Left-Communism's Discontents
Table of Contents
The Nail In The Coffin: The Left-Communist “Program” is Social-Democracy (what!?)
Prelude: The Essence of Left-Communism
This article started from an engagement with “left-communists” after I got tasked with critiquing some selected works they chose as the foundation of their thought. This group of people chose two works, one dealing with the economic reality of the Soviet Union, Capitalism and Class Struggle in the USSR by Neil C. Fernandez, and one dealing with the political reality of the Soviet Union, A Revolution Summed Up by the ICP.
But let us makes necessary statements on the nature of left-communism before beginning the critique of the material they rely on.
When speaking of left-communism, we must always be reminded that we are not speaking of a communist tradition, for a communist tradition has accomplishments as the Communards, the 2nd Internationale Social-Democrats and the Bolsheviks do. We are also not speaking of an ideology, for an ideology is concretely reproduced in civil society. What we are speaking of when analyzing left-communism is the excrement of an ideology. To use Lenin’s term: it is a pathology.
"But but but I am a Bordigist, not a councilist as Lenin was arguing against!!!!"
The pathology of left-communism is one of method, not one of political positions or tactics. Councilism and organic centralism are simply two sides of the same coin:
-Do they both deny communism’s mass appeal? Yes.
-Do they both deny communism’s victory of the battle “of democracy”? Yes.
-Do they both deny the Party as a different sphere from the working class (one by rejecting the Party altogether, one by “organic centralism”)? Yes.
-Are they both insecure about the objectivity of communism and want to police every single act of the working class even under the system of free association? Yes.
-Do they ironically have forms they worship as eternal (councils or Parties!)? Yes.
-Are they both worthless movements without a shred of accomplishments or even CLAIMS on accomplishments - a characteristic Lenin noted of the “Lefts”? Yes.
When you become a left-communist, you stop thinking. You do not analyze the novel developments in the sciences - so as to submit them to absolute criticism and distill their rational kernel. Rather, you dismiss all novelty as false. You do not take the time to master the foundations of novel forms of ideology, rather you reduce them to past counterparts. You do not take account for any history, for you have no history. You can not learn from the past since you wish to take what ideally is demonstrated to you as “good” and reject the “bad”. You become one of those who want the Paris Commune without Marx. Those who want Marx without the 2nd Internationale and its institutions. Those who want Social-Democracy without Kautsky. Those who want Lenin without Stalin. Those who want Mao without Deng. All of these perspectives must be rejected.
Marx was conceptually in the Paris Commune from the start.
Kautsky was conceptually in Social-Democracy from the start.
Stalin was conceptually in Lenin from the start.
Deng was conceptually in Mao from the start.
The reason Lenin could not believe Kautsky’s failure was precisely because of his proximity to what Kautsky represented. He understood Kautsky’s failure as his own. This is the fundamental step the left-communist can never make. Similar to many vulgar Marxists, the left-communist always finds a scapegoat - as the anti-semites do with the Jew. They have countless debates about the “clear break” of when the Soviet Union “had a counter-revolution”. Is it 1924? No, no, it has to be 1926! Is it rather 1929?
This entire perspective must be rejected. If we are to be proper Marxists and subsequently Leninists, we must understand the history of the entire Soviet Union as our own. All of it without dismissal.
This is how Lenin dealt with the legacy of 2nd International Social-Democracy. He claimed authentic continuity with the essence of the whole movement - which was beginning to be distorted in his time. He did not reject this movement - he showed how this movement itself led to his position. He showed an alternative interpretation of the Social-Democratic Act. From our perspective, we must show how an alternative interpretation of the whole Bolshevik act leads to our own position. Not that this act was not “pure” enough - but that this act has two possible interpretations - one which takes it further and one which brings it back to the past! We must say: “We are the Soviet Union now!".
What does this do? This renders our analysis of history properly immanent. We can analyze the beginning and the end, how the end was in the beginning and how the beginning contrasts with its own end. We can analyze how the elements we wished to defend in the beginning gradually dissolved upon their own immanent logic, how they were partially defended, how they eventually had to be rejected and how our very beginning was partially wrong and partially right. Was it a “wrong” that we failed? Absolutely not. For failure is part of historical authenticity.
These philistines are the types to say the Paris Commune was “wrong” but they “had good intentions”. This is a view that has to be rejected altogether. The complete opposite is the case: the Paris Commune was right in its very failure. In the very manner that it insisted and sustained its failure, it proved to the entire world that this failure was also theirs. This was also the ultimate failure of the capitalist order, not merely of the communists. Put in other words, if the Paris Commune had not insisted upon its failure and thrown itself in the hands of history proper if it had waited for the “international revolution”, the “right conditions” as the Mensheviks preached or the “advanced capitalist countries”, it would not have proven to the entire world the void of the capitalist order - the political void which makes possible the proletarian dictatorship. Should we prove this void at the cost of failing? Yes, we should. Not only should we, but it is absolutely necessary and will happen regardless - whether by the working class or by barbarism.
This should be our perspective on the Soviet Union. A naive perspective of “counter-revolution” hence becomes impossible. The revolution contained a counter-revolution of itself, objectively speaking. This is independent of any subject. Hence, the goal is to locate the Soviet dissolution within the very start with Lenin - learning from this specific instance and failure - transforming the Soviet Union from within the Soviet Union. It is impossible to take “distance” from the Soviet Union, to assert a pure untainted past. This “past” is itself overdetermined by the Soviet project. It is only in negation of the Soviet Union can a seemingly “pure past”, a false one, be discovered; the Soviet Union has already transformed the parameters of what is considered victory and what is considered failure. The political void which was created prior to the Bolshevik revolution absolutely had to be seized upon. This void of the unknown success or failure of the revolution is what defines the revolutionary moment proper. The specific acts and material consequences of seizing this void is what define the development of revolutionary tactics.
Only in this void can the universality of Marxism be proven. Only in “backwards Russia” can Marxism be asserted as true - as truly universal - as applying and transforming all conditions. Only in the drawing out of the proletarian interest from the most distant and abstract conditions and reflecting them to the whole of capitalist reality can Marxism be proven as a universal theory.
Continuing on the pathology of left-communism, let us give some concrete examples to distill the essence of this brain disorder.
For example, it is impossible to find a left-communist dealing with neo-classical economics on its own grounds - without naively falling back to his old formalism about capitalism. For a left-communist, all these theories are just “useless extensions” of the old bourgeois capitalism. Why were they necessary then? He will reply: capitalism needs to expand. But why in this qualitatively specific manner? He will reply: since it encountered a novelty it had to subsume. Isn’t this a contradiction with what you said earlier? Doesn’t every novel subsumption come with a novel space for the class struggle and the emergence of socialism? He will reply: No since capitalism always subsumes in the same manner. So why did this “novelty” appear as a novelty and not as merely the extension of the past? He will reply: that is just fetishism. But doesn’t every fetish, especially every new fetish, designate a decaying of that very fetish? Doesn’t every fetish designate a relative breakdown, at varying levels of the mode of production, of capitalist subsumption which allows us to consciously critique it? Isn’t this the condition of possibility of Marx’s project?
To this, he has no answer.
It is impossible to find a left-communist with insights into contemporary capitalism. Since the left-communist denies the possibility of historical development until “all capitalism” collapses, he can never offer any initiative, insight or contribution. Since he denies the abolition of capitalism within capitalism - a foundation of the dialectical materialist outlook - he can never locate the “abolitions” of capitalism within capitalism:
"This [the stock exchanges] is the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself, and hence a self-dissolving contradiction, which prima facie represents a mere phase of transition to a new form of production. It manifests itself as such a contradiction in its effects." -Marx, Capital
It is impossible to find a left-communist with insights into the empirical development of communism. Since the left-communist denies the development of socialist forms of production within capitalism - another foundation of the dialectical materialist outlook - he can never locate the socialist forms of production that are emerging:
"The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organization all the shortcomings of the prevailing system. But the antithesis between capital and labour is overcome within them, if at first only by way of making the associated labourers into their own capitalist, i.e., by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of one's own labour. They show how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production have reached a particular state." -Marx, Capital
It is impossible to find a left-communist with insights into contemporary ideology. Since the left-communist denies the breakdown of capitalist ideology from within capitalist ideology - a foundation and condition of Marx’s theory of the fetish (Marx could only have analyzed a “fetish” if it was already decaying) - he can never locate novel representations of proletarian interest, class consciousness and communist ideology.
It is impossible to find a left-communist with insights into political strategy. Since the left-communist denies the breakdown of class from within class, from within the bourgeoisie, the left-communist snivels at every class breakdown as “bourgeois” - not recognizing this very breakdown creates the space which must be seized by the proletarian revolution.
Do you notice a pattern here? The issue with left-communism is not about empirical arguments. It is not about proving this point or that point to them. It is not about establishing this or that policy. It is not about using this or that tactic. All of these are veneers for their true pathology. It is a fundamental rotting of the brain which is incapable of understanding Marx’s method. Dialectical thinking, for a left-communist, is impossible. The trauma this would inflict on the victim would shock them so hard to their core that they would either leave Marxism or leave ideology. Funnily enough, this is what we observe historically. From Camatte’s rejection of Marxism, to Adorno’s “negative dialectics”, to the Situationists, Communizers and Autonomists and finally to the roots of fascism itself - all stemming from some form of left-communism originally. Push a left-communist hard enough and he will always concede Marx was wrong about his own philosophy, that dialectical materialism ends with “negation”, that Engels was wrong about nature, that Marxism ends with primitivism and degrowth as Camatte concluded.
The same logical line will be seen in our dealing with the left-communist garbage they call their “theory”. The same issue will present itself when we deal with capitalist production, with the commodity, with value, with the nation, with the state, with the Party, with class.
The left-communist can not conceive of the abolition of value from within value-form, the abolition of the commodity from within the commodity-form, the abolition of the nation from within the nation, the abolition of the state from within the state, the abolition of the Party (and the political/economic divide in general) from within the Party and the abolition of classes from within class.
