By the Connessioni per la lotte di classe, this text develops starting from some of Mattick's assumptions, the problem of the self-activity of proletarians in the class struggle and the content of the rupture in a radical sense.
“The proletarian revolution will not be lacking, while the world changes, to educate the stupid educators."
P. Mattick, 1935
1.
There are issues that appear meaningless to most, arousing hilarity or outrage, or more simply are considered uninteresting.
Today, declaring oneself to be pro-revolutionary, when viewed within a historical representation appears to be simply a fad, an urge, a whim. Yet that demon never seems to go to sleep, regardless of the forms in which it may appear, produced by the very contradictions inherent in the capital movement.
Rivers of blood and ink have been spent on this subject in the past century, going so far in the most radical portions as to conceive of what had been (the proletarian revolution) either as failed attempts or as a development of capitalism itself.
We are not interested in resuming the well-worn debate on the defeat-crisis of the workers' movement; such a debate was already undertaken and partially resolved as early as the 1920s-30s where the most radical components of the then communist movement abandoned the category of betrayal in order to describe the process of integration exerted by the movement of capital on the proletariat, seen as part of the movement of capital itself. It is singular that these considerations were elaborated by the Council Communists and later by the Italian Communist Left, the only two currents that posed the problem of a real balance sheet of the proletarian experience they went through, having represented at the most acute moment of rupture in the first postwar period (World War I) the most radical components in terms of action and theory. In a special way it was precisely the strand defined as Councilist that placed the emphasis not so much on the betrayal of the old workers' movement, but on what it had actually been, not neglecting the proletarian uprisings that had developed. There has often been an overlap between the term managementism and the term Council Communist, however we think, while deeming this experience historicized, that they placed at the center the actual content of the communist movement, understood as a radical break from the movement of capital, and thus also from its own forms (Politics itself, understood as the activity of separation). Seeing the class struggle itself not merely in terms antagonistic to capital, but as a form of capital itself (the process of integration) is one of the major legacies of this strand, which at the same time emphasized the different dynamics of capital when this within a process of crisis produced de-integration, making the appearance of the revolutionary proletariat possible, but not automatic.
2.
The movement of capital precisely because it is a dynamic and not a static element, produces within it its negation, which is then the revolutionary proletariat itself, understood as the main productive force. This potential force is released according to the needs of the proletariat itself, which finds it impossible to live within the very limits of capital. But just as capital is a dynamic force, made more and more static by the processes of crisis, so the revolution of the proletariat is also a dynamic force, contrasting capitalist social relations that tend to be increasingly static with communist social relations that are increasingly dynamic. In this sense we can say that communist social relations are already the ongoing revolutionary process, where they revolutionize the revolution.
We find it useful to use the Marxist schematization again, based on classes, not seen in its sociological or technological elements, but within the relations of production themselves. We know that this is an approximation; the world was never simply divided into capitalists and proletarians; indeed, the supposed golden age of the proletariat for the official and radical left saw the proletariat as a minority in relation to society as a whole. Today as the proletariat develops more and more, we read from all sides of its end or the end of its role... failing to see this dynamic except through the eyes of the past: trade unions, parties, cooperatives, associationism, municipal socialism, popular state, popular nationalism, income meter, technological, etc...
Yes to the inability, which also concerns us, to know how to read the new dynamics of de-integration realized by capital and the related class struggle, still using a stereotyped and historicized approach. Where a “new phase of capital” presupposes a “new phase of the class struggle” not so much in its ultimate content, the movement of capital (the old) opposed to the communist movement (the new), but certainly in its forms and relative quantities. In this respect it is capital itself that creates the conditions for the collective worker but its activation is neither automatic nor invariant. The collective worker produced by the very development of increasingly ramified and total capitalism is the form that no longer finds a place within an obsolete and stagnant mode of production. If there have existed in the past embryonic forms of the collective worker that developed new social relations, these were nonetheless marked by their meager quantity in both temporal and spatial terms.
