The ICC way and our way

[Brian]

LBird wrote:

 I think defining what we consider to be the 'objective' conditions is at the heart of the issue with Alf and the ICC. I think that this definition of what conditions exactly are 'objective' has political implications about the timing, nature, extent and purposes of the revolution.PS. I think I agree with the rest of the political points that you make.

Its not only the political implications to consider during the revolutionary process.   For such a process  contains the economical, social and cultural elements which will also be undergoing transformation.  Nevertheless, despite these implications the speed and pace of the process will ultimately depend on the objective conditions being defined under the banner of class interests.That is, until the workers become conscious of their conditions and circumstances they will remain a class in its self.  Which is an objective condition on its own. It follows, whilst the producers of wealth are ignorant of the objective conditions  so any unity of purpose remains elusive.

[alanjjohnstone]

LBird wrote:

Do I get a gold star?

Nope, a Form A 

[LBird]

Brian wrote:

That is, until the workers become conscious … Which is an objective condition …

Seems to be another vote for the notion that 'class consciousness' is an objective requirement, and that it doesn't yet exist.The ICC's theory of 'decadence' seems to be based on the assumption that the objective conditions for communism already exist, and have existed for 100 years, and that 'consciousness', being defined as a subjective factor, can be brought into existence by an effort of revolutionary will.Can Alf comment further on the links between decadence, consciousness, object/subject and voluntarism?

[Alf]

LBird wrote:

The ICC thinks that all the proletariat needs is a party, now, at present. Objectively, the class is ready. This gives a shorter perspective.The SPGB (and I) thinks that all the proletariat needs is consciousness, then, in the future. Objectively, the class is not ready. This gives a longer perspective.

No, no and again no. The proletariat is not ready. It is still very far from having the level of consciousness and self-organisation needed to make the revolution. One of the elements in this process is the activity of revolutionary political organisations. The fact that such organisations are so small today is one measure of the fact that the proletariat is not ready, because as it becomes more combative, more organised and more conscious revolutionary organisations will tend to grow in size and influence – this in itself proves that these organisations are products of the movement and not a spirit hovering over it like God over the waters.If you want to call these factors 'objective', OK. There is never a total separation between subjective and objective.  But if you call everything objective, where does that leave the subjective factor?

[LBird]

Alf wrote:

If you want to call these factors 'objective', OK. There is never a total separation between subjective and objective. But if you call everything objective, where does that leave the subjective factor?

[my bold]The 'subjective' factor is class-conscious action.From what I can tell, comrades here are arguing that, to have that form of subjective action, requires the pre-existence of the objective factor of 'class-consciousness'.On the contrary, if 'consciousness' is defined as a subjective factor, and thus doesn't need to be in existence at the point of action, it only requires someone else with the necessary consciousness to provide it to the still unconscious proletariat, which will, during that process, learn it from the 'someone else'.As I've said to you (and the ICC) before, I'm not a Leninist, and I think that the proletariat has to have a class consciousness before it can take this subjective action. I don't think this can be acquired during the process itself, because the process will be driven by the existing level of consciousness that obtains at the point of action. If the proletariat is still dominated by ruling class ideas, this backwardness will shape the course of events, to our detriment.Unless, that is, the unconscious proletariat has a willing and helpful teacher to hold its hand whilst it develops itself, and to scold it if it doesn't pay attention.Seems an unlikely series of events to me, comrade.The proletariat must have come to teach.

[Alf]

In respone to ALB: in our view the wage form and the law of value should be attacked from the beginning of the revolution. But that's not the same as declaring it 'abolished' once and for all. Perhaps you are right and will it all be very straightforward because by the time the workers take power they will have thrown off the entire weight of thousands of years of class society. But what happens if the revolutionary process meets with obstacles and set backs and what Marx called 'the 'old shit' starts to reassert itself again? If you have the idea that it's all going to be plain sailing, will you be prepared for such set backs? Class consciousness can regress as well as move forward -and even the very high level needed to take political power could go backwards if the revolution runs into dificulties. The answer to that is not, as the Bolsheviks ended up thinking, that the party has to hold onto power on behalf of the workers. On the contrary, it will require the most convinced communists to keep fighting very hard against any tendency for large numbers of workers to fall back into the old passive attitudes where  politics becomes the affair of specialists. 

