Die Neue Zeit
4th March 2008, 02:47
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/318/hlcorbg.html
The real essence of capitalism, as Peter Hudis has pointed out, is "the reduction of concrete labouring activity into abstract labour through the medium of socially necessary labour time" (Conceptualisng an emancipatory alternative). This standpoint places class struggle at the very centre of capitalism - the constant struggle between 'living labour' and the representatives of 'dead labour' to extend or limit socially necessary human needs. Because it is our labour power which creates all new value for the capitalist, each of us must be rewarded with some of this value in the form of wages, if only to prepare ourselves for tomorrow's "daily grind at the mill". The capitalists try to reduce this socially necessary labour to the minimum, the better to extract the maximum surplus labour. As workers, however, we try individually and collectively, through industrial and political struggle, to maximise the proportion of value received as socially necessary labour time, the better to meet our needs. This creation of all new value, both the socially necessary and surplus labour, by the collective working class is the essence of the labour theory of value.
However, even a labour theory of value is still restricted to the viewpoint of capitalist political economy. What gave Marx the confidence to inscribe "The abolition of the wages system" on the communist banner was his adoption of the viewpoint of socialised humanity. By adopting such a viewpoint, Marx went beyond a classical political economy's labour theory of value and in effect argued a 'value theory of labour'. He showed why it was that the rewards of our labour are constantly being pushed down to what the capitalists think is 'socially necessary labour' and why political economy uses reified categories like wages, prices and profits. But he went further and showed us that under capitalist production relations labour is not only exploited but is the real creative pole of the capitalist production relationship. The capitalists' capital, formed by accumulating our past or 'dead' labour makes the capitalist class appear creative, to give them economic, social and political power. But their power is nothing but our own creative activity stolen and alienated. The major job for any workers' republic is to abolish wage slavery, and this, of course, is why Dave's undeclared programme of "revolutionary democracy" is not communist. His banner for a future workers' republic (if he was honestly to raise it) is "The wages system under workers' representative control".
If there is a distinction to be made between pre- and post-international revolutionary wave, revolutionary social democracy, it lies in the following. The older revolutionary social democracy clung to Marx's pre-Paris Commune view that socialism would come about by further perfecting and bringing the existing capitalist state 'under workers' control' - through socialist majorities in parliament and other levels of the state. Drawing on the experience of the Paris Commune, Marx later rejected his earlier view. He now boldly declared the need to smash the capitalist state machinery.
But in the period following the Paris Commune Marx went further, making his earlier slogan, "Abolish the wages system" more concrete. He showed us that workers' economic control could not be brought about just by placing the wages system under 'workers' control'. The whole wages system needed to be abolished. This requires a double mechanism. First, we have to take over direct control of production and distribution through combining as 'freely associated labour' - what was later understood as workers' councils. Secondly, our workers' councils must plan production and distribution directly on the basis of labour time. This eliminates the distinction between socially necessary and surplus labour and allows us collectively to agree what proportion of social labour is allocated to individuals (by means of labour certificates showing the hours we have worked) and what is reserved for the meeting of wider social needs, democratically decided by the workers' councils themselves.
If our workers' councils confine their role to 'political revolution', then the political 'representatives of labour' will develop a new power beyond our real control by mediating between what they see as the wider social interest and our 'local selfish' interests. It is only the direct collective control of labour time by each workers' council concerned which gives us the equivalent decisive power to that enjoyed by the owners and controllers of capital at present. This means 'political revolution' must be followed directly by 'economic revolution'. However, the purpose of this is not to continue these two separate spheres inherited from capitalism, but to unite them in what amounts to 'social revolution' and overcome this division created by capitalism.
The failure of the infant USSR to move beyond the first requirement to begin the transition to socialism - the abolition of the capitalist state and its replacement by workers' councils - to the second requirement - the abolition of wage slavery and the beginning of the uprooting of the law of value, is the main reason why this model has to be superseded today to create a genuine new communism for the millennium. If we go back to Lenin's State and revolution we can see the theoretical embryo of this failure. Lenin refers to Marx's Civil war in France, enabling him to advocate a new commune state based on soviets. Furthermore, he also quotes extensively from Marx's Critique of the Gotha programme, getting very close to the need for production and distribution planned by workers' councils on the basis of labour time.
