Definition of work in socialism
Nasser Paydar, February 2013
Independent of its specific social form, labour in different historical periods is a simple vital relationship between man and nature. In this respect, labour does not say anything “in itself” about the conditions or economic and social formations governing the process of its performance. On the contrary, it illustrates more than anything the distinguishing difference between man and animal. It is through labour that man distinguishes himself from other animals. Marx says in this regard: “The labour process, as analysed in its simple and abstract form, is the purposeful activity of man for the purpose of producing use values and preparing nature for human needs. It is the general condition of the exchange of materials between man and nature and the eternal condition of human life, and for this reason it is independent of every form of human life and all its social forms. In other words, it is common to all social forms of human life. Therefore, it was not necessary for us to study the relations of the worker with other workers in this discussion. Man, and his labour on the one hand and his materials on the other would suffice for us. Just as one cannot guess from the taste of wheat who sowed it, so one cannot learn from such a process of labour under what conditions it was carried out. Did it flow under the cruel whip of the slave-guard, or under the anxious eye of the capitalist? Did Lucius Cincinnatus create it in his cattle-herding, or is it the work of the savage who kills his prey with a stone? (Capital, Vol. I)
Up to this point, and at this level, work is an activity for the production of products needed by humans. A feature that undergoes a substantial transformation with the emergence of commodities and commodity production. With its birth, commodities make the labour process a covenant of unity between the labour process and the value production process because they themselves embody the unity of use value with value, or exchange value. Before the production of commodities, humans work in order to meet their biological and welfare needs, in other words, work is only the producer of use values, but with the commodity becoming a commodity, what is actually erased from the scope of calculations is the use value of products and the result of labour. It is absolutely true that in order to acquire value or exchange value, the product of labour must have use value in any case, but in the process of trading commodities, the socially necessary labour inherent in them or the labour time crystallized in the commodity is the only criterion for carrying out any exchange.
The next phase of the evolution of the labour process appears in the dynamics of the transformation of commodity production into the capitalist mode of production. Here, the process of creating value in labour gives way to the process of valorisation. The production cycle takes the form of a unity of the dynamics of labour and the process of creating value. This is a characteristic of capitalist production or the relationship of the production of surplus value. In this way, the first form of work in human life did not pursue any goal other than the creation of consumer values. A characteristic that seemed to be the unwritten definition of the concept of work by human communities of that period. This definition that work should meet the subsistence needs of individuals. For many years, humans continued to live with simple and primitive tools in this mode of production and with this natural understanding of the place and concept of work. Communal communities were the first suitable living structure and the organic superstructure of this mode of production. During this period, the basic need of people for food, clothing, shelter, and the necessary defensive equipment to repel attacks from predatory animals and the like determined the entire purpose of human production and work. The primitive tools of this time, the lowest degree of labour productivity, and the very low level of human intervention in nature or his ability to utilize natural resources all imposed on him a miserable form of livelihood.
This situation did not last. In the process of work, humans changed their expectations, needs, knowledge, tools, influence, and finally their mode of production and their entire life. The productivity of labour increased in light of the growth of the means of production and the increasing power of human intervention in nature. The first collective and self-consumption mode of production gradually retreated in the face of man’s growing need to develop the means of labour and production. The material dialectic of history replaced the original form of production with a commodity economy and the exchange of the product of labour based on socially necessary labour concentrated in commodities. A contradictory material mode of production that, on the one hand, was compatible with the process of historical development of societies, and on the other hand, was the beginning of the history of human slavery and the increasing deepening of this slavery in history.
