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by Lucien Sve Translation/synopsis by Carl Shames
To Begin With the Ends
Introduction: the trap of the term
"communism"
This book is not written for those who side with the hegemony of
the dollar and see
capitalism today as the end of history. It is for those who take
the side of revolutionary
action and thought, and who are willing to engage in a thorough
re-thinking and
conceptual reconstruction of a present and future emancipation.
The central issue is
what we may call the communist question. There has been very
little research on this
question, that is, little real study of the possible alternative
to capitalism.
The ideological attacks on communism have attempted to
disqualify a priori the
possibility of thinking about an alternative future and the
response from the left has
not, as of yet, been adequate. This is our starting point. Two
recent books in particular
are illustrative: The Black Book of Communism, and Past of an
Illusion.
A common characteristic of this ideological attack is the openly
infra-conceptual use
of the term 'communism', despite this being the main focus of
the books. One book
equates the 'communist illusion' with the Soviet Union, claiming
that both have died.
Communism is equated with its Stalinist form. They speak of a
'general entity' of
communism rather than specific historical forms. There is no
distinction between the
retrospective and prospective nature of communism. The political
conclusions precede
the historical demonstration. The ultimate goal of all this is
to criminalize and de-
legitimize all militant action and thought against capitalism,
to de-historicize any
consideration of communism, by turning it into an abstraction
presented as a tragedy.
There are real problems in defining communism. The Soviet Union
used the terms
socialism and communism to describe itself. The Communist
Manifesto speaks of
'scientific socialism'. Many theoretical and ideological issues
underlie what on the
surface seems to be a matter of words.
Let us review the tasks corresponding to what I am calling the
'new communist
question': What was born in 1917 has disappeared and traditional
communist forces
have dissolved; Stalinism is a mark of infamy; Lenin is being
reappraised and even
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Marx is closed for inventory. We are literally not in the same
world as before: classes,
people, concepts are all totally different. We need to analyze
in broad outline where we
are in history, why communism is a process more than ever on the
order of the day,
how it would be radically different from what it was in the 20th
century, and how can
we advance in this direction.
What needs to be done is to reconstitute theoretically a
communist vision for our
time, and to lay out such a vision as a coherent whole, along
with the motivating and
structuring concepts and primordial considerations it
presupposes. What could the
term communism signify today, both as political struggle and
future social form? This
involves grasping Marx's revolutionary perspective in all its
vigor and rigor, in order to
rediscover the basics of deep social transformation.
Chapter I. Does the future have a name?
Many Marxists have mistakenly interpreted Marx's ideas as
signifying an end to
philosophy, the idea being that materialist scientific analysis
does away with the need
for specifically philosophical development and interpretation.
In fact, the writings of
Marx, Lenin, Lukacs and Gramsci are permeated by theoretical
considerations,
including the philosophical, on the theory and practice of
politics. The Stalinist period,
however, is characterized by a theoretical regression and
political decadence. The only
way out of this is to re-think matters to the core.
The path to the communist question is long, but having said that
in general, I have
no difficulty specifying the particular philosophical need for a
theoretical approach.
What we can call the theoretical is fundamental and
non-negotiable.
Major changes in the notion of how capitalism will be replaced
with another system
were underway in 1976 at the time of the 22nd Congress (of the
PCF). The previously
sacrosanct notions of dictatorship of the proletariat, the
insurrectional conquest of
power and violent installation of socialism were abandoned in
favor of notions of
progressive democratic transformation of the capitalist mode of
production. But these
changes were instituted top-down by a party leadership
maintaining the old way of
doing things.
The main idea of the shift at that time is that the dictatorship
of the proletariat is no
longer necessary because the working class now constitutes the
great majority of the
population. Thus a political question was given a sociological
answer. But this is not
the basic question. Socialism is seen as transitional to
communism, and 'advanced
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democracy' as transitional to socialism. The problem is in the
non-theoretical, non-
critical way this transition is understood. It ignores the most
essential aspects of the
Marxist historical perspective.
The problem was not the abandonment of the concept of
dictatorship of the
proletariat but how this was done: in a top-down decision, and
in the absence of a
theoretical context. This was the basis of Althusser's
objection, and although I had
many disagreements with him, on this issue we were in agreement.
The issue was
raised at that time of how theory can be freed from its role as
justifying a political
course, as in the old doctrinaire 'Marxism-Leninism'.
The 23rd Congress of 1979 was one of real strategic innovation
but for me it
emphasized the contrast between political wealth and theoretical
poverty. On the one
hand the notion of 'self-managing socialism', in the absence of
a theoretical
foundation, quickly became an empty formula. On the other, the
statutes were purged
of the traditional references to Marxism. While there were good
reasons for this, the
result was a weakening of the standards of theoretical thought
this name represents.
The main obstacle to all advances more and more appeared to me
to be the backward
conception of the functioning and mode of life of the party. The
problem was not only
an indifference of the leadership to theoretical matters
covering an entire range of
fundamental questions, but the unwillingness to look at the
functioning and
organization of the party itself. My differences with the
leadership were more and
more political as well as theoretical.
The secret of 'scientific socialism'
The best way to proceed to the communist question is through a
summary of the
theses concerning the supersession of capitalism as
traditionally presented by
'scientific socialism'. As we assess these theses, we cannot
ignore their relation to what
they understand is being superseded. Socialism is seen as
transitional, characterized
by the social ownership of the large means of production when
the working class has
gained state power. This is a transition to a higher form, a
future order totally freed of
the heritage of class society, as seemingly spelled out in
Marx's Critique of the Gotha
Program. Socialism is described as 'to each according to his
work' and communism as
'to each according to his needs'. With communism, the 'end of
pre-history' is achieved;
communism then moves forward, freed from the past and based only
upon itself.
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But when we look at this we see that socialism can not be spoken
of except in the
larger context of communism. This is why Lenin wanted to change
the name of the
Marxist party to Communists. This is why Communist parties have
this name.
We need a far more vigilant examination of the relationship
between socialism and
communism than what is found in the manuals of scientific
socialism. We can see right
away how unclear it all is. Socialism has been seen as the first
stage of communism and
communism has been understood as the stage beyond socialism. The
result is an
impoverished idea of communism. As a first step toward
reconstructing this idea, let
us summarize Marx's characterization of communism:
- universal development of the productive forces;
- real appropriation by associated producers of their
objectified social powers;
- supersession of the rule of monopoly capital and commodity
relations;
- emancipatory transition of labor beyond the form it takes in
the capitalist working class;
- free satisfaction of cultural and material needs, integral
development of all individuals; - disappearance of the state
and of classes;
- de-alienation of social consciousness;
- universalization of exchange and of humanity itself;
- end of exploitation;
- elimination of oppressions based on class, race and
gender;
- transition from the apparent freedom of contingency to real
freedom;
- all in all, the end of human pre-history and the beginning of
true human history.
It is impossible to consider this without being taken by the
visionary audacity of the
Marxist idea of communism. Each of the above, of course,
requires tremendous
clarification and elaboration. This should not be seen as an
itemization, however, but
as an organic whole of interconnected aspects. For example, the
universal
development of productive forces is not only a development of
the various forces (such
as technical capacities), but is more essentially a development
of the productive force,
humanity as a whole, as it incorporates science. A perfect
example of this is today's
informatization of life. Without this development, no other
aspect of communism can
come about. The decisive point here is that the appropriation by
society as a whole of
the major means of production and exchange is impossible without
the supersession of
the market and the capitalist working class, the integral
development of individuals
and the disappearance of the state. The fact that so many
theorists in the Marxist
tradition have failed to recognize this has resulted in the
reduction of this core of
Marxist thought to simplistic formulas, i.e. socialism = social
ownership of the means
of production + 'to each according to his needs'. Moreover, the
whole concept of
socialism, in principle the first phase of communism, was
massively reduced to simply
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that of social ownership of the means of production and
exchange. This had disastrous
theoretical and practical results.
