Dear Reader,
In my opinion, this text is too valuable to be treated as
any kind of “sacred text”.
It needs to be “improved upon”, and circulated, «samizdat», worldwide, in such “improved” forms -- i.e., in as many versions as are seen as being needed, by every author who thinks that [s]he can “improve” upon it [including this one].
It needs to be “improved upon”, and circulated, «samizdat», worldwide, in such “improved” forms -- i.e., in as many versions as are seen as being needed, by every author who thinks that [s]he can “improve” upon it [including this one].
This text is under the Equitist Advocacy group’s “omni-copyright”
umbrella, so there are no “copyright violation” issues to hinder such
circulation, whether attributed anonymously, or under the name or pseudonym of
the improving author, or under the name of the Equitist Advocacy group
[although, in that case, the fact of the “improvement” of their original text
by (an)other author(s) should be explicitly noted, obviously].
Here are the links to the original version, by the Equitist Advocacy group --
http://equitism.org/Equitism/Equitism-entry.htm
http://www.equitism.org/Equitism/Theory/PoliticalEconomicDemocracy/PoliticalEconomicDemocracy.htm
Here are the links to the original version, by the Equitist Advocacy group --
http://equitism.org/Equitism/Equitism-entry.htm
http://www.equitism.org/Equitism/Theory/PoliticalEconomicDemocracy/PoliticalEconomicDemocracy.htm
Regards,
Miguel
Part 1. of
8. --
Alternative to the
Totalitarian, Humanocidal Self-Degeneration
of Capitalism -- Political-Economic Democracy
Introduction
Is there no alternative to our plight — to the horrific
destiny of humanocidal totalitarian degeneration described in Global
Strategic Hypothesis: Towards A Strategy For Humanity and in The
Political Economic Law Of Motion of Modern, Capital-based Society -- The 'Sociotaxis'
Toward Totalitarianism?
We believe that there is an alternative.
We have endeavored to introduce you to that alternative by way of the text below.
Hypothesis A
A Progressive
Negation of Bourgeois Democracy,
and of Bourgeois Civil Liberty,
Means a Dialectical Negation
Thereof. What we seek is an «aufheben» extension,
not an absolute abolition
-- i.e., not an undialectical / abstract
negation -- of bourgeois democracy.
It is suicidal, ahistorical,
and simply wrong to condemn all of bourgeois democracy -- and all of bourgeois
civil liberty -- as if they were without any substance at all.
The expanded social reproduction witnessed within the
ascendance phase of capitalism, along with its advances in voting rights, and
in civil liberties, afforded the majority of the populations of the core
capitalist nations greater protections from the depredations of the capitalist
class and of its state than they had ever before enjoyed — e.g., ending the “bad
old days” when anyone who would not kiss the ass of the king was subject to
summary beheading, or drawing and quartering — and made it possible for that
majority to transcend the status of peasant and serf semi-slavery, to form
unions, and to attain to “middle class” standards of living, for a time.
The post-1800s, decadent phase of capitalism, with its
gathering social-entropic momentum of contracted social reproduction, its
pro-contraction ideologies [e.g., most recently, ruling-class perverted, “People
are Pollution” ‘ecologism’], and competitive-capitalism’s slide into hybrid,
private-oligopoly/state-capitalist totalitarianism, is set to annihilate all of
those gains, and has already, especially via the current “Designer Depression”,
as well as during recent “Wars of Choice”, gone along way toward completing
that reversal of fortunes for the majority, producing class.
However, this fact, in truth, only accentuates -- it does
not erase -- the importance of those gains, and of the fight to resume and extend them --
except in the demented minds of nihilists.
Indeed, only the resumption, and extension, of those past
gains in democratization, that are now in jeopardy, can any longer prevent
their complete annihilation.
Now, only the extension of political democracy to
encompass political-economic
democracy,
as defined below, can save even political
democracy, and then only by also advancing political democracy beyond anything
it ever was -- or could have been -- before, within the ‘‘‘real subsumption’’’
of all other/earlier-extant social relations [of production] by the
capital-relation[-of-production].
Hypothesis B
A Progressive Negation of Capital-Value, and of “The Exchange-Value” in General, means a Dialectical Negation Thereof. What we seek is also an «aufheben» conservation/elevation/transformation/
‘‘‘real subsumption’’’ of prior value-forms, not
their absolute abolition, i.e., not
their undialectical / abstract
negation.
