social change, antagonism, and hegemony
[to measure (market) predation is to measure power and “addresses the subject only indirectly, by acting on its environment” — in particular, by reshaping “the material conditions of social reproduction.”]
The economic power of capital is hard to understand with the standard concepts you encounter in an introductory course in political theory or political philosophy. Violence, coercion, and force — the things the state is supposed to monopolize — are not appropriate. Neither are the legitimacy, authority, and voluntary submission that are supposed to mark the relationship between citizens and government in most liberal and democratic theory. No one forces you to go to work every day, but that doesn’t mean you think your boss has a legitimate right to tell you what to do.
Unfortunately, the canon of Marxist theory does not do much better than Poli Sci 101 in this regard. The dichotomies of violence and ideology, of coercion and consent, of dominance and hegemony, of RSAs and ISAs litter the traditions of Marxist theory. They all reproduce the fundamental intuition of social contract theory, of modern economics, and of Weberian sociology “that power comes it two fundamental and irreducible forms,” the power to act forcibly on the body and the power to alter thoughts and act on ideas.
Mau’s book is driven by the conviction that economic power is irreducible to this “violence/ideology couplet,” and that its distinctiveness can only be grasped once we recognize that economic power “addresses the subject only indirectly, by acting on its environment” — in particular, by reshaping “the material conditions of social reproduction.” This is a valuable insight, and Mau’s careful attention to its elaboration and to thinking about its ramifications makes his book one of the most fruitful additions to Marxist theory in recent years. Economic power is indirect, mediated power. It shapes our choices by shaping the material and social environment in which we make choices.
Cass Sunstein — “Obama’s superego” — together with his University of Chicago colleague Richard Thaler, coined the phrase “choice architecture” to intervene in this domain of indirect power as a space of deliberate government. However, as Mau rightly argues, the choice architecture of capitalist society — despite the dreams of “libertarian paternalists” like Sunstein and Thaler — is mostly produced inadvertently. Capital is not a cabal of capitalists or government officials. Nor is it a supra-individual Hegelian subject acting of its own accord. Rather, it is “an emergent property of social relations,” a “fixation” of our own social activity. We make it — but we seem incapable of unmaking it. This is the power of capital — the ability of this emergent choice architecture to reproduce itself, even in the face of organized efforts to derail or transform it.
Under Capitalism, We’re All Dominated by the Invisible Threads of the Market by WILLIAM CLARE ROBERTS
1) The mode of production based on wage labor has made it possible to feed, clothe, and house 8 billion people, vastly increasing the carrying capacity of the earth and breaking out of the Malthussian trap of earlier modes of production.
2) This mode of production has also concentrated heretofore undreamt of wealth and political-military power in the hands of a tiny minority. 2/8
3) This same mode of production has driven a process of scientific and technological development that has made at least one fourth and maybe half of the population of the earth superfluous from the standpoint of wealth production. This massive, “economically expendable”… 3/8
…population is concentrated especially in the global south, but found in pockets everywhere. We can feed 8 billion, but we can only employ 4–6 billion in profitable forms of production, a number that will likely continue to decrease sharply. 4/8
4) Development has also upset the homeostatic regulation of the earth’s climate, unleashing a spiraling dynamic of climactic change that is already driving and will increasingly drive this economically expendable population into precarious migrations of immense scale. 5/8
5) The goal of radical social change, I propose, is to avoid the mass slaughter that the current world, as captured in these first 4 theses, seems to be building towards. 6/8
The second industrial revolution issued in the industrial-scale murder of scores of millions — in the colonial killing fields, the slaughterhouses of disposable populations, and the famines of catch-up development. 7/8
There is a real danger that the next century will see exterminations ten to fifty times what the world saw between 1880 and 1980. Confronting that possibility head-on is compelled, intellectually, by historical materialism. fin
====================================
Communism #1 (Nov 1983) Debut issue of the English-language GIC-ICG journal Communism.
“It’s constantly forgot that the suppression of the state is also the suppression of democracy, that the extinction of the state is also the extinction of democracy.“
The State and the Revolution — Lenin
— — — — — — -
These few lines are to explain briefly and schematically the existence of our group, its role and its duties, and to clarify the reality from which the group extends as an active agent.
