Workers' Liberty

Martina,

This article by Greg Wilpert of Venezuelanalysis on the extension of co-operatives, and other forms of non-private capitalist enterprises is interesting, particularly this section:

"Taking each of the three elements of capitalism one at a time, one can first focus on the ways in which the Chavez government’s policies affect or transform the ownership of the relations of material (as opposed to intellectual) production. While the vast majority of Venezuela’s productive capacity is still either owned privately or by the state, one of the government’s main areas of emphasis has been to expand non-private forms of ownership and control, such as via cooperatives, co-management, and expanded state management/ownership.

Social Production Enterprises are, “economic entities dedicated to the production of goods or services in which work has its own meaning, without social discrimination nor privileges associated with one’s position in a hierarchy, in which there is substantive equality between its members, planning is participatory and operate under either state, collective, or mixed ownership.”[4] In order to qualify as an EPS and thus for preferential treatment for low-interest credits and state contracts, companies must fulfill a list of requirements, such as to, “privilege the values of solidarity, cooperation, complementarity, reciprocity, equity, and sustainability, ahead of the value of profitability.”[5] If these values are indeed fulfilled, then one can say that with regard to ownership and control over the means of production Venezuela is moving away from capitalism and towards 21st century socialism."

Greg Wilpert

Full Article Here

The Meaning of 21st Century Socialism in Venezuela

Arthur Bough

I think you should also read it in conjunction with this:

Trotsky on Mexico's Second Six Year Plan

Trotsky argued that there were different types of Bonapartist regime. Some of these Bonapartist regimes were progressive, they represented capitalism in a dynamic phase of development. They were the means by which a country without a native bourgeoisie, or with a very weak one was able to respond to the need to industrially develop, and accumulate Capital. Other forms of Bonapartism reflected a degeneration of a developed capitalism, a stage of development where the working class had grown to be able to challenge for state power, but had not accomplished it, where the balance of class forces meant that the bourgeoisie could not rule by the normal method of bouregoisie democracy,a nd where it was therefore forced to accept a more independent role for the state. Of the former kind was that of Bismarck in Germany, and of many former colonial or semi colonial states. Of the latter - though Trotsky argued that fascism was a particular form of Bonapartism - was Nazi Germany.

In the former camp came Mexico in the 1930's. In this piece Trotsky argues that what was being developed in Mexico was state capitalism. Marxists from the time of Marx and Engels on have believed that even state capitalism is progressive, even though not clearly socialism. Marxists defend state capitalism because it is historically progressive - even though in application it can be even more oppressive to workers than private capitalism. In this piece Trotsky, therefore, whilst clearly making the argument that what was being developed was not socialism, and that it was necessary for the working class to push through those limitations, to rely on its own organisation etc. sets out how even those limited transformations of state capitalism could best be achieved by the Cardenas Government. The similarities with developments in Venezuela are clear if you look at Wilpert's article. What is significant in Trotsky's approach, therefore, is the way in which he combines clear support for the progressive measures being undertaken, recognises the historical and objective limitations that such a society has to overcome within the real world, advocates the best way in which those can be overcome through the acceptance of the need for compromises such as the payment of compensation for firms nationalised, the need to establish joint ventures with capitalist businesses etc - all positions which Ultra-Left Communists criticise - and at the same time uses this as the basis for arguing the need within this process for socialists to mobilise the working class to push through those changes where possible.

Arthur Bough

I suppose the obvious question would be, what about without the oil? To look at Mexico, 1930 (and nowadays) against a (hypothetical) Venezuela without a highly sort after commodity, would there be much difference? We'll probably never know, so I think the more interesting question would be, what about after the oil (or Chavez) has gone? Would the Veneuelian's revert back to a society more akin to Mexico's under the pressure of capitalism, or continue on a more socialist path? From what I've read these co-operatives and social programes have the potentional of revolutionizing the entire society, although I still have a few doubts.

Firstly, I'm not too good at maths, but if there are 1.5 million Venezuelans in 100,000 co-operatives that would make the average of 15 members to a co-op. How much control do they actually have considering the size and number of the groups?

Secondly, the oil.

Lastly, is it possible for this style of socialism to cross its' own borders? The oil seems to me the leverage against the capitalist, something other Latin American countries don't have. Have these countries tried to introduce any of the same reforms and was there any capitalist backlash?

Overall the situation in Venezuela seems to have alot of potential, but how far can capital be pushed, how long can they live off the oil and can a similar system be replicated in other countries less equiped to deal with the global market?

Firstly, I want to mnake it absolutely clear that I do not beleive that what exists in Venezuela is socialism. What is being developed at the level of the nationalised industries is state capitalism, and that is why I referenced the links to Trotsky's comments on Mexico. Nor are co-operatives of themselves socialist as Marx's comments make clear. What workers co-operatives are as Marx makes clear is a transitional form - one which continues to oeprate as a capitalist enterprise, but now owned by workers, that in Marx's words removes within it he contradiction between Capital and Labour by making each worker a capitalist.

The nationalised industries themselves,the co-managed enterprises themselves etc. CAN also be similarly transitional forms. In the early 1920's when Lenin was trying to recruit foreign capitalist enterprises to establish businesses in Russia, he described the economy they were creating as state capitalist with bureuacratic deformations. The economy as a whole continued to operate largely through the mechanism of the market particularly as a result of NEP, private capital where it could be brought in from outside - which unfortuinately Lenin did not have the success in achieving he hoped for - and from domestic sources continued to exploit Labour. But it did so within the confines of the controls imposed by a deformed workers state - and even Lenin accepts that the workers state was deformed even then. At the same time Lenin refers to the other types of enterprises within Russia, the wholly nationlaised enterprises, the co-operatives, and collectives as enterprises "of a socialist type". The phrase is intended to distinguish them clealry from the idea that such enterprises could be themselves socialist. To be socuialist would require a wholesale transformation of the whole of the society.

But Lenin makes clear in many of his writings that the transfoprmation to socialism is likely to take many different forms. He lambasts the ultra-Left communists in Left Wing Communism for not recognising this, for not recognising the need for socialism to develop through many different stages, during which time there will have to be all sorts of compromises made with capitalism. That is the basis of Trotsky's arguments in relation to Mexico. Nationalisation is not socialism, but the measures being undertaken the cration of state capitalism were progressive, they represented one of these intermediary stages that Lenin describes in Left Wing Communism, and open up the possibility for the working class to push through their limited nature, provided the working class relies on its own organisation.

That was the point I was trying to make here in relation to the co-operativs in Venezuela. Yes you are absolutely right, the existence of the oil in a world economy of high oil prices gives the Venezuelan government, not only wiggle room in its manouvres with international capital, but also provides resources for implementing policies that other state capitalist regimes have not been able to attempt. Yes you are absolutely right that the average size of co-operatives - though it would be interesting to see what range this average masks - is a limiting factor.

But the wide range, and number of co-operatives does open up significant possibilities under such conditions, given the favourable treatment given to them in state purchasing contracts etc. which worker and peasant co-operatives have rarely had in the past. But Trotsky's argument still holds. Socialism cannot simply evolve out of the existence of these co-operatives. It is necessary for them to integrate their operations with the communitires in which they are based as the Xanon co-operative in Argentina has done. It is necessary for all these co-operatives themselves to organise and co-ordinate their activities, probably to merge in some cases in order to increase their economic power. It is also necessary that the workers in these co-operatives be tied to a Workers Party that assists them, and educates them, and that the workers in these co-operatives link their activities to those of other workers engaged in class struggle.

