Part Two, Nasser Paydar
The capitalist system defends the existence and survival of domestic work, because domestic work is one of the important levers for intensifying the exploitation of workers in this system. A worker who has sold his labour power to capital for at least 8 hours a day in the workshop, hospital, store, school, factory, etc. and has also lost several hours in the process of traveling and returning for this sale for free, now after reaching home must also work for hours in the house and kitchen, so that, in total and by doing all these tasks, he can reproduce his consumed labour power for resale to capital. In reality, he does not work only 8 hours, but taking into account the time spent commuting, cooking, washing clothes, and most importantly, taking care of children and other household chores, he has worked for capital for 15 to 16 hours or even more per day. All of this is only relevant to the case and conditions in which the worker is able to provide the basic means of subsistence and reproduce his labour power with one work shift. Otherwise, for example, in societies such as Iran, Singapore, Bangladesh, South Korea and many other countries, they have to work about 80% of the day and night in the worst conditions in order to feed themselves and their children. What capital pays the worker in the meantime, in the case of a single work shift, is only a very small part of the value of his 8 hours of work. Even in this case, that is, with the same 8-hour work time, he has still done about 15 to 16 hours of work for the capitalists. Housework or the time spent commuting by workers is not considered work at all in the ideology of capital. It does not fall into either of the two conventional forms of work, that is, productive or unproductive work, because it is not exchanged with either productive capital, unproductive capital or income. A deeper look at what lies behind the relationship between the purchase and sale of labour power can clarify the place of this free labour time in the capitalist system and in the process of capital reproduction in general. Housework and commuting time are certainly not productive labour. This is obvious because they are not directly consumed by the capitalist in the production process and therefore do not create surplus value. At the same time, housework is not unproductive labour either, because it is not purchased through the capitalist. The appearance of the matter is quite deceptive, and it seems that housework is therefore a personal matter and a kind of entertainment and recreation for the worker or the masses of workers. The matter becomes even more deceptive when the generality of this phenomenon for all classes in all pre-capitalist systems is added to it. It is pretended that housework is neither specific to the working class nor specific to human life in the capitalist system. All of these components will lead us astray and lead us to the misconception that housework in the capitalist system is just a personal matter or a natural pastime of the working class.
In order to judge the place of domestic work in this system correctly, we must understand capital well. With the establishment of the relationship of buying and selling labour power, not only the surplus labour of the worker becomes the property of capital, but only the surplus values from its exploitation do not become the capital of the capitalist class. Capital is a social relationship. A relationship that gushes filth and blood from all its pores. It forces the worker to regulate and determine the course of his life based on the interests and requirements of capital’s valuation. In proportion to the increasing profitability of capital, he lives, thinks, gets educated, acquires expertise, learns social behaviour, finds taste and preferences, changes feelings and emotions, and recreates his own way of consuming and using things. Capital forces the worker to adapt everything from reproduction, how to form a family, how to live in society, to cooking, entertainment, social etiquette, and all of his daily life to the requirements of surplus value production.
To achieve this principle, capitalism dictates and imposes a specific culture, thought, morality, habit, and worldview on the worker. Not content with all this, it spends a significant part of the product of his labour and toil on the police, army, bureaucracy, and the establishment of a government that imposes these expectations on him by force of bullets or in the form of thousands of intellectual, cultural, ideological, moral, and political educations. Capital is a social relationship, and housework is also a specific part of this social relationship and has its own role and place in the reproduction of this entire system. Having a private kitchen in every home, cooking or washing clothes from house to house, and the like, are certainly not genetic or eternal matters; on the contrary, they are traditions and tastes that have emerged throughout the history of human life and from the depths of various production methods and economic and social formations. The productive form of each period has manipulated or changed them in accordance with the requirements of its own development and survival, it has preserved or destroyed it. Capitalism has done the same thing and has used and continues to use all these habits, traditions and tastes for its own benefit and to intensify the exploitation of the working masses even more. We will discuss the socialist alternative to housework below, but following what has been said, it must be added that on the one hand, housework wastes a huge part of human labour power or, to be more precise, imposes a heavy workload on them in favour of capital, and on the other hand, it paves the way for the double exploitation of women, the deep mental and physical exhaustion of people, the intensification of sexual oppression and, finally, the consolidation of the sinister culture of private property.