This denaturing reduction had its effect not only in the realm
of ideas, where it
contributed to a substantial conceptual degeneration, but in the
building of socialism
in the Stalin epoch, as it shaped strategic choices. The
revolution was considered to be
complete from the moment, in the '30's, when the socialization
of the means of
production and exchange had been instituted in the countryside
and cities. Stalin
declared that the disappearance of the state was an
impossibility in the conditions of
capitalist encirclement. The integral development of
individuals, supersession of the
social division in between the functions of direction and
execution, dealienation of
consciousness, were no longer on the agenda. As a result, things
were converted into
their reverse. Social ownership clearly cannot effectively exist
in conditions of the
persistence of an omnipotent state, of a fragmented
individuality and a mystified social
consciousness. This requires what Marx envisioned as the
appropriation by the
associated producers themselves of their means of production and
more generally, of
their societal powers, that is, the taking possession and
effective control, by working
people themselves over all the objective conditions of their
activity. What happened
instead was a dispossession of the producers by a state/party
bureaucracy. Cut off
from communism, this version of socialism actually reinforced
social alienation.
Certainly, in the traditional culture of a party such as the
PCF, 'socialism' has not
been limited to this formulation of the socialization of the
means of production and
exchange, although this is considered essential to the
definition. Although the
discourse has proclaimed the emancipatory virtues of communism,
a closer look shows
that these have been essentially seen in the same terms. All
social problems and
contradictions of capitalism will be resolved, in this view,
when this primary struggle
to socialize the means of production is won. The emancipatory
objectives projected for
socialism thus dwindle to a shadow of the communist vision.
Another issue in the PCF is its silence on the disappearance of
the state. The result is
tacit acceptance of the entire bourgeois framework for thinking
the relation of the
individual to the state, and the delegation of social power.
A crucial manipulation of Marx's thought
How do we account for the fact that socialism refused to
transition to communism?
Socialism in its Stalinist form ceased seeing itself as
transitional; the goals of
communism were forgotten in an expurgated version of Marxism. If
70 years was not
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sufficient for the Soviet Union to at least begin the transition
to communism, this
cannot be attributed solely to extrinsic factors - capitalist
encirclement, etc. The main
reason has to be internal: socialism, after Lenin, repudiated
its revolutionary essence
to the point of actually opposing the development of
communism.
The more we look at this strange experience of the Soviet Union
and its camp, the
more we have to confront the ambiguity in the vocabulary of
socialism and
communism. Are they two phases of the same formation? If so, why
two terms? Marx,
in the Critique of the Gotha Program, introduced the idea of two
phases, but did not
call the first socialism, but rather the inferior, or
undeveloped stages of communism.
Marx in fact never thought this first phase could be
conceptualized in any way apart
from the second. Political thinking based on a limited vision of
a socialist alternative is
thus totally foreign to Marxism.
Marx and Engels clearly chose the term 'communism' when they
wrote the
Manifesto, to distinguish it from the non-theoretically based
conceptions of 'socialism'
of that time. The contrast of 'socialism' to 'communism' in the
mid 1800's, then, had to
do with political currents. The whole point of the Manifesto is
that Marxism is a
theoretically grounded total confrontation with bourgeois forms
of society,
individuality and thought. The 'socialist' parties of the time
did not undertake this at
all. The politics of socialism, then and now, don't confront the
world at the level found
in the Manifesto, for instance on the nature of individuality
and state power.
Socialism and social democracy dominated politics at the turn of
the century. Marx's
Critique of the Gotha Program was deliberately misinterpreted so
that socialism
became a semi-independent first phase of communism while the
latter was put off to
be thought about at another time. Communism thus became an
ideal, a vague
possibility far in the future, while socialism came to be seen
as real, pragmatic,
attainable. Social democracy, and dogmatized 'scientific
socialism' share this reliance
on a non-Marxist conception of social transformation.
Lenin was the only one to see through this mystification and its
implications.
Nevertheless this distortion characterized the workers'
movements of the 20th century
including both the social democratic and communist parties. What
has been
invalidated by the whole course of these movements is not
communism, but this whole
conception of socialism.
Relearning communism
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How do we re valorize the Marxist idea of communism in light of
the failure not only
of the Eastern socialisms but of the communist and socialist
parties of the West? A
central issue we have identified is the complete incapacity of
both to fully
conceptualize revolutionary social transformation. The questions
discussed above are
crucial in understanding the chronic impotence of the parties of
the West. In the area
of strategy, the state is not questioned. Social transformation
is seen as a coup, a
replacement of power from above, the revolutionary conquest of
state power. The
whole strategy of seizing state power followed by the
dictatorship of the proletariat has
lost all credibility but no alternative strategy or vision has
been proposed in any depth.
While the French and other parties renounced the term
(dictatorship of the
proletariat), they haven't truly abandoned that way of
thinking.
If we want a conception that is real for the majority of people,
the whole conception
of social transformation must be extended far beyond seizure of
the means of
production and exchange to all the abolitions and metamorphoses
and the subsequent
innovations, that is, a communism for our time, not projected in
the future, but as it is
as a potential right now.
The second, and even more important, reason for the failure of
the revolutionary
project in the developed capitalist countries was the crisis of
historical relevance that
has devalued the very idea of socialism. From the start, Marx's
ideas of communism,
enumerated above, were hard to conceive and impossible to place
on a political
agenda. The very notion was tacitly dismissed as irrelevant and
utopian. But how can
we fail to see its real development in today's reality? Isn't
science becoming a universal
productive force? Aren't individuals struggling for a revolution
in biography, of age,
sex and identity, presaging the integral development of
individuals? Isn't the
unprecedented expansion of wage labor, leading to broader use of
human capacities
the beginning of a supersession of the traditional working
class? The growth of citizen
initiatives, globalization - although in monstrous form -
represent a trend toward
human universality and planetary regulation.
The main point is that means, by which we understand human
organization in the
production of goods, gradually become subordinate to ends: the
development of
people, the humanity we aspire to be, the form of social life,
our historic horizons.
There is no real answer to these questions outside the
perspective of communism. The
communist parties have by and large failed to address this
entire range of questions,
sticking to old conceptions, but recently dabbling with a little
bit of ecologism. The fact
is, the social revolution of the 21st century will be communist,
or it will not be.
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It bears repeating that we are not attempting to depict an ideal
future and to
formulate a politics of how to get there. We are not calling for
the abandonment of real
present day struggles for social progress in favor of a focus on
vague future ideals. By
communism we must understand not only a future social formation
but a current
process. To speak of the communist vision is to call for seeing
the tendencies at work
right now pushing toward overcoming the human limits of the
present social order.
This way of thinking avoids both the socialist utopianism of
imagining abolitions by
decree, and the reformist conceptions confined to a 'socialism'
that retains the most
basic features of bourgeois society. It attempts to think the
process of social
transformation in the deep dialectical complexity of the process
in which concrete
things really change.
The real task, however, is to develop a new politics. Communist
parties have never
tackled these issues. They have not seen their relevance to all
aspects of political
thinking. Issues of the changes in the working class, the nature
of the state, the relation
of the individual to the collectivity, the fragmentation of
individuality and
development of the spectrum of human capacities - these
questions are not in the
distant future, but are here today. In fact it is the limitation
of our thinking to
'socialism' that ties our hands and limits the forms and
terrains of struggle to defensive
measures against the ravages of capital. We must broaden the
struggle to supersede
capitalism and to all fronts: capitalist forms, commodity-labor,
the state, domination,
mystified consciousness, the hundreds of relations that produce
and reproduce
alienation, etc. We must construct an authentic communist
strategy, as realistic in its
immediate objectives as suggestive of the immense goals that
provide their true
meaning. Thus, the actors of today begin to see the communist
goal of their acts.
Did Marx over rationalize history?
This task of shifting our perspectives is of course more
demanding than it may
initially appear. We have to inventory the theoretical contents
of the communist vision
and invent the corresponding political practice in the
conditions of our world. Nothing
is given in advance. It would not be sufficient to produce a new
Communist Manifesto,
even if we could. We have to radically re interrogate Marxist
theorization itself. How
do we know the future is called communism? The Manifesto claims
to give us the
"theoretical knowledge of the movement of history as a whole",
but how do we know if
this is true? What is it to be a communist, what remains of
communist belief for today?