Hence, the left-communist has not even begun to grasp Marx’s theoretical genius. He is still primitive in his thinking; incapable of grasping the dialectical argument Marx presents about capitalism. He can not grasp how the abolition of private property leads to collective production and appropriation - a process which necessarily re-defines the content of what is produced and appropriated as now labor acquires its social share in production and not its value as “labor power” - the value which only extends as long as it accumulates Capital. He can not grasp how exchange without private appropriation necessarily leads to the unification (and abolition) of the political and the economic - the abolition of the town/country distinction - by the very fact that the workers under the separated spheres now collectively own the same share in production - in qualitative term - leading to the outstripping of exchange/money altogether.
Thus, the only possible way to preserve the left-communist pathology is to dress it up with the most minute discussions about “tactics”, “the Party” and “when was the Soviet counter-revolution”. All the minute details on where Lenin did not follow this or that line, on how the Party missed this or that tactic. Only within this infinite multiplicity of policy-making discussions and subjective positions with regard to reality can left-communism preserve itself. All of left-communism’s concepts arise from the need of “analyzing” in this manner.
“Organic centralism”, for example, is the perfect concept of the Party to endlessly discuss if a certain tactic was “organic”, in “continuity” with this specific empirical segment of the proletariat, in line with a proper “reversal of praxis” regarding this specific segment of the economy.
Once the left-communist is faced with discussing the whole, the essence of reality and what makes reality one unified order - he fumbles and loses his thinking capacity. Once he is faced with how the whole overdetermines every “policy”, every “proletarian interest” and every “economic organization and form of production”, he starts to have a panic attack about how “capitalism” is so “subsuming” (Endnotes!!). He can never grasp Marxism’s prioritization of the property question - of the relations of production - for action and this action’s condition being the breakdown of the capitalist order already - the economic base.
It never occurs to the left-communist that communism is itself another “whole” developing from within capitalism in every political sphere, every economic form and every ideological representation. For the left-communist, the new “whole” does not exist outside him - he must “create it” alongside his “comrades”.
When the pathology of left-communism enters your brain, you can no longer enrich your mind. You can not master literature, philosophy or economics. Those are “bourgeois sciences”. What you become is a hipster complaining about reality. We have a word in Marxism for this: Reaction.
Capitalism and Class Struggle in the USSR
This first book has been recommended by a left-communist as a good enough exposition of the general critique of the Soviet Union’s economic reality. Although the author operates under autonomist sympathies, the book contains many of the same arguments the left-communists make with regard to the Soviet Union. Let us begin.
Totality vs Standpoint
One of the essential philosophical points the author brings up is his relation to “totality” - specifically as understood after Lukacs - and an acceptance of the “standpoint” of the proletariat instead. Hence, the author says it is unnecessary to defend the breakdown of capitalism, one must simply defend the “actually existing” proletarian struggle, mostly understood in class terms instead of political-economic terms. This is an oft-repeated point within the left-communist tendency. In essence, it is similar to the conceptions of “organic centralism” and the “reversal of praxis” developed by the Bordigists. This is called the “autonomy” of the proletariat. The argument is that since knowledge is necessarily concrete and must derive itself only from the class struggle, the Party must be contained “within” the proletarian movement as an active organizer. It asserts a certain disdain for “abstraction” since this is seen as a deviation from the tactical necessity of the concrete struggle. Thus, it often clashes with the Leninist concept of the vanguard as an organ which, instead of existing concretely within the struggle, draws the struggle towards itself and towards its abstraction as a Party.
However, very quickly, numerous problems arise.
First, this argument curiously dissolves any objective and universal “justification” of the standpoint of the proletariat by distancing itself from the political-economic standpoint. The left-communist might answer that the only justification he needs is the concretely struggling “proletariat” which showcases, in its struggle, a contradiction to the ruling order. But this justification is not universal. It is not a justification for the entire society. Fine, he might say, he is content with opposing the entirety of societal logic. But this simply renders his position just another particularist position. He has no objective advantage over say, the petty-bourgeois movements or the nationalist movements. Since the interest of the proletariat is here, paradoxically, only confined to the proletariat - the social revolution completely loses its universality. By objective advantage, I mean an advantage which necessitates its transformation at the entire level of society - at the level of the ethical consciousness of the capitalists themselves. The interest of the proletarian is not here derived as an objective interest for the whole of society, for the transformation of all consciousness, for the transformation of all human practice.
But what is the proletariat for Marx? Marx calls the proletariat the “ingenious soil of the whole people”. In the proletariat, the contradictions of all of society are resolved - not merely the vindicative impulse of the proletariat over society. This is precisely why the proletariat stands for the abolition of all classes. In this sense, it extends its mercy even over the capitalists themselves! The contradictions in capitalist consciousness and bourgeois society find their solution in their proletariat and by solution is meant an objectively necessary transformation which actually positively resolves their condition. The transition towards communism is advantageous to the capitalists, not as capitalists, but as men. This is precisely why Marx made the argument that the small capitalists and the petty-bourgeois, which were also historically the soil and start of capitalism, will actually decide to abolish their position as capitalists when they will interact and see the results of the proletarian movement.
Transformation, in Marxism, only derives itself from the previous form. It is from the capitalist form *itself* that the socialist mode arises - it does not arise *outside* of it. This is a crucial point of dialectical materialism.
Second, what is the “proletarian movement” here? Further, how is this movement represented in its struggle? By saying “We need to confine ourselves to the proletarian movement”, what are we truly saying? Is the proletarian movement the trade-unions? The battle for wages? The “concrete” proletarians moving and protesting? Indeed, those form components of the proletarian movement. But is the proletarian movement reducible to these forms? Absolutely not. Since the proletarian class interacts and forms of the basis of the entire reproduction of bourgeois society, proletarian interest is also represented outside the “concrete” arena of “concrete” battles. Proletarian interest also takes a political form. These two arenas of proletarian struggle might seem disjointed at first. In trade unions, the proletarian is defending his wage. This indeed seems very “concrete”. In the political arena, the proletarian is defending something which is seemingly more abstract, i.e, the reproduction of his universal interest in universal political demands - such as reform in the land, stopping some wasteful war, the demand for education and health, etc. This abstraction seems less “pure” than the “concrete struggle for concrete goals” since it includes within it other strata of society. Yet, is this really so?
Isn’t the first lesson of Marxism the absolute presence of abstraction within the utmost concrete acts? Isn’t this a staple of Marx’s concept of the fetish? Hence, are “concrete struggle for concrete goals” less fetishistic than the political struggle? We can safely say that they are indeed not. The “concreteness” of the proletarian in his workplace and “concrete” arena reveals itself to be the highest abstraction of the highest capitalist order. In fact, without proper abstraction away from this area, this sphere can turn into a wholly reactionary phenomenon.
The worker arena and the political arena may even appear antagonistic without the light of communist ideology. The first reason is because the worker arena abstracts certain workers from others - it does not universalize the worker relation and hence becomes minimally political. The second is because the worker arena abstracts from its relation to the non-worker arena - a sphere it must also address and transform.
Party & Class
Finally, the left-communist may ask the question: why not start from the concrete and prove to the worker that he needs an abstraction, which will truly be his “own” abstraction and not one exterior to him? First, proletarian interests are already represented in society, although in disjointed and mystified forms. The goal of the communist Party is to scientifically unify these representations and clarify their true content. Advocating for an abstraction outside the one that is objectively developing, either in the political arena or otherwise, is conceding class consciousness to the bourgeoisie. Class consciousness is not created from scratch; it is discovered, recollected and organized. Second, the Party is itself such an abstraction; the abstraction which abolishes bourgeois abstraction. The Party is necessarily abstract since it is an organ of the proletariat’s self-abolition - its reach extends beyond the empirical proletarian’s self-interest. The self-interest of the empirical proletarian is not self-abolition; only his interest as a class, hence as an external politico-economic reality is self-abolition.
Since the Party is a political abstraction, it is democratic. Every political abstraction is a democratic one. This is a necessity because of the very character of political abstraction, stemming from the social division of labor, which universally abstracts from every individual regardless of his social relation to the whole. This abstraction occurs objectively outside of men’s minds as soon as they enter into the arena of politics; it divides their tasks, it forms them as individuals within the organization and it separates the basis for tactical consciousness universally among the members. Yet, the whole in the Party is definite, contrary to bourgeois Parties: it is Marxist theory. Ideology has shifted from the forced socialization of the abstract “private” sphere as it exists in bourgeois politics to “collective ideology” as it exists in the Communist Party. The Party can not be “organicist” since no political abstraction can be “organic”. At the same time, because of the adherence to Marxist theory, it is centralized. The centralization then on the other hand determines the individuals' collective will and action and sets them upon a concrete common basis which makes concrete the abstract individual. These two aspects are necessary for the withering character of the one Party proletarian state.
Further, communist consciousness is not Party consciousness. The Party on its own is not what communist consciousness, i.e social self-consciousness, is. The Party, as an organ of the political sphere, must wither away. Hence, what form does communist consciousness take in the Party? It can only be consciousness which makes the Party objectively wither away. But consciousness which makes the Party wither away is also consciousness which centralizes and strengthens the Party’s representation of proletarian interest. The deeper point here is that the Party’s representation of the proletarian interest is in fact the Party’s own abolition as a separate sphere of politics. Communism abolishes the political/economic distinction, there can be no Party interfering under the system of the free association of the producers. Hence, the Party can not start from the presupposition of this abolition but it must become the organ which leads to its abolition. The political/economic divide is an objective division of capitalist society. To become the organ of this abolition is to raise the political to its extreme, i.e, to lead the political-economic division to its extreme by making the political control the economic and the economic control the political (this is the relation between collective property and the proletarian state). It is not to work as if this division did not exist - this would be Utopian and a rejection of the Marxist theory of development.
What a complete opposite to the Bordigists who think the “Party” is eternal! All their concepts stem from this thinking; oh we must preserve the eternality of the Party, it must be organic, it must immediately abolish every capitalist consciousness and form, oh lord our Party! At the same time, the left-communist has the audacity to accuse the Marxists of adhering to too many “capitalist forms”. What a paradox!
