The worsening climate disasters and the brutal wars now raging in Europe, Africa and the Middle East show that capitalism’s tendential destruction of our future is accelerating. Furthermore, the wars are used, not just in the conflict zones themselves but all over the world, for massive propaganda for nationalism, for drumming up support for the expansion of the repressive powers of the state, for war preparation.
This acceleration of history puts the political groups and individuals who oppose supporting any side in these wars between capitalists nations in which the working class is always the victim, and who want to expose the system’s drive towards destruction and the possibility to end capitalism, before a challenge. If they really want not only to interpret the world but to change it, to paraphrase Marx, now, more than ever, they need to find ways to speak louder and with more clarity, and in order to do so, they must seek to communicate and collaborate.
So it is a positive sign that there were several pro-revolutionary encounters this year in which the question how to understand and oppose capitalism’s war drive was at the top of the agenda. The Beach Communists, who organized such a meeting, a week-long ‘summercamp’ in Poznan (Poland) published a list of them (not all on the subject of war alone). However, these meetings, while reflecting a growth of understanding in this political milieu of the seriousness of the situation by the very fact that they took place and attracted participants from many countries, also reflected the weaknesses of this milieu. IP participated in two of them. One we co-organized. The most ambitious attempt to gather the “revolutionary defeatist” forces was the “anti-war action week and congress” in May in Prague.
Prague
Many were invited and many came to the “Action Week and Congress” (motto: “Together against capitalist wars and capitalist peace”). Relatively speaking of course, this was no Trump rally. A whole week of actions, rallies, demonstrations and discussions were to take place. It seemed exactly what was needed at this time, political activists from different countries and different pro-revolutionary tendencies setting their differences aside to discuss together on what needs to be done. As the invitation said, “in the spirit of proletarian internationalism and revolutionary defeatism, we seek to give individuals and groups from different parts of the world the opportunity to meet, to associate and to coordinate their joint efforts.” Alas, the opportunity turned out to be a lost one.
Much has yet been written on different websites on what occurred. The planned demonstrations and other activities were a farce, the meeting space was lost, chaos and quarrels ensued, the meeting split in two rivaling factions on no clear political basis. They held separate meetings, neither of which fulfilled the hope expressed in the invitation. And afterwards, the blame game commenced. While we don’t want to play that game, it’s important to ask why things went wrong, in order to draw the lessons.
One cause was the overambitious program and the lack of organization, which may be due to the lack of experience of the organizers. Furthermore, when the permit for the meeting space was withdrawn, these organizers disappeared, or so it seemed. Maybe to avoid being shouted at. Members of the Czech-based group Tridni Valka, affiliated with Class War/Guerre de Classe, which tried to come up with an alternative space, were shouted at, even though they claimed they were not part of the organizing team and had warned the latter against the expansion of their plans.
Another cause was sabotage. The majority of the anarchists in the Czech republic strongly supports Ukraine in its war with Russia. It just so happened that they (mainly the Anarchist Federation of the Czech Republic (AFed) held an anarchist book fair in Prague at the same time as the anti-war congress and launched a virulent attack against the latter. They produced a leaflet1 branding the anarcho-communists who participated in it as “anarcho-putinists”. The text concluded: “As anti-militarists, we will never be neutral nor indifferent. We will continue to support Ukrainian people in their fight for independence and freedom.” That shows exactly what the problem is with anarchism, though it must be said that many who identify with the anarchist label would totally reject this masquerade of war-support as “anti-militarism”. But by fixating on the dichotomy authoritarianism-freedom, many anarchists always find a reason to support one side against the other in conflicts within the ruling class, since there is always one side which is less authoritarian than the other, thus hiding the very nature of these conflicts, which is not about “cultural autonomy” as the text claims, but about the interests of capital, on both sides. One wonders how many more proletarians have to die on the altar of profit for these anarchists to question their alliance with the ruling class. Those whom they denounced of course are neither neutral nor indifferent. It is because they take the side of the exploited class and care about their lives that they oppose the ruling class’s wars.
The pro-war anti-militarists reportedly intimidated local activists against attending the planned activities of the “Action Week” and are suspected of having caused the loss of the meeting space by alerting the authorities to the subversive nature of the gathering. Which (not the subversive nature but the suspicion) of course can’t be proven. Some participants of the anti-war congress went to the book fair of the pro-war anarchists to challenge their position. We weren’t there, but heard that it quickly degenerated into a shouting match.
However, lack of experience by overwhelmed organizers and sabotage by pro-war leftists alone cannot explain the implosion of this worthwhile initiative. The “revolutionary defeatists” 2 themselves were not up to the task. Of course they too are children of their times and don’t escape from the influence of capitalist alienation. There was rivalry, there was grandstanding and sectarianism. And there was a lot of suspicion. Members of groups who had not been invited (such as the ICT and the ICC) but came to the public part of the ‘congress’ and the local group Tridni Valka accused each other of manipulations. It was disheartening.
But on Saturday there were interesting presentations also, and some discussions. On Sunday, the last day of the congress there was a non-public meeting in the backroom of a small restaurant outside the city. We all fitted in there, with room to spare. Some congress. But still, with pro-revolutionaries from eight countries, from different groups, something could be salvaged. Possibilities of discussion, activism and collaboration were explored and we agreed on the need to define the political positions on which such an effort could be based. Sanderr of IP was asked to put the conclusions of this discussion in a short statement to be approved by all those who want to join the attempt to work together against capitalist war and peace. This statement was written after the meeting ended and initially evoked no response. Later it was discussed and amended at the meeting in Arezzo (see below). Afterwards, it was further discussed and changed by participants of the non-public meeting in Prague. The final (?) version of the statement follows this article (Addendum 1).
It must be recognized that only a few of those who attended the Prague congress have joined in the discussion of the statement. It appears that for many the event was demoralizing, diminishing rather than encouraging the possibility of common debate and action. However, this was only a first step. There will be others.
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1The complete text can be found HERE.
2We keep putting this term between quotation marks because we don’t like it. But it is generally used to designate those who oppose both sides in wars and advocate class struggle against them, and we don’t have a better term. We don’t like it because our goal is not the military defeat of our “own” side (that’s how Lenin used this term) but the breakdown of the war machine on both sides.
Arezzo
In June a meeting of left communists was held in Arezzo, Italy. It was a continuation of the efforts of last year in Brussels, to gather dispersed elements of the Communist Left and openly discuss questions and concerns of the milieu. The organization was undertaken by Internationalist Perspective with the support of Controverses. Other reports on the meeting can be found at the sites of Controverses (in French) and Free Retriever’s Digest.
The turnout was less than what we had hoped for. There were different reasons for this, mostly logistical. But almost nobody turned down the invitation for political reasons. The participants were of different groups: Old Moles Collective, Battaglia Communista (ICT), Internationalist Perspective , Free Retriever Digest, and GRI (a discussion group in Paris close to the ICT). Comrades of Controverses unfortunately were prevented to come because of covid.
Over two full days the participants discussed: 1. The Revolutionary Subject, 2. War and Capitalist Crisis, and 3. The Period of Revolution and a Transition to Communist Society. On the second day they also discussed and proposed amendments to the “internationalist declaration against capitalist war” (Addendum 1) that resulted from the meeting in Prague and also circulated in Poznan, thus involving many strands of the pro-revolutionary anti-war milieu.
The meeting was held in English, French and Italian with translation done by other members after each intervention. Notes were also done collectively by rotating the task.
