[OPE] Hillel Ticktin: Decline and the transition to socialism

From: Doğan Göçmen (dogangoecmen@aol.com)
Date: Wed Jun 11 2008 - 02:21:35 EDT


Decline and the transition to socialism


Hillel Ticktin concludes his discussion on the theory of decline by 
        examining its forms as capitalism makes way for a higher society

      
How does the decline of capitalism and the transition to socialism differ 
        from the previous declines and transitions discussed earlier (see Weekly 
        Worker October 6)?

      
The former is both spontaneous and conscious. All previous systems 
        went into decline spontaneously, almost automatically, without anyone 
        understanding what was happening. They did understand that they were in 
        decline - but very late, when their cities were conquered, when forms 
        of government became ever more oppressive, or when there were huge levels 
        of unemployment and the proletariat was bribed with bread and circuses. 
        But they did not understand that feudalism was in decline when the crusades 
        were launched or when merchant bankers were beginning to play a considerable 
        role in the economy. The new mode of production came into being without 
        being foreseen or planned.

      
By contrast the new mode of production after capitalism can only come 
        into being as a planned society, controlled from below. In other 
        words, it has to be both democratic in a way which has never existed before 
        and planned in the interests of the direct producers by the direct producers. 
        Obviously this implies the need for a political party.

      
The fundamental aspect of socialism/communism is that it is a society 
        in which for the first time humanity becomes conscious of itself and takes 
        its future directly into its own hands. This is only possible when humanity 
        is no longer struggling with itself, but is able to act in the interests 
        of everyone both as individuals and as a collective. We can look at human 
        society as one in which there has been a constant struggle, on the one 
        hand, to subdue nature, but also, on the other, to establish a social 
        form adequate to that subjugation of nature. In other words, the social 
        form of labour for the production of humanity’s needs can only be attained 
        with communism.

      
Such a society cannot come into being either piecemeal or in one part 
        of the world. This has been proven by what happened to the USSR. It requires 
        to be introduced as a new system over much of the globe simultaneously. 
        Some people have therefore argued that it is an impossible undertaking, 
        not only because it must be a world system, but also because it has to 
        be introduced as a whole system “all at once”. Milovan Djilas, who accepted 
        the doctrine of socialism in one country, nonetheless argued that it was 
        very difficult to introduce a new system at one moment - in contrast to 
        capitalism, which developed into its fullest form over centuries.

      
Such people are forgetting the very concepts of decline and transition. 
        Just as the various underdeveloped forms of capital came into existence 
        in a declining feudalism, so distorted forms of the future socialist society 
        have come into existence. It is perfectly true that socialism cannot be 
        built out of nothing. It has to be based on existing society and its conditions.

      
In other words, in the period of the decline of capitalism there must 
        a decline of all the old categories and movement towards the new. The 
        move from capitalism to socialism is qualitatively different from that 
        of feudalism to capitalism, in that socialism cannot come into being in 
        the interstices of capitalism. The new society can only come into being 
        when the world capitalist system is overthrown, but before that time pseudo-socialist 
        and proto-socialist forms can exist. They are not socialist, but they 
        do conflict with capitalism - at the same time as they prop it up.

      
Decline of abstract labour

      
In the period of decline of capitalism the fundamental categories of 
        capital themselves undergo change. Value is increasingly replaced by organisation 
        and management. Just as Marx pointed out that inside the firm ‘planning 
        reigns’, so today government intervention, nationalisation, monopoly, 
        cartels and implicit agreements are crucial in the declining market.

      
The basic contradiction within capitalism shows itself in the form of 
        the opposites of exchange-value and use-value - and so abstract labour 
        and concrete labour. The social form of labour under capitalism is, of 
        course, abstract labour. If value is in decline, so too must the categories 
        of labour-power and abstract labour.

      
The category of abstract labour is crucial for the operation of capitalism 
        in four respects.

      
Firstly, because the labourer is reduced to the level of an abstraction, 
        he is alienated both from his product and from his labour process. He 
        is alienated from his species-being - ie, estranged from himself - and 
        so from his existence as a human being and from humanity itself. He is 
        also alienated from nature. The concept of alienation is therefore subsumed 
        into the category of the abstract labourer.

