From: "Greg Schofield" <g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au>
Subject: Re: AUT: What could "proletarian socialism" possibly mean?part1
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 17:33:45 +0800


Chris thanks for this well constructed reply. Our views on the topic are very different and some of it rests on pretty fine definitions.

My criticism begins witht the question of relying on fine definitions through which I think you balance too much upon.

The first is this. The Labour Certificates, which I stand to be corrected, seem to have been given very little space in Marx's work overall. If these are truly a "cure" for money then Marx mentions them oddly and gives very little reasoning on why they should differ so radically. On the otherhand, if Marx was merely using it as a reference to firmly held "Proudhornist" beliefs (ie that Labour Certificates were an essential change) he does use them as an effective an illustration for other questions, though not much wieght can be given them in any theoretical sense.

What is the difference between the universal medium of exchange (money), and the exchange of Labour certificates for products exactly? I know of no work done by Marx to suggest that Labour Certificates fundementally change the role of money, indeed his analysis of the value of money (ie in representing abstract labour in an abstract way) fits rather nicely with the concept of Labour Certificates. Besides which we have his scorn laid upon such schemes by others (I would have to reread a fair bit to substatiate this claim). 

But the real arguement is the simpliest. In the Gotha Program critique, Marx uses Labour Certificates exactly the same as wages, differentiated according to skill and intensity of labour, perhaps adjusted a little according to social need, but nothing that would seem out of place in advanced capitalism. Are Labour Certificates on balance according to Marx a fundemental systemic shift in social organisation? I think his point was exactly the opposite - the analysis, which mimicks wages as we know them so well, is a restating of the first line:

"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges."

Everything that flows from the critique fits nicely within this one sentence. Indeed, we find nothing which signifies any profound break with the old except of course the rulership of the working class so far as this one document is concerned.

Now let me turn to your substantive argument, rather then this exegesis.

"Labor certificates have nothing to do with money.
Money is the most anstract, complete, perfect, insane form (mode of
existence) of alienated labor.  The 'money form', as Marx refers to it in
Capital, does not exist when the amount of labor time spent can actually be
measured, when the social relation is not one of alienated labor.  The
'money form' is necessary when the amount of labor time spent actually does
not appear self-evident, since the wage form conceals the appropriation of
surplus value from the total.  Both the money and the wage form hide the
actual social relation between labor and capital.  In so far as Marx's
discussion of labor certificates involves the transparent exchange of labor
time for tokens of labor time, it involves the abolition of wage labor and
the wage form."

There is a big jump in the middle of this one and one that cannot be within the period of transformation. Your premise is that labour has already become unalienated. Of course once this is achieved your arguement holds absolutelty except for one thing - what need then for even Labour Certificates (an alienated form of abstract labour by their very nature)?

If labour is unalienated then we move from Engels phrase "each according to his abilities" to full communism "each according to his needs" (not the best way of stating it but fair enough and echoing Marx). If people get according to their needs rather then their ability to contribute labour, Labour Certificates are redundant. Unalienated labour is not something achieved easily, labour has to become a conscious creative activity, done for conscious ends and personified by active beings. In this sense they must know why they labour to meet some needs of their own or of their fellows - it is not then the recognition of labour which has to be returned, but the needs themselves directly fulfilled without the inevntion of Economic relations at all - again what need of Labour Certificates in unaliented production?

Chris my reasons for fulfilling this line of argument are to attack forms of common utopianism (here not leveledd as an accusation but as a collective political activity - hence I assume that you too would be an ally in this). The self-critical moment, is that of determining (limiting) just where such utopianism resides. Conceptually its modern form sits in the transposition of full communism onto its initial phases. That is attributing to the immediate question what is in fact the result of its solution (or getting the cart before the horse).

The initial phase of communism means nothing unless it leads to the higher phase of fully realisied communism, how can this be done when the object of the latter becomes the premise of the former?  The defeat of labour alienation (recognisied in the realisation of full communism) is the end product of a long struggle to achieve it, it cannot be the defining premise of that struggle, the effort of defeating it must come before the defeat itself.

In your paragraph above you are being logically consistent but based on an error. We all know the definition of utopianism, the imposition of some idealizied social system on the future, we all know that Marx went to great lengths to avoid any such system making, indeed his recipe which comes directly from his analysis of capitalism relies on a pre-existing class coming to power with the means to realise its interests - no system at all but a change in the social and power relations of society (bound to be uneven and contradictory in its ralisation I hasten to add).

By importing unalienated labour into the early period of communism (the bit that knocks directly against the period where the bourgeois class rules until class ceases altogether), you have inadvertently imposed a system, albeit a simple one based on Labour Certificates, which is impowered to do remarkable things for a piece of paper - it makes the relations of production transparent!