The Revolutionary Subject
A text (Addendum 2) had been circulated prior to the meeting. It focused mainly on the obstacles to the development of revolutionary consciousness. The presentation concluded that as the crisis deepens in the coming years, common suffering may clarify the stakes, the class may become more unified. The current working class has not suffered an “historic defeat”. After a period of decline of the class struggle since the 1980’s in which the obstacles increased, since 2011 many intense and massive struggles occurred but more in the streets than in the workplaces and rarely based on autonomous working class initiative and organization. We must try to understand what this trend expresses.
There was general agreement on this. The discussion explored the implications of the enormous expansion of industrial production in Asia and thus of the industrial proletariat there for the balance of forces between the capitalist nations but also between the capitalist class and the proletariat. The absence of a collective memory of industrial struggle is a factor that weighs on the new proletariat.
We discussed also the impact of automation on the conditions of the proletariat, and on its social practices and subjectivation, as well as on the rate of profit and capitalism’s crisis tendency.
There was some disagreement on what the collapse of the USSR had done to the consciousness of the working class. The comrades of the ICT claimed that it snuffed out hope for a communist society (while recognizing that this hope was based on the false equation of communism and state-capitalism) and therefore has led to a political depression. Others argued that, precisely because it was based on this false equation, on a lie, this hope was itself an obstacle to revolutionary consciousness. If it’s snuffed out, so much the better.
Non-class based social movements were discussed with some ambivalence. While some argued that they were destined to be crushed and absorbed only to strengthen bourgeois inter-classist mystifications such as the defense of democracy, others thought that they are significant because they express a growing discontent and mistrust in the political ideology of the ruling class in a period of relatively low intensity struggle in the workplaces.
A significant obstacle to the development of class consciousness, particularly vehement in Italy, is the rise of base unionism (S.I. Cobas) which traps the most combative elements of the class, often migrant labor, in a “radical” leftism.
Also war and war preparation was seen by some as an obstacle to the development of revolutionary consciousness. Whatever the chances might be that war becomes a catalyst for social antagonism, it prepares the worker to act on an inter-class terrain and thus to identify with his exploiters.
War and Capitalist Crisis
Most of the discussion around war was focused on amending the common statement initiated in Prague. But Sanderr (IP) also presented a text (Addendum 3) that situated war in the context of capital’s crisis of value, explaining that at present there is too much capital existing in relation to the possibility of its valorization. While those present agreed with this, a text written by Mcl. (Controverses) which since then has been expanded and published in Controverses #8 criticized relating capitalist war to capitalist crisis. As this is an important issue, we will return to this debate in an upcoming article.
A subject of discussion was the claim that the current working class has not suffered an “historical defeat” and that this is an obstacle to the war plans of the capitalist class. It was argued that before WWI the proletariat had not suffered such a defeat either, and yet that didn’t prevent the war. Others claimed that it had been defeated, by social-democracy. Some said that the working class of today seems even more defeated which others questioned. One said that you cannot speak of defeat until the class acts in a unified way. This debate did not lead to a conclusion, not even to an agreement on what the term “historical defeat” means, but we agreed to discuss this further.
Significant disagreements arose on the question of political organization, as was to be expected. The comrades of the ICT, a group known for its focus on party-building, defended their strategy of promoting “No War But the Class War” committees, rejecting the accusation that these were fishing grounds for ICT-recruitment. The other participants did not think that such permanent committees is what is needed now. If the class struggle creates them, great, but pro-revolutionaries cannot create class struggle nor the forms of organization that arise from it. We must focus on working with others in the pro-revolutionary milieu, on deepening our analysis, sharpening our tools of propaganda.
Revolutionary Period and Transition to Communist Society
The discussion on the so-called period of transition was initiated by a presentation by Link (Old Moles Collective) of a text (Addendum 4) that was circulated prior to the meeting.
It is difficult to recall this discussion in short, to adequately portray the debate. Moreover, due to the hypothetical nature of the topic the discussion itself proceeded with some difficulty as many questions tend to come into play at once. However one thing is clear, that despite some apparently major differences of opinion, all comrades pursued the debate with openness and the will to understand each other’s positions.
The classic left communist position defended by Link and others foresees that, after a successful global proletarian revolution, a period of transition begins, in which a system of workers councils exerts control over the remnants of a state apparatus. In effect, the management of society in this phase will proceed through the organs of councilor and state power until the previous ruling class is done away with. The state is necessary, because of the need to integrate all those who are not part of the working class and thus not represented in the councils, including those of the former ruling class, and because of the need to organize the scarcity.
On the other side of the debate are the so-called ‘communisateurs’ who criticize this vision on the basis that it conceives of a transitional period by recourse to bourgeois categories. They state that revolution is equal to transition to communism and that it means the immediate abolition of those incentives by which capitalism might re-emerge. If communism is ‘the real abolition of the state of things present’ then the revolution destroys the existing social forms. The fundamental form is not money but the value form, the measure of value based on abstract labor time. Everything else depends on this.
IP-members argued that many left communists tend to think that the revolution will be a reprise of 1917, a mass strike, an insurrection, a take-over of the state. Only this time they will avoid the mistakes of the Bolsheviks. Imagining that situation, they see no other option than to work with the social institutions capitalism bequeathed them, the state, money, banks, etc, and they worry mainly how these can be made democratic and egalitarian. But the revolution will be very different. In this era of globalized capital, there are no weak links like Russia in 1917. In this era of advanced real domination of capital, the capitalist class has developed means to stretch out the crisis and to strengthen its ideological control. But it is de facto assuring less and less the social reproduction. As a result cracks appear and widen in the capital’s domination. The struggle for survival engenders new social forms, not based on value.
A system of vouchers was discussed. Although few defended it outright, some insisted that it would be necessary to manage scarcity and therefore to implement a more precise way of linking collective work to collective consumption. Others countered that the revolution would change the nature of work, that the point would not be to implement a new system of forced labor but to halt capitalist production and redirect it towards new forms of creativity.
A debate on the state was had. Those who see revolution as the self-abolition of the working class disagreed with the idea that the working class must implement a “dictatorship” and establish a state apparatus, whereas others defended varied ideas of how the councils will steer a withering state into the ground. They disagreed among themselves on the relation between the councils and the state. While some argued that those two powers must be separate so that the councils are not swayed by the inherently conservative tendencies of the state, others thought they should be integrated, that the state cannot have separate power, otherwise “all power to the councils” would be an empty phrase.
Despite or because of the many differences, it was a rich discussion but clearly an unfinished one.
All the participants agreed that the meeting had been useful and that in-person meetings are more important now than ever. The discussions should continue. There is much to be done on the organizational front if there is to be a 2025 meeting. In particular better preparation of the discussions and decisions about the agenda which includes early circulation of texts that allow time to reflect and react.
Poznan
The summer camp in Poznan (Poland) in July was the most recent iteration of an annual gathering that dates back to the 1990s. It was originally initiated by workerist groups, including the German Wildcat group but brought pro-revolutionaries from many countries and tendencies together. The focus was on reports of various class struggles but there were also workshops on questions of strategy and theory. This and the common meals, the many conversations and the bucolic settings made them memorable experiences. In recent years, some tension developed between those who wanted to maintain the informal essence of the event and those that wanted to go beyond exchanging information and adopt a common platform and think about closer collaboration. It seems that the latter won this dispute. When after the pandemic the summer camp was rebooted (organized by the group Kon-flikt in Varna, Bulgaria, on the Black Sea coast, giving rise to the term “beach communism”) a platform was adopted. The positions it defends – for internationalism, against support to any side in wars, for revolution to abolish capital, for working class self-organization, against parliamentarism, plus mutual respect and trust at the summercamp – are essential and we agree with all of them. So we would have liked to participate in this year’s camp, despite some misgivings 1 but it wasn’t possible.