What is the meaning of history? What is the potential of the
'human race' referred to in
the Internationale? These questions call for a broad
re-examination of Marxist
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theoretical thought. This itself is not the subject of this
book, which is devoted
essentially to political questions.
A question to be taken up here, however, concerns the
rationality of history. The
communist perspective has meaning only within a historical logic
which implies
intelligibility of the present (up to a point) and
pre-visibility of the future. Only in
these conditions can our objectives be deemed plausible and our
actions effective. It
presupposes that we are still living in class society and that
today's class contradictions
themselves engender the presuppositions for the transition to a
classless society. If we
can name the present it is not absurd at all to suppose that we
can name the future.
This is the historic rationality of the communist era.
The dominant ideology never ceases to force upon us the belief
in the impossibility
of envisioning an alternative world, and with the demise of
'socialism', this view was
pushed ever more forcefully, joined by many erstwhile leftists
who went along with the
idea that 'communism' can no longer be seen as an
alternative.
This requires us to look briefly at a question of fact: did Marx
over rationalize history
- not in an idealist way, as in Hegel, for whom the course of
history is the
manifestation of Reason, but even in the materialist terms of
necessity and most
importantly, in his conception of determinism? This issues has
been raised and argued
over hundreds of times. Indeed, Marx adhered to a notion of
causality in historical
movement - he saw a necessary connection between the general
character of each
epoch of productive forces, human included, and the global
structure of their class
relations, and more broadly and less strictly, with other
structures and
superstructures. Each social formation, for Marx, is an organic
totality whose
evolution is no more haphazard than that of a biological being.
We can study the logic
of its functioning, and see the coming of a changes in its
development and major
features of its contents. Thus, the capitalist mode of
production, where we find class
contradictions heightened to their extreme, produces the
conditions for transition to a
classless social formation where the class antagonisms that
characterize thousands of
years of human history are left behind, relegated to the
pre-history of social humanity.
History, for Marx, is not a dark night in which we don't see
what we're doing, where
we're going or what we want. Nevertheless, there is a
fundamental difference between
this understanding and what is properly spoken of as
determinism.
First of all, this materialist theorization includes the living
consciousness that
concrete social formations contain inexhaustible singularities,
an infinite variety of
historical trajectories based on general logics of development.
Each capitalist society,
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for instance, has a familiar air, basic similarities to all
others, despite immense
differences. History is saturated with chance and to this extent
is unforseeable. The
necessity that reigns in nature is not univocal but dialectical.
It includes contradictions
and works ceaselessly through the range of possibles. The laws
of evolution essentially
express tendencies and contra-tendencies in dynamics that can
always lead to
unexpected results. No evolution is linear, no process
mechanical, no development
identical to itself or others, no history written in advance.
Moreover, unlike natural
processes, historical events can't occur without us. But human
freedom doesn't
suspend necessity, just as the airplane doesn't suspend gravity.
The future is never
closed. This open necessity, equally far from scientistic
determinism and obscurantist
contingentism, is where the actors of history may draw
theoretical and practical
lessons derived from their experience.
Deconstruction of historical time
How do we understand that not only anti-Marxism but ordinary
Marxism as well
adhered to a deterministic caricature of this thinking, in which
'socialism' exists in
some pre-conceived way, achieved in a 'final struggle', in which
whatever path or line
was taken was deemed the only correct one? Where do we find the
roots of this
arrogance that reified the goal and so simplified history? Do we
invoke the influence of
mass culture, pre-Marxist conceptions, etc.? No doubt we should.
But don't we find
elements of this mechanical, necessitarist scheme in Marx
himself? Not only in the
often quoted Preface to the Contribution, or in the Poverty of
Philosophy, but toward
the end of Book I of Capital, where he writes that capitalism
engenders its own
negation, "with the ineluctability of a natural process", a
phrase echoing the slogan
that the victory of the proletariat is 'inevitable'.
Did Marx, in the euphoria of discovering the essential logics in
history, ascribe to
them a determinist interpretation? Isn't this a fatalism that
can lead to a fanaticism,
such as in Engels' letter to Bebel in which he claims that "the
final success" of the
revolutionary party is "absolutely certain", or even when Lenin
asserted, "the future
belongs to us"? Perhaps in Marx and his followers, despite the
radical rupture with
speculative thought in the formation of historical materialism,
there is a never fully
conquered over-rationalist view of history and overestimation of
its necessities. We
can see here the enormous practical stakes of seemingly minor
theoretical points.
These internal differences in Marxism are small compared to the
objections raised
by the project of deconstructing the concept of history that
gained influence in the last
decades. The objective rationality of the historical process had
already been called into
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question much earlier, for instance by Max Weber's thinking on
the intrinsic
incompleteness of history and the arbitrariness of
interpretation, by Dilthey, Jaspers
and Freud who showed that the meaning we attribute to our
actions is essentially
illusory. After the war, Merleau-Ponty took up an earlier theme
that logic and history
are intrinsically separate.
Without doubt the most important was Levi-Strauss who undertook
the most radical
deconstruction. The final chapter of La Pense Sauvage was aimed
overtly at Sartre
and covertly at Marx. It put forward enormous provocations as
though they were
proven facts. All of history, according to Levi-Strauss, is an
illusion, an artifact of a
discipline constituting its object. History in fact is a series
of dates with no unity; it
decomposes into autonomous sequences based ultimately on
infra-historical and
unconscious causalities - biological, geological and
cosmological which he calls the
true infrastructures of historical materialism. Thus the linear
continuity called history
is not linked to man, the meaning we ascribe to our historical
experiences is never the
correct one, the supposed intelligibility of history, the
meaning we ascribe to our
actions, is a myth. Levi-Strauss comes to this memorable
conclusion: the French
revolution, as generally understood, in fact, never existed.
The theme of the illusion of historic rationality is developed
further by many others.
Paul Veyne, for instance, in his study of Foucault (Foucault
Revolutionizes History),
claims that "History, as we have spoken of it for two centuries,
doesn't exist". All that
exists are "singular constellations"; the rest is "but a word".
By demonstrating that
madness does not exist but is only constituted or dissolved by
practices that give it the
appearance of an object, Foucault magisterially showed the way
to a veritable
"completion of history", "dynamiting all rationalizing political
philosophy". 'Ideology',
'the state', 'politics' even natural objects don't really exist,
according to Veyne. Only a
Marxist would cling to the naive belief in an object.
This crusade is joined by F. Lyotard. Branding Marxist thought
as the "totalizing
model and its totalitarian effects", he countered this peril
with an irrevocable
decomposition of grand narratives. These are the broad
mythologico-historic themes
such as class struggle and human emancipation that have always
served to "legitimate"
authority. Post-modern science, with its understanding of the
discontinuous,
catastrophic, paradoxical, sees human society for what it really
is, "immense clouds of
linguistic matter". Notions such as class struggle, for Lyotard,
are nothing but a
"protestation for honor".
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A different direction is taken by Michel Serres, in his analysis
of historical time. All
contemporary sciences, according to Serres, show that time is
not linear, but turbulent
and chaotic. It "percolates", is "crumbled", "embossed",
"pleated" .... All our problems
in the theory of history have to do with the naive way time has
been understood. Ideas
based on a notion of temporal progression are disqualified,
especially Marxism. The
dialectic is thus uninteresting and irrelevant. The entire
Marxist mode of thought is
obsolete.
Where do we see the goal of our acts?
These assertions require a careful answer, not just polemics,
for they address real
problems. Thus, regarding history as illusion, yes, the course
of history as we represent
it is a construct which only naivet would take as an objective
given. Yes the great
workers' movements from 1848 until today make use of
self-legitimizing narratives.
Yes the forms of communist activism of the last century may not
be appropriate for the
next. But, the French revolution, contrary to Levi-Strauss, was
not an illusion or myth.
The dehumanization produced by finance capital is not an
artifact of historical
methodology, a legitimating narrative. In fact it is the denial
of these realities which is
the most flagrant example of mystifying ideologies, of wishful
thinking.