When the pre-capitalist ‘money-praxis’, and the
pre-capitalist money form of [exchange-]value, emerged from out of the ‘self-densifying’
expanded self-reproduction of the pre-capitalist ‘commodity/barter-praxis’, and
form of value, the “commodity-relation[-of-production]” was not “abolished”.
On the contrary, it was «aufheben»-conserved
and «aufheben»-transformed
in and by the ‘money-praxis’.
It was mediated and subsumed by and as the pre-capitalist
money-catalyzed “circulation-praxis”, i.e., by the ‘money-mediated-circulation
of commodities’.
The ‘commodity-barter praxis’, the “commodity-relation” as
social relation of production, emerged because it had use-value for the human
agents of that epoch of human political economy.
The commodity-form continued to
have use-value for them when it was superseded, as the ‘meristemal’ social
relation of production, by the “money-relation[-of-production]” -- the ‘commodity-barter-relation’
as subordinated to and as ‘‘‘subsumed by’’’, or ‘‘‘appropriated by’’’, that
successor social relation of production, called “money”.
The ‘commodity barter-relation’ first emerged as a new
value-«species» of ‘goods-value’; of “use-value”; i.e.,
of “use”; of “utility” — as an ‘‘‘indirect
use’’’,
or ‘exchange-use’ of
goods [i.e., as a new mode of use
of goods produced by one’s own «locus», to -- via
barter-trading transactions -- acquire other
goods produced by other «loci», if perhaps not by one's own] -- in contrast to, and
as an alternative opportunity to, the ‘‘‘direct use’’’, or ‘‘‘direct consumption use’’’ of
the same goods.
When the productivity -- “productive force” -- of one’s
own community in producing a given good made it available in such abundance as
to make part of its volume useless
there, trading that “surplus” volume with other communities, where it was still
scarce/produced with low productivity, in return for a good that was still
scarce/produced with low productivity in one’s own community, became a better
use for that surplus volume of that good, than keeping it -- e.g., storing it,
or letting it lay about unused until deteriorated -- or discarding it.
But this new «species» of ‘‘‘exchange-use
value’’’ grew so ‘socially-large’, relative to the old «species»
of ‘goods-value’/’gifts-value’, as the communities’ productive forces increased
more generally, that this new «species» of the uses
of goods came to inaugurate a new «genos» in its own
right, the «genos» of [initially
commodity-barter-based] ‘‘‘exchange-value’’’.
Still later, but again, when the ‘capital-praxis’, and the
capital form of [exchange-]value, emerged from out of the ‘self-densifying’
expanded self-reproduction of the ‘money praxis’ and form of value, via the
further growth of the force of social
reproduction, the “money-relation-of-production” was not “abolished”, nor even was money’s
predecessor form of value, and social relation of production -- the “commodity-relation-of-production”
-- “abolished”.
On the contrary, the ‘money-praxis’ and the ‘commodity-praxis’
were both «aufheben»-conserved
and «aufheben»-transformed
in and by the ‘capital-praxis’.
Both commodity and money were subsumed by the
capital-catalyzed ‘‘‘capital-circulation/capital-reproduction-praxis
and capital-reproduction-process’’’, e.g., as “money-capital”
and as “commodity-capital”, respectively.
The ‘money-praxis’, the “money-relation” as social
relation of production, emerged because it had use-value for the human agents
of that epoch of human political economy.
The money-form continued to have use-value when it was
superseded, as the ‘meristemal’ [the “leading-edge”, “growing-edge”, or
“vanguard”] social relation of production, by the “capital-relation”.
The ‘money-relation’ was subordinated to and as ‘‘‘subsumed
by’’’, or ‘‘‘appropriated by’’’, that successor social relation of production,
called “capital”.
The ‘money-relation’, before it ever could become a new «genos» of exchange-value in its own right, first emerged as
a new value-«species» of ‘commodity-value’; of ‘barter-value’
-- in the form of the protracted historical series of ‘‘‘money-commodities’’’.
The role of a ‘‘‘money-commodity’’’ tended, eventually, to devolve upon
the ‘gold-commodity’, or upon another ‘‘‘commoditized’’’ “precious metal”,
given the money-functions-advantageous physical characteristics of such metals,
as the form of use-value in terms of which the exchange-values -- eventually,
the prices -- of all other commodities could best be expressed, forming a “universal
equivalent” medium of expression for the exchange-values of all other
commodities.