According to Marx, only labor that produces capital is productive, while labor that is directly exchanged for a profit or wage is unproductive. “The result of the capitalist process of production,” he argues, ”is therefore neither a mere product (use-value) nor a commodity, that is, a use-value having a determinate exchange value. The result and product of it is the creation of surplus value for capital and thus the actual conversion of money or commodities into capital, which elle prior to the process of production they were not except at the level of target intention.
The production process absorbs more labor than is paid for, and this absorption, this appropriation of unpaid labor that takes place in the capitalist production process is its immediate purpose. For what capital (and therefore the capitalist as such) wants to produce is neither an immediate use-value for the purpose of self-consumption, nor a commodity destined to be transformed first into money and then into use-value. It has as its purpose the enrichment, the valorization of capital, its accretion, and thus the preservation of the former value and the creation of surplus value. And this specific product of the capitalist production process is obtained precisely through exchange with labor, which, for this reason, is called productive.
In fact within the capitalist system, production process and circulation process constitute a totality. A distinction must therefore be made between the creation of surplus value and its distribution, since the distinction between productive and unproductive labor is blurred by the fact that in both the spheres of production and circulation wages are paid and profits realized. The division of labor, regarded as a historical product of capitalist development and subject as such to constant change, causes capital to be divided among the different sectors of the market economy and, therefore, unproductively employed capital to receive a share from the overall social surplus value. Similar to surplus-value-creating capital, unproductive capital takes the form of enterprises that provide an average profit to the capital invested in them. The unity of the two types of labor can also be grasped outside the capitalist process of production considered as a whole. If we analyze the enterprises that generate surplus value, we equally see a division of labor, according to which one part of labor creates surplus value directly, while the other creates it indirectly.
We could at this point divide labor into 3 macro areas:
But when Marx speaks of the development of the revolutionary proletariat, he does so on the basis not of the distinction between types of labor, but in the changes that take place in class relations as the accumulation of capital continues and the division of society into two major classes with a progressive proletarianization of the masses thus increases.
In this sense, the category of middle classes itself is incorrect because it simply represents an income period that invests sections of the proletariat or the bourgeoisie itself. It is no accident that the term middle class in countries such as the U.S. has had a characterization more ideological-social than really related to what capitalist relations of production actually are.
When we use the term collective worker, we mean a massification of the proletariat to a universal class, this of course does not appear as if by magic, but is certainly a tendency inherent in the movement of capital itself. The persistence of varied social stratifications only indicates the ability of the movement of capital, to exert competition within it, but such that it does not create its own self-dissolution. The integrative process of capital had given rise to a “middle class” that from an ideological point of view made it unnecessary to even speak of revolution, of its necessity. The cracks in that process through de-integration brings with it a polarization mirrored in the Marxian theoretical division between proletariat and bourgeoisie.
4.
But the proletariat is not in itself, by essence the revolutionary class entrusted with the task of overthrowing capitalism. Only in a process of formation, contradictory and by no means linear, does the proletariat produced by capitalism and producer of this economic system have, at certain historical moments, the possibility of assuming a revolutionary role, where there is always an alternative between communism or present civilization, affirmation of a new humanity and thus new social relations that become new relations of production or exploitation, oppression and misery, determined by the historical process, namely the process of capitalist accumulation. But this process is not unlimited and the crisis is a demonstration of these limits that allow, by expanding the contradictions and processes of class de-integration, the development and emergence of revolutionary movements that see the collective worker as the subject of transformation.
It is terrible for the psyche of militants, but the proletariat is either revolutionary or nothing. The revolutionary proletariat is not only direct activity, but is the critique of political economy that materializes in the development of new social relations and thus new social production. The demise of this process, born of the very limits of capital, presupposes the end of the proletariat as a revolutionary element, but not its inactivity; on the contrary, both authoritarian as well as democratic regimes are always seeking a new community of purpose, a “true” participation. The substantial difference is that while the revolutionary proletariat necessarily poses the problem of a new social production, breaking the constraints of capital, and thus poses in its own dynamic of struggle the affirmation in positive of a new humanity by denying its own entity, the activity of capital is based on a particular vision, where there is a juxtaposition of community and class interests and on these it develops its processes of separation and affirmation, the appeals therefore to national and social unity, to the sanctity of (wage-earning) labor, to humanitarian morality, to democracy or authority, etc. . . are attempts by capital to “activate” the proletariat. The more capital actually acts in its particularistic aspects the more universalistic it presents itself. Revolutionary class struggle breaks through this mechanism, proletarian action has the power to break through these cages, and this is what has happened if one analyzes the forms of proletarian insurgency read not through the eyes of left-wing (or right-wing) ideology but as a mere social force that in its actual manifestation breaks through political economy and politics itself. This is perhaps the greatest legacy bequeathed to us by the 20th century, where autonomous proletarian movements (councils, struggle committees, etc.) even if in a time-limited way enabled and were manifestations of this insurgency.
