Ernest Mandel: Communism

As a companion to the rant above, I offer the great Belgian Marxist, Ernest Mandel giving a too brief explanation of the term ‘communism’. Written when Stalinism still lived, barely, and claimed the mantle, I imagine Ernie, in his wisdom, would have said this or that differently today, added or deleted as the case might be. After all, as each generation gets its own Shakespeare, so each it gets its own Marx. Its own communism. Mandel did more than most to help define the communism needed by his generation. That we might do the same for ours.

Communism

Ernest Mandel

The term ’communism’ was first used in modern times to designate a specific economic doctrine (or regime), and a political creed intending to introduce such a regime, by the French lawyer Etiénne Cabet in the late 1830s; his works, especially the utopia L’Icarie, were influential among the Paris working class before the revolution of 1848.

In 1840 the first ’communist banquet’ was held in Paris – banquets and banquet speeches were a common form of political protest under the July monarchy.

The term spread rapidly, so that Karl Marx could entitle one of his first political articles of 16 October 1842 ’Der Kommunismus und die Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung’. He noted that ’communism’ was already an international movement, manifesting itself in Britain and Germany besides France, and traced its origin to Plato. He could have mentioned ancient Jewish sects and early Christian monasteries too.

In fact, some of the so-called ’utopian socialists’, in the first place the German Weitling, called themselves communists and spread the influence of the new doctrine among German itinerant handicraftsmen all over Europe, as well as among the more settled industrial workers of the Rhineland. Under the influence of Marx and Engels, the League of the Just (Bund des Gerechten) they had created, changed is name to the Communist League in 1846. The League requested the two young German authors to draft a declaration of principle for their organisation. This declaration would appear in February 1848 under the title Communist Manifesto, which would make the words ’communism’ and ’communists’ famous the world over.

Communism, from then on, would designate both a classes society without property, without ownership – either private or nationalised – of the means of production, without commodity production, money or a state apparatus separate and apart from the members of the community, and the social-political movement to arrive at that society. After the victory of the Russian October revolution in 1917, that movement would tend to be identified by and large with Communist parties and a Communist International (or at least an ’international communist movement’), though there exists a tiny minority of communists, inspired by the Dutch astronomer Pannekoek- who are hostile to a party organisation of any kind (the so-called ’council communists’, Rätekommunisten).

The first attempts to arrive at a communist society (leaving aside early, medieval and more modern christian communities) were made in the United States in the 19th century, through the establishment of small agrarian settlements band upon collective property, communally organised labour and the total absence of money inside their boundaries. From that point of view, they differed radically from the production co-operatives promoted for example by the English industrialist and philanthropist Robert Owen. Weitling himself created such a community, significantly called Communia. Although they were generally established by a selected group of followers who shared common convictions and interests, these agrarian communities did not survive long in a hostile environment. The nearest contemporary extension of these early communist settlements are the kibbutzim in Israel.

Rather rapidly, and certainly after the appearance of the Communist Manifesto, communism came to be associated less with small communities set up by morally or intellectually selected elites, but with the general movement of emancipation of the modern working class, if not in its totality at least in its majority, encompassing furthermore the main countries (wealth-wise and population-wise) of the world. In the major theoretical treatise of their younger years, The German Ideology, Marx and Engels stated emphatically:

“Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of dominant peoples ’all at once’ and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with them. . . . The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a ’world-historical’ existence.”

And, earlier in the same passage:

“This development of productive forces (which at the same time implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise, because without it privation is merely made general, and with want the struggle for necessities would begin again, and all the old filthy business would necessarily be restored . . . (1845-6, p. 49).”

That line of argument is today repeated by most orthodox Marxists (communists), who find in it an explanation of what ’went wrong’ in Soviet Russia, once it was isolated in a capital environment as a result of the defeat of revolution in other European countries in the 1918-23 period. But many ’official’ Communist Parties still stick to Stalin’s particular version of communism, according to which it is possible to successfully complete the building of socialism and communism in a single country, or in a small number of countries.

The radical and international definition of a communist society given by Marx and Engels inevitably leads to the perspective of a transition (transition period) between capitalism and communism. Marx and Engels first, notably in their writings about the Paris Commune – The Civil War in France – and in their Critique of the Gotha Programme (of the German social-democratic party), Lenin later – especially in his book State and Revolution – tried to give at least a general sketch of what that transition would be like. It centres around the following ideas:

1) The proletariat, as the only social class radically opposed to private ownership of the means of production, and likewise as the only class which has potentially the power to paralyse and overthrow bourgeois society, as well as the inclination to collective co-operation and solidarity which are the motive forces of the building of communism, conquers political (state) power. It uses that power (’the dictatorship of the proletariat’) to make more and more ’despotic inroads’ into the realm of private property and private production, substituting for them collectively and consciously (planned) organised output, increasingly turned towards direct satisfaction of needs. This implies a gradual withering away of market economy.