Note: You will notice a constant talking point that is reoccurring here: the Marxist theory of change is always one which sweeps the foundations and lets the pyramid fall on its own. “On its own” since its fall can not be controlled in one direction or the other; it depends on the original act.
The question is then asked: from where does the Party begin? The Party begins from an observation of the current working class, the differing representation of their interests - whether mystified by petty-bourgeois movements or others. Then, the Party radically abstracts from all of these movements (whether trade unions or petty-bourgeois) to communicate the correct communist position to them which leads to the abolition of private property from the perspective of the present. Hence, the Party seems alien to the proletariat yet eerily close. The correct representation of the Ideal here (as Ilyenkov would analyze it) is then also the correct material position. This inherently sways proletarian elements within every movement towards the Communist Party. It even sways other classes which wish to abolish themselves as capitalists more and more.
Here’s Lenin on how Marx analyzed the broad movement and populism which already existed within a society - a movement left-communists often try to ignore:
"Marx, however, does not simply “repudiate” this petty-bourgeois movement, he does not dogmatically ignore it, he does not fear to soil his hands by contact with the movement of the revolutionary petty-bourgeois democrats—a fear that is characteristic of many doctrinaires. While mercilessly ridiculing the absurd ideological trappings of the movement, Marx strives in a sober, materialist manner to determine its real historical content, the consequences that must inevitably follow from it because of objective conditions, regardless of the will and the consciousness, the dreams and the theories, of the various individuals. Marx, therefore, does not condemn, but fully approves communist support of the movement. Adopting the dialectical standpoint, i.e., examining the movement from every aspect, taking into account both the past and the future, Marx notes the revolutionary aspect of the attack on private property in land. He recognises the petty-bourgeois movement as a peculiar initial form of the proletarian, communist movement." -Lenin, Marx on the American “General Redistribution”
Conceding the proletarian character and interest which is objectively developing in society would only be abstractly negating such an interest - an objectively reactionary position. Assuming the mantle of this emerging proletarian interest and giving it its proper form is the communist position. This is the victory of the battle “of democracy” as Marx describes. The contradictions from within other classes are left untouched by the left-communists. This is because they can not grasp that the proletariat represents the universal emancipation of all members of society. Let us look into some of these contradictions.
First, the contradictions between the big bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie. This antagonism, which is minimal and internal to the bourgeoisie, will always lead to the defeat of the petty bourgeoisie in the long term. For Marx, the “petty bourgeois-democratic revolution” is on-going in capitalist society, in fact, it is a sign that the bourgeoisie as a class is objectively collapsing from within:
"But the democrat, because he represents the petty bourgeoisie – that is, a transition class, in which the interests of two classes are simultaneously mutually blunted – imagines himself elevated above class antagonism generally. The democrats concede that a privileged class confronts them, but they, along with all the rest of the nation, form the people. What they represent is the people‘s rights; what interests them is the people‘s interests" -Marx, 18th Brumaire
The petty-bourgeois democrat wants to reform bourgeois society without abolishing its basis. He wants to reform it according to his ideal principles which he observes, as the proletarians do, are decaying in their essence in modern capitalist society. Paradoxically, he opposes the very bourgeois interests his current position historically lead to: excessive state debt, the corruption of education, health, land, etc. The position of the petty-bourgeois democrat only exists in capitalist society and only ideally opposes “capitalism”. Hence, the petty-bourgeois democrat is forced to become a “socialist” although not a “scientific socialist”. His opposition to present society is not with regards to anything which is merely archaic or feudal - he now wishes to secure “new principles” such as “welfare”:
"The revolutionary point was broken off and a democratic turn given to the social demands of the proletariat; the purely political form was stripped off the democratic claims of the petty bourgeoisie and their socialist point thrust forward. Thus arose social-democracy" -Marx, 18th Brumaire
Hence, what are the objective interests of the petty bourgeoisie once they realize this fact? Nothing else than to realize that their only emancipation is their emancipation from their class position by following the leadership of the proletariat and its representation. To accept the “permanence of the revolution” as Marx describes it - the constant opposition to all bourgeois power and property - not merely accepting concessions from this bourgeoisie.
Second, there also are the contradictions between town and country, represented in the struggle between peasants and the urban bourgeoisie. The peasantry is then divided into small and big peasants. Under systems of feudalism, both the small and big peasantry are revolutionary. However, under a developed capitalism - as was the case in France - the small peasant, as a rural subsection of the proletariat or the petty bourgeoisie - remained the only opposing class to the bourgeoisie and the capitalist system in the countryside. More than once Marx and Engels stressed that even in the developed countries of Western Europe, socialism could not succeed against the opposition of the peasantry:
"Even in France the Socialists are realizing more and more that no lasting victory is possible for them, unless they first win the great mass of the people, that is, in this case, the peasants" -Engels.
Indeed, this is also what historically happened with the Paris Commune. The peasant movement was not merely struggling against the “feudal remnants”, which did not remain in France, but against the bourgeois landlord. Hence, they proved to be the natural allies of the proletariat. More than this, even segments of the middle classes and petty bourgeoisie now allied with the proletarian revolution - since they understood their position was impossible and accepted the system of the free association of the producers:
"What separates the peasant from the proletarian is, therefore, no longer his real interest, but his delusive prejudice.
If the Commune, as we have shown, is the only power that can give him immediate great loans even in its present economical conditions, it is the only form of government that can secure to him the transformation of his present economical conditions, rescue him from expropriation by the landlord on the one hand, save him from grinding, trudging[aa] and misery on the pretext of proprietorship on the other, that can convert his nominal proprietorship of the land into real proprietorship of the fruits of his labour, that can combine for him the profits of modern agronomy, dictated by social wants and every day now encroaching upon him as a hostile agency, without annihilating his position as a really independent producer. Being immediately benefited by the Communal Republic, he would soon confide in it. […]
For the first time in history the petty and moyenne middle class [petty and middle bourgeoisie] has openly rallied round the workmen’s Revolution, and proclaimed it as the only means of their own salvation and that of France! It forms with them the bulk of the National Guard, it sits with them in the Commune, it mediates for them in the Union républicaine!" -Marx, The Civil War in France
Finally, what is the necessity of the political-economic perspective? The political-economic perspective is absolutely necessary to find successful tactics as it concerns the specific areas where capitalism has broken down and failed. It also absolutely necessary to formulate the correct ideological form of the proletarian interest. It is necessary to break down capitalist mystification, a mystification deteriorating from the inside of capitalist production and properly revealing itself as a “fetish” - which it could well possibly not have been before. The breakdown of old forms and their negative resolution in bourgeois society is the condition of possibility of social critique. The abandonment of the political-economic perspective is the abandonment of class consciousness and the restriction of praxis to relative and mystified “victories”. The political-economic perspective of Marxism outlines the basic functioning of capitalist society, its laws and its breakdown. The application of this perspective to reality allows to universally locate these laws, their personification and their failure in society. The communication of the necessity of the proletarian dictatorship, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the abolition of private property all come from the Marxist political-economic analysis.
Communism’s Mass Appeal
The left-communists have always accused the Marxists of “populism” or the worst “nationalism”. For the left-communist, communism has nothing to do with the existing and emerging political mass movements. How then is he to say that communism is objective? No, no, objectivity for him is his eternal idol of the Party - it must be!
Instead of this snivel, the Marxist perspective is to find the emerging proletarian interest within every mass movement.
Marx and Engels always insisted on the mass appeal of communism, of communism being the movement of the “immense majority” of society and benefitting “all members” of society. There is no revolution without a mass movement. This principle used to mean “democracy” - but the meaning of democracy has changed over time. The democratic concept used to mean something akin to modern populisms and mass movements:
"Democracy nowadays is communism. Any other democracy can still exist only in the heads of theoretical visionaries who do not bother their heads about what is really happening, for whom principles are not developed by men and circumstances but arise out of themselves. Democracy has become the proletarian principle, the principle of the masses. … The democratic masses can be confidently counted in when reckoning up the communist forces. And when the proletarian parties of the various nations get together, they are entirely right in inscribing the word “Democracy” on their banners, for, with exceptions that don’t count, all European Democrats in the year 1846 are more or less clear communists" -Engels, The Festival of Nations in London
This principle applies to all bourgeois societies. Communism must convince the vast majority of the people of its validity. It must convert all these non-ruling elements towards the proletarian revolution. What it must make sure is that ideas from these non-proletarian masses do not influence its goal and ideology - the defence of proletarian interest which takes the form of the abolition of private property. In the developed bourgeois nation of France, Marx said:
"The French workers could not take a step forward, could not touch a hair of the bourgeois order, until the course of the revolution had aroused the mass of the nation, peasants and petty-bourgeois, standing between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, against this order, against the rule of capital, and had forced it to attach itself to the proletarians as their protagonists" -Marx, Class Struggle in France
The proletariat assumes leadership of the existing mass movements, wins the “battle of democracy” as Marx put it, convinces them of the objectivity of the proletarian interest and the socialist system and creates the conditions for a mass revolution under its leadership: the proletarian dictatorship. Under its leadership, it centralizes the productive forces in the hands of the state - it nationalizes the vast majority of the means of production, specifically those the state needs for its sustainment and collectivizes old forms of property. It is possible that under its rule, segments of the population resist collectivization. Under such circumstances, the Party must perform rigorous ideological work to convince the masses of the superiority of the socialist system and to economically incentivize these groups to shift to the system of the free association of the producers.
Tactically, the Communist Party must go down deeper to the masses, as Lenin put it, it must go to the segments of all classes and convince them of the proletarian interest and the socialist system. We must cite Lenin in full here:
"We said that a Social Democrat, if he really believes it necessary to develop comprehensively the political consciousness of the proletariat, must ”go among all classes of the population”.
We must ”go among all classes of the population“ as theoreticians, as proagandists, as agitators, and as organisers.
We must also find ways and means of calling meetings of representatives of all social classes that desire to listen to a democrat; for he is no Social-Democrat who forgets in practice that ”the Communists support every revolutionary movement“, that we are obliged for that reason to expound and emphasise general democratic tasks before the whole people, without for a moment concealing our socialist convictions.