It is those potentials - the increased social weight of the workers through ownership of the means of production, the possibility in practice to ceate the elements of an alternative socialist economy through the development of co-operation and planning between co-operatives on a free and voluntary democratic basis without direction from above, the immense potential for the development of class conscioussness by seeing the possibility of this alternative society unfolding, and the potential for solidarity with other workers in struggle - which I would point to as the revolutionary nature of such developments, not the role of the state, which remains a bourgeois state - albeit one in conflict at the moment with a left leaning governement {its necessary to recognise the difference between the state and the Government or you cannot understand anything that transpires within a bourgeois democracy}, and against which the workers involved in these co-operatives or otherwise must continue to struggle.

Arthur Bough

I might be getting confused so tell me if I get this wrong. The most successful/surviving within the ranks of the capitalist is he who puts back what he earns, money to make money. I think you said something like, that in comparrison to what the capitalist could live like if he used the money for himself, he too is suffering. My point is for any enterprize, industry or business to survive it has to continually re-invest the capital it generates. In reality one capitalist could (and does) live off a slim slice of the capital, but in terms of a co-operative there are even more "mouths to feed", interests to look after, in essence the capitalist has been multiplied (though not the same grandour). Even if co-ops are more productive, it would have to be a substantial increase in this productivity to be able to compete against the individual capitalist on the "free market". This is partly why I disagree with Trotskyi and yourself that co-operatives are a transitoinal stage of development. Against capital, and even with the aid of nationaliation, co-operatives seem weak.

The future is not set in stone. The HISTORICAL dialectics of Marx is good only for HISTORY. Anything from what IS, NOW (let's not get into that again!!!) is only a prediction. For all we know there maybe 101 levels of capitalist forms we have to "push through". Society may stagnate, even reversing in terms of knowledge and technology. We may co-operatize (new word) the Earth and watch it fall back some short time in the future into a capitalist slump, or worse. We may never "socialize" atall. Agreed, historical materialism can predict with some degree of accuracy general rules and formulas of future human development, but it will never be a crystal ball.

In regards to nationalisation, how many times have we seen a company or industry yo-yo between state and capitalist? Will co-operatives be much different if they too become profitable and tempting?

Martina,

1. The issue in relation to Capital is not the portion of Surplus Value, which goes to unproductive consumption. Ultimately, that portion is restricted by the amount of Surplus Value that the capitalist needs to re-invest - accumulate - in order to remain comptetitive. This is what is wrong with the AWL's statement that capitalism is all about the development of "wealth", it isn't its about the necessity for Capital accumulation.

What is different about a workers co-operative compared to a private capitalist firm is a number of things. First, as Marx presented in Capital, and as Connolly shows in the piece above Workers Co-operatives tend to be more efficient in the way in which they use fixed Capital. Secondly, although the portion of Suplus Value paid out to private capitalists for unproductive consumption i.e. in dividends, is not significant compared to that accumultaed, it still represents a sum of money which could be used for further accumulation, or for expansion i.e. to extend the number of co-operatives, or could be used to raise even if only marginally workers wages and conditions, or could be used say as a fighting fund to support other workers in struggle. In other words where these funds currently go to finance the extravagant lifestyle of capitalists they could be used to increase the power of the working class.

Now, you are right that taken individually workers do not have the same Capital resources as large individual capitalists. In fact, even taken together the collective wealth of workers, imncluding their pension funds, does not equal the Wealth of the feww thousand top capitalists - as I've said before Bill Gates has as much wealth as the bottom 40% of the US population combined. Yet, collectively, workers still do own a considerable amount of Capital. Unfortunately, because their own aliquot partr of this Capital is small, and because they have no direct control over that Capital - because it is in Pension Funds controlled by professional Management Companies, or in PEP's and ISA's where the investment decisions are taken by Fund Managers, or is held in various types of Savings Accounts, where it is the Bank or other Financial Institution which disposes of the money - it does not act as Capital for them, but is used as Capital by those that do control its allocation.

I calculated recently that the Funds in all of the various Private and Company Pension Funds are large enough to buy 100% stakes in at least the bottom 50 of the FTSE 100 largest companies in Britain. That does not include the money nominally stored as Capital by the State to pay State Pensions - which given the way in which the State plays about with workers pensions would almost certainly be better under the direct control of workers rather than the Capitalist state.

This is not chiecken feed. This is a substantial chunk of important Capital were it mobilised directly to give workers ownership of those companies. In reality the leverage is much greater than that ebcause in practice you only need to have around 30% ownership of a companies share Capital to have effective control of the Company. Having gained control of that company, the whole of its Capital can then be used to carry through leveraged buyouts of other smaller companies, and the same thing can then be repeated using the Capital on their Balance Sheets.

This it seems to me is not the problem. Or at least there is certainly a problem that would be encountered in simply winning the basic democratic right for workers to have control over their own money in these pension funds, but having achieved that the Capital available would certainly mean that some very important, strategic - and profitable - companies could become worker co-operatives well capable of competing against private capital. What is the problem is combining that with the necessary politics.

Capitalism as an ideology, culture etc. reproduces itself automatically because of the very working of the system. There would be no point in establishing such worker co-operatives if they simply operated as private capitalist companies, just owned by workers. To an extent that has to be the case in that they have to operate as commercial concerns etc. in the same way as a private capitalist cocnern or else they will not compete, but they have to be more than just that. The workers in those co-operatives have to themselves udnerstand what they represent, and have to be able to go beyond the lessons of co-operation fostered within that enterprise, to extending those lessons outside, in terms of linking up with other co-operatives, with the community and so on. In short it requires a level of class conscioussness, and it requires a Workers Party to engender that class conscioussness, to codify the lessons, and to organise its extension, and political representation. At the moment no such Party exists - well the Co-op party exists, but its philosophy is totally reformist, and limited. Only a Workers Party that was being educated by a sizeable number of Marxists is capable of fulfilling that task.

You are right the working class may never organise socuialism, the future gives no guarantees. In fact, we have a golden opportunity at the moment. The Capital held by workers in these Pension Funds, and the other assets workers have built up since the Second World War - for example home ownership - may well be a temporary phenomena that disappears in the next 20-30 years as Western workers find their living standards stagnating in competition with workers in developing countries in Asia, and eastern Europe. At the same time the world economy is just at the beginning of a 25 year long wave expansion during which time wages tend to rise. If workers in thre west are to utilise the unique situation they are in to mobilise their resources to establish such co-operatives on a substantial and sustainable scale, now is the time to do it.

As far as nationalisation is concerned, I think I have made my point several times. Marxists do not defend nationalised industry because we beleive it is in some sense "better" than or morally superior to private capitalist industry. Often it isn't. Consumers have received far better services from privatised telecoms, gas, and electricity companies - probably not water. The recent rail crash demonstrated that it was the privately owned Virgin train which performed well reflecting the Capital invested in decent rolling stock, whereas it was the nationalised Network Rail that had botched the maintenance work on the track. The standard of care in private hospitals even for NHS patients is usually better than is provided in NHS hospitals, and so on. Bosses in nationalised industries, and National and Local Government are often just as bad or worse than their private couterparts when it comes to the way they treat their workers. No it is for none of those reasons that Marxists defend state capitalist property. The reason is because such property is historically progressive - the same reason Trotsky had for defending the Soviet Union against imperialist attack. But to simply state that would be facile. We argue that case, and make the necessary defence, only to push through its limited nature, and we push through it by way of the defence, by way of pointing to its limited and contradictory nature, by arguing the need to replace its bureuacratic control with democratic workers control.

Arthur Bough

I'm interested to know what your position on trade unions are in relation to the co-operative movement.

On an unrelated note...

AWL printed an article about Tesco(http://www.workersliberty.org/node/view/4171) in which it said each Tesco worker makes the company £95,000. I'm not disputing the number (it's probably alot higher) but how was it worked out? Was it simply net profit divided by no. of workers or are there other factors I'm missing? If its' correct the average Tesco worker would only have to work 5 and a half hours to earn thier weekly wage, the other 31 and a half goes to the company. I think it works out an 18/82% split. If you have any idea or even any links it would be appreciated.