2) The dictatorship of the proletariat, however, being the instrument of the majority to hold down a minority, does not need a heavy apparatus of full-time functionaries, and certainly no heavy apparatus of repression. It is a state sui generis, a state which starts to wither away from its inception, i.e. it starts to devolve more and more of the traditional state functions to self-administrating bodies of citizens, to society in its totality. This withering away of the state goes hand in hand with the indicated withering away of commodity production and of money, accompanying a general withering away of social classes and social stratification, i.e. of the division of society between administrators and administrated, between ’bosses’ and ’bossed over’ people.

That vision of transition towards communism as an essentially evolutionary process obviously has preconditions: that the countries engaged on that road already enjoy a relatively high level of development (industrialisation, modernisation, material wealth, stock of infrastructure, level of skill and culture of the people, etc.), created by capitalism itself; that the building of the new society is supported by the majority of the population (i.e. that the wage-earners already represent the great majority of the producers and that they have passed the threshold of a necessary level of socialist political class consciousness); that the process encompasses the major countries of the world.

Marx, Engels, Lenin and their main disciples and co-thinkers like Rosa Luxemburg, Trotsky, Gramsci, Otto Bauer, Rudolf Hilferding, Bukharin et al. – incidentally also Stalin until 1928 – distinguished successive stages of the communist society: the lower stage, generally called ’socialism’, in which there would be neither commodity production nor classes, but in which the individual’s access to the consumption fund would still be strictly measured by his quantitative labour input, evaluated in hours of labour; and a higher stage, generally called ’communism’, in which the principle of satisfaction of needs for everyone would apply, independently of any exact measurement of work performed.

Marx established that basic difference between the two stages of communism in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, together with so much else. It was also elaborated at length in Lenin’s State and Revolution.

In the light of these principles, it is clear that no socialist or communist society exists anywhere in the world today. It is only possible to speak about ’really existing socialism’ at present, if one introduces a new, ’reductionist’ definition of a socialist society, as being only identical with predominantly nationalised property of the means of production and central economic planning. This is obviously different from the definition of socialism in the classical Marxist scriptures. Whether such a new definition is legitimate or not in the light of historical experience is a matter of political and philosophical judgement. It is in any case another matter altogether than ascertaining whether the radical emancipators goals projected by the founders of contemporary communism have been realised in these really existing societies or not. This is obviously not the case.

Ernest Mandel: A Life For The Revolution

More of the late Ernest Mandel.  When we, as Marxists, critique our past as we must do, we sometimes fail to place the past firmly in its time.  The point of looking at the past is not, as an example, to say that the Bolsheviks “should not” have banned factions, but to ask why the Bolsheviks banned factions.  The elements of the 20th century experience still reflected in the Marxist movement that we rightly wish to shed, as well as those we’d be stupid to abandon, came about in reaction to concrete realities, real events.  Ernest Mandel was a participant in many of those events and an astute observer of those realities.  As such his life is a wonderful guide into that time’s maddening complexities.

A revolution in retreat is a terribly disconcerting and confusing experience.  That Mandel and Trotskyists defended Marxism and the perspective of workers self emancipation in the midst of great reversals speaks to their Marxism as much as to their courage.  I can’t imagine Marxism surviving as something recognizable as an emancipatory movement without their struggle.  However, and we imagine Mandel would agree with this, Marxism defined by its defense against those whose distortions claim to speak in its name can’t help but also, in its way, distort Marxism.  It’s one of those awful contradictions of history: the defense of Marxism necessarily limits it.

Our wish to reclaim Marxism from the perfidy of the past and redefine it in terms of today will be defined by other experiences, not unrelated, to those faced by earlier generations.  While we come to terms with the past in order to face the future we do a disservice to that project if we reject the mistakes without absorbing the lessons.  It is so easy to throw stones at the past without learning a thing but the ability to be self-righteous.  We had much to learn from Mandel when he was alive and we still do.  This film has been around the net for a while, but only recently have I discovered it in English.  The rest of the film can be found here.

Ernest Mandel and Daniel Singer Speak!

Two of the very finest voices on the European left in the latter half of the twentieth century were Ernest Mandel and Daniel Singer, both now sadly gone.  Different in politics and style Mandel and Singer gave expression to the historic needs of the working class and the emancipatory communist project in the midst of the Cold War when the “official left”, including the Communist Parties, had long since abandoned them.

