you're religious, what you eat and in what quantities, what clothes you wear etc., many of our "libertarians" express opinions that one would expect of a fascist. But when it comes to something as essentially social as, well, objectively socialised, large-scale production? Then it's your sacred right to do whatever the fuck you please, because anything else is evil dictatorship.

I mean, did some wires get crossed somewhere? Production is social. If you don't like that, no one's forcing you to participate. But you can't walk into a factory, where a social process goes on, and demand to do whatever you please because you're such a special snowflake.

[Illegalitarian]

What some people who presume to call themselves materialists apparently can't grasp is that the superstructure of society depends on the relations of production. The only way for a classless society to return to a previous phase of social development is a massive destruction of the productive forces.

And what you can't seem to grasp is that what you suggest is not in anyway related to the socialist mode of production.




Material conditions don't change "for no reason". At the same time, they don't change because someone thought they should change. Being determines thought - that is the shortest possible statement of materialism. "The created existence of an 'other'" is critical theory-speak that implies that the way people think about other people calls fascism into being, which is ludicrous. People of the other Chinese states during the Warring States period considered the people of Qin an 'other'; does that make the duke Kang of Qi a fascist dictator? It's ridiculous, and it's just this sort of abstract, idealist thinking that leads the modern left down the blind alley of neurotically dissecting words instead of addressing the material conditions.



Again with the determinism. It's how people act, not how they think, along with the development of the forces of production, that determine change, it simply does not happen out of thin air as you seem to be implying.

Revolutions can devolve, their gains can be lost. This is simply a fact, and its likely that what you advocate would indeed not lead to a change in the relations of production, if this is the way you suppose workers should try and organize the means of production during a revolutionary period, or even directly after.



Which is absurd. And you don't appear to be thinking this through either. South-East Asian cultures, for example, include the Khmer culture, fairy famous, or notorious as the case may be, for the highly centralised Khmer Empire whose rulers saw themselves as universal kings.


The same kingdom that was extremely inclusive and was one of the earliest civilizations to try and attempt autarky as part of its proto-nationalism? Not a very good example and they were certainly not "centralized" in the way you're using the word.



The Chinese culture, likewise, divided the world into the civilised, organised Middle Realm and the barbarians on the periphery who needed to be civilised and brought under the rule of the Chinese state. The first centralised states, arising in the river valleys of Asia and Africa, were far from "Western" or "European". The Roman Empire in the Balkans and Asia Minor, which is called the Byzantine Empire by those who can't go of their Western Bias, again far from Western, rivaled the Khmer Empire of Angkor in the centralist and despotic zeal of its official ideology. And so on. To say that centralism is "Western-centric" is to betray a truly Western-centric ignorance of the history of other cultures.


You're equating the centralization of states with the centralization of economic activity. No one is making this argument.




I do love the constant complaints about "dictatorship", though, they raise the level of the "argument" from the merely annoying to the blatantly hypocritical. When it comes to purely personal affairs, such as who you're attracted to and what gender you identify with, whether you take drugs, whether you're religious, what you eat and in what quantities, what clothes you wear etc., many of our "libertarians" express opinions that one would expect of a fascist. But when it comes to something as essentially social as, well, objectively socialised, large-scale production? Then it's your sacred right to do whatever the fuck you please, because anything else is evil dictatorship.

I mean, did some wires get crossed somewhere? Production is social. If you don't like that, no one's forcing you to participate. But you can't walk into a factory, where a social process goes on, and demand to do whatever you please because you're such a special snowflake.

Production is social, it's not highly centralized and controlled by a group of people who would control economic activity for the whole world. That is the opposite of production being social. You construct this giant strawman of the hypocritical anarchists, then turn around and talk about the socialization of labor in the context of being under the thumb of a central planning committee, you can't make this stuff up.

[Decolonize The Left]

I mean, did some wires get crossed somewhere?

Yes they have, somewhere within your mind.

