Translation and introduction by Rida Vaquas. The original text in German can be found here.

Gerd Arntz, Strike, 1936

Anton Pannekoek is well-known as one of the principal theorists of council communism, a man who broke from both the traditions of Kautskyist social democracy as well as Bolshevism. By 1935, this break had crystallized into a clear attitude against the party as an instrument for working-class liberation: “a party is an organization that aims to lead and control the working class.”¹ However, Pannekoek was very much a child of orthodox Second International Social Democracy, and a self-described pupil of Karl Kautsky, just as much as Lenin was. By presenting a translation of this short text, I hope to emphasize the Social Democratic inheritance of Pannekoek and the continuities of council communism with radical readings of Karl Kautsky.

The essay ‘The Propertied and the Propertyless’ was originally published in the SPD paper Leipziger Volkszeitung and eventually compiled as one of seven essays in a pamphlet Der Kampf der Arbeiter (The Struggle of Workers) in 1907. Much of Pannekoek’s early career in German Social Democracy resulted from his close friendship with Kautsky. After the German authorities prevented Pannekoek from taking up his position at the SPD Party School, it was Kautsky who found him alternative positions, including writing a weekly column for socialist newspapers. Kautsky’s aid hence embedded him into the German socialist movement and Pannekoek eventually moved to Bremen, where he was part of ordinary party life.

It would be wrong to construe this as simply a close personal friendship: Kautsky and Pannekoek shared a political outlook about the world. Both were representatives of the last great generation of scientific socialism. This was not ‘scientific’ in the sense of a vulgar determinism in which one keeps vigil for the final set of statistics that make revolution inevitable, but scientific in that it posited hypotheses and demanded proofs, one had to show their working when they claimed to solve the formula of social change. An amusing article in the SPD’s satirical magazine Der Wahre Jacob in 1912 aptly illustrated their affinity in approach, even when their conclusions differed. In an imaginary debate about fashion, Kautsky writes a beautiful chapter about the “genesis of trousers” in the emergence of humanity, ending with the proposition that had Adam had trousers, he may not have bitten into the fatal apple. Pannekoek, who had witnessed the conversations with Kautsky, reproaches Kautsky for having overestimated the role of trousers as a Marxist.²

This exchange mirrored the real split between Kautsky and Pannekoek that first became public in 1911-12 (one may note that Pannekoek split with Kautsky somewhat later than Rosa Luxemburg did) in a debate in Die Neue Zeit about mass action, in light of the 1911 strikes in England. Kautsky outlined a perspective in which the development of capitalism causes the emergence of mass actions by periodically creating conditions of extended unemployment, taxation pressure, inflation, and war.³ However, the development of the organized proletarian masses, through the institutions of Social-Democracy and the trade unions, changed the character of mass actions to ensure both that defeat is not a disaster and that victories are enjoyed by the proletariat, and not exploited by a faction of the enemy. Yet Kautsky’s case against embracing spontaneous mass actions as a tactical principle is simple: they are completely unpredictable and hence nothing can be said about what is to be done when they arise in advance, the party can only ensure that it is not caught off guard by them, by building up its own understanding of state and society and power.

What marks Pannekoek’s response to this analysis is his own disappointment with a great master of Marxism. In his view, although no one had proven the significance of Marxist theory as much as Kautsky did in his historical writing, in this instance Kautsky had “left the Marxist tools at home” and hence obtained no result.⁴ For Pannekoek, contemporary mass action differentiated itself from the mass actions of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries because the class who carried it out had changed: from bourgeois to proletarian. The distinction between the unorganized and organized is irrelevant, as many of the unorganized are capable of the same proletarian discipline and solidarity through the conditions of their work. In Pannekoek’s most cutting perspective, Kautsky “is not doing himself justice” in claiming he is unable to ascribe a particular political character to the masses when he has successfully done so for parliamentary politics.

It becomes clear that Pannekoek’s first critiques of Kautsky’s Marxism emerged from wanting to push it beyond its limits and seek to apply it to new scenarios. Pannekoek’s ultimate conclusion in 1912 was that the party must instigate revolutionary action at the right moment, not when the masses can simply no longer be held back, but when the conditions mean that large-scale actions by the masses have a chance of success. Only later disillusionments turned him away from the party form altogether. There is much merit in Pannekoek’s objection to Kautsky that one has not determined very much at all if the determination is that the masses are unpredictable. Yet it was clear that Pannekoek’s own formulas didn’t hold up in the light: the masses by no means tend towards radicalism in all cases, and there has been no guarantee that they would rise against war. In their final parting of ways, both Kautsky and Pannekoek sought a more rigorous application of a Marxist framework they shared from each other.

This translation demonstrates the analytical clarity that this Marxist framework had to offer at its strongest.

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The political struggle that the socialist working class leads and of which every election campaign is an episode is not in the first instance a struggle about particular political institutions and legal demands, but instead a universal struggle between the propertied and propertyless class. To understand it correctly, it is necessary to take a close look at the combatants, the causes, and the aims of this struggle.

According to this classification of both of the parties in conflict, it may appear that the ownership of money or income is the basis for class division. This is how it’s often understood by our bourgeois opponents. They take income or assets statistics in their hands, draw a few lines that separate the low from the middle incomes and the middle from the high incomes, and believe that they’ve obtained an insight into the class relations of the present-day. Even more comically, they do this when they present a statistic from the Middle Ages or the eighteenth century and from this prove that there were proportionately just as many low, middle and high incomes at the time as there are now and with this they believe they have refuted the concentration of capital, the demise of the middle class and the escalation of class contradictions.