In these interviews conducted in the midst of the collapse of the Stalinist regimes and the first Gulf War Singer and Mandel place the time in context and look to the future.  Whatever the outcomes of their prognostications, the lucidity of their thought and the commitment to the working class in the face of the “end of history” is undeniable.  Highly recommended for comrades who lived through The Fall and those who are scratching their heads and wondering what it was all about.  Mandel and Singer, Presenté!

Ernest Mandel Offers a Guest Commentary

Bourgeois ideology and proletarian class consciousness
Ernest Mandel from Leninist Organisation – Part 2

The Marxian proposition that “the dominant ideology of every society is the ideology of the dominant class” appears at first glance to conflict with the character of the proletarian revolution as the conscious overturning of society by the proletariat, as a product of the conscious, independent activity of the wage-earning masses. A superficial interpretation of this proposition might lead to the conclusion that it is utopian to expect the masses who, under capitalism, are manipulated and exposed to the constant onslaught of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas, to be capable of carrying out a revolutionary class struggle against this society, let alone a social revolution, Herbert Marcuse, who draws this conclusion, is (for the time being) simply the latest in a long series of theoreticians who, taking as their point of departure the Marxian definition of the ruling class, finish by calling into question the revolutionary potential of the working class.

The problem can be solved by replacing the formalistic and static point of view with a dialectical one. The Marxian proposition simply needs to be made more “dynamic”. The dominant ideology of every society is the ideology of the dominant class in the sense that the latter has control over the means of ideological production which society has at its disposal (the church, schools, mass media, etc.) and uses these means in its own class interests. As long as class rule is on the upswing, stable and hence hardly questioned, the ideology of the dominant class will also dominate the consciousness of the oppressed class. Moreover, the exploited will, as a rule, tend to formulate the first phases of the class struggle in terms of the formulas, ideals and ideologies of the exploiters. [1]

However, the more the stability of the existing society is brought into question, and the more the class struggle intensifies, and the more the class rule of the exploiters itself begins to waver in practice, the more will at least sections of the oppressed class begin to free themselves of the control of the ideas of those in power. Prior to, and along with, the struggle for the social revolution, a struggle goes on between the ideology of the rulers and the new ideals of the revolutionary class. This struggle in turn intensifies and accelerates the concrete class struggle out of which it arose by lifting the revolutionary class to an awareness of its historical tasks and of the immediate goals of its struggle. Class consciousness on the part of the revolutionary class can therefore develop out of the class struggle in spite of and in opposition to the ideology of the ruling class. [2]

But it is only in the revolution itself that the majority of the oppressed can liberate themselves from the ideology of the ruling class. [3] For this control is exerted not only, nor even primarily, through purely ideological manipulation and the mass assimilation of the ruling class’ ideological production, but above all through the actual day-to-day workings of the existing economy and society and their effect on the consciousness of the oppressed. (This is especially true in bourgeois society, although parallel phenomena can be seen in all class societies.)

In capitalist society this control is exerted through the internalisation of commodity relations, which is closely tied to the reification of human relations and which results from the generalised extension of commodity production and the transformation of labour power into a commodity, and from the generalised extension of the social division of labour under conditions of commodity production. It is also accomplished through the fatigue and brutalisation of the producers through exploitation and the alienated nature of labour, as well as through a lack of leisure time, not only in a quantitative but also in a qualitative sense, etc. Only when the workings of this imprisonment are blown apart by a revolution, i.e., by a sudden, intense increase, in mass activity outside of the confines of alienated labour – only then can the mystifying influence of this very imprisonment upon mass consciousness rapidly recede.

The Leninist theory of organisation therefore attempts to come to grips with the inner dialectic of this formation of political class consciousness, which can develop fully only during the revolution itself, yet only on the condition that it has already begun to develop before the revolution. [4] The theory does this by means of three operative categories: the category of the working class in itself (the mass of workers); the category of that part of the working class that is already engaging in more than sporadic struggles and has already reached a first level of organisation (the proletarian vanguard in the broad sense of the word); [5] and the category of the revolutionary organisation, which consists of workers and intellectuals who participate in revolutionary activities and are at least partially educated in Marxism.

