j ) The Communist Revolution
 Communism is mankind's appropriation of its wealth, and implies an inevitable and complete transformation of this wealth. This requires the destruction of enterprises as separate units and therefore of the law of value : not in order to socialise profit, but to circulate goods between industrial centres without the mediation of value. This does not mean that communism will make use of the productive system as it is left by capitalism. The problem is not to get rid of the "bad" side of capital ( valorisation ) while keeping the "good" side ( production ). As we have seen, value and the logic of profit impose a certain type of production, develop some branches and neglect others. Any sort of worship of the present economy, of present workers ( as part of capital ), of present science and technique, is nothing but a worship of capital. Any sort of praise of productivity and economic growth as they now exist, is nothing but a hymn to the glory of capital. On the other hand, to revolutionise production, to destroy enterprises as such, the communist revolution is bound to make use of production. This is its essential "lever," at least during one phase. The aim is not to take over the factories only to remain there to manage them, but to get out of them, to connect them to each other without exchange, which destroys them as enterprises. Such a movement almost automatically begins by reducing and then suppressing the opposition between town and country and the dissociation between industry and other activities. Today industry is stifled within its own limits while it stifles other sectors. Capital lives to accumulate value : it fixes this value in the form of stored labour, past labour. Accumulation and production become ends in themselves. Everything is subordinated to them : capital feeds its investments with human labour. At the same time it develops unproductive labour, as has been shown. The communist revolution is a rebellion against this absurdity. It is also a dis-accumulation, not so as to return to forms of life which are now gone forever, but to put things right : up to now man has been sacrificed to investment; nowadays the reverse is possible. In this matter communism is equally opposed to the productivism of the so-called socialist countries ( also advocated by the official Communist Parties ) and to the reformist illusion of a possible change within the existing context. The ideologies of economic growth and zero growth are both counterrevolutionary. Communism is not a continuation of capitalism in a more rational, more efficient, more modern, and less unequal, less anarchic form. It does not take the old material bases as it finds them : it overthrows them. The predominance of accumulated labour in the productive process is the prerequisite for : 1 ) the end of the exploitation of human labour; 2 ) the end of the subordination of needs to the production of producer goods. Only communism can make use of this condition created by capital. Communism is not a set of measures to be put into practice after the seizure of power. It is a movement which already exists, not as a mode of production ( there can be no communist island within capitalist society ), but as a tendency which originates in real needs ( see above, on those without reserves ). Communism does not even know what value is. The point is not that one fine day a large number of people start to destroy value and profit. Communism does not try to do away with value : it transforms a production relation, and this action abolishes the mercantile system. As for those who theoretically grasp the outline of this historical movement : they can play a useful role; their intervention makes things easier. The mechanism of the communist revolution is a product of struggles. The normal development of these struggles leads to a time when society forces all individuals whom it leaves with no other perspective to establish new social relations. If a number of social struggles now seem to come to nothing, it is because their only possible continuation would be communism, whatever those who take part in them may now think. Even when workers are just making demands they often come to a point when there is no other solution but a violent clash with the State and its assistants, the unions. In that case, armed struggle and insurrection imply the application of a social program, and the use of the economy as a weapon ( see above, on the proletariat ). The military aspect, as important as it may be, depends on the social content of the struggle. To be able to defeat its enemies on a military level, the proletariat -- whatever its consciousness -- transforms society in a communist way. "Modern strategy means the emancipation of the bourgeoisie and the peasantry : it is the military expression of that emancipation. The emancipation of the proletariat will also have a particular military expression and a new specific warfare. That is clear. We can even analyse such a strategy from the material conditions of the proletariat." [26] Up to now struggles have not reached the stage when their military development would have made necessary the appearance of the new society. In the most important social conflicts, in Germany between 1919 and 1921, the proletariat, in spite of the violence of the civil war, did not reach this stage. Yet the communist perspective was present underneath these encounters, which are meaningless if one does not take it into account. The bourgeoisie was able to use the weapon of the economy in its own interests by dividing the working class through unemployment, for instance. The proletariat was unable to