About Us
We are workers. From the moment we opened our eyes, we have witnessed the savage exploitation of our fathers and mothers, our neighbors, the residents of our working-class districts, and workers everywhere by capitalists and by capital itself. With our flesh, our skin, our veins, and our blood, we have experienced that all capital and all wealth are produced by our class, while poverty, misery, and degradation are increasingly piled upon us.
The more we have produced, the more deeply we have been separated from the means of production, from the process of labor, and from the products of our own work. The more we have expanded the power of capital, the more exhausted, diminished, and dehumanized we ourselves have become.
With open eyes and with our whole being, we have seen that the state, the army, the law, rights, morality, culture, the police, religion, the mosque, the pulpit, and everything in existing society belong to the capitalist class. They defend capitalism, stand against us, and serve the continuation of our ruthless exploitation by capital. Our consciousness, understanding, thought, reason, emotions, and perception are inseparable from these realities.
By virtue of being workers, we are spontaneously anti-capitalist and opposed to wage slavery. No special philosophy, science, expertise, or intellectual authority is required to teach us hostility toward capital. The roots of our spontaneous anti-capitalism lie here, in the depth of these lived realities.
We are not a group, a party, an organization, a committee, or any faction. We consider such formations—constructed over the heads of workers—to be instruments that divert our class movement into bargaining with capitalists and the pursuit of state power. This kind of organization-building, even when accompanied by anti-capitalist rhetoric and left-wing posturing, is a method alien to the working class.
The natural form of organization for our class is the council. Within the course of council-based struggle, we must come together to discuss, to share our experiences and awareness with one another, and to strengthen and advance the spontaneous anti-capitalist orientation of our class.
We do not publish this periodical in order to lead workers’ struggles. Not only do we make no such claim, but we regard any form of leadership authority, any relation of followers and leaders, and any degree of subordination of the workers’ movement or the working masses to the will of leaders as a disaster for this movement and a deviation from the real path of anti-capitalist struggle.
We want this periodical to be a tribune for anti-capitalist influence within our everyday struggle as workers. The purpose of publishing Against Capital is to expand the active role of as many workers as possible in determining the direction, methods, and course of the class struggle—both in resisting the constant assaults of the capitalists and in achieving the ultimate liberation from the very existence of capitalism.
We are workers. From the moment we opened our eyes, we have witnessed the savage exploitation of our fathers and mothers, our neighbors, the residents of our working-class districts, and workers everywhere by capitalists and by capital itself. With our flesh, our skin, our veins, and our blood, we have experienced that all capital and all wealth are produced by our class, while poverty, misery, and degradation are increasingly piled upon us.
The more we have produced, the more deeply we have been separated from the means of production, from the process of labor, and from the products of our own work. The more we have expanded the power of capital, the more exhausted, diminished, and dehumanized we ourselves have become.
With open eyes and with our whole being, we have seen that the state, the army, the law, rights, morality, culture, the police, religion, the mosque, the pulpit, and everything in existing society belong to the capitalist class. They defend capitalism, stand against us, and serve the continuation of our ruthless exploitation by capital. Our consciousness, understanding, thought, reason, emotions, and perception are inseparable from these realities.
By virtue of being workers, we are spontaneously anti-capitalist and opposed to wage slavery. No special philosophy, science, expertise, or intellectual authority is required to teach us hostility toward capital. The roots of our spontaneous anti-capitalism lie here, in the depth of these lived realities.
We are not a group, a party, an organization, a committee, or any faction. We consider such formations—constructed over the heads of workers—to be instruments that divert our class movement into bargaining with capitalists and the pursuit of state power. This kind of organization-building, even when accompanied by anti-capitalist rhetoric and left-wing posturing, is a method alien to the working class.
The natural form of organization for our class is the council. Within the course of council-based struggle, we must come together to discuss, to share our experiences and awareness with one another, and to strengthen and advance the spontaneous anti-capitalist orientation of our class.
We do not publish this periodical in order to lead workers’ struggles. Not only do we make no such claim, but we regard any form of leadership authority, any relation of followers and leaders, and any degree of subordination of the workers’ movement or the working masses to the will of leaders as a disaster for this movement and a deviation from the real path of anti-capitalist struggle.
