An alternative to destruction by capitalism: The case for communism

Charles Posa McFadden 2023-08-19 9:20 AM

Introduction

Used in its scientific sense, as done by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in The Communist Manifesto, “communism” covers the same conceptual territory as the word “socialism”. Marx and Engels each used these words interchangeably to mean common ownership of the social means of production and exchange, following the similar practice of those before and after them. More recently, “ecosocialism” has been used by many authors to underscore the ecological essence of Marx and Engels contributions to social science. Feel free, then, to substitute either of these options as you read this argument for communism. It is likely that Marx and Engels used communism in their working-class manifesto as a stick-it-in-your-face response to the pejorative use of “communism” by communism/socialism/eco-socialism’s pro-capitalist opponents.

The case for communism has been made many times before. Even at this critical moment in history that case has so far been judged wanting by many people, possibly most, not only globally but within all but perhaps a few nation-states.

So why make this case again?

First, because the majority can be wrong. Paraphrasing the historically best-known  proponents of communism, “the ruling ideas of every society are the ideas of its ruling class”. Today the capitalist mode of production and its ruling class is dominant globally, evident in the current dependence of every nation on Earth on capitalist commodity exchange, including global trade. If the great majority of people on Earth came to believe, particularly during a period of global crisis, that communism was both possible and necessary, capitalism would be on its way out, following in the footsteps of every prior class-divided social system.

Second, because the capitalist mode of production is driving humankind beyond the limits of natural reproduction within a finite biosphere. The defense of capitalism by its leading proponents and defenders even includes the threat of use of weapons of mass destruction. If used, the result, even sooner and faster than the consequences of capitalism’s inherent drive towards ecological destruction, would likely, even in a limited engagement, be the end of humanity’s existence.

Third, because communism is both the logical alternative to production and exchange for private profit, and the only alternative system of social relations for making our way within nature which is inherently capable of sustainably managing humanity’s relations with the biosphere on which we depend. That biosphere, after all, extends across, over, and immediately under every nation-state on Earth. It cannot be managed sustainably by individuals or by any individual nation state through a social system based on competition between individuals and nation-states for their own private benefit.

But dialectical logic (including the recognition of both gradual and systemic change across time) is not enough. The capacity for applying dialectical logic may distinguish our species from others, but action to achieve a global transformation based on dialectical logic requires conscious, scientifically informed, well-organized agency. We will return to this issue later.

Brief historical background

The 1917 Russian and 1949 Chinese communist revolutions delivered a mixed message on the nature and viability of a transformation from a class-divided social system to a communal one. Each occurred under unfavorable circumstances for the realization of communism. Economically weakened by the World Wars from which they emerged, beset by the enmity and interventions of the ruling classes of their surrounding former trading partners, their only possibility for survival as societies intending a communist outcome was the adoption of bureaucratic, centralized administrations. They did succeed (and in China are continuing to succeed) in delivering high levels of social support and economic and cultural development to their formerly impoverished populations. But the necessity of administration on a continuous war-footing also contributed to popular alienation and worker disengagement from democratic decision-making in the former USSR, ultimately putting limits on labor productivity in that country, and leaving it vulnerable to counter-revolution.

Neither in the USSR, during its existence, nor in China, continuing in its rapid transition from a formerly impoverished country victimized by foreign imperialism to an economically advanced country guided by its revolutionary commitment to realize communism, has an alternative to capitalism been fully achieved, one sufficiently free from external danger and internal contradictions to provide a model yet of its intended goal. China’s hybrid model, which includes the active role of an internal capitalist class, remains susceptible to counter-revolution from the combined agency of external and internal capitalist self-interest. This internal contradiction within China’s hybrid social system is enhanced by its continuing dependence on capitalist dominated global trade, including corresponding international institutions and a global US imperialist led military alliance to enforce this trade. The realization by China of its communist goal is thus dependent on the revolutionary victories of the working- class movements in its trading partners in moving their countries on complementary paths towards a more just, democratic, peaceful, and ecologically sustainable global civilization.