[ALB]

Alf wrote:

In respone to ALB: in our view the wage form and the law of value should be attacked from the beginning of the revolution. But that's not the same as declaring it 'abolished' once and for all. Perhaps you are right and will it all be very straightforward because by the time the workers take power they will have thrown off the entire weight of thousands of years of class society. But what happens if the revolutionary process meets with obstacles and set backs and what Marx called 'the 'old shit' starts to reassert itself again?

You are implying here that a long transition period during which "the wage form and the law of value" will be gradually abolished is needed for the working class to throw off the "weight of thousands of years of class society".I don't see that and how the two are connected, except that both imply that the "objective" conditions for socialism/communism are not met, i.e. that the productive forces are not developed enough to provide plenty for everyone and that the working class is not fully competant to run a socialist/communist society.You bring in Marx, but we all know that quotes from Marx and Engels cannot settle any argument (except one about what they actually said). Anyway, Marx and Engels refer to the "old shit" (not always translated as this) in The German Ideology, extensive notes written in 1845. Here's the one I think you referred to:

Quote:

Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.

Whether you agree with it or not (and we know a lot more about human behaviour today than in 1845), this is a claim that "all the muck of ages" will be got rid of in the course of a communist revolution as a precondition for founding a new, communist society, not after the revolution or in the course of creating the new society.Here's the other passage:

Quote:

This “alienation” (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an “intolerable” power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity “propertyless,” and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced.

This is a claim that unless it is possible to abolish scarcity "the old filthy business" of the struggle for necessities (presumably taking the form of the struggle to obtain money, one way or the other, to buy necessities) would reassert itself. It is linked not the psychology of the workers and people in general but to the level of development of the productive forces.In other words, a claim that a precondition for socialism/communism is the development of the productive forces to a stage where plenty for all can be produced, i.e. where there will be no need to retain featuress of an earlier stage when this is not the case, features such as "the wage form and the law of value". It is these that are in fact part of the "old shit".But, then, these are just the opinions of two young Germans nearly 170 years ago, their contribution to this debate if you like, but no more authoritative than the contributions of the rest of us..

[Alf]

It's certainly true that in The German Ideology, Marx makes some crucial observations about the productive forces and the relations of production, about how the latter, the social relations between human beings, can both serve as a framework for the development of the productive forces, and, in another epoch, as a barrier to their advance.  And in the future revolution, understanding exactly what this means will be directly linked to the actual proces of social transformation. But Marx in the same work, as well as in others written at the time, also talks about the self-alienation of man, and demonstrates how deep its roots lie. This problem is obviously connected to the level of the productive forces, but it cannot be reduced to this aspect. The process leading from capitalism to communism is above all else a grandiose attempt to go beyond alienation, and nothing would be gained in this struggle by underestimating how estranged we are from each other, and from our own inner potential.  

[ALB]

Alf wrote:

But Marx in the same work, as well as in others written at the time, also talks about the self-alienation of man, and demonstrates how deep its roots lie. This problem is obviously connected to the level of the productive forces, but it cannot be reduced to this aspect. The process leading from capitalism to communism is above all else a grandiose attempt to go beyond alienation, and nothing would be gained in this struggle by underestimating how estranged we are from each other, and from our own inner potential.

Interesting but rather surprising argument — that humans have a basic psychological nature from which they have become alienated under capitalism and which socialism/communism will restore and allow to flourish.It would be nice if this was true as it would mean that we could turn the tables on the apologists for capitalism and say that it is capitalism that is "against human nature". Unfortunately, since the 1840s the findings of social anthropolgy have shown that it is "human nature" to be able to adapt their behaviour to the social environment in which they find themselves and that therefore it is just as "natural" for us to live under capitalism as it would be to live in socialism/communism.  Human behaviour is adaptive and flexible. There is no fixed human behaviour-pattern. The good news is that this means that socialism/communism is not incompatible with it.Maybe Marx, influenced by other German philosophers of the time who spoke of humans' "species being", did hold this view for a time (I'm not sure, though, that he "demonstrated" how "deep its roots lie"; rather he and the other German philosophers just asserted it without bringing forward any proof, as philosophers typically do). But later, for the workers' movement, "alienation" came to have a less philosophical, more practical meaning — the separation of the producers from both the means of production and from what they produced and which came to dominate them as an outside, "alien" force  in the form of capital.Ending "alienation" in this sense won't take long: it will end as soon as capitalist ownership of the means of production is replaced by their common ownership and democratic control by all the people. The producers will then collectively control production and will no longer be "alienated". This can be done very quickly once the working class decides to do it and wouldn't take one year let alone forty or even ten.