From this time on, as the new mode of production developed, the collective self-consumption economy and production centred on satisfying human needs also disappeared from the history of human life. The use value of products and the role of people’s labour in improving their lives were no longer considered at all. On the contrary, the exchange value of goods determined the existential philosophy of labour and production. The means and the end of history changed their places. Man became the means and the production of commodities the end. Thus, production with the aim of exchange became the basic law of human life, and this law, at the very point of its emergence, recorded its new version of the basis of human existence in the dark diary of history with the ugliest lines. The exchange of the product of labour for the product of labour led to the expression of values, the emergence of intermediary value, the emergence and development of the market, the spread of money, the birth of the serfdom system and feudal relations, and finally to the accumulation of industrial capital, the commodification of human labour power, and the expansion of the capitalist mode of production. At every step of its development, the commodity economy deepened and deepened the exclusion of all aspects of man from the sphere of intervention in the definition of labour, and this phenomenon rushed forward to its deepest and most extensive frontier in the capitalist mode of production. Here, that is, under the dominance of capitalist production, not only the product of labour was no longer a commodity, but labour power was also a commodity. Moreover, the product of labour was no longer a commodity, but capital. The definition of labour, what to produce and what not to produce? The division of labour, the fate of the product of labour, and the decision-making about everything related to human life from birth to death, and basically whether or not humans were born and how to die, suddenly left the realm of human will and came under the influence and unruly power of capital. The owner of the commodity of labour power became a wage slave. Labor, which had previously been a relationship between man and nature, was now completely and completely subjugated, a collar of the most pitiful form of slavery on the hands and feet of the overwhelming majority of the earth’s inhabitants. Its only philosophy of existence was to produce profit, to separate humans from labour, to transform the product of labour into capital, to bring the worker out of existence and his catastrophic slavery to the product of labour.
With the advent of capitalism, the social productivity of labour increased dramatically. The standard of living and the type of human needs developed in an unprecedented way. Human awareness and knowledge and the scope of information increased in unimaginable dimensions. Nature was exploited much more widely than before. But all this development, progress, knowledge acquisition, specialization, utilization of nature, the increase in the productivity of labour were all under the control of the power of capital and the law of value. All of them were removed from the sphere of intervention of the producers and all of them became a means of capital’s godlike domination over human destiny. The development of capitalism was the development of the process of man’s complete separation from his labour and the definition of his labour. This process has now reached its peak at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and man’s alienation from the process of labour and production and himself has progressed to the last stages of deepening. Mankind, who in the past millennia was under the pressure of a low level of knowledge, was a slave to the superstition of belief in gods, but now, at the height of knowledge and awareness, the development of technology, and the discovery of the secrets of nature, is a thousand times more a slave to the power of capital. This time, it is no longer man’s scientific weakness that has forced him to worship gods, but the product of his work, which has seated him on the throne of power on the planet Earth in the company of capital. This is the great material power that defines human labour. It has the first and last word on what the world’s workers will or will not produce. It employs hundreds of millions of workers in the world’s weapons production centres to make bullets, missiles, tanks, or all kinds of atomic, hydrogen, and microbial bombs. None of these workers kill people, nor do they have the slightest idea at the time of their employment where, how, or what portion of the world’s population their products will end up in. Perhaps all of them, or the vast majority of them, would hesitate to even bother with an ant. Under the pressure of hunger, they seek to sell their labour power, and one day, during their idle days, they realize that a factory in their city is hiring workers. Finding work and a chance to temporarily escape death from poverty and hunger are the only things on their minds when they approach the recruitment centre for the production of weapons of mass destruction.
The workers start working there, just like other people of their class who work in a pharmaceutical plant or a pasta factory. It is only capital that decides to produce weapons here and wheat elsewhere, and capital, as the theme of its existence, defers any excess or deficiency in the production of this or that product to the profit it makes and to the requirements of its own ever greater profitability. The tens of millions of workers employed in the production of instruments of mass destruction, like the entire working class of the world, have no involvement in the definition of their work and the determination of their own fate. The same applies to the entire capitalist mode of production and to every detail of the labour process of this system. There are no precise statistics available on what percentage of the world’s total workforce is currently engaged in the production of means of subsistence, welfare, education, treatment, and other areas of meeting the needs of human life. However, it is certain that more than 60% of the international working class is employed in centres whose products of labour and production not only have nothing to do with the livelihood and welfare needs of humans, but on the contrary, they serve to destroy their physical health and intellectual excellence.
