Part Two, Nasser Paydar
The unity of intellectual and physical labour and the elimination of the duality between them is one of the important components of socialism. The process of implementing and realizing this goal, like all other principles and resolutions of workers’ and socialist civilization, is not an abstract and mechanical category, but an integral part of the entire process of eliminating wage labour and eliminating the capital relationship. The duality between intellectual and physical labour cannot be eliminated by Maoist-type methods and the Soviet camp, by the Chinese-type cultural revolution, and by resorting to mystical and populist methods. The separation of intellectual and physical labour is a specific historical phenomenon in the process of the emergence and development of the social division of labour. The first facets of the emergence and expression of this separation must be sought in the process of the emergence and development of the primary forms of ownership, namely tribal ownership and then ancient common ownership. But the emergence of a fundamental gap and a widespread separation of mental and physical labour occurred in the separation of the city from the countryside, the transition from barbarism to civilization or from the tribe to the nation and the state. The emergence and development of cities, which was itself the beginning of the development of manufacturing industries, the expansion of wage labour and capitalist relations, was inevitably accompanied by the emergence of offices, the police and the expansion of government organizations. The separation of mental labour from physical labour became deeper day by day in the context of the requirements of the division of labour based on a commodity economy and manufactured products. This separation later increased to enormous proportions in proportion to the continuous and increasing development of capitalist relations and its homogeneous division of labour.
In the current historical conditions, in the capitalist era, the dichotomy between physical and mental labour is a direct reflection of the requirements of the capitalist division of labour. It is only capital that has tied the fate of billions of the working population of the earth to endure hard physical labour in factories, farms, ports, in road and construction work, carpet weaving or in the depths of mines, and it is again capital that has made the entire occupation and work of a part of the world’s population devise and think up ways to intensify the exploitation of workers even more horribly, impose an ever more barbaric system of wage slavery on the working masses, how to conquer the market and make goods competitive, suppress and kill workers, manufacture chemical and germ bombs and prepare for the catastrophe of the destruction of humanity. It is capital that, by dividing its labour even within a factory, within an office, within the vastness of a farm, within the small environment of a neighbourhood, within the narrow confines of a family, has demonstrated the most brutal method of tearing people and humanity to pieces, and in this regard, it has divided people into those worthy of intellectual labour and those condemned to physical labour.
Capitalism, like all the other consequences of the aforementioned economic and social formations, homogenizes the physical and mental division of labour in the production of primary commodities or previous forms of production with the dynamics of surplus value production. The relationship of buying and selling labour power superimposes the inhuman effects and consequences of the separation of the worker from his labour on the separation of mental and physical labour and expands this separation to the most catastrophic possible state. Here we are faced with a class that, in both the fields of manual and mental labour, is completely deprived of any kind of free, independent thinking based on unity with its labour by selling its labour power. A class that, even when it does intellectual work, thinks for capital and against itself, and its intellectual work is the process of strengthening the bonds of slavery of capital on its hands and feet. It is a teacher and teaches sociology and with its work it instils the sanctity, originality and legitimacy of capitalism in the future generation of its class, the class of wage slaves. He teaches psychology and tells his followers not to seek the root of mental illness in the existence of capital and not to go below the level of parental errors and capitalist research to find it. The worker does not do physical work and takes an administrative job, for example, he becomes a tax collector, joins the staff of the justice department, is employed as a civil servant, in all these cases his work is apparently intellectual and not physical, but he is without any doubt the intellectual servant and slave of capital. The nut and bolt of a machine is designed, produced and assembled with the thought of capital in mind. He does intellectual work but is not supposed to think with the conscious mind of his class, worse still, any inclination to such thought or thinking is taboo. Crossing the red line is extremely risky and the dimensions of this risk can lead to his complete and total destruction. Such is the fate of the intellectual work of the worker in the capitalist system, if his physical work is the cause of depreciation and erosion of his body, his intellectual work causes many times more wear and tear, decay and ruin of his mind. One of the characteristics of capitalism is the continuous increase in the productivity of labour in the scope of the functioning of the social capital of each country and the entire world capital. A process that is essentially achieved through the development of technology and industrial machinery and, possibly, the increase in the skill of the worker. A contradictory process that reflects the inherent contradiction of capital. On the one hand, it increases the production of maximum profit and capital by each worker, and on the other hand, it relatively reduces the variable part of capital, the only source of surplus value production.
