Post Capitalist-Society – Join The Debate.
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There seems to be a lot of talk about capitalism coming to an end. As if we can just sit back and wait for it to happen and make guesses about what society will look like when it is gone.
Is this really what an intelligent human species should be doing? Passively standing by waiting for society to either collapse or evolve? Or should we consciously organise and actively replace capitalism with something else?
What do we want a post-capitalist society to look like?
Great questions.I think Marx and Engels efforts to develop a science of social change may contain some insights which will prove useful in approaching this topic. Then, as now, differing ideas were floating around about what new society should entail and how to bring it about. "Scientific socialism" was their effort to ground such inquiries in really existing, concrete conditions ( as opposed to "utopian" visions).One insight which I think has enourmous implications for where we find ourselves today is the proposition that social revolution begins when the forces of production develop to the point that they come in conflict with the relations of production.This is certainly an accurate anaylsis how how bourgeois society conquered feudal society, and may have bearing today as we see new technologies like artificial intelligence, robots, and three-dimensional printing ( to name a few) threatening traditional employment.It is important to note that Marx wrote that the conflict arises because the old familiar relations of production resist (act as a "fetter" upon) the new, more efficient and powerful productive forces. The old relations must eventually be swept away or progress will be thwarted.We can already see evidence of this conflict emerging. But here's the bad news…Despite Marx's optimism about the inevitability of the proletariat to achieve class-conscienceness and achieve the "end of human prehistory" we can see today the danger of a very different outcome.In the past (sticking to the schema of historical materialism) when a ruling class has been overthrown it has been replaced by a new technology-bearing class. Today we have such a new techology-bearing class threatening the bourgeois order and stealthily accreating power. Silicon Valley (for lack of a better all-encompasing designation) is changing the rules of capitalist property rights, the legal foundation of capitalist society.The new technology-bearing class, for the gifts they bear, assume acess to all your private data, your photos, you emails, your texts. They assert the right to track you, online and in real life 24/7. They listen to your conversations in the privacy of your own home and have even been caught turning on your cameras without your knowledge. The content you produce online and the data you produce as you live your life are theirs to profit from. Examples of a new order of property rights abound. In the future, when you buy a self-driving car you will not actually own a self-driving car because you will not own the operating system. The tablet my wife bought me for Christmas has a camera which I've never used because I refuse to agree to Microsoft's terms that they should have access to my photos. (Imagine a camera manufacturer making such a demand in the predigital age.)This is how power is accreted. Property rights are the legal expression of the relations of production, the undermining of these reveals the transfer of power to a new class. This is not the long-anticipated victory of the proletatiat.The goal of development of technology is to give Man greater mastery over nature; to deliver us from necessity to freedom; to emancipate us, to allow a fuller development of human potential. We are on the threshold of finally developing the technologies which can usher in the "end of human prehistory," but tragically we face the possibility of becoming enslaved by these tecnhologies, or, more accurately, by the new class bearing them.
Hi Ex-Machina Welcome to the forum. That is a very interesting contribution and I am sure members will reply to you in good time. I have sympathy with your analysis but disagree that the development you describe would constitute 'post-capitalism'. Unless you envisage the technological elite bringing an end to capitalist economic relations :: the wages and market system?
Ex Machina wrote:…social revolution begins when the forces of production develop to the point that they come in conflict with the relations of production.I think that it's important to acknowledge that Marx's theory about conflict between forces and relations of production is not a theory of 'technology being the driver of change'.Marx's 'forces of production' and 'relations of production' both involve social theory and practice. That is, it's not a theory of 'stuff' (forces) driving 'ideas' (relations).Marx is making the point that the theory and practice of our social forces comes into conflict with the theory and practice of our social relations.Without that acknowledgement, it's easy (and often has been done) to fall into 'technological determinism', where workers are regarded as passive, and have to merely await suitable 'techological development'. There are as many 'ideas' in the forces as in the relations.Democratic Socialism won't come into being without our changing of our theory and practice in all areas of social production. Social consciousness is central to change. 'Fetters' start with our ideas, which are often those of the ruling class, and we have to criticise them. Self-development of the proletariat is the key, not technological change.
Quote:Passively standing by waiting for society to either collapse or evolve? Or should we consciously organise and actively replace capitalism with something else?This is often the response i get accused of in discussions with proponents of cooperatives.They tell me to start now by building what used to be called by old timer industrial unionists, the kernel of the new society within the shell of the old. They want something better now and that is something the WSM cannot supply.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Quote:Passively standing by waiting for society to either collapse or evolve? Or should we consciously organise and actively replace capitalism with something else?This is often the response i get accused of in discussions with proponents of cooperatives.They tell me to start now by building what used to be called by old timer industrial unionists, the kernel of the new society within the shell of the old. They want something better now and that is something the WSM cannot supply.
