So, I don't understand. The Communist Manifesto, which i am reading right now, is actually critiquing 'crony capitalism'. To quote,
"Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the mediaeval commune; here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany), there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as in France), afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, corner-stone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world-market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."
That is, the state as it exists, serves the purposes of the industrial classes. No one can contend that.
"The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless and indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation."
So, here is the critique of capitalist (is it alright to conflate liberalism and capitalism?) emphasis on 'profit', which becomes "brutal exploitation". Debraj's point here though is that in the the promotion of self-interest, everyone will work for their own good, for acquiring more profit. Though, we know though enough of what we've read that that is not possible simply because people are not positioned equally to power, and therefore do not have access to 'lobbying' in full measure to make the state work in their interest. That is basically also the feminist problem, especailly in countries where women are not an important 'constituency'. So, the question that arises is, how do women, and subordinated people in general, become an important constituency. By entering the workforce? Bullshit. What will be then of those staying at home - men or women? So, the public/private divide that we talk of exists in Communism as well capitalism.
"The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere."
Considering this in the light of colonialism and the 'third-word' today, it is absolutely true. Much of Western hegemony is established through technology. But, we come back to the question that even if expanding trade is fair, how do women and workers get to have a say in this economic system. So, no industries have been able to set up in West Bengal because of the 'communist' demand of high wages and accommodating all 'party-workers'. this brings us to a number of questions:
1. How does one get beyond the fact that there will be cheap labour available elsewhere, that is, there will be a hierarchy in 'demand' for indutrialisation and wages?
2. If workers cannot demand high wages, how does one come to the point of valuing physical labour more?
3. If in West Bengal, this kind of communism becomes about accommodating all party-workers, how is this model different from 'crony capitalism'?
"The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature."
The capitalist culture has instituted its hegemony over all other cultures. Though I disagree with the "seclusion and self-sufficiency" bit... India and Europe have been trading with each other for more than 2000 years. But this 'globalisation', which really means the economic hegemony of the West, and intellectual hegemony are I think a result of colonial capitalism.
"The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West."
True. True. True. The Communist Manifesto offers a brilliant critique of Western (Western European and American) Capitalist hegemony. DOn't think you need to read anything other than this to know it all.
"The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff. The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?.... Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway of the bourgeois class."
The nation-state as an institution is a product of capitalism. Even nature is colonised in capitalism. "Free competition". An idiotic idea of capitalism. So, capitalism also changes because of the critiques leveled by communism. It begins to take differences of positions into account and comes up with 'affirmative action'.
"The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex. No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.
The lower strata of the middle class—the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by the new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population."
Capitalism swamps small-scale and local industries and at the same time opens up the factory for more varied background of workers - caste, race, etc can theoretically be overridden as everyone takes on the identity of workers. Pretty much like communism where individual psychology and individuality do not, would not, matter since everyone is supposed to put on the cloak, nay, the uniform of 'worker' and engage in the task of 'nation-building' as in USSR.
"The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages."
True. Workers rebel against machines when the system is the problem. Now this whole point about 'the system' being the problem or as we put it 'structural change' are extremely problematic phrases. Are we saying that since capitalism is based on brutal exploitation and appropriation of the surplus, it can never approximate an equal/egalitarian society? What about the Scandinavian states, capitalist, welfarist, 'social democracies', where the cost of physical labour is extremely high, the standard of living is extremely high, the economy is extremely high? How is it that they have made it? So then, does it become a question of the colonial past, the draining of resources and capital, or of capitalism per se? What i mean is, does it become a question of capitalism not working in India with its colonial past and 'developing' nature? Then, what i am effectively saying is, that the realtion of the Scandinavian countries and India theoretically becomes one of the oppressor and the oppressed, and therefore can do them good but not us?
Well, communism is good i believe, but it either can't work in India. Because for communism to work, it is an evolutionary requirement that the country already be a capitalist one. Now, truly, we are not. However, communism, as I have always believed, is a great methodological theory; it points out a number of dichotomies that capitalism is based on (the private/public one is not one of them): industrialist/worker, West/East, urban/rural. But really, to think that being a worker can erase all other differences and make the ground fertile for 'the workers of the world unite' is naive, to say the least. This idea in fact preserves the public/private divide as in capitalism... that all we relegete to the 'private' - religion, caste, race, gender - will be erased in the 'public' domain of the 'worker'. In that, I could say that communism actually relies on capitalism's public/private divide and builds on it.