Capital is always in the grip of this contradiction. The tremendous pressure of the upward trend of organic composition, the tendency towards a falling rate of profit, the absoluteness of this dynamic and the occurrence of a crisis touch its chest. The capitalist system is inexorably seeking a way to confront this danger. In this regard, firstly, spontaneously or plannedly, it drives a huge part of the working population of the world into the wasteland of unemployment and, secondly, it mixes different states of organic composition and the degree of productivity of social labour in each country and on a global level. The direct result of this process in the present world conditions is the complete exclusion of about a billion people of working age from all types of intellectual and physical labour on the one hand and the universal reproduction of the deepest forms of separation of intellectual and physical labour on the other. As a result of this situation, the majority of the working-class population on the international level and especially on the three continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America, if they are able to sell their labour power, must submit to the most exhausting and deadly forms of physical labour under the direst conditions. These jobs include wear and tear, destruction, and death in dark, dingy carpet weaving workshops, mines hundreds of meters deep, road construction, farms and harvest centres for products such as cocoa, toxic substance production factories, shoe factories, dyeing factories, clothing factories, fisheries, foundries, steel smelters, kilns for producing plaster, bricks, cement, and other building materials, production lines of giant industrial factories, or hundreds of other fields that require the most strenuous and deadly types of physical labour.
Capitalism has, on the one hand, raised the level of technology, industry, modern machinery and labour efficiency to the highest level, and on the other hand, has pushed the compulsion to do exhausting physical labour for billions of workers to the point of explosion. Over the past years and decades, extensive propaganda has been launched by various circles of the bourgeoisie under the titles of “Information Age”, “Information Technology Society” or “Service Society” and the like. The essence of the talk is that humanity has been freed from the shackles of physical labour or strenuous physical activities!! As if the computer has put an end to the physical labour of the working masses!! And as if in the coming days we will witness the computerization of all work and the liberation of all workers from hard physical labour!!
These are just a few of the common fabrications of the capitalist tribunes of today, but the realities and the very nature of capitalism say the opposite and prove the opposite. The gigantic growth of information technology and technique has not only not reduced the deadly pressure of physical labour on the working class, but, due to the nature of capitalism, has increased this pressure tenfold. The reason for this is simple. The goal of technological development here, in every form, is to increase the rate of surplus value and obtain the highest possible profit. For this, the pressure of exploitation must be increased, and on this basis, technology must be a means of exerting double, tenfold, and a hundredfold pressure on the working masses. In all the areas mentioned above or in all other similar areas, the pressure of physical labour on workers is much more severe than in previous periods because they must produce as much product as possible in the minimum number of working hours and deliver as much surplus value as possible to capital. The “Taylor system,” which has been the pride of the bourgeoisie’s innovation and creativity since its inception, has been nothing more than a weapon of mass destruction for workers to melt their bodies, minds, and entire existences in the furnace of profit-making. This role played by this system is not only specific to the industrial production line; the sales worker behind the cash register of any large chain store also feels the physical labour pressure of capital much more than before. The exponential increase in various diseases caused by work pressure throughout the world is the most telling evidence of this. Leaving aside the effects of the growth of capitalist technology on the increase in the intensity of physical labour pressure, global capital has turned the largest part of the planet into a field of exploitation of ultra-cheap labour. The largest and most gigantic industrial and financial trusts in the world have invested mountains of their capital in this sector, and this is where the astronomical rate of surplus value blows the minds of the owners of international trusts. The Bengali worker with a monthly wage of $37 becomes the source of the roaring flood of profits for JC, Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Penney, Hans & Morris, Pier Mark, Kik, Walmart, Carrefour and other large trusts. The young Filipino or Singaporean girl with a 16-hour day without the right to go to the toilet, a wage of less than a dollar and a surplus value of several thousand percent, saves the declining profit rate of the European or American industrial and financial monopolies from the abyss of collapse. Finally, it is here that for every 5 crowns of labour cost of a Chinese worker, 400 crowns of profit are produced for the Ink Club company. Here, the huge mountains of capital subject billions of workers to the most terrible conditions and the most terrible forms of physical pressure and make the risk of death heavy on them in all stages of work and exploitation.
