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The second argument deployed against us by our critics is that of an alleged "utopianism". However, this also is incorrect, since throughout the entire examination no imaginary constructions whatsoever have been dreamed up for the future. We have examined only the basic economic categories of communist economic life. Our sole aim has been to show that the proletarian revolution must summon forth the power to implement in society the system of Average Social Reproduction Time (ASRT); should it fail in this, then the end outcome of the revolution will inevitably be State communism. It is, however, unlikely that any such form of State communism will be introduced directly or openly announced, since this would tend to compromise it far too openly. A much more likely turn of events would be that these tendencies would develop out of some form of guild socialism, which the English writer G.D.H. Cole has described in his book Self-Management in Industry, and which has been taken up by Leichter in a more exact form. Everything here is disguised State communism. In particular, this work represents a last-ditch attempt by the bourgeoisie to forestall the establishment of that most fundamental but least understood of all the "Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution": the establishment of an exact relationship of the producer to the social product.
It has, on the contrary, been our experience that every work purporting to represent a principled view of communist production and distribution which has hitherto come to our attention and which claims to be based upon the historically valid realities is in fact based upon the purest utopia. Projects are drawn up showing how the various industries are to be organised, how the contradiction between producers and consumers is to be eliminated through the agencies of various commissions and committees, through which organs the power of the State is to be curbed, and so on. Wherever one or the other author of such a fantastic scheme finds he has fantasised himself into a corner with his intellectual somersaults, or wherever any difficulty arises in making his concocted speculations work out, for instance in respect to the integration of various industries .. the solution is soon to hand: a new commission or a special committee is "brought into being". This is especially the case with Cole's Guild Socialism, the historical predecessor of which was so-called German trade-union socialism.
The organisational infrastructure of any system of production and distribution is functionally associated with the economic laws determining its movement. Any conception concerning such an infrastructure which does not reflect the economic categories inherent to its system is therefore no more than utopian speculation. Such utopianism merely serves to distract attention away from the real fundamental problems.
In our observations we have not concerned ourselves with this speculative field. Insofar as the organisational structure of economic life has been touched upon at all, this has been only to refer here and there to the organisation of industrial establishments and cooperatives. This has its justification in the fact that history has to a large extent already indicated what these forms are to be, thereby depriving them of any of the characteristics of an over-heated imagination. We have treated the question of the organisation of the peasants with the greatest reserve, precisely because the West European movement possesses very little experience in this field. We must await the verdict of history as to just how the peasants will organise themselves. As far as the farming establishments are concerned, we have contented ourselves by showing how capitalism itself has prepared the conditions for calculating Average Social Reproduction Time (ASRT). All we have done has been to examine some of the consequences arising from this.
Just how the industrial organisations will combine with one another, which organs they will call into being in order to ensure the smooth operation of production and distribution, just how these organs will be elected, how the cooperatives will be grouped - all these are problems the solutions for which will be determined by the special conditions prevailing in each sector of the economy and the specific ways in which they reflect the fundamental characteristics of production and distribution. It is precisely this, the functional operation of the production apparatus, which Cole elaborates in the greatest detail in his depiction of guild socialism, without anywhere touching upon the real problems as they arise from the fundamental economic laws of motion, and it is this which reduces his work to the status of worthless dross. For this reason we reject decisively any and all accusations of "utopianism". The method we have adopted in our exposition is precisely that of concentrating upon the fundamental questions, which are those concerned with the methods to be adopted for implementing the average social hour of labour and the reproduction time arising therefrom.
Should one equate trust in the strength of the proletariat to establish communism with utopia, then this can be no more than a subjective utopianism which the proletariat will need to eradicate through intensive propaganda.
The sole area in which the accusation of utopianism might seem to possess some semblance of justification is that relating to the system of control over the norms of economic life. But only a semblance. One might hold the opinion, for instance, that Leichter has allowed more scope for developmental possibilities, inasmuch as he has left open the question as to whether the system of accounting between separate industrial establishments should be carried out individually between the establishments themselves through the medium of labour certificates, or whether this should be done through simple double-entry book-keeping at the book-keeping centre, whilst we insist unconditionally upon the method of centralised double-entry recording. The essential point, however, is that we draw attention continually to the prime significance of the system of social book-keeping in general as a weapon of the economic power of the proletariat, whilst it simultaneously provides the solution to the problem of regulation and social control of economic life. The organisational structure of this system of book-keeping, its specific points of contact with society as a whole - these questions have naturally been left out of our account.
It is of course possible that, in its revolution, the proletariat will fail to generate the strength necessary to enable it to use this decisive weapon for promoting its class power. In the end, however, this is what it must come to, and indeed this is quite apart from the question of the social power of the proletariat, for the simple reason that a communist economy demands an exact computation of the quantity of unremunerated product which consumers are to receive. In other words, the data necessary for the computation of the Factor of Individual Consumption (FIC) must be ascertained; should this not be received, or only inadequately, then it becomes impossible to implement the category of Average Social Reproduction Time, whereupon the entire communist economy collapses. Then there remains no other solution than that of a price policy, and we will have turned full circle, to arrive once again at a system of rule over the masses. We will have sailed straight into the jaws of State communism. Thus it is not our imagination which considers the system of general social book-keeping to be a necessity for communism; on the contrary, it is the objective legality of the communist economic system which makes this unconditional demand.
If we were to make a brief summary of our observations, we would arrive at the following picture:
The foundations of this exposition are grounded in that which is empirically given, namely: that with the assumption of power in society by the proletariat, control over the means of production passes into the hands of the industrial organisations of the workers. The strength of communist consciousness, which in its turn is associated with a clear understanding as to the social uses to which those means of production are to be put, will determine whether or not the economic system in which that use is comprised will maintain itself. Should the proletariat fail to make its power effective, then the only road remaining open is that which leads to State communism, a system which can try out its various hopeless attempts to establish a planned system of production only on the backs of the workers. A second revolution, which finally succeeds in actually placing control over the means production into the hands of the producers themselves, then becomes necessary.