5.
From our point of view, class struggle is not a tactical issue.1 We do not regard the revolutionary class struggle as a phenomenon of every moment. The conception of permanent revolutionary class struggle is comparable to those who believe in the bourgeois conception of permanent progress. Apart from commodity fetishism, whatever meaning the laws of the market may have with respect to particular enrichments or losses, and however much they may be maneuvered by this or that interest group, under no circumstances can they be used for the benefit of the proletarian class considered as a whole. It is not the market that controls individuals and determines the prevailing social relations but rather the fact that in society a separate group owns or controls the means of production and the instruments of repression. Defeating capitalism requires actions outside the market relations between labor and capital, actions that abolish both, the market and class relations. Limiting actions within the capitalist perimeter only develops capital, regardless of the degree of struggle that is expressed, but this is not due to a lack of subjective clarity but in the holding of the old against the new. Emphasizing the self-activity of proletarians engaged in struggle thus does not concern an issue related to the forms but to the very content of the revolutionary process.
Already Marx pointed out in Capital, “the upward movement imparted to the price of labor by the accumulation of capital shows that the golden chain to which the capitalist holds the wage-earner indissolubly bound, and which he keeps reaffirming, is already long enough to permit an easing of tension.”
The improvement of working conditions and the raising of wages, was made possible by progressive capital formation; workers' struggles themselves were factors for capitalist expansion. In the likeness of competition, they accelerated the accumulation of capital and, thus, the pace of capital's “civilization.” Everything the workers gained was counterbalanced by increased exploitation, which in turn allowed for even more rapid expansion. The workers' class struggle itself ended up serving the interests not surely of individual capitalists, but of capital itself. The more the workers gained, the richer capital became. Every increase in the “workers' share” helped widen the gap separating wages from profits. We witnessed in these decades an apparent progressive growth, which actually concealed its continuous weakening in relation to the development of capital. The relationship of integration of capital was effective, but relative to a given phase; today we are witnessing phenomena of de-integration, which potentially liberate the proletariat from the mechanisms of the capitalist economy by placing it on radical ground. De-integration that also reverberates in the forms of Politics, in the plane of representation, without falling into easy simplifications there is no doubt that there are more and more proletarian social portions that feel only the teeth of capital...
But this dynamic is only hinted at today, and there is not yet that shift from quantitative to qualitative. Yet already the mere appearance of this dynamic offers all pro-revolutionaries the possibility of identifying the emergence of the new over the old. Where revolution itself again becomes a hypothesis, distant but not impossible as different social ensembles are redefined and the current mode of production appears increasingly stale.
6.
The mediocrity of the capitalist man, and thus of the revolutionary in non-revolutionary conditions, became painfully evident in small/large organizations. More and more people, on the premise that the 'objective conditions' are ripe for revolution, explain its absence by 'subjective factors' such as lack of class consciousness and lack of understanding and character on the part of proletarians. These deficiencies themselves need in turn to be explained by 'objective conditions,' because such inadequacy of the proletariat is undoubtedly a product of its particular position within the social relations of capitalism. The need to limit activity to didactic intervention becomes a virtue: developing the class consciousness of the workers is seen as the most essential of revolutionary tasks. In this sense, the so-called propaganda of the fact, the practice of revolutionary terror starts from the same mechanism, although obviously there is less mediated involvement than verbal or written.