However, it is precisely at this point that Lenin moves away from Marx. For, despite his monumental efforts since grappling with the Philosophical notebooks in 1914, Lenin still clung to some of the revolutionary social democratic views of the pre-World War I Second International. In particular, he shared the view of socialism as the culmination of the 'objective' concentration and centralisation of production undertaken by monopoly capitalism. This looked to the state to continue the centralising process until production was fully nationalised and hence ripe for socialisation. Viewing society as would-be socialist administrators running a centralised system of production, revolutionary social democrats rejected Marx's lower phase of communism, organised as 'freely associated labour' abolishing wage slavery. Lenin, still taking his lead from the earlier social democratic revolutionary legacy, took its logic one step further.
"All citizens are transformed into hired employees of the state, which consists of armed workers ... The whole society will have become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labour and pay." Thus it is that Lenin, coming so close to Marx's genuine communism, ended up advocating instead a 'barracks socialism'. Revolutionary social democracy viewed the economic organisation bequeathed by monopoly capitalism as progressive. It did not see the need to abolish wage slavery (and also began to view Henry Ford's capitalist assembly line technology and workplace organisation favourably, too). Instead it tried to put the wages system 'under workers' control'. The experience of the whole last century is that this has no more provided the basis for a successful communist (or even socialist) transition, than placing parliament 'under workers' control' (electing social democratic governments). Furthermore, if we look at Lenin's quotes, we can see just how close they come to anticipating the society which triumphed under Stalin. The supervision by armed workers soon gave way to supervision of unarmed workers by socialist administrators, backed by the regular army, regular and secret police, as well as Party placemen at every level. Needless to say, equality of labour and pay were never implemented. But the Stalinist USSR certainly came close to being a society organised as "one big office" and "factory".
German social democrats clung on to their Marxist label until the 1953 Bad Godesburg conference - as long as they only claimed Marx's pre-Paris Commune view of socialism as the fullest 'parliamentary democracy under workers' control', this had some legitimacy. The official communists claimed more of Marx's legacy and accepted the need to smash the capitalist state, but until official communism finally collapsed in 1991 they also clung to Marx's pre-1875 view of placing 'the wages system under workers' control'. Quite clearly, we can now see that both these views have led to disaster.
Yet Dave and others, in that shrinking band of dissident revolutionary social democrats, still want to cling on to a restricted vision of Marx, born out of the 'counter-revolution within the revolution'. Dave wants to refine this old revolutionary social democratic theory to make it more consistent. In complete opposition to Marx, who linked the need for 'freely associated labour' (workers' councils) with the abolition of wage slavery and the introduction of time labour accounting, Dave completely separates them. He protests vehemently against orthodox Trotskyist contributors to the Weekly Worker that his version of 'revolutionary democracy' in no way denies the need to move to a 'workers state' with workers' councils wherever that is possible, ie nationally. But then silence - what are these workers' states to do? Do they manage capitalism until the 'United States of the World' has been achieved? Now, orthodox Trotskyists quite rightly believe that to state such a thing openly would hardly inspire workers to make a revolution. That is why there is an alternative neo-Kautskyist face to Trotskyism. Maybe we should just wait until the capitalists have created a fully integrated world market and state before we attempt to build socialism. The irony is that, despite heated debates on terminology, Dave (provided he does not slide into the neo-Kautskyist paralysis which is latent in his politics), the orthodox Trotskyists and the old Stalinists have the same post-revolutionary programme - 'the wage system under workers' control'.
