Communism:
- The real movement which abolishes the present order.
- Production by people who associate together freely.
Often, these are taken to refer to two different times. The ‘real movement’ is taken to be the political organization now (the party, frequently). The second sense of communism is taken to be a future condition which has not yet arrived. The separation of these two senses of communism into two distinct times, and the placing of the second into an always deferred future, is part of what allows the communist future to serve a justificatory function for the the so-called communist organization in the present. Thus, the Spanish revolution can be sold out, the Kronstadt soviet crushed, etc etc ad nauseum, in the name of communism, all manner of atrocities justified by the claim that they hasten a step toward the golden future.
Instead, I prefer to think of communism as people producing in a situation where they associate with one another freely, and this production itself is the real movement which abolishes the present, or threatens to. (Hence panics over piracy etc on the part of the bastards that be.)
Communism as the specter that haunts capitalism, then, is the ever-present possibility that specific modalities of communism will spread, further undermine capitalism, and wreak havoc. This haunting is not a sad ghost who replays a death scene, nor is it a memory which lingers and disturbs. It is a poltergeist, an active powerful force that is malevolent and irrational (in the eyes of the boss).
Communism is perhaps best thought of as communisms, communist socialities and practices, which are situational, that is, which exist in different modalities throughout history. The product which capitalism, in all its modalities, produces alongside different products, is that of social relations in a modality of capitalism. Communism produces, likewise, modalities of communist social relations.
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In the future, I would like to think further about this in regard to the use of ’situation’ in the work of Colectivo Situaciones and Miguel Benasayag/Diego Sztulwkark, who deploy the term to develop concepts and practices of ’situational militancy’, which in their work is synoymous with ‘militant research’ or ‘research militancy’. The idea, then, would be ‘communist situations’, or ’situational communism’ (replacing ‘modality’ with ’situation’, but also thinking about politics in keep with this). On all of this last, more later.
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For now an earlier attempt to get clear on this, which I plan to read over and revise later, and perhaps to break up into shorter posts…
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Marx and Marxism deploy at least two definitions of communism. Communism is the “real movement that abolishes the present order” and it is production by freely associated labor. Within official Marxism – Marxism made into an ideological weapon and theory of planning for state capitalism – these two definitions are separate, and taken to refer to two different times.
Production by freely associated labor is placed in the future, over the horizon and out of reach like the Christians’ Second Coming. Freely associated labor will only arrive later, after the transition to communism is complete. Of course, what official Marxism calls transition is actually the consolidation of state capitalist power, a consolidation made more complete by saying that the time is not yet ripe for freely associated production.
The “real movement” is placed in the time of the present, and names whatever official Marxism is doing at the time: seizing the state militarily, conducting the long march through the institutions, etc. These activities don’t destroy the present order – defined as the society of imposed work – but rather aim at upholding the present order (only the factory bosses will wear red armbands).
Official Marxism is oftentimes part of a machine that destroys communism, precisely through the splitting up of these two definitions into two times, producing separation.
Recently I have come to think about communism as both of these definitions at once. That is, communism is the real movement that abolishes the present order through its being freely associated production.
Production of what, though? Well, of means to meet needs, among other things. Marx writes that capital can commodify the means to meet any needs, whether of the belly of the imagination. What is commodification, though? Commodification is the insertion of a barrier, putting up a fence, enclosing the means of meeting needs. One gets access to enclosed goods only by paying, and one can afford to pay only if one has wages. That is, only by selling our labor power are we allowed access to commodities, to commodified means for meeting our needs and desires. Communism is the demand to end this enclosure. More, communism is the end of this enclosure, the production of new means to fulfill our desires without submitting to capitalist command. Communism is thus partly the refusal to work, the refusal of life lived as labor power.
Along with use values – means to meet needs – capitalism produces itself as a social relation. That is, use values are produced in the form of commodities, in a form bound up with the imposition of work.
Communism, in addition to producing use values (free music, for instance) also produces a social relation: the social relations of communism, which are anathema for capitalism.
There are several aspects to communist production/production of communism. Here are a few:
-the production of new needs (needs which are not currently being met) and the means to meet these needs. When this happens, capital will try to impose work again, via enclosure: a commodity which meets the new needs is introduced, combined with attacks on the noncommodity ways to meet the needs.
