Part Two, Nasser Paydar
In the capitalist mode of production, labour is a necessary necessity of life. He who is unable to exchange his labour power for capital is also deprived of the right to life. In the second half of the twentieth century, after years of suffering and storms of struggle, a part of the workers of the world have succeeded here and there in obtaining, under many conditions and conditions, a kind of temporary pension called “unemployment insurance right” in the event of losing their job. In a number of these countries, a minimum social allowance for unemployed people without any kind of income has been temporarily recognized. The main point regarding these cases or any possible type of social security in the current situation is that these “rights” and “entitlements” are absolutely not a permitted phenomenon of the capitalist system. All of these have been the product of the great struggles of the international working class and the result of the forced and emergency retreat or, at best, the expedient and temporary retreat of the bourgeoisie of this or that country in the face of the crushing waves of the workers’ struggles. For this reason, such “provisions” are completely unstable, and their existence or absence is a function of the balance of class forces between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. With every capitalist crisis, with the slightest decline in the curve of the rate of profit of capital or with any degree of decline and stagnation in the struggles of the workers, the bourgeoisie mobilizes and struggles with all ferocity to reclaim these facilities, taking them back or mutilating them to the extent that its power of aggression requires. Under the rule of the capitalist system, in order for the worker and his family to survive, the capitalist must need to buy and consume his labour power. How this need or lack of need arises is in turn a very important issue that must be pondered in order to understand more and more the anti-human nature of capitalism.
Capital buys the labour power that is the source of the production of the greatest surplus value. Even if it is unproductive, it still plays the greatest role in the reproduction of the total capital and the realization of the surplus value resulting from the consumption of productive labour. Moreover, capital buys this labour power until it meets all the needs and requirements of profitability and the accumulation process with these specific characteristics. In all these cases, the labour power of the worker is a commodity whose purchase must generate the greatest profit. Under any circumstances in which these characteristics are taken away from labour power, the basis for its sale is eliminated, the worker fails to find work or, if he has work, loses it and becomes a hungry human being condemned to humiliation, degradation and destruction. The mere consent, desire or effort of the worker to sell his labour power and thus survive is not enough at all. In some cases, he is forced to dance to the capitalist’s thousand and one instruments to please him. Sometimes, he migrates to the four corners of the world to sell this one commodity. Sometimes, to succeed in his cause, he must organize the bloodiest movements and witness the bloodshed of his fellow workers. The worker faces all these ominous events in order to live in this system.
The commodity nature of labour power in the capitalist system, apart from the above issues, also imposes the compulsory duration of the sale of this commodity as a continuous link in the entire chain of slavery on the hands and feet of the worker. Regardless of the fact that his survival is conditional on the sale of this commodity, regardless of all the serious risks involved in selling this commodity, the seller of labour power must necessarily work for the capitalist several times the working time that is equivalent to the reproduction of his labour power. In other words, in order to survive, he is not only forced to work and not only constantly in danger of not selling his labour power, but even in the event of capital’s need for his labour power and the chance of selling this power, he must work for the owner of capital several times the time that is necessary to produce his livelihood. He, or in fact his class, in order to simply survive, that is, a type of survival whose only philosophy is the renewal of labour power for resale and the production of more and more surplus value for the capitalist, is obliged to:
– To use all its power to reproduce the capital of the capitalist class.
– To cultivate the reserve army of capital.
– To feed and reproduce the police, military and bureaucratic machine of capital.
– To produce the annual additional capital.
– To pay the costs of marketing and competition and the commercial cycle process of capital.
– To compensate for the annual depreciation of fixed capital.
– To produce the living expenses, luxuries and entertainment of the bourgeoisie.
– To pay the heavy and exhausting military and war-making expenses of the bourgeoisie.
The working masses must create a value equivalent to all these costs, needs, functions and uses for their own survival and that of their children. All of this and all of what has been mentioned above are just a few of the conditions for workers to achieve a life of either eating and not dying or falling into the abyss of not eating and not dying, and in any case, full of humiliation and fear of hunger and enduring humiliation in the capitalist system.
