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en:sic1-crisis-and-communisation [2011/12/01 20:04]
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en:sic1-crisis-and-communisation [2015/04/12 21:08] (current)
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| ====== Crisis and Communisation ====== | ====== Crisis and communisation ====== |
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| ::**Peter Åström** | ::**Peter Åström** |
| //Communisation is not any kind of peaceful experimentation with new ways of life, but the revolutionary answer by the proletariat to an acute social crisis. The text below offers a few observations on this connection in the light of the current crisis.// | //Communisation is not any kind of peaceful experimentation with new ways of life, but the revolutionary answer by the proletariat to an acute social crisis. The text below offers a few observations on this connection in the light of the current crisis.// |
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| The class struggle between capital and the proletariat takes place all the time and forms the whole of our existence. In most cases it takes relatively peaceful forms, but throughout history it has given rise to numerous revolutionary movements which have threatened the existence of the mode of production. These movements have always originated in a refusal of unendurable proletarian living conditions, but it is not simply that an ‘excessive' exploitation regularly calls capitalism into question. Often it is rather a 'too lenient' treatment of the working class which is the immediate cause behind social unrest. We can take Greece as an example, where the very poor finances of the State (caused, according to the bourgeoisie’s representatives, by too generous conditions for many groups of workers) in the end had to be remedied by the blood-letting of the working class. Exploitation and surplus value production are two terms for the same thing, and since the capital relation lives from producing surplus value, i.e. from exploiting workers, the class contradiction necessarily belongs to its most inner essence. Never can it escape from this contradiction, no matter how much the mode of production manages to mutate. Therefore, the threat that this relation will explode from the inside lurks behind every serious crisis. | The class struggle between capital and the proletariat takes place all the time and forms the whole of our existence. In most cases it takes relatively peaceful forms, but throughout history it has given rise to numerous revolutionary movements which have threatened the existence of the mode of production. These movements have always originated in a refusal of unendurable proletarian living conditions, but it is not simply that an ‘excessive’ exploitation regularly calls capitalism into question. Often it is rather a ‘too lenient’ treatment of the working class which is the immediate cause behind social unrest. We can take Greece as an example, where the very poor finances of the State (caused, according to the bourgeoisie’s representatives, by too generous conditions for many groups of workers) in the end had to be remedied by the blood-letting of the working class. Exploitation and surplus value production are two terms for the same thing, and since the capital relation lives from producing surplus value, i.e. from exploiting workers, the class contradiction necessarily belongs to its most inner essence. Never can it escape from this contradiction, no matter how much the mode of production manages to mutate. Therefore, the threat that this relation will explode from the inside lurks behind every serious crisis. |
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| Serious crises, such as the one we have been experiencing since 2008, break out in situations where the capitalist class fails to guarantee sufficiently high surplus value production under bearable conditions for the producers of this surplus value (that which in bourgeois jargon is called combining growth with social considerations). The most abstract definition of a crisis for the capitalist mode of production is that its reproduction is being threatened, that is to say the continued reproduction of the antagonist classes. It is on the concrete level, however, that we can see the crisis develop before our eyes: banks and companies that are threatened with bankruptcy and workers who are losing their jobs, are evicted from their homes, or are subjected to wage cuts, reduced pensions, poorer healthcare and so on. When single capitals or groups of proletarians get into straits, the State can intervene in order to ward off an emergency, by bailing out companies or handing out a little extra money to the municipalities and thereby maintaining a certain level of service. But there are never any miracle cures. In such instances, the State indebts itself, and sooner or later the budget has to be balanced, which means that in the end it is the proletariat which has to pay for it. The only mercy that the capitalist class can offer the proletarians of a country in crisis is some form of installment plan (a mortgage on future exploitation), or they can let the proletarians of another country pay a part of the bill. An example of the former is how Iceland was instructed to compensate Britain and the Netherlands for their losses connected with the collapse of Icesave: 2.8 billion euros plus interest over a period of thirty years. An example of the latter is the Swedish government’s vigorous pressure within the EU and the IMF in 2009 in order to prevent a devaluation of the Latvian currency, which would have been devastating for the Swedish banks that had lent out enormous sums to the Baltic countries. The latters’ brutal austerity packages were probably completely necessary in order to save the Swedish banking system from collapse, something which explains the extremely tough demands by Sweden and the EU.((Only after the height of the storm had passed did the Swedish finance minister dare to speak directly: ‘This I have never said so clearly before, but the truth is that Sweden was in very, very big trouble in 2009, virtually over the edge’ – Anders Borg, January 19, 2011.)) Acute measures such as emergency loans for the auto industry or nationalisations of mortgage companies do not, however, solve the underlying problem behind the crisis, which is a crisis of investment or rather a crisis of accumulation, i.e. a crisis of exploitation.