Part three, Nasser Paydar
Democracy has no sacredness for the workers. The statement that the workers’ movement must fight for democracy!! The anti-capitalist approach of the working class or communism is not about the abolition of wage labour by this class. “Democratic revolution”, “People’s Republic”, “Revolutionary Republic”, “Soviet democracy” and the like, for the working class of a society in which capitalism constitutes the ruling mode of production and the bourgeoisie the economically and politically dominant class, are only dark tunnels of escape from the real struggle against capital. These tunnels have historically been dug by approaches outside the circle of the anti-wage labour struggle, by people’s communism, nationalist anti-imperialistic, the former Soviet camp or Pro China circles, in order to remove the proletariat from its real class battlefield and make it the foot soldiers of other movements.
The conscious proletariat, in every situation, every level of readiness, and every moment of the process of its class struggle, directly fights for socialism. It places the immediate socialist horizon in front of every type of capitalist rule and civilization and makes the achievement of this perspective the subject of its ongoing struggle. What achievements it achieves or fails to achieve at each stage of its anti-capitalist movement, what level of political freedoms and social rights it imposes or does not impose on the bourgeoisie, what welfare facilities it seizes or does not seize, all depend on the current situation of its struggle, on its fighting power, on the level of its knowledge, awareness, and consciousness, and on the degree of its organization and readiness to exercise power against capital. Its movement is anti-capitalist, its perspective of struggle is the abolition of wage labour, its war against the regime is a war against capitalism and the capital state, its solutions are the mechanism of confrontation with the existence of capitalism and the formation of a line against this system, its organization is the organization of power against wage labour. The conscious proletariat always and at all times looks at the movement, the goals, the current situation and the twists and turns of its struggle in this way. Step by step, this path does not open up the misleading exits of a democratic revolution or the establishment of a democratic republic and the like. To the extent that its current strength allows, it pushes the bourgeoisie back from its stronghold and makes every inch of this advance a rampart for a more conscious, organized and powerful offensive against capitalism. No victory and no level of war achievements are a place to stop and accept any form of survival of wage slavery. Step by step, this path is only the key to the secret of attacking to wear down the enemy as deeply as possible until victory and the establishment of socialism abolishing wage labour. In the twists and turns of this struggle, there is no stage, residence, revolution, structure or specific political formation called democracy, because each of these will involve digging out some kind of exit from the road of war against capital and giving in to a form of planning of the capitalist productive, political and social order.
The working class’s approach to the abolition of wage labour bases all its demands, even its urgent ones, on the critique and practical negation of the entire objectivity of capitalism. Instead of proposing civil rights and democracy, it calls for the elimination of any form of government or state over the heads of the workers. Instead of “democratic intervention of the people in their social destiny,” it calls for the direct and effective presence of all individual citizens in the definition of work, planning of production and social labour, policymaking, how to distribute the social product of labour, the abolition of private property, the abolition of wage labour, and so on. Instead of “free elections,” “democratic suffrage,” “democracy,” and the like, it calls for the replacement of any conventional government with a council and socialist society of individual citizens. Instead of unions, syndicates, and civil and legal organizations, it puts forward work and life councils and an anti-capitalist council movement. The socialist tendency of the working class expresses itself in a socialist movement, a movement for the abolition of the existing situation, and makes the program of struggle and the practical policy of its struggle the organization of the workers’ councils’ movement against wage labour. By propagating reformism, by trying to transform modernism and secularism and reformist demands and democratic rights into the nothingness of the workers, socialism cannot be achieved or the way for the socialist revolution of the workers can be paved. This is a pathological reformist perversion that the existing left is suffering from. The socialist revolution and the establishment of a council labour organization that abolishes wage labour are only the work of the working masses who have pursued socialism as a movement. They have fought against capital with a clear perspective of socialism, a socialist critique of existing objectivity, current anti-capitalist demands, an anti-regime anti-wage labour, and an alert and conscious socialist head. Opening a period called the democratic revolution, the struggle for democracy, and the establishment of a democratic republic have no place or relevance in the heart of this campaign.
Socialism and national planning
The socialist labour organization relies on the existence of basic councils, communes, and the general congress of councils in all its economic, political, and social aspects. The way in which the councils govern society, the economic system, and the features of socialist civilization have been discussed earlier. What is of interest in this chapter is the explanation of the basic aspects of the relationship between the council structure of the socialist labour organization on the one hand and the matter of nationwide and even centralized planning of production, welfare, and social services on the other. A clear explanation of this relationship naturally depends on answering other questions. The degree of importance of planning in socialism, its content, level, and how centralized it is, the uniformity of planning with all the characteristics of the socialist labour organization or the process of eliminating wage labour, the manner in which this uniformity can be realized by eliminating any type of government over the heads of citizens, and some other questions are raised in this regard. The effort is made to ensure that the content of this chapter, although brief, answers at least the most pressing of these questions.