Should, however, the industrial organisations succeed in making their power effective, then they can order the economy in no other way than on the basis of Average Social Reproduction Time, with simultaneous abolition of money. It is, of course, also possible that syndicalist tendencies may be present, with such a degree of strength that the attempt of the workers to assume their own administrative control over the industrial establishments is accompanied by attempts to retain the role of money as the medium of exchange. Were this to occur, the result could be nothing other than the establishment of a form of guild socialism, which in its turn could only lead by another road to State communism. The decisive nodal point of a proletarian revolution, however, lies in the establishment of an exact relationship of the producers to the social product, and this is possible only by means of the universal introduction of the system of labour-time computation. It is the highest demand that the proletariat can place before history.. Simultaneously, however, it is also the most fundamental, and it is without doubt the decisive factor for the struggle for power. It is an aspect of power which the proletariat alone can win, through its struggle, and in that struggle it must never place its chief reliance upon the assistance of socialist or communist intellectuals.
The maintenance of the power of the industrial organisations is therefore based upon the assertion of independent administration and management, since this is the sole foundation upon which the system of labour-time accounting may be implemented. A veritable stream of literature from America, England and Germany supplies proof that the computation of average social production time is already being prepared within the bosom of capitalism. Under communism the calculation of (P + C) + L serves just as readily as now, under capitalism, a different unit of economic regulation does - in this respect also capitalist society bears the new communist mode of production in its womb. The settlement of accounts between the various industrial establishments, necessary to ensure the conditions for reproduction in each one of them, takes place through double-entry book-keeping maintained at the accounting centre ... just as now. This also represents yet another example of how capitalism is pregnant with the new communist order. The amalgamation of establishments is also a process which, already today, is being carried into effect. It must only be borne in mind that the industrial regroupings of the communist future will as likely as not be of a different kind, because they will persue different aims. Those industrial establishments which we have designated as the GSU type, the so-called "public" establishments, also exist today, but as instruments of the capitalist State. These will be separated from the State and integrated into society according to communist principles. Here also we are dealing with the reconstruction and extension of that which already exists. But the State thereby loses its present hypocritical character and initially exists only as the apparatus of proletarian power pure and simple. Its task is to break the resistance of the bourgeoisie. ...But as far as the administration of the economy is concerned, it has no role whatsoever to fulfil, whereby the preconditions for the "withering away" of the State are simultaneously given.
The separation of the public establishments from the State, their integration into the total organism of the economy, demands that the part of the total social product which is still destined for distribution according to norms of individual remuneration must be determined, for which purpose we have elaborated the Factor of Individual Consumption (FIC).
As regards the sphere of distribution, here also the organs of the future communist society are present in embryo within capitalism. To what extent present-day consumer cooperatives will prove to be viable as organs of the new communist economy is another question, since under communism distribution will be organised along different lines. One thing, however, is certain: a great deal of experience is even now being accumulated in the contemporary consumer cooperatives.
If we compare all this with State communism, the first thing to be observed is that, in its case, there is no possibility that money will pass out of use, because only those productive establishments will be made State property which have reached the required degree of "maturity". Hence a large part of production will still remain in the hands of private capital, thereby excluding the possibility of any other form of economic control than that of money. The commodity market remains, as does also labour-power as a commodity, one which must then realise its price on the market. This would mean that, in spite of all the fine words to the contrary, in reality the elimination of wage-labour would be impossible. The ensuing programme of "nationalisation", which is then supposed to open up the road to communism, in fact inaugurates nothing but an endless vista of hopeless prospects. The right to shape the developing communist society is snatched out of the hands of the producers themselves and vested in those of State bureaucracy, which would soon bring the economy to a state of total stagnation. From the isolated vantage-point of their central bureaux, it would be the administrators who would decide what is produced, how long it would (more likely, ought to!) take to produce it, and with what level of wages labour would be remunerated.
In such a system it will also be necessary for democracy to play its part. It is solely by means of elected responsible bodies and councils that the interests of the masses can be guaranteed. This democracy, however, will be infringed and rendered null and void in sphere after sphere, because in essence it is incompatible with the type of centralised administration which will inevitably arise. The latter will unavoidably dissolve into the rule of many separate dictators, and the course of social life will be determined by autocratic forms of rule within the system of democracy. Thus here also we will see yet a further example of how democracy becomes a cloak concealing the actual imposition of the rule of a minority over millions of working people, exactly as under capitalism. At the very best the workers will have to content themselves with the highly valued "right of co-management", which represents yet another form of disguise concealing the real relations of power.
The rejection of all centralised forms of administration and management of production does not however imply that we have taken our stand exclusively upon a federalised structure. Wherever management and administration are in the hands of the masses themselves and are implemented through their industrial organisations and cooperatives, powerful syndicalist tendencies are without doubt present; but when viewed from the aspect of the system of general social book-keeping, economic life is seen to be an indivisible whole, from which strategic vantage-point the economy is not so much administered and managed as surveyed and planned as a unified whole. The fact that all the various changes wrought upon society in the course of the economic process by the application and simultaneous transformation of creative human energies come to be registered in the one recording organism forms the highest summation of all economic life. Whether one calls this federalist or centralist depends simply upon the vantage point from which one views the same phenomenon. It is simultaneously the one and the other, which means that, as far as the system of production as a whole is concerned, these concepts have lost their meaning. The mutual opposition of federalism and centralism has been subsumed within its higher unity; the productive organism has become an organic whole.
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