What went wrong according to Dave is that the communists tried to build communism in one country. Dave has it completely wrong. It was the failure to successfully move fully to the first phase of communism which forced the retreat from international communism to national Bolshevism and hence state capitalism in one country. This failure was at least partly due (international factors undoubtedly played their part) to the attempt to limit communism to the view that it involved placing the 'wages system under workers' control'. This is what Dave is arguing we should advocate today, whilst reassuring us that the "economic revolution" will take care of the communist future. The most politically articulate members of the Bolsheviks and the Third International, who most vociferously opposed Lenin and the Bolshevik majority's retreat to national Bolshevism, had a more internationalist perspective than those who now argued for NEP, the capitalist 'transition to socialism' or later for state capitalist 'socialism in one country'. The first task of any successful workers' revolution will be to extend the revolution internationally. Despite Dave's attempts to characterise the debate in the RCN as a debate between 'international socialism' and 'socialism in one country', history has shown these two false alternatives are but the two faces of 'socialism in no country'. Dave does not seem to appreciate that (as long as he is still arguing for workers to seize power nationally) we will face the same immediate economic problems of isolation, whether we confine our programme to setting up workers' councils or move on to abolish wage slavery. International capitalism is not going to like it either way and will attempt to crush such efforts militarily or by an economic blockade causing undoubted hardships. (We can go further and point out that the major imperialist players are not even happy with mildly reforming governments which threaten to nationalise some local multinational facilities, such as Arbenz's challenge to the United Fruit Company in Guatemala, or Mossadeq's challenge to Shell-BP in Iran). Therefore 'state capitalism under workers' control' faces the same problem as the first phase of genuine communism. The advantage of the latter is that workers have more effective and entrenched control of society. There is no separate state (whether it calls itself 'soviet', or is a party-state), which the imperialists can more easily focus their pressure on. Secondly, the example of genuine workers' control (as opposed to 'representative' or nominal workers' control) is a much greater inspiration to workers and the oppressed when it comes to spreading the international revolution.
Given the material above, there are a lot of questions that need answering, including the possibility that Marx may have become the first "scientific anarchist." On the other hand, the argument above completely ignores the "Lenin sucks, Marx rocks" argument that Russia was NOT ready for the "lower phase of communism," which leaves the possibility of certain capitalist-epoch tasks that need "completion" (which I will address in a "permanent revolution" thread).
The real essence of capitalism, as Peter Hudis has pointed out, is "the reduction of concrete labouring activity into abstract labour through the medium of socially necessary labour time" (Conceptualisng an emancipatory alternative). This standpoint places class struggle at the very centre of capitalism - the constant struggle between 'living labour' and the representatives of 'dead labour' to extend or limit socially necessary human needs. Because it is our labour power which creates all new value for the capitalist, each of us must be rewarded with some of this value in the form of wages, if only to prepare ourselves for tomorrow's "daily grind at the mill". The capitalists try to reduce this socially necessary labour to the minimum, the better to extract the maximum surplus labour. As workers, however, we try individually and collectively, through industrial and political struggle, to maximise the proportion of value received as socially necessary labour time, the better to meet our needs. This creation of all new value, both the socially necessary and surplus labour, by the collective working class is the essence of the labour theory of value.
However, even a labour theory of value is still restricted to the viewpoint of capitalist political economy. What gave Marx the confidence to inscribe "The abolition of the wages system" on the communist banner was his adoption of the viewpoint of socialised humanity. By adopting such a viewpoint, Marx went beyond a classical political economy's labour theory of value and in effect argued a 'value theory of labour'. He showed why it was that the rewards of our labour are constantly being pushed down to what the capitalists think is 'socially necessary labour' and why political economy uses reified categories like wages, prices and profits. But he went further and showed us that under capitalist production relations labour is not only exploited but is the real creative pole of the capitalist production relationship. The capitalists' capital, formed by accumulating our past or 'dead' labour makes the capitalist class appear creative, to give them economic, social and political power. But their power is nothing but our own creative activity stolen and alienated. The major job for any workers' republic is to abolish wage slavery, and this, of course, is why Dave's undeclared programme of "revolutionary democracy" is not communist. His banner for a future workers' republic (if he was honestly to raise it) is "The wages system under workers' representative control".
