Comrade MIYACHI TATSUO,
I have read rather intensely your proposal or rather “DRAFT OF PROGRAM OF SOCIAL MOVEMENT IN 21st CENTURY,” “Analysis of contemporary capitalism,” along with reading of “On Association” and would like to approach this subject from a somewhat different entry point.
Without question we are in the first phase of an epoch of social revolution and the world program of the proletarian revolution must roughly correspond – as the subjective expression of this objective process, to what is taking place. This presents the older comrades with an opportunity communist have not been able to fulfill since the defeat of the Bolsheviks in the Soviet party and then 30 years later, the overthrow of Soviet power. Technology allows us to transfer to a younger generation summations of the class struggle based in our individual experiences and the doctrine of Marx.
I am grateful for having an opportunity to present my opinion on that which is looked at to formulate the program of the proletarian revolution in the 21st century.
Comrade MIYACHI TATSUO states:
> Usual programs of communist assume that social revolution begins only after
> proletariat takes over political power in common. So program is party's
> program, and its content is political monism, but we can no longer organize
> current social movement by such program. Collapse of USSR proved reality of
> this inference.
Qualitatively new methods of production are laying the basis for the separation of all of society from its foundations. The beginning phases of production without a mass of labor begins the leap from society based on exploitation to society based on cooperation.
The economy is the mobile, flexible aspect of society. Change meets no resistance there. But the class relations and institutions are static. It is there that social change meets resistance; it is there that change and new ideas come up against people with vested interests. This tension between that which is mobile and changeable and that which is entrenched accounts for the stages of the unfolding revolutionary process and the turbulent, back and forth, seemingly erratic pace at which events unfold.
Revolution, like any process, involves both destruction and reconstruction. Once qualitatively new methods of production are introduced into the economy, the process of destruction throughout society is objective and automatic. But the reconstruction is not automatic. It depends on the subjective. Whichever class has the political power to do so reorganizes society according to its class interests. The outcome of the political struggle will depend on the struggle for the consciousness of the world proletariat.
Since Marx and Engels, communist have shaped their practical program for the social revolution based on an assessment of the various quantitative and qualitative developments in the productive forces and sum up this assessment as “victory to the working class in its current struggle” on the one hand and the call for a society of collective owners of the means of production – associate producers, on the other. Communist assumes that the social revolution is generated on the basis of the productive forces.
It is true that not all of the various communist parties and political associations of communist in our history have fared well in carrying out this task, but the Soviet revolution made a superhuman attempt to develop and evolve the communist movement to the proper theoretical level and its productive forces. Nevertheless, this effort was the purpose of the Third Communist International (Comintern).
Karl Marx stated in his“Preface to A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy:”
“In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will: these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society - the real foundation on which rise legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or - what is but a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within which they had been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production, these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution.”
“Then comes the period of social revolution.”
“Then” happens after – not before, “a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come into conflict with the existing relations of production . . .”
"Then" cannot be seen with the human eye until after it has come; dialectic of knowing and doing or emergence. This can be called "Problem of Marxism" in defining point of transition, before its occurs. He who grasp "point of transition" in advance is called a genius. I sensed, but did not grasp the scope of the technological revolution until I read lots of books.
The unfolding epoch of social revolution – as transition to a new mode of production and not simply an intensified form of the commercial, trade or speculative crisis, arises as the expression of the antagonism between the productive forces and the private ownership of the means of production –capitalist property relations.
This new qualitative phase in the decay of capital could not be grasped until it emerged or understood simply on basis of credit system. Old school communist were not practically incorrect because no one can see emergence - the transition to another stage in completion of the industrial infrastructure. Perhaps historically incorrect, but that is dialectic of knowledge.
Specifically, this opening phase of an epoch of social revolution is the result of the completion of identifiable quantitative and qualitative changes in the productive forces. Since the Second Imperialist War a fundamental mechanization of agriculture has taken place in the most powerful imperial centers of word capital and we have witnessed a qualitative transformation of what communist call the “middle strata” or the mass of petty bourgeois producers.
During the era of the Soviet Revolution Lenin identified the petty bourgeois producers as what in American we call the small family farmer and agricultural laborers of which some – to varying degrees, owned their primitive instruments of production or animal foodstuff. During the era of the Soviet revolution the mass of humanity was still concentrated on the land as petty bourgeois producers.
The mechanization of agriculture and the growth of the huge capitalist agricultural combines represent a more than less spontaneous movement and completion of a certain quantitative expansion of the industrial infrastructure. Movements arise on the basis of the conflict between productive forces and production relations. The last real social movement in our country arose on an objective material basis or what Marx class "the material factors of production:" the conflict between the mechanization of Southern agriculture in the 1940s and 1950s and the social relations and institutions of segregation.