These poor jokers, who want to demonstrate away the obvious facts of the great social upheaval in this way, clearly don’t have the faintest idea of what a social class actually is. A class is not a group of people that have the same size of income, it is instead a group of people who fulfill a particular function economically in social production. We say ‘economically’ so that you don’t fall for the idea that the technical side of work is understood as the social function. A weaver and a typographer professionally have a different function, technically their work is varied, but economically they are both waged workers and belong to the same class.

In the manifold diversity of the social production process it is no wonder that a colorful picture of the most diverse social classes appeals to the eye. In industry, capitalist employers stand against waged workers; from this universal fundamental relationship, different class relationships are built up, according to the scale of the industry. The independent craftsman concurs with the capitalists that he is an independent businessman, but he employs no waged workers. And the small masters of artisanal small enterprises, just like shopkeepers, are even described in colloquial language as separate from the large-scale capitalists, as the middle class. Their difference consists in the smaller number of workers and the smaller amount of capital, without it being possible to identify firm boundaries between the two groups. In large industry, a group of overseers and technical work managers slide in between the capitalists and the workers. The high technical and scientific demands placed on today’s large and giant conglomerates have called into being a class of private technical and scientific officials that form the ‘intelligentsia’ alongside similar and equally-placed public officials. Economically they belong to wage workers as even they sell their labor power—a special intellectual labor power trained by long studies and better paid—for wages. The higher level of wages, i.e. their very different living standards, again separates them from workers. At the same time, the development of large industry has effected a separation between the industrial entrepreneur, who lives off profits, and the owners of money, who live off interests, through the vast amounts of capital that it demands. In the stock company, a paid official even steps into the role of the employer, the director. The double function of the capitalist, to direct production and to pocket the surplus-value, has been divided between two types of people. However, all finance capitalists cannot be lumped together, just like all industrial capitalists. According to their size, a differentiation persists like in the world of fish in the sea: the big devour the little. A little rentier is as much a finance capitalist as a member of high finance, but to these stock market wolves he is a stock market lamb as it were and hence his social role is another one.

If we now take a look at agriculture, we find the same gradations, even if not in exactly the same way, as in industry. Only a class is added here, because the landowners, through their monopoly, can extract a ground rent from the yield of agriculture without playing any active role.You have dwarf peasants, small farmers, medium and large farmers and farmworkers. Here the hybrid and transitional forms are emerging that confuse the picture of social classes to an untrained eye. The agricultural workers often have a small plot of land, while owners of smaller plots of land, too small to live off, seek additional income as agricultural or even industrial workers. They are hence simultaneously independent landlords and wage workers. In the home industry we find supposedly independent craftsmen that are totally dependent, body and soul, upon capitalist businessmen. That the legal form of waged service doesn’t suffice to ascertain class is shown by the numerous transitions from the paid director to the worker, via subdirector, head of department, chief engineer, technician, draughtsman, supervisor. Here one will often be at a loss to define precisely, in the gradual transitions, which class distinctions one must accept and where their boundaries lie.

So social life offers a colorful picture of the most diverse classes whose functions, and hence interests, directly show sharp contradictions and enormous differences and even gradual transitions. Isn’t this picture a resounding refutation of our assertion that only two classes stand against each other in the social struggle? And doesn’t a look at the varied functions of classes immediately show that the definition of two groups, only according to their assets is unscientific and unsustainable— a fictitious assertion only for the purpose of demagogic sedition?

No. This definition is substantiated in the social order in its deepest essence. It emerges from the specific role that money plays since the advent of capitalism. All money has the characteristic of being able to work as capital, i.e. when the owner buys the means of production with it, rents workers, and sells the commodities they produced, it comes back in their hands as more money, as larger, as capital blessed by surplus-value. They do not even have to do it themselves, with the greatest pleasure others will take away the stress and worries of running a business and pay them part of the profit as interest for the use of their capital. Money has acquired the characteristic of bringing its owner interest through capitalism. Whoever has access to money can hence secure an income without any work.

This income comes from surplus-value which formed in the process of production. The working class brings into being vast quantities of value through their work; they only receive a part of it back as wages. The remainder is surplus-value which falls to the capitalists. This surplus value must be distributed amongst the different capitalists and groups of capitalists because they all live from it. The landowners demand their share, the businessmen and middlemen ask for their share, the directors and highly paid industrial managers take their piece, the finance capitalists obtain their interest or dividends. They fight amongst themselves about the distribution of surplus-value. The distribution is partly decided by economic laws and partly by political power balances. What matters to us here is the fact that all those who have money are thereby entitled to a certain extent to some of the surplus-value, provided of course that they do not hide it in an old stocking like the former misers. The surplus-value is created by the exploitation of the lower classes whose work produces that surplus; all those classes who share the surplus value among themselves together form a great society of exploitation, and everyone who has money is thereby, by the grace of Mammon, a shareholder in this excellent corporation.

This is the reason we can speak about a great class contradiction between the propertied and the propertyless. It is because these words are synonymous with the exploiting and the exploited classes. Whoever doesn’t own anything is forced to sell their labour-power to the owners of the means of production, i.e. indirectly to the owners of capital, in order to live. These capital owners give them a wage for long and hard work, which only suffices for a poor living standard, and the remainder of the worker’s produced value goes into their pockets. Whoever does not own anything must allow themselves to be exploited, the private ownership of the means of production cuts them off from any other way out. The situation remains mainly the same even when the worker owns a little bit of money, the interest of which forms a small subsidy to their wages. Even if they have money at the bank, they are still not exploiters. In this interest, they only gain a tiny little piece of the great mass of surplus-value which is squeezed out of the entire working class, and this little bit doesn’t even come into view next to the surplus-value they contribute to the total mass by their own wage labor. They increase surplus value and are exploited, they find themselves in the same situation as their comrades. And as a rule, they regard this money not as capital but as a saving fund by which they will meet their needs in the case of unemployment or accidents. 