Increasingly evident is the silver lining to the Reagan era agreement between the USA and China to permit foreign capitalist direct investment in China. While this agreement might have been entered into by the US and its core capitalist allies in part to weaken China’s relations with the former USSR, the resulting hybrid social system in China ultimately achieved purchasing power parity with the United States, enabling China to provide alternative trading opportunities to those countries trapped in underdevelopment by a US dollar denominated international system of trade and investment.

Multipolarity has thus emerged as a strategic perspective, countering the alternative of a unipolar world dominated economically and politically by the United States and its now largely subordinate allies among the former core of imperialist countries. As an alternative to the transfer of wealth produced by the exploited wage-labor of the developing countries to the dominant core of capitalist countries, the prospect now exists that other developing countries might join China in mutually advantageous trade, enabling each country’s development through the retention and internal investment of the surpluses produced by their working classes.

Of course, this opportunity is being resisted by the capitalist class in the imperialist core, now threatening the world’s working peoples with a choice between their annihilation from neglect, ecological deterioration, or weapons of mass extermination. While the ruling classes recognize that the alternative to their rule and continuing appropriation of the surpluses produced globally by the world’s working people is an alternative social system, they have so far been able to distract and misdirect the majoritarian working class into reformist dead-ends.

Meeting capitalism’s ever evolving strategies of domination is the challenge still faced by the working class and all those oppressed and exploited by capitalism in every country. Capitalist cooperation and solidarity, such as it is, needs to be matched by working class solidarity and cooperation. Divide and rule cuts both ways.

Conceptual barriers

Within the imperial core of capitalist countries, a large part of the challenge to those aiming for social transformation is the identification and consequent organized response of the working class and its potential allies to the conceptual barriers which the ruling capitalists have erected. Some of these misconceptions are identified and addressed here.

Multipolarity as a goal

The problem here is the adoption or implication of multipolarity as an ultimate goal, rather than a strategic perspective.

The struggle for freedom from imperialist domination is essential to every oppressed nation, making multipolarity among and within capitalist nation-states a shared objective between communists and non-communists within each nation. Today, this includes both a struggle of the oppressed nation-states against US led global imperialism, and a struggle within the US led imperialist alliance between subordinate and superordinate nation-states. The source of these unresolved conflicts is the continuing transfer of a significant part of the surpluses from exploited wage-labor within the subordinate nation-states to the superordinate (imperialist) nation-states. This transfer comes directly to the foreign investors or indirectly to the financial institutions allied to those foreign investors (for example, in the case of US imperialism, to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund).

But a defining characteristic of capitalism everywhere is ultimately the need to continue capitalist development by exploiting other nations. Imperialism is a product of capitalism. It is emblematic of Marx’s second law of capitalist behavior, the drive towards expanded accumulation of capital. It will recur so long as capitalism dominates anywhere. Imperialism will only be terminally ended when capitalism is everywhere replaced by communism, that is, when communist economic and political relationships constitute the dominant socio-economic system within every country.

The objective of realizing a multipolar world is only meaningful as a relationship between capitalist countries. The defeat of a dominant imperialist power can do no more than partially open the door to a future for humanity. That future depends on a level of global cooperation inconsistent with capitalism and its private, as opposed to communal, goals. The achievement of the alternative to capitalism, namely communism, is the strategic goal of revolutionaries.

To fulfill the promise of communism, every political party which declares itself to be a communist one has the corresponding responsibility for achieving within its country’s borders a society in which all who participate in its economic activity have an equal right and responsibility for the management of that country. This level of democracy is antithetical to private profit rights, the defining legal basis for capitalism.

The achievement of an historically unprecedented level of democracy, as required for effective, cooperative management of humanity’s relationship with nature, is a condition for the achievement of an ecologically sustainable future for humanity.