The socialist Council Labor Organization, in the process of its establishment and expansion, realizes the process of the decline of domestic work and its replacement by public services. Limited production and scattered or individual labour, even if carried out within the framework of collective and socialist relations, are fundamentally incompatible with socialist civilization, with the principle of human liberation, and with the goals and expectations of socialism, the abolition of wage labour. Let us return to the example we had earlier in another discussion. That there should be a kitchen in every house and that every family should prepare its own food, that every house should have its own washing machine, that every mother should take care of her child, and the like, assuming that each and every resident enjoys such facilities equally, is still in conflict in various respects with the standards and foundations of a free, prosperous, and humane socialist life. By creating a public laundry, a public restaurant, a kindergarten, a meeting and recreation hall, by establishing a place for public tools and facilities, and the like, in every residential area, a huge amount of socialist voluntary labour can be saved for the benefit of society, that is, for the benefit of individual citizens. At the same time, the amount of environmental pollution can be greatly reduced. If, instead of 50 washing machines, 50 vacuum cleaners, 50 refrigerators and freezers, 50 dishwashers, 50 toy cupboards, 50 kitchens, 50 swimming pools in 50 separate houses, we can meet the entire needs of the local residents with 10 or more of these services in each neighbourhood, we will have made a huge saving in the amount of voluntary work of the citizens of a society, for example, 60 million. This work, if done, will pave the way for greater abundance of welfare, facilities, lack of need, growth, and physical and intellectual excellence. It is clear that the work saved in this transition will not be limited to the amount of work spent on producing the aforementioned equipment and facilities. A public restaurant in a neighbourhood can be well run by the socialist voluntary work of several citizens within the framework of the division of council duties among the residents. But the total time spent by, say, 60, 80, or 100 families living in this neighbourhood on cooking, washing dishes, shopping, etc., certainly amounts to many times the collective work required in a restaurant. If we consider this difference in the planning for the replacement of housework by socialist public work, then the importance of the decline and disappearance of housework in the whole of socialist life and civilization will become clearer. Perhaps, in a simple and rough calculation, we can reach the surprising conclusion that, for example, citizens who are members of the socialist work organization will in this way save something like 20 to 30 percent of their voluntary public work for the benefit of improving their living and working conditions, education, treatment, recreation, and physical and mental well-being.
With all this, the problems and hardships caused by housework are not limited to the mere waste of time and its economic losses. The existence and survival of housework is a requirement of the capitalist division of labour in society. Housework corresponds to the process of the division of labour of capital and the process of fragmentation of man in this specific relationship. It is a manifestation of the disintegration and individuality of the mind and the attachment of man to private property. The existence of this form of work shows that humans are individual and scattered elements with separate issues and subjects for a significant part of their lives.
Socialism, in the process of the decline of household work and its replacement by collective and public services, opens up the most creative and fruitful areas of spiritual and moral development for mankind. It takes people out of the narrow and exhausting confines of a life full of blind proprietary and selfish calculations and connects them to a world full of the glory of human solidarity and unity. The socialist organization of work achieves this solidarity, harmony and coordination, above all else, in the main sphere of human life, in the field of work and production, decision-making and planning, and the development and maintenance of social affairs by all members of society. But it does not stop there, but rather pushes forward until all economic, moral and cultural remnants of private property are eliminated. It replaces the individualism born of a sense of private ownership of the kitchen, the automobile, the refrigerator, the freezer, the vacuum cleaner or the washing machine with a human empathy inspired by a sense of shared life. It is in light of all these factors and components that the councils will strive, in parallel with the establishment of the socialist organization of labour, to transfer what in the capitalist system belongs to the realm of domestic work to the realm of public and communal activities.
