Date: Mon, 09 Jun 1997 19:47:47 +0100
From: Joćo Paulo Monteiro <jpmonteiro-AT-mail.telepac.pt>
Subject: M-I: Marxism and the world today (2)


International: How about the point emphasized by bourgeois commentators
in
the West, particularly in the light of the collapse of the Eastern bloc,
namely the
issue of individuality and the primacy of the individual in both economy
and
polity. They argue that not just the Soviet-type economies but all those
countries
which during the last two to three decades went for some kind of welfare
economy, based on the active role of the state, are facing economic
apathy and
technical stagnation due to this increased state responsibility and the
weakening
of competition and individual motivation. They claim that not only are
competition and individual ism the mainstay of capitalist society, but
an
inseparable and irreplaceable part of man's economic activity as such.
Socialism
is accused of giving priority to society over the individual and even of
aiming to
standardize people and obliterate their individuality. In what way have
such
factors contributed to the economic dead end of the Eastern bloc, and,
generally,
how do you see the relation between socialism and the individual? 

Mansoor Hekmat: First of all we have to be clear about the meaning of
individual
and individuality in bourgeois ideology. Here, individual does not mean
human
being. Nor should the primacy of the individual be taken to mean the
primacy of
human being. It is, incidentally, the capitalist society itself and the
bourgeois notion
of human being which abstracts from humans' individual specificity, i.e.
all those
qualities which make each of us unique individuals and which define our
individual
identity. It is this notion which gives a faceless image of man - both
in material and
economic, as well as in intellectual and political-cultural terms. In
this society
human beings confront each other, and interact with each other, not with
their
individual identity and characteristics, but as human bearers of
definite economic
relations. The relation between people is a form and an aspect of the
relation
between commodities. The first element in the definition of the
characteristics of
the individual is the relation that he/she has with commodities and the
process of
commodity production and exchange. The individual is a living entity
representing
an economic position. Worker is the bearer and seller of labour power as
a
commodity; capitalist is capital personified. The consumer is the
possessor of a
definite purchasing power in the commodity market. In capitalism the
human being
is identified and recognized by these capacities. When the bourgeois
thinker talks
about the primacy of the individual he/she is in fact talking, not about
the primacy
of humans, but about the necessity of abstracting from human features
peculiar to
each human being, about his/her integration, as a unit, and nothing
more, in the
economic relations. For the bourgeoisie, man's primacy means the primacy
of
commodity, of the market and of the exchange of values, as the basis of
human
interrelations, for it is only in this form, i.e. as exchangers of
different commodities
in the market, that each person's peculiar identity and personality is
taken away
from him, and h e confronts others as an "individual", as a human unit
bearing a
commodity which has exchange value. 

In capitalism the reduction of the human being to individual is
necessary and
unavoidable, since people must carry out the logic of their economic
positions,
replacing their human judgments and priorities with this logic. Worker
should sell
his labour power and deliver the commodity after sale, i.e. work for the
capitalist;
the capitalist should carry out the requirements of the accumulation of
capital. The
worker should compete with the sellers of a similar commodity. The
capitalist, to
increase his share of the total surplus value, must continuously improve
labour
productivity and the production technique. He must make layoffs in time
and
recruit new workers in time. If in any of these roles people were to
impose their
extra-economic priorities and judgements the economic mechanism of
capitalism
would be disrupted. 

It is the same at a political level. Individualism is the basis of
parliamentary
systems, where at the best of times, i.e. where the conditions of having
property,
being male and white, etc, as preconditions for voting rights, have been
omitted
after years of struggle by people, each person has one vote in the
election of
national parliamentary representatives. After the elections, people go
home and the
elected, at least on paper, take up the legislative work on their
behalf. Each
individual is one vote, not a human being with powers to constantly
judge the
needs and priorities and have the opportunity to fulfil them. A
political system in
which there is this permanent intervention by people - a council system,
for
instance, which provides for continuous presence by people themselves in
the
decision-making process, from the local to the national level, is not
considered
"democratic" in the parliamentary system of thought. In the bourgeois
system the
political concept of individuality is the direct derivative of the
economic concept of
individuality. 