Multipolarity is a strategic perspective of the communist movement, opening political engagement to the exploited and oppressed for the realization of communism. The goal of communists is communism on a global scale and within each country. This means, ultimately, the end of class division and the end of nation-state competition for resources. It means a shared responsibility globally for the welfare of humanity in all its diversity, an equitable, peaceful, and democratic relationship between people and nations and a sustainable relationship with the rest of nature.

Other conditions which must be met are identified later in this argument for communism, each associated with the dependence of all nations on global trade and cooperative, efficient, and equitable management of the finite resources of the Earth’s biosphere. These conditions are simply those which make a future beyond the immediate decades of this century possible for humanity.

Identity politics as a defining characteristic of a democratically functioning organization or society

The ruling class in capitalist societies has long used the strategy of promoting selected members of the exploited classes and oppressed groups to positions as enforcers and spokespersons for capitalist class policies, and practices. Rather than indicating greater democracy, this practice aims to mask and maintain the greater exploitation of those whose gender, nationality, ethnicity, race, or sexual orientation makes them more vulnerable to predation and exploitation.

The struggle for the human rights of all the oppressed is essential to the achievement of a more just, democratic, peaceful, and ecologically sustainable future for humanity. Identity politics is not. It is the human right of both genders, all races, every nationality and ethnicity and all persons, regardless of sexual orientation, to share equitably in the results of social production, including the right to form sexual relationships that correspond to their sexual orientation, without giving up their other rights.

Identity politics is being used by the capitalist ruling class as an advertisement of the level of democracy that exists under its rule. The reality is the opposite. It stands as evidence of how far the ruling capitalist class will go to disguise the level of violence it is responsible for.

The essence of all human rights’ struggles is the right to participate equitably in social reproduction. In the first place, this includes the equitable sharing of the goods and services produced by labor from natural resources and the corresponding responsibilities for sustainable management of humanity’s relationship with nature. This, in turn, requires an expanded legal definition of the family, as the Cuban people have recently given through extensive discussion and new legislation defining the role and rights of the family. This legal definition includes, among other features, the right to non-binary unions and the right to form families that include multiple partners and generations, with each family enjoying all the legal rights of a family, including, for example, the right of inheritance of personal goods.

Capitalism as a necessary condition for labor discipline

This misconception arises from labor alienation, which can occur whenever and wherever those engaged in work for others do so without engaging in the decision-making about what, where, when, and how. The greater the degree of coercion, the greater the degree of alienation, evident in the comparatively higher level of productivity of wage-labor over serfdom and slave labor.

Relative freedom from labor alienation is evident in the results of management practices which include some labor participation in work-related decision-making by comparison with the results of more directly coercive management practices, as those currently engaged in such practices can attest. The least alienated are those engaged in the choice of what, when, where, and how to work, as the few who are so privileged can attest.

The possibility of tapping into the full creative potential of the working class for problem solving depends on opportunity for self-organization and self-discipline. This will require liberation from the coercive discipline of labor needed by the exploiting capitalist class and its replacement by the self-organization and self-management of the working population.

The main distinction of capitalism from feudalism and slavery is the extent of labor cooperation and collaboration that it entails. Capitalism is in this respect both the precursor of communism and the creator of the ecological necessity for communism. Without communism, humanity cannot achieve the level of self organization and discipline needed to achieve an extended future. In that respect, by externalizing the health of nature as a consideration, capitalism has already surpassed its best-before date.

The capacity of the biosphere to support a large human population well into the future therefore necessitates the transformation of capitalism to communism, best understood in that regard as the qualitatively higher system of cooperation and collaboration needed for the sustainable management of the biosphere. The guiding principles of communism therefore include the maintenance of the health and diversity of life forms and the retention or creation of the other material resources necessary for sustaining humanity well into the future.

Coercive centralized decision-making as a necessity

This misconception is a corollary to the misconception of capitalist “labor discipline” as necessary. Both coercive centralized decision-making and capitalist labor discipline are necessary to capitalism. But both stand in the way of moving beyond capitalism. Indeed, both coercive centralization of policy-making and coercive labor discipline is needed by the supporters of capitalism to prevent communism. This is increasingly the case as capitalism further breaks down in terms of social stability and ecological sustainability. It also increases the likelihood of accidental, if not intentional, use of the accumulated weapons of mass destruction.