Socialism destroys the foundation of human life’s dependence on labour and turns labour into a completely voluntary phenomenon. The presentation of this article certainly raises many questions. First of all, is it possible in principle? The answer is clear. This can be fully realized at this very moment, if a workers’ revolution occurs and the communist proletariat is prepared for the socialist transformation of capitalism in a very large part of the world. I would add that by this part of the world I do not mean only Western and Northern Europe, the United States, Canada, Japan and similar societies. In the present society of Iran, a country that has borne the full brunt of the capitalist economic crisis in a devastating manner for about 35 years, there is still the possibility of making work completely voluntary in the event of a workers’ revolution against wage labour. There is sufficient living statistical evidence from the official sources of the bourgeoisie itself to prove this claim.
When 8 million workers in the midst of the current capitalist crisis produce all the necessities of life, education, health care, and welfare for 80 million people in one year, and in addition, they hand over trillions of tomans in profit to the capitalists and the capitalist state, it is natural that by eliminating wage labour, dismantling the state, and organizing labour and production in a socialist manner, a program can be implemented to make labour voluntary. If today the same 8 million workers who produce all those necessities of life and welfare are themselves living in the depths of hunger, lack of rights, lack of education, lack of health, and deprivation of everything, this is only due to the domination of wage slavery. Under the present conditions, what is produced in the entire world is sufficient to make labour voluntary throughout the world, and what is produced by the working class in many existing countries is more than sufficient to free the inhabitants of these countries from the bondage of work. A very cursory glance at the United Nations statistics clearly confirms the truth of this claim. In 1996, about 2,049,078,000 tons of cereals, including wheat, barley, and rice, were produced in only 98 of the world’s 244 countries. If we divide the grain production in just these few countries by the total world population that year, we come up with a per capita quota of 3,610 kilograms. To put it more simply, during 1996, each family of four received more than 14,400 kilograms of grain from the grain produced in just 98 countries. Let us remember that the UN statistics include countries such as Tajikistan, Ethiopia, Armenia, and many of the poorest countries in the world. We have no information about the grain produced in the other 146 countries of the world, but even if we ignore their annual production altogether, we are still faced with a per capita quota that is very adequate and perhaps even more than the needs of the entire population of the planet.
The situation is more or less the same for other products. In the same year 1996, 466,317,000 tons of fresh cow’s milk were produced in the same 98 countries mentioned. The quota of each family of four of these products amounts to 328 kilograms per year and nearly one Liter per day. The amount of meat produced by the aforementioned countries was 215,169,000 tons, of which the daily share of each household on earth is close to half a kilo of meat. Finally, the share of sugar produced by a family in the same 98 countries was 61 kilos per year. In the aforementioned year, based on the same UN statistics, 3,545,768,000 tons of coal, 2,771,993,000 tons of crude oil, 76,913,000 tons of natural gas, 0,426,731,000 tons of iron ore, 1,896,953 kilos of gold, 5,892,000 tons of copper, 1,383,779,000 tons of cement, 28,394,000 tons of crude steel, 19,123,000 tons of aluminium, and finally, about 35,086,000 automobiles were produced in only 101 countries out of a total of 244 countries in the world.
In all these cases we witness an abundance of manufactured goods. The very basic point here is that all this huge volume of products has been produced in the world, at the same time that more than a billion people of working age on the planet are completely unemployed and struggling to find work in the four corners of the world. All this evidence screams that the working people of the world, through their work for many years and generation after generation, have created such a level of technology, means of production and economic possibilities, and have created such a degree of knowledge, technique and art and the productivity of social labour that, if wage labour is abolished and socialism is established, it will best meet the needs of all humanity.