Going back to your question about the Soviet Union. The Soviet economy
was not
an economy in which the human being had primacy. What curtailed
individuality in
this system was the massive hold of an administrative system on the
market
mechanism. When the official commentary in the West refers to the
violation of
individuality and individualism in the Soviet Union its objection is
primarily to a
system in which personal ownership of capital was severely restricted,
and so the
industrial lord obeyed not the economic logic of capital but the
decisions of an
administrative system. In other words, capital lacked multiple
individual and private
human agents. Secondly, the Soviet worker, though politically totally
atomized
vis-a-vis the administrative system, economically did not figure as an
individual
seller and in competition with other workers. Though the administra tive
system
tried by its own economic accounting to direct, just like the market,
the units of
capital to more profitable areas or itself fix the value of labour power
at the lowest
possible level, from the viewpoint of the bourgeoisie this was no
substitute for the
free and competitive confrontation of capitals, and of capital with
labour under a
competitive labour market. The slogan of `man's primacy', counterposed
to the
Soviet model, was a slogan against this administrative system, in favour
of freedom
for private capital and for increasing economic competition among
workers and
their atomization in the labour market. As I said, this administrative
system was no
longer able to assume the complex and diverse functions of the market.
In
particular, it could not incorporate into the Soviet economy the
technological
revolution underway in the Western industrialized countries. 

I too think that in this sense the individuality and competition of
commodity-owners is an indispensable part of the capitalist economy, an
essential
mechanism in this system for technical development. But capitalism owes
its
survival also to the fact that the bourgeoisie has itself constantly and
at crucial
junctures limited the scale of this competition and individuality, going
for
economic, as well as extra- economic, interventions through the state
and
administrative institutions. Economic crises with devastating
consequences, and
acute recessions are as much intrinsic to capitalism as constant
accumulation and
improvement of technology. Capitalism restructures and purges itself in
this way.
The bourgeoisie's need to keep the extent of these crises in check and,
more
important, its need to protect the system politically against the
struggle of the
working class, has forced bourgeois parties and states to frequently
intervene in the
economy from above and impose some restraints on the market mechanism.
The
Thatcherism and Monetarism of the '80s was thrown up against a powerful
Keynesian tradition and Social Democratic policies which emphasized
significant
state intervention and the role of state expenditure in economic growth.
It seems
that today this trend itself is in retreat. Anyway, the point I am
making is that to
accept the central place of competition and market in capitalism's
technical
development doesn't yet mean that the bourgeoisie itself seeks, or has
sought, the
long-run survival and growth of capitalism in free market and perfect
competition.
The free market, perfect competition and extreme economic individualism
advocated by the New Right are as baseless and unrealistic as the idea
of a planned
and competition-free capitalism. 

Much can be said about socialism and individual, or rather, about
socialism and
Man. To this day, Marx has been the most important and profound critic
of the
dehumanization of humanity under capitalism. The gist of the discussion
of
commodity fetishism in Capital is to show how capitalism and the
transformation
of the production and exchange of commodities into the axis of human
intercourse
is the basis of the alienation and lack of identity of humans in
capitalist society.
Socialism aims to return this identity to human beings. The slogan `from
each
according to his ability, to each according to his need' is entirely
based on the
recognition and guaranteeing of the right of every person himself to
determine
his/her position in society's material life. In capitalist society the
human being is
slave to blind economic laws which determine his economic fate,
independently of
his thinking, reasoning and judgement. As I said, in bourgeois thought
by the
individual is meant the human being stripped of identity,
self-alienated, robbed of
all the particular characteristics and individual qualities peculiar to
him, a human
being who may therefore be transformed, as a unit, into the living agent
of some
economic relation and role in production, into the buyer or seller of a
particular
commodity. It is in fact this society that in this way standardizes
human beings,
reducing them all to the patterns set by the economic division of
labour. In this
system we are not particular human beings with our individual views to
life, with
our particular psychology, temperament and emotions, but holders of
particular
economic posts. We are living agents in the exchange of lifeless
commodities. Even
in our intimate personal and emotional relationships with each other we
are
primarily recognized by these characteristic of ours: what is our job,
how much
purchasing power we have, what is our class? We are classified and
judged on the
basis of this economic status, on the basis of our relation to
commodities. The
capitalist society has even created the blueprint of the life style of
each of these
groupings: what we are supposed to eat, what we are to wear, where we
are to
live, what is to make us happy, what is to frightens us, what our dreams
and
nightmares are to be. Capitalism first takes away our human identity and
then
introduces us to one another by the standard economic labels that it has
stuck on
us. 

In contrast, socialism is a society in which human beings gain control
over their
economic lives, are freed from the chains of blind economic laws and
themselves
consciously define their economic activity. The decision is with the
person not with
the market, or accumulation or surplus value. This liberation of entire
society from
the blind economic laws is the condition of emancipation of the
individual and the
restoration of humanity and human specificity of every individual. 