For a more just, democratic, peaceful, and ecologically sustainable future, humanity will need to practice democratic centralism, with an emphasis on democracy. Where initiatives on a larger geographical scale are merited, they would be made by representatives directly accountable and recallable by the agencies at the next smaller geographical scale. For example, issues that necessitate or benefit from more centralized coordination, such as protection of the biosphere, transportation, communication, and trade and the sharing of scientific and technological knowledge would be pushed to the more centralized levels. Decisions on economic projects of a more local nature would be made by the agencies at the correspondingly smaller geographic level.

The working class (or in Marxian terminology, the proletariat) refers to those engaged in the production of material goods for sale.

It is true that every mode of production, whether communal, slave, feudal, capitalist, or a hybrid of these modes, is a social relationship between people for making their way within nature. Nature is the primary source of all that sustains human life. It is the surplus beyond the immediate needs for sustenance of those doing the work that supports all other human activity. This only says that humanity and our social systems are a part of ecology.

When Marx and Engels, then living in mid-nineteenth century England, sought to better understand the basic laws governing capitalist behavior, they focused primarily on industrial capitalism. Engels, after all, was the manager of a factory in Manchester, England, owned by his German family. The working class, or “proletariat”, was identified as the antagonist of the capitalist class or “bourgeoisie”.

While Marx and Engels’ economic model, elaborated over three volumes of Capital and through their other writing, incorporated all forms of paid work, it was Industrial production that came to define capitalism in the eyes of most communist political parties over the following century and sometimes beyond. In mid-nineteenth century, agriculture remained the primary productive work in most, if not all countries where capitalism existed, and service work for hire was primarily done for the propertied classes, whether capitalist, slave, or feudal.

But class composition since the age of Marx and Engels has dramatically changed. In the most highly developed capitalist countries, paid service work predominates, agricultural work occupies only a small fraction of the population, and industrial production has been largely transferred to countries where the cost of wage-labor is cheaper. The direction of change in all countries is towards service work as the primary activity of the working class. While accumulated capitalist property (Capital) has continued to expand globally, the rate of profit (surpluses divided by the sum of the cost of labor and the cost of materials and technology) has tendentially declined (Marx’s third law of capitalist behavior).

The primary illusion fostered by the capitalist ruling class is the aspiration to join the middle class. The reality is that nearly all service work today has been “proletarianized”, that is, been made dependent on income from wages and salaries paid by capitalists or by governments under capitalist class control.

Even the middle class of small capitalists are dependent on exploiting themselves as well as their employees to the benefit of the capitalist oligarchy. Their position is often similarly precarious to that of their employees. They face extinction if they are unable to deliver products and services at lower cost than could be provided by the larger capitalist corporations.

With increasing concentration of capital wealth in the hands of a few, constituting a capitalist oligarchy, a future for humanity now depends on the working class both shedding illusions and capitalist aspirations, and self-organizing. Given the degree of control exercised by the oligarchy over society, both within countries and internationally, no reform of capitalism that limits capitalist exploitation of labor is durable, even if temporarily feasible in restricted cases. Only the global defeat of capitalism offers a resolution to the precarity of labor and the undermining of ecological conditions for a future for present generations, let alone future ones.

Elsewhere, Karen Howell McFadden and I have identified additional conceptual barriers to revolutionary consciousness and agency. These can be found in the articles which constitute our argument for Achieving an Ecological Civilization published individually by the online journal Green Social Thought  (http://www.greensocialthought.org) and together on our own website, https://www.greensocialdemocracy.org.

So, what is to be done?