Those, on the other hand, who decide to immerse themselves in immediatism, effectively abandoning all revolutionary ambitions, if from a certain point of view they are more honest with the present than those who believe they can put it all together, become, however, simply one of the many standard bearers of capital (not of individual capitalists) by consciously or unconsciously thickening the old.2 This is why the historical left (whether reformist or antagonist) must be fought, not because it has betrayed but because it is itself an element of capital.
In the absence of de-integrative thrusts from capital, the possibility and meaning of pro-revolutionaries is solely tied to the past or the future, or in the mixture of these two moments. The imminence of the present is used solely as a potential force for the future. In this sense, gradually defining the content of struggles and the dynamics of capital allows us to understand whether there is a particular trend, and where the new appears or the old persists. This is why inquiry, linked to proletarian experience, and theoretical research is useful, not so much to identify special portions of proletarians or to know when moment x appears.
There are no set moments for revolution; even when one considers it inevitable, one cannot determine what its precise moment of beginning is. While the factors of randomness and direction are undeniable for the revolutionary process, it is nevertheless necessary to recognize their limits and the variables of their role in the historical process.
The contribution we can make is to participate in the generalization of new social relations, an aspect that spills over practical and theoretical problems. However, we must know how to relativize the contribution of pro-revolutionaries, of ourselves, precisely because revolution revolutionizes, overthrowing all paradigms of the old, in this sense falling in love with forms is foolish and is often linked to a defense of the old.3
One risk one runs is that even though animated by good intentions ... of inhibiting the development of new social relations by being recognized as a specialized direction. This risk exists even if pro-revolutionaries declare themselves opposed from a theoretical point of view to deliberately imposing themselves as the leadership of the revolutionary proletariat. But we think that the solution lies not in the rejection of any kind of intervention (already theoretical reflection, inquiry, or speaking to a group of workers or in an assembly is a form of intervention) but in seeking an understanding of the real goal of the struggle, in the continuous search for the identification of the new that clashes with the old, in the ability to see the limits of the movement of capital, which is then to discover the possibilities of the communist movement.
We find it useful for all pro-revolutionaries to connect with each other, to give themselves organizational forms but this serves them first and foremost, even if it is often presented as necessary sacrifice..., to survive the present, to improve their critical capacity, where the goodness of their action is not, however, measurable according to a capitalist scheme of effectiveness. Since proletarians (but we can safely speak of human beings) do not all develop the same degree of consciousness, there will always be groups that seek to intervene in the course of the revolution, not only driven by circumstances, but also because their consciousness is more advanced. But the meaning of their action of their revolutionizing must be put in relation to their ability to generalize the new social relations and not reproduce the old capitalist social relations, and it is only from these premises that one can analyze the effectiveness and necessity of organized work among pro-revolutionaries.
7.
Thus, there are no stages, nor transitional periods, within a revolutionary process (a mechanism inherent in the scheme of capital), but the juxtaposition of old and new social relations that result if there is greater juxtaposition in old and new relations of production where it is the quantitative element that produces quality and not vice versa.
There are situations where revolutionary activity can be carried out and others where this is impossible. The one and the other depend on the power relations that are established at a given moment and these are in turn conditioned by the socio-economic situation. Thus it is necessary to identify the inherent limits in the capitalist model of production. It is only in the collapse of the old that the new can emerge, not in a confrontation of equals, where the old has more and more tools and weapons in hand (not only metaphorically). A strike, a struggle unless it turns into a civil war and a struggle directly against Politics (the State) and the political economy itself (the capitalist production model), sooner or later it is doomed to end as soon as the workers achieve their demands or not. The historical left expected, of course, that the critical situations caused by such strikes and struggles, and with them the reactions from capital and its state, would lead to the growing recognition of the unbridgeable antagonism between workers and capital, so as to make workers increasingly sensitive to the idea of revolution. This was not an unreasonable assumption, but it was not borne out by the course of events as they unfolded. Undoubtedly, the turmoil procured by a strike brings with it a heightened awareness of the true meaning of a class society and its exploitative nature, but this, in itself, does not change the reality of things.. The exceptional situation, while also producing new social relations, degenerates again into the routine of daily life and its immediate needs, reproducing the old capitalist social relations; the class consciousness that had manifested itself, turns again into apathy and a submission to the present state of things.
