Entrepreneurial Communism Ben Turk The communist revolution
Transkript
Entrepreneurial Communism Ben Turk The communist revolution
Entrepreneurial Communism Ben Turk The communist revolution will be better served by going into business than by going to the barricades. Most attempts to pursue communism have used exclusively political means. Lenin’s revolution and Bernstein’s socialism through democracy aim to bring about changes only by working through the government: Lenin by uprising and creating a new government and Bernstein by voting socialism in through the existing government. These methods will always fail because they invert the relationship between politics and economics. A society’s political system is built on its economic foundations. The arrangement of those economic foundations largely determines the society’s governmental, social, and political arrangements.1 Economics determine politics, not vice versa. By focusing only on the political most communist methods do not change the fundamental arrangements of the capitalist system. Lenin’s violent revolution will only result in The Communist State simply taking over the role of the bourgeoisie. Bernstein’s social democracy will result in no more than a redistribution of the wealth created by the capitalist system. Real change will primarily be the result of the development of a new economic system, one that changes the form of these class arrangements. This revolution will be primarily economic. Political changes may be necessary but a political route needs the new economic framework as its base. We cannot simply over-throw bourgeois governments without being able to replace the capitalist mode of production itself. We need a revolutionary change in the mode of production. 1 “The sum total of [the] relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society- the real foundation on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.” – Marx, preface to a Critique of Political Economy, Selected Writings, 389. The Revolution in Theory The capitalist mode of production is based upon the division of society into two particular classes and the relationship between these classes. The bourgeoisie are defined by their ownership of the means of production (through land or capital). The proletariat is defined by a lack thereof, which leaves them with no option other than to sell their labor-power to the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie does little or no labor, produces little or no value and reaps most profit because they own and control the means of production. The proletariat does all the labor and receives only wages sufficient to keep them alive so they can continue to work2. If this is the reality of the capitalist system, then these are the arrangements that the new system must challenge and replace. True communism must eliminate this class division and conflict at its economic root. The new economic system must be defined by new classes, or an abolition of class altogether. The abolition of all private property is not necessary. The only relevant property relations are in terms of the means of production. Luxuries and those commodities that are not economic tools are not our direct concern. What gives the bourgeoisie its power is ownership of the means of production. The important questions relate to this ownership. In the capitalist mode, the means of production are owned by individuals or by stock holders. This creates a division between labor and investment and separates society into the two classes. Changing capitalism requires developing a new relationship between investment and labor. 2 See, Marx, Capital 1 chapter 6, 270-280. 2 The capitalist system is a necessary step in history because it is so efficient that all people no longer need to struggle to survive3. The efficiency of capitalism creates enough value that all people’s basic needs (and most of their wants) could be met if wealth were distributed evenly. The political cause of social justice demands this equal distribution of wealth but in doing so it threatens the efficiency that created the wealth in the first place. Inequality is built into the capitalist system, in the privileged relationship of capital over labor. So we cannot solve this problem within capitalism. Political communism (social democracy or authoritarian communism) attempts to further the cause by imposition of social justice at any cost. This kind of communism takes a moral stand on issues of equality, justice and consumption. In the process it sacrifices efficiency. No system can expect its adherents to share with others when they are unable to feed themselves, nor should it. True freedom and equality require efficiency. If we want greater equality, we must develop a way to create it without sacrificing efficiency. The new mode of production must be at least as efficient if not more efficient than capitalism. The system must be set in such a way that people are able to work for the sake of working or for recognition of the common benefits of their work, not as a struggle to survive. To create this system we should attack the inefficiencies of capitalism. The two most obvious inefficiencies built into the capitalist system are alienation of workers and productive loss through investor profit. Under capitalism the relationship between capital and labor is such that the value produced by a worker is greater than the value received as compensation.4 If a worker produces a value of x through her labor she will only receive a wage of y and the 3 4 Capital 1 chapter 13, 439-454. See Marx’s account of surplus value in Capital 1 (chapter 9, 320-329). 