|
b ) Community and the Destruction of Community  Mankind first gathered in relatively autonomous and scattered groups, in families ( in the broadest sense : the family grouping all those of the same blood ), in tribes. The level of productive forces was very low, and the storage of provisions, of supplies, was often nearly impossible. Production consisted essentially of hunting, fishing, and gathering. Goods were not produced to be consumed after exchange, after being placed on a market. Production was directly social, without the mediation of exchange. The community distributed what it produced according to simple rules, and everyone directly got what it gave him. [4] There was no individual production, i.e., no separation among individuals who are re-united only after production by an intermediate link, exchange, namely by comparing the various goods produced individually. Activities were decided ( actually imposed on the group by necessity ) and achieved in common, and their results were shared in common. In the primitive community there are no intermediaries between production and consumption, nor between individual and society. Production is not an isolated activity but is integrated into social life, the components of which can hardly be distinguished : activities and relations of production mingle with blood relationships and with the way people see the world ( "art" ). Economics and politics properly speaking do not exist. The production of the means of life is a social act : there are no trades, no jobs. Social organisation is the result of common activity, and people do not need any particular institution to unite them : there is no distinction between "private" and "public" life. The individual as such does not exist. This society is totalitarian in the sense that all aspects of life are automatically decided and settled. There are no rival groups inside the community. A division between opposed and conflicting social groups can appear only when the level of productive forces rises to the point where a man can produce more than is necessary for his own subsistence. Specialisation, trades, technical and social division of labour, classes and class struggles will then be possible. In the primitive community, as in all societies, labour is an activity of transformation. Labour power, using a given means, produces an object. This modification has a result : a product serving a purpose, fulfilling a particular need. This is the concrete aspect of labour, giving birth to a useful object, which has a utility, a use value, with its specific function ( one has to bear in mind that utility is a social notion, and has no meaning outside the society where the object is produced ). This is the only aspect which exists and is known in the primitive community, where social activity consists of the creation and transformation of life. The relation between the individual and the use values, and among the individuals themselves, is direct. Up to a point there is not even a difference between family and society : the family gathers all those who are in the group ( group based on consanguinity ), at least at one stage of the evolution. Technical progress generates a surplus, which is the first achievement of productivity : people start producing more than they need for survival. The surplus creates a problem for the community as soon as it reaches a certain volume, because its development requires that : 1 ) activities become specialised inside the community, and 2 ) various communities swap their respective surpluses. This circulation can only be achieved by exchange, i.e., by taking into account, not in the mind, but in reality, what is common to the various goods which are to be transferred from one place to another. The products of human activity have one thing in common : they are all the result of a certain amount of energy, both individual and social. This is the abstract character of labour, which not only produces a useful thing, but also consumes energy, social energy. Work is social by its very nature. As it progressively allows man to come to terms with nature, it also allows him to develop his relation with other men. The "actor" of history is always society, the product of the interactions among people's activities. Society transforms its environment, but only by expending a certain amount of labour time, regardless of the concrete and useful character, and the quality, of the result. The value of a product, independently of its use, is the quantity of abstract labour it contains, i.e., the quantity of social energy necessary to reproduce it. Since this quantity can only be measured in terms of time, the value of a product is the time socially necessary to produce it, namely the average for a given society at a given moment in its history. With the growth of its activities and needs, the community produces not only goods, but also commodities, goods which have a use value as well as an exchange value. Commerce first appears between communities, then penetrates inside communities, giving rise to specialised activities, trades, socially divided labour. The very nature of labour changes. With the exchange relation, labour becomes double labour, producing both use value and exchange value. [5] Work is no longer integrated into the totality of social activity but becomes a specialised field, separated from the rest of the individual's life. What the individual makes for himself and for the group is separate from what he makes for the purpose of exchange with goods from other communities. The second part of his activity means sacrifice, constraint, waste of time. Society becomes diversified, it separates into various members engaged in different trades, and into workers and non-workers. At this stage the community no longer exists. The community needs the exchange relation to develop and to satisfy its growing needs. But the exchange relation destroys the community. It makes people see each other, and themselves, only as suppliers of goods. The use of the product I make for exchange no longer interests me; I am only interested in the use of the product I will get in exchange. But for the man who sells it to me, this second use does not matter, for he is only interested in the use value of what I produced. What is use value for the one is only exchange value for the other, and vice versa. [6] The community disappeared on the day when its ( former ) members became interested in each other only to the extent that they had a material interest in each other. Not that altruism was the driving force of the primitive community, or should be the driving force of communism. But in one case the movement of interests drives individuals together and makes them act in common, whereas in the other it individualises them and forces them to fight against one another. With the birth of exchange in the community, labour is no longer the realisation of needs by the collectivity, but the means to obtain from others the satisfaction of one's needs. While it developed exchange, the community tried to restrain it. It attempted to destroy surpluses or to establish strict rules to control the circulation of goods. But exchange triumphed in the end, after a long and complex evolution, at least in a large portion of the world. Wherever exchange did not triumph, the society ceased to be active, and was eventually crushed by the invasion of merchant society ( for example, the Inca empire was destroyed by Spaniards looking for value in the form of precious metals : see below, the section on money ). As long as goods are not produced separately, as long as there is no division of labour, one cannot compare the respective values of two goods, since they are produced and distributed in common. The moment of exchange, during which the labour times of two products are measured and the products are then exchanged accordingly, does not yet exist. The abstract character of labour appears only when social relations require it. This can only happen when, with technical progress, it becomes necessary for the development of productive forces that men specialise in trades and exchange their products with each other and also with other groups, who have become States. With these two prerequisites value, average labour time, becomes the instrument of measure. At the root of this phenomenon are practical relations among people whose real needs are developing. [7] Value does not appear because it is a convenient measure. When the social relations of the primitive community are replaced by enlarged and more diversified relations, value appears as an indispensable mediation of human activities. It is not surprising that the average socially necessary labour time should be used as a measure since at this stage labour is the essential element in the production of wealth : it is the one element different tasks have in common : they all have the property of consuming a certain quantity of human labour power, regardless of the particular way in which this power is used. Corresponding to the abstract character of labour, value represents its abstraction, its general and social character, apart from all differences in nature between the objects the labour can produce. Notes [4] K. Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, ( New York : International Publishers, 1966 ). [5] Marx, Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 1, Sections 1 and 2. [6] Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 ( New York : International Publishers, 1964 ). [7] Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Lawrence and Wishart, 1972. Engels' studies were based on a limited amount of research, such as Morgan's work on Ancient Society. Today we should add such studies as Malinowski's work on the Trobriand Islands, and Reich's comment on it in his "Irruption of Sexual Morals." For instance, the potlatch institution among some North American Indians is an interesting transitional phenomenon between primitive communities and mercantile societies. |