But this new «species» of ‘‘‘exchange-value’’’
soon grew so ‘socially-large’, relative to the old «species»
of ‘commodity-barter exchange-value’, that it came to inaugurate a new «genos» in its own right, the «genos»
of ‘‘‘monetary
exchange-values’’’,
or of, e.g., ‘‘‘gold-weight-expressed
prices’’’.
Next in this progression of human ‘social relations of
production’, the ‘capital-relation’ first emerged as a new value-«species» of ‘‘‘money-value’’’, and of the ‘‘‘money-mediated
circulation of commodities’’’ -- namely, as an inversion
of that money-mediated ‘circulation-praxis’, of the trading-sequence, i.e., of
the ‘alienation-sequence’, or of the ‘circulation-sequence’ of ownership, the
partial replacement of the ‘‘‘commodity → money → different commodity’’’ praxis, by
the reversed exchange-sequence, ‘alienation-sequence’, or ‘circulation-sequence’
of “mercantile capital”: ‘“money → commodity → more money”’, wherein the aim of the latter sequence of
the “sellings”, or “alienations”, of property is no longer the acquisition of a
different commodity,
but the acquisition of profit,
of “more money” than was advanced, or “invested”,
at the start of the latter ‘circulation-sequence’.
Thus, the capital form was initially confined to “circulation”,
in the forms of a “mercantile” capitalism, and/or of a money-lending, “usurers’ ” capitalism, both
representing sub-«species» of capital that initially
had primarily only a parasitical relation to “production”,
and that only ‘“form-ally”’ dominated, subsumed, or re-shaped the
production-processes of goods/commodities.
Only later, in the forms of the vast latifundial
slave-labor-based plantations of the ancient Mediterranean world, and of the
late medieval/early modern Americas, both producing agricultural commodities
for sale on a large-scale, to markets approaching a world-wide level of expanse,
did capital -- did human beings as the agents of the capital-praxis -- began to
re-shape human production in its own image.
Indeed, only with the advent of the modern wage-labor version / sub-«species»
of the capital-relation -- of the non-slavery-based selling of labor-capability in
return for a wage; of the alienation
of work-capability and of work-life-time -- and, thus, with the emergence of “industrial
capitalism” -- did the capital-relation come to “real-ly” dominate and subsume,
and to comprehensively re-shape, to its own requirements, the human
production-process; the human labor-process.
That is, this new «species» of ‘‘‘exchange-value’’’
grew so ‘socially-large’, with the further growth of the self-reproductive
force of human society, relative to the old «species»
of ‘money-commodity exchange-value’, and of the ‘commodity-barter
exchange-value’ that came before it, and that still continued, that this new “capital”
«species» of value came to inaugurate a new «genos»
in its own right, the «genos» of ‘‘‘capital-value’’’;
of ‘the auto-catalytic form of [exchange-]value’; of ‘‘‘money-which-makes-more-money’’’,
or of ‘‘‘profit-making money’’’, and of self-compounding ‘profit-making profit’.
Likewise, when the ‘capital-praxis’, the capital form of
[exchange-]value, or capital as ‘meristemal’ social relation of production, is
superseded, subsumed by, and subordinated to, its successor social relation of
production, it will not and cannot be immediately and absolutely abolished, i.e., it cannot be abstractly negated, but it will be dialectically
negated; «aufheben»-negated
-- conserved, elevated, transformed, and subsumed in and by a new «species»
of human social relations [of production], a new «species»
of human[e] values, which will have grown up from within it, growing out of it, to the point of outgrowing it,
and beyond, thus to superseding it, becoming a new «genos»
in its own right.
The ‘capital-praxis’, the “capital-relation” as predominant
social relation of production, the capital form of [exchange-]value, was
always, from its very inception, problematic, “self-contradictory”.
Moreover, it becomes ever more so, throughout its historical
self-development, ultimately becoming ‘un-practice-able’, whether or not that ‘im-practice-ability’
manifests in the form of its supersession, or in the form of ‘‘‘the mutual ruin
of the contending classes’’’, and of the collapse into a “New Dark Age”.
But the “capital-relation” was never a useless, never an
avoidable as ‘‘‘instar’’’ of human-species progression -- never without merit
as a transient, transitory, and transitional means of achieving growth of the
social self-force of social reproduction, actualized as expanded human social
reproduction, to the point of achieving escape-velocity from the “attractor” of
the “capital-relation”, and the capital-centered form of alienated-human
society.
