THE EMERGENCE OF COMMUNISM WITHIN CAPITALISM James Lawler
The Soviet model of state command socialism. In many recent commentaries in connection with the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, we are told that Marx had profound insight into the problems of capitalism. His main failing, however, was his proposed solution to these problems, "state command socialism." This is the idea that the workers' state was to plan the operation of an entire national economy. The collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union is taken to mean the practical refutation of Marx's alleged solution to the problems of capitalism. But was this really the conception of socialism, or communism, that Marx proposed? We have perhaps been understanding Marx for too long in the light of the later Soviet experience, the command system installed by Stalin beginning in 1929 and continuing until Gorbachev began the process of perestroika in 1985. State market socialism market socialism What kind of socialism is possible if it is not state socialism in the sense of a centrally controlled and planed economy? Clearly, another possibility is the state market socialism characteristic of the early Soviet period of the New Economic Policy, established by Lenin in 1921. This was also the form of socialism proposed by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. The nature of state market socialism becomes quite clear if we read the Manifesto in the light of Engels' earlier draft, "The Principles of Communism". One of the planks of the program of the Communist Party is: "Gradual expropriation of landed proprietors, factory owners, railway and shipping magnates, partly through competition on the part of the state industry and partly directly through compensation in the form of bonds." (1) Two ways of acquiring property are mentioned. 1) The proletarian state will buy out some, but not all, capitalist enterprises. 2) The proletarian state will also acquire property through competition with capitalist enterprises. This implies that socialist state property will be more efficient than capitalist property and will win in a fairly structured market-place competition. In all this, a market context is simply presupposed. An economic logic, respectful of market production, is observed and perhaps even improved upon. Such state market socialism does not however operate on capitalist principles. Substantial modification of the capitalist environment is implied in the fourth measure of the "Principles": "Organization of the labour or employment of the proletarians on national estates, in national factories and workshops, thereby putting an end to competition among the workers themselves and compelling the factory owners, as long as they still exist, to pay the same increased wages as the State." (2) The immediate goal of the proletarian government is not the elimination of competition per se. It is the elimination of competition between workers over the price of their labor. While market relations in the production of goods for sale continues after the communist revolution, what is ended, or is in the process of ending, is the labor market, the market in human time, energy and skill. By becoming owners of their own means of production, workers no longer sell their ability to work as a commodity, subject to pressures of market forces, especially to the pressures arising from competition with other workers. Consequently the kind of market that is initiated by the proletarian state is no longer a capitalist market. Thanks to conscious management by the proletarian state the market begins to work against the bourgeoisie and for the proletariat. It is no longer the blind elemental force in which the interaction of isolated producers takes place as if it were an external power of nature. The rational or conscious element or "planning" transforms market production, rather than simply replacing it. >From 1848 to 1864 Marx's conception of the nature of socialism underwent further evolution after 1848. The crucial text for understanding this evolution is Marx's "Inaugural Address of the Working Men's International Association" of 1864. In his address, Marx says that he is assessing "the experience of the period from 1848 to 1864". There he writes of "the victories of the working class movement in the great contest between the blind rule of the supply and demand laws which form the political economy of the middle class, and social production controlled by social foresight, which forms the political economy of the working class." Here are the two main opposites of Marxist thought: the unfettered rule of money, on the one hand, and the rule of free human beings, on the other. How do we go from the one to the other? Is it by eliminating the first, outlawing it, burying it or abolishing it, so as to allow the second to be created in its stead? This sort of approach is characteristic of what I call "nihilistic socialism" which takes a fundamentally negative attitude to the old society. Nihilistic socialism fails to recognize the core idea of "dialectical socialism" according to which the old society gives rise to the new as part of its internal development. What is central is to see how the new society grows up out of the old, and to show the transition from the one to the other, the intermediary links that connect the opposites. In the great contest between these two principles, Marx sees the first major victory of the political economy of the working class against the blind rule of supply and demand in the Ten Hours Bill, part of a series of Factory Acts. This Bill simply restricted