So far, there have been no public reports on the meeting and the grapevine did not yield much information either. We don’t even know who attended, but the site of the Beach Communists list an impressive number of groups and projects who, aside from unaffiliated individuals, were expected to come.
From what we heard, there were no sexism incidents and the care-team did not have to banish anyone. But there was a disagreement on the most pressing issue confronting us: capitalism’s wars, ‘revolutionary defeatism’. The group Vogliamo Tutto (“We Want It All”) objected against the position on this in the Summercamp platform and proposed to change it, to make it more inclusive. They think it should open to activists who share our goal of ending capitalism but who in the meantime, support one side against the other in capitalism’s wars.
War has always been a paramount question for the proletariat. It constitutes the ultimate degree of capitalist exploitation and oppression. It’s no longer just labor which capital demands from the exploited, but their very life or that of their children. So it cuts through all the radical verbiage and shows where one really stands. Your anti-capitalism means nothing if you support the capitalist war-drive.
To quote Raoul Victor:
“Wars starkly reveal on which side in the class struggle a political force is situated. War makes clear, in particular among the many organizations which pretend to be on the side of the exploited classes, who capitulates, at the moment of truth, to the demands of the system of exploitation, and who refuses them; who calls for the submission to the dominant class and who calls for revolt against them and their system. During the First World War, it was the question of participation in the war which determined the forces that would participate in the first international revolutionary wave. It was this question which revealed to what point the Social-Democratic parties had putrefied and which put the internationalist left of the Second International (Spartacists, Bolsheviks etc.) and the anarchists of the American IWW or the Spanish CNT of that time in the same camp. Even though these currents had different analyses of the reasons which had pushed the different national factions of the bourgeoisie of the world into this conflict, they all shared the same refusal to support it and the conviction of the necessity of destroying this system to put an end to its barbarism.“
It’s a breaking point and that can be painful. “When one side calls the other a warmonger and the other a friend of Putin, we think: Why the hell? Stop it!”, Vogliamo Tutto (VT) wrote in a text titled “ Diverging Positions on War: in Favour of more Room for Dissent within Beach Communism” that was circulated prior to the meeting. They see good people on both sides who want the same thing. What divides them is not an issue of principle but a mere disagreement on strategy. And “All it takes is a slightly different weighting of the assessment criteria or a slightly different result in the empirical analysis , and you become a political enemy in such a mode of discussion. That makes no sense to us.” They are “disconcerted by how everyone around us can have such a clear and strong opinion on this in such a confusing situation. We ourselves sometimes end up on one side, sometimes on the other – although usually on neither.” Neither in an either or-situation means on the fence. But it’s clear in what direction they are leaning. Supporting one side in a capitalist war does not necessarily mean affirming its war aims or supporting its bourgeoisie, they maintain. It would only be support for the ruling class if we would be in a revolutionary situation, in their opinion, so for now, the question is moot.
As they see it: “Pursuing the strategy of revolutionary defeatism seriously and not merely rhetorically requires, first, recognizing that, with regard to wars that are currently taking place, it can only be an empty phrase and that we can’t have any influence on the course of these wars; second, determining what the conditions are for revolutionary defeatism to become possible; third, working to create these conditions in the long term.”
How? By building. “Building places where the expression of our convictions can have any influence, helping to change the real power relations, and building international networks capable of coordinating resistance – whether to end a war in a non-revolutionary way, or to overcome capitalism, building structures that help develop agency.”
These anti-authoritarians have serious leadership ambitions. But they are mistaken when they think that they can build beforehand the organizational forms that the class struggle will take and that only the class in struggle can create. This is not the task of political groups.
VT thinks that those who take a ‘revolutionary defeatist’ position today do so with the aim of impacting the outcome of the war, specifically, that they want to work towards the capitulation of Ukraine. That might be a good thing or a bad thing, they’re not sure, and they analyze the possible consequences in some detail. It may mean less death and destruction, but also Russian occupation, and maybe more war, the Kremlin would not be satisfied with a victory in Ukraine, and would annex Georgia. And VT wants to be very careful not to do anything that might lead to the annexation of Georgia. They even write: “If there is class struggle against the wars, that might actually be a bad thing”, because it might help the worse side to win.
But whatever Lenin had in mind, the aim of ‘revolutionary defeatists’ today is not that one side should win and the other lose but to draw a clear line between the capitalist perspective which entails ever more war and misery, and the proletarian revolutionary perspective, which entails humankind’s liberation. There is no compromise between them possible. If conditions arise for practical revolutionary defeatism not just as a position defended by a small minority but as a social force transforming war into revolution, it will be because this dividing line is understood in ever larger parts of the working class. This consciousness is what pro-revolutionaries must nurture. Central to it is the autonomy of the class, of its struggle and perspective, from the capitalist class and its states. Supporting the mutual destruction of workers in the wars of their rulers is diametrically opposed to that. If there is class struggle against the wars, our reaction should not be to ponder which side in the war is helped by this but to embrace this expression of class autonomy. Defending and fostering the latter is not something pro-revolutionaries must do “in the long term”. We are already living in the future. If the autonomous class perspective is crushed now, ideologically and/or physically, the conditions in which VT would feel ‘comfortable’ to defend ‘revolutionary defeatism’ will never arrive.
The central argument of VT is that there are greater and lesser evils. Some capitalist regimes are worse than others, so the victory of one can have worse consequences than the victory of another. This is true (with the caveat that “history is written by the victors” who highlight the crimes of their enemy and hide or justify their own). But in the absence of autonomous class struggle we’re all individuals with no power to influence which war machine will prevail. That will be decided by which side has the most cannon fodder and other resources at its disposal. And if there is strong autonomous class struggle there will other questions to decide than which capitalist nation or bloc is the most evil one.
We don’t deny that there are differences between capitalist states. There always are some , for a variety of reasons. Among slave owners as well, there were more brutal and less brutal ones. Among bosses too. And between the parties in the capitalist political arena there are differences as well. There are always reasons to support one against another, the greater evil. That may seem perfectly reasonable if your point of departure is that revolution is at best something that may occur in the far future, and in the meantime all we can do is seek protection from the greater evil by offering our services to the lesser one. Or as VT puts it, “helping to change the real power relations”.
That’s how leftists think. They may call themselves internationalists and distance themselves ideologically from the lesser evil they support, like the anarchists who fight in the Ukrainian army proclaiming that their voluntary enlistment does not imply support for the war aims of the state. But it’s the state who determines what the war aims are, who gives the orders which these brave foolish anarchists must follow, who sends them to their death.
In contrast, pro-revolutionaries reject the lesser evil approach because its implication of strategic alliances with the state or factions of the bourgeoisie goes directly against the need for autonomous struggle and perspective, without which ending capitalism and its wars would be impossible.
We were told that most participants of the summer camp disagreed with VT’s positions and that its proposal to water down the common platform was rejected. We look forward to learning more about the discussions that took place. In any case, it is good that this disagreement was debated. The positions VT defended are shared by many and must stimulate us to clarify the revolutionary perspective.
Conclusion
What to conclude from these gatherings ?
A member of the organizing committee of the summercamp said that “Poznan was a tiny fragment in the mosaic that is the current, permanently evolving, diverse pro-revolutionary minority. In common with the other fragments it suffered from a degree of self-centered egoism, with very little realization of the need or possibility to establish connections across the fragments.”