Nor will it become absolutely useless
after its ‘‘‘real subsumption’’’ by its immanent successor as ‘meristemal’
social relation of production.
It will, in particular, remain an indispensable source of economic “checks-and-balances”, against the abuse of
monopoly -- against the catastrophic collapse of product and service-product
use-value and safety -- that predictably arises from monopolies of supply.
E.g., the conservation of a competitive market for
consumer goods produced by competing producer-stewarded and producer-democratically-managed
enterprises will conserve that economic “check-and-balance”, protecting
producer-consumers and their families from monopoly abuses -- either by
state-managed monopoly enterprises such as have already, in human history,
demonstrated their propensity for abuse -- or by others among the associated
producers, e.g., by monopoly producers-cooperatives.
What is ‘essence-ial’ to the
successor system of human sociality is that the “capital-relation” be no longer
allowed to seize, to attempt to organize, the social-reproductive totality;
that the “capital-relation” be subsumed by, subordinated to, and contained within its successor
social relation of production, that of ‘political-economic democracy’,
as defined below.
Hypothesis C
The Transition from Capitalism to ‘Democratic Communism’ is a Dialectical, that is, an «Aufheben», Transition. ‘‘‘Democratic-Communist Society’’’, or ‘realized
political-economy’, i.e., ‘political-economic democracy’, will
arise, not by the “abolition”
/ abstract negation of the capital «species»
of equity -- of ‘‘‘capital-equity’’’, ‘internality-equity’, or “capital equity
stock” / “joint-stock-company” “stockholder democracy” — and of the capitalist
market, but by the dialectical,
or self-«aufheben» negation,
i.e., by the conservation/elevation/transformation, of that initial, «arché species»
of “equity”, that is, via ‘‘‘further speciation’’’
within the “equity” «genos», beyond its first, “capital
equity” «species».
This means ‘the completion of the
«genos»’ of equity -- via the emergence
and development of additional «species» of the “equity”
«genos», and via the ‘‘‘real domination’’’, or ‘‘‘real
subsumption’’’, of that «arché species» of the ‘generalized
equity’ «genos», namely, of the ‘capital-equity’, or ‘internality
equity’, «species», by those successor /‘progressor’
«species» of the “equity” «genos»,
namely, by those «species» of ‘generalized
equity’ for which we use the following names --
- The ‘Citizen Externality Equity’ «species» of the equity «genos»;
- The ‘Citizen Birthright Equity’ «species» of the equity «genos»;
- The ‘Citizen Stewardship Equity’ «species» of the equity «genos»;
- The ‘Citizen Allocational Equity’ «species» of the equity «genos»
-- as defined in the sequel.
Hypothesis D
Human-Social Production Requires Human-Social Pre-Imagination. In Capital
(vol. I), Marx wrote the following
about the human process of production -- in contra-distinction to the processes
of all of the «species» within the «genos»
of the ‘‘‘social animals’’’ -- as a process that requires the human pre-imagination of the product which is to be produced, and
also as an ontological, dialectical
‘‘‘internal contradiction of’’’, or ‘‘‘self-contradiction within’’’, Nature,
i.e., as an ‘intra-duality’ of Nature -- of Nature conceived as maximal
self-developing, dialectical
totality:
“Labour is, in the first place, a process
in which both man and [other parts of -- M.D.] Nature participate, and in
which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material reactions between himself and
[other parts of -- M.D.]
Nature. He
opposes himself to [other parts
of -- M.D.] Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces
of his own body, in order to appropriate Nature's [other -- M.D.] productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the
external world, [i.e., on parts of
Nature external to its human[ized] part(s) -- M.D.] and changing
it, he at the same time [self-reflexively, self-refluxively acts upon himself and -- M.D.] changes his own
nature. He
develops his slumbering powers and compels them
to act in obedience to his sway. We are
not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us
of the mere animal. An immeasurable
interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his
labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human
labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps
it as exclusively human. A spider
conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame
many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect
from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in
imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour process, we get a
result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its
commencement. He not only effects a
change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realizes a
purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will.”
-- [Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (vol. I), ‘‘‘The Productions-Process of/by Capitals’’’,; International Publishers Co., Inc. (NY: 1967), pages 177-178, emphasis added by M.D.].