For it is not enough to call ourselves the “vanguard”, the advanced contingent; we must act in such a way that all the other contingents recognise and are obliged to admit that we are marching in the vanguard.
A “vanguard” which fears that consciousness will outstrip spontaneity, which fears to put forward a bold “plan” that would compel general recognition even among those who differ with us. Are they not confusing “vanguard” with “rearguard”?
We must take upon ourselves the task of organising an all-round political struggle under the leadership of our Party in such a manner as to make it possible for all oppositional strata to render their fullest support to the struggle and to our Party." -Lenin, What is To Be Done?
This beautiful passage alone by Lenin destroys all left-communist consciousness, all talks about “organic centralism”, the “reversal of praxis”, the “abstentionism” and the anarchist crap. The proletariat can only prove itself as the universal class in its contact with all the classes of society, with their independent movements and leaders. It must show the superiority of its position in practice and lead all these non-ruling segments to politically support the proletarian dictatorship:
"But when it is a question of practical action by the masses, of the disposition, if one may so express it, of vast armies, of the alignment of all the class forces of the given society for the final and decisive battle, then propaganda habits alone, the mere repetition of the truths of “pure” Communism, are of no avail. In these circumstances one must not count in thousands, as the propagandist does who belongs to a small group that has not yet given leadership to the masses; in these circumstances one must count in millions and tens of millions. In these circumstances we must not only ask ourselves whether we have convinced the vanguard of the revolutionary class, but also whether the historically effective forces of all classes—positively of all the classes of the given society without exception—are aligned in such a way that everything is fully ripe for the decisive battle." -Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder
The left-communist is “scared” that by convincing other classes of the proletarian position - the communist movement will be “diluted”. He does not understand that all these non-ruling classes only find their resolution in communism under the proletarian dictatorship! He does not understand that the “abolition of class” is not the one-sided struggle against empirical individuals, but the transition of all society out of class and towards the socialist system! He does not understand that this universal principle is contained within the proletarian interest - specifically in the manner in which the abolition of private property solves his specific existence!
The Popular Front
Another issue presents itself. In a developed capitalist society, many political parties precede the proletarian party. What is the Communist Party’s relation to these other parties? Marx and Engels dealt with this question in the final section of the Manifesto - which unsurprisingly left-communists never read. In the developed capitalist nation of France:
"The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-Democrats against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution.
In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.
In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.
Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries."
What a passage! There’s not a single trace of the left-communist pathology which restricts communists from forming blocs with other Parties - for the sake of strategic victories - while keeping their independence and critical position! The strategy of the popular front has been one of the most effective communist strategies in history. It led to the victory of the Paris Commune under the Union Republicaine (which was a united front) in France. It led to the victory of the Bolsheviks after the 1905 and 1917 blocs. It led to the victory of Mao’s Communist Party in 1949. It led to the victory of the Worker’s Party of Korea in 1953.
The popular and united fronts can not “dilute” the class character of Parties if the Party establishes itself as truly independent. This is why communists always win at the end of the popular front strategy: they uphold the truly universal and proletarian position. Even if one of the Parties which you temporarily aligned with wins, this is not a defeat of the proletarian but a moment of victory. The other parties can never reconcile the contradictions of bourgeois society. The communists will win. The Communist Party can now struggle as effectively as possible. Here is Marx on this:
"In a word, from the first moment of victory, mistrust must be directed no longer against the conquered reactionary party, but against the workers’ previous allies, against the party that wishes to exploit the common victory for itself alone." -Marx, Address to the Communist League
We can see how this perfectly parallels the 20th-century struggle against fascism and imperialism. In fact, the greatest historical precedent is the Paris Commune itself. The Paris Commune could only form after the establishment of a new government, the Republican Union, which constituted all the “healthy elements of French society” (including the Communards) as Marx put it - against the Thiers Party, which advocated for German supremacy in French land! This united and popular front directly led to the establishment of the first proletarian dictatorship - a new government!:
"In fact, after the exodus from Paris of the high Bonapartist and capitalist bohème, the true middle-class Party of Order came out in the shape of the “Union Republicaine, enrolling themselves under the colors of the Commune and defending it against the wilful misconstructions of Thiers. Whether the gratitude of this great body of the middle class will stand the present severe trial, time must show.
If the Commune was thus the true representative of all the healthy elements of French society, and therefore the truly national government, it was, at the same time, as a working men’s government, as the bold champion of the emancipation of labor, emphatically international." -Marx, The Paris Commune
These left-communist distorters and falsifiers of Marxism want us to forget such a victory, to forget the glory of the tactics of the proletariat, to forget our history as communists. We say no to these reactionaries.
These petty-bourgeois falsifiers would say that the Commune merely rode a “national movement” against the Germans and not a truly “proletarian movement”. These philistines do not understand that the proletariat must constitute itself as the national class - that within it are solved all the national antagonisms and their integration with the international movement. Again, it is the same issue: they do not understand the abolition of the nation from within the nation. They do not understand the development of proletarian interest within every national movement - as Marx understood the proletarian interest developing the petty-bourgeois movement of the National Reformers in America.
These falsifiers should come out point blank and admit what they conceal: they think Marxism and its method are not “effective enough” for the proletariat! They think the dialectical perspective “concedes” to the bourgeoisie! They can not see that the dialectical perspective is the only perspective which justifies the objectivity of communism; the absoluteness of its rule and its subsumption of capitalism.
This is what all their cries are reduced to. Good old Lasalleans!
The Reversal of Praxis
"Thus, whilst determinism denies the individual the possibility of achieving will and consciousness prior to action, the reversal of praxis does allow this within the party, and only within the party, as a result of a general historical elaboration. However, although will and consciousness can be attributed to the party, it is not the case that the party is formed by a concurrence of the consciousness and will of individual members of a group; and nor can such a group be in any way considered as free of the determining physical, economic and social factors weighing on the class as a whole." -The ICP
This is an altogether wrong view. Taking the “reversal of praxis” to mean “communist consciousness” - more specifically “communist acting consciousness”: it is very clear that such a “reversal” does not merely occur in the Party. The Party is merely one of the organs of the societal upheaval of communism. It is a relative “reversal” which presupposes the whole and all its parts. It presupposes the “reversal” in the trade unions, the “reversal” in the bourgeoisie’s intelligentsia’s attitude towards the masses (as Marx describes, the bourgeoisie gives the educational tools which lead to its destitution to the masses), the “reversal” in existing ideological consciousness - for polemic and critique is itself an act, the “reversal” in mass politics - away from bourgeois politics. The Party is merely a part of all these “reversals”. Taken on their own, all these “relative reversals” can become reactionary if abstracted from their necessary parts, as Lenin critiques in What Is To Be Done.
Hence, authentic proletarian knowledge is the knowledge which shows all classes in society that their position is only resolved by the proletarian interest practically. It is not the consciousness which wants to merely “re-organize” the proletariat:
"Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships of all classes and strata to the state and the government, the sphere of the interrelations between all classes. For that reason, the reply to the question as to what must be done to bring political knowledge to the workers cannot be merely the answer with which, in the majority of cases, the practical workers, especially those inclined towards Economism, mostly content themselves, namely: ”To go among the workers.“ To bring political knowledge to the workers the Social Democrats must go among all classes of the population; they must dispatch units of their army in all directions" -Lenin, What is to Be Done
In communist society, communist acting consciousness occurs every day under the system of the free association of the producers; no need for any constant interference by a “Party”! Their consciousness is defined by their material relation to production, their communal form of production, and not the opposite. Social being defines consciousness, not the contrary. Hence, every proto-communist form of production and interaction arising prior to the social revolution contains a relative “reversal”. With the connection of all these “reversals” - including the one which leads to the Party - the social revolution is completed.
Communism is not about intricately controlling people’s lives. Such a conception means you do not believe in the objectivity of communism and that you still believe in the bourgeois political/economic separation. Communism and communist consciousness is about changing people’s material relation to production and observing the organic cultures and conscious representations this change manifests itself in. Such consciousness can not be predicted, in its form, prior to the social revolution. This is the definite break from utopian socialism.
Management vs Ownership
Returning to our book, the author seems to be often times confusing management with ownership. This confusion will later lead him to absurd conclusions.
-What is the power of the state in capitalism? In socialism?
"Taxes are the life source of the bureaucracy, the army, the priests, and the court – in short, of the entire apparatus of the executive power. Strong government and heavy taxes are identical. By its very nature, small-holding property forms a basis for an all-powerful and numberless bureaucracy. It creates a uniform level of personal and economic relationships over the whole extent of the country" -Marx
The state in capitalist society is a post-festum formation. It is formed to centralize the bourgeois interest and stabilize it. Taxes are used to re-invest in “public” projects which are only arms of the bourgeoisie (contractors and loans to private companies, the military complex, the PMC, etc). Hence, in bourgeois society, the political and the economic are firmly divided. The economic power of the bourgeois state is derived from the private ownership of the bourgeoisie. One must always understand “taxes” in bourgeois society as not only affecting the worker, although they mostly do, but also the bourgeoisie. “Taxes” are also a reduction of the commodity bundle of the worker, which means he can only sustain his life-form in a reduced manner and spend less. This forces the bourgeoisie to equilibrize the wages once again. Hence, the economic foundation of the bourgeois state is always Capital. State ownership in bourgeois society is always a concession by the bourgeois class which is won over in other spheres of the state economy (the relation between public enterprises and the Federal Reserve in the United States is a perfect example of this):
"The aristocracy of finance, therefore, condemned the parliamentary struggle of the party of Order with the executive power as a disturbance of order, and celebrated every victory of the President over its ostensible representatives as a victory of order. By the aristocracy of finance must here be understood not merely the great loan promoters and speculators in public funds, in regard to whom it is immediately obvious that their interests coincide with the interests of the state power." -Marx, 18th Brumaire
On the other hand, in the era of the proletarian dictatorship, the fundamental economic arms which support the state are all state-owned. The military, the national bank, the education system, the natural resources, the fundamental enterprises of social production, etc. The bridge between the political and economic is resolved. Hence, what is produced by society is re-invested into society. It is in the material interest of the state to enrich its organs - organs which are themselves public utility. Thus, it is in the material interest of the proletarian state to enrich the whole people. This specific relation between state power and the state-owned enterprises, a reciprocal relationship where one’s growth is the condition for the other’s, is the dissolution of the state into civil society - the withering away of the state. The principal difference with Social-Democracy is the proletarian dictatorship.