This is also why the relationship between theory and praxis is not direct. When an objectively revolutionary situation exists, revolutionary action is possible. A situation arises from the contradictions of capitalist development, from the inevitability of crisis, so it is a phenomenon that runs through the history of capitalism and develops in it, in this sense revolutionary theory only makes sense in relation to crisis. Theory exists even when it is impossible to put it into practice. It is in advance of future revolutionary praxis and meanwhile finds its verification in the actual development of capital and the intensification of the mechanisms of class de-integration, which is linked to that. Revolutionary theory has for its object the abolition of capital and can only find its full confirmation in the latter. It does not respond to the particular problems encountered by revolutionary praxis at any given time, since circumstances are constantly changing and leading to unpredictable situations. Theory can therefore deal only with the probability of future revolutionary situations and not with the particular measures that a given revolutionary situation requires. Such measures are dictated by the revolutionary situation that arises spontaneously, it can be said that only action can give theory the form that enables it to correspond to praxis. The search for means and ways to overcome capitalism, to achieve self-determination for those excluded from power, to end competition, exploitation, to develop a community that does not pit individuals against society, will be the result of struggles described as spontaneous events that occurred.
Spontaneity is a term today that testifies to our inability to treat the social phenomena of capitalism scientifically and empirically, but it is at the same time the necessary separation from the activities that favor the predominant society. Which contributes to a sharpening of critical faculties and a disassociation from futile activism and organizations without a future. Spontaneity is linked to the theory of collapse, which is not an automatic process, just as spontaneity itself does not come from some mystical or ideological reason, but is within the very dynamic of accumulation that produces a reversal of quantity into quality. It is necessity that produces communist passion. The de-integration produced by the limits of capitalist accumulation, produces necessity, which can only be satisfied outside of capital, and thus outside of all the structures and dynamics produced by it.
Thus, the end of capitalism with a society based on the needs of humanity does not come from the abstract definition of such a society or appeals to justice, humanity to fraternity. Communism will or will not be, depending on whether the real action of the proletariat is found or not contained, which is not driven by the desire to transform society, but by the need to defend itself against exploitation, created by the very limits of capital. However, it is in the dynamics of struggle through the new social relations that the nature of capital, and the methods of attack and defense, are discovered. In this way, the real basis of communist society, founded on the proletariat's appropriation of the conditions of social life, is gradually formed. In order to make such a revolution possible, it is necessary for the new social relations to persist, at least in their embryonic state, to the overturning of existing relations, made increasingly precarious by the processes of crisis. The proletariat has nothing to do with those who believe in inculcating class consciousness in it; it is the conditions of existence that prepare it for communism.
Some Comrades from Connessioni per la lotta di classe
Summer 2012
- 1With respect to Marx's own analysis and limitations, it seems appropriate for us to quote this passage, written by Paul Mattick in 1939: “Marx elaborated his theories during a revolutionary period. He was then the most advanced of the bourgeois revolutionaries and also the closest to the proletariat. But the defeat of the bourgeois revolution in Germany, and its subsequent triumph in the context of the counter-revolution, were to convince Marx that the working class constituted the only revolutionary class in the modern world. And it was on this basis that he conceived the socio-economic theory of the proletarian revolution. Underestimating, as did many of his contemporaries, the strength and adaptability of capitalism, he was wrong in declaring the end of bourgeois society imminent. Marx was faced with this alternative: either place himself outside the actual course of events, and thus cling to radical but unworkable ideas, or participate in the historical situation of the moment in the real struggles, while reserving for -better times- the application of revolutionary theories. The latter possibility was soon rationalized with the formula of the -right balance between theory and praxis-, at the same time, the defeat or victory of the proletariat returned to becoming a simple matter of -good- or -bad- tactics, of organization fit or unfit for its tasks and of capable or incapable leaders. If the Jacobin element, inherent in the movement to which Marx willingly or unwillingly linked his name, had such a development, it was due to Marx's primitive connection with the bourgeois revolution, than to the non-revolutionary praxis of the movement itself, attributable to the non-revolutionary character of the epoch." - Karl Kautsky: From Marx to Hitler, now republished on the Connections website: http://connessioni-connessioni.blogspot.it/2012/08/kautsky-da-marx-hitler-pmattick.html