Well I concede that Labour Certificates would change the watermarks on our familiar money, but I can see no role in making anything more transparent. Indeed I suggest that if such certificates where employed in order to make these things transparent, we would need vast factories of accountants to keep track of just what was going one and where - and as we know from any form of accounting it serves just as well to hide things as to reveal them (in fact I question just how much such bureacratic supervision actually reveals even in the best circumstances).

Chris, it is exactly this sought of logical circle which embarked me on looking at the whole thing again and questioning my own assumptions. I had scanned the classic works to create a picture of socialism, I got all the pieces I could find certain that they would not add up to anything resembling capitalism or what passed for socialism in the USSR, the problem was all I was doing was transposing the essence of capital-wage in a new disgusied form vis vis the little utopia I had made. 

Work it this way or that, make provate property collective and still you have property and with that a contradiction but also the presevation of the wage-labour relationship. Each definite statement was made only to be followed by a qualifying statement to differentiate it from any capitalist form. In the end, for me at least, it became too obvious that the qualifications over-rode the definite statements and the result was no more than a play on words. While pursueing an anti-utopian conceptualisiation I had become an arch-utopian, hence my emphasis now not on the differences which may of may not be created between Prolaterian Socialism and Capitalism (of any variety) but of the similarities and persistence of the latter through the former and a concentration on the contradictions this assumes rather then the forms which may or may not be adopted.

It is the contradictions which are important and as contradictions they predicate no particular solutions but only a struggle to the resolve themselves. We can no more see communism (though we frequently experience it in terms of personal life) then a ancient Roman slave could conceive of today's society, yet we always want to know in solid form what we are striving for. Of this I am sure you are well aware, that is not my point but look at the logic of the approach you have adopted, in a sense you are reifying future socialism, making it into a thing, when in fact it is just the idea of where present contradictions will take us once they rise up beyond their current constraints - an idea of contradictions not a system in any form.

Chris I want to pay more attention to the rest of your mail, so I will leave it here and write another response soon. 

Greg




--- Message Received ---
From: cwright <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 12:12:27 -0600
Subject: Re: AUT: What could "proletarian socialism" possibly mean?

Greg said:
> As for labour certificates, lets call them money and be done with the
false dictonomy (I really don't see Marx so much as advocating them as using
their simplicty to illustrate a point). On the other hand we could well keep
the so-called labour certificates, they are just money by another name, and
I am sure this is simply borrowed from Proudhon as you suggested _ I
remember something mentioned about them in the Grundrisse but nowhere else
comes to mind.

Chris:
Greg, let's NOT call them money (labor certificates), since they are very
much something else.  This is a common error, but one which we have to get
past at some point.  Labor certificates have nothing to do with money.
Money is the most anstract, complete, perfect, insane form (mode of
existence) of alienated labor.  The 'money form', as Marx refers to it in
Capital, does not exist when the amount of labor time spent can actually be
measured, when the social relation is not one of alienated labor.  The
'money form' is necessary when the amount of labor time spent actually does
not appear self-evident, since the wage form conceals the appropriation of
surplus value from the total.  Both the money and the wage form hide the
actual social relation between labor and capital.  In so far as Marx's
discussion of labor certificates involves the transparent exchange of labor
time for tokens of labor time, it involves the abolition of wage labor and
the wage form.

"He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such
an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common
funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means
of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of
labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in
another."

This does NOT describe capitalist society, but its negation.  Nowhere in
this whole discussion does there exist a place for the capitalist, for the
expropriation of alienated labor.  Nowhere does alienated labor exist in
Marx's entire discussion here.  I can only suspect that anyone defending the
idea that 'labor certificates' or 'tokens' equal wages or money does not
understand that money and wages are FORMS of the capital-labor relation, not
'things'.  As such, the use of copper circlets does not by itself indicate
the use of money.

Greg said:
> I stated in the previous post "something like worker's control over means
of production acts to change distribution automatically without labour
certificates or any such scheme." Now I am quite prepared to amend this
sentiment, or keep it for the simple reasons that I really do believe the
labour certificates were mentioned in order to illustrate underlying
problems in transition which the Gotha Program apparently overlooked, or
they act more or less like money and therefore make little difference.

Again, I disagree.  Marx is not concerned with the specific form that
communism will take, though he was quit clear elswhere that the Paris
Commune showed him something he had not seen before.  Instead, labor
certificates were mentioned as a means of handling the distribution of goods
in a society where 'workers' control' was less the issue than the
transformation of the social relations of production.  Control of the old
means of production would mean nothing more or less than the control of the
old social relations of production, which became self-evident in the Russian
Revolution when the Bolsheviks undermined the workers' taking over and
transforming industry (see their attacks on the Factory Committees, the
handing of factories back over to capitalists, and their opposition to
workers' socializing workplaces and different aspects of life.)