We hold that the above considerations apply also to the
process of the conscious human production of new social relations of [human
society's self-re-]production -- in particular, to the process of our creation
of ‘democratic-communist’ society, as a way out of the “lawful” descent of late
global capitalism into the hell of humanocidal totalitarian state-capitalism --
from out of the materials of capital-relation society, and also out of those of
the surviving/subsumed previous social relations of human society-production.
If the conception of ‘democratic-communist society’ -- of
its ‘‘‘historical-specificity’’’; of its social form as an ‘historical species’,
a ‘temporal species’ of human-species development; of its ‘‘‘historically-specific’’’
social relation of production -- could be rightfully said to have been acceptably left in partial ‘vaguery’
during the times of, and in the works of, Marx and Engels -- both those they
published and, to the extent known to date, those that they left unpublished --
under the argument that it was still too early, in the history of the “capital-relation”,
to determine the determinations of its successor social relation of production
in detail, the same can no longer be rightfully said today.
Situated, as we are, deep in the descendant phase of the
global «Kapitals»-system, a descendant phase that began
circa 1907, over
a hundred years ago; situated, as we are, at the very extremity of human
prehistory, on the precipice of the great transition -- or of ‘‘‘the mutual
ruin of the contending classes’’’, and with it, the ruin of the human species
and of the biosphere of this planet entire -- we can no longer afford such a luxury
of ignorance.
Relying on ‘‘‘spontaneity’’’, on the ‘‘‘spontaneous discoveries’’’
of “the masses” in action, after the fact of their
initiating global social revolution, is, quite simply, nothing but a recipe for
catastrophe.
It is a careless and irresponsible «de facto»
call to maximize the “transitional” loss of life that is already burgeoning
world-wide, via the ruling class’s many ‘stealth genocide’ programs/pogroms, and
to consign “the masses” to horrible deaths -- all for nought.
On the contrary, social revolutionaries, to be worthy of
that name, must do everything within their -- admittedly limited -- power to absolutely minimize the cost in loss of human life of
the transition to a “post-prehistoric”, higher form of human[e] life.
We, they --
the peoples of the Earth --
must know in advance,
in detail,
what we are fighting for,
what we are trying to build,
or else we can never even get started; we cannot even begin to form any
coherent programme,
or strategy.
“The masses” are no dummies, doomed to service the ‘«noir»ist’
phantasy-romances of ‘intellectualoid’ Little Lord Fauntleroys, by obligingly -- and “spontaneously” -- spilling their blood by the billions to feed those
‘intellectualoids’ ’ fetid phantasy-lives!
The people of Earth will not risk everything, will not
start a world revolution, based upon the directionless vagaries of the present
anti-Leninist, anti-Stalinist left, that would merely risk even more chaos --
and, thence, via demands for the restoration of “order”, the handing over of
their lives, and of what little social defenses, rights, and protections they have
left, to the tender mercies of Lenino-Trotskyoid, Stalinoid, and/or Stalino-Maoid
totalitarian state-capitalists, or, far more likely, and even worse -- with a
vengeance -- to the now naked “iron fists” of the ‘Meta-Nazi’ totalitarian
state-capitalists of the present global ruling class, who already rule them,
with ever-more frayed “velvet gloves”.
“We” have already tried “spontaneity”: Germany, 1918.
Workers driving back and forth in trucks, shaking rifles
in the air, didn't cut it.
Such ritualisms and such incantations did not conjure up ‘democratic
communism’.
Instead, they gave us the failure of the German ‘democratic communist’
revolution.
That, in turn, gave us the degeneration of any hope of a
Russian ‘democratic communist’ revolution,
which would have required the support of the advanced productive forces that
would have been available to a German ‘political-economic democracy’.
That, in turn, gave us Stalin.
That, in turn, gave us Hitler.
That, in turn, gave us the world of today, in which
“socialism [in one country]” -- in which “[national] socialism” -- is so
discredited, by Hitler, by Lenin, by Trotsky, by Stalin, and by Mao, ad nauseam, that real
‘‘‘democratic socialism’’’ -- ‘political-economic democracy’
-- the only hope of a “Way Forward” for humanity, is refused even cursory
consideration by so many of us, crippling the chances for survival of humanity
as a whole.
SOLUTION –
‘Equitist Political-ECONOMIC
DEMOCRACY’;
BOOK:
MARX’S MISSING
BLUEPRINTS
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