Production method and nature of planning
The socialist Council Labor Organization, while organizing the state, plans work, production, and social welfare on a nationwide level. Large-scale industry, mass production, and the process of socialist transformation are unthinkable without this type of planning. Socialism, by preparing for new industrial revolutions, makes this task even more important. The bourgeois narrative of socialism in all its forms defines the boundary between socialism and capitalism by the presence and absence of a plan!! And on this basis, it sees the existence of a plan and the control of the laws of accumulation by a centralized state institution as indicating the establishment of the first and the elimination of the second. The story begins with the fact that this narrative, instead of defining capitalism by the relationship of buying and selling labour power, explains it by the anarchy of production, competition between individual capitals, or private ownership of capital by individuals!! In this regard, he summarizes the socialist transformation of the economy in the centralized planning of social capital and sees the centralized planning of production and control of capital competition by the state as evidence of the elimination of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. The power of the state here is the power of the unit of social capital, and the overall planning of the economy is precisely aimed at regulating the most favourable conditions for the reproduction of capital and applying these conditions to the working class. The plan here does not contradict the laws of the market. The market exists. Labor power is bought and sold, and exchange between different parts of capital follows its natural course. The role of the plan here is to regulate how the various spheres of capital are organized or exchanged, how capital is distributed in different spheres of accumulation, the level of wages, the organic composition of capital in different spheres, and how the total surplus value is distributed among different sectors of social capital. The competition of capitals, which in the conventional and classical form of the market played a role as the driving force for the formation of the general rate of profit, how surplus values are distributed among different sectors of capital, and the direction of capitals for advance in more profitable areas, here, under the pressure of centralized state planning, is somewhat diminished and marginalized. Centralized economic policymaking and the tyrannical dictatorship of the state in the former Soviet bloc were the inevitability of capitalism. In answering the question of why capital there replaced the conventional market, competition, and infrastructure of Western countries with centralized state planning? Or under what conditions did it do this? A separate discussion is required. What is emphasized here is the explanation of the contradictory content of the program in capitalism and socialism. The mistake of the democratic critics of camp socialism is that, departing from the false narrative of capitalism and the socialist transformation of the economy, they have considered the program itself to be synonymous with the socialist organization of labour. It is not surprising that some of them, like Jacques Bidet, have ultimately sought a solution in reconciling the market with socialism and compensating for the undemocratic effects of the program by the market!! Centralized production and nationwide planning are issues that exist in capitalism and will also exist in socialism. It should be seen what specific character and role the centralization and organization of production acquire in each of these two systems, given their fundamentally opposite material infrastructure.
Capitalist production, despite the constant competition of the various parts of social capital with each other in each separate society, or in the world as a whole, is based on maximum concentration. This concentration is especially intensified in state capitalism to the point of controlling the competition between the scattered components of social capital. The history of capitalism is essentially the history of the uninterrupted, increasing, and uncontrollable concentration of social production. The monopolization of capitalism and the emergence of the imperialist conditions of capitalist production were a concrete level of the advance of this tendency or process of centralization of capital. Concentration here results from the nature of the capital relation and the inevitability of the process of value-added and profit-making. The internal movement of capital to increase the productivity of social labour, to produce more massive surplus value, to increase its competitive power, and to seize a greater share of the total surplus value produced in society and internationally is inevitably intertwined with the process of centralization. The history of capitalism is the history of the ceaseless concentration of capital, the dispossession of numerous individual capitals, and their concentration in concentrated industrial and financial poles. The process of technical change and the organic composition of capital, together with the process of concentration and amalgamation of capitals, constitute a single and increasing process. The concentration and concentration of capital is a natural and inevitable necessity of the competition of the different parts of capital. The relationship between competition and concentration is not one of cause and effect; both of them originate from another source, from the “law of value” and the process of production of