The Mirage of Post-industrialism

The concept of the withering away of labour and of the disappearance of labour as a necessity emerged among the lefts in the developed capitalist countries in the 19th century, the era of the massive attack of capitalist industrialisation. The hell of the industrial production with 14 hours a day work, prison regulations, miserable wages, bullying of children and women, brought to life Marx's conception of the destruction of labour.

Then in the late 20th century in Europe and the United States came the era of deindustrialisation. There were liberal theorists who came up with a beautiful term, post-industrialism. They assured others that industrial production, factories had lost their value. Instead of the factory exploiting worker’s labour there was a fully automated enterprise coming. From now on, people would deal only with science, art, and service sector. Similar ideas were distributed among the lefts and the far-lefts who celebrated the delights of idleness, "zero work " and welcomed the opportunity to accelerate the transition "from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom."

The problem is that the old industry has not disappeared anywhere, it has just moved to the Asian countries, China, India, Indonesia, where it is possible to provide a profit through the exploitation of cheap labour. After the hell of industrialisation and Fordism, Europe and the U.S. plunged into the hell of deindustrialisation: mass unemployment, sullen poverty of alcoholised and narcotised province, blatant luxury of capitalist metropolis turned into a centre of financial speculation, the parasitic consumption and sociocultural degradation.

American sociologist Georgi Derluguian writes, “The productions were moved from the traditional industrial centres to the world periphery. It was necessary to establish effective and cheap capitalist production there, which required easy access to these countries, establishing of appropriate political regimes and of conditions for free import and export of capital, expanding and modernising of the transport system, and skilled workforce. So, at one moment, they found Brazil which saw significant growth during the eighties, at another, Egypt with its open-door policy. Ultimately this train came to China, the world's factory. Economic growth there was so strong and rapid that it affected other countries of the region: Malaysia, Bangladesh, India has recently entered a phase of impressive growth. Much of the Western proletariat became either lumpens living on allowance (as it happened, for example, in English post-industrial cities), or middle class living on credit. Not statist Keynesianism, but the private-owner one developed, with people consuming much more than they can afford. It already seemed that a new post-capitalist, post-industrial society emerged, but it was somehow forgotten that it was founded on industrial production in Chinese garment factories ... Global cities appeared: the central part of London, New York , Silicon Valley, Moscow. They were financial centres with staff serving them: lawyers, managers, computer , chefs in expensive restaurants, boutique owners.”

Such a system could be relatively stable only in conditions of a financial upsurge. A Russian-American economist Leonid Waldman notes that only the leading countries of the West were able to establish mechanisms that ensure high profits at the expense of operations in the financial markets, i.e. due to speculations in securities. The profits of transnational companies as well as of private and public companies in the South derived from the exploitation of cheap and super-cheap labour of Chinese and Indonesian workers were invested in the economy of the United States and Europe, blowing huge bubbles of financial speculation. The feast ended when these bubbles burst. The financial crisis tore away the veil of prosperity from a modern city and unmasked real problems of the civilisation of managers, parasites and underclass lumpens living on credit; a civilisation in which America and Europe had begun to turn into.

There is a grain of truth in the considerations of Marxist critics of labour and liberal theorists of post-industrialism. Indeed, the scientific and technological progress allows us to turn to automated industry. Factory workers whose skills in this case are close to the qualifications of engineers, programmers, etc., can only work as machine adjusters, technologists, etc. Physical labor tends to zero, the whole working activity in the society shifts to the intellectual sphere, to the area of control over production process as well as to the area of applied science, development and implementation of new technologies. This trend continues in some advanced enterprises. Perhaps someday in the future it will become dominant. But, first of all, intellectual work is also work. And secondly, modern capitalism largely relies on vast reserves of human labour in the countries of the global South and not on the automation and intellectualisation of labour. (Of course, part of the industries remained in the West. Deindustrialisation of Europe and the United States is not total at all).

What follows from this? The socialist project now is not different and cannot be fundamentally different from the old concept of workers' councils, as we continue to live within the industrial model. Just as it was in Budapest in 1956, the workers' councils at hundreds of factories will have to take these factories under control, create association of the councils in large areas and turn to the joint planning of production, consumption and all social life .