Workers even in a workers co-operative should still belong to a Trade UNion, and exercise Trade Union rights for a number of reasons. Firstly, the Co-operative has to be integrated into the wider class struggle, and TRade UNions are the basic organisational form of that struggle. It provides a direct link with other workers. Secondly,and esp[ecially on an individual level weotrkers might have grievances against the employer, even though that employer includes themselves. The individual workers must retain the right to defend their own interests against the collective, jst as within any democratic society an individual retains their own individual rights to be defended against oppression, or unfairness by the society as a whole.

On TESCO, I recall the figures from a while back. To be honest if I recal corectly I thought there was something a buit iffy about the economics/accountancy involved, but couldn't be arsed to look into it further. You would have to ask the AWL for the basis of the figures.

Arthur Bough

This isn't really to do with co-ops (well maybe in some way) but I've got a question that I can't seem to find any info on, how is the value of the land itself calculated? Did Marx ever write about this, I've scanned Capital but not come up with much, I was wondering if you knew

I think it is undeniable that co-operatives are part of the solution. Participating in a co-op opens your eyes to just how easy it is to be a worker, a manager, an administrator and a decision maker. A co-op should also educate its members about participatory democracy (respectful debate and discussion) in a day to day way that traditional politics has no interest in doing.

Mr Bough says it could take decades to learn the skills that necessitated Bureaucrats taking over previous revolutions and I guess in the instance of the Russian experience many of the participants may have been illiterate and innumerate but even so I’d put the time frame at years rather than decades.

Now we touch on the reason I left the AWL. Bureaucrats form a class in society, in a very Marxist sense of the word. A Bureaucratised revolution is a revolution of the Bureaucratic class (indeed Marx called Russia Bureaucratic Feudal following Mr Bough’s point that the revolutionary class gradually builds its mode of production within the old before the contradiction is resolved by violent revolution).

We also touch on what is wrong with most co-ops (where I went after being an AWL activist). So far no mention has been made of the two types of co-op. There are worker’s co-ops and consumer co-ops. In a worker’s co-op the body politic is the employees. In a consumer co-op the service users have the votes.

I have very little experience of worker’s co-ops, large examples are usually only formed when a capitalist venture fails but many small examples exist where friends get together to make a company.

Consumer co-ops seem to become less ‘co-op like’ the larger they get. The monolithic Co-op (bank, supermarket, farms, funerals etc.) as has been said before resembles Stalinist organisation more than socialist, it is a poor employer and poorer service provider. Housing co-ops limit the franchise to people who live there and are more likely to have a political life but many large organisations are called housing co-ops when they really have only the most limited input from tenants.

Now here I could go on about co-op theory, the maximum size of a co-op, the number of simultaneous human interrelations possible, organisational work arounds and trail off into a blue print for building socialism out of a strong co-op movement but I really haven’t got anything worthwhile to say about it and I’m not convinced that it would have any meaning.

Everything here that can be said about co-ops can also be said about trades unions. Trades unions are also great places for workers to learn the skills they will need to take over the world (better than consumer co-ops) and they are stuffed up with Bureaucrats.

In a totally separate discussion here on Page 2 starting with the post "A Willing Anarchist (unfortunately I couldn't get a direct link to work to the post) I give some interesting quotes from Marx taken from his "Critique of the Gotha Programme".

Marx not only outlines why socialists should not advise workers to make pleas to the bourgeois state for aid - because a) it sows illusions in the bouregois state as being likely to respond, b) because as Marx points out "Right" can only extend to what the given level of economic development can allow, and c) it merely emphasises the servile nature of the working class and its dependence on the ruling class whereas the job of socialists is to raise the working class off its knees, and demonstrate in practice to it that is is capable of running society itself. He also points out in this respect precisely why it is that co-operatives are progressive, precisely he says because they are the creations of the working class independent from the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeois state - a state which rather than making appeals to, strengthening by enlarging its sphere of influence, it is the job of socialists to undermine, to restrict, and ultimately to smash.

Marxists of today would do well to study the Critique carefully. It is a refreshing antidote to the infection of statism and petit-bouregois socialism which infects the movement. But they would do well also to take account of Marx's other comment in relation to the fusion of the German socialist forces that brought about the Gotha Programme, that one step forward of real movement is worth a dozen Programmes, and his comments along with Engels in the Communist Manifesto that the Communists do not form a separate Party to the other Workers Parties, not to mention Engels elaboration of that point at the end of his life to the American socialists telling them to live up to that advice, and build selflessly the Workers Party on no matter how inadequate a Programme to begin with.

Arthur Bough

The commune in Ralahine survived only because the owner was able to live off the surplus production of the worker. To me this paticular commune seems to be a front for another capitalist venture, in which we find (accordingly) the same tricks used to enslave the masses (albeit a small mass). What is different (and the reason I believe you have some faith in this society) is the peasantary element. The workers "owned" the means of production. But this was just an illusion, for how long would they own production if they failed thier payments to the land owner? Not too long I should think, when the same land could be used for capital rather than a failing social experiment. And this was all to proven when the land owner fell into debt and had to sell up. Which ever way you look at the situation freedom to live only existed as long as one mans capital could be sustained, capitalism. Once that had gone, the commune quickly disappeared.
In my personal opinion communism, co-ops and even unions cannot be achieved until capitalism/business is removed from all areas of goverment. Only when we have unity between all people can we start to prioritise the needs of society, and that will happen only when we hit rock bottom. Pockets of "utopia," although proof of communism in the practise of its members, has no comparison with true communism as its very definition requires all members of society to play an equal part, that land owner did not, and neither will any other.

I'm afraid you have misrepresented what I said, and your cocnlusion simply makes socialism impossible short of the very unlikely scenario that workers in every country in the world simultaneously organise a revolution.

Firstly, I did not say that the transition had to be gradual. I said that the potential exists for workers to take control of some aspects of their lives here and now within capitalism. That is what every other revolutionary class has done throughout history. It is also what Marx sets out as his view of the basis of socialist transformation above. But the final denouement would be anything but gradual. There will come a point in the process where the capitalists realise that the process is unstoppable within the confines of the normal operation of the political economy. The skirmishes that will have taken place up to that point with the capitalists trying to erect road blocks in the path of the extension of co-operatives of all kind, and the extension of workers control will just be insignificant to their relaisation that their whole system and political domination is coming to an end. They will organise armed counter-revolution to prevent it. The job of Marxists during all of this process is to warn and preapre the workers for that inevitability. And at the first signs of it the workers will need to be prepared to put down this slaveholders revolt. That will be the political revolution that installs the Dictatorship of the proletariat and sets the basis for the progress to socialism.

In fact such a society will be far more threatening to other capitalist powers than was the Soviet Union, for the simple reason that it will already be economically developed and strong. In place of the need for harsh repressive measures the workers democracy that will have built up as part of the whole process will act as a shining example for workers of all other countries, and instill in them the vision of a better future, and reason to take on their own capitalists. Indeed I find it impossible to conceive in the modern world that the model I propose should not develop throughout Europe even though at varying paces from country to country, rather than being limited to such a development in one single country.

And the fact is that you are wrong about the developed capitalist states being the last place that such co-operatives would exist. There are still a few small worker co-operatives that have survived in Britain, and as I pointed out the Co-op itself has survived and grown over thelast 150 years or so. In Europe co-operatives are even more common, particularly agricultural co-ops amongst small farmers and peasants.