There is a lot that can be criticized but the fact that these meetings occurred is significant. They are but a first steps and others will follow, which hopefully will draw lessons and improve. Several meetings in 2025 are already planned. It would be a step forward if different “fragments of the mosaic” would seek to come together or at least aim for some collaboration and common discussion. In fact, the organizing committee of the summercamp approached organizers of other gatherings in March, proposing a zoom meeting to explore that possibility. We reacted positively to that proposal but nothing came of it. Another sign of weakness, but not one that cannot be overcome. The “realization of the need or possibility to establish connections across the fragments” must grow, given the seriousness of the situation.
SY and Sanderr
11/1/2024
1For example, the invitation to the event announced that there would be a ‘care team’ with the responsibility to make sure that there would be no sexism at the camp and with the power to decide that people can no longer participate. Seriously, comrades? We need a sex police? In its wokish zeal the same text also reminds people to use the right pronouns and refers, as a guide for correct behavior, to a book titled “Männlichkeit verraten” (“Betraying masculinity”). What an awful perspective! Even if it is meant provocatively rather than literally, it’s a bad slogan. Never should we urge people to betray what they are (race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, etc). Conflating masculinity with sexism and patriarchy, like conflating ‘whiteness’ with racism, is not only wrong and demagogic but also counter-productive if our aim is class unity and thus the rejection of bourgeois ideological traps like identity politics.
ADDENDUM 1:
INTERNATIONALIST DECLARATION ON CAPITALISM AND WAR (Third draft)
1. All wars, whatever they are called, are capitalist wars. While the specific conditions in which they break out may be quite different, all are rooted in the capitalist system, which is based on competition and exploitation.Wars are the extreme form of the competitive logic of capitalism. They constitute the ultimate degree of capitalist exploitation and oppression. It’s no longer just labor which capital demands from the exploited, but their very life or that of their children.
2. While imperialism has been a constant feature of capitalism since its beginning, the crisis of profitability and the escalation of class conflict which capitalism faces today and the instability it engenders, both pushes economic competition to military conflict and creates opportunities to do so. This crisis will only deepen, making it inevitable that the continuing existence of capitalism implies implies that war could reach all over the planet.
3. The working class, the vast majority of humankind, has nothing to win and everything to lose in war. It is always its main victim. National defense and national liberation means fighting and dying for the interests of one faction of the capitalist class against another. It means killing (and being killed by) other working class people for the power and profit of the class that exploits and oppresses us.
4. We reject both nationalism and bourgeois democracy, which are the principal ideological tools by which the capitalist class creates the illusion that its interests and those of the working class within the national borders are the same, and by which it mobilizes for war and justifies the militarisation of society.
5. There are no separate solutions for the many existential threats to humankind. A peaceful capitalism, a green capitalism, a socially just capitalism are all just pipe dreams to hide the growing horror that is real. War, ecocide, climate disasters, pandemics, poverty, insecurity, forced migration, homelessness, stress and mental breakdown will continue to worsen, together with the crisis of capitalism which causes them all. Therefore there is but one solution to all of them: closing the capitalist chapter of human history.
6. We are not pacifists. We do not call for negotiations or UN interventions, parliamentary resolutions, disinvestments, etc. We do not appeal to the ruling class to act “reasonably”, because we understand that it can’t. Instead we count on autonomous, class based resistance to capitalism. The global working class is the only social force capable of ending capitalism and establishing a human community based on the fulfillment of needs instead of the compulsion of making profit.
7. But it has a long way to go. Its struggle cannot be merely economic, it has to be political as well and confront the state. It has to refuse to submit to capitalism’s war drive. We support proletarians on both sides of any war who refuse to fight, who desert, who turn their weapons against those who order them to kill each other. We support sabotage of the war machine and resistance against conscription, mobilisation and the militarisation of society.
8. But the oxygen on which the war-machine depends is the exploitation of the proletariat, the extraction of surplus value. It would be paralyzed without it. So war can’t be stopped without ending exploitation. Furthermore, to make room for the war efforts, the ruling class has to attack the social wage, impose austerity. In fighting against it, workers fight against the war, consciously or not. The more they wage this fight autonomously, without any collaboration with the capitalist class, its state and its trade union middlemen, the more it can blossom into a struggle against exploitation, a revolution which puts an end to capitalism, to its wars and its miserable ‘peace’.
ADDENDUM 2:
INTRODUCTION ON THE DISCUSSION ON ‘THE REVOLUTIONARY SUBJECT”
Comments on the agenda points proposed for the Arezzo meeting, part 1
1. The revolutionary subject. How do changes in the composition of the working class and the effects of the
capitalist economic and environmental crisis affect the development of revolutionary consciousness?
This is perhaps the most difficult question before us. It can and should be argued that a social revolution is not possible without a social force capable to accomplishing it and that there is only one such social force which is the global proletariat, working class, collective worker, which are all terms that describe the same thing. But it is a also clear that this capacity is only potential, that today’s proletariat lacks the autonomy, the self-awareness, the consciousness to realize this potentiality. What are the obstacles today, besides the ever presence of capitalist ideology, whose varying impact itself needs an explanation?
– the increased differentiation within the working class: living conditions within the class, between the skilled and unskilled, between the zones where capital is concentrated and those where it isn’t, are varying greatly. The impact on them of the capitalism’s crisis and of the ecocide it is committing are vastly different, hindering the understanding of the different segments of the proletariat of having the same interests against capital.
– the relative decline of the industrial proletariat with its rich history of struggle and the rise of new sectors and the proletarization in sectors that previously still stood (partially or wholy) outside the capital-labor relation (services, agriculture, etc) where the tradition and “collective memory” of class struggle is much less present.
– the increased separation created within the working class since the 1980’s through the restructuring of the production processes (post-fordism) entailing decentralization, globalization, dispersment of working class neighborhoods and work places.
– the vastly increased productivity cheapening consumer goods and thus bringing more of them within the reach of workers (to varying degrees) facilitated the formatting of the subjectivity of proletarians as atomized individuals participating in society through choosing commodities in shops and leaders in elections, subverting class identity.
– the new technology has further undermined class cohesion by tying every individual to his or her phone and creating phony (pun intended) communities/echo chambers online that act as a surrogate for real community. However, it must be recognized that it also has created an infrastructure for the organization and extension of class struggle and would be very useful for the self-organization of the human community after capitalism.
– the combination of environmental destruction and rising poverty and increasing the gap between capital in the global north and south, is already creating forced mass migration which undoubtedly will increase. In the absence of offensive working class struggle, in the absence of a climate of hope, of visibility of an alternative to capitalism, it is the populist right wing of capital which harvests political gains from this development, which further divides the working class.
These are just some of the obstacles that come to mind. Positive facts are unmentioned. But what to conclude from these obstacles which are likely to become even greater?
One conclusion could be that we have to be patient, that Marx’s “old mole” works underground and when it suddenly appears above ground it is never expected, that the crisis must become much deeper still, to unite the proletariat in its suffering, for the capitalist order to crack at many places, for more sand in the machine, and that in the meantime, the pro-revolutionary minority can do nothing to overcome any of these obstacles.
I think such a position is too extreme. It assumes that the pro-revolutionaries stand outside the class. Both leninists and councilists make that error (but draw opposite conclusions). Instead, we must see ourselves as part of the class and therefore engage ourselves not only in open struggles but in the conversations and debates going on in our class. We are a part of the old mole. But we must remain conscious that we are not sparks that ignite the revolution, that if we make a contribution to it, it will be by sharpening the theoretical tools that the proletariat needs in its struggle for survival.