Socialism and education
Capital makes everything a mechanism for the production process of profit. Science, education, research and knowledge also completely subject man to the same fate. It forces individuals to deviate from their educational path and adapt the goal of their intellectual and intellectual development to this purpose. To turn to a field of work and education that has bread, fame and name, and to attach themselves to the technology, specialization and art that capital defines according to its marketing and profit-seeking policy. If capital gives him the financial ability and ability to study, he should study medicine or engineering, pursue politics, management and work and businesses that provide water and bread, and he should study and learn all this in order to make the resulting specialization a guarantee for the more expensive sale of his labour power or make it a means for partnering with the capitalists and the capital state in further exploitation of workers. Otherwise, if capital denies him the opportunity to access these jobs and train him in these specialties, which is often the case, he will become a cleaner, a handyman, a simple miner deep underground, or indulge in prostitution. What do humans themselves want? Adapting work to the requirements of material and spiritual development of individuals, choosing employment according to the free flow of human thought and creative taste, or the like, these criteria and standards are meaningless in the customs of capital, because they are in conflict with production for the greatest possible profit. On the one hand, capital wants designers, engineers, policymakers, judges, planners, professors, experts, lawyers, executioners, military commanders, and on the other hand, it needs simple workers, drivers, cooks, teachers, childcare workers, welders, mechanics, lathe operators, and cleaners. It wants the first groups in order to plan how to exploit workers more and more horribly and produce more and more surplus value. It also needs the masses of workers and sellers of labour power because their labour is directly or indirectly the source of surplus value production and the origin and support of capital’s self-expansion.
The result of the word, in the capitalist system, it is only capital that decides about education, its method and content, the type of specialization, the different fields of employment, who or what part of the population will be covered by education? What percentage will remain deprived of learning and illiterate, what social groups will enter what professions. The working class and the lower masses of society can influence this decision to the extent that the power of their class struggle allows. As far as the “law of value” and the economic and social order of capital are concerned, the biological and welfare needs or the requirements of physical and intellectual development of people have no effect on educational planning. The place of specialization, the training of human resources, the determination of the type of professions, education and training, and everything related to learning and choosing a job are simply a function of the capitalist division of labour and directly follow the needs of the market and the movement of capital. A young person who is studying must choose his field of study and his future career based on the needs of the market. His ideas, expectations, and interests must be shaped by capital and the conditions necessary for capital’s profitability. Whether or not he will succeed in finding employment in this field of study even if he adapts his education to the needs of capital? Again, it depends on the market and the requirements of capital’s self-expansion. Because the work and profession that are in demand today may not be so in a few months. What he feels today, based on the existing data of life, is that he must do something to live within society. In this regard, he sees that the right to choose does not lie with him but with the capitalist market. A few, thanks to capital and the possibilities resulting from the exploitation of workers, choose any form of life they want, while the vast majority of people, in order to sell their labour power, must make it marketable and saleable. What the terms and conditions or components and characteristics of the acceptability of the sale will be, are determined by capital. In any case, in order to sell his labour power and sell it at a slightly higher price, if possible, he must combine it with some kind of specialization, skill, and experience. Otherwise, he will be left more and more without customers and will lose the chance of living and perhaps even surviving. The young man we are talking about, observing and assessing these conditions, inevitably seeks to find a way to make his labour force marketable and chooses a specific field of study based on the criteria and values created by the “law of value” or, in fact, the law of devaluing humans. Let us keep in mind that all of this is only possible if this young man or this mass of young men has the opportunity to go to school, study, and learn some kind of profession and specialization. The reality is that the vast majority of the working class in Asia, Africa, Latin America, part of Europe, and all of Australia are deprived of this opportunity due to the deadly exploitation of capital. In this part of the world, capital, based on a widespread international division of labour, has largely eliminated the need for education and specialization of workers. In these areas, the labour of children under six years of age, without any education or specialization, is the source of maximum profit, and precisely for this reason, the vast majority of workers and workers’ children are denied the opportunity to study, study, and specialize.