Capitalism's exalting of individuality is in fact its exalting of man's
atomization.
Human masses then become so indeterminate and flexible as to be able to
be
tossed around in accordance with capital's economic requirements. 

Look where the bourgeoisie remembers individuality and individual
rights: when it
wants to counter attempts for any form of economic planning which
disturbs the
market mechanism and involves extra-economic social priorities; when it
wants to
attack national health care, state-financed education, nurseries, social
welfare
services, unemployment insurance, calls for ban on sacking and so on;
against
trade unions and labour organizations as a whole, since these
organizations, to
whatever degree, reduce workers' fragmenta tion and the individual
competition
between single sellers of labour power, and somehow impose on the naked
laws of
the market certain people's discretion on wage levels, working
conditions, etc.
They remember it just when workers and people want to exercise their
human
character and take economic decisions on the basis their human
principles and
needs. So much for the primacy of the individual in capitalism. 

The basis of socialism is the human being - both collectively and as an
individually.
Socialism is the movement to restore man's conscious will, a movement
for freeing
human beings from economic necessity and enslavement in pre-determined
production moulds. It is a movement for abolishing classes and people's
classification. This is the essential condition for the growth of the
individual. 

International: What is socialist society's alternative to individual
competition
and incentive? How will a socialist society ensure a constant
improvement of
production methods, a raising of product diversity and quality,
technological
development and innovation - things which we under capitalism have
experienced even as technological revolutions? What kind of mechanism
will
ensure human beings' permanent drive for innovation and improvement in
production? 

Mansoor Hekmat: Technical innovation, and improvement in product quality
is
not an invention of capitalism, just as little as production of people's
essentials is a
capitalist invention. In the capitalist system human beings' permanent
drive to
reproduce and improve their conditions of life is organized in a
particular way. In
this mode of production individual competition and incentive are not the
origin of
technical progress; they are vehicles and channels through which the
more
fundamental necessities that exert pressure on total social capital, are
transmitted to
enterprises and individuals in the market and activate the latter. The
constant
raising of labour productivity and rate of surplus value is the
necessary condition
for preventing the fall in the general rate of profit with the growth in
the magnitude
of constant capital. This need of total social capital is transmitted
through the
market to individual capitals and enterprises as the need to compete.
The capital
which does not improve its technique goes out. This competition exists
also in the
next link, this time as competition among producers of means of
production.
Science, scientific curiosity, invention and innovation are thus
organized through
the market and by capital. Human beings are always eager for knowledge
and
improvement in production techniques and in the quality of their lives.
But in
capitalism this intrinsic drive is organized around the profitability
and accumulation
of capital. There is no doubt that, compared to the earlier systems,
capitalism has
greatly increased the intensity and scale of man's scientific and
technical activity.
But the specific form of this activity in this system should not be
confused with its
real source. Individual material incentives and competition between
enterprises are
not the origin of man's scientific in quisitiveness and technical
innovation. These
are the particular forms, only through which capital can accommodate
this endless
human activity, just like man's drive to produce his means of
subsistence. 

In capitalism, just as in any other economic system, after all necessity
is the mother
of invention. In this system it is the market that defines the needs and
the level of
demand for the commodities which satisfy them. Capitals which produce
these
commodities make profit. It is through these capitalist equations that
scientists and
experts find and take up their researches and projects. It is here that
the proportion
of society's resources which should be set aside for scientific
research, the direction
science and its practical application should take, the areas which have
priority, etc
are decided. In socialism, on the other hand, there is no market, no
competition
and no individual interest. But people and their scientific curiosity
and drive for
innovation and to improvement of the quality of life are there. The
important
question to be answered is what in the absence of the market can be the
mechanism of finding out society's scientific and technical needs,
choosing the
priorities, allocating resources and organizing the scientific and
technical activity?
This, in my view, is an important area for Marxist research and
investigation. I
have no ready answer to it, but I will here just touch on some of the
outlines. 

In the first place, a socialist society is an open and informed society.
In socialism it
will be a routine procedure to constantly inform people about the needs
and
problems in the various areas of human life worldwide. Under capitalism
it is the
market that informs capitals about the existence of demand and the
opportunity of
making profit in the production of certain commodities. In the socialist
system it is
the citizens and their institutions that constantly inform each other of
the economic,
social and human needs, as well as of the scientific and technical
advances of the
different sectors. Given the present technology, the organization of
such
information interchange and of everyone's constant access to it is
feasible even
right now. 