Secondly, is it true that only the singular truly exists? This
is a nominalism, guarding
its virtue against the speculative entities that have encumbered
history. True, vulgar
Marxism substantified 'the bourgeoisie' and mythologized 'the
working class' without
analyzing the complex realities and concrete attitudes
encompassed by these
abstractions. But what could be more antithetical to the
materialist dialectic than
thinking in terms of fixed generalities? The lesson is that a
conception aspiring to be
Marxist must re-evaluate the role of the singular event in
relation to general
necessities, and the role of its chance character in determining
the final course of
things. But does this mean we should reduce the singular to only
singularity? Each
person is unique, but being human is also universal. The
universal as such doesn't
exist, but this doesn't prevent its existence in the singular.
The class logic of capital
exists concretely in each layoff of workers, in financial
speculation, where the universal
primacy of private interest is inscribed in detail. Historical
rationality indeed exists in
each event.
The idea of a singular exclusively singular is akin to the
methodological
individualism of Anglo-American sociology. The corresponding
belief that all abstract
entities are in a sense images of Spirit cannot be attributed to
Marx, who a century
before Foucault and the others, insisted that labor, for
example, is always "a
-
determinate labor". At a certain stage of development as he
showed in the Grundrisse,
"labor in general" becomes a practical truth. This
becoming-singular of the general, a
process of historical rationality that only a materialist
dialectic can grasp, totally
escapes the nominalism - not only methodological, but doctrinal
- that Althusser offers
as the height of materialism. In fact, this is an idealist
characterization of the universal,
that is, of essential logics and relations. This dialectic, seen
as so impoverished by M.
Serres, allows us to comprehend an historic temporal topology
that totally escapes
him.
The greatest objection of all is that, after the fall of
communism, we can no longer
believe in the alluring legend of a history progressing toward a
better future. This
objection would be stronger if it took on this thesis as is,
rather than a mediocre
caricature. Everyone who knows Marx at all knows that he
rejected the notion of a
linear development, a regular, fully predictable progress. What
he did believe is that in
history as in nature there are processes that cumulatively lead
in the same direction.
For instance, the tendency in capitalism toward growth of the
productive forces and a
falling rate of profit. At the same time there are immense
contradictions motivating all
historical movement, such as between the accumulation of wealth
on the side of capital
and accumulation of poverty on the side of labor. This
tendential impoverishment,
derided in the '50's and '60's, today can be seen by all, at the
national and planetary
level, in a multiplicity of forms. The third point, most
decisive yet most misunderstood
is that the non-linear development of these broad contradictions
tends to produce the
negative and positive presuppositions of their own supersession.
Thus, in following its
own blind logic, private capital inexorably engenders the
ravages which bring into
being the individuals and the productivity that can create a
system that gives back "to
each according to his needs".
Can Levi-Strauss and the others refute this argument? There is
no sign of this. As
Marx wrote in the Preface to the Contribution, a statement that
none of these critics
has the courage to confront, "humanity takes up only those
problems it is able to
resolve". The ways they go about disqualifying Marx show that
historical rationality as
Marx really conceived it is something these critics don't want
to deal with.
In fact, after the definitive failure of Marxism was so widely
proclaimed in the '70's,
absolutely all of Marx's proposed laws of development of
capitalism has unfolded
before us and is accelerating. The forced revolutionizing of the
ways of production and
life, globalization of the market, accumulation of wealth on one
side and social distress
on the other, the ravageous efforts by capital to counter the
falling rate of profit, the
inversion of the relation between persons and things, ends and
means, even to the
-
point of endangering humanity's future. In the face of this, how
can we continue to say
history is a play of appearances, with no continuity, no meaning
we can identify and
thus that there is no reasonable enterprise for us to undertake?
This looks to me not
only like an intellectual aberration but a civic defection.
Unconsciously bearing a
rationality through its singular twists and turns, history is
not even this pure "process
without subject or end", as in Althusser's reduction: not
without grave limitations and
regressions up to now, somehow there has come to be a subject
and finality.
Grafted onto the great historical tendencies, the great
axiological visions have never
ceased to give birth to great political and human causes, whose
mobilizing virtues,
transcending the borders of generations as well as nations,
enabling us to construct
this partially civilized world of ours. The struggle for the
French Republic, the long
march for de-colonization, the irrepressible emergence of an
autonomous human
individuality, given impetus today by the struggle for true
equality of women. How can
anyone dare to say, in light of the fruits of these struggles
and many others, that they
are nothing but fictitious Grand Narratives, with no existence
but in our imagination,
that 'the Republic', 'sovereignty', or 'equality' don't
exist?
A new historic window
All this brings us to one ultimate question: does the demise of
the Soviet Union, and
the abortion of a century and a half of revolutionary history
forbid us from situating
ourselves in the continuity of such a history? This raises the
question of whether there
can be both an essential continuity of the contradictions of
capitalism and a
discontinuity of their supersession? This is the moment to be a
dialectician. Can we
say, as I have several times that a non-resolved contradiction
is not suspended, but to
the contrary, continues to work more deeply? Certainly yes, but
only insofar as the
coming-to-be of the resolution has suffered a radical setback,
when it inevitably
changes phase. History, as we know, doesn't serve the same dish
twice.
Transition of historic phase of non-surmounted contradictions -
an important new
notion in the living conceptualization of historical
materialism. A century and a half
ago a revolutionary prospect was formulated as a socialist
revolution to be
accomplished by a proletariat and led by an avant-garde party
which would conquor
state power and socialize the means of production. The
irretrievable failure of the
cause thus defined has already brought us into another epoch.
All the essential realities
that made this enterprise plausible are being transformed: the
ways of producing, class
structures, political logics, social realities, personal
motivations, spirit of the times,
state of the world. Thus an historic window has been closed. By
this I mean a
-
temporary framework that made one type of transformative
strategy possible and
others impossible. While the term 'conjuncture' refers to the
singularity of a moment,
historic window can refer to a whole period. The truth is, the
previous window was
already closing in May of 1968, revealing the progressive
obsolescence of traditional
communism, not to mention Brezhnevism.
Today this historic window, identified with the Manifesto, is
irremediably closed.
The 'working class' is no longer the great figure identified
with the potential forces of
social transformation. Its vision of socialism is not
sufficient, of revolution not
adequate, and of the party not appropriate. The cause remains
but in totally different
concrete determinations. This is the dividing line between an
archaic communism,
refusing to acknowledge this closure, cut off from the future,
and a communism that
takes on the task of exploring theoretically and practically the
new historic window,
still so little understood. This means understanding the
conflict between capital and
anti-capital today and inventing a new, authentically communist
culture, politics and
organizational forms that will allow us to take part in this
struggle.
No, Marx did not over-rationalize history. He tried to
dialecticize it in a materialist
way. He did underestimate the time-frame for completion of the
processes he
discerned. He saw the transition from the era of pre-history as
a short, homogeneous
epoch, rather than a very long history of changing historic
windows. It is this changing
that we will endeavor to clarify.
The future indeed has a name. Despite its contingencies,
turbulence, discontinuities
and false appearances, history, in its stubborn objectivity
harbors enough logic to offer
a combative subjectivity a reasonable chance to carry out a
great cause. Now isn't it
ever more necessary, objectively as well as subjectively, to put
an end to a class society,
always inhuman, but today dramatically unleashing a
proliferating and irreversible
dehumanization of the human species?
Finally, one might ask, if we can say the future is a classless
society, why use the
name 'communism', particularly if the 'communist question' is
far from foreclosed?
Two objections have been raised to use of the word communism as
the theoretical and
political designation of the movement for universal emancipation
- its semantic
content and its historic resonance. Regarding the first, while
the term implies
solidarity and collectivity, it itself doesn't signify Marx's
conception of the end of
history - the "complete and free development of all
individuals". But the decisive
novelty of the historic window taking shape today does not
nullify the continuity with
the project Marx envisioned of finally emerging from the era of
pre-history
-
characterized by class society. The term 'communism' has come to
signify the non-
negotiable radicality of the social transformation to be
undertaken. Perhaps in the
future there will be another word, but for today, this is the
word with these
connotations.