3 capitalist who owns her position appropriates the remaining x-y of value5. The worker under capitalism does not receive the full product of her labor. This system is designed so that the capitalist and the laborer are set up in direct conflict with each other6. The capitalist will always attempt to get the largest chunk of the value created by labor possible, by both driving up productivity and driving down wages. The money “earned” by the capitalist is not being used to create wealth or to reward labor. Continuing to pay investors after their investment has been reimbursed (a defining aspect of the capitalist system) is a waste of money. Overall productivity goes down due to the loss of capital to investors or owners7. The positions of stockholder and owner must be eliminated. We have to downsize the stock market. The laborer on the other hand will of course fight for higher wages and if she fails to get them she will not work as hard because she isn’t earning what she’s worth.8 If we can eliminate this conflict, laborers will be working for no one but themselves. They will obviously have greater motivation to work harder and the benefit for everyone collectively will be higher. The system will be ultimately more efficient. We can pursue the elimination of productive loss through investor profit and alienation of workers by structuring our economic activity in such a way that there is not this division of economic roles. Class differences will subsequently dissolve with the dissolution of these roles. The new mode of production will achieve this if each worker also owns the means of production his or herself, or if the means of production are owned in common by a collection of workers. 5 And even classical liberal theorists agree, “labor makes the far greatest part of the value of a thing” and labor creates “a right of property” Locke, 26-27. 6 See, Wage-Labor and Capital. 7 As opposed to the theory of trickle down economics, investors do not reinsert their money into the economy as quickly as others. Saving is a luxury, more money in the hands of those who can afford to save it means less being put back into the economy by those that have to spend it. 8 For Marx’s view onthis subject see, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Selected Writings, 63-113 and Alienation and the Proletariat, Selected Writings, 131. 4 Investment will work harder because it will all be going back into value produced through worker’s labor. Workers will work harder because they will receive the full product of their labor. In the past this classless society has been pursued politically by state ownership of the means of production. The claim of these political communists is always that people will not accept the necessary changes because they are trapped within the bourgeois system. The modern incarnations of this thought are that we are controlled by our corporate culture and we have to be forced to be free of our childhood in front of the TV. Apparently a revolt, violence and a powerful centralized state is supposed to shake up and destroy that programming. The error in this thinking is proven by history. The USSR and other Communist States have demonstrated that state ownership of the means of production is no different than bourgeois ownership of the means of production. Claims can be made that Russia wasn’t ready for the revolution. Lenin’s opportunistic changes to Marxist thought did skip over the capitalist stage of economic historical development, but I do not believe that this is the extent of the USSR’s flaws. The mass uprising and revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat will succeed no better in a modern industrialized nation, nor should it. Supposedly, the proletariat needs control of the state because capitalists will not allow the revolution to occur without great resistance9. The bourgeoisie has power and will not give it up without a fight. Dogmatic revolutionaries use this reasoning to justify creating a dictatorship of the proletariat. This dictatorship of the proletariat is supposed to wither away after the revolution is complete10. There is no reason to believe that a revolution carried out in this manner will ever be complete. First, creating a centralized proletariat state will not institute a beneficial economic 9 See Marx: The Civil War in France, The Critique of the Gotha Programme, and more, Selected Writings, 539-558, and 564-571. 10 See Lenin, The State and Revolution, 16-21. 5 change. The structure of the system will continue to be a division of economic actors. The state will own the means of production and the citizens will be exploited for their labor. Second, capitalist competition will be replaced by state monopoly. This will create a major loss in efficiency. If efficiency is reduced then economic development will stagnate. Economic revolution is most likely to result when capitalism is free to run at its best and still proves to be ineffective. Third, the political system itself will be adversely affected. The dictatorship of the proletariat’s attempts to force people into new social roles will inhibit their freedom and give the government much greater control. No government is going to give up that kind of control voluntarily. If the political revolution is necessary because the capitalists will not give up state control, then why do we expect that the dictatorship of the proletariat will? Finally, the proletariat is defined by its opposition to the bourgeoisie. A dictatorship of the proletariat does not even try to eliminate the class structure, only to invert it. We need to eliminate or emancipate the proletariat, not put it in power. These pragmatic and theoretical flaws of political communism and its history of failure have left the left floundering for a position. They can no longer justify using their communist dogmas to create a new society through government. In this way traditional communism is in much the same position as religion. Both ineffectually guilt people into following an obsolete moral code. What’s more, the adherents of this ideology are confronted with being opposed to the means of their own subsistence. They cannot reconcile their actions with their ideals. They settle for doing their best to live right, screw over capitalism, and hate themselves for their many inevitable sins and guilty pleasures. The left has become defined only by what it stands against and many leftists even stand against themselves. 