We continue serializing Raoul Victor’s reply to an Oekonux text by the ‘two Stefan’s”.

In this third and last part, Raoul Victor focuses on the transition strategies.

Raoul Victor:

3 – Production and distribution

The text reads, in part 3:

“Though there are a lot of peer phenomenons, peer production is primarily about production and not distribution.”

Michel Bauwens has already made some criticisms to that statement:

“I don’t see how you can equate privatized output with peer production, that would be very contradictory, as the output necessarily requires conditions that affect both input and process.” (5 apr 08)

I agree with Michel. I just wanted to remind what Marx, in the same sense, wrote about that question: “The relations and modes of distribution are thus merely the reverse aspect of the factors of production. An individual whose participation in production takes the form of wage-labor will receive a share in the product, the result of production, in the form of wages. The structure of distribution is entirely determined by the structure of production. Distribution itself is a product of production, not only with regard to the content, for only the results of production can be distributed, but also with regard to the form, since the particular mode of men’s participation in production determines the specific form of distribution, the form, in which they share in distribution. ” (source: “Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”)

4 – Is contemporary industry perfect in working with matter?

In part 4, the text reads:

“Capitalism improved working with matter and the means employed are material means. Contemporary industry is perfect in producing material things.”

“Perfect” ? From what point of view? Probably the author’s pen slipped.

The only point of view from which “contemporary industry” (ie. capitalist industry) is “perfect” is efficiency in exploiting labor force and cumulating capital.

According to the International Labor Organization last year there were 2 200 000 mortal work accidents in the world. The number of injured is almost 1000 times bigger. And this is not only in the poor countries. In Italy, for example, there were 1 300 death and 900 000 injured.

Even excluding that human aspect, even putting aside the fact that contemporary industry destroys the ecological equilibrium and the humans’ health, from a sheer quantitative or qualitative point of view “contemporary industry” has nothing to do with perfection. Quantity is enormously limited by the profit imperatives ; quality is corrupted by commercial and profit constraints and by the alienated nature of work (paradoxically these last points are very well demonstrated in part 4 of the text).

The text also says: “And alienation was personally acceptable, because the ‘dependence’ was highly outweighed with good wages.” Is that “perfect”?

5 – The germ-form theory (or the five-step model) and the power over the means of production

In part 4, the text reads:

“This, however, is a quite different transition image than old style types of conquering the power to control the (old) means of production. The new conception of a transition bases on changing the productive basis by establishing new social relationship, which are originally free of valorisation and alienation. It is not about taking the old power, but building a new one, which then cooperates-out the old one. This is the fundamental change of the perspective of emancipation the five-step model brought to us.”

The five-step model is very interesting. But, as far as I have understood it, it does not pretend to say how concretely the different steps are reached. In particular it does not deal with specific social-political life during the transitions. For example, social life is not the same for fishes (the original example given in the text) and humans, and the model works the evolutions of both of them. It also works for the transition from feudalism to capitalism, where class struggle was determinant and where the bourgeoisie, at the same time that it developed new productive relations that “cooperated-out” the feudal ones, had to conquer the political power from the feudal-aristocracy’s hands.

Establishing new social relationships, “cooperating-out” the old system is not contradictory with conquering the power over the means of production. They are both interrelated and, at different moments, conditioned one by the other. By itself, the germ-form theory does not give an answer to the question, for the transition from capitalism to a peer society, of how to transform the private property over means of production into social possession through the commons. One may pretend that, contrary to what happened in all social transitions of the past, the transition to a post-capitalist society will be done without class confrontation and ignoring the questions of political power and control over the means of production (I do not agree with that) but, in any case, that cannot be justified by the germ-form theory.

6 – Classes and the transition to a peer society

The text reads, in part 4:

“However, the restriction comes from the enclosure of the valorisation logic, in which workers and capitalists took opposite functions, but which forms a unique shell for both. Neither of them can escape, both of them have function according to their ‘character masks’.”

We already had that discussion with Stefan Merten and Stefan Meretz. I do not agree with the vision that reduces the workers struggle to the permanent wage bargaining, inserted within the capitalistic logic.. This is the case most of the time, but the history of capitalism has shown that in some circumstances that struggle may become something different, trying to crack the “unique shell”, opposing the capitalistic logic, leaving the reality behind the “character masks” to appear clearly: the naturally conservative nature of the ruling classes and the revolutionary nature of the exploited class. It is not true that the exploited cannot dream of anything else than being “well exploited”. That was already true before capitalism, as showed, for example, by the slave revolts in antiquity with Spartacus or the peasants war in the 16th century in Germany (called in German: Erhebung des gemeinen Mannes: the uprising of common men). Historical, social and material conditions were not mature. But to day their maturation is getting over qualitative steps. Peer production development in the most modern part of productive forces is a manifestation of that. “Peer relationships” development is not not opposed to the old dream of the exploited classes: it represents its first concrete realization.

At this level, I find contradictory the position developed by the text considering sterile any class struggle in a peer society’s perspective, and what Stefan Merten wrote a few moths ago, (see the thread “Labor contradictions”, 21dec08):

“Coming from the anarchist side I know there were movements which had different things in mind than ‘really existing socialism’. Whether those movements had a chance to overcome capitalism? Let me say it this way: I think (only) today the conditions are mature because the development of productive forces got that far. Universalized digital copy (aka Internet) being one of the technical artifacts here.”

Of course, I prefer this last vision of things.