the working day of women and children to ten hours. Marx writes of the world-historic significance of this legislation: "it was the first time that in broad daylight the political economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working class." (3) Recognition of the deep significance of the Ten Hours Bill was a major development in the thought of Marx and Engels about the development of the Communist mode of production. Engels had previously analyzed this bill in March of 1850, just after a court had acquitted a particular manufacturer of violating the Bill. Overgeneralizing from this momentary setback, Engels argued that there could be no significant victories over capitalism short of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism itself. He regarded the momentary defeat of the Ten Hours Bill as an indication of the impossibility of real reform under capitalism. However, support for the Bill was in fact strengthened after this particular backward step. This led Marx and Engels to draw the important conclusion that the new society can make major strides even inside the old one. In Capital, Marx repeated his interpretation of the significance of these acts, calling them "that first conscious and methodical reaction of society against the spontaneously developed form of the process of production". (4) These initiatives of the conscious regulation of society, or "planning", are not antithetical to the existence of the market, but only to the unfettered free market that is continually demanded by capitalism. Cooperative Market Socialism In his speech of 1864, Marx recognizes a second major advance of the political economy of the working class in its struggle with the political economy of capital, "the co-operative movement, especially the co-operative factories raised by the unassisted efforts of a few bold hands. The value of these great social experiments cannot be over-rated." Marx calls these co-operative factories the practical upshot of the theories proclaimed in 1848. In Capital Marx stresses this significance of cooperatives. In Volume III, in the context of a discussion of credit, Marx writes: "The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new . . ." The development of capitalist credit has supplied workers with the economic means of buying up their own factories. This analysis shows a deepening of the processes examined in the Communist Manifesto, where it was the workers state that would have to buy out some capitalists in order create enterprises that would be non-exploitative. Marx argues that the principles proclaimed in 1848 have born practical fruit in the worker controlled cooperatives. The essential principle of communism is that of the free association of producers. In the cooperative factories we already see this principle at work, "associated labour plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart." Communism is not a distant society that will be established in the future, but a reality developing in the present society, in capitalism itself. In his 1864 address and again in Capital, Marx traces the success of the principles of communism sketched in 1848. The deepening of the processes discerned in 1848 might be described as a shift from State Market Socialism to Cooperative Market Socialism. The workers state is no longer the primary instrument of economic transformation, although it remains central in terms of political requirements. Workers themselves, in their cooperatives, are able to do what in 1848 Marx postulated as the task for the workers state: to create enterprises that would essentially function as workers enterprises, and consequently to transform the capitalist private market into a workers social market. Consequently, the essential principle of the idea of communism in the Manifesto of 1848 is seen to be a reality coming into existence in the transformations occurring in the following sixteen years. Marx argues that the achievement of historical materialism is not merely to have shown the problems of capitalism, but to have identified the solution to those problems in the growing working class movement and the social, legal, political and economic results of that movement. Marx did not see the emergence and development of "cooperative market socialism" as the endpoint of this process, but as a necessary "intermediary link" in the dynamic connection between capitalism and fully developed communism. (5) In the hindsight of 150 years we should be able to see that communism has developed even further. Globalized capitalism is an expression of the inherent essence of capitalism, reverting to its laissez-faire or free market essence. But it is also an occasion for further advances of the political economy of working people to preserve the essentially communist achievements of 150 years and to advance these achievements on the international stage. The maxim of communism, theoretically proclaimed in 1848, has never been more practical than today: Workers of the world, unite! Notes 1. Marx, Engels, Collected Works (MECW) Volume 6, 350 2. Ibid. 3. MECW, vol. 20, 11. 4. Capital, op. cit., 480. 5. See James Lawler, "Marx as Market Socialist", in Bertell Ollman, ed., Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists (Routledge, 1998). In this article I distinguish six stages in the development of communism in Marx's thought. <http://www.espaces-marx.eu.org/Archives/Marx_98/Contributions/Contributions .html> Retour aux contributions disponibles <http://www.espaces-marx.eu.org/Archives/Marx_98/Contributions/Contributions .html> _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