Capital in this sector does not even establish factories on a very large scale for the maximum exploitation and exploitation of the physical labour of the workers, and turns the huts of Bengali, Filipino and Chinese women into furnaces for melting their bodies in the process of production of surplus value. In a word, the development of technology in capitalism, with all Its astonishing nature, has not only not reduced the pressure of physical labour on the working class, but has increased it to the greatest extent. In the same way, it has not only not reduced the separation of mental labour from physical labour, but firstly, it has carried this separation to the furthest limits, and secondly, it has made what is called mental labour for the masses of the working class no less than the various forms of physical labour, but equally exhausting, painful and deadly.
Socialism completely upsets this situation. The abolition of the duality of mental and physical labour is an organic and inseparable part of the process of abolishing the relationship between capital and wage labour. To the extent that capitalist relations in society are extinguished and replaced by socialist labour organization, to the extent that legislation, politics, planning, and administration of social affairs are removed from the monopoly of certain groups and become the normal course of life and social work of citizens, to the extent that scientific and technical specializations, management, and planning are replaced by the general awareness and knowledge of the citizens of society, to the extent that human participation in the social practice of production and service or welfare activities becomes equal and on the same level, yes, right in parallel with these changes and in the course of realizing these advances, the necessary grounds will be provided for the elimination of the distinction between physical and intellectual labour.
We have already mentioned that the contradiction between physical and mental work cannot be resolved by temporarily and spectacularly sending a certain surgeon to practical work!!! The point of eliminating the contradiction between mental and physical work is not that a certain mining engineer or architect should engage in physical work for a few hours in order to appreciate his health and not forget his connection with the construction worker or the mine cleaner!! The whole point of the matter is that all members of society can become architects, doctors, teachers, engineers and graduates of any other field, and all of these members can acquire all or as many of these knowledges as possible. The socialist Soviet organization of work and production provides everyone with the necessary facilities for this learning. Everyone can learn all knowledges, while each person undertakes work or tasks at any time according to his own interest and choice. Medicine, mining engineering, architecture, or any other profession does not bring any material or spiritual advantages. Each of these is not a job or position, but only a type of voluntary socialist work. Socialism puts an end to any kind of separation of intellectual and physical labour, and to achieve this goal, it undertakes all necessary planning. Programs, policies, and practices that are inseparable parts of the process of socialist transformation of the economy and the abolition of wage labour. Including:
1. Knowledge of politics and policymaking and the resolution of social issues of citizens, as discussed in the discussion of the councils, will become the current business of the councils and the normal course of work and life of all citizens. These matters will completely go beyond the form of specialization or profession. Their learning and training will be a routine matter for all citizens of society, and no one will be distinguished from another by any specialization or special position in these fields. Politicians, lawyers, judges, managers, consultants, attorneys, and the like will lose their distinctive existence forever, and everyone will become truly qualified to play these roles.
2. Defence matters will lose their occupational status. Defence will be considered a matter for everyone as long as it is relevant as an urgent matter for the socialist work organization. Otherwise, and when its necessity is eliminated, it will be removed from the mental and intellectual preoccupation of people.
3. Many professions and fields of work will merge and thus lose their existence as professions or independent work. For example, cleaning or dishwashing and the like will not exist as a job. Whoever works wherever, part of his daily work will be dedicated to cleaning that place. The inhabitants of each neighbourhood will take on the cleaning of their residential environment or public places around them. A doctor who works in a hospital will have enough time to take on the cleaning of that place along with all the hospital staff. Similarly, a teacher who teaches in a school or a worker who works in an industrial unit.
When the number of doctors, teachers, graduates, researchers and those familiar with technology, science and knowledge does not have any shortage or limitation, the implementation of this necessary socialist policy will not cause any damage to the performance of any work.