A closer look at the available statistics can make this clear fact even clearer. According to the same UN statistics, in 1994, the world’s gross domestic product per capita was $32,903 for Switzerland, the richest country, and $62 for Sudan, the poorest. A simple calculation shows that in that year the average world income per capita was $6,640, and for a family of four it was about $26,480. These statistics clearly show that in 1994, if the same living and present social product produced by the global working class were distributed among the entire world population, each family of four on the planet would have received a share of the gross domestic product equivalent to 211,840 Swedish kronor. To get a clear picture of this figure, we can compare it with the current expenses of a household in the same Swedish society, a country with the highest standard of social welfare in the world. In the year in question, the total annual income of a family of four dependent on social assistance in this country was about 120,000 kronor, a little less than half of the world’s per capita product. Let us assume that the cost of education, health, other forms of social services and welfare, plus the share that each person pays for the reproduction of the means of labour and production, equals half of his annual income. The final result of all these additions and subtractions will be that at this very moment, if capitalism were to give way to socialism, the standard of living and social welfare of every individual in the present population of the planet could be higher than the current state of life and welfare of a portion of the population of Sweden, that is, a portion of the population of the most prosperous country.
By now we have probably been able to answer the question whether or not voluntary work is practical with the establishment of socialism. These explanations should have made it clear that at least in a large part of the world the level of production and social facilities is so high that there is practically more than everyone needs. The occurrence of a workers’ revolution and the establishment of socialist council society in these societies could, in the very first moments, plunge the entire population into prosperity.
The next question in this regard is: what specific effect will the gross differences between the level of production and technology or the productivity of labour and the annual social product of different societies have on the process of practical feasibility of voluntary labour in the event of a workers’ revolution in each of these societies? For example, how will the difference between Iranian and German society affect the process of volunteering labour, assuming a workers’ revolution in these two societies, in the absence of a world revolution? The answer to this question is not difficult. The occurrence of a workers’ revolution in a society has no balanced relationship with the degree of industrial development of that society. The victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie essentially depends on a certain level of development of the socialist and anti-wage labour movement of the working class, the arming of the proletariat with a clear class solution for ending wage labour, the submission of the bourgeoisie to the suppression of the revolution, and the organization and preparation of the communist proletariat for the establishment of a socialist labour organization. The workers’ revolution may have occurred earlier in a country like Iran than in Germany, but this does not negate the magnitude of the problems on the path to socialist transformation of the economy, including the problem of making work voluntary in this country compared to German society.
Undoubtedly, the lower the level of industrial development, the degree of labour productivity, the natural resources, and the total means of production in a society, the more difficult will be the socialist transformation of the economy and the realization of the phase of voluntary of labour. The working class of a country where the level of production is lower, industrial growth is lower, and the level of economic development is more limited, with the occurrence of a revolution and even the abolition of wage labour, will still be forced to spend a significant part of its annual labour product for a long time on the application of modern technology with the aim of achieving high production capacity and socialist labour efficiency, in order to raise the level of welfare and social facilities higher and higher. A phenomenon that is not very relevant for the society of Sweden, America, Canada, Germany, and similar societies, for example. The result is that, for example, in Sweden, declaring work to be voluntary on the day after the socialist revolution is completely assumed and must be done, while the Iranian proletariat must overcome some possible difficulties in order to achieve this goal. To make the matter clearer, we can continue the discussion like this. If, for example, 9 million people in Sweden need an annual working time of 30 million hours after the victory of the labour revolution to meet all their living and welfare needs, the same 9 million people in Iran may need an annual working time of about 60 million hours. This means that the Swedish proletariat is able to declare work voluntarily in the fastest time, and secondly, this voluntary work is associated with the maximum social welfare of the citizens. On the other side of the story, the working class of Iran may not be able to achieve this task with the same speed of time, or may be able to do it, but will be required to accept lower welfare and social facilities. Let’s not forget that in socialism, time is absolutely not the criterion for calculating work. Our reference to the annual working time here is just to give an example to clarify the matter.
The centre of gravity of all explanations is that, independently of all distinctions between the level of industrial development and the growth of social productive forces, the problem of ending the bondage of labour to the life of citizens and of denying the necessity of labour as an economic compulsion of human life is an obvious principle of socialism. In what process and with what speed the proletariat will succeed in accomplishing this, or what stages it must go through to realize it, is a matter that depends on the relationship between the level of social production in any given society, the population and the volume of the subsistence needs and the general well-being of all citizens.