Finally, your comment that a capitalist power would nuke any such socialist state, actually seems not to be born out by history. Whatever threats were made to nuke China or Vietnam the fact is the US did not even though it came close to losing the Korean War, and actually did lose the Vietnam war. In both of those cases the argument would have been that the US was fighting an expansionist totalitarian regime that was invading a neighbour even though in both cases it was a matter of the North invading the South. Even then the main reason they did not use nukes was because of the reaction such an action would have had in terms of its own population and the effect on its standing in the world. It would have become a pariah state, and its own population would have been extremely radicalised in the process.

In 1918 the US and Britain and other imperialist armies occupied parts of the Soviet Union in order to assist the White Armies. The Soviet Government and other Marxists since have always overstated the degree of that intervention. It was always half-hearted and limited, and one of the reasons was that despite the violent nature of the revolution the workers of the world generally had sympathy for it, and took action to limit the actions of their own governments.

Imagine a democratic, peaceful workers state, where the only violence had been that taken by a duly elected workers government backed up by democratically accountable workers militia that put down an illegal attempt at an armed revolt by capitalists. How on earth could any capitalist state justify to its own people taking action against such a state let alone nuking it, and especially as over the years the workers of that country had themselves been driven on by the example of their fellow workers in other countries, and were marhing down the same road themselves. Were a capitalist state to take such action under those conditions it would simply bring its own demise at the hands of its own workers that much closer. But were your argument corect then it means that socialsm is impossible because however it was created a capitalist power with nukes somehwere would nuke it.

Arthur Bough

I did say gradual, but in context, I also said revolution in context. I am a Marxist I beleive in dialectics. That emans that quantity at a certain point is transformed into quality. It means no evolution without revolution and no revolution without evolution it means rapid spurts of activity are the culmination of a slower more gradual build up - just like sex, or like babies don't go through the violent revolution of birth without first going through 9 months of gradual development until they are ready to be born, and similarly the 9 months of gradual development has to be concluded in a final violent transformation.

Yes of course co-operatives are in a minority. Where did I say that such a development was automatic. History is a process driven by material conditions, but it is also human history, it requires real living human beings to take decisions and act upon them. The fact that co-operatives offer the form by which the future society can be created within the midst of capitalism in no way means that co-operatives arise spontaneously it requires real human beings to decide to create them. The combination of the male sperm and the female ovum creates the basis for the formation of a new life, but if a man and a woman don't decide to have sex and bring them together it remains merely a potential not a reality. Unless socialists decide to create and develop co-operatives, and the various other forms of co-operative organisation within their own communities that provide the potential for repalcing the reliance on the bourgeois state, they too will remain merely the potential for a new life, a new type of society, but one left unfulfilled.

As far as countries like the US and UK becoming societies where the rich are a majority and the working class a minority or these states leaching off poorer states the facts are conclusively against you. For the first time in history the working class is now globally the largest class even bigger than the peasantry. In countries like Britain and the US that fact is even more not less pronounced. A much larger percentage of the population in Britain now is made up of the working class then it was in Marx's day, not less. And as marx predicted it would wealth has become even more concentrated than it was in his time. Look at the US. To get into the top 1% of the richest people you need $3 million around £1.5 million. A lot if you are poor but relatively speaking not a huge amount. By comparison Bill gates alone has as much wealth as the bottom 40% of the population. In other words even the people in the top 1% are paupers compared to that increasingly small percentage that own and control the wealth.

And Marx pointed out that the logic of capitalism was to spread itself throughout the world. Whilst he deplored the methods it used to do so, he thought that this was progressive, because in doing so it created working classes in other countries, and enabled them to undergo the kind of technological and economic development that Britain had seen. Was he right, absolutely. Yes for a time, the rich capitalist countries leached off the colonies, but those colonies obtained independence a long time ago, and have in many cases developed rapidly. Look at Ireland which is now richer than Britain, look at China which has overtaken britain as the fourth largest economy in the world, look at India which is not far behind and catching up even faster, or Korea, or Malaysia, or Singapore and so on.

As far as nuclear weapons I think I've already made my point. The attack on Japan was in the context of an ongoing war etc. Even then just look at the approbrium that has brought on the US ever since.

The working class are not going to rise up spontaneously to directly expropriate the oppressors. If as you say you can't persuadde trhem to join Trade Unions, create co-operatives or take other less drastic politcal actions how on earth do you expect them to make a massive leap into becoming Bolshevik revolutionaries. And if some party carries through such a revolution on heir behalf we know the outcome of that experiment. Its one we don't want to repeat.

Arthur Bough

I agree that revelution is un-achievable without the participation of the working class, but it seems we differ in opinion on concerns to what constitutes participation. Your view is that it requires the majority of workers to understand the injustices of the present system and to act accordingly when they have suffient power/strength to take on the capitalist class "head on". This to me is global suicide for reasons I have already stated. Your gradual solution will only give the capitalists more time to formulate stratergies and distractions. Of course bloody revolution isn't the only alternative, but it is one we must at least consider if only to be objective. The fact that the Bolsheviks failed to implemant lasting Marxist change only proves that it could not work under those specific conditions. That is not to say it could not happen again, like every child, every revelution is different while sharing the same foundations. (everybody is different but still human). Again, obviously nobody is going to follow something they do not understand or haven't been told about, I am not saying we keep anybody in the dark or relent in revealing to the working classes the trappings and pitfalls of the present system. What I am saying though is the more gradual the capitalist' loose thier grip the worse the violence, cruelty and desperation, and as you say, when people are down trodden or cowed they tend to stay that way, trapped in a cycle of capitalist reactionism in response to a POTENTIAL revelution which may never happen.

I will conceed that at present the working class are the majority, but there is a big difference between the working class of the U.K in comparrison to that of a "third World" country. Undeniably we have better conditions of work and living, are paid more and have alot less political restrictions (at present). And this is why revelution must have a certian nessecity in relation to Capitalist states. The more "false" freedoms people gain within the system (by the knowing or unknowing extortion of others) the less likely they are to give it up. Unfortunetly your counter argument will not help them either since the down trodden are also less likely to turn the wheels of change.

I take more of a socratic/skeptic view in regards to philosophy, which incedently brought me to communism, but through a different route than DM, which is where I think our views on socialism split. You fight for your rights and the rights of your society, I fight for my rights alone, but understand that without a society there would be no rights. This may sound idealistic and possibly selfish (almost capitalistic) but I believe this is what communism lacks, a selfishness.

If we should teach anybody anything it should start with philosophy. Why? Because what is philosophy but the thinking persons morality? And if we get that wrong what chance has the future in correcting thier mistakes if the ethics behind thier desicions are already fundementaly flawed?

The simple fact is there must be a revelution in the mind of the individual before there can be one outside of him/her, and this internal fight can only be won by the individuals nessecity to change, for is not all change nessecary in relation to what actions arose before?

M. Daycoi

In one of his earlier more important economic writings Lenin also, sets out the superiority of large-scale co-operative, collective production over large scale capitalist production, even within the confines of a capitalist economy.

“It goes without saying that Kautsky very emphatically maintains that communal, collective large-scale production is superior to capitalist large scale production. He deals with the experiments in collective farming made in England by the followers of Robert Owen* and with analogous communes in the United States of North America. All these experiments, says Kautsky, irrefutably prove that it is quite possible for workers to carry on large-scale modern farming collectively, but that for this possibility to become a reality "a number of definite economic, political, and intellectual conditions" are necessary. The transition of the small producer (both artisan and peasant) to collective production is hindered by the extremely low development of solidarity and discipline, the isolation, and the "property-owner fanaticism," noted not only among West-European peasants, but, let us add,

Lenin Capitalism in Agriculture

Capitalism in Agriculture

The point that Lenin makes here is important that the condition is the absence of “extremely low development of solidarity and discipline, the isolation, and the "property-owner fanaticism,"” It was that which made the development of the co-operative at Ralahine (see original post above), the co-operatives in Lancashire set out as examples by Marx, and the various other co-operative ventures established by Owen – and also less well known by the Chartists – successful. By the same token it was the absence of all those factors in Russia after the Revolution which meant that collective production both industrial and agricultural did not take root within the consciousness of the working class – largely made up of peasants that had recently moved to the towns and cities, and even more within the peasantry, and which led instead to the need for Managers etc. which itself led to bureaucratisation of the economy.