But as soon as the wealth exceeds a certain level, it enables the owner to live from exploitation instead of his own work, modestly if he is a small rentier or entrepreneur, lavishly if he is one of the rich. As much as there are class differences among these people, as much as they perform different active or passive functions in the exploitation process, as much as they still struggle with each other for their share of the spoils – the reason why their property is not always secure – they do have a common interest because they are all participants in the exploitation. In the great social opposition between exploiters and exploited, the size of the fortunes within the community of exploiters is not important. Equally, it follows from this discussion that we do not claim that society consists only of these two large groups. There is a layer between them, of which it is impossible to say whether it is closer to one or the other group, such as a peasant who exploits workers and are themselves exploited by the landlord, or a civil servant who receives a mediocre salary. How they will stand in the great political struggle can only be determined from a particular examination of their class situation. But for the greater masses of people and classes, in the vast political struggle their various specific social functions will stand behind the basic question of whether they belong to the propertied or the propertyless, that is, to the exploited or the exploited.

 

Introduction by Amelia Davenport. From A Short Course of Economic Science. 

“Station Moon” by Pavel Klushantsev

What is Socialism? Is it the abolition of the state, the abolition of Value as an economic form, the abolition of private property, production for need rather than profit, or a rationally planned economy? All of these are cited, and rightly so, as essential features of communism. But while each of these deals with social relations, none but planning deals with the relations of production of the new order. Value is realized in exchange, property exists in the relations of consumption and prior to production, the state governs and secures the relations of production, and production for use governs the relations of consumption, not production. Even economic planning, which describes the overarching laws that govern the system of production, does not really describe the relations within production. The key feature of socialism or the Co-Operative Commonwealth, missing above is the abolition of the division of labor. 

 From the earliest socialists like Fourier through Marx and Engels, the division of labor was a central concern of the workers’ movement. Fourier describes an elaborate model society called a Phalanx where everyone rotates their job, although given tasks suited to their individual talents and interests. While he rejected the utopian impulse to craft a model society, Marx talks about the alienation in the separation of manual and mental labor which unevenly develops people. In “The German Ideology” Marx half-ironically describes a world where alienation has been abolished and even “critical critics” are free to do any job they wish throughout the day. Continuing this tradition, in his Short Course on Economic Science, Alexander Bogdanov gives a rough sketch of what the transformation of the social relations of capitalism into socialism would look like through the gradual abolition of the division of labor. A biologist, philosopher, field medic, proto-cybernetician, cultural worker, science fiction author, revolutionary communist, and economist, few figures in the history of Marxism are as criminally under-examined as Alexander Bogdanov. Introducing his life and the breadth of his work is a task for another essay. What concerns us here is the final chapter of the Short Course entitled “Socially Organised Society: Socialism”. This chapter represents something relatively unique for the time: non-utopian futurism.

 Bogdanov begins by laying out the great principle of social science: that the study of the existing tendencies and factors in society can allow us to predict in the broad strokes how history will move forward. By using a rigorous historical materialist lens, Bogdanov was able to make stunningly accurate predictions. For example, he correctly predicted the transition from steam power to mass electrification, the development of wind power and nuclear power, the development of a worldwide wireless telecommunications system, and the mass automation of labor. The first edition of the text was published in the 1890s! Bogdanov argues that while there are historical examples of societies that exist unchanged in relative stagnation or regress to earlier and less complex forms of organization, the force of movement in bourgeois society are toward complexity as such that stagnation would require an external shock. Such a shock would need to be bigger than a catastrophic world war to slow the progress of social development. In Bogdanov’s day, such an external shock seemed almost inconceivable. There was nothing that could stand in the way of Capital reshaping the world ever more in its own image.  Sadly, today the metabolic rift between the autonomous technosphere of capitalist production and the biosphere has grown to staggering proportion. It’s now possible to predict a scenario where world capitalism regresses, decays or collapses into much less complex or productive forms of social organization. Nevertheless, the trends and factors Bogdanov observed in the early 20th century still exist, if only heightened and more advanced. His outline of the new socialist world implicit in the old capitalist world remains as relevant as ever.

 Bogdanov examines five key aspects of the future socialist order that can be drawn out from trends in bourgeois society: Relation of Society to Nature, The Social Relations of Production, Distribution, Social Ideology, and the Forces of Development. Although the text is short and accessible, it’s worthwhile to summarize them in order to tease out what it means for today.

In his section on the Relation of Society to Nature, Bogdanov does not discuss ecology, something he spends considerable time on in other works, but rather focuses on the first principle of socialism: “the actual power of society over nature, developing without limit on the basis of scientifically-organised technique.” Because industrial society is based on machinery and socialism will inherit that productive basis, Bogdanov looks to the tendencies within the development of machines to see how society will change. He breaks down his predictions into three parts: 1) the source of motive power 2) the transmitting mechanism of power 3) the techniques of communication. Bogdanov argued that power would move from steam toward electricity because it was more plastic in use. He claimed that this would allow us to develop the potential of waterfalls, tides, wind and even the atom into energy. The transmitting mechanism of energy, that is machinery itself, would move toward automation and machines which self-regulate. But Bogdanov does not see this tendency developing within capitalist firms, because the outlay of investment is too dear, but rather in the militaries of capitalist countries who are not constrained by seeking short-term profits. In socialism, where society is focused on the long term wellbeing of people, first priority would be given to moving toward mechanical self-regulation, with ever-expanding machine energy utterly dwarfing any human labor inputs. Finally, Bogdanov predicted that wireless telephony would enable people to communicate instantly across any distance while improvements in transportation would make distance and geography no longer barriers to interchange at all.  All of this points toward socialism as a system where humanity as a whole, rather than a small minority, will be increasingly emancipated from nature.  