The category of “the class in itself” is linked to the objective class concept in the sociology of Marx, where a social layer is determined by its objective position in the process of production independent of its state of consciousness. (It is well known that the young Marx – in the Communist Manifesto and in his political wrings of 1850-1852, for instance- had put forward a subjective concept of the class according to which the working class becomes a class only through its struggle, i.e., by reaching a minimum degree of class consciousness. Bukharin, in connection with a formula from The Poverty of Philosophy, calls this concept the concept of “the class for itself” as opposed to the concept of the “class in itself.”) [6] This objective concept of the class remains fundamental for Lenin’s ideas on organisation, as it did for Engels and the German Social Democracy under the influence of Engels, Bebel and Kautsky. [7]

It is only because there exists an objectively revolutionary class that can, and is periodically obliged to, conduct an actual revolutionary class struggle, and it is only in relation to such an actual class struggle, that the concept of a revolutionary vanguard party (including that of professional revolutionaries) has any scientific meaning at all, as Lenin himself explicitly observed. [8] All revolutionary activity not related to this class struggle leads at best to a party nucleus, but not to a party. This runs the risk of degenerating into sectarian, subjective dilettantism. According to Lenin’s concept of organisation, there is no self-proclaimed vanguard. Rather, the vanguard must win recognition as a vanguard (i.e., the historical right to act as a vanguard) through its attempts to establish revolutionary ties with the advanced part of the class and its actual struggle.

The category of “advanced workers” stems from the objectively inevitable stratification of the working class. It is a function of their distinct historical origin, as well as their distinct position in the social process of production and their distinct class consciousness.

The formation of the working class as an objective category is itself an historical process. Some sections of the working class are the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of urban wage labourers; others are the sons and grandsons of agricultural labourers and landless peasants, Still others are only first or second generation descendants of a petty bourgeoisie that owned some means of production (peasants, artisans, etc.). Part of the working class works in large factories where both the economic and the social relations give rise to at least an elementary class consciousness (consciousness that “social questions” can be solved only through collective activity and organisation). Another part works in small or medium-sized factories in industry or in the so-called service sectors, where economic self-confidence as well as an understanding of the necessity for broad mass actions flow much less easily from the objective situation than in the large industrial plant. Some sections of the working class have been living in big cities for a long time. They have been literate for a long time and have several generations of trade-union organisation and political and cultural education behind them (through youth organisations, the workers press, labour education, etc.). Still others live in small towns or even in the countryside. (This was true into the late 1930s, for instance, for a significant number of European miners.) These workers have little or no collective social life, scarcely any trade-union experience, and have received no political or cultural education at all in the organised workers movement. Some sectors of the working class are born from nations which were independent for a thousand years, and whose ruling class oppressed for long periods other nations. Other workers are born from nations which fought for decades or centuries for their national freedom – or who lived in slavery or serfdom no more than one hundred years ago. If one adds to all these historical and structural differences the various personal abilities of each wage worker – not just differences in intelligence and ability to generalise from immediate experiences, but differences in the amount of energy, strength of character: combatively and self-assurance too – then one understands that the stratification of the working class into various layers, depending on the degree of class consciousness, is an inevitable phenomenon in the history of the working class itself. It is this historical process of becoming a class which, at a given point in time, is reflected in the various degrees of consciousness within the class.

The category of the revolutionary party stems from the fact that Marxian socialism is a science which, in the final analysis, can be completely assimilated only in an individual and not in a collective manner. Marxism constitutes the culmination (and in part also the dissolution) of at least three classical social sciences: classical German philosophy, classical political economy, and classical French political science (French socialism and historiography). Its assimilation presupposes at least an understanding of the materialist dialectic, historical materialism, Marxian economic theory and the critical history of modern revolutions and of the modern labour movement. Such an assimilation is necessary if it is to be able to function, in its totality, as an instrument for analysing social reality and as the compilation of the experiences of a century of proletarian class struggle. The notion that this colossal sum of knowledge and information could somehow spontaneously flow from working at a lathe or a calculating machine is absurd. [9]

The fact that as a science Marxism is an expression of the highest degree in the development of proletarian class consciousness means simply that it is only through an individual process of selection that the best, most experienced, the most intelligent and the most combative members of the proletariat are able to directly and independently acquire this class consciousness in its most potent form. To the extent that this acquisition is an individual one, it also becomes accessible to other social classes and layers (above all, the revolutionary intelligentsia and the students). [10] Any other approach can lead only to an idealisation of the working class – and ultimately of capitalism itself.

Of course it must always be remembered that Marxism could not arise independently of the actual development of bourgeois society and of the class struggle that was inevitably unfolding within it. There is an inextricable tie between the collective, historical experience of the working class in struggle and its scientific working out of Marxism as collective, historical class consciousness in its most potent form. But to maintain that scientific socialism is an historical product of the proletarian class struggle is not to say that all or even most members of this class can, with greater or lesser ease, reproduce this knowledge. Marxism is not an automatic product of the class struggle and class experience but a result of scientific, theoretical production. Such an assimilation is made possible only through participation in that process of production; and this process is by definition an individual one, even though it is only made possible through the development social forces of production and class contradictions under capitalism.

Notes