4. Specialization of any kind and at any level, as long as it exists and has not been destroyed, will not create any special rights in any field, whether economic, political or social, for any human being. It does not become the basis and origin of any greater right or share in the distribution of the necessities of life and welfare facilities for its holder, nor does it bring any special honour, proximity and social status. A doctor acquires all the facilities for life, education and learning his specialty from society, that is, from the voluntary socialist work of everyone. He acquires this specialty thanks to the labour, production, and effort of all citizens and attempts to learn it based on a general planning based on the needs of all on the one hand and his own desires and interests on the other. He is a citizen of a socialist society and is supposed to respond solely to a public service need with his education, knowledge, and expertise. Communist and humane ethics reject any kind of legal difference between him and others, and expecting a different life for him in return for the apparently different work he does in comparison to others is meaningless. The fact that he practices medicine, other builds houses, a third studies, a fourth produces computers, and… can only be a kind of voluntary and free division of labour.
Socialism and the Abolition of Private Property
Private property is essentially a concrete level of division of labour and a means of taking possession of the labour power of others. Division of labour, while it presides over the separation of activities, also implies a specific distribution of the product of activities. The first form of private property appeared in the family, with the slaveholding of the wife and children by the husband. This form of property expanded with the emergence of classes and then the development of manufactures, but it was only under the dominance of the capitalist mode of production that it reached its maximum growth and development. The foundation of private property in capitalist production is determined not by its conventional legal form, but by the wage labour relation itself or the capitalist mode of production. The capitalist is personified capital. He is the being who owns the means of production and exchange in the form of capital. The capitalist appears in various forms: an individual, an industrial institution, a commercial enterprise, a bank, a monopoly, a trust, a state, a union of states, or an entire social class. A significant number of capitalists share in the ownership of social capital and in the power of capital to a sufficient extent, but they are not necessarily the owners of factories, financial institutions, trading houses or other capitalist institutions, and they may not even own shares in this or that company. Their bank accounts may not show much money either. In the midst of the world of various transactions that the bourgeoisie has launched and that has engulfed the labour movement, the way of looking at the issue of property or its private form also has its own special place. A narrative that is common, with slight differences, among all the parties of the Soviet camp, Maoist, Trotskyist, Eurocommunist, and finally Western “Marxists”, sees the state ownership of social capital in conflict with the private ownership of capitalism and interprets it as synonymous with socialism!! This is precisely why none of the above approaches, despite all the war and struggle they have had with the camp, have been able to provide a socialist and anti-wage labour critique of the economic relations of the former Soviet camp.
Nowhere in history has the form of ownership determined the nature of the mode of production. On the contrary, everywhere it has been the mode of production that has determined the form, nature, and content of ownership, whether it is private or collective. How and in what form does the capitalist class of a society exercise its ownership of the means of production and exchange, or indeed of all social capital? What is the role of each of the different tendencies of this class in planning the process of value addition and reproduction of capital? Or how the balance of power between these tendencies is regulated in the exercise of the productive and political order of capital, does not change the basis of the dominance of capitalist relations over society. Capitalism is characterized by the purchase of labour power and the exploitation of wage labour. As long as labour power is a commodity in society, it is exchanged for capital, and when this relationship determines the form of the means of production, capitalist relations dominate society. Private property is intrinsically related to the division of labour in each historical period, the division of activities, and the way in which the product is distributed in that period. Marx somewhere declares private property and the division of labour to be synonymous categories. He says: “What is expressed in one with reference to activity is meant in the other with reference to the product of activity.”