Chapter II. What communism after
'communism'?
The use of the Marxist term 'communism' serves to suggest a
deeply thought-out way
to trace the broad outlines of the perspective of a social
transformation appropriate for
our times. To develop its concrete content, however, is a
completely different job,
requiring not only an intimate knowledge of many areas, but the
capacity to reactualize
the approach at each conjuncture. This is not a project for one
or even several people,
nor for a political force that seeks to 'direct the masses' by
formulating in advance, and
from above, an agenda of changes to be made. The true conceivers
of this social
transformation will be the actors themselves. But what is gained
in pertinence through
this democratization can be lost in the overall coherence of
thinking, and therefore in
political effectiveness. The coherence of the whole is
completely different from the
empirical sum of the particular contents that it articulates. It
is the organic relation
that unifies them, the essential logic running through them. It
is theoretical. It is this
theorization that is so clearly lacking today. This is why a
re-worked concept of
communism is so important, to serve as a unifying thread in the
quest for this new
coherence, enabling us to make sense of a radically
revolutionary enterprise. Our aim
in the present chapter, both very limited and ambitious, is to
begin anew from Marx's
heritage, and through its confrontation with the organic
contradictions of our world as
well as with the historic window of our epoch, to sketch the
transformed reality of the
communist vision in its general characteristics. Limited, in
that these are personal
reflections with many arguable points; ambitious, in that the
goal is no less than to see
how to succeed where the revolutionary movement of the 20th
century failed.
Marx's procedure was to undertake a deep analysis of the
contradictions of the real,
to identify the objective presuppositions for their
supersession, and, following from
this, to determine a plausible revolutionary goal. Thus, the
communist question for
him above all is a question of fact - how does the movement of
capital pave the way for
its own negation? This approach contrasts with all utopianism,
not in the sense of
great hopes, but of grand illusions. To lay out the ensemble of
major contradictions
that Marx revealed in his time is far from simple, due to an
essential characteristic of
his work. Departing from the global conception of communism
found in the Manifesto,
-
which speaks not only of capital and labor, but of the
individual, the family, state,
nation, law and morality, Marx undertook a colossal enterprise
of economic critique in
a much more limited area. And of the plan of work he outlined
for this subject in 1857-
9, Capital dealt with only a part - leaving out, with the State,
the global market and its
crises, which would have completed the long march from the most
simple abstraction
of commodity production to the concrete complexities of the
capitalist economy. These
reductions and omissions have led to terrible misunderstandings.
The dominant
reading of Capital, from the workers' movements of the 19th
century to Althusser, has
been essentially limited to Book I, with enormous theoretical
and political
consequences. The question is still open, therefore, of the
extent to which Marxist
materialism has suffered from an intrinsic underestimation of
the superstructural in
relation to the base, and more generally, of the symbolic in
relation to the thing. As we
critically project the concept of communism onto the realities
of the contemporary
world, we must always bear in mind everything that such a
concept may be leaving out,
especially with regard to an historical window that no
contradiction will be too many
to open wide.
The movement of capital and sources of communism
That noted, let us begin with the most determinant
contradictions that Marx traced
in analyzing the movement of capital. The elaboration follows
considerations on two
overall processes: the process of production (book I of
Capital), and the process of
development of the capitalist economy as a whole (book III of
Capital). The central
contradiction of the process of production is formulated as the
"general law of
capitalist accumulation": where capital dominates, there is an
accumulation of wealth
at one social pole and the inexorable accumulation of material
and moral distress at
the other, to the point of complete impoverishment, enslavement
and human
degradation (book I 724-5). This formulation of the
contradiction corresponds to the
intent of book I to reveal the secret of capitalist
exploitation, i.e. the extortion of
surplus value in which, despite its appearance, the wage is not
equal to the price of
labor furnished, but, quite differently, to the market purchase
price of the labor power
invested. Labor power, alone among commodities, produces more
value than is
represented in its cost. This exploitation is the source of many
other contradictions
leading periodically to crises, notably between the incessant
growth of the production
of goods, and the chronic shortage of purchasing power for the
working class.
Most fundamental in this process is that capitalism, based on
the private form of
ownership of the means of production, on which all extortion of
surplus value is based,
imparts to the product a more and more social character. This is
a pre-condition for all
-
development of productivity, but at the same time it renders
this private form obsolete.
Thus, it is the development of capital itself that unwittingly
creates the conditions for
the socialization of these means, which in turn can put an end
to class exploitation.
The anarchy of the market is replaced with a social mastery
consisting of rational plans
for human needs. Here we find the roots of the revolutionary
culture oriented toward
socialism, in the classic sense of the term. Many have seen this
notion of
transformation as the quintessence of Marxism, to which nothing
essential can be
added or subtracted.
But if we study Capital up to book III, we discover a far
broader panorama opening
up revolutionary horizons that have yet to be developed. The
fundamental
contradiction the analysis now concerns is the tendential fall
of the rate of profit, i.e.
the relationship between profit gained and capital advanced
which constitutes the true
'motive force' of capitalist production (book III p. 271 ES
1957). This tendency has to
do with the most essential logics of capital: as it unendingly
accumulates past labor
which is now objectified as fixed capital in the form of the
means of production, i.e.
machinery, technology, etc., it increasingly valorizes this
'dead labor', in relation to
'living labor', the productive work of living people in the
present. The profit yield from
living labor steadily decreases relative to the yield from dead
labor. According to Marx,
"from all points of view, this is the most important law of
modern political economy
and the most essential for the comprehension of the most complex
relations
(Grundrisse book II p. 236)."
In this law, we are able to see capitalism's deeply historical
and essentially transitory
function: to assure the unlimited advance of productivity in a
form where in which
dead crush the living, which contradictorily imposes on this
advance the most severe
and absurd limits. At the same time its violent efforts to
counteract this falling rate of
profit in every possible way become clear: above all through an
insatiable super-
exploitation of workers, but also by the massive devalorization
of capitals, resulting in
tremendous waste; an aggressive international expansion creating
a world market; the
technological appropriation of the formidable powers of science,
which raises
productivity to unprecedented heights while unleashing
contradictions themselves
unprecedented.
Marx's approach to the two processes we have been considering -
the process of
production and the development of the capitalist economy as a
whole - can be summed
up as follows: the general law of capitalist accumulation
enables us to grasp the
recurrent functioning of the system while the law of the
tendential fall of the rate of
-
profit allows us to understand the development of its strategies
and ultimately of its
present structural crisis.
Through these processes, new pre-conditions for capitalism's
supersession
accumulate, in particular those of the possible and necessary
transition to a mode of
the advancement of productivity based, contrary to the
preceding, on economies of
fixed capital made possible by the incorporation of science into
the productive
apparatus, which in turn allow the financing of the most
ambitious development of
capacities in all individuals. This inversion of the previous
historic tendency opens the
way to unparalleled economic efficiency and human development.
This brings us to a
major conclusion: when we consider the form of ownership of the
means of production
we touch on the essential only to the extent that it can create
a situation far more
favorable to the thorough transformation of the content of
management of financial
and economic activities. Here is the root of the problem: in the
absence of this, nothing
of importance can change, as we have seen in the French
experience of the
nationalizations of 1981.
The supersession of capitalism, in other words, requires far
more than socialism as it
has been ordinarily understood - that is, where the
socialization of the means of
production is considered to be the fundamental act which in
itself puts an end to
human exploitation. This supersession requires a communist
transformation that
revolutionizes many other essential relations and historic
tendencies of class society,
not only in their form but in their content, and which we can
summarize as this
cardinal reversal: human development finally comes to
predominate over the
production of goods.
But does this formulation mean we are allowing our rigorous
economic analysis to
regress into a vague philosophical humanism? This point is even
more decisive than
we might at first believe. When we read Capital carefully, we
cannot help but see the
deliberate persistence of 'philosophical' formulations by means
of which Marx situates
the very essence of capitalism in its irrepressible propensity
to reverse the most
universal of relations: those of person to thing and of means to
ends. Capitalism, he
writes many times, is that social form which personifies things
and thingifies (reifies)
persons, which promotes means to ends and demotes ends to means.