"The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level."
And really, our wages haven't been growing lower but higher. Even that thing, what do you call it, the capacity to spend per day with inflation, etc taken into account, really is growing. And really, this might be true only for the middle classes. So, there can be a number of critiques about liberalism: it has been favourable to only the middle classes with a particular kind of education and jobs. But the fact is, communism itself leaves out the 'poorest of the poor', informal workers, labourers, etc out of its own formulation. It envisions a capitalistic world where there would be only capitalists and workers, without other gradations, which is quite naive, again. What communists in practice have done is to support the state so that 'capitalists' don't have the world to exploit, in turn, giving the power to the state to exploit and become a model for 'crony communism'. Talk about the state's rules and bans and caps, talk about dissuading industry and work with only the state having the right to set up 'industry' (the PSUs), etc.
I think from my point of view, both communism and liberalism haved failed me. I see too many similarities in them. They both are grand-narratives. I do agree, i always have, that Marxism, communism, whatever you wish to call it, has great methodological importance but in terms of policy and actual implementation, i really doubt it. We can critiques state policies from a commuist point of view and that will only be fair, but when I think of the formulation of new policies, while we do need a communist methodological lens, I do not really promote a strong state (like most feminists would not). So, communism, socialism, marxism gives me a great set of tools to critique the present system with but none to create alternatives with. the vision they have is great, I would want an egalitarian society. But the communist method would require India to become fully capitalistic, to have a one class of workers, which is impossible. I don't know what alternative methods, policies can be. Participatory democracy is one I'm flirting with these days which builds on ideas of local governance, etc. I will maintain my position then that communist/socialist critique is great methodologically. But a vision for India will have to take into account its realities, its differences, its postcoloniality. And i can never be one of those Marxists (feminists), who say that erase class differences, address class issues and 'gender' will resolve on its own. Neither do I support the liberalists who say promote industry and free trade fully to incorporate women into the workforce and 'gender' will get resolved. Essetially, when it comes to gender, both communism and liberalism maintain the same public/private divide. Engels' critique of the bourgeois heterosexual family is great but too simplistically understood in class difference terms. Beauvoir crtiques this wonderfully. I am more attuned to thinking in terms of connecting dichotomies of private-public, East-West, urban-rural, man-woman than focusing on the '/' between them or focusing on only one. And I am wary of theories that are exclusionary... gender will be addressed later, this and that will be addressed later. Also, going back to the state, I do think we need the state, but not a strong resources-owning one like today's. Look at the godamned Lutyens' Delhi... it is architecturally...the whole of the city... is based on monarchical colonial set up...the seat of power at the centre, the bureaucrats surrounding it, the lavish houses, the slums at the periphery. Our present state is still colonial. The seat of 'authority'. Maybe Shirin Rai's position of 'in and against' the state is useful here. But to think of USSR, where violence, wastage of resources, etc happened to break down palaces, etc... sorry. I don't support violence even for a 'revolution'.
And people really should learn from feminism. It doesn't kill men for women to become the suthory like the bloody revolution in France. It's crazy. Also, I take the point about Molyneux's article. Yes, the rights discourse has been appropriated but the rights discourse it seems to me is the only one that can save us. Governments are selective about the right they choose to support...they have to be critiqued. Communism does not help here. Maybe liberalism somewhat does, with its tradition of social democracy, where the state has to become responsible for social services. Where the state has to extend these services to the people. And I really do not see any problem in the state harnessing the resources of private companies for their dissemination, if the state can take the responsibility of monitoring them. The state surely cannot disseminate them itself... we've seen the PDS system, the govt schools system, the health system collapse. Maybe then what we need to do is make sure the state 1. ceases to be owned by the industrial classes, by making more claims on it, 2. is accountable to its people, 3. monitors the private enterprises it promotes in terms of their engagement with their workers, maybe in terms of minimum wages, that are not 'subsistence' driven, working conditions, kind of employment offered, 4. ceases to pander to the ruling ideology, capitalist or patriarchal, 5. makes decisions in consultation with its people, either through civil societies or surveys, 6. accepts and carries out its role as an actor in activism against violence of any kind (surely by not banning the burqa as in France). And this list is surely not exhaustive.
So, in practice, i agree with neither the liberal nor the communist state.
"Nevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c., &c.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
Really? You have to be kidding me!