Therefore, on the question of management and ownership, we must firmly make clear that all the “managers” are themselves workers receiving remuneration! Capitalist ownership in Marxism refers to the extraction of surplus product from the means of production. There can be no “extraction” from them since they do not own the means of production they are managing!
Labor-Power, Money and Value
An important basis for the critique of the Soviet Union provided in this book is the affirmation that the appearance of forms such as money and value makes the economic base capitalist. But is this true according to Marxism? Well, no. According to Marx and Engels, forms such as money, exchange and value acquire a specific character under the proletarian dictatorship; the character of being “superfluous” which gradually leads to their self-abolition:
"It is impossible, of course, to carry out all these measures at once. But one will always bring others in its wake. Once the first radical attack on private property has been launched, the proletariat will find itself forced to go ever further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of the state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the foregoing measures are directed to this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the country’s productive forces.
Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain." -Engels
Is this character possible in a capitalist society? No, it can never occur. Hence, how are we to understand this?
Simply, the foundation for the expansion of value, money and exchange is abolished by the proletarian dictatorship. As per Marx and Engels, this foundation is private property. This relegates their existence in the economy at the level of mere appearance and relativity - of being “superfluous” and abolishing themselves over time. By consolidating circuits of production and distribution under the abolition of private property by the proletarian dictatorship, society enters a definite new mode of production - which gradually outstrips all old forms of production. A mode of production is always defined by its center of gravity - manifesting itself in the fundamental manner people relate to production.
Further, on the question of value, Marx and Engels always insisted on the objective nature of value abolition. The abolition of value and its forms is not a question of consciousness; it is an objective question. In other words, value breaks down objectively prior to the social revolution. The communists are tasked with solving the societal problem of value. Here is a fascinating passage by Marx:
"As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis. The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them. 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 sole measure and source of wealth." -Marx, The Grundrisse
Nowadays, since everyone is a “post-Marxist” - it is not enough to cite Marx and Engels. Since everyone denies bits and parcels of Marx’s theory, you must now justify the entirety of Marxist theory to the Philistines. These quotes prove the traditional validity of our argument a priori - they provide our orthodox continuity with Marxism. But since the Philistines do not care about continuity with Marx and Engels, we must prove to them that Marx and Engels were right.
Hence, the central question to be answered from our side is: how does the abolition of private property lead to the abolition of value, money wage-labor and exchange?
For our argument, we must establish certain essential theses:
-We must show how the abolition of private property corresponds to a new form of property; a collective property which is a share in production.
-We must show the distinction between capitalist labor-power and the socialist share in production.
-We must show how the share in production abolishes value, money and the commodity.
First, with the expropriation of the bourgeois class, the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship and the transition to collective property, the man to man exploitation is done away with. Hence, directly, labor becomes a component of direct social labor by the very fact that exploitation is no longer possible. The products of labor are forced to be used for social self-reproduction. The worker does not receive what is necessary for his “private” reproduction but now his “social” self-reproduction, i.e, the direct social product of his total social labor. Why? Because of the form of ownership of production under the proletarian dictatorship, all of the social product is always re-invested into society itself. The antagonism between dead labor and living labor is no longer possible. “Value” is no longer what defines the worker’s social relation to production and appropriation as he no longer sells himself as a commodity to Capital.
This shows the distinctive difference between capitalist labor-power and the socialist share within production.
Second, with the abolition of private property, the antagonism between mental and physical labor is slowly done away with. The differentiation of the spheres of production was the result of the capitalist need for expropriating surplus-value, beyond (emerging) social utility. This created different spheres which were antagonistically separated, making possible the exchange between capitalists. But as soon as capitalists and their property are done away with, the foundation for money and exchange is abolished. The worker now appears as a universal producer and appropriator of the social product. Hence, the previously separated spheres of production and distribution are unified - not merely in a central manner but also in a decentral manner.
This shows that the capitalist division of labor, which grounds exchange and money, has its foundation abolished the second collective property is instantiated.
Third, within the free association, wealth based on labor-time, i.e value, is abolished. What you contribute does not make you richer the more you work. You become richer and you work less. Your wealth is no longer defined by the labor-time provided but your share in social production.
Let us draw a picture with hypothetical examples for the sake of simplification.
Capitalist society:
1) 50% Surplus Value - 50h - 1 capitalist
2) 30% Constant Capital - 30h
3) 20% Variable Capital - 20h - 5 workers
3) is in relation to 1) since it is only as big as the capitalists can afford to keep the workers into work. 3) is also in relation with 2) since the more machinery, the more surplus value workers produce in the short-term. The worker receives what he is worth to the production process in terms of labor-time, i.e, in terms of how much labor-time is needed to reproduce him. Here, it is 4 hours.
Socialist society first erases the 50% of surplus value stemming from private property. This leads to the abolition of the value relation altogether.
Socialist society:
1) 30% Deductions (Social need, Machinery, etc) - 30h
2) 70% Remuneration - 70h - 5 workers
Here, however, the worker does not receive what he is worth as labor-time but what he contributes to society with an equal standard of work. Here, it is 14 hours as compared to the 4 hours needed for the worker’s reproduction in capitalist society. This is the “lower-stage” of communist society. Therefore, here we have the first difference. What is produced must be consumed. If what is produced by the machinery is NOT consumed - it can NOT be distributed. Hence, the abolition of private property forces society to change its whole relation to production, its whole relation to machinery, and its whole relation to appropriation. This means that the condition of the growth of machinery is social appropriation and vice versa.
However, in this very “lower stage” we have the higher stage lurking - in the form of the “social need” which is deduced from social production. We always have to ask: to whom are the means of production serving?
In conclusion, money, value and commodities which are immediately abolishing themselves at every turn can not stem from a capitalist relation. It can only stem from a socialist one.
In the next part, let us analyze how this concretely worked in the Soviet Union - both in the SOEs and the Kolkhozes (this part is a smaller section of a larger work I am working on; Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in the Socialist Commonwealth).
The SOEs and the Wages
What is remuneration when all the means of production are collectively owned, i.e, when no one stands at the top of production to extract a surplus? The workers own their share in the social labor - a share which includes their objective need. This need, which is abstractly social, can first only be achieved by the state. These abstract social principles include energy, health, education, etc. Then, their actual remuneration designates what is necessary for their social self-reproduction. In capitalist society, the wage designates the commodity bundle necessary for the “private” self-reproduction of the worker. In socialist society, since no surplus is extracted, the remuneration designates the need of social self-reproduction of the worker.
Here’s how the Soviet circuit works:
5 workers working 30 hours = 150 hour product
Ignoring the deductions, each worker should receive back a 30 hour bundle
But more than this, the worker also receives the entire product of “dead labor” which was previously used to increase the exploitation of the working class. Hence, his “30 hour bundle” only contains the relation he possesses to other human beings but not the relation he possesses to dead labor. This new product is a new form of wealth, not established on labor time, but established on free time. This new product includes, outside its relation to labor time, his entire relation to general intelligence or in other words: social self-consciousness. The eye becomes the human eye.
However, since “free time” is a relative reality, how are we to communicate communist free time from capitalist “free time”? What is this new social relation which is the basis of communist wealth? Indeed a 30-hour workweek can be considered free time in one epoch and slavery in another.
This new social relation simply is that, absolutely, when he works 30 hours, and receives new machinery, he does not need to work *more* for the same amount as before. This is the definite break from the capitalist value-form and the valorization process. This specific process or circuit, this social relation, is what defines communist wealth.
This specific social relation presupposes that the essence of labor-power has been exhausted in society, at the level of the mode of production globally - which then manifests itself nationally, and that the new form of wealth has taken firm hold. What this concretely means is that new investments in machinery can materially not proceed except by; reducing hours of labor, reducing the amount of workers per industry and increasing the wages. The reason for the reduction of labor hours is clear but the reason for the increase in wages less so. Aren’t wages simply a cost of production? Well, under this new form of wealth, “wages” or remunerations actually become an essential moment of wealth production. They provide the social basis necessary for the continued reproduction of society at a new higher level. They abolish themselves as wages and become a social share in production.
Now, in capitalism, specifically the capitalism which has been modified by its relation to the Soviet Union which caused a decreasing rate of the bourgeois class, this manifests itself in a paradoxical relationship where the population is divided between necessary work and superfluous work. The “necessity” of superfluous work is curious. From one perspective, it is unnecessary with regards to “necessary work” or actually commodity producing labor. But from another perspective, it is necessary for the social reproduction of society. First, to materially feed the population which is superfluous and second to provide a basis for social self-consciousness, although in mystified form. This social self-consciousness is seen in the manner superfluous work provides necessary social services, education, individual development or even artistic production - all qualities Marx speaks of when talking about the qualities of communist society.
Therefore, in communist society, the antagonism between “necessary work” and “social need” is resolved. First, by abolishing the specific capitalist concepts of “necessity” and “need”. Second, by affirming a new “necessity” of work and a new “need” unified within man in general.
Thus, let us return to our example. Let us assume the deductions, which are necessary to increase machinery and technical production. Would this reproduce the capitalist antagonistic relationship between dead and living labor? Why or why not?
Let us say 5 hours is deduced from each worker to fund better machinery.
Does the worker now need to work more to receive what he used to receive?
In the absolute sense, no. Since the 5 hours is invested to produce more effectively, requiring less labor, the worker will still receive what he actually worked to produce, i.e, workers in other industries will make up for this deduction (those who still work 30 hours for example) and he will be able to acquire the same product as before. The social relation overdetermines individual production.