(Author lists
numerous pages in Grundrisse and Capital).
Synonymous with endless accumulation, in the dual sense of the
word, capitalism
makes the frenzy of private enrichment, paid for by the immense
sacrifice of
individuals, the most absurd 'goal in itself'. Here, in the
final analysis, and by
-
definition what should be its triumph, is the deep
anthropological reason that denies
historical permanence to this mode of social organization, and
even to humanity itself
if it cannot free itself from it. Isn't the immense question of
ends, far too little familiar
to traditional communist culture, presently becoming more and
more crucial? We will
come back to this.
Thinking in terms of alienation
This philosophical approach, in the least speculative sense of
the word, finds its
exhaustive expression in Marx in the vocabulary of alienation.
This term, far more
diversified in German than in French (or English) has at its
center the concept of
Entfremdung, which means, the process of becoming-foreign. But
the minute this
word is uttered it is met with the most ferocious objections: it
is accused of being a
typical term that "still believes in philosophy", that reverts
to the Feuerbachian
illusions of the young Marx and that conjures away all class
analysis. Althusser, in For
Marx, made the claim that in Capital, "alienation disappears".
In fact, this is one of his
most patent errors, which he had to admit later (cf. Letter to
John Lewis), but he failed
to draw the right conclusions. In fact, the idea and vocabulary
of alienation/de-
alienation runs throughout the mature works of Marx and Engels,
from the Manifesto
to the Grundrisse and to Anti-Dhring. In Capital, the term is at
the very heart of the
expositions of the law of capitalist accumulation and of the
tendential fall of the rate of
profit. The French (and English) reader rarely sees this,
however, because the
translators, like everyone else, have been a little blind to the
fact that in Marx there is
not one but two successive and very different concepts of
alienation. In his early works
it is a speculative concept: it is what people are in a given
social context. When this
condition is not concretely understood as produced in history,
it is metamorphosed, as
in Feuerbach, into an abstract nature, or 'essence' of 'man',
which is understood to be
inherent in individuals. In this conception, we don't know why
people are dispossessed
in religious, political or economic alienation or how they can
reappropriate
themselves.
This immature concept of alienation disappears forever in Marx
and Engels in 1845-
6. The 'human essence' they now understand, is the evolving
'ensemble of societal
relations' (note re: translation of Gesellschaftliche = societal
not social). It has been
transmuted into another concept, fundamentally re-thought, and
now in terms
consistent with historical materialism. Alienation is now the
ensemble of processes by
which the societal powers of people, their collective capacities
to produce, exchange,
organize, know, are detached from them to become foreign, even
monstrously
autonomous, forces which subjugate and crush them. Examples are
capital and the law
-
of the market, the state and the logic of power, the
international arena and the
"inevitability of war", dominant ideas and illusory
appearances...
But why are these powers alienated? This has to do not with some
natural fate but
with an historic situation. Specifically human activities are
based in the ceaselessly re-
beginning and expanding cycle of their social objectivation in
productions of
cumulative complexity, from the first tools and signs to the
technologies and
theorizations of today, and of their constant subjective
appropriation by individuals. In
this process, the individuals themselves are developing. As
history progresses, the
elements of the cycle become more complex. But this
complexification is paralleled by
a triple process of social division: the division of labor,
which, as Engels said, "also
divides people", fragmenting their capacity for reappropriation;
the divisions of class,
which place the majority of material and cultural riches outside
the reach of the great
majority of individuals; and at the present stage of history,
what we could call the
division of phase. In this division, we see that human
capacities that have been
objectified in gigantic social powers begin to enter an era in
which they are no longer
governable in the existing social framework which prevents the
development of
universal cooperation and integral individuality.
Thus, we are living the paroxysm of alienation, this
antagonistic form that inevitably
imprints the objectivation of human powers with the epoch of
fragmented humanity.
Alienation, therefore, is not a social science concept limited
to a specific sector, such as
exploitation; it is a global category of historic anthropology,
less explicative than
interpretive, but more generally, critical and prospective,
philosophical without any
vagueness, and rigorously indispensable to conceive the general
logic of humanity's
trajectory. The concept of alienation encompasses, without
dissolving, the concept of
economic exploitation, as well as biographical fragmentation,
social reification,
political subjection, and ideological illusion. While the
concept of exploitation enables
us to conceive of socialism; alienation constitutes the category
par excellence of
communism, for which it even supplies a basic definition:
communism is both the
process and result of supersession of all the great historic
alienations through which
the human species has contradictorily developed until now.
What do we gain practically from these very theoretical
considerations for the
challenges that face us today? It is here that we must take
stock of the effects of the
historic reduction of communist culture to its socialist
version, whose assigned task
can be summed up as putting an end to the exploitation of
workers. We can do this by
pursuing the reverse - by studying the enrichment that the
re-production of Marx's full
original conception can provide in today's conditions. The
traditional culture of
-
socialism focuses on the production of material goods, its means
and their forms of
ownership, its actors and thus the working class. These are the
basic terms of more
than a century of revolutionary history. To go from here to a
communist culture of
general de-alienation doesn't imply at all losing sight of this
- quite the opposite: the
exploitation of labor is itself a 'great historic alienation'
because, as Marx repeatedly
emphasized, it is based on the separation of the producers from
their means of
production. This remains a major concern for all adversaries of
capital.
Thinking in terms of de-alienation calls for an enormous
expansion of the area of
contradictions brought within the scope of the communist
perspective. Even in
Capital, with all its limitations from the point of view
presented here, we find briefly
but clearly indicated the ravageous tendencies of capitalism
such as the exhaustion of
nature or the falsification of products, the growing needs, such
as for a radical change
of content in the education of the younger generation or for a
relation between the
sexes that opens the way to a family of a new type, for the
demystification of
consciousness, freeing its universe from the commodity and its
fetishism: these are all
possible bases for seizing the transformative initiatives too
often left to others, or even
treated as diversions. Furthermore, alienation, understood
unambiguously as a socio-
historical process, is at the same time the most profound
biographical logic, since all
forms of society imply forms of individuality. This double
category thus enables us to
think social antagonism and personal suffering together, to join
in practice the
motivations for transformation of the world and for recovery of
the self. This would
render to politics its full anthropological and ethical
dimension, a decisive expansion.
Ultimately involving the whole person, the culture of
dealienation concerns everyone.
This is why increasingly, the forces likely to contribute to the
supersession of
capitalism can be found well beyond the ranks of workers, in all
social sectors.
Towards a strategy of de-alienation
To this expansion, which has already changed many things, we add
a transmutation
which changes still more. If capitalism ultimately amounts only
to the exploitation of
man by man, its historic role is only negative, and its
contribution lies only in its
abolition. This understanding has defined an entire way of
fighting it. When we shift to
the point of view of alienation a completely different
perspective is created. Not that
the dispossession of workers becomes less unacceptable, but
alienation is not only the
ruthless dispossession of individuals, it is also an
unprecedented development of
human capacities, although in a form that affects them to their
core. This is what Marx
never hesitated to call the "historic mission" of capitalism,
and endeavored to
understand its tremendous vitality. Capitalism must not be seen
solely as destructive.
-
Alienation is to be found in everything it produces, for
instance in the cataclysmic
contour it imposes on globalization, while it plays a positive
role in its constant
propensity to destroy all timeworn barriers.
Thinking in terms of alienation ultimately re-establishes a
dialectical vision of
things, as opposed to a discourse of pure denunciation that
doesn't offer a true
alternative and as a result finds only a small audience. This
leads to the rejection of the
idea, no doubt correct for Russia when Lenin formulated it in
1918, but absurdly
codified as a general law by Stalin, that 'socialism' doesn't
find 'ready-made relations'
in bourgeois society except perhaps those of 'state capitalism':
a terrible idea for a new
society which is essentially seen as in some way imposed from
outside on a recalcitrant
reality. This is the very opposite of a Marxist conception in
which the development of
capital itself, and the reactions to it produce many
presuppositions of communism
from within . This brings into play a crucial change in
communist thought and
practice: from a culture of negativism and exteriority, which
inevitably marginalizes a
political force, to another where, whatever its influence at a
given moment, the future
is on its side.