But it is precisely the same factors which unless the concept of co-operation has become embedded in the consciousness of the working class through a period of prolonged worker co-operative production will result in the same bureaucratisation of any nationalised, planned economy established through a Leninist political revolution as opposed to developing as a social revolution organically through the direct conscious activity of the working class to take back itself the means of production, and own and control them.

Arthur Bough

So what? You have not proved a sucsessful method of intergrating these co-operatives into a capitalist system for a sustained period. All you are saying in the above post is that communism is more advantageous to humanity than capitalism. I'd hope we would have established that by now. I stand firm to my objections.

1. That taking control of pockets of society, even such things as T.A's can only go on for so long until those in power cannot afford to loose any more, and so resort to any means nessecary to secure thier own survival. Technically pitting the workers against each other.

2. That human greed (instinct) is a bigger factor than you assume. Wealth distribution among select groups of working class will subdue those who would have the means of revelutionizing this society. You must have heard the common misconception, "help this country before we help the others". The red nose "charity" now makes sure it is known that more money goes to those starving in the U.K than those starving in the "far away lands". Imagine then an England (or any country) full of rich citizens. Feed the poor or feed your face and get obese while cruising in your V8 destroying the ozone. We haven't even got the money yet, but we're already playing the part. Property-owner fanatisism. Its all well to say that it exists but how can it be changed? I see no answers from you, only observations.

3. You contradict the theory of capital. If wealth concentrates, labour gets more divided and "civil liberties" become ever diminished, then co-operatives and even unions are headed for extinction before they have had a chance to develop into thier full potential. Solidarity will be a thing of the past and the solitary worker will have to fight the system alone.

Right now we follow the philosophy of fast living, no responsibility of consequences. What we need is a philosophy of understanding. Far from merely observing, understanding in itself has the power to change life, even the world. But change (contrary to your belief) must come from the individual. He or she may be defined by society, but one thing they are not is society itself. They are "I". The idea of truth is universal, even if the experience is only relative. "I" is what connects us all. "I" is what Marx adapted from Hegels' idealism. And from this "I", "US", not vice-versa.

If a tree falls in the woods and you don't exist, do you know what a tree is? Think about it

Martina,

You say I have not proved a successful means of integrating these co-operatives into capitalism over a sustainable period. Absolutely, I haven't. Nor would I want to! To try to demonstrate that the strategy was to "integrate" workers co-operatives into capitalism over a long period of time, would be to signify a collapse into "utopianism" and reformism. The very opposite is what I am seeking to achieve.

Marx objected to the "Little Icara" as utopian, not because he beleived that co-operatives per se were utopian - the comment I have given from him above, and the one from Lenin, not to mention the other analysis of Lancashire textile co-operatives that Marx gives in Capital show the exact opposite to be the case. Nor in fact did Marx beleive that Owen's conception was utopian - he makes clear that it was the followers of Owen that turned it into a utopian schema. His objection his characterisation of utopianism was based precisely on the basis of the idea that socialism could be created as a result of ISOLATED communist enclaves each being self sufficient. In other words that there was no need for CLASS STRUGGLE. Owen's own perspective was quite obviously different, which is why for example he actively supported strikes, and attempted to establish the Grand Consolidated Trade Union. Owen recognised the need for class struggle and recognised that such struggle as long as it was confined to an economic struggle was limited. It was necessary not only to engage in that economic struggle, but also to engage in a wider class struggle, including a political struggle, but that the position of workers within that class struggle would always be disadvantageous as long as they could only sell their labour power. The establishment of workers co-operatives changes that relationship of class forces, it provides workers with another facet of the class struggle, the potential to own Capital, and to withdraw parts of daily life from the control of Capital, to put it under direct workers conscious control. In doing so it transforms workers class conscioussness in a way that economic struggle never can, and in a way that political struggle only achieves very periodically. It is as Lenin hints at following Kautsky, precisely the training ground that the working class requires prior to the socialist revolution to enable workers to gain the skills required in running their own businesses. And of course it was the absence of that in 1917 and thereafter - and the same will be true of any otrher similar political revolution - which meant that workers continued after some initial enthusiasm and fervour - to continue their lives as they had done before, coming in to work doing their job, taking their pay cheque and going home to get on with their lives. It is precisely what leads to the need for professional managers, and the bureuacratism which leads to the working class losing political control. Learning those skills probably takes decades, and no revolution would stay healthy that long. The working class must learn those skills be used to and confident in its ability to control its own life long before that political revolution occurs.

But as the experience of Argentina shows the development of workers co-operatives, if it is part of a conscious program worked out by the Workers Party, do not stand on their own, the perspective is not to integrate into capitalism, but to be a weapon in the arsenal of the working class, a bridgehead from which to launch further attacks. But it has to be consciously worked out. Such co-operatives cannot be simply what has often been seen in the past in Britain, futile attempts to save a few jobs in a dying industry or company. They have to be in those areas of life fundamental to the working class - their homes and estates, their health provision, the provision of energy and utilities, the provision of transport and communications. Nor can they be entered into light mindedly and with insufficient capital, which would mean they would be unable to compete against larger private capitalist enterprises, which is why it is necessary to gain control of, and mobilise the huge funds available in workers pension funds. Nor can they be entered into as some kind of exercise in political correctness such as happened with the News on Sunday, as Marx outlined they have to operate as capitalist enterprises, but owned by workers, and have to be operated according to the same commercial criteria. The difference is that where private capitalist enterprises by their very existence and operation reproduce capitalism, workers co-operatives, even operating on a commercial basis will also strengthen the position of workers. Instead of profits going to private capitalist they go to workers, some into higher wages, putting pressure on wages in the private sector, some going into investment - and it was in the sphere of the use of fixed Capital that both Marx and Connolly demonstrated that co-operatives were far more efficient - some going to support other workers in struggle, and some going into funds for the purchase of other private enterprises etc. to be also turned into co-operatives.

No the purpose is not to integrate into capitalism, but to be a lever in the hands of workers against it, and the necessary tool that allows workers to eductae and train themselves in the techniques they will require from day one in constructing socialism.

And yes, you are absolutely correct there comes a point when the bouregoisie seeing their social power undermined will recognise that their political power must fall too. That was preciely what dawned on the feudal class at the stage when they too realised that the change in economic relations in favour of capitalist ownership was undermining their social power, and their political power. Like the feudal aristocracy the bourgeoisie will then try to use any means possible to slow down and reverse that process. They will first use legal means, the use of the courts to oppose monopolistic and uncompetittive practices as workers co-operatives collaborate and integrate their plans. They will use political means to pass laws limiting the sphere of operation and so on. But a working class increasingly powerful, and led by a Workers Party that draws out the lessons of what is being achieved has the great advantage of all previous revolutionary classes of being by far the biggest class in society. The bourgeoisie was a small minority, and had to rely on the peasantry and emerging working class to actually fight its battles for it. An increasingly conscious working class will be able to build upon its icnreasing social power, will be able to use its own workers democracy to create the conditions under which its Party can win elections at local and national level, and will feel the weight of that external workers democracy in a way that Workers parties in bouregois Parliaments have never done in the past, and will then also use those political means to further its interests - just as the bourgeoisie did itself.

And because the whole point of establishing workers co-operatives is to ensure that they from the beginning co-ordinate their activities and plans, and that they support and are supported by other workers in struggle, and through the workers in their communities, the potential for the bouregoisie to set worker against worker is considerably reduced.