surplus value, but each is an effective driving force for the intensification of the other. Competition opens up the necessary ground for the intensity of the merger of capitals, and concentration, while implying the concentration of dispersed capitals and thus being devoid of competition, in turn makes the competition between concentrated capitals and the great poles of capital deeper and stormier. Capitalist crises in turn accelerate the process of concentration of capital and at the same time expand the scope of competition between concentrated capitals. Marx’s statement that capital, in the process of passing through the stage of “primitive accumulation”, gradually puts down its staffs and stands on its own feet, is not only indicative of the specific historical changes of capitalist production in a given period, but also of the general tendency of the dynamics of the increase in the value of capital in all periods. Throughout the development of capitalism, until the end of the 19th century and even the beginning of the 20th century, competition played an important role in the process of self-expansion of world capital. However, the relentless process of concentration of capital, the emergence of large industrial and financial monopolies, the emergence of large transnational capitalist trusts and enterprises, and the competition of large international capital poles marginalized competition between individual and dispersed capitals and made it a secondary and subsidiary phenomenon overshadowed by the fierce competition of industrial and financial trusts and monopolies. In other words, in the course of its historical development, capitalism, on the one hand, adjusts and reworks the mechanism of competition in accordance with the requirements of its development, and on the other hand, it places the manner of this adjustment or reworking in an increasing and compound process with a continuous tendency towards concentration. The more capital becomes concentrated, the more difficult, acute and crushing the competition of the different parts of social and global capital becomes. Conversely, the more difficult the conditions of competition and the more limited the possibility of its realization become, the greater and greater the need for concentration or the tendency of capital to concentrate. Capitalist production, under the pressure of the need for concentration, competition, the increase in organic composition, the downward tendency of the rate of profit, its inherent and inevitable crises and all its inherent contradictions on the one hand, and for imposing the full pressure of exploitation, the injustices and the misery of wage labour on the international working class on the other, makes certain forms of centralized economic and social planning inevitable. While these plans are continuous for reproducing the conditions of production and the economic, civil, political and social order of capital as a whole, they can be classified in terms of their nature and occur at two levels.
1. The combination of the historical course of capitalist development with the process of centralization has required a kind of self-fulfilling and internal planning for capital. In this respect, the plan is part of the laws of accumulation and self-expansion of capital. The dominance of industrial and financial trusts over the world market is not possible without trying to achieve the best production conditions, without searching for appropriate ways to reduce the costs of the fixed part of capital, access to ultra-cheap labour, achieving maximum competitiveness, or in the absence of using all research, scientific, sociological, marketing and other worldly matters. All of these matters require planning and require the most accurate and far-sighted types of assessments and planning with the aim of obtaining maximum profit. The bourgeoisie allocates a significant share of the proceeds of the exploitation of the working masses of the world to the cost of these plans and sees it as a vital, inseparable part of its total investment costs. A brief look at the working methods of today’s huge trusts and a comparison of their work with the capitalism of the first half of the nineteenth century clearly shows the degree of importance of planning for global capital and the process of its growth, complexity and precision during these two centuries. The huge industrial and financial giants of today, from banks to electronic trusts, computer and information technology companies, automobile manufacturers, drug production cartels, and chain enterprises, have immersed the production and sale of consumer goods all over the world in their octopus-like plans and locked them behind their iron walls. The theme of work here is the inherent drive of capital to increase the production of surplus value. The nature of capital as a social relationship. A global relationship that links everything in humanity around the production of surplus value and its created phenomena such as the formation of the rate of profit, the distribution of surplus values among individual capitals or different social capitals, the fluctuations between necessary and surplus labour, competition and war, and the conflict between the poles of capital. In this way, large financial institutions coordinate the process of capital reproduction, whether it is produced or not, how much is produced, and the distribution table of capital in different territories, all with the requirements of the profitability of the most dominant part of world capital. In all these cases, we witness the realization of a kind of spontaneous centralized planning in the existence of capital.
