Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Self-Valorization.. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Self-Valorization.. Sort by date Show all posts

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Anarchism In Action


Many folks have seen Avi Lewis and Naomi Kleins NFB film The Take, here is a report on the mass self-valorization movement in Argentina and the people who took direct action and direct control of their lives and communities after the collapse of the IMF regime in their country.

It is an example of anarchism in action, the creation of use value, hence self-valorization, and the elimination of exchange values, money-capital-money, for a barter system. Which pre-dates capitalism and is known as the gift economy.


The story begins in 2001, when the Argentine economy collapsed under pressure of IMF demands. Unemployment reached 35 percent. Direct action movements of unemployed workers known as “piqueteros,” mostly women, began blocking highways and then negotiating with the authorities for subsistence programs and public works employment.

The example of the “piqueteros” spread to a more and more disgruntled population. Discontent came to a head as the government accepted even greater austerity demands from the IMF and imposed a state of siege to suppress popular protest. Every bank account in the country was frozen. On the night of December 19, 2001, people from all over Buenos Aires took to the streets banging pts and plans and marched on Congress and the presidential palace. The next day, spontaneous street demonstrations forced Fernando de la Rua to resign the presidency. People throughout the country from diverse class backgrounds began meeting in “self-convened neighborhood assemblies.”

In the context of the crisis, people began improvising new economic institutions. New bakeries and gardens began providing food, often with support and distribution through the neighborhood assemblies. Soon five to seven million people were involved in barter networks, trading not only basic goods but also services – for example, psychoanalysis for computer repair. They also began taking over abandoned buildings, notably banks, and reopening them as neighborhood centers.

Meanwhile, many bosses stopped paying their workers and eventually closed their workplaces. The idea of taking over the workplaces emerged in response. One textile worker says the takeover at the Brukman factory “wasn’t an occupation at first, but it became one without us intending it.”

“Together, everyone in the factory thought about our situation, and decided to stay to see if the bosses would decide to give us a little money so we could celebrate the holidays with our families. . . . We waited two months for the bosses to come back. We went to the unions, the Ministry of Work, all with the intention of getting the boss to come back and offer us a solution. He never came. So we decided to work.”

At the Chilavert printing factory,

“When we realized that they were going to come and take the machines, well, then we had to make a decision. The time for thinking had ended and we took over the workplace. . . You know that if they take the machines from you, you’ll end up on the street. It’s a reflex – you don’t think about cooperatives, you don’t think about anything. Defending your source of work is a reflex.”

More than 200 such “recuperated workplaces” are currently in operation. Almost all were closed, abandoned, in bankruptcy, and/or in debt and in arrears in payments to their employees. Seventy percent were initiated in the 2001-2 period, but such takeovers are still occurring. Most are in the Buenos Aires area, but others are scattered in all parts of the country. They employ about 10,000 workers in total.

See:

Workers Control

Self-Management

Anarchism

Latin America





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Wednesday, July 07, 2021

CANADA
'I quit': Wave of resignations prompts concerns over labour shortage
PROLETARIAN SELF VALORIZATION

© Provided by The Canadian Press

CALGARY — If not for COVID-19, Valerie Whitt might never have summoned the courage to quit her job.

The 50-year-old Markham, Ont. woman had been a project manager for Ontario Health for 13 years. She felt drained and exhausted from battling traffic to and from her downtown Toronto office for up to two hours every day, but she was intimidated by the thought of giving up her stable position and steady paycheque.

Then the pandemic hit. Office workers everywhere were ordered to work from home, and for the first time, Whitt got a taste of a different life. She was still doing her job, but without the grind of her commute. She had more time to exercise and to plan healthy meals, and more energy for her six- and 10-year-old daughters.


"Just having that space in my life — not having to get up and rush to work, rush the kids out the door — gave me a lot of time and space to really evaluate my life and what I wanted to do," said Whitt, who officially quit her job last week and will be freelancing as she works toward the goal of starting her own business.

"This pandemic has shown me there’s more important things in life than having that busy corporate career.”

Whitt's story is by no means an isolated case. As the Canadian economy emerges from more than 15 months of COVID-19 restrictions and workers begin to return to the office, experts say a wave of employee resignations could trigger labour shortages in a variety of sectors.

“We’re expecting to see a rise in attrition, really across all organizations,” said Steve Knox, vice-president of global talent acquisition for human resources firm Ceridian.

Knox said employers are already encountering employees who are enjoying work-from-home and don't want to return to office life, as well as employees who are burned out after a stressful year. He said some employees seem to have used the past 15 months to re-evaluate their life choices, and are now saying "I quit."

While there is no statistical evidence of a mass exodus happening in Canada yet, the trend already appears to be taking shape south of the border. According to U.S. Department of Labor statistics, the share of U.S. workers leaving jobs in April was 2.7 per cent, a jump from 1.6 per cent a year earlier and the highest level in more than 20 years.

"We’re always fast followers. We take our cues from the U.S,” Knox said.

A Statistics Canada report released in May said 22 per cent of Canadian businesses surveyed expect "retaining skilled employees" will be an obstacle over the next three months, while 23.8 per cent identified "shortage of labour force" as a looming issue. The sectors most concerned about retention were retail (32 per cent) and accommodation and food (31 per cent).

According to industry lobby group Restaurants Canada, more than 800,000 Canadian food service workers lost their jobs or had their hours reduced to zero during the COVID-19 pandemic. Paul Grunberg, owner of Vancouver restaurant Salvio Volpe, thinks some restaurant workers who were laid off more than once in the last year due to public health restrictions are fed up with instability and are now looking for entirely new careers.

"We (Salvio Volpe) are seeing significant turnover, and to be honest, I've been desperately hoping it's nothing I did," Grunberg said. "But I really feel like people are just, 'I want a change. I want to get out of the industry, and work someplace maybe that's less challenging.' "

In Alberta, where the unemployment rate still hovers close to nine per cent, there are growing fears that recruitment and retention challenges could slow the province's recovery from recession, said Scott Crockatt, spokesman for the Business Council of Alberta. He said some of the province's largest companies report filling vacancies is more difficult than expected right now.

“Staff are looking for more flexibility, and we’re hearing that across every sector," Crockatt said. "In some cases they’re not interested in going back to their previous employment if they can’t get that flexibility.”

At Edmonton-based Morgan Construction and Environmental, which is involved in oil and gas and mining projects across Western Canada, there are over 75 job openings right now where normally there would only be a handful. President and CEO Peter Kiss said many of his fly-in, fly-out workers from other provinces are quitting.

"It seems like any sort of work stress, the travel, the COVID requirements at site, all those other things, are just too much stress for people right now," Kiss said.

Stress was a major factor behind Emily Campbell's decision to quit her TV reporter job in Montreal and move back to her hometown of Calgary last month. The 30-year-old had been mulling the idea of moving closer to family for a while, but a year's worth of reporting on a major global health crisis by day and returning to an empty apartment at night solidified her plan.

"I was stressed out and anxious and lonely. I realized 'wow, I can't imagine doing this job for the next five years, let alone the next 25 years,' " Campbell said. “The longer the pandemic went on, it kind of clarified my priorities.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 7, 2021.

Amanda Stephenson, The Canadian Press

  1. Kropotkin, Self-valorization And The Crisis Of Marxism

    https://libcom.org/library/kropotkin-self-valorization-crisis-marxism

    2008-01-03 · Where Kropotkin went back to the French Revolution and the Commune, these researchers have explored moments of class conflict and working class self-activity such as the liberation of London's Newgate Prison in 1780, the slave revolt in San …



Sunday, July 19, 2020

“‘I teach you the Superman…’: Self-Sacrifice and the Alchemical Creation of Nietzsche’s Übermensch.”