This text intends as well to outline the historical chain of events to which it owes its programmatic basis and the general outlooks we aim at. Amongst those, the publication of the present review in a language … especially conceived for the avant-garde fraction of the proletariat using that language, which will fight for self-organization (or self-reorganization) as a class wherever it is.
2 . Our group is the product of a still forming synthesis, of particular and regional direct experiments by the universal proletariat which annexe themselves to the ever standing work of the Communists- duty of directing, of centralising, etc. of fights, and of a comprehension of the global experience of the universal working class in its fight against Capital, systemised by the left communist fractions from which we inherit a materialistic, dialectic comprehension and a comprehension of the vital necessity to take an organized action towards the transformation of the world.
Explaining our constitution implies:
1° opposing all fables that the bourgeoisie has constructed around the fantom of communism with the central axis of the communist movement that develops within and against Capitalism; outlining the revolution and counterrevolution forces precisely.
2° to show the historical importance of the revolutionaries’ action.
3° to characterize the present situation.
4° on this basis, reaffirm the permanent duties of Communists, hence ours.
— — — — — — -
PRESENTATION ………………
THE COMMUNIST FRACTIONS AND
THEIR HISTORICAL NECESSITIES
The history of universal Capitalism is a history of exacerbation, of reinforcement of its contradictions and antagonisms. Each new expansion ends necessarily with an even more violent crisis that sets the entire planet ablaze. The capitalist solution to this crisis is always the same as the misery of the working class, austerity, forcing unemployment, banishment from the immediate process of production, centralising of State control, war-time economy, democratico-terrorist fortification of the State, destruction of all productive forces, imperialistic war. In front and against this, the proletariat fortifies itself by trying to affirm its communist programme as the fight against exploitation, the proletariat organization in a class, hence as a Party, the destruction of the bourgeois State, the proletariat dictatorship, the despotic destruction of the bourgeois production connections, the destruction of the infamous value law.
Each crisis of the capitalistic growth is thus a manifestation of a global social crisis, which materializes itself in the brutal surge of the contradictions between two antagonistic social projects: the conservation of Capital, which is necessarily counter-revolutionary, and the revolution, which imposes itself, expands and becomes a general revolution or else it is destroyed.
The bourgeois “solution” to the crisis of Capital is by its very essence partial and limited in time. The development of capitalism that such a “solution” permits necessarily develops the proletariat, fortifies and concentrates it. The rhythm of the new expansion determines the level of the new crisis, the development of its antagonisms and the affirmation of its decomposition: the new revolutionary wave. The communist solution to the crisis is necessarily universal, definite, and it does not imply minimising or abolishing the effects of capitalism but abolishing capitalism in itself. The point is not in proposing an improvement of salaries or a better administration of society, but in developing class warfare in order to abolish the system of paid labour. The communist solution does not pertain to democratize the State but to annihilate it completely. One must ascertain that, despite the proletariat’s enormous efforts aiming at extending its revolution, the counter-revolution has succeeded up to now in making that process fail, which simultaneously and inseparably permitted the physical and political destruction of the bastions of the “avant-garde” workers.
Contrarily to what the bourgeoisie wants us to believe about the most glorious class counter class conflict ever conducted by the proletariat in the whole world, there is nothing left to the proletariat but the accumulated experience. If today it is essential to repeat such tautologies (as communists- Internationalists) , it is because the counter — revolution imposing itself in the whole world (particularly materialised by the butchery that was the second world war) still keeps an enormous dominance at all levels, specifically the ideological one.
The ideological reproduction expresses itself in multiple ways. One of them allows to reconcile the interests of all the different fractions of bourgeoisie: it is the “Three Worlds Theory” . This ideology aims at dividing the world proletariat. According to this theory, there would exist a first capitalistic and developed world, where the workers do not need to fight for a communist revolution but for the defence of democracy, for “social” institutions and for the reform of structures (nationalization, self-administration, etc). There would be a second world, a “socialist” one, where there is no need to fight for the socialist revolution either (as it is already accomplished). It would take only to improve socialism by enforcing a series of democratic reforms or strictly political revolutions.
It is evident that in the third world, revolution cannot be accomplished as it refers to “under-developed”; “pre-capitalistic countries, where it would be utopic to desire anything else than to fight for the national liberation, as well as relying on the national democratic fraction of the bourgeoisie in its struggle against under-development and imperialism.