In exploring the social relations of production, Bogdanov says that the second defining characteristic of socialism is “the homogeneous organization of the whole productive system, with the greatest mobility of its elements and groupings, and a highly developed mental equality of the workers as universally developed conscious producers.” In practice, this means an end to the social division of labor and the development of worldwide central planning.  Bogdanov sees the nucleus of the end of the division of labor in capitalism’s tendency toward the de-skilling of workers. Increasingly, “the technical division of labor loses its “specialized” character, which narrows and limits the psychology of the workers, and reduces itself to “simple co-operation,” in which the workers carry out similar work, and in which the “specialization” is transferred from the worker to the machine.” This breaks down the division between people with different trades and makes the political community of interests among workers expand as their vital conditions become more and more the same in all fundamental ways. Furthermore, with the development of increasingly autonomous machines, the division between “executors” (the people carrying out labor) and “organizers” (the people directing it) will become superfluous as the day to day controlling of machines will take a more comprehensive education. Organizers and managers of labor will only be distinguished by having greater experience than executors and could be replaced by their fellow workers at will. Further, because the technical basis of production is constantly improved and will require more flexibility, workers will change their work regularly and no longer be bound to particular trades. Because socialism will abolish the chaos and anarchy of capitalist production it will necessarily create a central plan, centered around a great statistical bureau rather than an authoritarian security state, that coordinates labor on the basis of comradely discipline. In effect, for the first time in history socialism will solve the contradiction between the liberty of individuals to universally develop themselves and their equality as active members of the body politic.  

Turning from how the relations of production are to be organized to the relations of consumption, Bogdanov outlines the classical Marxist conception of a two-stage process. In Socialism, society as a whole will own all means of production and will initially own and distribute the proceeds of social labor, but individual ownership of the articles of consumption will also exist and represent the right of workers to reproduce themselves. Initially, during the transitional period before collectivism has penetrated the spirit of the great majority, remuneration based on work will be used to compel people to contribute to society. But, as culture changes and the process of production is humanized, access to the proceeds of labor will be free for all. To facilitate this Bogdanov sees in modern banks, stock exchange organizations, mutual aid societies, and insurance agencies as providing partial prototypes of the type of apparatus that will be developed in socialism. 

Beyond the relations of production, social relations will be fundamentally different in the world to come. In socialism, says Bogdanov, the first feature of the new psychology will be socialness and collectivism. Although we ourselves are socialized under conditions of competition and alienation, in a society based on comradely production will produce greater solidarity than we can imagine. The second feature is that fetishism will disappear from society. Whether fetishism of commodities and money, fetishism of nature, or superstition, all will become superfluous because, “The unknown will cease to be unknown because the process of acquiring knowledge – systematic organization on the basis of organized labor – will be accompanied by a consciousness of strength, a sense of victory, arising from the knowledge that in the living experience of man there are no longer any spheres surrounded by impenetrable walls of mystery.” By abolishing both the antagonistic relations between people and fetishism all social compulsion would come to end. Bogdanov argues that the Law and State emerge as a means to contain the anarchy and contradictions of class society through external force which takes on a fetishistic character. Fetishists root the power of the state in either divine authority or in “the nature of things,” but with the triumph of a universal science, Tektology, people won’t need to turn to such metaphysics to justify social relations. Instead of relying on fixed and abstract laws enacted through violence by “authorities” the people will collectively, democratically, and informed by science, deal with social contradictions directly. In extreme cases of violence or other anti-social behavior, “laws” and a carceral state would do far less good than having a highly organized community using its efforts to avoid harm to any party and science to cure the perpetrator. Even in the case of organizing production Bogdanov says, “The distribution of labor in society will be guaranteed on the one hand by the teachings of science and those who express them – the technical organizers of labor acting solely in the name of science, but having no power – and on the other by the power of the social sense which will bind men and women into one labor family by the sincere desire to do everything for the welfare of all.” It’s only in the early stages of a socialist society that a state in the true sense will exist because a state is nothing but an instrument of class domination. In the early stages of socialism, the state is the domination of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, but in its later stages, there can be no state. 

Under exchange society, social life is defined by inward contradictions like class struggle, market competition, and so on, while non-exchange societies are defined by an outward contradiction with nature. In feudalism and past non-class societies the primary economic contradiction existed between the needs of the population and what its environment could provide. As a self-sufficing economy, socialism is distinguished from its predecessors by not only its developed technical basis but also the far greater scale, embracing the whole of society and possibly humanity. Where in previous self-sufficient economies economic growth and technical development was determined directly by the growth in population, in socialism humanity will struggle to expand its knowledge and mastery of nature in order to fulfill its creative impulse. Socialism will not represent a regression to a steady-state economy but instead accelerate the accumulation of energy by humanity while maintaining the sensitive balance of our interchange with nature. Unlike in class society where the mass accumulation of energy has only led to the refinement of debauched classes of parasites and perverts, in socialism accumulated energy will be turned toward creative labor and self-perfection. Bogdanov further claims that the diversity of humanity, united, free and equal in socialism, will unlock a heretofore unseen capacity for progress that will dwarf the spurts of innovation seen in exchange-society. With profit removed as the motor force of economic organization, productivity will be the determining factor to save as much labor and as many resources as possible. The natural bureaucratic conservatism of capitalist firms against innovation on the ground level will be overcome and the whole of humanity will participate in expanding the sphere of development. In sum, “the general characteristics of the socialist system, the highest stage of society we can conceive, are: power over nature, organization, socialness, freedom, and progress.”