Dr. Melanie J. van Oort – Hall
https://www.girard.nl/texts_online/v/Van_Oort-Hall_Melanie_2.pdf

I. Übermensch as Divine Ideal

a. A Process of Self-Divinization
In this paper, we would like to explore the historical background of sacrifice and divinity in Friedrich
Nietzsche’s philosophy. Peter Berkowitz, in Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist, has shown how
Nietzsche’s philosophy is oriented towards the process of self-divinization. Nietzsche’s philosophy is
an attempt to work out what kind of human beings would be necessary, if “God is dead,” (The Gay
Science, § 125) and “the world is the will to power – and nothing besides!”1
 (Will to Power § 1067)
Berkowitz says that based on Nietzsche’s love of truth, “which he sometimes calls his gay science,” he
comes to the conclusion that the final good or perfection “for human beings consists in the act of selfdeification.”2
 Lucy Huskinson has suggested that Nietzsche’s later teaching on the Übermensch is
really his re-interpretation of the esoteric doctrine of the Higher Self, which is the understanding of
“God” in the Hermetic Tradition.3
 A point we will explore later on in this paper.
Although Nietzsche mentions the Übermensch in his early Notebooks, in the Prologue of Thus
Spoke Zarathustra, he officially announces the Persian prophet’s teaching on the subject.4
 Zarathustra descends his mountain cave, out of his so-called love for humanity. Knowing in his heart that “God is
dead,” he wants to bring humanity a gift. In the next section § 3, we learn that the so-called gift is
Nietzsche’s Übermensch, which he announces in a market square. For Nietzsche, the Übermensch is
the answer to the “death of God” (Z, I, “Of the Bestowing Virtue,” 3), and the destiny of humanity
itself depends upon its realization on earth (The Will to Power § 987).5
 The Übermensch is not a transcendent ideal, but a superhuman species (Z, I, “Of the Bestowing Virtue,” 1)

SELF DIVINIZATION COULD ALSO BE SEEN IN MARXIST TERMS AS SELF VALORIZATION

SELF DIVINIZATION SOUNDS A LOT LIKE TRANSHUMANISM

AND OF COURSE.....

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Right Wing Echo Chamber

Last week the right wing thunk tank and taxpayer funded lobby group the Fraser Institute discovered corporate welfare. And sure enough their political lobby arm the Canadian Taxpayers Federation echos their masters voice;



Mr. Gaudet said the collapse of the auto industry remains inevitable despite this latest surge of public cash. "There is no evidence in the past that corporate welfare works," he said. This bailout will only lead other financially struggling companies and industries in this tough economic time to also expect a government shell-out, Mr. Gaudet warned. "The government can't bail them all out," he said. "It's hard to justify to a laid-off Nortel worker why his or her tax dollars should go to support artificially inflated salaries in the auto industry."



Which Nortel workers are those? The ones left working in China?

My goodness but this is funny to hear the CTF speak on behalf of workers. This political lobby of business types, who are not taxpayers, whose association does not speak for workers but a small self interested right wing business lobby, whose association is not democratic and has no elected officials simply employed self appointed spokesmen.

But as the article goes on to point out actually the last time Chrysler was bailed out they paid back their debt. However it seems ominous that this apologist for the capitalist class is telling us the Big 3 are doomed. Of course as usual they blame workers salaries and production costs for being uncompetitive. However as usual they never let the facts get in the way of their rhetoric. In Canada the wages and benefits paid to Toyota workers who are not unionized are competitive with CAW wages and benefits. Not less but competitive. Yet no one is telling Toyota workers to take a wage cut.

And like the Big 3 Toyota is cutting back on production as well. The crisis of overproduction has hit automakers around the globe, thanks of course to globalization.

We are facing a two fold crisis in capitalism, the fiancial market meltdown and the crisis of overproduction and underconsumption. Nothing new in that it is just the same old same old as Marx pointed out 150 years ago.

SEE

Bail Out Is Not Job Security

Chrysler Black Mail

There Is An Alternative To Capitalism

Auto Solution II

We Own GM

Auto Solution

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Sunday, May 25, 2008

Buzz Off

In the true tradition of business unionism Canadian Autoworkers President Buzz Hargrove sold his members out for a bowl of pottage. Despite his pseudo-socialist bluster, which was really ghost written by Sam Gidden, and his so called political activist unionism, in the end like all other union bosses he sold out his workers for a contract today.

It makes one wonder why we need unions. Well actually the bosses need them more than the workers do, since they are used to curtail authentic class struggle, and to mediate on behalf of 'variable labour' with the owners of capital.

The recent record breaking settlement with the Big 3 auto companies was a sell out by Buzz as he prepares to retire.

In the latest round of talks, Mr. Hargrove managed to negotiate what is effectively a wage and benefits freeze.


While denouncing two tiered wage settlements agreed to by UAW and the Big 3 south of the border, Buzz agreed to a made in Canada two tier wage structure no different than those he was denouncing.


Economic provisions of the deals mirror those of the CAW's deal with Ford Motor Co., which was cemented May 4. New hires will be paid 70% of base wages during the first three years of employment before climbing into the full wage scale. The deal cuts a week's vacation in return for 3,500 Canadian dollar (US$3,485) one-time payments and increases to drug co-payments.


The sell out of principles began when Buzz and CAW agreed to a no strike deal with Magna.

The Magna-CAW deal struck last fall between Mr. Stronach and Mr. Hargrove is a good start: In return for a no-strike clause from the union, Magna agreed to stop resisting unionization.


He has now followed it up with a sweet heart deal with the Big 3 selling out autoworkers by tying them into a contract that does not assure them job security, but rather see's further lay offs and plant closures with a payout to the survivors.

The auto industry is bleeding and all Buzz got was a band aid, and he admitted it.

Major economic clauses for all three companies

Wage freeze for three years.

Elimination of cost-of-living adjustment until 2009.

Employee co-payments of 10 per cent on prescription drug costs, amounting to $250 in the first year and growing slightly in the next two years.

Newly hired employees receive 70 per cent of full wages and take three years to get to full level, compared to previous provision of 85 per cent and two-year growth to full wages.

Surrender of 40 hours of holidays a year in return for a one-time payment of $3,500 in 2009.

Chrysler

Etobicoke casting plant in Toronto kept open for 2½ years instead of being closed next year. Company and union will look for buyer or joint venture partner for Chrysler.

Confirmation that next generation of Chrysler's large sedans will be built at Brampton, Ont., plant.

Minivan plant in Windsor, Ont., will maintain three shifts as long as market stays healthy. Shift at St. Louis plant to be cut before any shifts in Windsor.

GM

New rear-wheel-drive car for Oshawa, Ont., to join Chevrolet Camaro.

Extension of Chevrolet Impala production at Oshawa plant to 2012.

New six-speed transmission for St. Catharines, Ont., pending government financial support.

New V8 engine for St. Catharines.

Retirement incentives up to $125,000 and a $35,000 vehicle voucher for workers at Windsor transmission plant, which will be closed in 2010.

Retention of second shift of workers at Oshawa Truck plant. Instead of layoffs, workers will go on two-week rotating shifts until September, 2009.

Ford

Adds new vehicle to Oakville, Ont., assembly plant beyond Ford Flex, which goes into production this year.

Extends life of St. Thomas, Ont., large-car assembly plant by three years from expected closing next year.

Autoworkers in Canada are marking time, as CAW rests on its laurels happy to have organized the Big 3 and now Magna. They have made little effort to take on the Japanese or Korean automakers in Canada who now outsell the Big 3.

Instead of organizing Toyota, Buzz cozied up to Toyota management and backed one of their VP's who was running for Liberal MP last election. Like his bargaining strategies his political strategy of strategic voting leads workers to a dead end.

It's a good thing he is finally retiring unfortunately while that will end the cult of personality in the CAW it will not end the entrenched bureaucracy of labour fakirs and pork choppers who dominate the organization.

CAW likes to claim to be a social union, a left leaning union, but it is in the end regardless of its ideological claims, a business union, structured to maintain capitalism.

As Marx pointed out years ago; Trade unions are not revolutionary organizations, but defense organizations of the working class. They call for a fair days wage instead of demanding the abolition of the wage system.

Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. The fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.


Under the Fordist model of mass production and with the post War boom they became the hand maiden of capitalism, bargaining with the bosses to get crumbs off the table for their members.

They abandoned any pretense to being agents of social change, instead they became the cops on the shop floor, halting wildcats and job actions by workers. Building permanent corporate style organizations paid for by workers, and populated by professional permanent non-elected paid representatives, they have abandoned the revolutionary aims of workers self-organization; the control of the means of production, the take over and self management of factories by the workers themselves.