Not only have you entirely misrepresented what I wrote which is still posted above quite clearly for all to read, but you've further continued on a rampantly ethnocentric, remarkably over-simplistic, poorly nuanced, and, for lack of a better term, White Man rant about globalization, economies, societies, etc.

In short, you're not worth continuing this discussion because you are unable to engage in reasonable dialogue.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

And what you can't seem to grasp is that what you suggest is not in anyway related to the socialist mode of production.

Perhaps not what you term "the socialist mode of production", which apparently includes markets and so on (judging from your contributions in an earlier thread). But that is not how Marxists (apart from people like Pablo or Tito, whose Marxism is, shall we say, questionable) understood the problem.

To quote Engels:

"This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonising of the modes of production, appropriation, and exchange with the socialised character of the means of production And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control except that of society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilised by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful lever of production itself.

Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with them. But when once we understand them, when once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to reach our own ends. And this holds quite especially of the mighty productive forces of today. As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the nature and the character of these social means of action — and this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production and its defenders — so long these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long they master us, as we have shown above in detail. But when once their nature is understood, they can, in the hands of the producers working together, be transformed from master demons into willing servants. The difference is as that between the destructive force of electricity in the lightning of the storm, and electricity under command in the telegraph and the voltaic arc; the difference between a conflagration, and fire working in the service of man. With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the productive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production: upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production — on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment.


Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialised, into state property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production in the first instance into state property. But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far, based upon class antagonisms, had need of the state, that is, of an organisation of the particular class, which was pro tempore the exploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited classes in the condition of oppression corresponding with the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage-labour). The state was the official representative of society as a whole; the gathering of it together into a visible embodiment. But it was this only in so far as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for the time being, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, the feudal lords; in our own time, the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a state, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not "abolished". It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase "a free people's state", both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the state out of hand. "

(Anti-Duhring)

Once again: the productive forces have outgrown all control except that of society as a whole. Not the co-operative, not the commune, not the region or the guild but society as a whole. This control is exercised even if the technical details are left to subordinate bodies, as indeed the modern capitalist leaves the technical details to managers and executives.


Again with the determinism. It's how people act, not how they think, along with the development of the forces of production, that determine change, it simply does not happen out of thin air as you seem to be implying.

So, can you point out the post in which I implied that change happens "out of thin air"? Again, it is the material conditions of society that determine how social change happens, not the "created existence of an 'other'".


Revolutions can devolve, their gains can be lost. This is simply a fact, and its likely that what you advocate would indeed not lead to a change in the relations of production, if this is the way you suppose workers should try and organize the means of production during a revolutionary period, or even directly after.

The gains of a revolution can be lost because a revolution is a transitional period of struggle and consolidation. Once a mode of production has been established, the world is not going to revert to an earlier mode just because. Hence there have been no feudal states for quite some time, nor asiatic-despotic ones etc.


The same kingdom that was extremely inclusive

(1) It was so inclusive it had an official state religion, two in fact. (2) What does this have to do with anything?


and was one of the earliest civilizations to try and attempt autarky as part of its proto-nationalism? Not a very good example and they were certainly not "centralized" in the way you're using the word.

Autarky is not the sign of economic development but of backwardness. Many civilisations prior to the time of the Khmer Empire were autarkic by virtue of being isolated, undeveloped, lacking trade routes or the administrative prerequisites for effective trade etc. But the Khmer state, in fact, had an active trade network, reaching as far as the Chola state in India and China. I don't know where you found "proto-nationalism" in the Khmer Empire, and I'm not going to ask.


You're equating the centralization of states with the centralization of economic activity. No one is making this argument.

First of all, MDMR was talking about centralisation and an international outlook ("bias toward 'global' as good") in general. Second, most of these states were in fact centralised in an economic sense as well - not so much the Roman Empire, despite the crucial importance of Constantinople in regulating economic activity, but the Khmer Empire and the various Chinese states definitely. In fact the main economic activity in those states, for most of their existence, were public works undertaken by semi-free labour directed by the central authorities.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Since I can't edit my post:


Not only have you entirely misrepresented what I wrote which is still posted above quite clearly for all to read, but you've further continued on a rampantly ethnocentric, remarkably over-simplistic, poorly nuanced, and, for lack of a better term, White Man rant about globalization, economies, societies, etc.