Further, since there is no extraction of surplus, the product of the state-owned companies must necessarily all be re-invested into social-self reproduction. Hence, this instantly creates a rise in remuneration. Let us *assume* this product is not re-invested into social self-production and *instead* again re-invested into machinery. Will this create a resurgence of the dominance of dead labor over living labor? Absolutely not. If the product is forcibly invested into machinery, even when not needed (and this indeed can often not be known beforehand - even with the planning), this will create a disequilibrium in social production where the workers will not be able to acquire their necessary social share in production.
Let us draw a circuit. Let us assume 30 hour workweek is necessary currently for social reproduction and living.
30 hours necessary:
5 x 30 hours = 150 hour product
-25 hours deduced for machinery
= 25 hour product per worker
Through machinery only 25 hours become necessary:
5 x 30 hours = 150 hour product
-25 hours deduced
= 20 hour product per worker (5 was unecessary)
Then, the worker only acquires the 20 hour product while the 5 unecessary hour work product does not get distributed. This is a material loss for the state-owned enterprise, i.e, a waste of the means of production. The enterprise hence needs to increase the remunerations of the workers, i.e, their social basis for reproduction gets *redefined*. This process is automatic and a staple of communist wealth. Hence, the principle which defines and transforms the entire production process is the specific manner in which the workers relate to the product - that is - a social and common appropriation stemming from the collective ownership. Content and form are changed: the exchange of equivalents only occurs on the basis of communal production and appropriation.
The Kolkhozes
Applying the same analysis to the Kolkhozes, we get:
Kolkhozes
40 hour work x 10 peasants = 400 hour work product.
Each peasant gets his full 40 hours of work product.
National industry
40 hour work x 40 workers = 1600 hour work product.
Each worker gets a certain part allocated for national development and the other for himself. These two lines get blurry with enough development.
Let’s say, each worker gets 35 hour product.
The 5-hour product taken - or the 400-hour aggregate product - is used to buy grain from the Kolkhozes.
But the opposite is also possible through state plans.
40 hour work x 10 peasants = 400 hour work
But the peasant needs to meet state prices and hence 5 hour of his work goes over to the state. Hence, a 50 hour aggregate is taken by the proletarian state to provide grain to its population. This 5-hour constant that keeps coming back is what Marx calls the difference between labor-time and need. Need can only be defined by the proletarian state at this stage.
Hence, the peasants have no control over the workers’ labor-time - there can be no wage-labor here because of the middle-term, the proletarian state, which regulates the exchange upon collective property. There is no circuit of Capital.
Since the peasants have no control over the national industry and hence can not extract from it (and from the urban workers) for some private need, they are in line with the “socialist circuit”. The more the peasants buy agricultural industry, the less hours they will have to work and hence the cheaper grain will become and the more likely the cooperatives are to be transformed to a higher symbiotic level. Since the proletarian state re-invests the social product of society into society itself, the collective peasantry will have to invest more and more into its industry to catch up.
Since there is no exploitation in the national industry, the industrial workers directly receive what they work for and also its social consequences (the state-planned development of industry), which, over time, reduces the amount of work they have to perform much faster and hence also the part allocated to buying grain from the peasantry. Hence, the relationship between worker and peasant is a win-win which is dissolving both.
Two limits are imposed upon the Kolkhozes - which aligns them with the socialist economy - collectivity and re-investment to be productive enough. Collectivity allows for no exploitation from peasant to peasant. Re-investment allows for no exploitation from peasant to worker or from worker to peasant:
"Similarly, we have only just begun the organization of various forms of co-operative societies of small farmers as a transition from petty commodity agriculture to communist agriculture. The same must be said of the state-organised distribution of products in place-of private trade, i.e., the state procurement and delivery of grain to the cities and of industrial products to the countryside. Available statistical data on this subject will be given below.
Peasant farming continues to be petty commodity production. Here we have an extremely broad and very sound, deep-rooted basis for capitalism, a basis on which capitalism persists or arises anew in a bitter struggle against communism. The forms of this struggle are private speculation and profiteering versus state procurement of grain (and other products) and state distribution of products in general." -Lenin
Because of the low social division of labor in the countryside, which grounds exchange, the peasantry must alienate its product and only after re-appropriate. Hence, the development of capitalism is obstructed by the abolition of private property in the countryside. But this is not only the case for the peasants. It is also the case for the workers in the cities, although in another form. Because of the relatively *higher* social division of labor in the cities, the form of alienation of the workers in the cities that still persists is the abandonment of their products in front of the state. Hence, the peasantry and the cities both still suffer of some kind of alienation - although they can love their alienation - and this persists until the collapse of the differences between the two:
"Secondly, it is just as evident that when we are in possession of state power, we shall not even think of forcibly expropriating the small peasants (regardless of whether with or without compensation), as we shall have to do in the case of the big landowners. Our task relative to the small peasant consists, in the first place, in effecting a transition of his private enterprise and private possession to cooperative ones, not forcibly but by dint of example and the proffer of social assistance for this purpose. And then, of course, we shall have ample means of showing to the small peasant prospective advantages that must be obvious to him even today." -Engels
Engels makes clear that even under a proletarian dictatorship, one must work gradually and slowly to consolidate its power and enact the transfer to the socialist system. This tactic is fleshed out as a fully democratic one. The proletarian dictatorship is democratic with the objectively persisting classes even though it is still indeed struggling against them but with them against themselves.
But are these specific forms of alienation in the era of the proletarian dictatorship necessary? First, their necessity has been proven historically. But more than that, based on historical experience and a basic grasp of historical materialism, we can also showcase their necessity theoretically:
"As the division of labour springs from the propensity to exchange, so it grows and is limited by the extent of exchange – by the extent of the market. In advanced conditions, every man is a merchant, and society is a commercial society." -Marx
Here, we understand from Marx that the division of labor and exchange (here specifically in the form of commodities) appear almost simultaneously to each other. Further, we learn that the expansion of the alienation of the division of labor grows alongside the extent of exchange, i.e, the universal determination of exchange-value in all relations of society specific to capitalism.
Is the abolition of commodity exchange, production and money a question of consciousness or an objective problem? It is most definitely an objective problem.
How does it occur? First, the peasant must reach the level of development of production where the product of his labor no longer appears to him as his individual work but as only an aliquot part of the social labor. The relationship is mystified if the peasant sticks to his old habits - his direct social production and relationship to the totality of the means of production appear to him as his own self-sufficient work. The necessary transformation involves a significant rise in the division of labor and the coordination of all technical means to make both the alienation and re-appropriation possible. What happens here is an interesting fact of socialist relations of production. The peasant indeed alienates his product in the form of money but *immediately* re-appropriates it on a collective basis.
Under capitalism, the worker alienates his product, based on given conditions of labor, and re-appropriates his condition of life. Both of his acts are the same - his initial alienation and his “re-appropriation” in the form of the wage are both capitalist in nature.
However, in socialism and the transitional phase, the worker alienates his product only upon a given social base - here in the form of the Kolkhozes - and re-appropriates it once again only upon that base. What happens here is an interesting stretching and dissolving of the commodity-form. The commodity here appears as the vanishing mediator and is abolished upon consumption; it does not reach the level of autonomy. This is alienation which abolishes alienation.
The first dissolving form of the commodity is that the peasant does not receive his individual and private labor back but receives the aliquot part of his immediate social labor. A share.
The second is that this “commodity” that is actually exchanged is only one product over the whole collective and not private “commodities” with a commodity-owner. It is the total social labor of the collective association - appearing in the form of money due to the lower division of labor in the countryside - but outstripping itself as money since its appropriation is now in the form of the share.
The third is that since the mediator between the peasants and the workers, the state, is a collective organ and has no individual profiteering from it, the exchange between peasants and workers through the state is an exchange of equivalents.
Funnily enough, Bordiga made the extreme theoretical error of saying only “labor-power” remains as a commodity in the lower stage of socialism when it is the FIRST thing communists abolish when they abolish private property! The worker is no longer remunerated based on his “labor-power” but his share in the total hours of labor.
Collective property directly destroys the value-form. The aliquot of social labor isn't labor power. It includes within it the social forces of production and hence machine "time" in it too. In capitalism, machine "time" is antagonistic to labor. In communal production, it isn't.
Interestingly enough, the author anticipates my line of argumentation and its foundation in Marx. Hence, he is forced to disagree with Marx on an essential point:
"If it is impossible for those working in the Autonomist school to agree with Marx that [the credit system] is the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself,...which presents itself prima facie as a mere point of transition to a new form of production (1894, p.569)." - Fernandez, p.135.
Here, the author makes explicit what all left-communists must arrive at. They must deny Marx’s analysis of the property question, the necessity of the proletarian dictatorship and the theory of the fetish. It is impossible for a left-communist to assert the abolition of capitalism within capitalism. It is impossible for a left-communist to assert the objectivity of communism.
Anyone who denies that the abolition of private property objectively leads to the abolition of money, the commodity and money are forced to deny Marx’s dialectical argument about their relationship. In short, he is forced to reject Marxism.
The Collective versus Capitalist alienation
Another major talking point in the text is that the existence of political abstraction and also the abstraction of labor as a general category precludes the Soviet Union from being a communist society.
However, speaking of the first forms of communism, Marx says:
"The community is only a community of labour, and equality of wages paid out by communal capital – by the community as the universal capitalist. Both sides of the relationship are raised to an imagined universality – labour as the category in which every person is placed, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community." -Marx, Private property and Communism
"In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor." -Marx, The Critique of the Gotha Programme
The abstraction of labor, in the initial stages of communist society, is not removed but brought to an extreme. In this very movement, this abstraction abolishes itself as abstraction since what is appropriated is not the individual labor-content of a product but the social product of total-labor. This product is not itself defined by labor-time - it is defined by the conditions of communal production and appropriation. Hence, the abstraction of labor turns into its opposite; the satisfaction of the specific social need of the worker. Only by asserting the worker as a general category fully - by going from the in-itself to the for-itself - can the social nature of work give rise to the social nature of wealth. This “doubling down” on the old forms is a constant in dialectical analysis.
Symbolic profit!?