Instead they accept the day to day operations of capitalism as inevitable, not worth fighting over except to try and ameliorate its worse excesses, which keeps the bosses happy.

Workers since the beginning of capitalism have organized themselves, when unions were outlawed or banned, workers still created them and used them to strike against the bosses.

This self organization of workers is the dialectic of the conflict between labour and capital. When capitalism boomed it offered unions labour peace, a greater share of the pie, through out the sixties and seventies this was known as the social contract, and was reflected in a trilateral approach to State governance, the unions joined the politicians and capitalists at the table of civil society, determining how the welfare state would function.

Capitalism created the welfare state, in order to avoid a revolution at the end of WWII, and the labour leaders gleefully joined the bosses and their state glad to be accepted as equals. But they never were equals they were bought off, as the eighties and nineties proved when the bosses tore up the social contract and went on the offensive attacking union gains and calling for the privatization of the state.

The unions still slow to wake up, like the door mouse at Alice's Tea Party, thought this assault was an aberration, a few bad apples amongst their friends the bosses.
Instead it was a well planned and orchestrated assault on the State by capitalism which needed more capitals to expand, and saw public sector services as a waste of the that capital.

The class war had been declared when capital started calling for roll backs, give backs, started off shoring and contracting out, and creating two tiered wage structures. The unions gave up fighting back accepting Maggie Thatchers admonition that There Is No Alternative.

And we hear Maggie echoed in Buzz's departing deal with the Big 3.

The 64-year-old Mr. Hargrove described this year's set of talks as the toughest he has faced since he became president in 1992. He warned in an interview yesterday, however, that they will "look like a picnic" compared with what his successor will face in 2011 if Chrysler, Ford and GM continue to lose market share and are forced to continue slashing their Canadian and U.S. operations.



There is a solution to the problem, and it was shown by the Aluminum workers in Quebec, and by workers in Argentina, when capital abandons the factories the workers still make them run.

We can exist with out capitalism, with out hedge fund investments, workers self management of their factories, and of public services is the alternative. Unfortunately it is usually embraced after the fact, after capital has abandoned the factories and communities that surround those factories.

But it shows that workers can organize themselves to run things for themselves and for their communities, without capitalists.

It is the secret of capitalism, that without workers there is no capitalism, we create the beast which oppresses us. Our challenge is not to tame the beast but to end its existence by creating the conditions for real existing socialism.

For more critiques of the CAW deals see:


Bruce Allen Learning Some Lessons from Michigan's Auto Jobs Crisis
The evidence of manufacturing job loss on a massive scale in Ontario where the Canadian auto industry is concentrated is clear and undeniable. Nonetheless a question must be asked. Is it accurate to characterize what is taking place here as a “manufacturing crisis?” Or is it something else?


Sam Gindin The CAW and Panic Bargaining: Early Opening at the Big Three
In the face of a deteriorating economic climate and concerns about the ‘investment competitiveness’ of Canadian plants, the CAW leadership made a startling move this spring. It had an air of panic about it: the leadership quietly asked the Big Three – GM, Ford and Chrysler – to open their collective agreements early, offering a new ‘pragmatic’ settlement. ...


Sam Gindin Two-tier Wages, Second-Class Workers
When Autoworker President Buzz Hargrove makes new pronouncements, they carry weight within and beyond the labour movement – even when, as has recently been the case, they seem to undermine what Canadian unions have always stood for...


Herman Rosenfeld MAGNA IS NOT CAMI
In Bob White’s October 30th Op-Ed piece in the Toronto Star, the retired CAW president refers to the current Magna deal as a form of "innovation", comparing it to the 1980s fight against concessions and the formation of the new Canadian auto union...



Sam Gindin The CAW and Magna: What if Magna Builds an Assembly Plant?
In the discussions of the proposed Magna-CAW (Canadian Auto Workers) ‘Framework of Fairness’ deal, the focus has been on Magna as a components company. But what if Magna opened an assembly plant? Under the language of the ‘Framework of Fairness’, it too would be part of the deal...

SP Labour Committee Windsor Modules: The CAW-Magna Deal Delivers – Or Does it?
On November 7, 2007, the CAW made an historic announcement. The first collective agreement under the new CAW-Magna Framework of Fairness Agreement (FFA) was ratified at Windsor Modules, a plant of some 250 workers...


SEE:

Alcan Proves Marx Right

Workers Control vs Corporate Welfare



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Saturday, November 22, 2008

Auto Solution II

Up the road without a map
KEN LEWENZA
national president, Canadian Auto Workers union
November 20, 2008
Your editorial demands CAW concessions as part of any deal to restructure the North American auto industry (Keeping A Foot In The Car Door - Nov. 19).
The CAW was the first major player in the North American industry to respond pro-actively to the devastating effects of the financial crisis and credit crunch. Our new three-year contract freezes wages, suspends cost of living protection, and introduces, once fully implemented, savings totalling $300-million per year (or more than $10,000 per worker, per year) for Canadian auto makers.
Auto labour costs are significantly lower in Canada than in the U.S., Germany and Japan - yet our productivity is higher (at least 10 per cent better than in America).
We didn't write the free trade deals, we don't manage the companies, we don't design the vehicles - we just build them. The best thing we can do as auto workers is to keep building vehicles in the most efficient, high-quality plants in the hemisphere, at competitive costs.


CAW Ken Lewenza says; "We didn't write the free trade deals, we don't manage the companies, we don't design the vehicles - we just build them." And that's the problem. The solution to the auto crisis is not more concessions from the workers, thats been tried and it hasn't worked. Just as federal provincial aid have not helped because we lack a made in Canada Industrial strategy.

Jim Stanford, chief economist at the CAW, said newly signed contracts between the union and the Canadian arms of the Detroit automakers include several unprecedented givebacks, such as an 18-month suspension in cost-of-living increases.
A lack of policy attention from governments in both Canada and the United States have contributed to Detroit's collapse as much as anything else, he said.
"In Japan and Germany and Korea and now China, governments proactively nurture and support high-value export industries like autos. In North America, for the last two decades, we haven't bothered."


Rather the solution is right in front of all of us the workers should control auto manufacturing in Canada they should manage and design the cars not just 'build them'.

Ken if you don't want to discuss concessions then you better start talking about workers control of the means of production.


If there is to be a bailout, let it be for us, the workers. Who dare say we’re unqualified? In the 1920s Italian workers at Fiat and Alfa Romeo took over the plants, and they made cars without bosses. Even as we speak, workers in Venezuela are taking over plants and running them.

And I would add to that the Paris Revolution of 1968 and the Hot Autumn of 1969 when auto workers in France and Italy along with student radicals took over factories and universities and put them under worker control.

Capitalism is in a crisis it is time to socialize capital under workers control.

November 20, 2008
A suggestion for Big Three and UAW (updated)
Michael Nadler
My conceptual solution to the auto company bailout question is as follows:
The federal government makes a one-time only injection of the requested $25 billion into the Big Three in return for a proportionate ownership stake in the companies. Based on the current market capitalization of GM and Ford and my estimate of the market value of privately-held Chrysler, that would give the government about 80% ownership in the 3 companies. (A discount from the market price could be justified for such an investment, providing a higher ownership stake.)
The $25 billion cash injection is conditioned on the United Auto Workers (UAW) accepting a gift of the 80% (or higher) ownership stake from the government, giving the UAW absolute control of the 3 auto companies which will then be exempted from any anti-trust restrictions on consolidations, etc. The fate of the Big 3 and its workers will then be entirely in the hands of the UAW, which could strike the appropriate balance between compensation and competitiveness, as well as the many other issues that will determine the fate of the auto companies it now owns, the jobs they provide and the workers it represents. In that regard, the obligations of the PBGC might be limited as part of this grand bargain.



Workers' control of the means of production?
One of the most influential books on my political outlook when I was first getting politically aware was Geoff Hodgson's The Democratic Economy, published by Pelican Books in 1984. In it he advocated an economy predominantly consisting of worker-owned enterprises: market collectivism, to use a phrase of Jaroslav Vanek. In a Market Collectivist economy, argues Hodgson(p.177), "The workers are self-managed: they do not work under the direct or indirect control of a capitalist...the workers (collectively) own the product of their labour, which they bring to the market for sale."