use the economy in its own interests, and struggled mainly by military means; it went so far as to create a Red Army in the Ruhr in 1920, yet never used the weapon which its own social function gives it. [27] In a different context, some riots of the black minority ( with the help of whites ) in the U.S. began a social transformation, but only on the level of the commodity, and not of capital itself. These people were only one part of the proletariat, and often had no possibility of using the "lever" of production because they were excluded from it. They were outside the factories. However, the communist revolution implies an action from the enterprise, to destroy it as such. The rebellions in the U.S. remained on the level of consumption and distribution. [28] Communism cannot develop without attacking the heart of the matter, the centre where surplus-value is produced : production. But it only uses this lever to destroy it. Those who have no reserves make the revolution : they are forced to establish the social relations which jut out of the existing society. This break implies a crisis, which can be very different from that of 1929, when a large part of the economy came to a standstill. If the various elements rebelling against wage labour are to be unified, society will have to be in such trouble that it will not be able to isolate each struggle from the others. The communist revolution is neither the sum of the present day movements, nor their transformation through the intervention of a "vanguard." It implies a social shock, an attack of capital against those without reserves, at various levels, which both amplifies and modifies their action. Of course such a mechanism can only take place on a world-wide scale, and first of all in several advanced countries. It follows from what has been said that the communist revolution and communist society are not problems of organisation. The main question is not the seizure of power by the workers. It is absurd to advocate the dictatorship of the working class as it is now. The workers as they are now are incapable of managing anything : they are just a part of the valorisation mechanism, and are subjected to the dictatorship of capital. The dictatorship of the existing working class cannot be anything but the dictatorship of its representatives, i.e., the leaders of the unions and workers' parties. This is the state of affairs in the "socialist" countries, and it is the program of the democratic left in the rest of the world. Revolution is not a problem of organisation. All theories of "workers' government" or "workers' power" only propose alternative solutions to the crisis of capital. Revolution is first of all a transformation of society, i.e., of what constitutes relations among people, and between people and their means of life. Organisational problems and "leaders" are secondary : they depend on what the revolution achieves. This applies as much to the start of the communist revolution as to the functioning of the society which arises out of it. Revolution will not happen on the day when 51% of the workers become revolutionary; and it will not begin by setting up a decision-making apparatus. It is precisely capitalism that perpetually deals with problems of management and leadership. The organisational form of the communist revolution, as of any social movement, depends on its content. The way the party, the organisation of the revolution, constitutes itself and acts, depends on the tasks to be realised. [29] In the 19th century, and even at the time of the first world war, the material conditions of communism were still to be created, at least in some countries ( France, Italy, Russia, etc. ). A communist revolution would first have had to develop productive forces, to put the petite bourgeoisie to work, to generalise industrial labour, with the rule : no work, no food ( of course this only applied to those able to work ). [30] But the revolution did not come, and its German stronghold was crushed. Its tasks have since been fulfilled by capitalist economic growth. The material basis of communism now exists. There is no longer any need to send unproductive workers to the factory; the problem is to create the basis of another "industry," totally different from the present one. The task is to develop what capital hinders and uses only to increase profits : fixed capital, science, research. The communist revolution faces projects of transformation and training. Compulsory labour will be replaced by a transformation of the conditions of work. The end of exchange and profit will allow under-developed countries to satisfy the most urgent needs and also to solve the agrarian question and develop industry in conditions different from those experienced by the advanced countries. This is a world-wide process of accumulation and dis-accumulation, of developing and orienting productive forces toward the fulfilment of needs. Notes [26] Engels, Conditions and Prospects of a War of the Holy Alliance against a Revolutionary France in 1852, in Werke, East Berlin : Dietz, Vol. Vll, p. 477. [27] Useful information can be found in Spartakism to National Bolshevism, The K.P.D. 1918-24 ( Aberdeen Solidarity Pamphlet ). One may add to the bibliography : F.L. Carsten : Revolution in Central Europe, 1918-1919, Temple Smith, 1972. [28] This point was not fully understood in an interesting text by the Situationist International : The Rise and Fall of the Spectacular Commodity Economy ( 1967 ). [29] The whole debate about "the building of a revolutionary party" fails to grasp this point. [30] This is the programme developed by Lenin in 1917 in State and Revolution. |