Looking around at the development of modern capitalist society, Bogdanov’s predictions have become so true as to almost seem banal. What skilled laborer doesn’t live in fear of being replaced by a self-regulating machine and so feel some pressure to learn new skills and gain new certifications in order to remain competitive? Who can imagine a world without wireless phones? Aren’t logistics companies already prefiguring the technical apparatus of socialist planning? If one is to believe texts like The People’s Republic of Walmart, all we have to do is put existing technical infrastructure under public control. Yet without transformation by subordination to the Co-Operative Commonwealth, this technical apparatus can only serve to increase the domination of workers by capitalism and continue to shift the externalities of production onto colonized people. Beyond the mere conquest of state power, socialism represents a dual revolution in both economics and culture. Having a clear vision of what that entails will allow us to prepare the revolutionary movement to exercise real power and take the necessary steps to get there. Bogdanov shows us how Socialism emerges in comradely relations in production and consumptive relations are secondary to it. He eschews fantasies of every worker having a mansion or luxury boat, while also rejecting the reactionary cowardice of those who would reign in humanity’s productive potential. Waste will be minimized in socialism, but our capacity for freedom, inextricably linked to our capacity to harness the energy, will not cease to grow. 

The aim of Socialism is the free association of producers in the commonwealth of toil. By rooting our understanding of it in an emancipated yet disciplined comradely cooperation of the whole of society to master nature we can dispense with utilitarian-reformist illusions, revenge fantasies, and other distractions. As the International Workingmen’s Association declared, there are “no rights without duties and no duties without rights.” Each person in the Co-Operative Commonwealth will be expected to apply their brain and muscle toward their shared collective good while receiving in return the means for their individual development. Even in a world of material abundance, social labor will increase its command over nature. One might balk at the idea of a “struggle with” or “mastery over” nature, but nature is nothing less than mankind’s external body and expanding our technical control over it as a species is no different than developing habits and techniques of self-discipline for the individual. In the face of climate disaster, there is no way for our species but forward toward assuming a mantle of responsibility for the health and direction of the biosphere. Humans have always been a geological force and it is time that we recognize it. This means reigning in the wasteful, blind, and inhuman economic order which must invent needs from thin air to bind our species under the wheel of dukkha. It means establishing conscious self-control over our world, what the Soviet geologist Vladimir Vernadsky proposed as the Noosphere: consciousness, rather than technology, as a geologic force. The ethics of the “luxury communist,” rooted in a crude middle-class communism of consumption, and “degrowth,” rooted in a middle-class skepticism of humanity are both inimical to working-class socialism. By seizing hold of production for itself, and aided by the universal sciences of Tektology and cybernetics, the working class will remake the world in its own image through the commonwealth of toil. 

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Socially Organized Society: Socialist Society 

Transcribed from Chapter X of A Short Course of Economic Science, 10th edition, 1919. English translation J. Fineberg, 1923 by Adam Buick. 

The epoch of capitalism has not yet been completed, but the instability of its relations has become quite obvious. The fundamental contradictions of this system which are deeply undermining it, and the forces of development which are creating the basis of a new system, have also become quite clear. The main features of the direction in which social forces are moving have been marked out. It is, therefore, possible to draw conclusions as to what form the new system will take and in what way it will differ from the present system.

It may seem that science has no right to speak of what has not yet arrived and of what experience has not provided us with any exact example. But that is erroneous. Science exists precisely for the purpose of foretelling things. Of what has not yet been experienced it cannot, of course, make an exact forecast, but if we know generally what exists and in what direction it is changing then science must draw the conclusions as to what it will change into. Science must draw these conclusions in order that men may adapt their actions to circumstances, so that instead of wasting their efforts by working against the future and retarding the development of new forms, they may consciously work to hasten and assist such development.

The conclusions of social science with regard to future society cannot be exact because the great complexity of social phenomena does not permit, in our times, of their being completely observed in all details, but only in their main features, and for that reason the picture of the new system also can only be drawn in its main outlines; but these are the most important considerations for the people of the present day.

The history of the ancient world shows that human society may sometimes regress, decline, and even decay; the history of primitive man and also that of several isolated Eastern societies shows the possibility of a long period of stagnation. For this reason, from a strictly scientific point of view, the transition to new forms must be accepted conditionally. New and higher forms will appear only in the event of a society progressing further in its development as it has progressed up till now. There must be sufficient cause, however, for regression or stagnation, and these cannot be indicated in the life of modern society. With the mass of contradictions inherent in it and the impetuous process of life which they create, there cannot be stagnation. These inherent contradictions could cause retrogression only in the event of the absence of sufficient forms and elements of development. But such elements exist, and these very contradictions develop and multiply them. The productive power of man is increasing and even such a social catastrophe as a world war only temporarily weakens it. Furthermore, an enormous class in society growing and organizing is striving to bring about these new forms. For this reason, there are no serious grounds for expecting a movement backwards. There are immeasurably more grounds for believing that society will continue along its path and create a new system that will destroy and abolish the contradictions of capitalism.

1. Relation of Society to Nature

The development of machine technique in the period of capitalism acquired such a character of consecutiveness and activity that it is quite possible to determine its tendencies and consequently the further result of its development.