Greg said:
> My postulate is that the first phase of communism the capital labour
relation persists even if capital is collectively held by the working
class - that this is the historical contradiction which drives society
towards the communist mode of production (phase two).

Chris:
Then we are screwed.  Either, as Marx posits in the Critique that
"Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of
production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little
does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these
products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to
capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion
but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of
labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all
meaning."

Please ponder this carefully.  Wage labor does not exist in the first phase
of communism according to this.  Exchange does not exist, therefore,
exchange value does not exist.  Value does not exist since individual labor
no longer exists in an indirect fashion, i.e. all labor is directly social
labor, unlike alienated labor.  Clearly, obviously, blatantly, Marx does not
have in mind the continuation of 'labor' in the sense of 'wage labor'.  The
abscence of commodity production is self-evident in Marx's discussion,
hence, the captal-labor relation does not exist.

Now, you can disagree with Marx on this, but you cannot claim that you and
Marx agree.  Marx rather agrees with Harald on this.  Or vice versa.

> Now in the bit below I am wondering if we need to clear things up. I am
stateing that the first phase of communism is politically Proletarian
socialism, socially the Dictatorship of the proletariat, economically a form
of state capitalism. I don't stick the DoP in as another stage, rather these
are all aspects of the same thing - a period of historical transition.

Ok, here we go again.

Marx said:
The question then arises: What transformation will the state undergo in
communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain
in existence there that are analogous to present state functions?

Chris says:
Read his lips.  "What social functions will remain in existence that are
ANALOGOUS TO present state functions?"  ANALOGOUS.  Analogous:  Similar in
function but not in structure and evolutionary origin.  In other words, Marx
is not even talking about the state being analogous, but the social
functions which would have been carried out by the state.  This is very
clearly not about a state within communist society, although contra Harald,
Marx prolly did suspect that larger means of organization would exist for
coordinating certain social functions on a global and regional scale.

Marx said:
Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the
revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding
to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be
nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

Chris says:
Clearly, the dictatorship of the proletariat, which Hal Draper has clearly
shown Marx to understand as 'social dominance' not a specifically
'dictatorial' and not specifically a state, is limited to the transition
between capitalist and communist society.  In fact, this is only really a
state in so far as it involves the armed suppression of the capital's
minions and the abolition of the institutions of capitalist society, which
Marx does not put a time line on, but which hardly seems likely to be long
since it is the 'revolutionary' period, and Marx knew enough to know that
revolutions do not go on indefinitely.

Marx said:
That, in fact, by the word "state" is meant the government machine, or the
state insofar as it forms a special organism separated from society
through division of labor, is shown by the words "the German Workers' party
demands as the economic basis of the state: a single progressive income
tax", etc. Taxes are the economic basis of the government machinery and of
nothing else. In the state of the future, existing in Switzerland, this
demand has been pretty well fulfilled. Income tax presupposes various
sources of income of the various social classes, and hence capitalist
society.

Chris says:
This little quote is useful.  Marx considers the state to be a special
organism separated from society.  Since Marx earlier discussed communism as
involving the abolition of the division of labor (1844 Manuscripts, for
example), but not here, what has changed?