- 2Henri Simon, The New Movement: “the struggle against capitalist domination, which in its various modern and diverse forms occurs in all the countries of the world, presents new tendencies [...] The common and essential characteristic of these tendencies is the management by those themselves who are struggling of the totality of their needs in all the circumstances of their lives, in the field of action and thought. The signs of a potential as radical transformation of social relations must be seen in the very upheaval of capitalism, in its crises and its attempts to adapt. These signs may erupt in isolated explosions quickly destroyed by dominant interests, otherwise they may fade and be absorbed with slow progress and reform. The effects of the above can be more or less traced in all areas of human activity, in all countries, at the level of individuals and organizations in which they are involved. Essential is the struggle in the classic locus of human exploitation by capital, industrial or commercial enterprise, but the expression of the new trend can be traced in all areas of life and takes similar forms. Conflicts spread to all areas of social life showing that autonomy cannot be limited but will conquer all things.” The opposition within the class struggle is created between new and old, between the communist movement and the movement of capital. The term communist movement does not mean “communists,” the left, or even revolutionaries, etc., but the establishment of new social relations.
- 3“A part of the ‘ultra-left’ movement went one step beyond the anti-Bolshevism of the Communist Workers Party (KAPD) and its adherents within the General Labor Union (AAU). It believed that the history of the Social Democratic parties and the practices of the Bolshevik parties proved sufficiently how futile it was to attempt to replace reactionary parties, this for the reason that the party itself as a form of organization had become useless even dangerous. The movement split: one part abandoned the party form altogether, the other remained as the 'economic organization' of the Communist Workers' Party. The first moved closer to the trade unions and anarchist movements, but without abandoning its Marxian Weltanschauung. The other saw itself as the heir to all that had been revolutionary in the Marxist movement of the past. It attempted a Fourth International, but succeeded only in creating closer cooperation with similar groups in a few European countries.
History passed by to the side of both groups; they argued in a vacuum. Neither the Communist Workers' Party nor the anti-party fraction of the General Labor Union overcame their condition of being sects of the 'ultra-left'. Their internal problems became entirely contrived since, as far as practical activity was concerned, there were no real differences between them.
These organizations - remnants of the proletarian attempt to play a role in the 1918 uprisings - attempted to direct their experiences within the framework of a development that was moving steadily in the opposite direction to that in which these experiences had originated. Only the Communist Party, thanks to Russian control, could really grow within the framework of a situation that was moving toward fascism. But representing Russian fascism, not German fascism, it too had to succumb to the emerging Nazi movement which, recognizing and accepting the prevailing capitalist tendencies, eventually inherited the old German labor movement in its entirety.
After 1923 the German 'ultra-left' movement ceased to be a serious political factor in Germany's labor movement. Its last attempt to force the trend line of development in its direction was dissipated in the ephemeral action of March 1921, undertaken under the popular leadership of Max Hoelz. Its militants, forced to go underground, introduced conspiratorial and expropriatory practices into the movement, thus hastening its dissolution. Although organizationally the groups of the 'ultraleft' continued to exist until the beginning of Hitler's dictatorship, their activities narrowed to those of discussion groups attempting to understand their own failures and that of the revolution in Germany.” From Anti-Bolshevik Communism in Germany, Paul Mattick.
This quote is from an essay recently translated by Connessioni, regarding the German revolution and its limitations, written by one of the leading authors of the Council Communist strand. It is striking that even today such an approach has not been overcome, and this we think because some of those contradictions live on in today. Mattick's “pessimistic” approach actually conceals an understanding of the effects of the movement of capital within the pair it creates between class integration and de-integration, the only one that can allow the new to emerge in the face of the old. But where the old persists, its hold, it proves impossible for voluntarist drives or shortcuts to overcome such an obstacle. In this sense, even much of the “epochal” arguments, splits, quarrels and fractures could be described as classic storms in a glass of water.
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