If there is a distinction to be made between pre- and post-international revolutionary wave, revolutionary social democracy, it lies in the following. The older revolutionary social democracy clung to Marx's pre-Paris Commune view that socialism would come about by further perfecting and bringing the existing capitalist state 'under workers' control' - through socialist majorities in parliament and other levels of the state. Drawing on the experience of the Paris Commune, Marx later rejected his earlier view. He now boldly declared the need to smash the capitalist state machinery.
But in the period following the Paris Commune Marx went further, making his earlier slogan, "Abolish the wages system" more concrete. He showed us that workers' economic control could not be brought about just by placing the wages system under 'workers' control'. The whole wages system needed to be abolished. This requires a double mechanism. First, we have to take over direct control of production and distribution through combining as 'freely associated labour' - what was later understood as workers' councils. Secondly, our workers' councils must plan production and distribution directly on the basis of labour time. This eliminates the distinction between socially necessary and surplus labour and allows us collectively to agree what proportion of social labour is allocated to individuals (by means of labour certificates showing the hours we have worked) and what is reserved for the meeting of wider social needs, democratically decided by the workers' councils themselves.
If our workers' councils confine their role to 'political revolution', then the political 'representatives of labour' will develop a new power beyond our real control by mediating between what they see as the wider social interest and our 'local selfish' interests. It is only the direct collective control of labour time by each workers' council concerned which gives us the equivalent decisive power to that enjoyed by the owners and controllers of capital at present. This means 'political revolution' must be followed directly by 'economic revolution'. However, the purpose of this is not to continue these two separate spheres inherited from capitalism, but to unite them in what amounts to 'social revolution' and overcome this division created by capitalism.
The failure of the infant USSR to move beyond the first requirement to begin the transition to socialism - the abolition of the capitalist state and its replacement by workers' councils - to the second requirement - the abolition of wage slavery and the beginning of the uprooting of the law of value, is the main reason why this model has to be superseded today to create a genuine new communism for the millennium. If we go back to Lenin's State and revolution we can see the theoretical embryo of this failure. Lenin refers to Marx's Civil war in France, enabling him to advocate a new commune state based on soviets. Furthermore, he also quotes extensively from Marx's Critique of the Gotha programme, getting very close to the need for production and distribution planned by workers' councils on the basis of labour time.
However, it is precisely at this point that Lenin moves away from Marx. For, despite his monumental efforts since grappling with the Philosophical notebooks in 1914, Lenin still clung to some of the revolutionary social democratic views of the pre-World War I Second International. In particular, he shared the view of socialism as the culmination of the 'objective' concentration and centralisation of production undertaken by monopoly capitalism. This looked to the state to continue the centralising process until production was fully nationalised and hence ripe for socialisation. Viewing society as would-be socialist administrators running a centralised system of production, revolutionary social democrats rejected Marx's lower phase of communism, organised as 'freely associated labour' abolishing wage slavery. Lenin, still taking his lead from the earlier social democratic revolutionary legacy, took its logic one step further.
"All citizens are transformed into hired employees of the state, which consists of armed workers ... The whole society will have become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labour and pay." Thus it is that Lenin, coming so close to Marx's genuine communism, ended up advocating instead a 'barracks socialism'. Revolutionary social democracy viewed the economic organisation bequeathed by monopoly capitalism as progressive. It did not see the need to abolish wage slavery (and also began to view Henry Ford's capitalist assembly line technology and workplace organisation favourably, too). Instead it tried to put the wages system 'under workers' control'. The experience of the whole last century is that this has no more provided the basis for a successful communist (or even socialist) transition, than placing parliament 'under workers' control' (electing social democratic governments). Furthermore, if we look at Lenin's quotes, we can see just how close they come to anticipating the society which triumphed under Stalin. The supervision by armed workers soon gave way to supervision of unarmed workers by socialist administrators, backed by the regular army, regular and secret police, as well as Party placemen at every level. Needless to say, equality of labour and pay were never implemented. But the Stalinist USSR certainly came close to being a society organised as "one big office" and "factory".