With regard to the first part of the machine – the source of motive power – we have already indicated the tendency, viz., the transition from steam to electricity, the most flexible, the most plastic, of all the powers of nature. It can easily be produced from all the others and be converted into all the others; it can be divided into exact parts and transmitted across enormous distances. The inevitable exhaustion of the main sources of steam power, coal, and oil, leads to the necessity for the transition to electricity, and this will create the possibility of making use of all waterfalls, all flowing water (even the tides of the oceans ), and the intermittent energy of the wind which can be collected with the aid of accumulators. A new and immeasurably rich source of electrical energy, infinitely superior to all other sources of electrical energy, has also been indicated, atomic energy, which is contained in all matter. Its existence has been scientifically proved, and its use even begun, although in a very small scale where it automatically releases itself (e.g. radium and other similar disintegrating elements). Methods for systematically releasing this energy have not yet been discovered; the new higher scientific technique will probably discover these methods and united humanity possess inexhaustible stocks of elemental power.

With regard to the transmitting mechanism, we also observe a tendency towards the automatic type of machine. Following this, we observe an even higher type – not only an automatically acting, but an automatically regulating machine. Its beginnings lie on the one hand in the increasing application of mechanical regulators to present-day machines, and on the other in the few mechanisms of this type already created by military technique (e.g., self-propelling submarines and air torpedoes). Under capitalism these will hardly find application for peaceful production: they are disadvantageous from the point of view of profits as they are very complicated and unavoidably dear; the amount of labor which they save in comparison with machines of the former type is not great, because automatic machinery also dispenses with a considerable amount of human labor. Furthermore, the workers required to work them must possess the highest intelligence; hence their pay also would have to be high, and their resistance to capital would be considerably greater. In war, there is no question of profits, and for that reason, these obstacles to their application do not arise. Under socialism the question of profits will disappear in production also; first consideration will be given to the technical advantages of self-regulating mechanism – which will render possible the achievement of a rapidity and exactness of work incomparably greater than that achieved by human organs, which work more slowly and with less precision, and moreover are subject to fatigue and error.

Furthermore, the number of machines and the sum total of mechanical energy will increase to such a colossal degree that the physical energy of men will become infinitesimally small in comparison. The powers of nature will carry out the executive work of man – they will be his obedient dumb slaves, whose strength will increase to infinity.

The technique of communication between men is of special significance. The rapid progress in this connection observed at the end of the capitalist epoch has been obviously directed to the abolition of all obstacles which nature and space place in the way of the organisation and compactness of humanity. The perfection of wireless telegraphy and telephony will create the possibility for people to communicate with each other under any condition, over any distance, and across all natural barriers. The increase in the speed of all forms of transportation brings men and the products of their labor more closely together than was ever dreamed of in the past century. And the creation of dirigible aircraft will make human communication completely independent of geographical conditions – the structure and configuration of the earth’s surface.

The first characteristic feature of the collective system is the actual power of society over nature, developing without limit on the basis of scientifically-organized technique.

2. The Social Relations of Production

As we saw, machine technique in the period of capitalism changes the form of co-operation in two ways. In the first place, the technical division of labor loses its “specialised” character, which narrows and limits the psychology of the workers, and reduces itself to “simple co-operation,” in which the workers carry out similar work, and in which the “specialization” is transferred from the worker to the machine. Secondly, the framework of this co-operation is extended to enormous proportions; there arise enterprises that embrace tens of thousands of workers in a single organization.

We must suppose that both these tendencies will proceed considerably further under the new system than under machine capitalism. The differences in the specialization of various industries will be reduced to such insignificant proportions that the psychological disunity created by the diversity of employments will finally disappear; the bonds of mutual understanding and the community of interest will unrestrainedly expand on the basis of the community of vital interests.

At the same time organized labor unity will grow accordingly, grouping hundreds of thousands and even millions of people around a common task.

The continuation of the development of the two previous tendencies will give rise to two new features of the post-capitalist system. On the one hand, the last and most stubborn form of specialization (the division between the organizational and executive functions), will be transformed and lose its significance. On the other hand, all labor groupings will become more and more mobile and fluid.

Although in the epoch of machine capitalism executive labor at the machines approaches in character to that of organizational labor, nevertheless a difference between them remains, and for that reason, the individualization of the functions of the executor and the organizer remains stable. The most experienced worker in machine production is very different from his manager, and cannot replace him. But the further increase in the complexity and precision of machinery and at the same time the increase in the general intelligence of the workers must eventually remove this difference. With the transition to the automatic regulators, the work of a simple worker approaches nearer and nearer to that of the engineer and acquires the character of watching the proper working of the various parts of the machine. If automatic regulators are attached to machines there is no need for the mechanic continually to watch his gauges and indicators to see whether the required amount of steam pressure or electrical current is maintained. All he then has to do is from time to time to see whether the regulators are in working order, to alter them as occasion requires, and to see to their speedy repair when necessary. At the same time the knowledge, understanding, ingenuity, and general mental development required of the worker increase. It is not only practical common sense that is required, but exact scientific knowledge of the mechanism, such as only the organizing intellectual possesses to-day. Consequently, the difference between the “executor” and the manager will be reduced to a purely quantitative difference in scientific training; the worker will then carry out the instructions of a better informed and more experienced comrade rather than blindly subordinate himself to a power-based upon knowledge inaccessible to him. The possibility will thus be created of replacing an organizer by any worker and vice versa. The labor inequality of these two types will disappear and they will merge into one.