The production, purchase, and sale of all kinds of narcotics is one of the most profitable areas of capital accumulation in the world today. When only 5 million tons of opium, heroin, and hashish are sold daily in a society like Iran, the amount of trade in these substances in the world can be well guessed. In this same Iranian society, a population of several million people in the form of police, IRGC, army, Basij, various patrols to control and harass women, gendarmes, ministers, lawyers, members of parliament, spies of the Ministry of Intelligence, employees of the Prime Minister’s Office and other ministries, prison guards, court employees, and so on are involved in imposing a system of wage slavery on the working class. Expand the statistics of this huge workforce of several million to the entire capitalist world and imagine how capital defines human labour and determines the fate of the human labour process?! These are just examples. Examples that, each as a piece of a puzzle, together depict the entire capitalist world. At the present moment in a society like America, the total workforce employed in the field of agricultural production is about 2% and in the industrial sector only 12%, but the number of employees of the FBI, CIA and other octopus institutions planning and implementing the capitalist order is much greater than these figures. Now consider that:
– The total number of workers and employees of the US military industries is also in the same 12%;
– A huge percentage of the products of civilian industries, like military industries, do not serve to meet the needs of the citizens’ livelihood and welfare, but on the contrary, serve to destroy all types of human life.
– American industrial products in various fields cover a large part of the global capitalist market;
– In the fields of agriculture, many products have little to do with the needs of the people’s livelihood and welfare;
– American agricultural products are traded everywhere in the world market,
– A significant percentage of the entire labour process in industry and agriculture is spent on preparing materials that transform the food products produced to the benefit of capital and to the detriment of human health. Finally, and most importantly, if in the realm of industry and agriculture or any other field of work and production, products needed for people’s livelihood and well-being are produced, it is not with this goal in mind, but only as a commodity for the market and to achieve profit.
Consider all these and many similar points and then calculate what is the relationship of the American working people to the entire process of labour and production in this country as an example of the entire capitalist world? The answer is simple; in the capitalist system it is only capital that defines human labour and the goal of production. Man is completely dissolved in the labour process and the alienation of the worker from the labour process is at the highest possible stage. Capital as a social relation in the context of its own specific and harmonious division of labour has spread the process of separation of producers from labour and the dominance of dead labour or capital over living labour to all levels and dimensions of human civil and individual life and has brought it to a conclusion. The law of value dominates all forms of human activity and the way in which the lives of individual human beings are expressed, and at the same time the role of the productive human beings in determining the goal and type of production, the way of distribution and consumption, and the definition of social labour is completely eliminated. Labor is defined by capital. Whatever production is profitable and capital-increasing is considered work, otherwise its work permit is revoked.
Work may create food, clothing, and housing, or it may produce chemical and nuclear weapons, clothing for the body of a starving person, or a hot bullet for the heart of an anti-capitalist fighter. It may be a hospital, medicine, and surgical equipment, or it may be a bomb that falls on the heads of millions of children, old and young. It may be a school, university, and kindergarten, or it may be an instrument of torture and the gallows. In all these cases, work is conditional on producing surplus value or on the need for the process of producing surplus value and increasing profits as much as possible. The only criterion and standard for recognizing work is whether it is profitable. The direct and inevitable result of the capitalist definition of work is the absolute and all-round rupture of the connection between work and the real biomaterial, civil, and welfare needs of man. For example, 30,000 children die every day under the pressure of lack of medicine, and at the same time, the amount of the world’s annual military budget is equal to the total income of two billion and six hundred million inhabitants of the planet. The largest portion of the world’s printing workforce is devoted to producing advertisements and commercials selling capitalist goods, while at the same time hundreds of millions of children around the world are deprived of any kind of education. The part of human labour that is used by international capital solely for the production of weapons is equivalent to the same amount of labour that is spent on the subsistence and reproduction of the labour power of 60% of the entire population of the planet. From the point of view of capital, the production of subsistence and welfare needs pursues the same goal as the production of means of mass murder of human beings. The production of pathogens is no different from the production of medicines needed to treat diseases, provided that both are profitable. What makes one preferable to the other is only the greater surplus value contained in it. Capitalist production combines the process of separation of man from his labour with the process of dismembering humans based on the requirements of the capitalist division of labour, and these two with the process of absolute separation of human labour from their real biomaterial, welfare, and civil needs, and in this connection, it expands and deepens man’s alienation from the labour process and from human self-alienation to very terrible dimensions.