2- Capitalist production in the process of reproducing the most favourable conditions necessary for the continuation of the exploitation of labour power is not enough as a mere internal spontaneous planning, but rather establishes, reproduces, and establishes all the superstructural requirements of a centralized planning to impose a system of wage slavery on the working class. The structure and function of the existing state are the developed form of these superstructural and centralized planning requirements. The state, even in the form of state capitalism of the camp type, still does not establish the laws of accumulation and self-expansion of social capital, but, with its specific economic function and its specific political and social functions, assumes an organic and determining role in the reproduction of the conditions of production of capital. The contemporary state, as has been stated elsewhere, is not just a simple militaristic institution for the military coercion of capital against the proletariat, or even a complex bureaucratic apparatus for the maintenance of this order; on the contrary, it is a huge and very complex apparatus that plays a profoundly effective role in regulating the relationship of purchase and sale of labour power and creating the conditions necessary for the reproduction of social capital and all its related problems. The capitalist mode of production finds in the existing state institutions, laws and contracts that: First: embody a concrete level of civil, legal and social development of this mode of production. Second: play the role of a centralized system of defence and purification, institutionalizing the necessities of the survival of wage slavery, regulating the working and social life conditions of workers on the basis of converting their maximum labour into surplus labour and finally exercising military and police force of capital against the proletariat. The state, with its own plan as a representative of society, practically institutionalizes and regulates the entire conditions of work and life, exploitation and disenfranchisement of the working class and the lower masses in order to increase the surplus labour for capital as much as possible and to reduce the paid labour of the workers as much as possible. Organizing the social facilities necessary for the development of the labour force and keeping the reserve army of labour alive is an inevitable task of capital. The state undertakes this task on behalf of the capitalist class and, as a huge nationwide trust, organizes it with maximum economy in favour of social capital and to the detriment of the proletariat.
We observe that the capitalist mode of production, whether in the natural process of self-expansion and production of surplus value or in the course of its social and superstructural development, is everywhere concerned with planning and systematizing the productive, civil, political, cultural and social order of capital. One difference between state capitalist societies such as the former Soviet bloc and non-state forms of capitalism is that in the first form the state monopolizes both aspects of this planning in a mixed and organic manner. In these societies, in addition to its specific infrastructural functions, the state, as the owner of social capital, also controls the laws of accumulation and distribution of the social product or the way capital is organized, and the law of competition between different sectors of capital is subject to centralized state planning.
In the socialist organization of work, the issue of planning and concentration of production is in radical and essential contradiction with that in the capitalist system. Here, planning pursues the same goals on which the foundations of the socialist economy and the process of abolishing wage labour are based. If in capitalism the goal of all affairs is to produce more profit, in socialism it is the production of the greatest possible amount of comfort, growth, and equal well-being for the members of society with the least amount of work that determines the nature of socialist planning.
Creative, effective, free, informed and equal participation of the members of society in the process of production and voluntary social work is the manifestation of the highest and most humane form of social planning. Work that is carried out by the same members of society with the same awareness, freedom, creativity, equality and ability to influence. Achieving this goal that everyone is directly present in the definition of work, referring the decision-making of all matters of production and whether to produce or not, to all citizens, distributing all living, welfare and social facilities equally among humans and creating a society consisting of free and needy humans and free from any constraints beyond themselves, are all matters that form the fabric of socialist planning. Here, the discussion of the program is these. It is about ensuring and guaranteeing the maximum opportunity for physical leisure, the most sublime form of spiritual development, the highest level of social welfare, the highest level of their needlessness and interference, with the minimum consumption of human labour. The program and the abolition of the state above the heads of citizens in the socialist organization of labour constitute distinct aspects of a unity. The principles and general lines of this program can be summarized as follows.
1. The continuous reduction of the average voluntary social labour of citizens with an effective practical orientation to free everyone from the bondage of work and that work is in no way a condition for the full enjoyment of human beings of the maximum possibilities of life and social welfare. The gigantic growth of modern technology and the occurrence of great industrial and information revolutions have raised the level of production to the point where the products of a large production unit may meet the living needs of millions of people in a society or even tens of millions of the inhabitants of the planet in one sector. Currently, many capitalist production institutions and economic organizations, relying on the high level of labour productivity of each, have made a large part of the global capital market the field of sale and circulation of their products. Socialism, by eliminating wage labour, exchange, markets, and buying and selling, paves the way for much greater technological and industrial revolutions. This, combined with the overall planning of production and social labour, allows the citizen of a socialist society to create the highest possible level of product and social welfare by expending the least amount of labour and organizing the best form of using technology, and in this regard, to remove the shackles of labour from the hands and feet of humans as much as possible.