The simple answer to this 'response' is to point out that 'cooperatives' are not 'the kernel of the new society'.Cooperatives are actually 'the kernel of the old society within the shell of the old', yet another version of 'market exchange'.This is exposed by their 'wanting something better now' (ie. within capitalist relations).All we can offer at present is a view of the future, because we're nowhere near making 'something better now', and we should concede that to supporters of cooperatives.For us, World Socialism is 'The Cooperative', not a continuation of market (or other) competition between a plurality of 'cooperatives', each concerned only with itself, but a singular world cooperative in which all social production is controlled democratically. That is, a Democratic World (not individual production by either biology or social sub-groups).If workers simply want better conditions within capitalism now, we should point them to unions or cooperatives, and openly say that we wish to build consciously for our future, a building which is critical of what exists (rather than pragmatically uses what exists).We democratic socialists have different aims to cooperatives, alan. The 'pragmatic now for accepted old' doesn't have our aim of 'critical now for created new'.
Don't teach your granny to suck eggs, LBird.I do respond to such replies in a similar fashion as yourself but i will heed your particular phrasing of it and hope it resonates better than how i say it.I merely wished to point out that despite the statement's sentiment, our position itself is accused of passivity and always has been.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Don't teach your granny to suck eggs, LBird.Sorry, alan, I didn't meant to imply that you didn't understand – I was merely trying to reinforce your position!I've always acknowledged that it was yours and ALB's excellent posts on LibCom about 'economics', during the debate with some sects that I can't remember at this moment, that did teach me to suck eggs, that prompted me to look up the SPGB.Whether that latter move has been a success or not, I'll leave to others to judge!
Which brings me nicely to…
alanjjohnstone wrote:I merely wished to point out that despite the statement's sentiment, our position itself is accused of passivity and always has been.[my bold]I will say only one word regarding their correct estimation of passivity: 'Materialism'.
The lesson of Michael hanneke's movie Time of the Wolf is that we have already seen what a post-apocalypse looks like, we see these things all the time, in Bangladesh, Mexico, etc. pace Hollywood, they don't involve people in leather having high speed battles with improvised weapons, and reverting to some sort of tribal atavism. They usually involve people looking scared, helpless and dislocated, sitting around waiting for help.The relevence of this little aside is that we have also seen what real post-capiotalism without active socialism looks like: megaslums, humans by their millions consigned to scrapyards and literally living off the detritous of the rich.
Young Master Smeet wrote:…without active…Marx's criticism of 'materialism', YMS.The central question then (for what he called 'new materialism') became "Who or what is 'the active side'?".The 'materialists' insisted it was 'matter' (without any consciousness, as 'physicality').The 'idealists' insisted it was 'god' (without 'matter', as 'immateriality').Marx, having unified 'idealism' and 'materialism' into 'social production', insisted it was 'human production' (requiring both an active consciousness and its product, 'social objects').We are the 'active side'.
Few organisations calling themselves 'socialist' or 'communist' offer a vision ofa socialist society but the SPGB has been clear since its formation in 1904.This short three minute video restates that vision and is well worth watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZonz0YE50A&t=1s
A social revolution is happening before our eyes, it's just difficult to see. People are slowly rejecting various received wisdoms, including central controls, hierarchy and statist authority. In the process, they may adopt new (and old) nonsenses and superstitions, but I believe the general movement is away from controlled societies. This, in my opinion, does not bode well for socialism as it is conceived here, though I also think that the end result could bear strong similarities to socialism.It seems obvious that any effort to overthrow capitalism is going to require active worker intervention. Without it, capitalism will just evolve into another property-based system, the social-relational roots of which may have been alluded to accurately in a response above about the way information is being controlled in post-capitalist Information Societies. However, accelerating capitalism's obnoxious features – such as mass immigration and imposed diversity – cannot work in my view, or at least is dangerous, as it could lead away from socialism. Imposed diversity intensifies the grip of ruling classes on workers and – I am sorry to say – dumbs down society and regresses things biologically. Breeding and human quality are factors in the type of social system that can be adopted. That you pointedly choose to ignore this means that your entire worldview has an important blind-spot. What I would be interested to know is whether anybody here has a road-map or meta-plan for how you get from A to B, A being the present situation under capitalism or post-capitalism, and B being socialism. I know that you believe in taking the political/parliamentary route, but that is an aim (i.e. socialist delegates elected to enact socialist legislation and dismantle capitalism, etc. and so on), not a real plan. You also believe in education and propaganda in order to spread socialist consciousness, but what is the plan for how your aims are achieved?The present situation is that the planet is owned or controlled by capitalism in totality (though not strictly in entirety), and even those tribal communities that don't practice it still live formally under this control. Therefore how do you consciously organise? Neo-Marxists support co-operation in the hopeful belief that organising socialist macrocosms within capitalism will lead workers to class consciousness. I think this practice does hold part of the answer. I don't accept co-operativism is completely flawed or that communes and co-operatives inexorably degenerate into private enterprises, but in order for workers to organise independently of capitalists, there would have to be some geographic distance put between socialist pioneers and the vital power centres of capitalism.A resolution of this could be an organising concept based on meta-utopias, which in the case of socialists could take the form of self-sustaining communities that practice socialism or a system as near as possible to it and offer a realistic way for disgruntled people to leave capitalism. But hasn't that been tried before? It has and it always fails, but maybe it fails because the pioneers retain capitalism in some proxy form as the essential basis of their social relations.
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