With this segment, we have reached the absurdity of the left-communist critique of the Soviet Union. The author of this text, faced with the inexistence of profit in the USSR, is forced to say that “profit” in the USSR took the form of “clout”! What a complete moralistic break from Marxism!:
"An argument is presented in which bureaucratic forms of permission, and, more generally, blat, are understood as fulfilling this function and therefore as constituting a form of money-capital other than the rouble." -Fernandez, p. 142
Not only does this ignore the specificity of the Marxist critique of capitalism - it renders Marxism into a struggle against all forms of “oppression” and “differences” that could exist in society - when Marx and Engels made clear of specific differences that would occur in communist society - such as the advantage of those who can labor more effectively! Isn’t this precisely the same as this “clout” this revisionist is speaking of?
We are done with this book. It was absolute garbage. Let us move on.
A Revolution Summed Up
After having critiqued the first book thoroughly, we turn to the second book: "A Revolution Summed Up" by the ICP. After the first book, I really thought it couldn’t get worse. But it did. This book is a conglomeration of “policy critiques” and vague statements about “money and value”. Nothing of the relations of production, of the abolition of value, of the main factors which differentiate communism from capitalism. A lot of its arguments are similar to the first book, so let us distill its novel formulations of the same garbage.
Let us analyze some of its points. Here are the main arguments - with quotes:
"But, as the Communist Left had pointed out since the Stalinist counter-revolution of the mid to late 20s, the direction of the USSR was entirely capitalist and bourgeois. Wherever wage labour, capital, and an economy based on exchange exist, we are in the presence of capitalism, its economic cycles and the falling rate of profit. This is quite simply, and has always been, the authentic Marxist position" -ICP
Both Marx and Engels defended the position that value, exchange and money will abolish themselves “of their own accord” under the proletarian dictatorship. The necessity of this abolition has been discussed in previous chapters (in Labor Power, Money and Value). As for the “economic cycles” and the “falling rate of profit”: the falling rate of profit can only exist under the system of private ownership of the means of production.
Let us draw a circuit of when the rate of profit hits 0 for simplification:
Capitalist society:
Cycle 1:
-Surplus 10% - 10h - 1 capitalist
-Constant Capital - 60% - 60h
-Variable Capital - 30% - 30h - 5 workers
Cycle 2:
-Surplus 0% - 1 capitalist
-Constant Capital 70% - 70h
-Variable Capital 30% - 30h - 5 workers
Here, the company collapses. However, in socialist society:
Cycle 1:
-Deductions - 60% - 60h
-Remunerations - 40% - 40h
Cycle 2:
-Deductions - 60% - 70h (+10 for machinery)
-Remunerations - 40% - 50h
The reason this happens is because of the substantially different ways in which machinery is “invested” in capitalist society and in communist society. In capitalist society, machinery is “invested” in private manner, i.e, by paying for more machinery which is itself based on another sphere of capitalist production based on the extraction of surplus value for profit. In communist society, the investment in new machinery correlates to an increase in appropriation by the worker, since all production is collectively owned. The condition for increase in machine investment is collective appropriation - or else production is itself impossible. A new investment in machinery involves growth in another sphere of the collective socialist economy. Hence, what the worker gives, he receives back in another form.
What the falling rate of profit designates is a change in the organic composition of capital, rendering labor as no longer the main factor in production and hence the accumulation of labor-time as contradictory to production. What becomes necessary then to continue production is either; a reduction in labor-time or in other terms; an exchange of equivalents between different labor-times - no longer an “accumulation” of labor-time as surplus value. These are only possible in communist society.
Basically, in capitalist society - the labor process works in this manner:
Labor-time → Variable Capital + Constant Capital + Surplus Value
In communist society:
Labor-time (one sphere of production, let’s say agriculture) → Labor-time (machinery) → Labor-time (remuneration - consumption)
Hence, further investments in machinery directly means collective production/appropriation - as opposed to investment in machinery seen as a necessary “loss” in capitalist society.
Previously:
40h for machinery, 10h for “wage” → 80%C/20%V Organic Composition
Communism:
4h for machinery, 0h for wage → 100% “C” Organic composition
4h machinery = 4h remuneration → 100% “V” Organic composition
Collapse of c/v difference
This precludes any individual or organ standing at the top of production - extracting surplus from it. Each producer is forced to assume the work relation to society as machinery (which is society as a concrete abstract and not a bourgeois subject) subsumes all production and productive capacity. To extract surplus value, labor must be able to produce more than its reproduction cost and the machinery cost. At a certain point in production, labor only reproduces constant/variable - profit breaks down. This means that to accumulate no longer means to privately own machinery - i.e to privately own labor. To accumulate now means to make the opposite movement, to organize the reduction of labor-time.
"It suffices to compare the constitution of 1918 with that of 1936 to see that the party which, in power, capitulated to the democratic-bourgeois revolution, was not the Bolshevik Party of 1917-29, but the Stalinist party that survives as the government party of Russia even in 1968! The first, unlike all constitutions throughout history, proclaimed none of those personal rights (property and security) that characterize the bourgeois era, but which capitalist practice constantly tramples on, nor any other kinds of “personal rights”. On the contrary, it loudly proclaims its socialist aim, incompatible not only with the survival of a class of small farmers, but also with the existence of a class of cooperative members assured for life of the possession of the soil and delivering their products to society through the market: the entire abolition of the division of the people into classes." -ICP
and
"This was the kolkhoz in which, for all the reasons we have seen, we must recognize, along with the brilliant Italian Marxist left (out of which the International Communist Party was born) “the true capitulation of the glories of Bolshevism” in the social-economic domain." -ICP
Here, the revisionist ICP claims a discontinuity between Lenin and Stalin on the question of the Kolkhoze cooperatives and the basic organization of the economy. But is this true? Let us cite Lenin in full. In his text, “On Cooperation”, he analyzes all the different types of cooperatives; the ones in capitalist society, the ones that existed under the NEP and the new ones that were emerging:
"In the capitalist state, cooperatives are no doubt collective capitalist institutions. Nor is there any doubt that under our present economic conditions, when we combine private capitalist enterprises—but in no other way than nationalized land and in no other way than under the control of the working-class state—with enterprises of the consistently socialist type (the means of production, the land on which the enterprises are situated, and the enterprises as a whole belonging to the state), the question arises about a third type of enterprise, the cooperatives, which were not formally regarded as an independent type differing fundamentally from the others. Under private capitalism, cooperative enterprises differ from capitalist enterprises as collective enterprises differ from private enterprises. Under state capitalism, cooperative enterprises differ from state capitalist enterprises, firstly, because they are private enterprises, and, secondly, because they are collective enterprises. Under our present system, cooperative enterprises differ from private capitalist enterprises because they are collective enterprises, but do not differ from socialist enterprises if the land on which they are situated and means of production belong to the state, i.e., the working-class.
This circumstance is not considered sufficiently when cooperatives are discussed. It is forgotten that owing to the special features of our political system, our cooperatives acquire an altogether exceptional significance. If we exclude concessions, which, incidentally, have not developed on any considerable scale, cooperation under our conditions nearly always coincides fully with socialism."
-Lenin, On Cooperation
What a wonderful passage! Not only is Lenin affirming the cooperatives as fully in line with the development and consolidation of the proletarian dictatorship; he is saying those cooperatives form the socialist mode of production itself! How far is this from Bordiga’s scoffing at the great socialist Kolkhozes! But for these philistines, it is not enough to cite Lenin. They throw Lenin out of the window the minute it is convenient.
"Whether we consider the relations that prevailed between town and country or the situation of the proletariat in Russian society, its entire economic history after 1929 shows that Russia was dominated by a new primitive accumulation of capital that the owner-State planned in directions that were imposed on it by the demands of the USSR for imperialist greatness" -ICP
and
"This is what we are saying. It was the capitalist suggestion of national grandeur which, even in the absence of a recognizable capitalist class, imposed itself on Stalinist and post-Stalinist power and pushed it to opt for the absolute predominance of heavy industry, a credo that the “liberalizers” of today are not about to give up, whatever small reforms they introduce in the administrative management of the economy." -ICP
"Primitive accumulation" is only possible in early capitalist societies - well before the international linking of the market. A communist association in relation to the capitalist order can de facto not be “primitive accumulation” since the basis of its development is the expropriation of this global capitalist order - by simply operating under a faster mode of production.
The development of industry in Russia was absolutely necessary. This isn’t a “capitalist measure”. Capitalism can only justify the growth of machinery when it involves the extraction of surplus value - a relation which is impossible in communist society. In communist society, as in the USSR, the condition for the growth of machinery is the growth of collective appropriation; since what it produces is necessarily appropriated. Communism introduces a wholly new relation to production and machinery; the development of technology under communism is qualitatively different. Communist production also subsumes the wealth of all previous modes of production - being qualitatively faster, more efficient and better than all of them.
"To put it in a nutshell, the “rationalism” of these neo-socialists-in-one-country is limited to economy in the use of constant capital to delay and slow down the fall in the rate of profit and to confront “peaceful competition” with the more developed capitalist countries more advantageously on the world market. The only “rationalism” that we proletarian communists recognize as such is the abolition of the gigantic waste of living labour practised by capitalism in all its forms. Their rationalism demands due deference towards the law of value, economic freedom, competition, in short commercial anarchy and sordid bourgeois interests." -ICP
The Soviet Union enacted the largest reduction of labor-hours in history - which affected the entire world. It was the primary factor in the “abolition of the gigantic waste of living labor” worldwide. It was the primary factor in the abolition of value worldwide. It was the primary factor in the abolition of competition worldwide.
As for the question of Socialism in One Country: only the development of the country can lead to global economic imbalance - directly creating the possibility of furthering the proletarian revolution. Revolutions in other countries can not be controlled by the proletarian dictatorship. They can be supported - but never preplanned. Revolutions presuppose reversals in every sphere of society.
The ICP’s concealed nationalism (my God!)
What are you saying, Karim!? Can an organization that is named the “International Communist Party” really be nationalist? Don’t you see that it is in their very name!?
It is in this precise irony that the truth is asserted.
