CHAPTER I

PART 5

Towards The Association of Free and Equal Producers

In the form of its system of production, humanity has created an organism designed to satisfy the needs of tens of thousands of human beings. In the course of their production, we use up both our own labour-power and the production process itself. Seen from this point of view, the process of production is simultaneously a process of destruction, a process of the using up of resources; nevertheless, through this very process of destruction we continuously create new use-values. That which has been consumed is born again in the same process. Machines, tools, our own labour-power, are simultaneously renewed in this process, are produced anew, or reproduced. It is an unremitting stream of reformed human energy, energy changed from one form into another. Each specific form is crystalised human energy, which we can measure according to the time during which labour is expended inorder to create it.

The same yardstick applies to that part of the production process in which no physical products are created, such as for instance education, the health service, etc. Here also means of production and labour-power are expended, in which cases the product simply takes the form of the instruction received, the care given to the sick, etc. Distribution takes place directly in and through production itself, and the expended energies flow in their new form directly into society. Because of the fact that we are able to measure these energies intime, a fully exact relation between producer and product is established. The relation of each individual producer to each specific social product is in this way rendered wholly and clearly perceivable.

In the case of the organisation of production according to the schemes of Neurath or Hilferding, or as it is implemented in Russia, this relationship is, on the contrary, completely concealed. Here it is a process veiled in mystery, and the producers themselves certainly know even less about it than the state administrators. In this case, therefore, a definite proportion of the social product must be allocated to the producers by a superior authority, and the former must await trustfully that which they are to receive. This is how matters proceed in Russia. Although productivity may rise, although the mass of social products may increase, the producer nevertheless receives no increase in the share - that is to say, exploitation exists.

What should the producers undertake against this? Nothing? Yes indeed, they must take up once again the cause of struggle against the exploiter, against those who hold control over the system of production in their hands! One may attempt to place "better leaders" in power, although this of course does not lead to the removal of the causes of exploitation. In the final analysis, there remains no other road forward than that of reconstructing the entire system of production in such a way that the exact relationship of the producers to the products fashioned by their labour becomes the foundation of the social system of production. In such a system, however, the task of the leaders and adminstators in respect of the allocation of the products is also eliminated. There remains nothing to allocate. The share in the social product is determined directly. Labour-time serves as the measure for determining the proportion of the total product to be individually consumed.

The question as to whether or not the proletariat, in the course of a communist transformation of society, succeeds in establishing this relationship between producer and product is in the final instance a question of social power. It is on this basis, and this basis alone, that planned production is possible. The seperate industrial units, and indeed whole industries, can then be integrated both horizontally and vertically into a single planned whole, whilst all sections compute quite autonomously their share in the total accounting of labour-time used up in its various forms, these being essentially: wear and tear on machinery, consumption of raw and auxillary materials and expenditure of labour. This fundamental ordering and organisation of communist production can, and indeed must, be brought into being by the producers themselves, can indeed be established by them alone. The Association of Free and Equal Producers then becomes an absolute necessity. The system of interlocking relations and mutual interdependence grows from below, precisely because the producers themselves, in their own right, have control over management and administration. Now the necessary scope has been created to allow for the initiative of the producers themselves to be expressed, who are thereby able to create the moving and developing forms needed by social life in all their thousandfold forms. (19)

It is the proletariat itself which lays in place the foundation-stone cementing the basic relationship between producers and the product of their labour. This and this alone is the key question of the proletarian revolution. In just the same way as the feudal serf struggled in the bourgeois revolution for his piece of land and for the full right of disposal over the fruits of his labour, in the same way thew proletariat now struggles for control of the factories and other industrial establishments and for full right of disposal over production - an outcome which is only possible if the fundamental relationship between producer and product has been fought to its final conclusion in a new social legality. The decisive question at issue here is precisely that of the place the proletariat is to win for itself in society; the question as to whether, along with the right to labour in the work-places, the right of disposal over the products of these work-places is also achieved; or, on the contrary, whether the proletariat is once again to be pronounced incapable of discharging responsibility, and leaders, experts and scientists are to be entrusted with that right of disposal. In the final instance, this struggle will be fought out against those who believe that they are destined, after the revolution, to assume responsibility on behalf of the proletariat. It is for this reason that the cooperation of such people is only appropriate if the foundations of communist production have first been laid. It is this basis alone that their skills may work for society, whereas otherwise they can develop only into a new ruling caste.

The so-called 'dictatorship of the proletariat' suppresses everything which opposes the ruling administration, until all branches of production have become sufficiently "mature" as to be integrated by their respective supreme management bodies into the general structure of power and administration. In the case of the "Association of Free and Equal Producers", workers' rule serves the purpose of introducing and carrying through the new system of production, accounting and regulation on the basis of average social labour-time as the general foundation of all production, and in order to create the basis on which the free producers themselves may control production and administer it. In the case of state capitalism, on the other hand, the general conditions are such as will create the strongest machinery of suppression under the control of a central apparatus. In the case of the system of freely associating producers, it functions so as to bring to life and to promote those very forces through which it itself as the function of rule progressively loses power, in order finally to make itself superfluous; workers' rule works so as to bring about its own demise at the earliest possible historical moment.

Without concerning ourselves further with state capitalism, we should far rather now proceed to examine how it comes about that any 'reasonable' person at this present historical juncture may still embrace and adhere to the 'naive' conception of Marx (who is supposed to have derived this out of the liberal-anarchist tendencies of his time) (20) which held that the regulation of economic life should come "about not through the state, but through a union of the Free Associations of the Socialist society", and in which the fundamental catergory of economic life should be the average social hour of labour. Indeed, over and above all this, it is necessary to take steps to ensure that this 'naive' conception of Marx is shown to be the sole possible foundation upon which communism might be achieved. To pose the question in this way means simultaneously to declare that this conception was not in the first place born behind a writing-desk, but was itself the product of a seething, developing revolutionary life-activity.

So far as it is possible for us to look back upon events in review, we may count three decisive moments which marked our disillusionment with the sychophantic hymns chanted by the 'communist economists'. The first was the spontaneous development and functioning of the Soviet system; the second the disarming of the Soviets by the Russian state apparatus; and the third and final moment of disillusionment the growth of state-administered production into a new, hitherto unknown form of rule over the whole of society. These facts compelled us to undertake a closer examination, an examination which revealed that state capitalism, in both theory and practice, has absolutely nothing in common with Marxism. At the same time as social life itself, through its definite expression, social practice, has, in the form of the Workers' Councils, the Soviet system, impelled Marx's concept of the Association of Free and Equal Producers into the forefront of history, that same social life, with its objective criticism of theory and practice, has simultaneously given the actual power in society to state capitalism.

References

19. Paragraph ending: "...who are thereby able to create the moving and developing forms needed by social life in all their thousandfold forms" How clearly the advent of modern computerisation techniques has highlighted the simple practicability of such a system! Indeed, it may be said that, at least as far as the technical basis of control over production is concerned, the era of the computer represents the dawn of the era of communism.return to text
20. H. Cunow: Die marx'sche Geschichts, Gesellschafts und Staatstheorie, Band 1 (The Marxist Theory of History, Society and the State, Vol 1), p.309.return to text

END OF CHAPTER ONE

GO TO CHAPTER TWO

RETURN TO MAIN / CONTENTS PAGE

GO TO: About this web page.

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page