Furthermore, socialist society is a society in which people enjoy a much
higher
level of scientific education than today. Access to learning and
participation in
scientific activity is not a privilege of a particular social group; it
is everyone's
elementary right. Just as once literacy was the privilege of a few but
today is
regarded as a basic right. We see even today how, for instance, using
computers
and even their relatively complex and specialized application, at least
in the more
advanced countries, has become so generalized - though still a far cry
from
socialism's capability in promoting general scientific capacities and
making the
means for scientific work accessible to all. 

It may be objected that knowing the needs and being able to satisfy them
does not
yet necessarily mean that they will actually be satisfied. In the
absence of the
motive of self-interest, what else would drive people into fervent
scientific and
technical activity? Here then we should return to man's intellectual
qualities and
how these are related to the social relations. Capitalism's stereotyped
picture of the
human being and human motivation cannot be a starting point for the
organization
of socialism. Capitalism builds on individual self- interest and
competition. To
make the economy work, it bolsters these qualities in people and trains
them in this
spirit. The basis of socialism, however, is man's humanism and his
social nature.
Not only no scientific effort but none of the socialist ideals can be
realized without
getting rid of the intellectual and cultural prejudices fostered by
capitalism. I don't
want to enter the discussion of human nature, though personally I
believe that
humanism and being society-oriented are more basic and more reliable
features in
humans than competition and self-interest. This has been coroborated
many times
even in this backward and prejudiced class society. It is still a fact
that whenever
people are to be called on to sacrifice themselves more than the usual
degree it is to
these noble sentiments and features that they appeal. Like any other
social system,
socialism breeds the human being appropriate to itself. It is not
difficult to imagine
a society in which people's motivation in their economic and scientific
activity is to
contribute to the well-being of all, to participate in a common effort
to improve the
lives of all. 

I have to mention another point. Capitalism has both emerged on the
basis of an
industrial revolution, and also, compared to earlier economic systems,
itself brought
about striking technical changes. But right in the middle of this
development the
paralyzing effect of capital in the development of society's technical
capacities is
still conspicu ous. In this society technology develops where it is
profitable for
capital and where preservation of the bourgeoisie's political power
requires it.
Alongside the enormous development of warfare technology we see the
serious
technical backwardness of medicine and health care, education, housing,
agriculture, etc. And the majority of the people of the world is
deprived of the
results of this technological progress. The technical profile of
socialism will
certainly be different from that of capitalism, since the technical
priorities of a
society based on improving people's lives are totally different from a
society driven
by the profit motive. 

International: In the final years of the twentieth century, the century
which
communists had called the age of proletarian revolutions, socialism
seems as
inaccessible an ideal as it was at the beginning of the century. How do
you, as a
Marxist, explain this? What is your vision of the actual accomplishment
of
proletarian revolution and socialist society? 

Mansoor Hekmat: Communism was not supposed to be achieved as a rational
model, as a human ideal, as something favoured because of its
rationality or
desirability. An important contribution of Marx to the history of
socialist and
communistic movements was that he linked the communist cause and the
prospect
of its realization to the struggle of a particular social class, i.e.
the wage-earning
working class in capitalist society. Socialism's victory could only be -
and can still
only be - the result of a working-class movement. So, in my opinion, the
fact that
socialism has not been achieved is primarily because of the shift in the
social and
class base of mainstream communism after the developments of the second
half of
the 1920s in the Soviet Union. The Russian revolution and its outcome
have
played the most decisive part in this. The October revolution was a
workers'
revolution for socialism. And it was led by Bolshevism which represented
the
working-class radicalism and Internationalism within the general
socialist trend.
With the political victory of this revolution a communist pole formed in
the Soviet
Union, in opposition to the experience of the 2nd International. It is
clear that
communist movements, parties and communist practice worldwide would
intimately be linked to this camp. The building of a Soviet state and an
International, based on the vision of the radical and worker tendency
within the
socialist movement, has been the highest achievement of communism, as a
working-class movement, in this century. As I have said before,
unfortunately this
camp did not remain a worker-communist pole. During the debates on the
economic path that the Soviet Union should follow worker communism
retreated in
the face of the nationalist perspective and politics. On the whole, with
the
consolidation of a planned state-capitalism in the guise of constructing
socialism in
the Soviet Union, worker communism was practically disarmed. Later on,
workers
and communism were step by step pushed back in all the fronts. The
entire
prestige of workers' revolution was exploited by a bourgeois socialist
camp which
for decades influenced the fate of communist struggle around the world.
With the
emergence of a bourgeois Soviet Union, as the reference point of the
official
communism, worker socialism as a whole was marginalized. No important
parties,
able to challenge this domination by bourgeois socialism over the
so-called
communist movement, developed in the worker-socialist tradition. 