-the production of means to meet old needs, without working (going around the enclosure). This frequently takes the form of crime: shoplifting, climbing over fences at festivals, pirating software and music, counterfeiting,
-the production of collective refusals of the imposition of work (this has several aspects, a few of which are: — so-called ‘spontaneous’ refusals, like wildcat strikes, occupations, riots, etc; ‘organized’ refusals like strikes, pickets, roadblocks, and organizations – primarily informal but perhaps formal in some cases – that seek to defend and circulate these refusals: flying pickets, affinity groups, indymedia, unions, or just groups of coworkers or neighbors who stick together, speak out on each others’ behalf, etc.)
As someone who calls myself ‘communist’ on occasion, it seems there are several corollaries to all this. First off, like everyone, communists live under capitalism. As such, it is worth being involved in moments/processes of communism, called elsewhere the political recomposition of the working class, or perhaps the expansion of our desiring-production. This involvement is not from a position outside – who is “outside” capitalism? The old stereotype of ‘parachuting into the working class’, lifting ‘the masses’ from their limited trade-union consciousness does not apply. This old view implies a radical position from outside (and above) the proletariat, a position which is definitely a fiction today, and probably always was. The only position outside the proletariat is the capitalist position (and perhaps it is no accident that the official Marxisms that have taken the ‘outside the class’ view have ended up fighting for state capitalism). We act where we are, in the limited ways we are able to. In part, this embodies one sense of what Foucault called the specific intellectual: instead of seeking to represent anyone, we use what we have, where we are.
This means that those of us employed in intellectual labor – the production, manipulation, and circulation of ideas, data, knowledge, and the training of other labor power – it means the same as what struggle means for anyone who works: trying to live life despite capitalism, trying to steal back the time that we can both individually and collectively. In these endeavors we have to be careful, strategic, in order to win what we want to avoid reprisals bigger than we can handle. Also, communist intellectuals can deploy their knowledge, resources, and abilities in another way as specific intellectuals: doctors serving as medics or medic-trainers at big demonstrations, lawyers helping the arrested navigate the legal maze, graphic designers laying out radical leaflets and magazines and websites, computer workers using the internet to find information to puncture the boss’s lies or to find out where the bullying supervisor lives, writers making myths to inspire subversion, students using their university’s computers to pirate software and music, etc. These are acts of freely associated production, production of knowledges, abilities, possibilities, relationships, desires and means to meet desires, forms of organization for the practice (and production) of alternative ways of life now, and for defending and circulating these practices (and as the Zapatista experience shows, sometimes circulation and defense are the same thing).
Much of what these notes do is simply to map categories onto what is already happening, and calling it communism. This touches on something else that has been on my mind: militant inquiry. This practice produces knowledge and subjectivity, in part by tracing the knowledges and subjectivities that already exist. The idea is not to lead, but to provoke conversation, to think and struggle together to produce new and better ways to live, a process which is itself one of communism: freely associated production that is a joy in itself (who doesn’t like getting free music or books?), and that tries to produce more freely associated production and defend the moments that do exist (for instance, community defense of the Zanon factory in Argentina).
In thinking through this, I’ve developed many questions and areas I want to think more about. It seems to me that it is our capacity for communism that makes us capable of capitalism. That is, the ability to work, to be labor power, is smaller than the whole set of our potential, and being labor power is a reduction of or limit on this larger set of potential. Also, it seems to me that the relationship between labor (the activity done after we have sold our labor power) and subjectivity/sociality should be thought of this way: labor is what we fight against. That is, work negatively conditions our subjectivity and social organization, in that work is what we oppose, but the labor process does not positively give the substance to our subjectivity. That is, the Leninist view of ‘trade union consciousness’ and the objective limits of/on workers is simply false.
I would like to pursue the category desiring-production, as a way to try and think this through. It seems to me that desiring-production is larger and logically prior to value production (and historically prior, if we follow Tronti it is workers’ struggle that produces the new forms of capitalism, the proletariat is the only creative force). Not vice versa. That is, work is an imposition on and reduction of our desires. Work does not generate our desires (beyond our desires not to work!), value production does not generate desiring production. Desiring production generates value production, and can explode it as well.