SEE:
We Own GM
Auto Solution


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Friday, April 28, 2023

The state and the future of socialism
When capital is in crisis, there are always two options—to give in or to move in

Michael A. Lebowitz / April 25, 2023
https://canadiandimension.com/

Wojciech Fangor, “Forging the Scythes” (1954). 
Image courtesy the Museum of Warsaw.

REALLY LONG READ

The following essay by Marxist economist Michael A. Lebowitz was first published in the 2013 edition of Socialist Register. Lebowitz, who passed away on April 19, 2023 at the age of 85, was a giant of the socialist left. Over the years, Canadian Dimension published several of his essays. He taught at Simon Fraser University for decades and was the author of numerous books including Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class and Build It Now: Socialism for the 21st Century. He was Director, Program in Transformative Practice and Human Development, Centro Internacional Miranda, in Caracas, Venezuela, from 2006-11.

We are in the midst of a class war. That’s not unusual. There is always class war in capitalism—although sometimes it is hidden and sometimes there is the interlude of an apparent Carthaginian Peace. But the class war has intensified now because of the crisis in capitalism—a crisis rooted in the over-accumulation of capital. And, in this crisis, capital has intensified the class war against the working class. Austerity, cutbacks, the need to sacrifice—these are the demands of capital as it calls upon workers to bear the burden of capital’s own failures. This is a war conducted by capitalist states against workers to compel them to give up their achievements from past struggles. And, in some places (but, unfortunately, not all), we see that the working class is saying, ‘no.’ In some cases, we see that workers are fighting to defend their past successes within capitalism and that they are fighting against the racism and xenophobia which are the default position when workers are under attack but are not in struggle against capital. Such struggles, as Marx knew, are ‘indispensable’—they are the only means of preventing workers ‘from becoming apathetic, thoughtless, more or less well-fed instruments of production.’ But, who will win this class war?

In his recent book, The Communist Hypothesis, Alain Badiou describes the past defeats of May 1968, the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Paris Commune as well as those of factory occupations and other such struggles as defeats ‘covered with glory.’ Because they remain in our memory as inspirations, they must be contrasted, he insists, to the ‘defeat without glory’ that social democracy brings. This is certainly true. However, we need to acknowledge that the current struggles against capital’s attempt to make the working class rescue it from yet another of its crises may yet be added to the list of glorious defeats. Of course, it is necessary to try to stop the cutbacks and to communicate to capital how high its costs will be for attempting to shift the burden of its own failures to workers. And, of course, we must celebrate those struggles taking place wherever the working class has not been anesthetized as a result of previous defeats without glory, leaving only what Marx once described as ‘a heart-broken, a weak-minded, a worn-out, unresisting mass.’

But it is not enough to say ‘no.’ There are those who think that an accumulation of loudly screamed no’s can be sufficient—let alone the ‘silent farts’ celebrated by John Holloway. These poets of negation demonstrate thereby that they don’t understand why and how capital reproduces itself. Why is it that after so many defeats so many still cannot see what Marx grasped in the nineteenth century – that capital has the tendency to produce a working class which views the existence of capital as necessary? ‘The advance of capitalist production,’ he stressed, ‘develops a working class which by education, tradition and habit looks upon the requirements of this mode of production as self-evident natural laws.’

Marx understood that capitalism tends to produce the workers it needs, workers who look upon capitalism as common sense. Given the mystification of capital (arising from the sale of labour-power) which makes productivity, profits and progress appear as the result of the capitalist’s contribution, it followed that ‘the organization of the capitalist process of production, once it is fully developed, breaks down all resistance.’

And, Marx added that capital’s generation of a reserve army of the unemployed ‘sets the seal on the domination of the capitalist over the worker’ and that the capitalist can rely upon the worker’s ‘dependence on capital, which springs from the conditions of production themselves, and is guaranteed in perpetuity by them.’ Obviously, for Marx, capital’s walls will never be brought down by loud screams or silent farts.

Even with a certain resistance marked by struggles over wages, working conditions and the defence of past gains, as long as workers look upon the requirements of capital as ‘self-evident natural laws,’ those struggles occur within the bounds of the capitalist relation. In the end, workers’ subordination to the logic of capital means that faced with capitalism’s crises they sooner or later act to ensure the conditions for the expanded reproduction of capital. Nowhere is this clearer than in the defeats without glory of social democracy.

And, defeat when capitalism is in crisis means that capital can emerge from the crisis by restructuring itself—as it did internationally with the Bretton Woods package after the crises of the 1930s and the 1970s. As is often noted, there is a big difference between a crisis in capitalism and a crisis of capitalism. The latter requires conscious actors prepared to put an end to capitalism, prepared to challenge and defeat the logic of capital. But this requires a vision which can appear to workers as an alternative common sense, as their common sense.

Like the ‘worst architect,’ we must build our goal in our minds before we can construct it in reality; only this conscious focus can ensure the ‘purposeful will’ required to complete the defeat of the logic of capital. To struggle against a situation in which workers ‘by education, tradition and habit’ look upon capital’s needs ‘as self-evident natural laws,’ we must struggle for an alternative common sense. But what is the vision of a new society whose requirements workers may look upon as ‘self-evident natural laws’? Clearly, it won’t be found in the results of twentieth century attempts to build socialism, which, to use Marx’s phrase, ended ‘in a miserable fit of the blues.’
The ‘key link’ for twenty-first century socialism

‘We have to reinvent socialism.’ With this statement, Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, electrified activists in his closing speech at the January 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. ‘It can’t be the kind of socialism that we saw in the Soviet Union,’ he stressed, ‘but it will emerge as we develop new systems that are built on cooperation, not competition.’ If we are ever going to end the poverty of the majority of the world, capitalism must be transcended, Chavez argued. ‘But we cannot resort to state capitalism, which would be the same perversion of the Soviet Union. We must reclaim socialism as a thesis, a project and a path, but a new type of socialism, a humanist one, which puts humans and not machines or the state ahead of everything.’

There, at its core, is the vision of socialism for the twenty-first century. Rather than expansion of the means of production or direction by the state, human beings must be at the centre of the new socialist society. This marks a return to Marx’s vision—to the contrast he drew in Capital between a society subordinate to the logic of capital (where ‘the worker exists to satisfy the need of the existing values for valorization’) and the logic of a new society, that ‘inverse situation, in which objective wealth is there to satisfy the worker’s own need for development.’ This concept of the worker’s need for development is the culmination of Marx’s consistent stress upon the centrality of the development of human capacity—the ‘development of the rich individuality,’ as the real wealth and explicit goal of the new society. Here was the ‘inverse situation’ which would allow for ‘the all-round development of the individual,’ the ‘complete working out of the human content,’ the ‘development of all human powers as such the end in itself,’ a society of associated producers in which ‘the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.’

But this is only one side of Marx’s perspective. A focus upon the full development of human potential was characteristic of much socialist thought in the nineteenth century. What Marx added to this emphasis upon human development was his understanding of how that development of human capacities occurs. In his Theses on Feuerbach, he was quite clear that it is not by giving people gifts, not by changing circumstances for them. Rather, we change only through real practice, by changing circumstances ourselves. Marx’s concept of ‘revolutionary practice,’ that concept of ‘the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change,’ is the red thread that runs throughout his work. Marx was most consistent on this point when talking about the struggles of workers against capital and how this revolutionary practice transforms ‘circumstances and men,’ expanding their capabilities and making them fit to create a new world.

But this process of changing ourselves is not at all limited to the sphere of political and economic struggle. In the very act of producing, Marx indicated, ‘the producers change, too, in that they bring out new qualities in themselves, develop themselves in production, transform themselves, develop new powers and new ideas, new modes of intercourse, new needs and new language.’ And, certainly, the relations within which workers produce affect the nature of the workers produced. After all, that was Marx’s point about how capitalist productive relations ‘distort the worker into a fragment of a man’ and degrade him and ‘alienate from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process.’ It is essential to recognize that every human activity has as its result a joint product—both the change in the object of labour and the change in the labourer herself. Unfortunately, that second product is often forgotten.