Non-worker socialism has always been a living current in the general
socialist
tradition and within the left criticism in society. Prior to the Soviet
experience, this
tendency existed alongside, and in conflict with, worker socialism. And
we know
that the choice of the term `communist' by Marx and Engels was precisely
so as to
show that they belonged to a particular, worker, tendency in socialism.
But with
the Soviet experience the supremacy of non-worker socialism obtained
decisive
dimensions and worker communism did not even remain an influential
tendency in
the destiny of socialism. 

In my view, from the late '20s onwards communism was completely
derailed. Now
the Soviet problem itself, alongside capitalism as such, became a
central problem
for genuine worker- communism. The fact that socialism as an ideal has
not yet
won is the result of the fact that the only movement capable of bringing
it about
was subdued and broken up with the `nationalization' and appropria tion
of the
workers' revolution in Russia. Worker socialism is yet to straighten its
back from
this defeat. When I speak of the Soviet experience I don't just mean the
developments confined to a single country. The rise of Chinese
Communism,
which was a transparent cover for the nationalist ideals and aspirations
of an
essentially peasant country, the rise of militant left populism,
particularly in the
imperialist-dominated countries, the rise of a left student movement and
a
left-liberalism, which found expression in the New Left school and some
Trotskyist
ramifications in Western Europe, the emergence of Eurocommunism, and so
on,
each of which represented the quasi- socialist activation of non-worker
movements, were in different ways the later results of the defeat of the
workers'
revolution in the Soviet Union. In the absence of this experience, I
think, worker
socialism could have stood up to these activations; it could have
retained and
consolidated its position as the credible mainstream of Marxism and
socialist
struggle. 

In my view the non-worker pseudo-socialist movements, which entered the
scene
in the name of communism and Marx, weakened the basis of real communism
in
society. The first victim was Marxist thought and the Marxist criticism
of the
capitalist system. They emptied this thought of its incisive and
powerful content.
They replaced Marxism's radical criticism of capitalism with a host of
reformist
and, partly, even reactionary and anachronistic petty grumbles peddled
under this
name. Marx's search for truth and his profoundly scientific method were
disfigured; Marxism was turned into a store of divine clich‚s and verses
which were
only expressions of the low and worldly aims of the middle classes in
society. This
went so far that when we today say Marxism is critical of democracy, is
opposed
to nationalism, considers economic revolution as central, stands for the
abolition of
wage labour, does not feel pity for national cultures and ethnic
identities, is the
enemy of religion, and so on, it seems as if we are saying something
new. The
domination of the pseudo-socialist and even anti-working class ideas of
the non-
proletarian classes, in the name of communism and socialism, has for
long driven
workers into the restraints of trade unionism, even into mass
subordination to
Social Democracy, i.e. the left wing of the ruling class itself. Where
they did not,
as in the Soviet Union, literally slaughter working-class leaders, the
false socialisms
had at least this role that they cut the link between worker and
communism on a
massive scale. Both where they presented workers with repulsive examples
of
closed, despotic and stagnant societies in the name of socialism, like
the Soviet
Union, China and Albania, etc, and where they paraded the noisy but
empty
oppositionism of the intellectuals as left and radical communism, as in
the West
and in the imperialist- dominated countries, the result was to alienate
workers from
communism and to silence the communist worker inside the class. Thanks
to these
currents, a worker-communism which could stand up to a capitalist world
war and
bring a country the size of Tsarist Russia or Germany to revolution was
for years
reduced to critical and opposionist efforts and muttering. With the
collapse of these
false camps and the decline in the appeal of communism and Marxism among
the
non-worker classes and their intellectuals, this cycle is just being
closed. 

So when you ask me why communism and socialism have not won in this
century
I in turn ask which socialism was supposed to win? Our socialism, worker
socialism, with the defeat it suffered from the nationalist line in the
Soviet Union,
for a long time lost the power of bringing about fundamental changes in
contemporary society. It lost its class power to trade unionism, Social
Democracy
and left reformism. Its keen criticism of the existing society was
buried under the
weight of pseudo-socialist distortions. We are just today straightening
our back
from this experience, and this under the conditions of a new assault on
worker and
on socialism. 

Let me add a final point. I am not among those communists who consider
the final
victory of communism as the inevitable result of the historical process.
The
realization of socialism is the result of class struggle, and this
struggle is as much
capable of victory as it is of defeat. Not only communism and free human
society,
but capitalist barbarism, on a scale perhaps not yet experienced by our
generation,
can be the outcome of this conflict. Nevertheless, in view of the fact
that this cycle
that I talked about is now closed and bearing in mind




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