6 If state sponsored revolution will always lead to stagnation then we must find an alternative method. This alternative does exist. The economic changes can and will grow organically out of the capitalist system. Capitalism itself has historically proven that revolutionary changes in the economic system are possible without state control, indeed they have only occurred against the best efforts of the controlling governments. The feudal mode of production was based upon agriculture. Society was divided into two classes, the nobility and the serfs. The nobility were defined by their birthright, granting them ownership of land. The serfs were defined by a lack thereof, which left them with no option but to be owned by the nobility in exchange for protection and an opportunity to work the land. The lords held the serfs in a situation similar to a mafia insurance scam on a broad scale. The serfs mainly needed protection from the lords who were supposedly protecting them. Feudalism was an amazingly stable system for centuries. It only fell apart when a new class grew out of the existing feudal system. The merchant class destroyed feudalism when they replaced the feudal mode of production. They changed the means of production, invented new types of products, new relationships between workers and labor and developed banking and investment. This new mode of production is capitalism and it proved more efficient. The merchant class grew stronger, richer, and more powerful. The early capitalist mode of production was inhibited by feudal laws that restricted ownership of land and control of the political system to the nobility. The capitalists fought against these laws. They won these political battles because their more efficient economic system allowed them to dominate and eventually eliminate the nobility. The political revolution followed after the economic revolution. This is the model of revolutionary change that the communist revolution ought to follow. 7 The political revolution advocated by most communists bears no resemblance to this revolution. It is the equivalent of serfs marching into the manor house, killing the king, putting on the crown, saying, “I’m in charge” but continuing to be serfs. This idea is absurd. The serfs could not be revolutionary. The same holds true today. The proletariat will not have the means to successfully achieve even a political revolution until they cease to be the proletariat. Workers will advance the revolution when they go into business for themselves. They will then cease to be proletariat. By pooling resources and becoming equal investors and equal laborers, or arranging themselves so that their investment and labor are proportionally equal, they will in the long run prove to be more efficient than their capitalist competitors. They will beat capitalism at its own game. Freedom cannot be forced down from above. Economic changes cannot be politically created. Revolution is only needed if the government stands rigidly on an obsolete law that inhibits the new economic system from functioning. The capitalist revolution also changed the political system. Authoritarian communism disregards these changes. It claims that the ideals of freedom, equality and democracy are just part of the ruling class norms.11 I disagree. The capitalist revolution created significant changes in how the political system works. These changes are very relevant to the current revolution. Democracy creates the possibility of nonviolent governmental change. This means that even if the bourgeois state imposes restrictions on the economic activities of the new mode of production revolt against those laws may not need to be violent. Political activity, violent or non-violent should not be the revolutionary’s main concern. Economic activity is. We’ve got to develop our mode of production, prove capitalism obsolete and then remove whichever aspects of bourgeois state stand in our way. 11 See German Ideology, Selected Works, 159. 8 Revolutionary Praxis The capitalist revolution succeeded because advancements in technology and human relations created new products that were better produced under the capitalist mode of production. Feudalism was a primarily agricultural system. Capitalism grew out of the merchants and guilds who were producing non-agricultural commodities. By developing a proletariat class, exploiting them, and mass-producing commodities capitalism created great wealth and eventually replaced serfdom even in the agricultural sector of the economy. Today advancements in technology and human relations are creating new products that are similarly better produced under a new mode of production. The fastest growing and most important industries in the developed nations of the world are the entertainment industries. Material goods are becoming less important than things like films and music. New technology has made these products primary, but entertainment products are not best produced by capitalism. A hierarchically organized corporation is not an efficient means to produce entertainment products. These products are art and art is best produced by enterprising individuals (artists) not corporations. Art is the new mode of production. What is a worker who is not alienated if not an artist? This revolution is not made by the proletariat masses. It is made by entrepreneurial artists who structure their economic activity by new assumptions and relationships. These artists own the means of production themselves, either individually or collectively. They receive the full product of their labor. Their enterprises are structured more efficiently than the capitalist businesses and, unless they are inhibited by government intervention, they will beat capitalist businesses in free competition. This is a new free market revolution, Entrepreneurial Communism. 