The ICP’s understanding of changes in the mode of production is precisely nationalist, which is why it can scoff at the Kolkhozes. It does not see the Kolkhozes as standing at the top of the world capitalist mode of production, expropriating it - rather it sees the Kolkhozes as “backwards”. Why? It says that Russia did not go through “capitalism” and hence the association in the Kolkhozes could not be communist. But this is a thoroughly nationalist argument! Don’t they know that capitalism is international? Don’t they know that the association is in relation to the entire capitalist world, which has gone through capitalism? Don’t they know the Kolkhozes benefit from the entire products of capitalism, machinery and development? Don’t they see that the extent that the commune is communist is the extent to which it relegates capitalism to the rest of the world - forcing it to deal with it, even though it develops faster than any capitalist enterprise? No, they do not see this.
Bordiga’s proposal to Stalin in 1926 was that the communist parties around the world should be able to control the Soviet Union. What a funny guy! Isn’t this the most virulent nationalism of all time, which forces the role of the Communist Party to another country instead of furthering the international revolution!? Isn’t this the most thorough abandonment of the international revolution?
Bordiga’s insistence on the abolition of commodity production, instead of the abolition of private property which then leads to it, stems again from his nationalist understanding of the economy. He does not see that the division of labor creates different associations, which can be self-sufficient of their own, and that only with enough development are they unified. Bordiga thinks these associations are unified from the start - hence his nationalist mystification. Since he observes the nation as a “whole” as the bourgeois sees it - he assumes the national economy is also a “whole”. Can the proletarian dictatorship control the economy of the capitalist world order - can it abolish commodity production there, where the economy is a different whole altogether? No, it can not. Should it still trade with the capitalist order - with the necessary medium of money? Not only should it, it absolutely needs to. And with enough trade, the money-relation is abolished altogether and the respective countries each own a share in the total international labor. Only in its trade with the capitalist order does communism showcase its superiority. The same applies to the countryside.
Aphoristically, the paradoxes of left-communism can be summarised as:
They accuse the Marxists of adhering to capitalist forms while proclaiming the eternity of the Party - a capitalist form!
They accuse the Marxists of populism while they ignore that proletarian interest exists outside the empirical “proletariat”!
They accuse the Marxists of nationalism while analyzing the mode of production only nationally!
They accuse the Marxists of “economism” while believing “planning”, not the property-relation, transforms the mode of production!
They accuse the Marxists of “romanticism” while believing consciousness determines social being and not the opposite (the reversal of praxis!!!)!
The Nail In The Coffin: The Left-Communist “Program” is Social-Democracy (what!?)
Now that we’ve talked about the abstract issues of the transition to communism, let us analyze what the left-communists concretely propose. This will be, by far, the funniest part of our critique. Let us cite one of their main theoretical works, “The Immediate Revolutionary Program”, by the ICP (https://www.pcint.org/07_TP/011/011_immediate-program.htm):
"Nothing better shows the ignominy of such an involution than a list of measures that would now be formulated for a Western capitalist country, upon the realization of the seizure of power, to replace (after a century) those of the Manifesto, although its most characteristic measures would still be included.
7. These demands are as follows:
a) «Divestment of capital»; a massive reduction of the part of products composed of means of production, with the target being increasd means of consumption.
b) «Increase of production costs» in order to be able to give higher wages for less work time, as long as salary, the market and money exist.
c) «Draconian reduction of the work day» to at most half or less its present length by absorbing the unemployed and those engaged in anti-social activities.
d) After a reduction of the volume of production by a plan of «under-production», concentrating production in the most necessary areas, «authoritarian control of consumption» to fight the promotion of useless, voluptuary and harmful goods and to abolish activities that propagate a reactionary psychology.
e) «Rapid abolition of the limits of the enterprise» with an authoritarian transfer not of personnel but of means of labor, with a view to a new consumption plan.
f) «Rapid abolition of welfare» of the monetary type to be replaced by social provisions up to an initial minimum for those who cannot work.
g) «A halt to construction» of housing and industry on the outskirts of big and even small cities as a first step towards a more uniform distribution of the population over the surface of the earth. Reduction of congestion, speed and volume of traffic by prohibiting unnecessary travel.
h) «Resolute struggle against professional specialization» and social division of labor through the abolition of careers and titles.
i) Closer to the political domain, obvious immediate measures to subordinate the school, the press, all means of communication and information, as well as all entertainment and leisure networks, to the communist State."
What a surprise! This is a thoroughly Social-Democratic Program! Don’t believe me? Let us read its contents closely.
First, there is not a single talk of changing property relations - what actually makes one a communist! This is fascinating. Even when they speak of the press, communication, information, entertainment and leisure - they only say that we must “politically” subordinate these spheres to the State. No talks of nationalization! In fact, nationalization is not mentionned once in the whole article surrounding these demands. What a curiosity!
There is a reason for this: the left-communist is adopting this Social-Democratic Program to distance himself from actual communist countries that existed in the past! He says to the capitalists: no, no we will not expropriate you like the evil Stalin - we will just militarily control your every act. This is much better for you, isn’t it?
Further, the left-communist can also not logically conceive of a transition. This another reason why his Program is a Social-Democratic one. He can not conceive of social relations being in contradiction with their form of production. For example, he can not conceive of collective associations in which the money-form still appears, but over time becomes superfluous.
This Program makes complete sense when you read left-communism’s analysis of Russia. They wanted an eternal NEP - never expropriating the capitalists but merely “managing” them!
Second, some of these demands assume that they can be implemented without a change in the relations of production. For example, point b) which says: “Increase of production costs in order to be able to give higher wages for less work time, as long as salary, the market and money exist.”. This is a thoroughly imprecise formulation. Is it an increase of costs nominally, i.e, through state fixing of prices? Does it involve a change in property relations - i.e nationalization? Are these demands through taxes?
If this is through taxes and state-fixing, this does not resolve the class struggle but makes it worse! It relegates the opportunity to capitalists to organize, as they still hold the vast majority of the economy in their hands (since the Program speaks of no nationalization!) and overthrow these oppressive tax measures against them! Further, nominal increases in wages mean nothing if the means of production are owned by the capitalists! Any Marxist should know the difference between the nominal and the real wage. All of these demands are simply post-festum; after the capitalists have made all the profits.
The same can be said of "c) «Draconian reduction of the work day» to at most half or less its present length by absorbing the unemployed and those engaged in anti-social activities". This demand is mystified. Every communist supports a reduction in hours of labor. But oh Lord is there a difference between a (forced) reduction of labor hours under the ownership of capitalists and under the collective ownership of the producers. Under private ownership, this would create the most intense competition ever seen, the most intense exploitation of the working class, the most intense class oppression we’ve ever seen - short of turning the whole country into a civil war!
All of the other demands are the same. They are mere legal demands about how a capitalist economy should run: oh please, do not make traffic here, oh please do not give drugs to people, oh please produce more food. Absolutely NOTHING about property. What is this joke?
Third, with the lack of the talk about the property question, one has to assume what the left-communist thinks the power of the proletarian state is. Let us hope the left-communist doesn’t think the state is merely direct military power…? Oh, but that’s exactly what he thinks! When uses words such as “draconian” and “authoritarian”, he imagines state troops going to capitalist enterprises and forcing them to do this and that. He can not imagine that the proletarian State must absolutely have an economic organ of power of its own - or else it is nothing. He does not understand that if what the State uses, its functions, are not themselves independant of the capitalist sphere, i.e themselves state-owned, this will lead to capitalists speculating off state functions.
What makes this Program thoroughly Social-Democratic is the lack of investigation into the change in relations of production. These are sets of policies perfectly within the capitalist paradigm - never questioning property. At best, it is idealist, at worst, it is thoroughly reactionary. Let us compare it with the actual proposed Program in the Communist Manifesto:
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the
populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.
What a refreshing read! Now we are talking about communism! Notice how every point relates to changing the fundamental relations of production and strengtening the proletarian state economically.
This was the nail in the coffin for left-communism. Everything is proved in its concreteness; and the concreteness of left-communism is Social-Democracy - the moderate wing of fascism.
Is there a cure…?
The most obvious cure for left-communism is the bullet. As for the sincere communist, who merely got tripped up in this mistake honestly, there is an alternative. Since the pathology of left-communism takes hold of the brain firmly, as a parasite, the victim must go the end of the treatment. He must take left-communism to its end. This is a scary operation - the left-communist may leave Marxism altogether - as we observe historically. He may praise a Hitler or a Mussolini here and there. But if he is sincere, if he takes his ideological position to its extreme, the absurdity of his old ways will strike him like a red iron. Marx’s method will slowly reconstruct his brain.
How is he to take left-communism to its extreme? Simply, he must trace its ideological development. No one can run from history. He must read those who tried to clarify its ideological underpinnings philosophically - not only ideologically. Let him read Adorno’s Negative Dialectics, Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and Endnotes. These readings are all preparation for when he first opens up Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (not even to speak of the Logic for now). Since, fundamentally, the left-communist’s issue is one of method; he must read the pinnacle and start of the dialectical method. His understandings of abstraction, abolition, transformation, negativity, positivity, substance and subject will all be transformed with that text. His method of argumentation and exposition itself will change. No one is a Marxist without a firm understanding of Hegel’s method and Logic.
But how is he to approach this text if he lacks preparation? A contemporary Marxist who went through all those steps, through Adorno, Lukacs, Debord and co, offers a good gateway to entering Hegel’s way of thinking. Hence, the two gifts you can offer the local left-communist are:
-"In Defense of Lost Causes" for a political exposition of such a project.
-"Less Than Nothing" for an extensive critique of almost all Marxist currents philosophically and an advanced introduction to Hegel’s thought.
For a mix of the historical and the theoretical, a more classical Marxist approach:
-Draper’s Marx’s Theory of the Revolution (multiple volumes; specifically volume 2 would help cure the left-communist illness).
After these works and Hegel’s, he may re-read the Marxist texts he was previously citing and finally understand his philistinism.
After the local left-communist has been firmly convinced that he was wrong, you may dispose of him. In the good Stalinist manner, he is now “subjectively” right but he was “objectively” wrong. Good luck!
(For Federal agents: the violent speech is a joke)