The third question will probably be: what guarantee is there for the citizens to perform the activities required by society by declaring labour to be voluntary in the socialist organization of the economy? This question is especially important in view of the fact that at any level of technological development and industrial development or at any degree of growth in the productivity of labour, a certain amount of social labour is in any case necessary to ensure the livelihood and well-being of citizens. Those who raise this question will point out that if work is declared voluntary, what will happen to the social work needed by a socialist society? To answer this question, perhaps a look at the current realities in the lives of people in many countries, including the people of Northern and Western Europe, will suffice. In the eyes of today’s inhabitants of these countries, even in this hell of filth and horror of capitalism, work is not simply an act of economic survival. Work, as capital, is a necessity of the worker’s life and a compulsory condition for securing his livelihood, but individuals also view it as a spiritual need, a means of connecting with society and escaping personal isolation. Many people in retirement, even without economic compulsion, seek some kind of employment to fill their free time as a hobby. The idea that if one day the obligation to work as a necessity for livelihood is lifted from people’s shoulders, no one will work is the embodiment of an extremely backward and medieval attitude. On the one hand, this view places the objective basis of its assumptions in the social existence of human beings who, under the tremendous and inhuman pressure of the drudgery of capitalist society, have become weary of any kind of work, and on the other hand, it generalizes the logical and humanly justified hatred of work under the domination of commodity relations to any other social and historical conditions, including socialist society.
The type of view in question separates human thought and mental states or emotional reactions from the conditions of life and work and the social relations that dominate these conditions, and considers human habits and temperaments as special, mystical and metaphysical phenomena. Everything clearly indicates that the voluntariness of work not only does not diminish people’s interest in doing the work required by socialism but certainly intensifies it. Contrary to what some people think today, with the declaration of voluntariness of work in socialism, the volume of work demanded by citizens will certainly be much, much greater than the volume of work required by society. When every individual is free from any compulsion to work to earn a living, when every individual can undertake work that he or she desires, when work is freed from the constraints of commodity relations, and finally, when work is no longer subject to any time frame or capitalist conditions, in such a situation, no human being will prefer sitting in a corner of the house or a corner of solitude to free, voluntary work accompanied by all kinds of desire. The fourth question regarding the voluntariness of work in socialism is how this phenomenon is socially organized, that is, the form of its practical implementation. This question is also particularly important in that the category of voluntariness of work does not in any way include the mere non-compulsion of citizens to work or the elimination of the necessity of work as an economic necessity of life, but beyond that, it also includes the type of work and other aspects related to employment. While citizens are free from the dependence of their livelihood and welfare on work, they also have the right to leave their current field of employment and choose another job at any time and without any special conditions if they wish to work. This naturally requires the fulfilment of certain economic, scientific, social, and cultural preconditions, but a look at the current situation in the world shows that these conditions have been created in a large part of the world in light of the work of successive generations of the international working class.
Today, not only in Europe, America or Japan and other advanced industrial countries, but even in Iran and Malaysia and many Latin American societies, there is a sufficient amount of specialized and skilled labour for all areas of work and production. Capitalism, within the framework of responding to the dynamic needs of profit production and with the aim of exploiting workers more and more brutally and deadly, has on the one hand developed modern technology in an astonishing way and on the other hand has made working with this technology and machinery simpler and simpler. At present, the greatest role of people, especially in advanced industrial societies, has become a kind of simple observer of machines. In such a situation, the phenomenon of specialization does not play much of a role in the fate of production and therefore, in the event of a workers’ revolution and the abolition of wage labour, along with the domination of humans over the fate of production and the results of their own labour, there will be enough human power capable of participating in various areas of social work. In a word, the economic, scientific, educational and cultural preconditions necessary for the immediate declaration of the voluntariness of work are abundantly available in a large part of the world today, and the socialist anti-wage labour movement of the proletariat, if the capitalist state machine is destroyed and the necessary preparations are made for the establishment of a socialist labour organization, will not only be faced with a level of production and industrial development commensurate with the voluntariness of work in these societies, but will even have the necessary facilities to make the type of voluntary work optional.