9 Once the new structure proves itself useful in the production of art and entertainment the same basic principles can be applied to production of consumer commodities. Larger groups of people will be able to collectivize, invest and follow the path laid out in the entertainment sector by the Entrepreneurial Communists. New politics and culture will flow from this economic change. Today’s political and cultural realities are rooted in our economic system. By looking at the political realities created by capitalism and comparing them with the assumptions of the new economic system we can predict what political and cultural changes will occur. Capitalism divides society into classes and privileges one class over another. This produces massive and always growing inequality. Competition between laborers results in the immiseration of the masses.12 By competing for wages, starving workers will always settle for less rather than for nothing. One worker who insists on making $6 an hour will be quickly replaced by one willing to work for $5. As long as there are people who have no other means of subsistence there will be someone willing to work for less, and under worse conditions. This process will always drive down labor standards leading to a lower living standard for all the proletariat. Competition among capitalists has an inverse effect. Each time a capitalist enterprise successfully beats its competitors; it improves its position and increases the likelihood that it will succeed again in the future. The successful capitalist eliminates many others.13 This eventually results in monopolies. The successful business has achieved great wealth through complete control of its product’s market. 12 13 See Capital 1 Chapter 32, 929. Ibid. 10 These laws have two important political effects. First, they create massive inequality and second, they create the requirement of a strong centralized state. The reason they create massive inequality is obvious. The reason they create the necessity of a strong centralized state is not so obvious. Eventually these factors will cause capitalism to break down completely. If all labor is driven to poverty then the capitalist will have no one to sell to. Monopolies, by eliminating competition, also create economic stagnation. When the laborers find themselves without safe and legitimate means of subsistence they seek out alternative methods, usually involving thievery, exploitation, and force. Historically, these problems have been solved by state intervention in the form of regulations for capitalists, welfare for the pauperized proletariat and prison for the unruly proletariat. Maintaining regulations and controlling crime requires strict laws and a large intrusive government. Maintaining welfare and prisons requires steep taxation. Therefore maintaining capitalism requires a powerful state. There is no alternative to government regulation through morality or social norms within capitalism because any capitalist who resists the temptation to drive down wages, abuse workers, and eat up the market will simply lose to those who aren’t so scrupulous. If our new economic system is classless and is not structurally determined to create gross inequality then the society will be more equal and the political system will be much different. The state will no longer need to reconcile class conflict because there will be no more conflict. Poverty and the necessity of welfare will be reduced because the reserve army of labor will no longer be a system requirement, there will be far fewer able bodied people who are willing to work but unable to find work. Also, more people will be willing to work and less likely to resort 11 to crime because they will receive the full value of their labor-time. This means there will be a smaller less intrusive government and more equality, more justice and more freedom. These political changes cannot be fully realized under capitalism, and there’s no such thing as a quick and easy revolution to make them happen immediately. They have to flow from a new economic system, which will only succeed correctly and fully through free market competition with the capitalist system. We don’t need to use politics to create freedom, equality and justice directly. The only political action necessary is removal of restrictions to the economic revolution.14 The Revolution in Practice The revolution will begin when the historical context is right for it. There are two important conditions of this historical context. First capitalism must be fully developed and submerged in the muck of its own internal contradictions. Second, a new mode of production must be underway to replace it. The form of this new mode of production is determined by new technologies, new products, and finally new modes of human organization. The first condition of the revolution has been met since at least the great depression. Modern capitalism is highly dependant on government controls. Society has reached extremes of economic inequality. Businesses continue to override existing government restrictions. Indeed in America the political system is so corrupt that the capitalists have taken over the political arena and are not only dismantling their stabilizing restrictions, but have completely abandoned the free market to receive government subsidies, and become totally dependant on profits from political maneuverings domestically and internationally. 14 This is not to say that politics are irrelevant. Social concerns will continue to be hammered out through political and social struggles. These struggles are important here and now, but fighting them cannot permanently change the system that creates the problems. 