Organization and leadership for revolutionary transformation under contemporary conditions

For the past century humanity has experienced successive capitalist orgies of destruction of human beings and the physical structures humanity has built, evident in World Wars I and II and the unfolding since World War II of a seemingly endless World War III. Each phase of this process has been driven by the needs of competing capitalists and the governments which represent them to create new opportunities for continuing profitable exploitation of wage labor and capital accumulation. The latter is evident in the demand of the capitalist class and the governments representing it of ever-expanding GDP, which makes no distinction between construction and destruction and takes no account of the associated waste and ecological destruction.

We don’t of course have the liberty of making revolution to replace capitalism with an alternative system under conditions of our own choosing. In the first place, the existential crisis we face is a global one. It arises, in part, from the incompatibility of a global capitalist system of production and trade with our collective need to manage our relationship with the biosphere sustainably. This in turn requires that we concurrently manage our relationship with each other more equitably, democratically, and peacefully than is possible under capitalism. The level of cooperation and planning needed for ecological stewardship would be impossible to achieve otherwise.

The transformation we need must not only be a global one, but it must also be undertaken in a manner that constrains the presently ruling capitalists from using the weapons of mass destruction which are presently at their disposal. Nothing less than global coordination and cooperation of the revolutionary forces will be required, including the timing of revolutionary action to coincide with a period in which the dominant contingents of the global capitalist class and its mercenaries are at least temporarily unable and unwilling to offer violent resistance.

There are also several pre-conditions that must be met for a revolutionary transformation. One of these is revolutionary leadership that has earned the trust of those engaged in the revolutionary action. For a global revolution, this must include revolutionary leadership in every nation and locality on Earth, dedicated, capable and experienced in acting in cooperation and coordination. Each contingent must have earned sufficient confidence from the people to defeat and replace the local capitalist class and its mercenaries in government and at work.

Present conditions also include a working class with unprecedented levels of education and socialization. These, of course, are favorable conditions for revolutionary transformation to a knowledge-based society governed by the people themselves, without capitalists and their mercenaries. Corresponding to these conditions is the necessity of corresponding revolutionary organizations, ones which feature engagement of all members in decision making, action, and continuing learning. Leadership of these organizations must be organic, that is, arising from those engaged in action, continued learning, and as facilitators of the continuing development and action of their comrades. This, of course, is a far cry from the born to lead, egoistic, and controlling individuals who serve as mercenaries of the capitalist class or inhibitors of the capacity of the working class to free itself from capitalist rule.

Of course, bureaucratic, as opposed to organic forms of leadership are one of the negative inheritances from centuries of class-divided social systems. Overcoming these will require time, including the use of forms of education and development of levels of imagination, scientific and technological knowledge needed for an ecologically sustainable global community.

Some of the working-class organizations formed at earlier stages in the history of the class struggle may have to be transformed or bypassed by the creation of new organizations better adapted to the historically unprecedented level of socialization of the working class, both as a proportion of the total population within each country and as the possessor of the historically highest levels of education and preparation for democratic self-rule.

Is there a litmus test of existing parties which claim to be committed to socialism or communism? Evidence of nostalgia about a return to past conditions, such as the use of the hammer and sickle as representative of the tools of the current working class, is one such test. Another consists of policies which morally equate the resistance of those capitalist countries in the crosshairs of US imperialism, such as Russia and China, to the destructive practices of US imperialism itself. Still another is the uncritical use of countries with hybrid economic systems (such as China), as models of socialism and communism. If all the existing socialist and communist parties in a given nation-state fail these litmus tests, then at least one of them needs to be transformed or a new revolutionary movement created.

When all these conditions are met and conceptual barriers largely removed, it will become evident to all that there is no further need for continued rule and global domination by those whose motivation and preparation are for the casino and thieves-den which is now contemporary capitalism.

∞

This argument is the product of ongoing discussions with Karen Howell McFadden who also critically reviewed each draft. Background and related arguments can be found on their website, https://www.greensocialdemocracy.org and in the online journal, Green Social Thought, http://www.greensocialthought.org. For a reasonably comprehensive argument (2019-2021), see their co-authored work: Achieving an Ecological Civilization, available on their website.