This requires a clarification of vocabulary. When we read Marx
in the available
French (or English) translations, we often encounter the term
abolition, as in the
Manifesto which often evokes the image of an "abolition of
existing social relations".
This idea has for a long time been closely identified with
communist discourse: we
must abolish the ownership of the means of production, abolish
capitalism, etc. But
most of the time this term is translated from the famous German
term Aufhebung,
which, in popular usage means primarily abolition, suppression,
etc., but in the
theoretical language of Hegel - who explained its etymology and
usage, and of Marx
following him, expressly had a much more dialectical meaning:
suppression,
preservation and elevation, that is, the transition to a higher
form, which the
contemporary translations of Hegel render by the neologism
'sublation' ('sursomption'
in French; just as the French author has replaced this neologism
with the more
common French term 'depassement', I have replaced the English
neologism with the
term 'supersession' - cs). The classical and universal
translation of Marx, in which
Aufhebung is unilaterally rendered as abolition therefore
constitutes a patent
deformation of his thought, with incalculable consequences. when
Marx speaks of an
Aufhebung leading to a higher form, we should translate this as
supersession . In fact,
when he is speaking of an abolition pure and simple he most
often uses different
terms, such as Abschaffung or Beseitigung.
-
In the absence of adequate explanations of these matters, this
terminological shift
from the language of abolition to that of supersession may
appear to represent a
reformist retreat. (note - this has been the case in France in
responses to new
translations of Marxist works and to texts put out by the
Communiste Refondateur
group, both of which Sve has been deeply involved in.) Quite to
the contrary, this shift
represents re-establishing our understanding of what Marx had in
mind: that since
capitalism is an antagonistic and transitory form of the
development of human forces,
the revolutionary task is inseparably to suppress this form in
order to maintain and
promote the already acquired contents in new forms, and thereby
to supersede
capitalism in the full sense of the term. Can we, for example,
abolish fixed capital, all
the accumulated past labor which is an essential part of
national wealth? The
mistaken, non-Marxist idea of abolition, so central to the
'communist identity' up to
now, has paid the terrible price of a stunted political practice
in which 'theory' has had
interest for only a handful of intellectuals. And this when what
Gramsci said in his
time is becoming more true than ever: "everyone is a
philosopher".
A greatly expanded area, a dialectized content - we still
haven't exhausted the most
essential contributions of the perspective of de-alienation
until we add: a new type of
strategic approach. The idea of changing the mode of ownership
of the means of
production all at once envisions a broad politico-juridical act
that presupposes the
conquest of state power over the bourgeoisie in a classical
perspective of recourse to
violence. This is a conception of great revolutionary allure
whose result has most often
been, in a country such as ours, to await the hour that never
comes, that is, a political
practice too little revolutionary, often limited to defensive
struggles, verbal
denunciations, trade union actions, etc. This whole ensemble is
overturned by a
perspective of reappropriation. Does that mean that the vision
of revolution is out-
dated? Not at all: to supersede capitalism continues to be, in
the strongest sense of the
word, a revolution, that is, a radical reversal of the existing
order. But the idea of
revolution is not necessarily linked to that of a violent
conquest of state power, nor
with an abrupt social transformation enacted from above. This is
only one historic
form of revolution, among others.
The effective reappropriation of their social powers by the
masses of individuals,
revolutionary indeed, doubly rejects this form: it cannot be
instantaneous, constituting
rather a long process requiring a favorable balance of forces;
it has no need to await a
hypothetical propritious moment, aspiring instead to take on
truly serious affairs
without delay. What emerges here is a truly new concept of
revolution: revolutionary
without revolution - a revolutionary evolution, or perhaps an
evolutionary revolution.
-
To begin with the ends
We now begin to see the renewed analytical capacity offered by
the transition from a
culture of socialization of means of production to another, far
broader and deeper, of
reappropriation of all human forces, of which I have offered
only a few glimpses.
Furthermore, the idea of alienation encompasses not only this
cleavage of human
forces from living humans, but the loss of meaning as well. An
immense chapter of our
contemporary drama falls under this formula. In a non-alienated
cycle of
objectivation, socially reified human powers reclaim subjective
meaning in their
constant personal reappropriation: thus come to be able to
experience the reason for
our tools, words and institutions. But the mercilessly
alienating split of human
possessions, powers and knowledge from their producers cuts off
the route to
meaning, in two ways. Means without ends on the one hand,
because the enormous
growth of human powers tends to metamorphose into a blind and
too often crushing
'natural force'; ends without means on the other, as individuals
are condemned to
bounce absurdly between chimera and impotence. We are living the
most historical of
crises of meaning. a sure sign that in one way or another our
social prehistory cannot
last much longer. The choice is a naissant communism or a final
dehumanization.
Perhaps the strongest accusation we can bring against capitalism
is its total
incapacity to explain why we should suffer the thousand deaths
it inflicts upon us.
Humanity is materially and morally destroying itself literally
for nothing, for a frenetic
accumulation of abstract wealth, stripped of all anthropological
sense. This is why the
most central question we can pose today has to do with the ends
of our human
activities. Failure to pose these questions was no doubt one of
the major insufficiencies
of the culture of socialism in its focus on the means of
production: behind the 'how' it
forgot the 'why'.
To begin with the ends: this is the proper starting point for a
communism of our
times. Why, that is to say, for what, do we work, go to school,
vote, etc.? What is the
human purpose? No social activities should escape this question.
Any de-alienation of
politics must begin by truly hearing these questions of meaning,
and by working with
the questioners to come up with meaningful answers. Capital, for
its part, is no longer
even making a pretense, however cynical, of having any human
purpose: it is money
for the sake of money and its power, whose ultimate end can only
be itself. This
absence of human ends is its true condemnation. But, is it
possible to find, at a
completely different ethical level, a for what that is valid in
itself?
-
Ecological thinking pays considerable attention to this question
of ends, which
confirms shared heredity between it and communism. Its most
notorious philosopher,
Hans Jonas, formulates in Le Principe Responsabilit (1990) - a
book he intended as a
response to the Principe Esprance by the Marxist Ernst Bloch -
this major imperative
which enjoins us not to compromise by our actions "the
permanence of an
authentically human life on earth." But what is an authentically
human life? To follow
Jonas, the answer is behind us, provided ultimately by living
nature of which we are
members, and probably of a transcendent, therefore sacred
essence, because humanity
itself cannot be the autonomous source of its goals, and still
less can it propose the task
of human progress. In opposition to this project, which he terms
totalitarian, he
proposes the obligation to transmit the unchanging heritage that
ultimately constitutes
us. Men and women as they are in nature, as it is, is ultimately
the end in itself of this
deliberately conservative thinking. Of course, there are many
Greens on the left and it
would be worthwhile to open deep discussions with them on the
question of the
human ends of an emancipatory political project for our
times.
Communist thought, no less preoccupied with similar questions,
in contrast, is
oriented toward the development of human forces in their
constant appropriation by
all individuals. But for what, in sum, do we find in this the
ultimate value? Marx
answers as follows: engendered at first by nature, developed
humanity is then self-
producing through the course of its own history, and it is
"historical development"
itself that makes an "end in itself... of this development of
all human forces as such"
(Grundrisse vol. 1 p. 424). Here also the last for what turns
into an end in itself, but of
a very different sort. It is not behind us, arrested in advance
by nature, but open ahead
of us in history as a veritable practical finality which
consists of taking on the immense
responsibility of extending the biological and then social
hominization of yesterday
and today into a more and more civilized future humanization, a
process with clearly
internalizable meaning for all of humanity.
An authentically Marxist concept of communism, renewed by a
reflection on its
history in the East as well as the West, still proves to be the
most productive for
reconceiving in a plausible way the supersession of capitalism
in the conditions of our
time and tracing the lasting ways of development of a more
humanized humanity.