German social democrats clung on to their Marxist label until the 1953 Bad Godesburg conference - as long as they only claimed Marx's pre-Paris Commune view of socialism as the fullest 'parliamentary democracy under workers' control', this had some legitimacy. The official communists claimed more of Marx's legacy and accepted the need to smash the capitalist state, but until official communism finally collapsed in 1991 they also clung to Marx's pre-1875 view of placing 'the wages system under workers' control'. Quite clearly, we can now see that both these views have led to disaster.
Yet Dave and others, in that shrinking band of dissident revolutionary social democrats, still want to cling on to a restricted vision of Marx, born out of the 'counter-revolution within the revolution'. Dave wants to refine this old revolutionary social democratic theory to make it more consistent. In complete opposition to Marx, who linked the need for 'freely associated labour' (workers' councils) with the abolition of wage slavery and the introduction of time labour accounting, Dave completely separates them. He protests vehemently against orthodox Trotskyist contributors to the Weekly Worker that his version of 'revolutionary democracy' in no way denies the need to move to a 'workers state' with workers' councils wherever that is possible, ie nationally. But then silence - what are these workers' states to do? Do they manage capitalism until the 'United States of the World' has been achieved? Now, orthodox Trotskyists quite rightly believe that to state such a thing openly would hardly inspire workers to make a revolution. That is why there is an alternative neo-Kautskyist face to Trotskyism. Maybe we should just wait until the capitalists have created a fully integrated world market and state before we attempt to build socialism. The irony is that, despite heated debates on terminology, Dave (provided he does not slide into the neo-Kautskyist paralysis which is latent in his politics), the orthodox Trotskyists and the old Stalinists have the same post-revolutionary programme - 'the wage system under workers' control'.
What went wrong according to Dave is that the communists tried to build communism in one country. Dave has it completely wrong. It was the failure to successfully move fully to the first phase of communism which forced the retreat from international communism to national Bolshevism and hence state capitalism in one country. This failure was at least partly due (international factors undoubtedly played their part) to the attempt to limit communism to the view that it involved placing the 'wages system under workers' control'. This is what Dave is arguing we should advocate today, whilst reassuring us that the "economic revolution" will take care of the communist future. The most politically articulate members of the Bolsheviks and the Third International, who most vociferously opposed Lenin and the Bolshevik majority's retreat to national Bolshevism, had a more internationalist perspective than those who now argued for NEP, the capitalist 'transition to socialism' or later for state capitalist 'socialism in one country'. The first task of any successful workers' revolution will be to extend the revolution internationally. Despite Dave's attempts to characterise the debate in the RCN as a debate between 'international socialism' and 'socialism in one country', history has shown these two false alternatives are but the two faces of 'socialism in no country'. Dave does not seem to appreciate that (as long as he is still arguing for workers to seize power nationally) we will face the same immediate economic problems of isolation, whether we confine our programme to setting up workers' councils or move on to abolish wage slavery. International capitalism is not going to like it either way and will attempt to crush such efforts militarily or by an economic blockade causing undoubted hardships. (We can go further and point out that the major imperialist players are not even happy with mildly reforming governments which threaten to nationalise some local multinational facilities, such as Arbenz's challenge to the United Fruit Company in Guatemala, or Mossadeq's challenge to Shell-BP in Iran). Therefore 'state capitalism under workers' control' faces the same problem as the first phase of genuine communism. The advantage of the latter is that workers have more effective and entrenched control of society. There is no separate state (whether it calls itself 'soviet', or is a party-state), which the imperialists can more easily focus their pressure on. Secondly, the example of genuine workers' control (as opposed to 'representative' or nominal workers' control) is a much greater inspiration to workers and the oppressed when it comes to spreading the international revolution.
Given the material above, there are a lot of questions that need answering, including the possibility that Marx may have become the first "scientific anarchist." On the other hand, the argument above completely ignores the "Lenin sucks, Marx rocks" argument that Russia was NOT ready for the "lower phase of communism," which leaves the possibility of certain capitalist-epoch tasks that need "completion" (which I will address in a "permanent revolution" thread).