      
Secondly, every worker is placed in a similar position within the capitalist 
        system and within the division of labour. Hence the potentiality of a 
        collectivity is established in the form of the working class. That is 
        why in the USSR, where of course there was no abstract labour, genuine 
        collectivity was virtually impossible.

      
Thirdly, it is abstract labour which is the basis of value itself. Alienation, 
        the working class and value are the three fundamental categories which 
        flow from abstract labour: “the qualitative characteristic that individual 
        labour must present itself as abstract, general social labour only through 
        its alienation” (K Marx Theories of surplus value Vol 2, London 
        1969, p504).

      
(There is a corollary: under socialism abstract labour will be abolished, 
        along with value. Calculation of labour time therefore becomes only approximate. 
        One labour can only be compared to another with abstract labour.)

      
Within capitalism the full flowering of abstract labour can only take 
        place with the development of modern industry and so modern machinery. 
        In other words, it is only with mature capitalism that we have established 
        the true nature of abstract labour. Embryonic capitalism has only embryonic 
        abstract labour.

      
With the development of abstract labour comes the homogeneity of the 
        class and its ability to perceive itself as such. Abstract labour allows 
        it to become conscious of its exploitation and of the need to reject its 
        position as abstract labourers, wage labourers. This gives rise to the 
        formation of trade unions and working class political parties.

      
Put another way, these conditions create the potential for consciousness 
        of exploitation and the need for change. But at the same time they also 
        produce the fetishism of the commodity - which induces the worker to accept 
        his lot as producing quantised labour.

      
However, both the rejection of capitalism and the actual movement of 
        capital itself - towards the production of machines by machines - undermines 
        abstract labour. While only socialism can actually get to that point, 
        capitalism moves in that direction and so throws millions out of work. 
        Capital as capital can only use such workers unproductively in finance, 
        advertising and the retailing of goods and services.

      
At the same time, the spectre of the future socialist society demands 
        that health and education take social forms, while other sectors like 
        transport and housing are also controlled, if not financed, by the state. 
        In other words, sometimes these sectors are openly nationalised, particularly 
        in periods when capitalism needs to make concessions, while in other periods 
        these sectors are privatised but retain strong state involvement. 

      
The point is that workers in these sectors cannot be reduced to abstract 
        labourers of the earlier kind. At most they constitute a kind of hybrid 
        form. The workers remain exploited, but they are not a homogenous entity.

      
Where does this leave the class? At first sight, it might look as if 
        it is weaker, but in reality workers are no longer fetishised or controlled 
        in the same way, allowing them to develop a general political consciousness 
        in relation to the state and society as a whole. At the same time capital 
        cannot permit this, so it attempts to subjugate workers to capital by 
        finding ways of turning them once more into abstract labourers - proletarianising, 
        for example, thousands of civil servants and education workers. In reality, 
        this is impossible and ends in a muddle - but the muddle is sufficient 
        to provide a common enemy.

      
Decline of law of value

      
Nationalised property, needs-based sectors, giant firms, the joint stock 
        company itself, with its evolution towards increasing control by managers 
        and bureaucrats - these are all forms which conflict with the essence 
        of capitalism, which requires private property, owned by an individual, 
        a family or a series of individuals rather than anonymous funds.

      
Finance capital, of course, understands the problem. Hence its imposition 
        of what is called neoliberal or Thatcherite forms. But they cannot work 
        over the medium to long term. These are utopian measures.

      
The various forms whereby the law of value has been replaced or supplemented 
        constitute, in my view, forms which also contradict the operation of 
        the law of value. As argued above, they also and necessarily change the 
        relations of production. Concretely nationalisation prevents capitalists 
        taking part in a particular sector. Furthermore, individual capitalists 
        will normally object to such sectors - for example, the local government-owned 
        construction firm operates without controls and cannot be competed with. 
        There is nothing to stop such a firm from undertaking all state construction 
        if the government so prefers - or, for that matter, all construction which 
        covers its marginal costs - as long as government operations cover its 
        fixed costs.

      
While state sectors often have the potential for unstoppable expansion 
        unless reined in, the interface between the government and the private 
        sector has become even more corrupt than in earlier periods. Private firms 
        contracted to local councils have been notoriously corrupt, but the arms 
        sector is equally notorious for overcharging the government. The point 
        is that prices and profits are determined outside of value as a social 
        relation, instead adopting a combination of administrative or bureaucratic 
        relations and capitalist-worker relations.