Sanderr 6/12/2024
ADDENDUM 3
WAR AND CRISIS
Some comments on the agenda points proposed for the Arezzo meeting, part 2 : War, its central role in capitalism and its effects on the prospects of the working and ruling classes.
We live in a world awash in crisis.The system, the capitalist ground rules, makes it impossible to overcome the existential threats humanity faces. This impossibility fosters the possibility of inter-imperialist war.
1. The crisis is a crisis of profitability which is a crisis of capitalism’s foundation, the value-form, resulting from the fact that “Capital itself is the moving contradiction, in that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as the sole measure and source of wealth” (Marx, Grundrisse). Since the “Great Recession” of 2008, world profitability fell to near all-time lows. The collapse was only avoided by borrowing heavily from the future. Global debt rose from $84 trillion at the turn of the century to $296 trillion by 2021, 353% of the total annual income of all countries combined.
The attempts to overcome this crisis make the impasse deeper. Automation, the concentration of capital, monopolism, the chase for technological rent (surplus profit) all lead to surplus profits for the most advanced capitals but a decline of the general rate of profit, meaning that a growing portion of existing capital assets, constant capital as well as variable capital, becomes unprofitable, and hence superfluous for value accumulation.
There is too much existing value in proportion to the creation of new value. Excess of value in all its forms: constant capital (excess production capacity), variable capital (excess workers) and financial capital (financial bubbles, growing debt overhang). All these forms of capital can only remain value if they remain engaged (directly or over time) in the creation of new value. When they don’t they lose part or all of their value. The fact that the cap class has developed state-capitalist means to temper that, or rather to postpone that, or the fact that the most developed capitals still can rake in megaprofits thanks to their competitive advantage, doesn’t change the underlying dynamic. Left by itself, this dynamic leads to a great unravelling, a deep depression, a sharp conflict between the needs of capitalism and of the reproduction of society, a breakdown and, in the worst case for our rulers, to proletarian revolution.
The function of crisis and depression, within the logic of the value-form, is to reduce the value of existing capital (especially variable capital) and thus of the costs of production, thereby creating more room for surplus value and thus profit. But war can provide the same shock treatment by massively destroying existing capital. So, rather than a capitalist solution to the crisis, generalized war is its continuation.
Compared to the social risks that an economic breakdown of global capitalism entails, war has clear advantages for the capitalist class in maintaining its ‘order’ through the militarization of society. Until it doesn’t, as history shows.
2. This does not mean that capitalists wage wars with the conscious aim of destroying value. Generally speaking this is not the case, their aim usually is to conquer value (or defend it). We have to make a clear distinction between intent and result.There is a perverse harmony between the incentives the systemic crisis creates for conquest and conflict and the system’s need for destruction of existing capital to restore the conditions for accumulation.
The crisis intensifies the economic competition, which was never purely economic but which shifts more and more to military competition when opportunities for valorization dwindle. It therefore intensifies inter-imperialist conflict which has its own rules of escalation that can overpower economic rationality and yet serve the perpetuation of the capitalist system, without that being the conscious purpose.
3. Before the 20th century, capitalist wars roughly fell into two categories. The first were wars between rival states, fought to consolidate the emerging nation-state, to expand its frontiers, to eliminate remnants of feudalism. They typically led to the redrawing of the borders but not to the expulsion or extermination of populations; they were confined to hostilities between armies. Secondly, there were wars between capitalist states and pre-capitalist societies. Those were genocidal, and involved the construction of racism to justify the extermination or reduction to slavery of native populations.
Since the 20th century wars between capitalist states have taken on characteristics of the second category, they have become genocidal. The development of military technology made it possible to erase any distinction between combatant and non-combatant, soldier and civilian, and xenophobia and racism made the extermination of the enemy – now primarily the civilian population — an integral part of the very structure and organization of war.
The tendential ejection of ever-larger masses of labor from the productive process entails the creation of a population that from the point of view of capital is superfluous, no longer even potentially necessary to the creation of value, having become a burden for capital, a dead weight that it must bear at the expense of its profitability. The existence of such a surplus population can create the conditions for ethnic cleansing and mass murder, inserting the extermination of whole groups of people into the very `logic’ of capital, and through the complex interaction of multiple causal chains emerge as the policy of a capitalist state.
4. It would be a mistake to see the tendential generalization of war as a linearly growing process. It can be expected that it will be interrupted be pauzes, moments of relative “peace”. There are several factors which for now act as a brake on war-escalation:
– The atomic threshold. The war over Ukraine may be the first major interimperialist conflict in which the two sides refrain from using their most potent weapons, because they cannot be used without risking self-destruction. This means Russia cannot be attacked directly, even though it is militarily much weaker than the West. That limits the confrontation for now, like in the cold war, which did not really end. But it is no guarantee that a future step by step escalation towards nuclear war is impossible.
– Likewise, the globalization of the capitalist economy is a factor that weighed much less in global wars of the past. This should not be underestimated. War between the two major superpowers over Taiwan for example is for now extremely unlikely, given the devastating economic consequences which the destruction (or even the temporary interruption) of the Taiwanese computer chip industry would have for both. The mutual dependency if the interimperialist rivals is greater than ever. But again, that’s no ironclad guarantee. Even though it’s bad for profits, the war dynamic can lead to a restructuring of trade patterns. We see today a clear tendency in that direction.
– The third, most important check on escalation: the lack of social submission. In a limited war, the mobilization of the population can seem unnecessary. Russia invaded Ukraine in the expectation that it would be a quick “special operation”. When it turned out otherwise, it encountered increasing problems to find enough cannon fodder to continue. To wage war, the capitalist rulers need the support or submission of the ruled. They need the working class to produce the tools for war, they need its youth to fight and die in the war. In contrast to the period preceding world war two, the proletariat in the major capitalist countries has not suffered major defeats. At the moment, it seems unlikely that it could be mobilized for war.
5. The situation is different in Israel-Palestine, where the population has been drenched for decades in nationalist propaganda, reinforced by mutual, asymmetric genocidal terror. This confirms that the brutality of war itself can be the most efficient war propaganda if the nationalist framework is not questioned. Again, until it isn’t. In the early phase of world war one, despite years of frenzied nationalist indoctrination and the betrayal of socialdemocracy, there were several instances in which soldiers of both sides ignored orders and fraternized (most notably the Christmas truce of 1914). Unfortunately they were apolitical and did not spread, and did not reoccur later, as the events of the war fanned mutual hate and desire for revenge. Only from 1917 on the general misery created by the war turned the tide and spawned revolutions which forced an end to the war and threatened the capitalist rule.
Nationalist endoctrination and the concomitant democratic myth are the main weapons for the ruling class to destroy class consciousness and mobilize society for war. It is the utmost duty of the pro-revolutionary minority to fight these mystifications tooth and nail and to support all class based resistance to war. Revolutionary defeatism is a class line.
Sanderr
6/14/2024
ADDENDUM 4:
REVOLUTION AND TRANSITION TO COMMUNISM
How can a communist society be built? A Brief Contribution to Discussion
Introduction
The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.1
Well, this statement may not provide us with a very detailed plan for a new society but what it says is key to how the working can build a new society. What Marx meant was that it is all well and good trying to analyse society and people but this doesn’t change society in any significant way. It is only the actions of the whole working class that can challenge existing society and they can learn in this struggle how to build a new society. We cannot analyse and come up with a detailed picture of the future, that has never been possible, it is only in the task of building that society that the working class can find out how that the future looks because it will be creating brand new relationships based on equality and liberty eliminated financial and class differences. None of us can see at present just how communist social relationships will look, how prejudice and power will be eliminated and how everybody will participate in the running of society. This is why the feminists, anti racists and all the other reformists fail today because they exist within capitalist society and their opinions and ideas are dominated by what they have been taught by capitalism, a system of divisive, alienating social and economic relationships.