>From 'Manifesto of Emancipation' by Paresh Chattopadhyay
The third point about labour in Marx's critique of the "Program" is how Marx
envisages labour in the new society after capital has disappeared from the
scene. At its initial phase the new society cannot yet completely get rid of
the legacy of the mode of labour of the old society - including the division
of labour, particularly the division between physical and mental labour.
Now, in one of his early texts Marx speaks of the "abolition of the division
of labour" as the task of the "communist revolution," even of "abolition of
labour" tout court (1973a: 70, 364). However, in the Gothakritik Marx's
stand does not appear to be quite the same on this question. Referring to "a
higher phase" of the Association which will have completely transgressed
"the narrow bourgeois horizon," Marx does not say that either labour or
division of labour would be "abolished." He stresses that labour in that
society would not simply be a means of life but would itself become life's
"first need." Similarly not all division of labour would be abolished, but
only the division of labour which puts the individuals under its "enslaving
subordination" (knechtende Unterordnung). Let us examine to which extent
there is a "break" ("coupure") between the early Marx and the late Marx in
this regard. In his Parisian excerpt notebooks of 1844 Marx distinguishes
between two types of labour. The first is labour in the absence of private
property in the means of production where "we produce as human beings." Here
labour is a "free manifestation of life and therefore enjoyment of life,"
where the "particularity of my life is affirmed." Here labour is "true,
active property." Contrariwise, the second type of labour, that is labour
exercised under private property, is the "alienation of life." Here "my
individuality is to such an extent alienated that this activity is hated by
me and is a torment. It is only an appearance of activity imposed only by an
external, contingent necessity, and not enjoined by an inner necessary need"
(1932: 546, 547). One year later, in another manuscript, Marx observes that
the labourer's activity is not "a free manifestation of his human life," it
is rather a "bartering away (Verschachern), an alienation of his powers to
capital." Marx calls this activity "labour" and writes that "`labour' by
nature (Wesen) is unfree, inhuman, unsocial activity conditioned by and
creating private property," and then adds that "the abolition of private
property only becomes a reality if it is conceived as the abolition of
`labour'" (1972a: 435-36; emphasis in text).
                        Now, labour as a pure process of material exchange
between human beings and nature is a "simple and abstract" category and as
such does not take account of the social conditions in which it operates.
However, all production, considered as "appropriation of nature from the
side of the individual," takes place "within and is mediated by definite
social forms" (Marx 1958: 241, 280). When labour's social dimension is
brought in, labour takes on a new meaning. The question becomes relevant as
to whether the labour process operates "under the brutal lash of the slave
supervision or the anxious eye of the capitalist" (1962a: 198-99). In fact
these two broad forms of labour epitomize, by and large, at least the
dominant type of labour that has operated in all class-societies.
Traditionally, labour has been a non-free activity of the labouring
individual - either as directly forced labour under "personal dependence" as
in pre-capitalism or as alienated labour under "material dependence" or
"servitude of the object" (Knechtshaft des Gegenstandes) in
commodity-capitalist society (Marx 1953: 75; 1966a: 76). Such labour has
reduced the labourer into a "labouring animal" (Marx 1962b: 256).
Consequently, the division of labour practised so far has been absolutely
involuntary where the "human being's own activity dominates the human being
as an alien, opposite power" (Marx 1973a: 33). It goes without saying that
such labour is totally incompatible with the human being's "free
individuality" under the Association. This labour in the sense of the
"traditional mode of activity" (bisherige Art der Ttigkeit) ceases to exist
in the Association, it is "abolished" (Marx 1973a: 70). Referring to Adam
Smith's idea of labour being "sacrifice of freedom," Marx notes that labour,
as it has appeared "in its historical forms of slavery, serfdom and wage
labour," always appears "repulsive, forced from outside;" labour has not yet
created the "subjective and objective conditions in which labour would be
attractive and self-realising for the individual." However, labour could
also be seen as an "activity of freedom," as self-realizing and indeed as
"real freedom" when labour is exercised toward removing the obstacles for
reaching an end (not imposed from outside) (1953: 505). Thus when Marx
speaks of "abolition" of division of labour and labour itself in his
writings anterior to the Gothakritik, it is precisely with reference to the
different forms of hitherto existing modes of labour which far from being a
self-realizing activity of the individual, unimposed from the exterior, a
free manifestation of human life, has been their negation. This is the
labour which has to be abolished along with the associated division of
labour. Thereby labour, transformed into a "self (affirming) activity"
(Selbsttigkeit), becomes, as the Gothakritik says not only a means of life
but also life's "prime need" in a higher phase of the Association.[i] Again,
it is about this hitherto existing type of labour that Marx observes in the
Gothakritik that the "law of the whole hitherto existing history "has been
that "in proportion as labour is socially developed and thereby becomes a
source of wealth and culture, there develops poverty and demoralization on
the side of the labourers, wealth and culture on the side of the
non-labourers."

[i].          Quite in the spirit of the Gothakritik Marx writes in an
earlier text: "As if the division of labor would not be just as much
possible if the conditions of labor belonged to the associated laborers and
they act in relation to them as these are in nature, their own products and
the material elements of their own activity" (1962b: 271).

Therefore, the idea that the first phase of communism involves 'state
capitalism' in any form is absurd.  Marx rejects this completely.  I think
that Harald also does a good job of finishing off this conception.

The issue of 'two stages' is again not dealt with clearly except by Harald,
who rejects it.  I happen to think that it makes a certain degree of sense
once we get away from the nonsense that the first stage is the dictatorship
of the proletariat, rather than actual communism dealing with a world
suffering from 'the muck of ages'.  Even the destruction of the
capital-labor relation will not have ended all of the problems which might
give rise to distribution along the lines of bourgeois right.  but this can
be gotten into further later, maybe.
------------------------------------
Greg Schofield
Perth Australia
g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au
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