      
Profit and targets

      
The welfare state, pensions, the reduced reserve army of labour (or indeed 
        its absence) - all these imply a change in the sale of labour-power. It 
        is still being sold, but the worker has limited forms of defence or control. 
        The very act of bargaining for a price for his labour-power implies a 
        degree of control. One can argue that this is a new, refined capitalism, 
        but in reality it then malfunctions because the aim can no longer just 
        be profits.

      
Capital, as always, still bases itself on profit as the bottom line, 
        but in order to judge whether they are getting there individual firms 
        use targets. Indeed the actual profits can appear as a consequence and 
        not as the aim. The target may be to become the largest firm in the sector, 
        to increase sales by a given percentage or to improve quality, etc. Profits 
        are dependent on other variables and the extent of their dependence is 
        such that firms can disaggregate them to the point where the individual 
        components become semi-independent entities. In other words, the internal 
        planning of the firm goes a step further. In certain industries the use-value 
        may have to come first as a target, as in the case of precision instruments 
        or items the quality of which is crucial to life.

      
Decline and decay

      
In theoretical terms, if a system and its internal forms are changing 
        but it is not overthrown, certain consequences follow. It will malfunction 
        to an increasing degree. That malfunction does not necessarily mean that 
        it is in perpetual crisis, but it does mean that parts of the system begin 
        to decay. Decay here means absolute decline towards extinction. An overripe 
        system, in other words, begins to go rotten.

      
Decay in our society is shown by:

      
l the enormous role of gangster 
        outfits like the Mafia, Yakuzi, drug lords and the growth of drug production 
        and consumption

      
l the reduction in production 
        over large parts of the world, at the same time as the majority do not 
        have enough to eat or to clothe themselves with

      
l the extensive spread of diseases 
        like aids, TB and malaria, when they could quickly be dealt with if enough 
        money were spent on research and free medical provision. The present threat 
        of avian flu is another instance where the fact that only one firm - Roche 
        - is providing the vaccine is preventing the provision of the required 
        quantity

      
l the never-ending wars and 
        massacres

      
l the stupidity of many of 
        the doctrines now expounded - from ‘intelligent design’ to ‘new age’ theories 
        (parts of the left are not excluded from this whole process)

      
Finance capital

      
The development and increasingly parasitic nature of finance capital 
        provides another illustration of the decline of capital as a whole.

      
Britain was the first country where finance capital evolved as such. 
        Money capital and industrial capital were originally merged, but the demerger 
        created the new form of capital, which then partially transferred itself 
        not just to the colonies but also to what became its competitors. The 
        latter, however, could not exist as competitors, as opposed to subordinates, 
        except through very close connections between banking and industrial capital, 
        not to speak of the importance of the government.

      
Whereas in Britain finance capital was able to achieve its aims through 
        indirect means of control, the latter countries had to do it directly. 
        Concretely this means that in the case of Britain finance capital could 
        obtain its share of surplus value through interest, rent, insurance, management 
        fees, etc, with overseas investment all existing in separate institutional 
        forms from industrial capital. The flow of investment went through finance 
        capital. This was not self-sustaining, but industrial capital tended not 
        only to pay a considerable proportion of surplus value in the above ways, 
        but also in the form of dividends and the direction of funds to investment 
        trusts.

      
The result was that finance capital came to control the potential for 
        growth and the renewal of the existing capital stock. As long as it was 
        simply a question of slow growth or no growth, industrial capital could 
        remain operating along its own lines, fundamentally supplying finance 
        capital with its source of funds. Once that changed, although individual 
        firms might be able to raise their level of re­investment, the system 
        required both much higher levels of investment than could be sustained 
        by individual firms and also a more even investment to allow inputs, spare 
        parts and machine tools to attain the quality required. This flow was 
        then regulated by finance capital to the point of possibly not permitting 
        much of a supply of funds at all. In this way the separation of the two 
        forms of capital was reinforced.