With the abolition of the last survivals of mental “specialization” the necessity and the sense of binding certain persons to certain particular work will also disappear. On the other hand the new form of labor will require mental flexibility and diversity of experience, for the maintenance of which it will be necessary that the worker from time to time change his work, going from one kind of machine to another, from the function of “organizer” to that of “executor” and vice versa. And the progress of technique, more. rapid than in our day, with its continual improvements of machines and contrivances, must make the rapidly-changing grouping of human forces and individual labor systems, or “enterprises” as we call them today, to a high degree more mobile.

All this will become possible and realizable owing to the fact that production is consciously and systematically organized by society as a whole. On the basis of scientific experience and labor solidarity, there will be created a general all-embracing organization of labor. The anarchy which in the epoch of capitalism disunites individual enterprises by ruthless competition and whole classes by stern struggle will be abolished. Science indicates the path to such organization and devises means for carrying it out, and the combined force of the class-conscious workers will realize it.

The scale of the organization must from the very beginning be world-wide or nearly so, in order that it may not be dependent in its production and consumption upon exchange with other countries that do not enter it. The experience of the world war and the revolutions that followed it shows that such dependence will immediately be converted into a means of destroying the new system.

The type of organization cannot be other than centralized; not, however, in the sense of the old authoritarian centralism, but in the sense of scientific centralism. Its center should be a gigantic statistical bureau based on exact calculation for the purpose of distributing labor-power and instruments of labor.

The motive force of the organization at first, i.e., as long as the whole of society has not yet been trained in the spirit of collective labor, will be comradely discipline, including an element of compulsion, from which society will step by step emancipate itself.

In this system of production, each worker will be actually on an equality with the rest as conscious elements of one sensible whole; each one will be given all the possibilities for completely and universally developing his labor-power and the possibilities of applying it to the advantage of all.

Thus the characteristic features of the socialist society are the homogeneous organization of the whole productive system, with the greatest mobility of its elements and groupings, and a highly developed mental equality of the workers as universally developed conscious producers.

3. Distribution

Distribution generally represents an essential part of production, and in its organization is wholly dependent upon it. The systematic organization of production presupposes a systematic organization of distribution. The supreme organizer in both these spheres will be society as a whole. Society will distribute labor and also the product of that labor. This is the very opposite of the anarchic unorganized distribution which is expressed in exchange and private property conducted on the basis of competition and the crude conflict of interests. The social organization of production and distribution presupposes also the social ownership of the means of production and the articles of consumption created by social labor until society hands them over to the individual for his personal use. “Individual property” commences in the sphere of consumption which essentially is individualistic. This, of course, has nothing in common with capitalist private property, which is primarily the private ownership of means of production; but does not represent the right of the worker to the necessary means of existence.

The principle of distribution arises directly out of the basis of co-operation. As the system of production is organised on the basis that it secures to every member of society the possibility of the complete and universal development of his labor-power and the possibility of applying it for the use of all, so the system of distribution should give him the articles of consumption necessary for the development and application of labor-power. With regard to the method by which this is to be achieved, two phases may also be foreseen. At first, when the scale of production is not particularly great, and collectivism has not yet penetrated the spirit of every member of society, so that the elements of compulsion must yet be preserved, distribution will serve as a means of discipline: each one will receive a quantity of products in proportion to the amount of labor he has given to society. Later on, when the increase of production and the development of labor co-operation renders such careful economy and compulsion unnecessary, complete freedom of consumption will be established for the worker. Giving society all that he is able in strength and ability, society will give him all that he needs.

The complexity of the new method of organizing distribution must obviously be enormous and demand such developed statistical and informative apparatus as our epoch is far from having achieved. But even in our time, the elements exist in various spheres of economic life which should serve as the material for such apparatus. In the sphere of banking and credit, for instance, there are the agencies and committees of experts for studying the state of the market, stock exchange organization; in the labor movement, there are mutual aid societies, co-operative societies; and organized by the State are schemes of insurance. All these will have to be radically reformed before they can serve for the future system of distribution because at present they are wholly adapted to the anarchical system of capitalism and therefore subordinated to its forms. They may be described as the scattered rudimentary prototypes of the future harmonious system of distribution.

4. Social Ideology

The first feature of the social psychology of the new society is its socialness, its spirit of collectivism, and this is determined by the fundamental structure of that society. The labor compactness of the great human family and the inherent similarity in the development of men and women should create a degree of mutual understanding and sympathy of which the present-day solidarity of the class-conscious elements of the proletariat, the real representatives of future society, is only a weak indication. A man trained in the epoch of savage competition, of ruthless economic enmity between groups and classes, cannot imagine the high development between men of comradely ties that will be organically created out of the new labor relations.

Out of the real power of society over external nature and social forces there follows another feature of the ideology of the new world, the complete absence of all fetishism, the purity and clearness of knowledge and the emancipation of the mind from all the fruits of mysticism and metaphysics. The last traces of natural fetishism will disappear, and this will reflect the final overthrow of both the domination of external nature over man and the social fetishism reflecting the domination of the elemental forces of society; the power of the market and competition will be uprooted and destroyed. Consciously and systematically organizing his struggle against the elements of nature, social man will have no need for idols which are the personification of a sense of helplessness in the face of the insuperable forces of the surrounding world. The unknown will cease to be unknown because the process of acquiring knowledge – systematic organization on the basis of organized labor – will be accompanied by a consciousness of strength, a sense of victory, arising from the knowledge that in the living experience of man there are no longer any spheres surrounded by impenetrable walls of mystery. The reign of science will begin and put an end to religion and metaphysics forever.