The abundance of ultra-cheap labour in this part of the world, the policy of continuously reproducing the conditions of this cheapness through the ruthless police dictatorship of capitalism, and the allocation of a number of countries in this part to the sphere of accumulation and reproduction of the production of consumer goods have largely reduced the need for special specializations or extensive training of the labour force needed by capital. Moreover, the violent suppression of the labour movements of these countries has severely reduced the possibility of the working class pressuring the bourgeoisie to obtain these facilities. For all these reasons, even the multi-year compulsory education that exists, for example, in Northern or Western Europe, remains unattainable for workers in the capitalist countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The way in which the population of the capitalist world is educated and literate at the beginning of the twenty-first century, at the highest stage of the globalization of capital and in the era of computer revolutions, is extremely disastrous, especially based on the statistics and figures published by the official sources of this system itself. According to United Nations statistics, out of the total 3 billion adult population of the world at the end of the 1980s, 880 million people were illiterate. In the United States, the largest hub of international capital, one in three mothers who are eligible for social security benefits is completely illiterate. In the same United States, about 23 million adults are so illiterate that their literacy level does not even help them solve their daily problems. Of the world’s 1.5 billion school-age population (age group 5-19), more than 750 million, or half, do not go to school. The same source adds that this figure has been on the rise in recent years. In other words, the illiteracy rate in this group is rising. In the age group 7-11, the age of primary education, one in three children lacks the facilities for school and literacy. In the poorest countries in the world, 95% of the population is illiterate. Nearly two-thirds of the world’s illiterate are women.
These are data that show how the capitalist system deals with the literacy and education of the world’s population. The subordination of education, specialization and research at various levels to the laws of capital movement is so strong and tight that any changes and transformations in it can only be analysed and explained as a direct reflection of changes in the needs of the capitalist labour market. In some countries of Northern and Western Europe, although the law on compulsory education up to the age of 16 has been in effect for many years, the number of university and high school graduates in these societies still determines a relatively small percentage of the entire age group corresponding to this level of education. For example, in the case of Sweden, this ratio was about 12% until the beginning of the last decade of the twentieth century. A society in which the giant industrial trusts each rake in around 30 to 40 billion kronor in profits each year, and the CEOs of most of its large companies receive tens of millions of kronor in compensation for terminating their employment contracts. Yes, in this same society, by the end of the twentieth century, only 12% of its inhabitants had attained higher education. The reason for the problem is clear. Capital only needed that many university graduates. Just as in Ghana, Somalia and Gabon, 90 or 95 percent illiteracy of the workforce does not cause any significant damage to the process of reproduction and profitability of capital. The education budget of these countries in most cases is a negligible amount compared to the military and armament budget. At the same time that millions of high school and university students in this or that capitalist society suffer from a shortage of teachers and professors of physics or chemistry, thousands of physics and chemistry professors in the scientific laboratories of the same societies are working tirelessly to make the industrial products of imperialist trusts and large and small capitalist enterprises competitive. Again, according to statistics from the 1980s of the twentieth century, the annual budget of the US Air Force alone was much higher than the total education budget of 1.2 billion children in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In 32 countries, the amount that governments spend on military affairs is more than the total amount they allocate to education, training, and health care. The world’s annual military spending averages $20,000 per soldier, but the world’s public education spending during the same period averages only $380 per person.
The capitalist mode of production’s treatment of literacy and the degree to which people are literate or not is just one aspect of the anti-human function of this system. The more fundamental problem is the deal that capital makes with the process of scientific progress and the application of human knowledge. Science, research, and scientific discoveries in the capitalist tradition are tools for improving the productivity of social labour and increasing the profits of capital. This is the basis of the capitalist system’s attitude towards knowledge, scientific research, and investigation. A very simple look at the history of the twentieth century, especially the second half of this century, clearly shows what capital does with science. While industrial products enter the global market every day with dozens of new shapes and forms with the aim of becoming more customer-friendly, advances in medical knowledge in the field of treating dangerous diseases such as cancer, AIDS, and similar diseases are very small. Capital requires expertise and scientific research to expand the scope of labour exploitation; ensuring health, hygiene, and a better life for humans has no place in the calculations of this system.
