| towards a better
understanding of the world, in order to change it.
The world we live in is a
world of contradictions.
The environment is in a state of decline, yet industry continues to
pump
pollutants into the atmosphere whilst non-polluting technologies are
neglected.
Thousands starve, while food stocks remain unused or unequally
distributed.
We can communicate with strangers from all around the globe, yet no-one
knows their neighbour. Automation could free us from labour, yet we are
chained to the machine. We live amongst vast material possibilities,
yet
poverty is the universal experience (not just in the narrow economic
sense
but also in terms of the quality of lived experience). “Never
in history has there been such a glaring contrast between what could be
and what actually exists.” [1]

Central to all these
contradictions and reshaping
all previous antagonisms is the global commodity-capitalist system. A
system
characterised by the production of commodities, wage labour
and the market economy. A commodity is what is produced by the
worker
under capitalist conditions, its purpose to reproduce and enlarge
capital
(stored surplus value). The pursuit of ever increasing profits is the
driving
force behind the whole process – the fulfilment of peoples needs is a
secondary
and not always occurring result.
Commodities are only available
in exchange for other
commodities, money being the universal commodity and measure of all
others.
Since all goods have been turned into commodities and access to
non-commodified
materials restricted [2],
those
without the means of producing anything to exchange must sell the only
thing they have, their physical or mental labour. The logic of the
market
economy treats this labour like any other commodity; to be bought, sold
and discarded as the market dictates. In effect the worker becomes a
commodity.
This transformation of living activity into an object creates an alienated
or estranged world in which humankind does not recognize or fulfil
itself,
but is overpowered by the dead things and social relations of its own
making.

Capitalist society is split
into two camps, the
bourgeois or capitalist class (those whose material interest lies with
the continuation of the present system) and the proletariat
[3] (those with “nothing to lose but their chains”). However,
both
classes are subject to the laws of the market economy [4]
- our concern is with the social relation
capital not the individual
capitalist
- the functionaries of capitalism are more and more disposable as
individuals.
While the rag wearing classical proletariat of Marx’s time has all but
disappeared, at least in the developed countries, the fundamental
division
remains; power and wealth are becoming more rather than less
concentrated
under the control of a small minority. The modern proletariat is almost
everyone; it is the working class which must destroy both work and
class.
At various points in history
the struggle against
capital has given us a brief glimpse at the new forms of organization
which
could bring about the dissolution of the commodity-economy and
reorganise
society to the formula “From each according to his abilities, to each
according
to his needs!” [5]
This form takes shape in the
absolute power of the
workers and neighbourhood councils (a.k.a. popular assemblies,
anti-work
committees, revolutionary collectives etc.). These councils vest all
decision-making
and executive powers in themselves and federate with one another
through
the exchange of mandated and instantly recallable delegates. In this
way
the possibility of the emergence of a new ruling class of bureaucrats
or
specialists is avoided. Unlike "workers control" which seeks the
self-management
of the world as it already exists, this movement for seeks the
qualitative
transformation of all areas of life, not just work. Generalized
self-management
is both the aim and method.

The old workers movement was
defeated by Stalinist
“Communism” in the east and reformist “Socialism” in the west. Our
point
of reference are lesser known, more radical struggles; Russia 1905,
Germany
1918-19, Italy 1920, Kronstadt 1921, Spain 1936-37, Hungary 1956,
France
1968, Czechoslovakia 1968, Portugal 1974-75, Poland 1980-81 and
Argentina
2001-2003.
If we are to avoid repeating
the mistakes of the
past it will be necessary to develop a theory of revolutionary
practice,
a theory which seeks to “get to the root of all things” and improve
them.
It is not a matter of choosing from one of the pre-existing ideologies
of the old workers movement and basing our world view around it, but a
matter of finding the “moment of truth” in all the theories of the past
and synthesising this with our experience of the present.
“The victory of the
councils is not the end of
the revolution but the beginning of it”. [6]
FOOTNOTES
1.
Ken Knabb
- “The Joy of Revolution”
2.
For a description
of how this came to be see Marx - "Capital Vol. 1" Chapter 26
3.
"Proletarian":
broadly speaking “modern working class” including the un-employed and
unemployable.
However the proletariat is not to be understood as a sociological
category
of people in such-and-such income group and such-and-such occupations,
but as a social relation of capitalism. It is all those who have little
or no means of support other than selling their physical and mental
labour-power.
The proletariat is the only class capable of ending class society, as
it
produces the material conditions of its own enchainment.
4.
“The propertied
class and the proletarian class express the same human alienation. But
the former feels comfortable and confirmed in it, recognises this self
alienation as its own power and this has the semblance of human
existence.
The latter feels itself crushed by this alienation, sees in it its own
impotence and the reality of an inhuman existence.” Marx -
"The
Holy Family"
5.
Marx –
"Critique of the Gotha Programme"
6.
René
Riesel – “Preliminaries on the Councils and
Councilist Organization” |