As for your comments about greed and human nature I do not at all ignore those factors. Quite the opposite. What is described as greed is actually a natural inclination for all human beings to want a decent standard of living. If socialism cannot provide that then there is no point in socialism. The whole point about a workers co-operative is to demonstrate the superiority of co-operative enterprise over competitive private enterprise in achieving that better standard of living for workers. It gives other workers an incentive to strive for the same thing. And yes until such time that society can produce enough to give everyone everything they want, and that everyone is capable of doing any job they want, it will be necessary to pay more for the skills of some people than for others, it will also probably be necessary to use some form of price rationing as well as planning to to allocate the things produced. But the whole process by which workers control this process themselves through a process of developing co-operative enterprises and communities, itself udnermines all of those traits learned under capitalism that you call "human nature", and will replace them with a different human nature based prcisely upon co-operation, and solidairity. Again it is one of the reasons I disagree with the Leninist conception i.e. that change does not occur overnight, a revolution against the ways of the old society does not at all necessarily mean that workers have become imbued with the spirit of the new, or that they can quickly do so.

As for the theory of Capital the theory is the opposite of what you procalim. The concentration of Capital actually means the ever increasing concentration of larger numbers of workers in larger and larger establishment. If anything the danger you set out would arise not from the cocnentration of Capital, but from its fracturing. I have written about this elsewhere in relation to the potential with new technology for workers to be atomised through home working etc as the majority of value is created through intellectual labour. In short the owners of cyber space could become like modern landlords renting out that space, and those working on that space would become independent self-employed peasants paying rent and tribute to those landlords.

As for your last points about understanding etc. I would recommend that you read Marx "The Poverty of Philosophy" where he destroyed that argument 150 years ago. Ideas to not just appear out of the ether. The ideas in men's heads arise out of their experience of the material world, and their relationship to it. Changes in that material world bring about changes in those ideas, and the ideas that become dominant. Individuals cannot change society, society changes individuals.

Arthur Bough

Society is a human concept, it exists only as an idea, a mere notion. It is possible to imagine a human without a society, but a society without humans, no. Does society make the individual? Does the Koran create suicide bombers or rap music make teenagers pick up guns? No. Again, they are ideas, not apart from the individual but not the individual itself. Life is choice, humanity is choice. Negation of an idea is also a choice, and one the means of production cannot touch.

Having read Marxs' Poverty of Philosophy I feel my time may have been better spent re-reading Kapital. In essence they are identical doctrines, although the former is more of a critique. There is, however, an apparent contradition in my view. Perhaps I have mis-understood. If the new (to put it cruedly) "system" out grows the old naturally, then what use is the saying;

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways — the point is to change it".

Will it not change natuarally? Infact what is the point of any of Marxs' work if the means of production are already destined to shape our futures?

Society only exists as a concept!!!! You may as well say a dog only exists as a concept, because its a word given by humans to describe something. Society just as much as a dog is a very real phenomena in the material world that exists whether or not humans have a word for it.

Can you imagine humans without society? Clearly, no you can't as I have demonstrated previously. For one thing without a society comprising at least two other human beings - a man and a woman - no other human beings could come into existence, and of course the reality is that even for such a simple thing as procreation a much larger number of people existing in society is required. Without society there is no individual human being.

Does the Koran make suicide bombers etc. No, but it is one factor alongside, all of the material conditions of oppression, the other ideas discussed and imbibed by individuals that does lead some people to become suicide bombers. Ideas do not simply spring into human minds ready made, they are formed by interaction with the material world. It is no coincidence that the idea to go and steal springs more readily into the mind of the individual that is desperate than it does into the mind of the middle class suburbanite.

Will not the world change naturally? No. History is history made by real human beings. Certain material changes in the way men produce take place naturally - almost behind men's backs. But in order for those changes to be reflected in the way in which Man organises society then deliberate acts are required by real human beings. Man from the beginning has always traded, but for most of his history that trade was peripheral. For most of the time he produced his own requirements, and consumed them directly. But during the Middle Ages trade increased. It was not a conscious decision of Men saying "Let is Trade more." But the result of the increased trade was that some men were able to become rich by being merchants. A "natural" progression for them was instead of simply buying cloth from peasants and selling it at market, they could use their new wealth to pay the peasant a "wage" to produce cloth for them, and for the peasant to spend more time producing cloth. But spending more time producing cloth and less time producing other things meant the peasant had to now buy the things they previously produced. They could do this because they were now paid a money wage from the merchant capitalist. Of itself this process creates a market, as increasingly people specialise in producing certain things and selling them to others who specialise in producing other things, and concomitantly the economy based on direct peasant production declines. No one had the "idea" to bring this about it occurs naturally through its own dynamic.

But this dynamic itself has a logic, a logic which leads the merchants to create manufactories in which the peasants are now brought together as hand craft workers, and this of itself creates savings which create bigger profits. And bringing these workers together leads to the development of the division of labour within the manufactory as well as in society, each worker specialising on an even more limited aspect of production. And that reduces costs and icnreases profits too. And the competition between these duifferent capitalists now to sell their increased production into the market requires they keep costs to a minimum, leads them to restrict their own consumption often to a level even below that of their workers,requires they plough their profits not into their own consumptoin, but into productive investment in order to ensure they remain competitive. None of this is ideas that someone simply dreamed up, but a process that men are forced into. But as the process develops and competition drives out the least competitive, and the more competitive grow and become richer so they become more powerful in society than the old ruling class whose power was based on ownership of land. Now that social position leads them to ask why they should finance this old ruling class through taxes on their profits without at least some say in how the taxes are spent, and ultimately why they should not be the ruling class, and hold political power.

That is the process going on behind their backs which brings them to this position, but which requires real deliberate political action to bring about that political control against the opposition of the old ruling class. The bouregoisie had several centuries during which their access to wealth gave access to education, where the need to develop science led to the development of all the political ideas which lay the basis for bouregois political rule. Unlike the situation that existed even in Lenin's day, the working class today has similar access to education, science and culture. It too is able to develop the ideas necessary for its own liberation, and control of society, and does not need to subcontract that job initially to some Leninist Party, as Lenin argued 100 years ago. But potential is not actualisation. The bouregoisie were able to develop the ideas it required to make it the ruling class because its daily life demonstrated to it, why the basic tenets of capitalism were rational as the basis for the organisation of society, and from which flowed the types of laws, morals and culture logical for such a society. The working class can only achieve that class conscioussness if it too has daily experience of production in a way which demonstrates to it, why co-operative, socialistic production is rational, indeed more rational than competitive capitalist production.

That is why Marx argued that co-operatives were the foundation of that development, were the transitional form upon which the working class social revolution would be accomplished, and would thereby transform the conscioussness of the working class, that would make them the socially dominant class, that would lead them to recognise the need to also conquer political power. Even Lenin recognised the importance of that experience, and the writings of Trotsky on Mexico reproduced elsewhere on this site show how important he saw for example the role of workers control even as a means of educating the working class, and raising its class conscioussness. But as Trotsky points out Workers Control of production under capitalism also presents dangers. As long as capitalism continues, the capitalist state will always try to overturn that workers control, only workers ownership provides a sound basis for stable workers control, and even then only as part of an overall consciously directed class struggle of Labour against Capital.

Arthur Bough

In his address to the International adopted as its principles Marx sets out the argument I have made above for the establishemnt of workers Co-operatives throughout the economy, but also rcognises as I argue above that the bourgeoisie will attempt to place every obstacle in the path of such a development. The only solution then as I argued above is for the development of class conscioussness arising from this change in the material conditions of production to be translated into politicla action, for the establishemnt of a broad Workers Party to fight for political power against these restrictions by the bourgeoisie.