      
In short, the characteristic of finance capital is that it attempts to 
        raise its own rate of profit above an otherwise existing typical rate 
        by using either unproductive capitals or less developed capitals with 
        lower organic compositions and higher rates of surplus value, which may 
        or may not be in the same country. In its crudest form it amounts to an 
        outflanking operation in relation to the working class.

      
Finance capital is an abstract capital which has shifted away from its 
        concrete form as fixed capital to one in which it becomes the form only 
        of realisation in the process of circulation. In so far as it does so, 
        it is parasitic, since capital can only exist as a unity of its two aspects, 
        and any attempt to emphasise the one over the other only leads to a seizure. 
        In this case, the sucking dry of fixed capital leads to the decline of 
        capital itself, but not before the forms by which it does so have exhausted 
        themselves. The essential point is that Britain had a particular social 
        structure predicated on its head start in the industrial revolution, which 
        outlasted its industrial decline. Thus it had a particular form of capital 
        and a particular form of labour.

      
Finance capital’s chief characteristics therefore are:

      
l It is capital in a form which 
        attempts to make money out of money. As such it is not attached to any 
        location. It becomes abstract capital, abstracted from the real economy.

      
l It is parasitic - drawing 
        value from the productive sector and subjecting it to its own nature and 
        demands.

      
l It draws other sectors in 
        the circulatory process into its orbit. It starts from finance and thus 
        banking, but extends to insurance, the retail sector, the property market 
        and then to any sector which is able to extorts rents from the economy, 
        such as pharmaceuticals, oil, etc.

      
l It is chiefly concerned with 
        the short term and the extraction of maximum returns.

      
As abstract capital it can organise or ‘plan’ the economy and society 
        in the interests of the ruling class. In fact it can do so internationally. 
        More accurately, it can plan the strategy and tactics of the class and 
        for that purpose the economy.

      
Forms of waste

      
Finally, the decline of capitalism can be demonstrated by its increasing 
        wastefulness, which is revealed in several ways:

      
l The maintenance of a reserve 
        army of labour in the form of unemployment. True, this is unable to operate 
        under modern circumstances in the developed countries, with workers moving 
        in and out of employment, but the real level of unemployment in the developed 
        countries is nevertheless high - and much higher still in the underdeveloped 
        countries (in South Africa the level of unemployment among the majority 
        black population is officially over 40%, but probably even higher). In 
        the UK the official levels are around three to five percent, but the number 
        of people on the disabled register, the prematurely retired, together 
        with those who have given up trying to get a job, may add up to around 
        20% of the workforce.

      
l The cyclical nature of production 
        and consequent underutilisation of resources, such as agriculture or steel, 
        which are taken out of production, even though the needs of society require 
        them. The surplus produced continues to increase and so too does the extent 
        of underutilisation. It is dealt with by closing down plants or taking 
        land out of cultivation.

      
l Non-productive sectors like 
        advertising and finance. Advertising today occupies a very large proportion 
        of economic activity - newspapers, radio, television, films, packaging, 
        hoardings, etc. Although some informational advertising will always be 
        necessary, the vast bulk serves the purpose of creating or intensifying 
        wants and is both undesirable and wasteful - not to say harmful, as in 
        the case of junk foods and tobacco.

      
The financial sector today is vast, including as it does banking, insurance, 
        property, pensions, stocks and shares, etc. The percentage of the workforce 
        employed in this sector is considerable and rising. Most are better paid 
        than other workers, sometimes receiving vast incomes.

      
l Over-rapid obsolescence or 
        production skewed towards forms dictated by the rich. Eg, private cars 
        rather than communal transport.

      
l The maintenance of a huge 
        defence sector, an apparatus of repression and the destruction of human 
        talent. Whole populations are liquidated in wars.

      
l The market. Competition involves 
        a massive duplication of effort, as well as the underutilisation of resources. 
        Monopoly, on the other hand, leads to a restriction in production, reduction 
        in innovation and rise in bureaucratic forms.

      
Within capitalism it is obvious that competition is able to achieve more 
        than monopoly/oligopoly. However, the comparison that ought to be made 
        is between capitalist competition and a genuinely democratic planned society.

 


 ----------------------
Doğan Göçmen
Author of The Adam Smith Problem:
Reconciling Human Nature and Society in
The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations,
I. B. Tauris, London&New York 2007

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