This means that capitalist private property must be sought within the division of labour specific to capitalism and not in its customary or legal form. The question of what the members of the bourgeoisie or the industrial and financial trusts and finally the capitalist state do with the wage labour of the proletariat and how they distribute the results of the exploitation of workers is a matter that is not influenced by the mere legal form of ownership, but at the same time is determined on the basis of the specific capitalist division of labour. State capitalism is a form of capitalism with a corresponding type of division of labour that is accompanied by the ownership and control of the state over all sectors of production and exchange, or in other words, the entire social capital. The existence of the relationship of buying and selling labour power is evidence of the production of surplus value by the sellers of labour power. This surplus value is converted into capital and is spent in the form of the state budget on military and law enforcement expenses, and on paying salaries to the military, police, and other government employees. In the form of government revenue, it is exchanged for unproductive labour and in this way, it is placed at the service of reproducing the labour power of the working class as a whole, and it is used to consume and depreciate fixed capital. In a word, it provides and guarantees the conditions for the reproduction of social capital and the self-expansion of capitalist production in general. Within this society, there are classes and one class exploits the other class. Different individuals or groups of the exploiting class, i.e. the bourgeois class, rule the society and the working class with the help of these relationships. Now, how does each person or group within the bourgeoisie secure their position and their share of the exploitation of workers and in what economic or legal capacity? The answer should be sought not in the direct legal form of ownership of this and that capital, but basically in the existence of capitalist ownership in general and in the division of labour based on the capitalist mode of production.
In the process of its reproduction and self-expansion, capital recreates all the consequences and specific mechanisms of economic or social organization that it needs. In this regard, it creates the way of exercising ownership and the legal form corresponding to it. In the process of historical development and under the pressure of its inherent contradictions, capitalist production also changes the form and way of exercising ownership. The balance between the state and private sectors in capitalist economies, the policy of privatization in some circumstances and statization in other circumstances, is essentially a manifestation of the reaction of the requirements of the reproduction of social capital to the inherent contradictions of itself and the economic and social crises of capital.
By abolishing individual or private ownership of industrial and economic institutions, no change occurs in the basis of the capitalist nature of society. Just as by replacing the market and competition between different capitals by the centralization and control of the economy, no damage is done to capitalist relations. Competition is the mechanism of capital in the formation of the rate of profit and the way in which surplus value is distributed, capitalism can exist without competition between individual capitals. Capital can replace this form of competition with centralized state planning or competition between private and state capitalist monopolies. The same rule is true for individual ownership of economic institutions. Property is a legal phenomenon within the scope of the capitalist mode of production. It is capital that gives meaning and content to the aforementioned phenomenon. The opposite is not true. As long as labour power is a commodity and is bought and sold as a commodity, capitalist ownership also exists. Now this ownership can be individual, state, cooperative, or any other form.
We said earlier that a capitalist is not necessarily the nominal owner of a factory, a business, or a financial institution, a large shareholder in a company, or the owner of a huge bank balance. He can be a capitalist without these things. A relatively large part of the global capitalist class is in this situation. The criterion of capitalist ownership of individuals in this sector is not the notarial deeds of their ownership rights, but their position and place in the labour organization of capital. Government officials, managers, advisors, the military, and all the high-ranking elements of the state bureaucracy or the police, security, economic, and legal institutions of each country are in this category. All of these, by virtue of their role in the capitalist labour organization, have their own share in the ownership of social capital and the power resulting from the existence of capital. To see the extent and breadth of their ownership, one should not go through the land registry office. One should look at capital, at the relationship between the purchase and sale of labour, at the capitalist class, at the ruling labour organization, and at the role of individuals in this organization. By eliminating wage labour, socialism puts an end to any form of ownership based on capital or the relationship of buying and selling labour power. The soviet and socialist organization of labour and production is the means of eliminating private, state, or any form of ownership that transcends class relations. In a society in which all its members participate freely, consciously, effectively, and equally in the planning of work, policymaking, production, and distribution within the soviets, there is no place left for any type of property rights stemming from previous forms of production. In order for the equal human rights of all members of society to replace the previous forms of ownership in all areas of social life, the components that have been proposed as necessary preconditions for the socialist transformation of the economy must be actually realized. No citizen sells his labour power to any authority, whether private or state. Every citizen should participate equally and without any discrimination in the planning of production and services and in the determination of policies, and individuals should participate voluntarily, directly and equally in the social practice of production or service activities needed by society. The abolition of capitalist ownership requires the direct, free, pervasive and completely equal exercise of the will of all citizens over all means of production, the entire social product produced or service and welfare activities. For this reason, in the absence of a socialist organization of work and the corresponding council structure, there can be no talk of a real abolition of capitalist ownership.