[Alf]

A lot to say there, but I could begin with saying that by no means all schools of anthropology since the 1840s consider that 'human nature' is a simple reflection of particular social relations. I don't agree that this was Marx's view or that he ever abandoned the concept of species being. But that's a big discussion. i'd like to hear others' views on this, but I will try to come back to Adam's points in more depth. 

[Alf]

For a more theoretical examination of why the movement from one mode of production to another necessarily involves a period of transition, I would recommend this text written by Marc Chirik in 1975 http://en.internationalism.org/ir/1_problems_mc.htm

[DJP]

Alf wrote:

i'd like to hear others' views on this, 

Personally it seems to me that 'Human Nature' (so I guess 'species being' with it) is just another metaphysical concept which doesn't stand even up to logical analysis regardless of any empirical observations – much like other concepts such as 'Free Will'.If 'Human Nature' means the nature of humans independent of the environment, then such a thing could never exist.If I was to consider the nature of water I could say it is a liquid at room temperature, a gas at 100c and a solid at 0c. But if I was to ponder what the 'true nature' of water is regardless of the environment it would be could be none of these things since it is the influence of the environment that the water exists in that determines it physical characteristics. To observe water sans environment tells us nothing of the nature of water.A human being is a biological system that exists in a co-determining relationship with it's environment. Human behaviour is the result of the interplay between biological factors, the environment and cultural reinforcement. The configuration of these factors takes many forms and has a seemingly infinite number of outcomes. Those who pick and choose certain behaviours as the result of 'Human Nature' and others as the result of something else (magic?) seem to be making an arbitrary choice, usually to support some pre-conceived moral viewpoint.On the other hand if you expand 'Human Nature' to mean 'what humans do' the term becomes so broad that you may as well discard it and use 'Human Behaviour' instead.Anyway, that's my hastily typed out thoughts on this…

[ALB]

Alf wrote:

that 'human nature' is a simple reflection of particular social relations.

Just to be clear. I never said that "human nature" was this. I was talking about human behaviour, which is culturally and social determined (a bit more complicated than a "simple reflection", though)."Human nature", if it is to mean anything, is the biologically-determined genotype of the animal species homo sapiens sapiens, i.e. upright stance, eyes capable of binocular three-dimensional colour vision, a vocal system capable of speech, hands capable of using and making tools, a prolonged period of growing up during which behaviour can be learned, etc. This hasn't changed since the species evolved some 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. It's human behaviour that's changed, made possible by humans' biologically-inherited capacity to adapt to different social and physical environments.I'm not sure that speculations about "human nature" by philosophically-minded individuals in the 1840s are much help today.

[Alf]

What's striking about ALB's defintion, which is obviously accurate, is that it entirely leaves aside the 'subjective' side of human experience, both the unconscious and conscious aspects. And yet that is what we are dealing with when we examine the problem of alienation, which is not simply a description of the objective reality of exploitation, but an attempt to understand how it impacts on the experience of the exploited.Looking back at The German Ideology (part one Feurbach) it seems obvious to me that Marx sees this problem as having very deep roots historically. Locating alienation in the division of labour and the conflict between the individual and the general certainly traces these roots to historical eras long before the advent of capitalism, These are not problems which can be 'abolished' in a few years simply because we ahve achieved material abundance and can even operate as an ideological obstacle to acheiving it, even among a working class where the majority are 'convinced socialists' "Further, the division of labour implies the contradiction between the interest of the separate individual or the individual family and the communal interest of all individuals who have intercourse with one another. And indeed, this communal interest does not exist merely in the imagination, as the “general interest,” but first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided. And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now"

[ALB]

The trouble with your theory of alienation is that it is a psychological one, a state of human existence, even a quasi-religious one. Humans were originally at one with themselves and the rest of nature, then with class society they became separated from this, but will be reconciled with their true nature again in socialism/communism. Indeed a "grandiose" project. In Hegel of course it was explicitly religious: Man was once united with God, then became separated and at the end of history will become re-united with God.I think it's better to regard "alienation" as sociological rather than psychological and see it as the separation (divorce, alienation) of the producers from the means of production and from what they produce. Ending alienation then becomes more prosaic and simply means bringing the means of production under the collective ownership and control of the producers. Which needn't take long.As to the rotation of tasks envisaged by Marx and Engels, this could be implemented very soon after the means of production have become the common heritage of all. I can't see this as justifying a decades-long transition period.

[Author]

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