Introduction to Communisation Theory

  1. Kadir Ateş
    Gilles Dauve is one of my favourite Marxian theorists, having come out of the Invariance journal started by Jacques Camatte, to producing his and Francois Martin's classic Eclipse and Reemergence of the Communist Movement (English trans., 1974). Here's a fairly recent article by Duave and Nesic of the Troploin group on communisation theory, called "Communisation":

    http://libcom.org/library/communisation
  2. Savage
    In relation to communisation in the DOTP thread, you brought up the question,

    ''how can communised workers in what was the "First World" be able to provide help, particularly materiel, for those in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of East and Southeast Asia, etc.?''

    I thought that Loren Goldner's The Biggest 'October Surprise' Of All: A World Capitalist Crash might be a good example of a less abstract plan for communisation which involves the question proposed.
  3. Kadir Ateş
    Yes, I think Loren is on the market with that text, which corresponds more or less to the stance of Insurgent Notes: http://insurgentnotes.com/2010/06/historical_moment/

    I once attended a meeting of Luxemburgists, who also brought up a good point that many munitions factories are based off of a standard factory model, meaning that one could easily convert production of missiles to production of railway.

    While I think we need to discuss both the abstract schema as offered by Theorie Communiste and others, we also need to consider the relative problems in Europe, Asia, North America, etc. The question which becomes tough--and this is why "transition programmes" don't jibe well with communisation theories--is how proles can organise this- what do you think?
  4. Savage
    Just reading Theorie Communiste's 'Communisation vs socialisation: the suspended step of communisation', again, I think they summarize the abstract position well,

    ''Communisation is accomplished through seizing the means of subsistence, of communication, of transport and of production in the restricted sense. The communisation of relations, the constitution of a human community / communism, is realized for, in and through the struggle against capital. In this struggle, the seizure of the material means of production cannot be separated from the transformation of proletarians into immediately social individuals: it is one and the same activity, and this identity is brought about by the present form of the contradiction between the proletariat and capital. The radical difference from socialisation is that it is not a matter of changing the property status of the material means of production. In communisation there is no appropriation of goods by any entity whatsoever; no state, commune, or council to represent and dominate proletarians in expropriating capital and thus carry out an appropriation.''

    I also found this section interesting because it reminded me of the ICC's theory on the DOTP,

    ''Without it being an explicit strategy, capital will struggle to recover social control in two ways: On the one hand, States will fight to re-establish their domination and restore exploitation. On the other hand, capitalist society will continue to maintain itself on the totally ambiguous bases of popular power and self-management. In formal subsumption, the entirety of the product of labour had for a long time been the object of a workers’ demand; it will now find a new lease of life and will constitute the ideal content for the reproduction of capitalist relations and a basis for a “solid” resistance against communisation. These factions may fight against each other or align themselves depending on the situation and hence on the development of the movement of communisation. The action of the capitalist class could be as much military as it could consist in social counter-measures and the construction of conflicts based on the capacities of the capitalist mode of production. The revolution itself pushes these capacities to develop in an unforeseeable manner, from the resurrection of slavery to self-management. But above all this reproduction of capitalist relations will be deployed as close as possible to the revolution, reproducing itself in all the moments where communisation starts to harden by its own nature into the simple organisation of the survival of proletarians, that is, into socialisation. The capitalist class is equally likely to centralise its counter-revolutionary action in the State as to decentralize the confrontation in its regionalization, dividing the classes into social categories, even ethnicising them, because a situation of crisis is also an inter-capitalist conflict. If in an inter-capitalist conflict one of the capitalist sites manages, across the general devalorisation of the crisis, to represent a global solution for all capitals, it will represent such a solution also for the vanquished.''

    Do you have any recommendations of theories that have attempted to give fairly explicit ideas for communisation, particularly on the topic of the relative problems for Europe, Asia, North America that you mentioned?
  5. Kadir Ateş
    Do you have any recommendations of theories that have attempted to give fairly explicit ideas for communisation, particularly on the topic of the relative problems for Europe, Asia, North America that you mentioned?
    I don't, actually, which is why I think in order to be truly "international" it would require some sort of plan. As much as I love TC and the rest, their abstract schema abstracts from the combined and uneven developmental conditions which capital creates.