This social movement arose somewhat separate and apart from the general working class movement. This is not the case today.
>12. The forming of Credit capitalism is producing new social movement rather
> than usual communist movement which aimed to take over political power.
Well . . . . yes, but Credit capitalism and its new features are generated on the basis of the material power of production that credit capital drives.
The basis for a movement today is different: the direction of capital is production without labor and this direction is incompatible with a society organized around the buying and selling of labor power. I emphasize the word “direction.” This developing new social movement will have to free itself from the forms and habits that correspond to a social response that is not based on the contradiction between the working class and the capitalist class. This movement is only taking its first steps.
Argentina gives first look at "then comes the period of social revolution."
But we can also see how production with increasing less human labor producing incrementally larger quantities of commodities is creating a class with no ties to the system and shaping the social struggle along different lines.
To make oneself understandable to comrades and train the younger comrades in revolutionary Marxism, categories are such to illustrate the directional logic and the motion of capital. Credit capitalism is the motion of the material powers of the factors of production on basis of capital.
Capitalism as a specific system of production relations calls forth a qualitative reconfiguration of agriculture distinct from the previous system of production. Capitalist property relations embrace certain quantitative and qualitative enhancements that mark its rise, ascendancy and domination, then its decay and transmutation.
In the sphere of the production of nonagricultural products – commodities, capitalism has advanced through certain quantitative and qualitative expansion in its 700 years of emergence, growth and decay. The process of production in a capitalist factory is simultaneously an aggregation of capitalist production relations (for example the relations between the capitalist and the workers), and an aggregation of productive forces (the labor of the workers and the means of production). Development from manufacture to machine production is not only a change of productive forces, but also a development and spreading of new production relations.
The union of the labor force of the workers and the means of production is simultaneously a connection of productive forces and a connection of people in the process of production, which together make up the relation. The division of labor in manufacture and industrial production is a relation in production and also emerges as a productive force. The point is that manufacture is a boundary - a certain distinct quantitative and qualitative configuration, different from industrial production pr industrial phase of capital.
The use of categories by communist of the Lenin and Stalin type allow us to illustrate and educate the workers to our viewpoint, but in real life this mutual penetration of capitalist/productive forces, and capitalist relations in production is the process of ever intensifying contradiction between majority of the rest world's population on the other is one expression on a global scale (200 people own more than 2.5 billion of the world's poorest). Polarization takes place also within the local economies -- in the US, the share of wealth of the top 10% continues to grow, while the share of the bottom 90% continues to shrink, according to a 1998 Federal Reserve report.
The networked economy (i.e., computer driven digitally interactive economy) is the great speed up, intensifying the pace of work, while extending the working day to that of the 7x24 robot. It (i.e., computer driven digitally interactive economy) enables and requires the circulation of capital at faster speeds, so it turns over faster (to maximize profit); it demands that human beings keep up with the packets of digitized commodities zipping at the speed of light through fiber optic cables.
The family is required to work more hours, in competition with the robot, trying to hold on to a slipping standard of living, and, stripped of any social safety net, fending for themselves in the contingent economy.
The technology revolution happens within capitalist production relations. The drive to maximize profits takes place as the credit capital phenomenon and pushes – drives, the technology revolution forward, but electronic-based production undermines value production. This is a profound contradiction.
That is, maximizing profits under these conditions means slave labor, sweatshops, forced overtime, cutting the social safety net, taking on more debt, and the end of service and civility and leisure -- misery and poverty for the majority of the world; obscene wealth for a tiny minority.
At any point in capitalism's history, some section of that class has played a dominant role, able to set the agenda for the class. Part of globalization is the rise of speculative capital.
Speculation has always been an aspect of capitalism, and related to insurance and credit. Today, though, speculative capital has become the dominant wing of capital. Among the speculative capitalists there are different wings. Speculative capital is not credit capital system but a sector.
With the Internet, new forms of speculation and hedging become possible as commodities and futures in new deregulated fields, like gas and electricity are traded online. The role of financial traders takes on a larger role than the more traditional role of companies as commodity producers.
I do not argue that you put forth propositions that deny this basic outline. Rather, entering the process through the “side” of the historic role of money and movable wealth; and their historic transformation into capital; the growth of the credit system and speculation at each phase in the quantitative completion of the world market gives a somewhat different picture of the social process.
I do not argue the role of the credit system in driving the processes, quantitative and qualitative configurations stated above.
I do not argue against your idea that today it is possible to disclose to the masses pushed into extreme crisis and forced to seek out method of product exchange and consumption “outside” the credit system, which increasingly larger sections of the world workers cannot access.
I do not argue against your idea that today there exist a basis for a new social movement vastly different from the era of the fundamental completion of the mechanization of agriculture in the imperial centers.