In short, submitting the proletariat to “progressive” and nationalistic” fractions of the capital permanently, thus maintaining its disorganization as a class.
All distinctions operating from that mutual basis stem from the fact that the bourgeoisie, by the essence of its regime — competition — — is confronted non-stop with an inner conflicting of interests.
The bourgeois unification, the centralization, the State, the State constellations, the international under State control never take their stand on the elimination of contradictions inside the union, but exist only in order to confront, above these divisions and in the best possible conditions, the imperialistic commercial war and the class warfare.
Thus, even if the whole bourgeoisie universally agrees with the “Three Worlds Theory” (which implies identifying socialism with nationalization and the atrophied development with extra-capitalism) , when the real question is to put workers into the service of one or another organization in understate control of the world capital (imperialistic constellations) , the bourgeoisie always appears divided.
Some will defend a socialist country, others will stress the atrocitiesof the repression in the same country? some will justify the NATO militaristic policy or that of China in the name of national supremacy, of democracy or/and of socialism; others will blame the Russian policy in Afghanistan, the Cuban policy in Africa, or the Vietnamese policy in Cambodia… it. will always be in the name of democracy, self-determination of the people and socialism. In the name of democracy too, some people will justify the policy of the “imperialistic Capital”, which through the English, American, French …governments , guarantees the gruesome order of capitalism in Ireland, Central America, Africa, etc. Other fighters for democracy will extend military help to the bourgeois fractions that on the occasion adopt the flag of national liberation, just like those who, in their own camps,take charge of maintaining the terrorist order of the organized capital (Poland, Mozambique, Angola.-..). In this case, there cannot be any agreement of any kinds each fraction of the capital fights for possessing the mystical flags that gave such good results during the second world war (democracy, national supremacy, antifascism.. „) .
Everyone tries to use the workers as cannon-fodder in his own camp of imperialistic capital. This is why it should be stressed that the capitalistic exploitation regime is universal. Contrarily to the bourgeoisie, the proletariat has no homeland, it has no regional or sectarian interests to defend. It is just as absurd and reactionary to imagine that socialism could exist in one country only as to conceive capitalism in one country only. It is essential to repeat unceasingly that capitalism is only a transitory phase for all humanity and that its destruction will inevitably be universal. Even the denomination of our group contains a deliberate tautology: Internationalist Communist.
It is clear that communism in the true sense, contains internationalist practice, the abolition of money, of merchandise, of all States, of social classes. If today it is still necessary to point it out, it is because the impact of the Stalinist, of the democratic and fascist counter-revolutions is still enormous; and because the communist program, in spite of the large working masses that objectively fight for its affirmation, remains absolutely unknown in its theoretical expression and is blurred and disfigured by the quicksand of capitalistic ideologies.
Let’s repeat what Marx and Engels stated a century ago: “Communism is neither an ideal nor a series of receipts to be applied to reality, but a real movement of destruction of all established orders.”
The communist program does not only consist in arms of criticism but also in criticism through arms. Its affirmation is at the same time the theoretical comprehension of the action and the action itself; its power is not solely derived from a. materialistic comprehension of the world it also implies a subversive revolutionary practice against the bourgeoisie society.
The essence of the proletarian fight, in all forms and periods of the capitalistic development, is essentially the same; the antagonism of the capitalistic society remains the same. The resolution of this antagonism cannot be the result of different “programs” but the result of the development and fortification of the movement of decomposition of capitalism; in other words, the communist movement, indivisible unity of objectives and means, practical affirmation of the proletariat as a universal autonomous class.
This is why in the phases of mounting revolutions, the importance of communist tasks can vary, thus assume different relative importances in periods of descending revolution. Still in periods of counter-revolution, the central axis of communists action is always the same…
=========================
Hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics — Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe
In this hugely influential book, Laclau and Mouffe examine the workings of hegemony and contemporary social struggles, and their significance for democratic theory. With the emergence of new social and political identities, and the frequent attacks on Left theory for its essentialist underpinnings, ‘Hegemony and Socialist Strategy’ remains as relevant as ever, positing a much-needed antidote against ‘Third Way’ attempts to overcome the antagonism between Left and Right.
=======================