2. Socialism rules out any kind of geographical border and demarcation, the federal allocation of natural resources and underground reserves to the inhabitants of a given region, or the local, regional private exploitation of the means of labour and production. It is not only individual or state property that disappears in socialism, but all the achievements of human labour in the form of technology, expertise, knowledge, means of production and subsistence, social and welfare facilities, and everything else belong to everyone, that is, to all citizens receptive to the socialist labour organization. The day when the banner of workers’ socialism and the abolition of wage labour is raised on the planet, absolutely every mine, factory, hospital, farm, forest, every service and welfare organization, every natural resource, every tourist and recreational centre, in a word, everything that exists in the world, will belong to all humanity. The practical realization of this is also not possible without centralized socialist planning. It is quite clear that the workers of a large or small industrial unit cannot, as a closed human island, decide on the type and volume of production or how the products of the enterprise will be consumed. A socialist society based on the abolition of wage labour with the latest scientific and technical achievements of mankind in the twentieth century is not to be governed by the standards of the inhabitants of the ancient Indian plains. A factory, a hospital, a school, or any other production and welfare institution belongs to the whole of society, and decisions about it are the inviolable right of all citizens. Equality of people in terms of the degree of participation in the social labour process, the standard of living, the use of public services and welfare, the type of education and treatment, the use of nature and underground resources, and everything else, are the real principles of the socialist organization of labour. In the sphere of the establishment of socialism, no distinction is acceptable between the level of welfare, living conditions, social services, or the limits of employment and leisure of individuals. The realization of this goal depends on the integration of all centres of work and production and various spheres of the social life of citizens into the flow of socialist overall planning.
3. Elsewhere in the book, we explained that the proletariat of some societies will still be exposed to exploitation by global capital even after the victory of the socialist revolution and the abolition of wage labour. The working class has no choice but to confront this problem by simultaneously fighting for the advancement of the world communist movement and the elimination of capitalist relations in the world, and by raising the level of technology and the productivity of socialist labour in its society. This in turn requires centralized socialist planning. Federalizing the economy!! or establishing industrial tribal monarchies!! will not open a door to liberating people from the yoke of wage slavery.
At the end of this discussion, it is necessary to talk a little about the homogeneity and unity of centralized planning with the council organization of labour and socialist civilization, or in fact, the adaptation of the plan to the elimination of the state and bureaucracy on the one hand, and ensuring the direct and pervasive involvement of all members of society in the development and maintenance of all economic and social affairs on the other. In this regard, it is necessary to emphasize two basic points.
First. Socialist planning relies on the awareness, systematic and comprehensive scientific and statistical information of all citizens in the economic, livelihood, welfare, social, domestic and international fields. In socialism, every human being is widely aware of everything that is happening in society. Radio, television, the Internet and information technology, newspapers and other means of mass communication are used in the most extensive way to enable the transfer of maximum awareness to citizens in all matters. No type of information and statistics and figures in any field are specific to any group. In light of the socialist use of information technology, every citizen will be able to be informed at any time of his/her choice about the entire economic existence and non-existence of society or the distribution of social services and facilities. What happens within each individual basic council, the discussions of the commune councils and the general congress of councils are transferred without any manipulation or reduction to all basic councils and communes and become the subject of their social and political discourse. Figures and statistics related to living conditions, education and upbringing, children and youth or elderly affairs, health and treatment are systematically exposed to the study of the population. Continuous surveys in all economic and social and service, domestic and international fields are explained to everyone. The product of this process will be the citizens’ mastery and ability to intervene effectively in the overall planning of production and social work. When each member of the Basic Council can, with the help of the aforementioned methods and policies, obtain the necessary information about all current issues in society, then all citizens will be able to consciously comment on and influence the micro- and macro-issues of socialist society. Overall planning of production and social work relies on such a powerful dynamism of the creative, direct, and conscious participation of individual citizens, and for this reason no objective or mental basis remains for the formation of a state bureaucracy or the existence of a state. The councils become the container of overall planning, and the program becomes the subject of work and the flow of thought and content of the activities of the council members.
Second. The centralization of the socialist program will under no circumstances mean the centralization of policymaking, even in the All-Union Congress of Councils or in any other Council institution. Planning here is not an administrative or governmental task. It is a circulatory system in the council tissues of society. The General Congress of Councils is the beating heart of this system, and its job is to organize within itself all the materials and program content prepared by all citizens who are members of the basic and commune councils throughout the society and pump them back into the general fabric of the councils. The members of the Congress are those who, individually and as members of separate councils, have been involved in preparing different parts of this planning. They are representatives of the discussions, plans and policies adopted by all members of the society and their only duty is to actively participate in the process of organizing and coordinating these policies and plans. Here we witness the elimination of any kind of bureaucratic interaction within the society and its replacement with free and pervasive public supervision in the planning work.
Third. The universality of planning in socialism does not create any restrictions on local policymaking or the regulation of economic, welfare and social affairs by the commune councils. On the contrary, it creates all the necessary conditions for the maximum amount of local authority of these councils based on socialist standards and criteria. The boundary of local planning is determined solely by the socialist rights of all citizens of the socialist labour organization. This boundary will not be under the pressure of any kind of contract or legality beyond human life.