Marx’s combination of human development and practice constitutes the key link. Taken seriously, it has definite implications for relations within the workplace – rather than capitalism’s joint product (the fragmented, crippled human being whose enjoyment consists in possessing and consuming things), it implies a person who is able to develop all her potential through her activity. Taken seriously, that key link has definite implications for the nature of the state—rather than allowing us every few years to elect those who misrule us as our representatives to a state which stands over and above us, it implies what Marx called the ‘self-government of the producers,’ the ‘reabsorption of the state power by society as its own living forces.’ Taken seriously, that key link has definite implications for the nature of the party—rather than a body that sees itself as superior to social movements and whose members are meant to learn the merits of discipline in following the decisions made by infallible central committees, it implies a party which learns from popular initiative and unleashes the creative energy of masses through their own practice. Taken seriously, that key link has obvious implications for building socialism.

Consider the characteristic of socialist production implicit in this key link. What are the circumstances that have as their joint product ‘the totally developed individual, for whom the different social functions are different modes of activity he takes up in turn’? Given the ‘dialectical inversion’ peculiar to capitalist production that cripples the body and mind of the worker and alienates her from ‘the intellectual potentialities of the labour process,’ it is clear that to develop the capacities of people the producers must put an end to what Marx called, in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, ‘the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour.’

For the development of rich human beings, the worker must be able to call ‘his own muscles into play under the control of his own brain.’ Expanding the capabilities of people requires both mental and manual activity. Not only does the combination of education with productive labour make it possible to increase the efficiency of production; this is also, as Marx pointed out in Capital, ‘the only method of producing fully developed human beings.’ Here, then, is the way to ensure that ‘the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly.’

The activity through which people develop their capacities, however, is not limited to the sphere of production as narrowly defined within capitalism. Every activity with the goal of providing inputs into the development of human beings needs be understood as an aspect of production. And the goals that guide production must be democratically established so that people can transform both their circumstances and themselves and thereby produce themselves as subjects in the new society. The implication is obvious—every aspect of production must be a site for the collective decision-making and variety of activity that develops human capacities and builds solidarity among the particular associated producers.

When workers act in workplaces and communities in conscious cooperation with others, they produce themselves as people conscious of their interdependence and of their own collective power. The joint product of their activity is the development of the capacities of the producers—precisely Marx’s point when he says that ‘when the worker cooperates in a planned way with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species.’ Creating the conditions in workplaces and communities by which people can develop their capacities is an essential aspect of the concept of socialism for the twenty-first century. But it is only one element. How can the worker’s own need for development be realized if capital owns our social heritage—the products of the social brain and the social hand? And, how can we develop our own potential if we look upon other producers as enemies or as our markets—i.e., if individual material self-interest is our motivation?

Capitalism is an organic system, one which has the tendency to reproduce the conditions of its existence (including a working class which looks upon its requirements as ‘self-evident natural laws’). That is its strength. To counter that and to satisfy ‘the worker’s own need for development,’ the socialist alternative also must be an organic system, a particular combination of production, distribution and consumption, a system of reproduction. What Chavez named in January 2007 as ‘the elementary triangle of socialism’ (social property, social production and satisfaction of social needs) is a step forward toward a conception of such a system.

Consider the logic of this socialist combination, this conception of socialism for the twenty-first century:

1. Social ownership of the means of production is critical within this structure because it is the only way to ensure that our communal, social productivity is directed to the free development of all rather than used to satisfy the private goals of capitalists, groups of producers or state bureaucrats. But, this concerns more than our current activity. Social ownership of our social heritage, the results of past social labour, is an assertion that all living human beings have the right to the full development of their potential—to real wealth, the development of human capacity. It is the recognition that ‘the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.’

2. Social production organized by workers builds new relations among producers—relations of cooperation and solidarity. It allows workers to end ‘the crippling of body and mind’ and the loss of ‘every atom of freedom, both in bodily and in intellectual activity’ that comes from the separation of head and hand. Organization of production in all spheres by workers, thus, is a condition for the full development of the producers, for the development of their capabilities—a condition for the production of rich human beings.

3. Satisfaction of communal needs and purposes as the goal of productive activity means that, instead of interacting as separate and indifferent individuals, we function as members of a community. Rather than looking upon our own capacity as our property and as a means of securing as much as possible in an exchange, we start from the recognition of our common humanity and, thus, of the importance of conditions in which everyone is able to develop her full potential. When our productive activity is oriented to the needs of others, it both builds solidarity among people and produces socialist human beings.

These three sides of the ‘socialist triangle’ mutually interact to form a structure in which ‘all the elements coexist simultaneously and support one another,’ as Marx put it. ‘This is the case with every organic whole.’ Yet, the very interdependence of the three sides suggests that realization of each element depends upon the existence of the other two. Without production for social needs, no real social property; without social property, no worker decision-making oriented toward society’s needs; without worker decision-making, no transformation of people and their needs.

The state’s place within ‘socialism as an organic system’

Is there a place for the state in socialism as an organic system? In the absence of a mechanism by which this particular combination of production, distribution and consumption can be realized, it remains purely a vision. Thus, implicit in the concept of socialism as an organic system is a set of institutions and practices through which all members of society can share the fruits of social labour and are able to satisfy their ‘own need for development.’ To produce and reproduce ‘rich human beings’ in a society based upon solidarity requires a conscious attempt to ensure that the necessary conditions for full human development infuse all levels of society.

Consider one possible scenario for a process of participatory diagnosis and planning. At the level of an individual neighbourhood, it is possible for neighbours to discuss directly the kind of community they want to live in and what they see as necessary for the development of their capacities and that of those around them. While this process identifies needs, the discussion also allows this community to explore its own ability to satisfy those needs itself; in other words, it identifies the capabilities of the community. Thus, at the level of the community, there is a direct attempt to coordinate the system of needs and the system of labours. In addition to being able to identify its needs and the extent to which those can be satisfied locally through the labour of community members, this process (which occurs under the guidance of elected neighbourhood councils) has a second product. By sharing and attempting to reconcile views of the most urgent needs of members of this community, there is a learning process—one in which protagonism builds and reinforces solidarity—i.e., the process of participatory diagnosis produces particular people, a particular joint product. At the core of this process, thus, is revolutionary practice—the simultaneous changing of circumstances and human activity or self-change.

Of course, the probability of a precise match between capabilities and needs within this community is negligible. The community is likely to have needs it cannot satisfy locally and capacities it does not need. In this situation, autarky supports neither the ability of people to secure the use-values they identify as important for their development nor the satisfaction in meaningful activity that can come from meeting the needs of others outside their immediate neighbourhood. Thus, to satisfy ‘the worker’s own need for development,’ the community needs to go beyond this barrier in order to coordinate with other communities in a larger body.

The commune represents a further step, bringing together the information transmitted by local neighbourhood councils about the needs and capabilities of their communities as well as drawing upon the knowledge of workers within units of production in this geographical area. Do workers have the capacity to satisfy the needs identified by the communities? By exploring this question in their workers councils, workers engage in conscious consideration of production options within their workplaces and focus upon the logic of producing for communal needs; however, to answer this question adequately requires more than responses from individual production units taken separately. By combining their knowledge and capabilities, workers in particular workplaces can achieve results which are greater than the sum of their individual parts taken separately. But, here again, more than a process of producing for communal needs and purposes occurs. Cooperation within and between units of production for this purpose generates solidarity among the combined workers and reinforces their understanding of the goals of production.

Throughout this process, community members and workers can interact through communal meetings and a communal parliament. And, the result of the process is that the commune councils have at their disposal data on (a) needs that can be satisfied from within the commune and (b) the needs which cannot be satisfied locally. Further, there is information on (c) the potential output of workplaces that can be provisionally utilized within the commune, and (d) the potential output of workplaces that is unutilized. Thus, there is both an indication of the level of needs that provisionally can be satisfied locally as well as identification of the excess demand and excess supply within each commune.

To stop here would reproduce the problem of remaining at the level of the individual neighbourhood. To create the conditions for the free development of all, it is necessary to go beyond geographical barriers. Thus, this process is extended to larger areas: the data from communes is transmitted upward to cities (communal cities), to the states or provinces and ultimately to the national level – to bodies composed of delegates from the communes, cities and the states, respectively. At the national level, then, it is possible to identify (a) provisionally satisfied needs, (b) unsatisfied needs, (c) provisionally assigned output and (d) provisionally unassigned output. It is fair to assume that there will not be a balance between needs and capacities at the first iteration.