"Hence the Ten Hours’ Bill was not only a great practical success; it was the victory of a principle; it was the first time that in broad daylight the political economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working class.

At the same time the experience of the period from 1848 to 1864 has proved beyond doubt that, however, excellent in principle and however useful in practice, co-operative labor, if kept within the narrow circle of the casual efforts of private workmen, will never be able to arrest the growth in geometrical progression of monopoly, to free the masses, nor even to perceptibly lighten the burden of their miseries. It is perhaps for this very reason that plausible noblemen, philanthropic middle-class spouters, and even keep political economists have all at once turned nauseously complimentary to the very co-operative labor system they had vainly tried to nip in the bud by deriding it as the utopia of the dreamer, or stigmatizing it as the sacrilege of the socialist. To save the industrious masses, co-operative labor ought to be developed to national dimensions, and, consequently, to be fostered by national means. Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies. So far from promoting, they will continue to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of labor. Remember the sneer with which, last session, Lord Palmerston put down the advocated of the Irish Tenants’ Right Bill. The House of Commons, cried he, is a house of landed proprietors. To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes. They seem to have comprehended this, for in England, Germany, Italy, and France, there have taken place simultaneous revivals, and simultaneous efforts are being made at the political organization of the workingmen’s party."

Marx - Address to the First International

Arthur Bough

There is an interesting section in the Grundrisse. It begins on p285 where Marx is talking about savings by workers. Marx seems to be putting forward a version of Lassalle’s Iron Law of Wages. Individual workers could save he argues, but not workers as a class because were they to do that, or to all work longer/harder, then the bosses would say you are earning too much, and cut wages. Such an argument would of course be false because as Marx makes clear the Subsistence Theory sets a minimum of wages not a maximum, subsistence includes an historic or cultural element, and finally workers can defend/raise wages through class struggle within limits.

But its necessary to understand Marx’s method here. He is working aloud posing questions and answering them. Moreover, his reason for the previous argument is to establish the conditions for defining Labour in Ideal terms, only then to subvert it. He argues that for Capital to be Capital (Ideal)it must be not-Labour. In other words it can contain not a drop of living Labour. Likewise for labour to exist as the negation of Capital it must be non-Capital, the worker must possess no Capital at all. As Marx puts it on p206 “purely subjective existence of labour, stripped of an objectivity. Labour as absolute poverty”, but Marx does not mean poverty in the normal sense here the worker might be rich in income terms what Marx means is then outlined, “poverty not as shortage, but as total exclusion of objective wealth.”

The concept was applied in a performance by Chris Rock I was watching on TV the other day. The routine went something like this.

“There are no wealthy black Americans. There are some RICH black Americans, but they aren’t WEALTHY. Bill Cosby is RICH from all the shit he does, but he ain’t wealthy. Now the white mother-fucker who writes the cheque to pay him for all that shit he does, NOW HE’s WEALTHY.” He went on in similar vein, before “The reason we ain’t wealthy is we spend all our money on rims. We might have the worst car on the block as long as its got good rims. Shit if we hadn’t got a car we’d put rims on our toaster. Now Bill Gates he ain’t got no rims, but he owns Microsoft.”

This is precisely the point that Marx makes. Workers can have high incomes (relatively), but if all that income is spent on consumption then the worker cannot become (WEALTHY) because they can’t accrue CAPITAL. But as Marx points out (though he bends the stick) workers wages are usually so low they can’t save, when they raise they take the opportunity to expand the sphere of consumption and culture, and to the extent they save the Savings Banks pay them low interest and lend it to Capitalist who use it to make much more money etc. It is only possible to break out of this if instead the savings become Capital. He says,

" … if the worker’s savings are not to remain merely the product of circulation - saved up money , which can be realised only by being converted sooner or later into the substantial content of wealth, pleasures etc. – then the saved up money would itself have to become capital, i.e. buy labour, relate to labour as use-value. It thus pre-supposes labour which is not capital, and presupposes that labour has become its opposite – not labour. In order to become capital, it itself presupposes labour as not-capital as against Capital; hence it presupposes the establishment at another point of the contradiction it is supposed to overcome. If, then, in the original relation itself, the object and the product of the worker’s exchange – as product of mere exchange, it can be no other – were not use value, subsistence, satisfaction of direct needs, withdrawal from circulation of the equivalent put into it in order to be destroyed by consumption – then labour would confront capital not as labour, not as not-capital, but as capital. But capital, too, cannot confront capital if capital does not confront labour, since capital is only capital as not-labour; in this contradictory relation. Thus the concept and the relation of capital itself would be destroyed.”

And this concept of Labour which is not Labour, Capital which is not Capital is precisely the solution that Marx gives to the problem. He has here subverted the starting point of the Ideal Labour and the Ideal Capital by standing them on their head and relating them not to the Ideal but the material realities. The worker cannot get out of his situation, cannot but be reproduced as labour through saving, but only through ownership of Capital. How does the worker become the owner of Capital rather than mere savings, precisely in the way Marx refers to in Capital III (where he also mentions ownership of shares in Joint Stock Companies), in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, and in his Address to the First International, by the setting up of Co-operatives which by their nature are transitional forms because within them Labour is at the same time not-Labour, and Capital is at the same time not-Capital.

Arthur Bough

23 years ago Maggie Thatcher and the bouregois state defeated the NUM, but they did not defeat the Miners of Tower Colliery in South Wales. On the contrary the Miners there demonstrated in practice the superiority of workers ownership and control of the means of production. The bosses with all the advantages they have of access to large amounts of cheap Capital, the full panoply of the capitalist state and its laws behind them could not make Tower Colliery pay. But 13 years ago the Miners at Tower bought the colliery, and ran it udner their own ownership and control, not only ran it, but ran it better than the capitalists, ran it at a profit. In the edn the Miners at Tower were not defeated by Maggie Thatcher and her armies, nore even by the laws of Capitalist production, but by the laws of physics. The coal simply ran out.

For the last 13 years the Miners of Tower colliery have shown the way for workers to transform the means of production from their capitalist basis into what Marx termed the transitional form to socialism, and did so in an industry and under conditions that are hardly the most conducive to the establishment of a workers co-operative in modern capitalism. In doing so they have done more for the cause of socialism than any number of lectures on its benefits. As marx put it,

"The value of these great social experiments cannot be overrated. By deed instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands; that to bear fruit, the means of labor need not be monopolized as a means of dominion over, and of extortion against, the laboring man himself; and that, like slave labor, like serf labor, hired labor is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labor plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart."
Arthur Bough

...but I think you're bending over backwards to provide a Proper Marxist Gloss to it.

Kautsky :

"...a community designed to satisfy its wants and embracing all the requisite industries, must have dimensions very different from those of the socialist colonies planned at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Among the social organizations in existence today there is but one that has the requisite dimensions, that can be used as the requisite field, for the establishment and development of the Socialist or Co-operative Commonwealth, and that is the modern state."

Luxemburg :

"Within the framework of present society, producers’ co-operatives are limited to the role of simple annexes to consumers’ co-operatives. It appears, therefore, that the latter must be the beginning of the proposed social change. But this way the expected reform of society by means of co-operatives ceases to be an offensive against capitalist production. That is, it ceases to be an attack against the principal bases of capitalist economy. It becomes, instead, a struggle against commercial capital, especially small and middle-sized commercial capital. It becomes an attack made on the twigs of the capitalist tree."

Karl K and Rosa L both read the same Marx that Arthur did -- in the original German, no less -- and yet they didn't see the Master stressing the importance of cooperatives. So I'm not sure that seeking the Karl Marx Seal Of Approval for building cooperatives is really all that useful.