In socialism, the exact opposite of what we have said is true. Work here is a type of free human activity that is planned by the citizens themselves solely with the aim of responding to the real needs of human life. A specific form of productive, educational, cultural, medical, sanitary, welfare, and recreational activity that is the natural need of the mass of citizens. The members of society recognize its implementation as necessary to meet their subsistence and spiritual needs, and then, in a common council relationship with a unified and collective planning, they strive to implement it in practice. It is only in the socialist organization of work that human work is in every respect consistent with the requirements of human material and social life. “Only at this stage does the self-activity of individuals adapt to material life, and this corresponds to the development of individuals as complete individuals and the casting off of all natural limitations. The transformation from labour to self-activity corresponds to the transformation from the previous limited interaction to the interaction of individuals as individuals. With the appropriation of the entire productive forces by united individuals, private property comes to an end. Previously, a particular condition always appeared in history as an accident. Now, however, the very isolation of individuals and the special way in which each individual earns his living become an accident.” (The German Ideology)
On this basis, socialism is a form of human interaction, a kind of expression of human life or a way of human social life that, by ending wage labour and eliminating the law of value, maximizes the role of individuals in defining labour and determining the purpose or type and content of production. Socialist council planning of labour fundamentally negates the exchange of products, not in the sense that people do not use the results of their labour, but on the contrary, in the sense that what everyone produces is made available to everyone equally and indifferently, and in proportion to human needs. “In all previous appropriations, a mass of individuals remained the servants of a single means of production. In appropriation by the proletarians, a mass of means of production must be placed at the service of each individual and in the ownership of all. Modern world trade cannot be put under the control of individuals unless it is under the control of all.” (The German Ideology) How labour is defined is the most fundamental criterion by which the nature of socialist production can and must be distinguished from the capitalist mode of production. Labor power in socialism completely loses any glimmer of being a commodity. Labor crystallized in a product or service and social activity has only a use value. If in capitalism it is the “law of value” and the production of surplus value that define human labour, in socialism, on the contrary, only man and his needs for health, flourishing, maturity, and physical and intellectual excellence are the criteria for the validity and definition of labour. Work here is a specific productive, educational, health, or service and welfare activity that is accompanied by the following indicators.
1- Its performance by humans is not aimed at any exchange. It is free from any kind of commodity affiliation and is not exchanged under any conditions, with any pretext, on the basis of any equivalent.
2- It only creates consumption values and is carried out in response to the physical needs and intellectual and spiritual excellence of humans.
3. The purpose of work, the consumption value of the product of work, the type of need for its performance, whether or not to produce, how much to produce, the planning of work and the manner of distributing the product of work are all determined by the free, informed, involved, equal and influential consensus of all citizens.
4- The means of work or whatever is used in the process of material production and the provision of public and welfare services are in the common ownership of all citizens.
5- It is voluntary, it does not follow any economic compulsion. No power or institution above the heads of individuals plans it, it is not a condition for livelihood or for people to enjoy service and welfare facilities, but rather it is a kind of spontaneous and desired need of people.
6- The interactions of producers or members of the socialist labour organization in general are the embodiment of free cooperation of united and equal people.
7. No form of social division of labour dominates the process of planning and carrying it out. In its voluntary acceptance, people are not divided into holders of different jobs or owners of different specialties and professions, and accepting its implementation in no way turns people into tools and machines.
8- It does not create any form of separation between planning and the process of objectivity, intellectual and physical activity, management and implementation, or legal, social, and other distinctions. All issues related to it are the normal, voluntary, and completely free occupation of individual citizens.
9. It is the manifestation of the unity between man and his thought, will, role, activity, belief and the result of his activity.
10. It implies the principle of man’s liberation from any constraint, even the constraint of accepting and doing work.
The above components are distinct aspects of a unity. What expresses the common theme of all these factors is the complete break of the labour process from the control of the law of value, wage labour relations, the commodity nature of labour power or the product of labour.