One important thing that Marx identified about capitalism was that no new class existed or was emerging within capitalism to bring with it a new form of exploitation. Only 2 main classes were brought about by capitalist relations of production, the bourgeoisie, the ruling exploiting class, and the working class, the exploited class.2
History has clearly confirmed this analysis. There are no new classes and no new method of production emerging within capitalism. The structures of capitalism’s ruling class may have changed in certain respects and various theories have grown to try to justify state control and the state bureaucracy as a new class but in fact this change was also foreseen by Engels and others 3. State capitalism is just a development of capitalist exploitation which protects and extends the life of the capitalist mode of production.
With no new class emerging, only the working class exists as a class which can create a new society but, the working class has nothing material to protect within a society that only offers it subsistence incomes. This means that it has the capacity to see what society actually is, it needs no ideology to protect its property rights and therefore it does not bring a new form of exploitation either. This means that a working class revolution must be a conscious revolution; it happens because the working class become aware of its fight with the ruling class and when it takes power it does so to create a society in its own image, a society of equal workers.
What we have seen in this book is that capitalism faces economic and political problems that it cannot solve permanently and keep reappearing as crises disrupting society. Luxemburg identified early in the 19th century that what was coming was a period of wars and revolutions. Lenin identified this new period as a period of imperialism the last phase of capitalist and that this would lead to wars and revolutions. Different analysis but with common ground which developed Marx’s idea of capitalism leading to the mutual ruin of all classes. What we have identified is that the twin threats of war and economic catastrophe lie in wait for capitalist society, threats that it cannot eliminate so we are reliant on a working class revolution to make major changes in social relationships and effectively eliminate the domination of society by economic relationships.
Let us be clear, socialism is not something that can be willed into existence, it is not a set of idealist dreams and we cannot say precisely how this society will be organised or how our behaviour will be changed.
Remember it is not our ideas that determine society but society that provides thinkers with their ideas. A new society cannot come into being simply because some people think it possible. This is why the a socialist analysis has to be based on the reality of society and the class struggle and the possibilities they provide for the working class.
Marx was clear that socialism is the movement of the working class, a product of its unity in action and what it can build – not an idealistic goal to be dreamt up in advance.
Hence what i have said in this text should be taken as proposals and suggestions written to contribute to a discussion.
Socialism is…?
As Marx demonstrated, the inherent tendencies of capitalist development, at a certaIn point of their maturity, necessitate the transition to a planful mode of production consciously organized by the entire working force of society in order that all of society and human civilization might not perish in the convulsions of uncontrolled anarchy 4
Socialism is, its true, is a forecast, a projection of what might be possible. However Marx argued that we do have an actual basis for understanding what might be generally possible in the conditions of capitalism based on the social and economic relations that exist but also on the state of the productive forces that has been achieved.
The capitalist relations of production pit the working class and the ruling class against each other in a struggle that cannot be resolved. The ruling class needs to exploit the working class to keep growing and keep making profits. The more it can reduce the cost of labour the more profit it can make. Yet for the working class the opposite is true, to make itself better off it must fight to reduce the profit made by the ruling class. This relationship between worker and owner, between working class and ruling class is always antagonistic. It is an unending economic conflict that plays out in the workplace but emerges sporadically into open political warfare.
The possibility of a socialist society therefore starts with this permanent class antagonism, but also with what the working class actually is: that it is effectively propertyless and has nothing material to defend in the existing society and it has no interest in taking over that exploitation and exploiting others. As all workers are equal, when the working class struggles against the exploitation it suffers it is fighting for a free future based on the equality of all without exploitation.
So when the working class rises up to fight the system that exploits it, when as a whole it recognises it will need to be organised and will need to take power away from capitalist ruling class to prevent that exploitation reappearing, its power will not be based on an army or legal authorities and so forth, its power can only be based on the participation of the mass of the working class in running society ie on its unity. When workers stop working and enter into conflict with the state that is when they can learn they are in a position to manage society themselves. Workers join up and organise themselves in assemblies and take unified actions to defend themselves and promote the struggle against the ruling class. Generally speaking, the more intense the struggle, the more the working class unifies and the more powerful the workers can become and this provides the possibility and the desire to reorganise society to benefit all equally and to stop the violence of the ruling class state.5
The capacity of the productive apparatus means that all of the world needs could be satisfied if production is managed differently: a society of abundance has become possible which means money and private property are no longer either necessary or constructive. The working class’ conflict with capitalist exploitation is a conflict that can bring unity to the working class and a recognition that it is a class that has real power in society. This power to band together reflects the common situation and the equality of all workers, and this creates the possibility to build a new society not based on exploitation but on the common interests of humanity.
The working class is already a fully socialised or integrated productive force which operates cooperatively in a division of labour across the whole of production. The working class experiences production as planned production for society, not as production for self, and so if and when it succeeds in taking over society, it is going to create a world in its own image by extending its organisation, its unity and social production to all sectors of humanity.
Socialism by re-organising the existing means of production can create a society of abundance.
Some Thoughts on what will be needed in a Communist society
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
This is how Marx described in general the production and distribution of communist society. How on earth can the working class build such a society? What do we have to plan for bearing in mind that it is all estimation.
What can we say about what socialism7 will be then?
Marx called communism a society of abundance (as opposed to all previous societies where were societies of scarcity where the limited productive forces benefited primarily the ruling classes). We have already seen that, under capitalism, enough food is produced to feed the whole of humanity but it is badly used and this point is key. Humanity has sufficient people and sufficient productive forces to support the whole population but money, private property mean that too much goes to the capitalists and the ruling class in general. The objective in building communism will mean the reorganisation of society so the all benefit from the proceeds of labour.
So here are some basic general statements describing the society that could be built by the working class:
• It will be society which is classless, a society without nations, and without a dominant state apparatus.
• It is the abolition of waged labour and wage slavery
• Everyone will take part in working for society and everyone will be of equal status whatever their role.
• It will have to be a society where everybody works in a planned economy so production and distribution will be the key factors in how society functions not exchange on an anarchic market.
• It will be a moneyless society so there will be no exchange of commodities, no private property, no wages and no wage slavery
• There will be common ownership of all resources and therefore common responsibility to look after all peoples.
• There will be no rich, no leaders and no bosses as it will be a society in which everyone takes part in the decision-making processes through workers’ councils in some form.
• There will be no state that has to use violence to control or subdue the population. Any organisations must be organised by delegates and delegates must be mandated and immediately recallable otherwise there will be a tendency to reproduce professional leaders.
• Not only will workplaces be reorganised but so to will the support systems for the family, for children, for the ill, for the old and infirm.
• Decisions will be made on the basis of what’s best for humanity and not on the availability of money.
• A socialist society must also be worldwide, it must get rid of capitalism in its entirety because capital and money are such insidious creatures they will only creep back in and take over again8
Given the condition the world today finds itself in, there will be important tasks which will have to undertake in order to create socialism. To repeat these suggestions are generalisations but they are based on the real conditions of capitalism and on the characteristics of the working class
What are workers councils?