You're delusional. Your complete ignorance of the history of non-Western civilisations, and your borderline-offensive generalisations, were noted, and now as with most people who buy critical theory nonsense, you're accusing everyone of being ethnocentric, of "White Man rants" etc. I suppose science is ethnocentric because it doesn't support your dreams about those nice non-Western cultures that just happen to be everything you like.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Why do you view this very specific, almost un-determinable, aspect of some future society as a question to propose right now, may I ask?

I am only interested because, pipe dreams aside, I think this is a case where the answer lies in the question, or the motives for the question.

[Rad]

Impossible question.

Right now we are workers without power. In post-revolution society, workers with power ... so unless one is in that position, it'd be impossible to say. It is like asking an 1850s American guy about what the world will be like in 21st century. With slavery etc. on his shoulders, his projection of the 21st century will be completely distorted.

[MarxSchmarx]

Why do you view this very specific, almost un-determinable, aspect of some future society as a question to propose right now, may I ask?

I am only interested because, pipe dreams aside, I think this is a case where the answer lies in the question, or the motives for the question.


Impossible question.

Right now we are workers without power. In post-revolution society, workers with power ... so unless one is in that position, it'd be impossible to say. It is like asking an 1850s American guy about what the world will be like in 21st century. With slavery etc. on his shoulders, his projection of the 21st century will be completely distorted.

I can't speak for the OP,but I think questions like these deserve more attention even if they are controversial.

The left needs to offer a positive program, a vision of how they will improve things. This worried thinkers like Kropotkin, Engels, Marx, etc... But it has receded as a critique of capitalism and the status quo has replaced a spirit of experimentation. Now will those visions be realized? Probably not. But if one starts thinking about it seriously after one gains power, I'd argue you'd be in far worse shape than if you had a coherent approach before starting.

[Rad]

I can't speak for the OP,but I think questions like these deserve more attention even if they are controversial.

The left needs to offer a positive program, a vision of how they will improve things. This worried thinkers like Kropotkin, Engels, Marx, etc... But it has receded as a critique of capitalism and the status quo has replaced a spirit of experimentation. Now will those visions be realized? Probably not. But if one starts thinking about it seriously after one gains power, I'd argue you'd be in far worse shape than if you had a coherent approach before starting.

But how will our answers even be remotely right? If we provide an answer based on the circumstances today, those circumstances may not apply in post-revoklution society.

For instance, I may say free healthcare will be typical in a communist society, but by the time we reach post revolution stage we may have already achieved free hrealthcare through social democracy (just an example). So this very concept may be redundant later on, although at the moment it has great significance.

[MarxSchmarx]

But how will our answers even be remotely right? If we provide an answer based on the circumstances today, those circumstances may not apply in post-revoklution society.

For instance, I may say free healthcare will be typical in a communist society, but by the time we reach post revolution stage we may have already achieved free hrealthcare through social democracy (just an example). So this very concept may be redundant later on, although at the moment it has great significance.

Good question. I think the answer is actually quite simple, and was recognized by Marx and Engels. Basically, as long as we have capitalism, or really any class system, built around scarcity, and predicated on the exploitation of labor to skew the allocation of scarce resources, there will always be an "imbalance" which the working class can only rectify at the expense of the other classes. Thus for instance a "lack of healthcare" should be rectified by higher taxes on ruling class returns of investments or removing privatized healthcare provisions or whatever. But no "social democratic" country with "free" healthcare also realistically has "free rent" or "free beer", the former of which is arguably a more fundamental human right than healthcare. Even in Cuba a lot of these things have real costs individuals bear.