But the attainment of this goal or the emergence of this new mode of production depends on the implementation of certain fundamental changes, all of which are as much economic as they are political and social. In order for the work and production and economic activities of humans not to be directed towards the purpose of exchange, it is naturally necessary to establish a completely new type of interaction between people. An interaction that corresponds to the negation of the exchange of labour and the product of human labour. This interaction, in turn, must fundamentally and essentially distance itself from all previous forms of division of labour. The common ownership of the means of production does not in itself solve any problems in this regard. The form of ownership is the concrete level of development of the mode of production in each period and depends directly, more than anything else, on the mode of division of labour resulting from the same mode of production. Accordingly, the abolition of the law of value and the liberation of labour from the control of capitalist relations depend on the establishment of a political structure, or more precisely, a specific labour organization. As has been repeatedly stated in this book, the abolition of wage lab or and the establishment of socialism are impossible in the absence of this labour organization and political structure.
The former Soviet society witnessed the replacement of market capitalism by state capitalism in the aftermath of the October Revolution. In these changes, individual ownership of capital gave way to state ownership of all Russian social capital. The buying and selling of lab or power, the commodity nature of the product of lab or, money as a means of exchange for goods, including the exchange of labour power for capital, the capitalist division of labour, the organization of social production based on the needs of capital, the state as the owner of all capital and the institution of capitalist labour and production planning, the absolute exclusion of producers and the mass of citizens from any direct participation in the planning of production and the management of social affairs, in short, everything that is the basis and manifestation of the existence of capitalist production, remained there without any reduction or reduction. The dispossession of individual owners of capital or the elimination of the exchange market between multiple capitalists simply meant the transfer of ownership of all capital to the capitalist state and the transfer of the entire market or field of exchange of goods to the state. Contrary to some perceptions, in Russian society or in the entire Soviet camp, even the very basis of the capitalist market did not change. The market is the centre of exchange between different capitals, and not necessarily different capitalists. When production is not in line with the biological, welfare and social needs of humans, when individual citizens do not directly intervene in determining the type and amount of production and the form of distribution and consumption, when workers must sell their labour power and reproduce this same power or commodity for resale with their wages, society definitely revolves around the law of value and is a fully capitalist society. In such a situation, labour power and all products of labour are exchanged. This implies the survival of the capitalist market along with a kind of manipulation of it. A market in which different individual capitals, even under the ownership of a single capitalist, are traded with each other. An important question can be raised here. This question is what the objective realization or embodied form of collective labour is like within the socialist labour organization. In other words, how and under what specific economic and political conditions does labour acquire its real socialist characteristics. In the first part of this book, we explained about the work and life councils, the commune councils and the general congress of councils as the council structure of the collective labour organization. The voluntary presence of the able-bodied citizens of the society in the work and life councils, their free participation in the process of production of the necessities of life, welfare and society on the one hand, and their direct and equal role in deciding on the type, manner, amount and manner of distribution and consumption of these products or services are the basic prerequisites for the realization of the socialization of the labour process. Only under such conditions does man become one with his work and instead of a pathetic state of being dissolved in the process of work, he finds the transcendental position of being the goal of work. Every kind of economic or social activity outside the scope of subsistence needs and the requirements of human elevation and transcendence is closed. Every kind of bureaucracy, every kind of capital being the product of labour, every kind of subjugation of man to a force beyond himself is put to an end. The unity of production and labour is realized through planning, the unity of policymaking with implementation, the unity of intellectual and physical labour is realized in a planned manner. The interaction between humans is transformed into the free cooperation of equal citizens. Labor power loses its commodity character and the exchange of the product of labour is relegated to the archives of history. In such a situation, a very large part of the labour force of society, which in capitalist society is wasted within the degenerate relations of state bureaucracy, the army, and the police, or in the fields of production, trade, and harmful and unnecessary economic and social activities, will be completely free, and all of them, within the socialist labour organization, like any other citizen, will serve to raise the standard of living and increase the general welfare.