Accordingly, the process of reconciling the system of needs and the system of labours is an essential requirement of the set of institutions and practices characteristic of socialism as an organic system. If there are excess needs, there are two logical resorts: (1) find a way to increase output (a question for workers councils to explore), and (2) recognize the necessity to reduce satisfaction of some needs. Thus, a critical discussion must occur here—what is to be unsatisfied? Exploration of this question requires a discussion of the relative requirements of different areas and the different types of needs to be given priority. It is only at this level that identification of national and regional inequality occurs as well as a discussion of priorities and choices for the society as a whole. This dialogue needs to take place not only at the national level but at every level down to the neighbourhood. Such a discussion is absolutely essential because, through such a process of participatory planning, people learn about the needs and capacities of others elsewhere in the society. There is no other way to build solidarity than to put faces upon other members of society. Thus, throughout this process, there are two products: development of the plan and the development of the people who participate in its construction.

The result of this scenario is a process of production for communal needs and communal purposes in which protagonism within the workplace and community ensures that this is social production organized by the producers. Obviously, too, the third side of the socialist triangle, social ownership, is present in that there is neither production for capital nor production for any particular group, i.e. a process of group ownership. In each workplace, workers are conscious that their productive activity is for society. In short, begin with communality, and the product of our activity is ‘a communal, general product from the outset.’

How, though, could the concept of socialism as an organic system be made real in the absence of institutions and practices such as these? This combination and articulation of councils and delegates at different levels of society is necessary to ensure the reproduction of a society in which the ‘free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.’ And, it is a state—a particular type of state, a state from below, a state of the commune-type. This state does not wither away—rather, it is an integral part of socialism as an organic system.

Of course, some people may not wish to call this set of institutions a state because these are society’s ‘own living forces’—i.e., not ‘an organ standing above society’ but ‘one completely subordinate to it.’ How would designation of this as a state be compatible with the view that, by definition, as Holloway puts it, ‘the state is the assassin of hope’? Like those who conceive of labour as inherently a burden (and thus can think of nothing better than to reduce it to zero), those who reject these institutions as a state demonstrate that they are trapped in the categories of old societies.

Old habits die slowly, though. And, taxonomy should not trump content. So, if some people prefer to call these articulated councils a non-state or the ‘Unstate,’ this should not present a problem—as long as they agree that socialism as an organic system requires these institutions and practices in order to be real.


Michael A. Lebowitz. Photo from Flickr.


Subordinating the old society: Contested reproduction


However, an organic system does not drop from the sky. In socialism as an organic system (to paraphrase Marx’s description of capitalism as an organic system), ‘every economic relation presupposes every other in its [socialist] economic form, and everything posited is thus also a presupposition, this is the case with every organic system.’ Yet, a new system never produces its own premises at the outset. Rather, when a new system emerges, it necessarily inherits premises from the old. Its premises and presuppositions are ‘historic’ ones, premises which are produced outside the system and which thus do not arise upon its own foundations.

In short, every new system as it emerges is inevitably defective: it is ‘in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society.’ Accordingly, the development of an organic system is a process of becoming. ‘Its development to its totality,’ Marx indicated, ‘consists precisely in subordinating all elements of society to itself, or in creating out of it the organs which it still lacks. This is historically how it becomes a totality.’

In the 1920s, the Soviet economist Evgeny Preobrazhensky made this very point about how a new system develops. ‘Not a single economic formation,’ he argued, ‘can develop in a pure form, on the basis merely of the immanent laws which are inherent to the particular formation. This would be in contradiction to the very idea of development. The development of any economic form means its ousting of other economic forms, the subordination of these forms to the new form, and their gradual elimination.’ So, what is to be subordinated? If socialism is to develop into an organic system, social ownership of the means of production must supplant private ownership; worker management must replace despotism in the workplace; and productive activity based upon solidarity and community must subordinate individual self-interest. And, of course, the old state must be transcended, replaced by the new organs which foster the simultaneous changing of circumstances and self-change.

Obviously, this cannot happen overnight. It also, however, is something that cannot take place in stages. The idea of putting off some questions until a later stage is prepared is alien to a concept of an organic system. The continued presence of elements of capitalism does not simply mean that socialism is at yet incomplete because a few parts are missing. After all, what kinds of people are produced within the old relations? In fact, every moment that people act within old relations is a process of reproducing old ideas and attitudes. Working within a hierarchy, functioning without the ability to make decisions in the workplace and society, focusing upon self-interest rather than upon solidarity—these activities produce people on a daily basis; it is the reproduction of the conservatism of everyday life—indeed, the reproduction of elements of capitalism.

The concept of socialism for the twenty-first century as an organic system theoretically posits what the experience of the twentieth century has demonstrated – the need to build all sides of the socialist triangle. One war, three fronts. In the absence of a struggle to subordinate all the elements of the old society, the new society is inevitably infected by the old society. And, the matter is worse if we choose homeopathic medicine to cure the infection. In short, rather than build upon defects (such as the orientation toward material self-interest that Marx warned about in his Critique of the Gotha Programme), the point is to subordinate them.

Just as capitalism, though, required the development of a specifically capitalist mode of production to be an organic system, socialism also cannot subordinate all elements of society to itself until it develops a specifically socialist mode of production. Consider capitalism before it developed to the point where it produced its own premises in their capitalist form—i.e., when it was still in the process of becoming. That process of becoming necessarily involved the contracted reproduction of the existing relations—relations Marx described as ones in which the producer ‘as owner of his own conditions of labour, employs that labour to enrich himself instead of the capitalist.’ The separation of producers from those means of production and the compulsion to sell their labour-power marked the beginning of capitalist relations. Wherever possible, however, workers attempted to extract themselves and to become independent producers rather than to sell their ‘birth-right for a mess of pottage.’ This possibility was always present as wages increased with the accumulation of capital in the absence of the specifically capitalist mode of production. ‘Two diametrically opposed economic systems’ were present—and not only in the colonies where the problem of non-reproduction of wage-labourers was most marked.

The struggle over the subordination of the elements of production, thus, did not end with the original (or primitive) development of capitalist relations of production. Reproduction of those new relations was not secure until the development of the specifically capitalist mode of production that ensures reproduction of the premises of the system. ‘As soon as capitalist production stands on its own feet,’ Marx noted, ‘it not only maintains this separation [between workers and the means of production] but reproduces it on a constantly extending scale.’ Until capital developed upon its own foundations, however, differing relations and differing logics existed simultaneously.

So, what happens when differing relations coexist? Rather than peaceful coexistence, there is contested reproduction—with each system attempting to expand at the expense of the other. Considering the Soviet Union in the 1920s, Preobrazhensky argued that the state economy was in ‘an uninterrupted economic war with the tendencies of capitalist development, with the tendencies of capitalist restoration.’ This, he proposed, was a ‘struggle between two mutually hostile systems,’ a war between two regulating principles—one, the result of the spontaneous effects of commodity—capitalist relations (‘the law of value’); and the other, based upon the conscious decisions of the regulatory organs of the state (which he called ‘the law of primitive socialist accumulation’). And, Preobrazhensky argued that each of these regulating principles was ‘fighting for the type of regulation which is organically characteristic of the particular system of production-relations, taken in its pure form.’ However, the result of their interaction was that the Soviet economy was regulated by neither in its pure form. There was not a simple combination or addition of the productive relations and their associated regulating principles; rather, they interpenetrated—coexisting, limiting and (significantly) deforming each other.

Preobrazhensky’s insight, in short, was that in the process of becoming of a new system, two systems and two logics do not simply exist side-by-side. They interact. They interpenetrate. And, they deform each other. Rather than the combination permitting the best of both worlds, the effect can be the worst of the two worlds. Precisely because there is contested reproduction between differing sets of productive relations, the interaction of the systems can generate crises, inefficiencies and irrationality that wouldn’t be found in either system in its purity. Accordingly, as is well known, Preobrazhensky argued that rather than search for balance between the two, it was essential that what he called primitive socialist accumulation subordinate and replace the law of value.