As a result of the combination of these two features, we get a third feature, the gradual abolition of all standards of compulsion and of all elements of compulsion in social life.

The essential significance of all the compulsory standards – custom, law, and morals – consists in the regulation of the vital contradictions between men, groups, and classes. These contradictions lead to struggles, competitions, enmity, and violence, and arise out of the unorganized state and anarchy of the social whole. The standards of compulsion which society, sometimes spontaneously and sometimes consciously, has established in the struggle with the anarchy and the contradictions have become a fetish, i.e., an external power to which man has subjected himself as something higher, standing above him, and demanding worship or veneration. Without this fetishism, compulsory standards would not have the power over man to restrain the vital contradictions. The natural fetishist ascribes a divine origin to authority, law, and morals; the representative of social fetishism ascribes the origin to the “nature of things”; both mean to ascribe to them an absolute significance and a higher origin. Believing in the high and absolute character of these standards, the fetishist subjects himself to them and maintains them with the devotion of a slave.

When society ceases to be anarchical and develops into the harmonious form of a symmetrical organization, the vital contradictions in its environment will cease to be a fundamental and permanent phenomenon and will become partial and casual. Compulsory standards are a kind of “law” in the sense that must regulate the repeated phenomena arising out of the very structure of society; obviously, under the new system, they will lose this significance. Casual and partial contradictions amidst a highly-developed social sense and with a highly-developed knowledge can be easily overcome without the aid of special “laws” compulsorily carried out by “authority.” For instance, if a mentally-diseased person threatens danger and harm to others, it is not necessary to have special “laws” and organs of “authority” to remove such a contradiction; the teachings of science are sufficient to indicate the measures by which to cure that person, and the social sense of the people surrounding him will be sufficient to prevent any outbreak of violence on his part, while applying the minimum of violence to him. All meaning for compulsory standards in a higher form of society is lost for the further reason that with the disappearance of the social fetishism connected with them they also lose their “higher” form.

Those who think that the “State form,” i.e., a legal organization, must be preserved in the new society because certain compulsory laws are necessary, like that requiring each one to work a certain number of hours per day for society, are mistaken. Every State form is an organization of class domination and this cannot exist where there are no classes. The distribution of labor in society will be guaranteed on the one hand by the teachings of science and those who express them – the technical organizers of labor acting solely in the name of science, but having no power – and on the other by the power of the social sense which will bind men and women into one labor family by the sincere desire to do everything for the welfare of all.

Only in the transitional period, when survivals of class contradictions still exist, is the State form at all possible in the “future State.” But this State is also an organization of class domination; only it is the domination of the proletariat, which will abolish the division of society into classes and together with it the State form of society.

5. Forces of development

The new society will be based not on exchange but on natural self-sufficing economy. Between production and consumption of products, there will not be the market, buying and selling, but consciously and systematically organized distribution.

The new self-sufficing economy will be different from the old primitive communism, for instance, in that it will embrace not a large or a small community, but the whole of society, composed of hundreds of millions of people, and later of the whole of humanity.

In exchange societies, the forces of development are “relative over-population,” competition, class struggle, i.e., in reality, the inherent contradictions of social life. In the self-sufficing societies referred to above, tribal and feudal societies, the forces of development are based upon “relative over-population,” i.e., the outward contradictions between nature and society, between the demands for the means of life arising out of the growth of the population and the sum of these means which nature in a given society can supply.

In the new self-sufficing society the forces of development will also lie in the outward contradictions between society and nature, in the very process of struggle between society and nature. Here the slow process of over-population will not be required to induce man still further to perfect his labor and knowledge: the needs of humanity will increase in the very process of labor and experience. Each new victory over nature and its mysteries will raise new problems in the highly-organised mentality of the new man, sensitive to the slightest disturbance and contradiction. Power over nature means the continual accumulation of the energy of society acquired by it from external nature. This accumulated energy will seek an outlet and will find it in the creation of new forces of labor and knowledge.

The new forces of development arising out of the struggle with nature and of the labor experience of man operate the more strongly and rapidly the wider and more complex and diverse this experience is. For this reason, in the new society with its colossally wide and complex system of labor, with its numerous ties uniting the experience of the most diverse (although equally developed) human individualities, the forces of development must create such rapid progress as we in our day can hardly imagine. The harmonious progress of future society will be much more intensive than the semi-spontaneous progress, fluctuating between contradictions, of our epoch.

All economic obstacles to development will be abolished under the new system. Thus, the application of machinery, which under capitalism is determined by considerations of profit, under the new system will depend entirely upon productivity. As we have seen, machinery which may be very useful for saving labor is very frequently useless from the standpoint of capitalist profits. In socialist society, such a point of view will not prevail and there will, therefore, be no obstacles to the application of labor-saving machinery.

The forces of development which will dominate at this stage will not be new forces; they will have operated previously. In the natural self-sufficing system, however, these forces were suppressed by the general conservatism prevailing in it; under capitalism they are suppressed by virtue of the fact that the classes which take for themselves the product of surplus labor, i.e., the main source of the forces of development of society, do not participate in the direct struggle with nature, do not conduct industry personally, but through others, and consequently remain outside the influence of the forces created in the struggle.

Under socialism, however, the sum total of surplus labor will be employed by the whole of society and every member will directly participate in the struggle against nature. Consequently, the main and greatest driving force of progress will act unhindered and at top speed, not through a select minority, but through the whole of humanity, and the sphere of development must increase unceasingly.

Thus the general characteristics of the socialist system, the highest stage of society we can conceive, are: power over nature, organization, socialness, freedom, and progress.