Thus, every generation and each person really has to decide for itself what the class struggle is for the generation. It must rediscover anew what the key ingredients of class struggle should be. Sometimes this is the threat to preserve social democratic concessions, as it is today in much of the global north particularly in northern Europe. Other times it is made up of strikes, sitdowns and large-scale work-place struggles as happens in Argentina in the early 2000s and as is happening in China today. And in still other times it is in the struggle to establish socialized medicine as it will remain in America for some time. Perhaps at other times it is to keep the reactionaries at bay, as in Spain in the 1930s and Japan today. The genius of historical materialism is the recognition that only logical endpoint of all these efforts can be the abolition of classes. As long as we have class society, the redundancy you describe cannot exist.

[Red Star Rising]

Presuming worker's control of the means of production and a dictatorship of the proletariat, I would say that, quite simply and coherently, these questions will ultimately be determined by the workers at the appropriate time. I would like to add to this that the conditions which will give rise to such decisions are unknown to us and we cannot truly speak to the quality of such decisions given that we cannot know the context within which they will take place.

However, I am a worker and if I was to speculate I'd say only the following:
- Decentralized decision-making processes is a must. 870's idea above of a large central decision making body with extensive administrative arms is, in my opinion, utopian, naive, and terribly short-sighted. Without getting into an argument, I see it as a perfect recipe for consolidation of power and subsequent abuse. It's fascism waiting to happen.
On the other hand, given the advent of modern communications technologies, I would argue that the shop floor ought be the independent body of decision-making. Each shop would communicate with all other shops on an even terrain of digital communication in order to coordinate all production and distribution of goods and services.
- The periphery of distribution would be local. Shops would be grouped according to nothing other than local proximity and desires of the local population. If one area needed something which they couldn't produce there, they'd reach out to the nearest area producing that item and coordinate distribution. If there was enough interest and need, they'd build a new shop for this purpose. There would be no things being manufactured across the world and shipped back to be painted then shipped back to be distributed. This is terribly inefficient and destructive.
- Likewise, management of communities would occur almost exactly in the same way that the shop floors would. Take, for example, your fire department. This would be considered a shop floor. Same for water treatment, etc... Localized, decentralized, fully democratic decision-making on a small scale. Mini-Soviets, if you will.
- Public protection would be a volunteer militia, with an attempt to draw from each shop floor in order to maintain diversity. These locals would stack, like the shop floors in the economic sphere, to form a larger force composed of a multitude of smaller cells.
- Regulation of social behavior isn't a topic of discussion, really. If we are speaking of a full-fledged proletarian democracy then the conditions are in place to determine the consciousness of the population. If women are truly equals under this society then patriarchy will be abolished by their hands, and quickly too, I'd imagine. Likewise for other inequalities and undesired behaviors.

All this said, I think it's important to focus on what's happening now, not argue over what we think things should be like. This process will be a long and arduous one, and many voices will contribute to this discussion. I imagine that we will be shocked and pleasantly surprised at how little our theorizing today on these issues will matter later.

This sounds generally good to me, but it sounds like you are advocating complete self-sufficiency of individuals communities (please correct me if I'm wrong on this) which is commendable but in the case of water treatment, energy etc, should there not be a delocalized system too make sure that, in the event that one area falls behind for whatever reason, a central body can respond quickly and efficiently? IDK if I'm misinterpreting what your saying here though...

[The Feral Underclass]

Why do you view this very specific, almost un-determinable, aspect of some future society as a question to propose right now, may I ask?

I am only interested because, pipe dreams aside, I think this is a case where the answer lies in the question, or the motives for the question.

As a matter of interest. There's no harm in speculating.

[The Feral Underclass]

But how will our answers even be remotely right? If we provide an answer based on the circumstances today, those circumstances may not apply in post-revoklution society.

But there are surely some basic understandings of what we want, otherwise what are we fighting for? More importantly we have a rich history to look at that gives us indications of what we shouldn't be doing, so there must also be things we can say that we don't want.