But consider capitalism in its process of becoming. How, in the absence of the specifically capitalist mode of production, were capitalist relations of production reproduced? After all, the interaction between what Marx had called ‘two diametrically opposed economic systems’ was definitely producing problems that would not occur outside that combination. This was exactly what was occurring when the labour-intensive accumulation of capital produced a tendency for the non-reproduction of wage-labour as the result of rising wages. Marx was quite clear on what capital’s answer was—i.e., how capital ensured the reproduction of capitalist relations of production under these conditions. He detailed the measures undertaken with the emergence of capitalism—‘the bloody discipline,’ the ‘police methods,’ ‘the state compulsion to confine the struggle between capital and labour within limits convenient for capital.’ In direct contrast to the conditions for the reproduction of capitalist relations once the specifically capitalist mode of production has been developed, he argued that ‘the rising bourgeoisie needs the power of the state, and uses it to “regulate” wages.’

In short, until capital produced its own premises with the development of the specifically capitalist mode of production, it needed what I have called a ‘capitalist mode of regulation’—a mode of regulation which could ensure the compatibility of the behaviour of workers with the requirements of capital. In the absence of what Marx called ‘the sheer force of economic relations,’ that specific mode of regulation relied upon the coercive power of the state to prevent wages from rising and to compel workers (through ‘grotesquely terroristic laws’) ‘into accepting the discipline necessary for the system of wage-labour.’

The necessity of a socialist mode of regulation

Can the associated producers, in their turn, use such a state to support socialist productive relations before the development of socialism as an organic system? Consider the situation described in the Communist Manifesto where the ‘battle of democracy’ has been won (through a revolutionary rupture or a longer process) with the result that a government representing workers exists. At every step in the process of the becoming of socialism, the elements of capitalism and socialism (‘two diametrically opposed economic systems’) will interact and produce systemic incoherence and crisis. For example, when capitalist elements dominate, attempts to subordinate or make ‘despotic inroads’ upon them will tend to generate a capital strike and an economic crisis. If a government is prepared to break with the logic of capital, it will understand (as the Manifesto indicates) that it is ‘compelled to go always further’ and to make ‘further inroads upon the old social order’ and thus to ‘wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State.’ In contrast, the sorry history of social democracy has been that, sooner or later, it yields to the logic of capital and reinforces its rule.

A socialist mode of regulation must achieve consciously what a specifically socialist mode of production will tend to do spontaneously—ensure the reproduction of socialist relations of production. The building and reproduction of those relations (represented by the sides of the socialist triangle) ‘consists precisely in subordinating all elements of society to itself, or in creating out of it the organs which it still lacks.’ Thus, the socialist mode of regulation must subordinate consciously every element which supports the old society—both the institutions and the common sense that supports those old relations. Further, it must create new socialist elements which can become the premises and foundation for the new society.

The socialist mode of regulation, accordingly, must embrace the Battle of Ideas—the ideological struggle oriented toward human development. It must stress how the logic of capital is contrary to the development of our potential, and it must use every example of capital’s response to measures supportive of human development as yet another demonstration of the perversion of capitalism. Further, the acceptance of the logic of capital as ‘self-evident natural laws’ must be challenged by development of a coherent alternative which stresses the importance of democratic, participatory and protagonistic practice in workplaces and communities and emphasizes a new social rationality based upon cooperation and solidarity. Of course, an ideological struggle cannot succeed by itself. Without the creation of institutions like workers councils and neighbourhood councils, which provide the necessary space for human development through practice, the battle of ideas lacks a real basis for the development (‘both individual and collective’) of new socialist subjects. Indeed, this mode of regulation requires a state that supports this struggle ideologically, economically and militarily and thus serves as the midwife for the birth of the new society.

But, what do we mean by the state? Do we mean the old state or the emerging new state based upon workers councils and neighbourhood councils as its cells? How could the old infected state whose very institutions involve a ‘systematic and hierarchic division of labour’—a state which has the character of a public force organized for social enslavement, of an engine of class despotism—possibly be part of the socialist mode of regulation?


Marx and Engels grasped that the working class ‘cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and use it for its own purpose.’ At last, Marx proclaimed, following what he saw as the spontaneous discovery by workers in the Paris Commune of an alternative form of state—a new democratic and decentralized state where the legitimate functions of the state were to be ‘wrested from an authority usurping pre-eminence over society itself, and restored to the responsible agents of society.’ At last, the necessary form of the workers’ state has been discovered: the Commune (which combined legislative and executive functions) was ‘the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of Labour.’ Here was the state which would ‘serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundations upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class-rule.’

The commune form represented the destruction of centralized state power insofar as that state stands above society. Marx called it ‘the reabsorption of the state power by society as its own living forces instead of as forces controlling and subduing it, by the popular masses themselves, forming their own force instead of the organised force of their suppression—the political form of their social emancipation.’ With the conversion of the state ‘from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it,’ self-governing producers thus wield the state for their own purposes, continuously changing both circumstances and themselves.

This new type of state, based upon direct protagonistic democracy in workplace and community, is indeed essential for the development of socialism as an organic system. Not only does it permit the unleashing of tacit knowledge and popular energy to link the capacities of people to communal needs and purposes but it has as its joint product new social subjects with new capacities, pride and dignity. With the transparency that is necessary for any control from below, those councils in workplaces and communities can police waste, sabotage and other attempts to reverse the process effectively; and, this too, reinforces the sense that the process belongs to the people and is not alien to and above them.

Yet, that new state does not drop from the sky. For one, given the effects of the ‘education, tradition and habit’ of those formed within the old society, we should not be surprised at the power of the old ideas to undermine efforts to build the new state from below. Although people transform themselves through their practice in workers and communal councils, they do so in small units and the spontaneous focus of these cells of the new state inevitably will be one of localism and self-interest (both individual and collective). The development of solidarity and a concept of community that goes beyond the local to other communities and workplaces (and beyond the self-interest that is manifested as consumerism) will tend to emerge only through practice.

These cells, of course, need to be connected if they are to emerge as the new state. They need to develop horizontal and vertical links with other workplaces and communities (as well as with bodies which consolidate these). But the creation of such links through the delegation of spokespersons on their behalf is not the same as the development of solidarity that transcends local self-interest. It takes time before the concept of the whole develops organically in these units and is internalized. In short, although the course of development of socialism as an organic system requires the creation of links based upon solidarity from below and the acceptance of collective democracy that transcends the particular, that process cannot be instantaneous. Accordingly, the new state is not capable initially of making essential decisions that require concentration and coordination of forces.

In contrast, the old state is more likely to be able to see the overall picture at the outset. With the presence of revolutionary actors in the government of the old state, it is possible to confront not only individual capitals but the power of capital as a whole. This is essential because the process of subordinating capital requires the working class to take the power of the existing state away from capital (and thereby to remove its access to the military forces of the state). This is the strength of the old state; it is well situated to identify critical bottlenecks and places for initiatives that require a concentration of forces (including actions to defend the process militarily against internal and external enemies determined to reverse every inroad). Can we imagine building a new society without taking the existing power away from those who possess it in the old society? In contrast to modern fantasists, Marx understood that ‘the transfer of the organized forces of society, viz., the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves’ is necessary; he understood that you cannot change the world without taking power.

However, as might be expected from this ‘engine of despotism,’ with its ‘systematic and hierarchic division of labour’ and ‘ready-made state machinery,’ the old state has the tendency to act from above to change circumstances for people rather than to foster revolutionary practice. That state remains above society; it divides society into two parts, one part of which is superior to society and which would bestow socialism as a gift to an underlying population. How could the old hierarchical state—even if made more democratic—foster the key link of human development and practice? Inherent in the logic of representative democracy is the separation of governing from the governed. Thus, rather than the necessary involvement of people which ‘ensures their complete development, both individual and collective,’ the spontaneous tendency of such a state is to reproduce ‘the delusion as if administration and political governing were mysteries, transcendent functions only to be trusted to the hands of a trained caste.’ The faces may change in the legislative branch, but the face of the old state to those below is that of the functionary, ‘an authority usurping pre-eminence over society itself.’ That is precisely why the Commune’s combination of legislative and executive bodies is so central to the development of a state which is society’s ‘own living forces instead of… forces controlling and subduing it.’