The same Karl Kautsky ended up defending the notion of that same bouregois state being utilised as a means of bringing about Socialism. This si the same Karl Kautsky criticised by Lenin for misrepresenting Marx in relation to the bouregois State. As for what Marx though about the idea that this "bouregois State" being the "requisite field for rhe establishment of socialism" we only have to look at what he said about it in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. He said that the Socialism of those that raise such demands is only skin deep, he said that any working class or its Party that raise such demands on the State proves only their unripeness for rule.

As for Luxemburg's statement well again Luxemburg wasn't perfect either. But there is nothing in her piece that I would specifically disagree with. She merely makes a statement of fact. The development of workers co-operatives envisioned and welcomed by marx didn't materialise. Why? Partly, because Marxists did not promote the idea, partly also because in the period after Marx's death up to 1914-20 Capitalism experienced a huge growth. Workers struggle was channelled into Economistic struggles, which could be succesful due to the demand for Labour. Partly also on the back of that that the Labour Movement experiences considerable growth, and the idea took hold that socialism could be won through a combination of industrial and Parliamentary struggle. In short the basis of marxism - self-activity by the working class was sidelined in favour of reformism of the idea that the condition of the working class could gradually be improved by Parliamentary measures, or by a respectable Trade Union movement. But as Pannakoek says about the TU movement what it actually became was a socialising vehicle.

On the other side the reaction against that Reformism is then Leninism. But in reality all we have here is two sides of the same State-Socialism coin. Both stand in contradiction to the fundamental basis of Marxism which is the self-activity of the working class. By thre same token I have also read Marx with the same facility to understand what he said as Kautsky and Luxemburg, but with the added benefit of an extra 80 years experience, and access to some of Marx's Writings that were not available back then.

Arthur Bough

As Harry Hill might say, "There's only one way to resolve this "FACTION FIGHT".

Luxemburg Speech to the Hanover Conference

And one more thing. I don't know which cooperatives people think of as an ideal, as an abstract scheme. I only know that the English cooperatives, which have been trotted out as models for the cooperative movement, do not at all realize socialist ideals in their process of production. [ Shouts: "Our models are the Belgian ones""] At the [English] trade-union congress, a tailors' union demanded that the union's parliamentary committee should cooperate with the Corporations to force its members to abide by the wages and working conditions which had been determined by the parliamentary committee: so capitalist exploitation has not been done away with at all.”

Marx Capital Vol III

“The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system. But the antithesis between capital and labour is overcome within them, if at first only by way of making the associated labourers into their own capitalist, i.e., by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labour. They show how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production have reached a particular stage. Without the factory system arising out of the capitalist mode of production there could have been no co-operative factories. Nor could these have developed without the credit system arising out of the same mode of production. The credit system is not only the principal basis for the gradual transformation of capitalist private enterprises. into capitalist stock companies, but equally offers the means for the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises on a more or less national scale. The capitalist stock companies, as much as the co-operative factories, should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other.”

He goes on,

“The two characteristics immanent in the credit system are, on the one hand, to develop the incentive of capitalist production, enrichment through exploitation of the labour of others, to the purest and most colossal form of gambling and swindling, and to reduce more and more the number of the few who exploit the social wealth; on the other hand, to constitute the form of transition to a new mode of production. It is this ambiguous nature, which endows the principal spokesmen of credit from Law to Isaac Pereire with the pleasant character mixture of swindler and prophet.”
(Capital Vol III pp441-2)

“Notions along that line are even more false in relation to cooperatives. I will make only a few observations here. It has become popular to put cooperatives on the same level of importance as trade unions, or even to say that they are a form of political struggle. No, cooperatives are of wholly different cloth. Even when we look only at their positive meaning, their significance for the working class, one thing remains: cooperatives are not class struggle. ["Quite right!"]”

And aware of the fact that such co-operatives as transitional forms to socialism necessarily contained the remnants of capitalism Marx wrote.

Marx Address to the First International

“But there was in store a still greater victory of the political economy of labor over the political economy of property. We speak of the co-operative movement, especially the co-operative factories raised by the unassisted efforts of a few bold “hands”. The value of these great social experiments cannot be overrated. By deed instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands; that to bear fruit, the means of labor need not be monopolized as a means of dominion over, and of extortion against, the laboring man himself; and that, like slave labor, like serf labor, hired labor is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labor plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart.”

And in contrast to the Lassaleanism of Kautsky, Luxemburg and the other Second International epigones of the SPD he wrote,

“The German Workers' party — at least if it adopts the program — shows that its socialist ideas are not even skin-deep; in that, instead of treating existing society (and this holds good for any future one) as the basis of the existing state (or of the future state in the case of future society), it treats the state rather as an independent entity that possesses its own intellectual, ethical, and libertarian bases.”

Part III
Critique of the Gotha Programme

And what kind of process does Marx see this social revolution being. IN the Grundrisse where he is looking at Fourier and the extent to which Capitalism itself reduces Necessary Labour he says,

"As the system of bourgeois economy has developed for us only by degrees so too its negation, which is its ultimate result." p712.

In other words the negation of bourgeois economy too must arise "by degrees". How? Marx sets out the basis also in the Grundrisse where he talks about Labour becoming not Labour, Capital becoming not Capital through a process of the workers accumulating not savings, but Capital. How, in the method he sets out in Capital, the uutilisation of Commercial Credit to establish Co-operatives, and buy into Joint Stock Companies. But, yes, of course Marx is no reformist of the ilk of Bernstein, no mechanical materialist that believes this process simply unfolds and matures into socialism - anymore in fact than did bouregois ecohomy simply unfold from within the interstirces of feudal society - the process will receive setbacks, the class struggle within the Co-operatives no less than in the Trade Unions or the Workers Party can fall foul of bouregois ideas. Hence the role of the marxists in these arenas of class struggle. But for the reasons Marx sets out the Co-operatives are different than the Trade UNions, precisely because the posit the new mode of production, whereas the TRade UNions socialise themn within the existing one.

Obviously, Luxemburg, Kautsky and the other Second Internationalists must have skipped those pages.

Arthur Bough

"The matter has nothing to do with either Sch[ulze]-Delitzsch or with Lassalle. Both propagated small cooperatives, the one with, the other without state help; however, in both cases the cooperatives were not meant to come under the ownership of already existing means of production, but create alongside the existing capitalist production a new cooperative one. My suggestion requires the entry of the cooperatives into the existing production. One should give them land which otherwise would be exploited by capitalist means: as demanded by the Paris Commune, the workers should operate the factories shut down by the factory-owners on a cooperative basis. That is the great difference. And Marx and I never doubted that in the transition to the full communist economy we will have to use the cooperative system as an intermediate stage on a large scale."

Engels Letter to Bebel 20th January 1886

Arthur Bough

“Proletarian organisation need not only be deployed in the form of strike action. Solidarity and the power to organise can also create cooperatives of various sorts, workers’ educational institutions, workers’ papers, and workers’ political parties: and it can turn out the vote for workers’ candidates in public elections. Strong votes for a workers’ party will increase the self-confidence and sense of solidarity of the working class as a class and its ability to organise and act, not just electorally but in other arenas of struggle, such as strikes, for example.

There is no real doubt that this view was a direct inheritance from Marx and Engels’s arguments from the time of the First International onwards. The Hegelian-Marxists’ claim that it was an undialectical vulgarisation of Marx and Engels, faced with the historical evidence, logically had to conclude that Engels had vulgarised Marx. This, in turn, has been shown by Draper and others to be false.”

Mike McNair

Weekly Worker 620

Arthur Bough

Marx and Co-operativism Gaian Economics

Arthur Bough

^^^ While those profoundly true and important words focused mainly on the need for transnational partiinost and "extreme democracy" (among other principles), I do wish that revolutionary-centrist comrade Macnair made a few more comments on the SPD-as-way-of-life model.