12 The second condition is presently coming together. As discussed earlier new technologies are shifting the economic focus to new products. All that is needed is the new form of human organization in business. Even this is beginning to happen. The time for Entrepreneurial Communism is now. The capitalist system has proven its inability to create superior art and entertainment products. This is indicated by the growing success of independent film, music, and media and the failures of corporate giant media producers. The most telling of these economic sectors is the music industry. According to the June 6th 2002 edition of USA Today the top five record companies are all losing money. They blame pirating, lack of radio variety, increased CD prices, and a "dearth of good music." These factors are caused by the failure of the capitalist mode of production. The problem is not that there is a lack of good music in general, or even that music is not making money. It is just that the good music is being made by musicians who fall below the USA Today radar. Thriving indie labels and totally self-sufficient bands are filling the “dearth of good music” capitalism has encountered15. No single indie entity will be as large as the corporate giants, and none of these bands will make as much money as the current popular music. This is as it should be. The collection of mildly successful indie labels and artists are collectively producing greater value more efficiently than the few corporate behemoths. The capitalist music machine is sinking to be replaced by a large number of highly eclectic music groups. The end result is as I predicted earlier: all the economic actors are on more level ground, monopoly is impossible, and greater value is being produced. Similar movements are happening in other areas of mass media. Independent films 15 See, USA Today, June 6th, 2002, and “The Imminent Death of Capitalism” by Ben Turk @ actionmanmagazine.com 13 have become increasingly more popular, but the music industry is moving along faster because it requires less initial investment. Capitalism is resisting this change. Capitalists use the government to control distribution and ownership of music. The capitalists still have a stranglehold on the primary outlets of music and film products. By controlling the radio, television, and movie distribution corporations control art. This control is exercised in two ways, politically and economically. The government by annexing and limiting bandwidth use has made the otherwise free and open mediums of television and radio restricted. By doing so they made bandwidth rare and valuable, this forces the airwaves into the capitalist mode of production. Capitalism requires strict controls on these mediums that are naturally better suited to free mass distribution. Artists have fought back by developing alternative systems of distribution and pirating the existing structure. Again, this is clear in the area of music. Bands are burning and distributing their own CDs, printing their own CD cases, t-shirts and posters, booking their own tours, and basically running their own businesses. Film distribution is following these methods. Touring underground film festivals are becoming more possible and prevalent. New technology works to benefit the Entrepreneurial Communist. The Internet allows new forms of distribution and media. The effect of Napster is very interesting in this way. Napster is basically a system of free and shared distribution. It is the communist dream. The bourgeois state stepped in to protect capitalist businesses from this mode of distribution. The copyright laws used to justify this intervention are an exclusively political method employed by capitalists to hold onto the means of production. Intellectual property laws are designed to restructure economic sectors that don’t make good capitalist sense. That is, any sector where the value of a product is not in the cost of its 14 physical production, but in some other aspect. CDs, for example are only the delivery system of the music. It is the music that contains the real value. These laws also impact other more serious sectors of the economy. Capitalism has a perverted effect on the production and cost of prescription drugs for the same basic reasons. The economic method capitalism uses to counter the entrepreneurial revolution is imitation and buying up of successful bands. The major music industry is always clamoring to create street cred and to find new bands to exploit with promises of quick fame and fortune. I don’t need to use this space to recite the typical “don’t sell out” litany of solutions to this problem. Historically, music has been a cycle of trends. Artists invent a new genre, capitalists buy them out or imitate them, the quality evaporates, the audience rejects that genre, and new artists develop another new genre. As the capitalists lose control of the means of distribution and bands no longer need the record industry to thrive, this cycle will die out, it’s already dying. The Future of the Revolution Communism as a political movement is dead. Attempts to change the capitalist economic system into a communist system through politics have failed. A new movement is rising. This movement proceeds to tear down the assumptions of capitalist economics and replaces capitalism at its roots. The DIY and indie rock ethics are more than an aesthetic or a trend. They create the economic structure of a new society, rising out of the contradictions of the capitalist economy and the hypocrisy of liberalism’s failure to achieve its ideals in any material reality. The hopes of progressive change cannot be realized within a social structure born out of capitalist economics. The artistic achievements of independents flounder within a wash of banality produced by corporate capitalism. Indie rock and progressive politics are fighting the 15 same foe. They hack futile against capitalism’s walls from two sides. When the material forces of DIY economics are joined with consciousness of their progressive role obsolete capitalism will be replaced with a new world rising from the underground. 16 Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. Indianapolis:Hackett, 1980. Lenin, V.I. State and Revolution. London: Penguin,1992. Marx, Karl. Capital 1. London: Penguin, 1976.\ Marx, Karl. Wage-labor and Capital. New York: International, 1933. McLellan, David. Karl Marx: Selected Writings. Oxford: University Press, 1977. 17