((Cf. Screamin’ Alice, ‘[[http://endnotes.org.uk/articles/15|The breakdown of a relationship? Reflections on the crisis]]’, October 2008.)) Order insists that exploitation be deepened. | Serious crises, such as the one we have been experiencing since 2008, break out in situations where the capitalist class fails to guarantee sufficiently high surplus value production under bearable conditions for the producers of this surplus value (that which in bourgeois jargon is called combining growth with social considerations). The most abstract definition of a crisis for the capitalist mode of production is that its reproduction is being threatened, that is to say the continued reproduction of the antagonist classes. It is on the concrete level, however, that we can see the crisis develop before our eyes: banks and companies that are threatened with bankruptcy and workers who are losing their jobs, are evicted from their homes, or are subjected to wage cuts, reduced pensions, poorer healthcare and so on. When single capitals or groups of proletarians get into straits, the State can intervene in order to ward off an emergency, by bailing out companies or handing out a little extra money to the municipalities and thereby maintaining a certain level of service. But there are never any miracle cures. In such instances, the State indebts itself, and sooner or later the budget has to be balanced, which means that in the end it is the proletariat which has to pay for it. The only mercy that the capitalist class can offer the proletarians of a country in crisis is some form of installment plan (a mortgage on future exploitation), or they can let the proletarians of another country pay a part of the bill. An example of the former is how Iceland was instructed to compensate Britain and the Netherlands for their losses connected with the collapse of Icesave: 2.8 billion euros plus interest over a period of thirty years. An example of the latter is the Swedish government’s vigorous pressure within the EU and the IMF in 2009 in order to prevent a devaluation of the Latvian currency, which would have been devastating for the Swedish banks that had lent out enormous sums to the Baltic countries. The latters’ brutal austerity packages were probably completely necessary in order to save the Swedish banking system from collapse, something which explains the extremely tough demands by Sweden and the EU.((Only after the height of the storm had passed did the Swedish finance minister dare to speak directly: ‘This I have never said so clearly before, but the truth is that Sweden was in very, very big trouble in 2009, virtually over the edge’ – Anders Borg, January 19, 2011.)) Acute measures such as emergency loans for the auto industry or nationalisations of mortgage companies do not, however, solve the underlying problem behind the crisis, which is a crisis of investment or rather a crisis of accumulation, i.e. a crisis of exploitation.((Cf. Screamin’ Alice, ‘[[http://endnotes.org.uk/articles/15|The breakdown of a relationship? Reflections on the crisis]]’, October 2008.)) Order insists that exploitation be deepened. |
| - we cannot act independently from the determinacy of the class contradiction, i.e. the material conditions. | - we cannot act independently from the determinacy of the class contradiction, i.e. the material conditions. |
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| Making the revolution is not a free choice because we can only act within a certain framework, within the context of a general crisis (also produced by class struggle). Communisation is the //revolutionary// answer of our time to such a crisis. The text does not deal with the various counter-revolutionary answers that will also be presented and all the “struggles within the struggle against capital” that we can expect (see B.L., 'The suspended step of communisation', pp. XX–XX in this issue). The proletarians will never be compelled to produce communism because of material impoverishment alone. In the face of deteriorating conditions, however, we can assume a re-emergence of the communist movement that will take the form of concrete actions and projects made up of individuals with minds and wants. These individuals (our future selves?) could then take on the task of abolishing capital/producing communism. I’m not saying that we should sit and do nothing until then but it isn’t enough to state that capitalism 'obviously' needs to be destroyed and then just do it. As Marx said: 'Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances…' (//The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte//, 1852). | Making the revolution is not a free choice because we can only act within a certain framework, within the context of a general crisis (also produced by class struggle). Communisation is the //revolutionary// answer of our time to such a crisis. The text does not deal with the various counter-revolutionary answers that will also be presented and all the ‘struggles within the struggle against capital' that we can expect (see B.L., ‘The suspended step of communisation' in this issue). The proletarians will never be compelled to produce communism because of material impoverishment alone. In the face of deteriorating conditions, however, we can assume a re-emergence of the communist movement that will take the form of concrete actions and projects made up of individuals with minds and wants. These individuals (our future selves?) could then take on the task of abolishing capital/producing communism. I’m not saying that we should sit and do nothing until then but it isn’t enough to state that capitalism 'obviously' needs to be destroyed and then just do it. As Marx said: 'Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances…' (//The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte//, 1852). |
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| The second criticism I find harder to understand. The text focuses on the need to attack and negate the capitalist categories but it also states clearly that the class enemy can only be defeated by 'producing completely new lives that are incompatible with the reproduction of capital'. What those lives might be is not developed in the text, simply because I don’t know. All I know is that it is going to be a bloody mess. | The second criticism I find harder to understand. The text focuses on the need to attack and negate the capitalist categories but it also states clearly that the class enemy can only be defeated by 'producing completely new lives that are incompatible with the reproduction of capital'. What those lives might be is not developed in the text, simply because I don’t know. All I know is that it is going to be a bloody mess. |
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| ::Peter Åström, July 2011 | ::Peter Åström, July 2011 |
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