First of all the working class will have to take power. It is however not in the scope of this book to discuss the process of revolution itself, the defeat of the ruling class nor how to fight against the remnants of capitalist ideology once in power; in this article we intend to focus on the positive tasks of the working class in power, that, as far as we can see at this time, must be faced. The start of the transformation into a new society can really only seriously begin at least when the dominant nations of the world are in the hands of the working class and hopefully when all nations across the world are in the hands of the working class. Workers councils or assemblies are what we have seen in the past as organisations that represent workers power. All workers will take part in a network of assemblies which will represent all workers (of course) and which will be the active mode of management of society using recallable delegates to represent current opinions and current decisions to be taken.
‘All Power to the Councils’ is a slogan that has been raised in all revolutionary situations and it is not an empty slogan!. We know now that the party cannot take power, it must be held by workers councils, these assemblies in which all workers participate. They are both organisations of discussion and clarification as well as organs of administration.
We cannot forecast how these councils will look on a world level and whether they will represent the working class through federal or centralised systems or a mixture of both. There will also need to be a range of specialist councils integrated into the world system which undertake to represent social and scientific needs and decision making. Obviously in this day and age when science is so technical and so complex there will need to be experts working together to at very least make proposals for how to manage environmental improvements, health systems, food production, social welfare, education and so on and so forth. All these will be tasks of the moment and will generate structure that will inevitably need to grow and develop into real organisations of involvement and administration. We can see the emergence of such institutions in various example of class struggle in the past century but it is probably easiest to focus on in Trotsky’s descriptions of the struggles in Russia in 1905 of how working class areas went on general strike established a Soviet of Workers and Soldiers which set up armed workers to protect the area against the physical attacks of the state and its cronies as well as telling landlords shopkeepers and workers that rents should not be paid nor should payments be made for goods until the strike was over.
Also in J Dominie’s analysis of the Russian revolution of 1917 it is said that during the ‘honeymoon’ period of the revolution:
Russia also seemed to have gone committee mad. Committees to govern every aspect of life were spontaneously creased from housing committees, which had the right to requisition and reallocate housing, to people’s courts and tribunals, which sprang up everywhere. Even hostile observers tell of railway passengers forming travel committees which regulating the (always overcrowded) train until it reached its terminus! Clearly not of this was a result of any Bolshevik master plan and the socialisations went far beyond what the Bolsheviks had though possible at the time10
These were not examples of worldwide structures but as limited regional councils they do provide a basic understand of how these councils could function.
Is a Period of Transition necessary?
It won’t be socialism or communism just because the worker class has taken power away from the capitalist ruling class and built itself a network of councils to represent and manage society. The class will have to put measures into place to reorganise life to work in a better way and some tasks will be important to start as soon as the working takes power.
The first phase of this process has been called the period of transition. In this period, power is in the hands of the working class but full communism has not yet been built and the old practices left over from capitalism will still need to be challenged and changed. There also remains individuals from the old ruling classes and middle classes who have not been integrated into working life. They will fight ideologically if not physically against the transformation taking place even if they are in the minority and will resist change. State-like institutions ie police, army, administrative structures as well as social support organisations will still exist in this period to manage these antagonistic classes of people and to manage the general social problems that remain in the world, whether that be poverty, homelessness, social service functions, policing functions, social prejudice. These institutions must be under the control of the workers councils but separate for the state is essentially a reactionary institution and will try to take over society.
What tasks will the working class need to address first?
The class will have to put measures into place to reorganise life to work in a better way and some tasks will be important to start as soon as the working takes power. Here are a number of indicative proposals that seem to be a product of the conditions that capitalism will leave behind but will inevitably need much discussion and clarification.
• Start to draw everybody in society into the working class itself and thereby over a period get rid of all classes.
• Set up assemblies that will allow all workers to take part in decision making
• Write off all debts and get rid of financial institutions as the start of a process of stopping the use of money as wealth and exchange.
• Plan and implement systems for managing health care, and social welfare organisations but especially re-directing and re-educating them to serve people’s actual needs not a financial concerns
• Plan and implement systems for managing educational organisations which will initially need to redirect them to engage all learners in a discussion and review social needs and to engage them practically in social transformation – no doubt dependant on age though.
• Maintain and organise agriculture and food supply to the whole population. This will be essential to get right in the early stages of the new society. It will involve not just the distribution of food to the poor regions of the world but also the restructuring of foodstuff production to eliminate wasteful foods (eg beef) and improve soil and forest protections.
• Find ways to improve living conditions in the poorer regions of the world which have suffered the major famines and wars which have lead to mass migrations and will need to have the infrastructure developed and modernised so that the local resources can be developed to support the local populations. This is one aspect where the eliminate of money will be a clear advantage to eliminating poverty as the enormous wastage of human labour that exists not will be overcome by the provision of resources that are not provided today as they cost money
• Investigate how to redress the degradation of the environment that capitalism has caused. Again we cannot know what state the ecology of the planet will be in at the time of a revolution, but it is clear that capitalism will leaving major problems for the working class to deal with such as global warming, sea level rises, loss of animal diversity etc11. Hence there will be the need to tackle those radical tasks of eliminating the use of fossil fuels as much as possible and the development of clean energy sources. Perhaps there will even by the need to adapt society to the changes in climate and regional ecosystems created by capitalism so that we can live with the extreme weather systems of storms, heatwaves, drought, flooding and fire that appear to now be part of daily life. The attempts to address ecological damage that capitalism has done will itself necessitate a complete change of society and lifestyles. It will not be just the organisation of society but the physical characteristics of society today eg buildings, roads, transportation systems, agriculture, workplace, scientific research, pharmaceuticals, will all need to be rethought and change. Being carbon neutral is unlikely to be enough as the levels of existing carbon in the atmosphere will need reducing significantly.
• Quickly eliminate harmful and waste industries especially the mass production of means of war but also the insurance and financial industries
• Start to reorganise cities and transportation systems. Bordiga suggested spreading out the big cities across the countryside but nowadays the idea of protecting the countryside is likely to gain more support, in Europe at least. Perhaps a more significant issue to have an impact on this question is restraining the population growth we are experiencing
No pressure then! Frankly, this list is only a small portion of the tasks that will have to be undertaken but they will not be easy tasks to plan for and undertake.
How may manufacturing and work change?
Communism will mean significant changes in manufacturing processes and social structures, it will mean the elimination of many industries and the conversion of all industries and households to renewable energies. In this digital age of mass communication, it will involve the maintenance and provision of these resources for the whole world yet also in this early period of transition it will mean preventing representatives of the old capitalist ruling class and their lackies from disrupting these services and certainly stopping them facilitating a obtaining individual wealth and a return to capitalistic society.
Marx spoke of the further development of the productive forces but given the enormous magnitude of the production forces (including the working class itself) existing in the early 21st century what is perhaps more appropriate is to think of the re-development, even the re-construction of the productive forces. The productive forces under capitalism have been constructed to provide the expansion of accumulation and profit for the ruling class but this distorts both the process of production and the products produced by that production system. As discussed what is needed is the production of goods for their use value and not their exchange value, in other words not just to make a profit. This will however mean decision-making about production itself will have to take account of environmental consequences and quantities of materials used rather than costs and exchange values. This may well involves the generation of new products and the reorganisation of manufacturing and distribution systems let alone the location and organisation of places of manufacturing.
These sound like major tasks, they are, but don’t forget though that should the working class takes power, it will be the mass of the population undertaking these tasks and it will already have to skills, abilities and resources to produce whatever is needed. Its been doing that for the benefit of the ruling class for the last 300 years anyway so now it will be doing it so that the whole population benefits equally. This will be a real positive step for humanity.