    Any suggestions? Looks like we'll have to start our own theory!
  6. Android
    Android
    Do not have anything to contribute to the discusson between 'Savage' and 'Kadir Ateş'

    But regarding the title of the thread, 'Introduction to Communisation Theory', anyone who is lurking might be interested in the following:

    'Communisation and Value-Form Theory', in Endnotes no. 2. This text provides good historical outline to communisation and value-from theory. Also, I'd recommended reading other articles in Endnotes which develop the communisation perspective in interesting ways.

    Riff-Raff no. 9: Communisation - with that background this might be of interest, although all the contributions are not available in English.
  7. Savage
    Thanks Ronan.

    Perhaps as a sort of 'food for thought' exercise we could try to theorize some explicit communisation steps that could be conducted given a proletarian revolution in the near future?
  8. Kadir Ateş
    Let's put this in another thread, Savage.
  9. Savage
    A new thread within this group?
  10. robbo203
    robbo203
    Thanks to Savage I heard about this group. It sounds interesting - though we might have quite different ideas about what "communisation" entails

    Anyway by way of an introduction here's my pennysworth - my recent post to the DOTP thread. Cheers

    In the process of communisation, capitalism is continuously moving towards communism, but it is still capitalist, even in decay. To give you are fairly lame metaphor, a dying person is still alive. We are sort of going in circles here, I think this discussion would be best diverted to the Communisation Theory group where we could probably get something more substantial, here you could perhaps go into further detail of how capital, the global social relation, could possibly be overcome instantaneously.

    To go with your metaphor, I think it needs to be noted that the death of the person happens at a point in time. At one moment you are still alive; the next, dead. Dying is a process, yes, but the state of being alive and the state of being dead are qualitatively different

    Its the same with the communisation process you mention. Like I said, I am not averse at all to talking about the idea of communistic type relationships, embodied in institutions, such as intentional communities or mutual aid projects, prefiguring in some sense a future communist society and developing within the shell of capitalist society. But you have to make a distinction between these prefigurative communistic type relationships and communism as a global society to replace capitalism as a global society. There is, as yourself agree, no third mode of production between capitalism and communism. In that sense the changeoveer from capitalism to communism at a systems level has to be - logically speaking - an instantaneous process. It cant be anything else. That doesnt mean you cannot have communistic type relationships taking hold within a still existing capitalist society - anymore than a person cannot be said to be dying while he/she is still alive.


    This all ties in with the the idea of the proletarian dictatorship which, to me, is an absurd construction and a dangerous one too from the point of view of the communist movement. Such an idea presupposes the continuation of capitalism and therefore of a proletarian government that will necessarily have to administer capitalism in the interests of capital and not wage labour since there is no other way to administer capitalism. Betrayal is thus structurally built into the very concept of the DOTP from the start.

    The rationale that is often advanced for the DOTP is that it "takes time" to implement a communist programme. But this as I said is based on a complete misunderstanding of what a communist revolution is really about. It is not about implementing some programme though, of course, there will be programmes to be implemented to technically adapt and modifiy existing capitalist institutions along communist lines. But that is something that happens inside a communist society, inside a society that has already undergone a communism revolution. It is not what the revolutiuon as such is about. Here we see the problem with drawing upon examples of capitalist revolutions to serve as a kind of template for a future communist revolution - where bourgeois revolutiuonaries would sollicit support on the basis of a set of promised reforms.

    The communist revolution via the democratic caputure of state power is predicated on something entirely different. It is not at all about electing a government to do something for and behalf of the workers. Rather it is a symbolic event signifying the readiness to switch over to a communist society . It is about how to coodirnate this switch in a way which is expliitly recognised by society as a whole and is thus vested with social legitimacy. And, as I say, by the very nature of things, this switch has logically to be an instantaneous one becuase there is nothing in betweeen capitalism and communism

    A proletarian government will not have signified a communust revolutiuon has taken place, such a revolutuion will still have to take place if a future communist society is to be instituted. That is why it absoluely essential that state power should not be captured before a majority of workers understad and want communism - because, short of this, those who capture power allegedlly on behalf of the workers will betray and turn against those workers. This is a copper bottomed guarantee. History provides abundant examples where this happened. The point is that once youve got a majority who clearly want and understand communism there is simply no need to dither around with some so called transition period; you will have met the precondition required for the immediate introduction of a communist society

    Thanks for your invitation to join the Communisation Theory Group which I will take up. Whatever our differences I think is important to discuss these ideas...
  11. Savage
    For further reference, this discussion will be continued in the 'Communisation and the DOTP' thread within this group.