There is no other that can claim a similar relevance. The
question is how to bring it
more into phase with the social changes represented by the
historic window discussed
earlier. We can begin by examining the lesser of these changes
and progress toward the
more radical. This poses a problem in principle. Since this book
is intended as a
philosophical contribution to the theory of a politics, with the
communist idea as the
leading thread, and is not the work of a specialist in the
various social sciences, I will
-
limit myself to discussion of the most obvious changes, the
sources of the necessary
recasting of our concept of communism, with an acknowledgment in
advance of the
risks of arguable interpretations and diagnostic errors.
Humanization in the service of finance
By examining these most striking changes in social reality, we
can consider the
extraordinary metamorphosis underway in what the Marxist
tradition calls the
productive forces, or more generally, in the tremendous ensemble
of effects that come
to constitute all the objective means of human activities. We
have to replace a
communism of the industrial age, characterized by the discipline
of the factory worker
and the creation of mass society, which imprinted the spirit of
Marx's time, with a
communism of the information age, appropriate for a new century,
characterized by
educated initiatives in networks and an interdependent
individuation. But this is more
than a matter of technological changes; at the heart of the
question are changes of an
anthropological order. In this regard the new fundamental fact
is without any doubt
the still very uneven, but ever more massive, spread of private
capital, in particular in
its financial form, to the immense sphere of market and
non-market services, which
have become, in the most developed countries, the greater part
of economic activity,
especially where the most vital human capacities are involved:
health, education,
research, information, sports, leisure time, the development of
culture and
communication, etc. These activities are often differentiated
from so-called productive
or material activities, as though they have no material effect.
This is a completely
ideological view of the issue, which reduces materiality to
things. The distinction we
would suggest is as follows: service activities are those in
which the useful effect is not
concretized, at least essentially, in things, but that directly
affect the human being.
These are par excellence activities of anthropological
significance. And their more or
less advanced development under the rule of capital, has
produced enormous changes,
calling for a major rethinking of the Marxist concept of
communism.
Without doubt the most immediate of these effects consists
simply of creating new
categories of exploited workers, a process that is not new,
except that it extends the
concept of exploitation to these categories, which requires some
theoretical
clarification. The development of these services under the rule
of capital has
characteristically disruptive consequences for the contents of
activity and their ends.
To submit them to its law of profitability, capital must recast
them more or less
entirely, altering their very meaning. The first imperative here
is commodification,
since the first necessity for the extraction of profit is the
pre-requisite objectivation of
value in a product. But nothing is more contrary to the essence
of service activities
-
whose direct recipient is the human being. Capitalism thus kills
their very reason to be.
We see this in highly financed sports, where everything has a
price and is for sale, or in
scientific information, where new ideas are metamorphosed into
salable products.
Knowledge ceases to be a public good. (note - health care,
education, transportation,
the whole ideology of doing away with 'big government', i.e. the
public sphere - to be
replaced by private, profit-making interests)
The second imperative is confiscation. The commodification of
services forces their
submission to the criterion of capitalist efficiency. But how
can we bend them in the
interest of maximal short term profitability in an atmosphere of
open discussions? The
capitalist seizure of services signifies the death of all true
democracy in matters of
choice, and above all with implications in health, information,
culture .... where
nothing less than our humanity is decided. Isn't this the seed
of what could be a 21st
century totalitarianism?
The worst is that in this commodification and confiscation we
see the implacable
inversion of relations between ends and means. Not that it was
ever otherwise with
capital. As Marx repeatedly emphasized, capital pursues nothing
but its own
valorization. Its goal is not to satisfy needs but to make
profits. Thus its constant
tendency to sacrifice the quality of the product to the rate of
profit. But what is new is
that the 'product' whose quality is turned into a simple means
in the pursuit of profit is
nothing other than the human ends of service activity. A logic
of dehumanization is
thus begun whose effects continue to get more monstrous until
this inversion can be
reversed. Thus, in the 'biomedical revolution' underway, in many
ways so promising,
increasingly it is not finance that is the means for research,
but research that has
become a means for finance. The results are visible everywhere,
and above all in the
U.S. where, for example, the catalog sale of frozen embryos has
developed, as well as
genetic testing by companies and its intrusion into personal
life, not to mention the
eventual development of cloning, all while there is scarcely any
money for struggles
such as against AIDS in Africa.
Service capitalism has thus induced in the most highly human
activities a
hemorrhaging of meaning that has already enfeebled many aspects
of cultured life, in
the truest sense of the term 'culture'. Television, for example,
with its extraordinary
possibilities, has become a means for sale of advertising to an
audience, whose screen
exalts everything from banks to toilet paper. A perfect image of
a total perversion:
meaning dies in the interest of the means of non-sense. Only
through immense efforts
have some limits been placed on this development which threatens
all services today,
-
including schools, which emphasizes all the more the urgency of
greatly expanded
struggles.
The civilized future of the world put on automatic pilot by the
profitability of
finance: no doubt this is a new chapter in the book of capital,
but how does this call for
a reconfigured concept of communism? Unlike all forms of
exploitation, the alienation
involved here doesn't constitute its victims into a class, a
radical departure from the
traditional Marxist framework. Is this a process in some way
outside of class? Not at
all, in a sense: the spread of capital to these services is the
clearest of the class-based
seizures, and the struggle against it is unequivocally an
anti-capitalist struggle. But
while there is surely a class at one pole of the contradiction,
the disconcerting fact is
that there is no class at the other. The problem of alienation
goes beyond the interests
of a determinate social category; it is the human finality of
everyone's activities. This
dissymmetry has profound implications: it calls for engaging in
a class struggle not
only in the name of a class but for people's humanity itself.
This is not at all a slide into
a simplistic humanism, but rather the most rigorous
confrontation with the
dehumanization produced by capital. This is how Marx saw a new
stage of history
prefigured in the development of the working class which
produces everything while
owning nothing. The working class ultimately represents, for
Marx, the 'dissolution of
all classes', that is, the negative prefiguration of a future
de-alienated relation between
people and their social wealth.
We see outlined here, some new possibilities for the joining
forces of partners who
otherwise have extreme differences. While broad coalitions have
come together, for
example, in the struggle for peace, in this case the direct
object for the first time would
be the supersession of capitalism. While this assemblage of
persons and forces will no
doubt reach universality, it will at least be a broad plurality.
Alienation impacts
everyone, but each as an individual in his or her personal
singularity and
unpredictable reaction. Thus we see here and there early signs
of overcoming the
traditional schisms between left and right, for example in
matters of health, education,
ecology or bioethics, as people find agreement on values such as
respect for the
integrity of the person. This offers truly unprecedented chances
to create relations of a
majoritarian, indeed irresistible force that could bring about
changes involving
essential de-alienations.
Civilized humanity against the dehumanizing economy of profit:
in this ethico-
political way of posing the question, both in terms of class and
not in terms of class,
don't we already see on the horizon the goal of our struggles to
emerge from our pre-
history, in a transparent opening toward a future classless
society?
-
Some misunderstandings
These considerations can be easily misunderstood as we shall
see. For instance, the
preceding in no way declares that class struggles in the
traditional sense of the term
are obsolete. Exploitation persists, and is more ferocious than
ever; the struggle for its
class victims remains entirely on the political agenda. But it
would be blind not to see
the equally serious enormous new extension of forms of
alienation, in which major
social activities are deprived of their meaning, so that all
participants, regardless of
class differences, find themselves qualitatively attacked in
their very life. Therefore, a
fundamental trait of the new historic window for the
supersession of the current state
of affairs is that the class struggle against capital can become
a general struggle for a
more civilized humanity in all areas.
(note 5 pages of discussion of controversies, differences and
misunderstandings
within PCF and outside, on some of these points. Sve's main
point is that the
supersession of communism requires the communist vision and
theory of de-
alienation right now - thinking only in economic terms, with the
goal of socialization of
the means of production, or establishment of a 'socialist
market' is not enough.
However, this does not at all mean underestimating or abandoning
traditional
struggles against exploitation or a class understanding. Also,
While broader issues of
raci