Without money and without financial management (exploitation) not only is it likely that working hours will be reduced but also the whole organisation of workplaces will change to reflect the different social structure and the participation of workers in the everyday management of where they work. Creches, family spaces, production planning and quality meetings are likely to become part of everyday life in the workplace.
How may distribution change?
The distribution of food and household products we need for everyday life under communism will undoubtedly lead to significant changes to the structure of the everyday life that we experience now. Financial transactions will not be involved so it will simply distributive processes. So city centres and shopping malls are likely to lose their significance (unless maybe the distribution of the variety of goods needed by society are undertaken by parallel networks needing different outlets?). Will this mean the internet will be even more central to this distribution or will cooperative distributive institutions emerge to fulfil these role locally? The latter is likely to be the case for food distribution but for household and hobby goods, this is less possible because the scale of such centres would be enormous.
How may everyday life change?
A further area of change will be the workplace itself as well as working and social life of humanity. The working class will have the task of eliminating money as a means of exchange so that society can begin to produce to meet the needs of the population and not the financial needs of the ruling class. That means eliminating money because waged labour is the basis of how capitalism functions. We will work for societies good and not to earn money. A drastic change isn’t it? The profit made by employers from their workers’ labour just wont exist in such a society. What people produce will be shared by distribution to all of society. It will not even be right to say all wealth will be communal because all that is produced will be communal ‘property’ and all individuals will have the opportunities to live and experience life, sports, travel as well as any other person.
One proposal to manage this situation of who is working and who isn’t during this period of transition is the use of labour-time vouchers12. That is, all work for the community will be recorded simply as the number of hours worked whatever type of work is involved. This will enable those that do contribute to obtain the goods they need AND to prompt or persuade those that don’t do productive labour to join in and receive the appropriate benefits. In this digital age, we would not need actual vouchers anymore as electronic records on phones etc will do the same job probably much better. Such a system could easily be used to create individual labour-time records which are non transferable; this will be important as a means of preventing vouchers being used as money substitutes. This is a very specific proposal whose advantages and disadvantages will need discussion at the time.
This does not mean that sections of society that cannot support themselves ie disabled, homeless, temporarily unemployed will be left outside the system, they must of course be supported in the system equally. Even those antagonistic classes and individuals must be supported too but in a way encourages them to become a constructive part of community. This does suggest for example that the labour-time records system would vary with position in society.
Only socialisation of the means of production … leads to the elimination of the capitalist commodity economy and thus to the overthrow of the product over the producer13
So by eliminating waged labour, the product of labour will be managed by workers themselves through their councils and consequently the distribution of the produce will be in their hands too. No longer can labour lose the benefits of what it produces to others as private property, it will be communal property.
Related to the reorganisation of the workplace will be the need to reorganisation of everyday life both in the family and the community as a whole. What are the features of everyday life in capitalist society? We have family homes for nuclear families, city centres and shopping centres for purchasing goods, cafes as leisure resources, cars and road networks for transport to work, education in schools, divisions between town and country and police to try to keep our activity within the bounds of what is accepted.
Social care facilities such as childcare for the very young, creche provision, care of the elderly and disabled will likely become socialised activities rather than being limited by reliance of family or state funding/support. Such services will need to be provided on a local level and will not be limited by the cost-benefit calculations performed by capitalism that lead to services being reduced to minimal costs.
Health care will not be limited by such cost-benefit calculations either but should have their basis in the provision of quality healthcare for all. This will probably have to divided into local regional and international resources dependant on issues and urgencies but we can surely eliminate that problem that stocks of drugs and equipment are limited to minimal levels instead of say emergency levels. Capitalism is happy to vast amounts of stock weaponry just in case but clearly fails to do this with regards to health requirements of the population as we say with the Covid pandemic when there were clearly totally insufficient stock of Personal Protection Equipment let alone beds and breathing equipment. This context really does represent the change of approach in a communist society where the basis of planning is what is necessary to support the whole community not what is necessary to support the state and the ruling class.
Transportation poses interesting problems. Capitalism offers far too little provision of public transport which is something that can easily be redressed but it is probably true that society is so complex now that individual transport will still be necessary – Cars may not entirely disappear therefore. Bulk distribution systems will still be essential and lorry and train networks are irreplaceable at present. What must be worked on therefore is clean propulsion systems for all vehicles. We will still rely on the engineers and technical developments to come up with new and improved systems.
The ideologies and ethics of capitalist society and the culture they create have to change but how? Academic studies may well contribute to this but, mostly, the changing practice in society will lead to material changes in the ideas held by all individuals society. Equality between races and genders will emerge from the equality felt by all workers and the elimination of classes and social structures.
Leisure activities will take up more of people’s daytime hours which is likely to be reflecting in facilities available locally. Education may well become a lifetime option.
Will we remain dependant on cars for travel or social transport networks and how on earth would traffic rules be implemented? Will we need holiday allowances? How will communal property be distinguished from personal property? These and many other questions are too specific and must remain open until we come face to face with these problems.
What tasks will the political party(s) of the working class have?
Last but not least will be the role of political organisations whether this is called the International or the Party. In the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks, the main political party that had the confidence of the working class in Russia, were not clear about their role and the role of the state and hence the Bolshevik party grew in size enormously during the revolution, came to take over or be identified with the state apparatus and individual members worked in the administration systems that were set up. We can draw lessons from that experience; firstly that the Party, or political organisations in general, cannot take power away from the mass organisations of the working class, that members of the Party should confine themselves to political tasks of making clear the long term goals of the revolution and of analysing the progress and indeed the errors that are being made as well as combating the remnants of capitalist ideology. The members of such organisations should also not get worn out by taking roles in the social administration but should focus on their political tasks of analysing social progress and political needs.
The tasks of the political party of the working class are not to take power or administer society but lie in understanding the current situation and in planning for the future.
Marx identified that the state is a product of class society which should wither away as the existence of classes comes to an end and as all members of society participate equally in community management. Perhaps it is also the case that the Party will wither away too as society achieves the goal of a classless existence and all that is left is the ‘administration of things’.
So while it is not possible to forecast exactly how socialism can be organised and exactly how humanity will behave in a society based on equality but, as you can see, we can make suggestions and proposals based on an analysis of what capitalism is and what the working class is. They are not being presented as rules however that have to be followed.
Racism, sexism, and social prejudice in general are products of class societies based on divisions and inequalities experience today and in the past. We know we want to get rid of these and other problems in the way people behaviour eg greed, selfishness, power lust, but we cant predetermine how this can happen. By getting rid of the power of the ruling class and the domination of work over our lives, we can get rid of the alienation each worker feels against society and other people. This means we an eliminate the prejudices and conflicts that keep us isolated and antagonistic to others. We may have ideas as to what is needed – and indeed it is a good to develop critiques of existing behaviour in this respect – but that cannot mean we know exactly what can emerge when the weight of whole working class attempts to transform how society works and behaves.
Don’t be put off by this uncertainty, the understanding of how socialism can be created by the whole of society rather than by powerful individuals, should give us all confidence in the possibilities it offers.
Let’s finish with one last, thought-provoking quote from Luxemburg on economics. Political economy or economics as it known in the 21st century only exists through the domination of commodity production and private property. This does not mean the some form of accounting won’t be necessary to make judgements about benefits versus costs to production. But the disappearance of private property and the accumulation of capital and wealth indicate that capitalism is to be replaced by a communal society based on social production and social ownership ie production and ownership by society as a whole not individuals.
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