During the interregnum when the old state cannot yet die and the new state is not yet able to stand upon its own feet, a great many morbid symptoms appear. Both states are necessary at the outset for the subordination of the old society and the nurturing of the new. However, the inherent tension between the top-down orientation from within the old state and the bottom-up emphasis of the worker and community councils is obvious. In their interaction over a period of indeterminate length, each state will tend to deform the other.

Thus, the desire on the part of revolutionaries in the old state to enact national policies according to a predetermined timetable, for example, tends toward the creation of uniform rules which ignore differences in the history and practices of the cells of the emerging state from below. Both in those cases where organic development is lagging and those where it is more advanced, the effect of demands placed by the old state upon the new shoots will tend to deform their development, as the impatience of functionaries of the old state will either turn the cells of the new into instruments of the old state, or impose a uniformity that tends to reverse unique advances and thereby to discourage initiative and enthusiasm.

Nor, viewed from the other angle, can the old state easily achieve goals of coherent planning, balance and equality when worker and communal councils assert their right to self-determination. As long as these local units insist upon their unique character and the right to pursue their own collective self-interest without interference, the tendency will be to foster relations of exchange (the quid pro quo), inequality and a lack of solidarity. Here, again, the combination of the two states produces incoherence rather than the best of both worlds.

In the context of growing tension and crises produced by the interaction of two diametrically opposed systems, there will be those in the old state who see the solution as the enforcement of power from above. Similarly, there will be those in the new cells who will see the solution as the removal of any authority above the individual unit in order to permit the unfettered pursuit of their particular collective interest. Both those tendencies must be struggled against because each leads to a different deformation of the socialist triangle of social production organized by workers, using socially owned means of production for the purpose of satisfying social needs.

The socialist mode of regulation requires a combination of revolutionary actors within both the old state and the new. Within the old state, it is essential that the policies pursued focus upon both the changing of circumstances and the changing of human beings; this calls for the rejection of capitalist measures of accounting and efficiency and their replacement by a concept of socialist accounting which explicitly recognizes the joint product which emerges from the key link of human development and practice. Within the cells of the new socialist state, on the other hand, the struggle must be against the defects associated with the self-orientation inherited from the old society. In both workplaces and communities, it is essential to find ways to build solidarity with other communities and society as a whole and to develop the understanding that the free development of each has as its condition the free development of all.

In short, the socialist mode of regulation involves a combination of the nurturing of the new state and the withering away of the old. In this process, there is a natural alliance within both the old and the new, not with the goal of achieving a balance between the two states, but unified in the commitment toward building a new socialism oriented explicitly toward human development and defined by the socialist triangle.

The state and the struggle for socialism


This combination of old and new states, however, is not only essential for ensuring the reproduction of socialist relations. A struggle against one-sidedness must be at the core of a strategy to end capitalism and to build socialism. Some people, however, focus only upon the new state (or, if you will, the ‘Unstate’) and reject the idea of using the old state. ‘The very notion that society can be changed through the winning of state power,’ Holloway argues, is the source of all our sense of betrayal; we need to understand, he announces, that ‘to struggle through the state is to become involved in the active process of defeating yourself.’ Why? Because ‘once the logic of power is adopted, the struggle against power is already lost.’ And, why even try? After all, the existing state cannot ‘be made to function in the interests of the working class’ because as a capitalist state ‘its own continued existence is tied to the reproduction of capitalist social relations as a whole.’ The state is ‘just one node in a web of social relations’ and, indeed, is ‘not the locus of power that it appears to be.’

From this perspective, the need to use the state (the armed ‘node’) to rip apart that web of social relations is just so old fashioned—so nineteenth and twentieth century. Forget the military, police, judicial and legislative apparatus now at the disposal of capital. The alternative to capital’s power is already there: ‘ubiquitous power implies ubiquitous resistance. Ubiquitous yes implies ubiquitous no.’ With the Hegelian magic by which things can be miraculously transformed into their opposites (as long as we don’t watch too closely), we come to understand that electoral abstention is victory, lack of leadership is leadership, and the ‘Many’ (the multiplicity of negative struggles against capitalism) is by definition ‘One.’ Negating the existing state through the mind means that it continues in the hands of capital in reality.

The other form of one-sidedness focuses exclusively upon the capture of the old state. Whether choosing the electoral road or invoking glorious victories of the past to support a direct assault upon state power, from this perspective the process of building the institutions and practices characteristic of the new state must be subordinated to the principal task. Social movements essential for the organic development of a new socialist consciousness based upon practice are viewed instrumentally—as fodder for election committees or as the source of cadres for the party. Subordinate, subordinate—that is holy Moses and the prophets! Thus, whether due to the imperatives of electoral rhythm or to the perceived need to rehearse military discipline, the tendency of parties fixated upon the old state is to draw the lifeblood from the incipient elements of the new state and to suppress within their own ranks those who would argue otherwise.

According to Marta Harnecker, this lack of respect for the autonomous development of popular movements was characteristic of elements of the political left in Latin America and brought with it a ‘verticalism, which cancels out people’s initiative’ and a ‘traditional narrow conception of politics’ which ‘tends to reduce politics to the struggle that has to do with political-legal institutions and to exaggerate the role of the state.’ And, the tendency for ‘hierarchization’ is the kernel of truth, too, in Holloway’s argument that the party, ‘whether vanguardist or parliamentary,’ subordinates ‘the myriad forms of class struggle to the overriding aim of gaining control of the state.’

However, rather than inherent in a party as such, this ‘hegemonist’ characteristic is precisely the result of a one-sidedness focused upon the old state. A different left is possible. As Harnecker argues, to build the left essential for socialism for the twenty-first century, we have to change the traditional vision of politics and overcome the narrow definition of power. The new political instrument must grasp the importance of practice for developing consciousness and capacities, needs to learn to listen to popular movements and to respect and nourish them. But it also has a special role—it should not ‘try to gather to its bosom all the legitimate representatives of struggles for emancipation but should strive to coordinate their practices into a single political project’—i.e., to create the spaces where they can learn from each other.

There is an organic link between state and party, and a party which recognizes the necessity for the articulation of old and new state in the process of building socialism differs substantially from one which focuses solely upon the capture of the old state. It is necessarily ‘a political organization which, as it advances a national programme which enables broad sectors of society to rally round the same battle standard, also helps these sectors to transform themselves into the active subjects building the new society for which the battle is being waged.’ In short, the party that is needed is one that learns to walk on two legs.

Two sides, two struggles: a party determined to defeat capital and to build the new state from below must always be consciousness of the danger of one-sidedness. Thus, if crises within capitalism propel a political organization into government, it must not only use that opportunity to defeat the logic of capital and to reduce capital’s power over the old state but also to use the power it has to foster the accelerated development of the sprouts of the new state. And, if conditions are not such as to permit a party to grasp the reins of power in the old state, then it must work to create those conditions by encouraging the autonomous development of social movements through which people can develop their powers and capacities and by building unity among them based upon recognition of difference.

Thus, just as a socialist mode of regulation requires the articulation of old and new state in the process of building socialism as an organic system, so also must we walk on two legs in order to defeat capital and to build collective power. And, at no time is it more possible to demonstrate clearly the gap between the logic of capital and the logic of human development than in the intensified class war when capital is in crisis and the nature of capital comes to the surface. It provides the opportunity to shatter the idea that accepting the demands of capital is common sense. But to show there is an alternative we need the vision of a society in which the free development of each is understood as the condition for the free development of all. And we need to reinforce that vision with more than rhetoric. Unless we are creating through our struggles the spaces which prefigure the new society, we face more glorious defeats.

When capital is in crisis, there are always two options—to give in or to move in. If masses are armed with a clear conception of the socialist alternative, they can turn a crisis in capitalism into the crisis of capitalism. Of course, it is possible that, as the result of our ideological disarmament, the current struggles against the capitalist offensive ultimately may lead to a glorious defeat. It is possible but we must take that chance.

Michael A. Lebowitz (1937-2023) taught Marxian Economics and Comparative Economic Systems at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia since 1965. He was directing the programme in Transformative Practice and Human Development at Centro Internacional Miranda (CIM). His latest book is Between Capitalism and Community (New York: Monthly Review Press 2021). His publications can be found at michaelalebowitz.com.