I do argue some theoretical and practical points of engagement. In “On Association,” you quote Marx stating:
“This result of the ultimate development of capitalist production is a
necessary transitional phase towards the reconversion of capital into the
property of producers, although no longer as the private property of the
individual producers, but rather as the property of associated producers, as
outright social property.”
I argue that the communist must attack the problems the laboring class faces based on what ever their point of engagement happens to be. It is true that in America many small and medium sized cities are on the verge of financial collapse, which I understand to be the direct result of the credit and speculative crisis and the refusal of the modern capitalist to fund infrastructure development because there is no promise of maximum profit.
It is true that a sector of workers have appeared in American society different from the old industrial reserve army of which Marx and Engels speak. That this sector is absolutely incapable of servicing its life needs as family units and its increasingly shutout of the market in terms of health care, housing needs, food, energy needs, etc.
The rub is that the communist do not ignore this objective movement forming in front of our eyes, but must find the means to form themselves into an elite to create the political form to raise the consciousness of workers to difference between individual selfishness and class selfishness or class struggle – demystify social relations, on a nationwide basis, because the world capitalist, politically govern based on the old “national” political structures.
Our engagement is proof positive of the formation of the elite or “vanguardism.” “DRAFT OF PROGRAM OF SOCIAL MOVEMENT IN 21st CENTURY,” “Analysis of contemporary capitalism,” and “On Association” is proof of spontaneous drive by world communism for reformation into advanced guard.
The cooperative movement on the part of association of laborers “shut out of market” is different from the cooperative movement of the early phase of capital development, i.e., Owens. I agree. The emerging “new cooperative movement,” emerges of the basis of the revolutionizing of the means of production and is driven by the credit capital system. I cannot dispute this and remain within Marxism.
I understand this to be the dialectic of polarization within capital in transition to new mode of production. Working class itself become polarized and there emerges workers who cannot sell their labor power for enough means to stay above the society margin of subsistence level. Here is basis of cooperative movement, which is somewhat different from movement of industrial workers or other sections of workers maintaining margin. The new sector of below the margin workers is polar opposite of a sector of credit capital called speculative capital and is increasing divorced from the production process to same degree as below the margin workers.
This “new cooperative movement” is objective logic of peoples desire to live and need to consume and must have a political voice. The political voice is the job of communist. I state:
“Political will unity” is understood to mean the organization of the communist into a compact mass.”
You state:
”About Term of political unity, Orthodox Marxist emphasize as premise of social revolution, but in fact social revolution already began without political revolution.”
Yes, the emerging new cooperative movement is part of transition to new mode of production, no simply response to commercial, trade and speculative crisis of past century. Yet this historic contradiction cannot be fought out and resolved in economy. Must be fought out in the political sphere, which is not separated by a Great China Wall.
Without some kind of formation of communist into vanguard, how do workers grasp their movement as a historic assertion and not simply anger on the part of individuals? You articles prove necessity for “political will unity.”
Entering analysis from standpoint of Credit capital and not the technology of the material power of production makes it sound like the strategic aim is formation of cooperative movement and not a society of associate producers and "sounded" like new syndicalism to my ear. Arguing against "political will unity" sound to my ear like no political association. Therefore I called this anarcho-syndacalism. My ear can be wrong.
Oh, in theory every process has a limit. Electronics and qualitatively new configuration of the material factors of production, outline the absolute limit to capital – i.e., the limits of its ability to extract surplus value on an ever widening basis. Outlining the absolute limit of a process is the theory of transition and not the real transition that people must fight for.
Marx calls this using up all the space for quantitative expansion in a new configuration or mode of production. This process only became visible in the last twenty years with advent of computerized production– not simply Internet.
Last point” you are correct, I must become less sensitive about Marx, Lenin and Stalin. I am not a “Stalinist” as such but a Marxist who supports Stalin's leadership in history. I was born in 1952 and Stalin died in 1953 – I think.
Historic questions are . . . “historic” because framework and alignment of forces no longer exist. The question of capital poses itself vastly different as a practical program before mechanization of agriculture on a world scale. The fight by communist was based on trade, commercial and speculative crisis and not transition that arise from material factors of production because there is less "space" or no more space for qualitative reconfiguration without changing social relations.
In my opinion no way to escape the law of value under conditions of small scale agricultural production. Further, people trained (fetish) by centuries of capital under such conditions (small scale agricultural production) will not work at full capacity when group of individuals can hoard and arise as privilege stratum.
I do not say emergence of class but privilege stratum.
Politics cannot undo a law of development of production and hence violence (politics administered by guns, jails and pain) becomes a historic factor indicating certain quantitative and qualitative configuration. Is this your meaning of the words "political will unity?"
Melvin P.
- Re: There are not unequal exchange ;critique of Frank Chris Burford
- Waistline2