Socialism destroys all these equations and inequalities. The process of eliminating wage labour and destroying the capitalist division of labour is the process of completely liberating education and research from capitalist standards and values. If the revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe chanted the slogan of separating education and training from religion, the socialist revolution of abolishing wage labour by the proletariat is the standard-bearer of removing every sign of commodity and capitalist relations from education and research within society. Here, knowledge and education are placed entirely at the service of improving life, moral exaltation, growth, flourishing and intellectual maturity, health and well-being of humanity. In this regard, the following points can be briefly highlighted.
1.The intellectual flourishing and scientific advancement of all citizens depends on the intellectual and scientific flourishing and advancement of each individual. In order for the principle of equality of all human beings to be realized, all necessary ways must be opened and paved for their equal ability and involvement. A society composed of individuals unequal in social involvement will never become a society of human beings with equal rights. The socialist and council planning of work and production places the promotion of the level of knowledge and awareness of all individuals in all fields at the forefront of its work in order to achieve their maximum scientific and human potential and effectiveness and links the cleansing of the social life of the evil contamination of wage labour relations to the most successful achievement of this goal.
2. The phenomenon of specialization will advance its decline with all possible speed. The socialization of knowledge will replace the acquisition of special skills and the acquisition of specializations. This is not difficult, and even capitalism has put into practice flashes of it wherever its interests have required it. In this current situation, a mountain of information in various fields of medicine, pharmacy, technology, physics, chemistry, history, literature, geology, biology and other sciences is available on the Internet. Capitalism, by its very nature, links the flow of this information to the flow of maximum profit production and takes advantage of its internalisation for purposes such as ensuring the undisputed rule of ideology, thoughts and beliefs of the ruling class, consolidating the foundations of the system’s power, marketing and brokerage and selling goods, fierce competition and competition of capitals with each other, and the most vicious and deadly stupidity of the thoughts of the working masses, etc. In the least harmful case, for example in the field of medicine, along with all other abuses, it exploits this information to reduce the welfare and treatment facilities of the working masses. Socialism uses this same technique and all the information facilities that exist or are being discovered and can be discovered in the near and distant future to replace specific specialties and skills through the process of massification and socialization of knowledge as much as possible and in greater depth. The basis is that every human being should learn as many branches of human knowledge as he or she desires and not only should he or she not face any shortcomings or obstacles, but should also have all the necessary incentives, facilities, and amenities before him or her. This principle should also be consistent with what was mentioned above. The attainment of all individuals to various knowledge depends on each individual attaining all of these knowledges.
The socialist organization of work at various levels of local and centralized planning makes the above-mentioned the foundation of educational work and paves the way for their realization. An operator of automatic industrial machines, an electrician or a locomotive driver can in turn be a doctor, physicist, chemist, historian, writer, politician or anything else. This does not mean that he does all these things at the same time or that his level of knowledge in these fields is necessarily the same and on par with all other people. This is not a utopia. It is a discussion of realities. This will be discussed further in the topic of eliminating the difference between manual and mental work. Let us emphasize for the time being that the foundation of work in socialism is based on the education of all knowledge to the highest level by all people. The socialist council organization of work rushes forward with this prospect and strives to remove the bottlenecks and obstacles in the way of its achievement. By eliminating the useless spheres of labour consumption, by abolishing the state, bureaucracy, army and military apparatus, by eliminating exchange and converting the voluntary labour power of these sectors into useful socialist labour, by abolishing the capitalist division of labour, by diminishing household labour and by developing communal life, socialism reduces the amount of labour required by society to the minimum possible through all these functions. At the same time, by developing technology and increasing the productive capacity of labour, it provides all the necessary facilities for the further expansion of schools, universities and research centres. In such a process of socialist development and growth of society, it will be quite natural for all human beings to attain maximum knowledge and education, and it is in this direction that what is called specialization or special vocational education in capitalist society today will be transformed into the general education of all citizens.