We want this periodical to be a tribune for anti-capitalist influence within our everyday struggle as workers. The purpose of publishing Against Capital is to expand the active role of as many workers as possible in determining the direction, methods, and course of the class struggle—both in resisting the constant assaults of the capitalists and in achieving the ultimate liberation from the very existence of capitalism.
❤5
Many workers ask: what is a council? What characteristics does the council movement have? Where does it differ from trade unions and political parties?
The worker is a human being stripped of intervention in their own work, production, and life. Capitalism turns them into an obedient, will-less bolt and nut in the production of profit. Workers work together, are exploited together, and are jointly cast out of real existence by capital. To change their present conditions in any measure, they are compelled to protest collectively, in unity and solidarity. Council-based bonds and council-based comradeship arise precisely from these shared conditions. Council organization is the most natural and accessible form of protest for the working masses.
Workers do not derive or adopt council organization from any ideological source, political theory, or doctrinal belief. Council struggles are, quite simply, present throughout every corner of the hell of Iranian capitalism. What is decisive in the council movement, however, is the nature of workers’ struggle—the anti-capitalist character of their struggles. Anti-capitalist struggle means that we do not regard being a worker and selling labor power as our life destiny; we do not tie our present and future to wage labor; we demand the complete domination of all human beings over their own work, production, and lives.
We demand the active and equal participation of all people in determining what should be produced, what should not be produced, how much should be produced, and what work is necessary or unnecessary. The foundation of councils and the council movement rests on the working masses’ refusal to cling to the laws, order, and institutions of capitalist power; on reliance upon the direct, interventionist, and effective presence of all workers; and on a decisive break from all forms of leader-making and any force standing above them.
This form of organization requires no permits, regulations, statutes, programs, leaders, or figureheads. Union-building and party-playing—under any name and with any banner—are not vessels for this task; they have no affinity, relevance, or place in this process. Unions and syndicates are merely shops for buying and selling the class struggle of the working masses, and political parties, even in their best conditions, are tools for replacing one form of the system of wage slavery with another.
The worker is a human being stripped of intervention in their own work, production, and life. Capitalism turns them into an obedient, will-less bolt and nut in the production of profit. Workers work together, are exploited together, and are jointly cast out of real existence by capital. To change their present conditions in any measure, they are compelled to protest collectively, in unity and solidarity. Council-based bonds and council-based comradeship arise precisely from these shared conditions. Council organization is the most natural and accessible form of protest for the working masses.
Workers do not derive or adopt council organization from any ideological source, political theory, or doctrinal belief. Council struggles are, quite simply, present throughout every corner of the hell of Iranian capitalism. What is decisive in the council movement, however, is the nature of workers’ struggle—the anti-capitalist character of their struggles. Anti-capitalist struggle means that we do not regard being a worker and selling labor power as our life destiny; we do not tie our present and future to wage labor; we demand the complete domination of all human beings over their own work, production, and lives.
We demand the active and equal participation of all people in determining what should be produced, what should not be produced, how much should be produced, and what work is necessary or unnecessary. The foundation of councils and the council movement rests on the working masses’ refusal to cling to the laws, order, and institutions of capitalist power; on reliance upon the direct, interventionist, and effective presence of all workers; and on a decisive break from all forms of leader-making and any force standing above them.
This form of organization requires no permits, regulations, statutes, programs, leaders, or figureheads. Union-building and party-playing—under any name and with any banner—are not vessels for this task; they have no affinity, relevance, or place in this process. Unions and syndicates are merely shops for buying and selling the class struggle of the working masses, and political parties, even in their best conditions, are tools for replacing one form of the system of wage slavery with another.
❤1
The Proletariat and the Process of the Anti-Capitalist Revolution
(Part 1)
No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room within it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. Thus humanity invariably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation… (Marx)
It is highly unlikely that among those familiar with Marx’s writings—whether supporters or opponents—one could find an individual who has not repeatedly read or heard the passage above, defended or criticized it, and perhaps even cited it in their own work. Finding such individuals is difficult; yet finding people who have sufficiently investigated the real substance of this statement, in the sense intended by Marx and in a manner worthy of his materialist conception of history and of class struggle, is no less difficult. Let us begin examining the issue by posing several questions.
1. In the contemporary era, which factors and forces constitute the productive forces to which Marx refers, whose development is the necessary condition for the dissolution of capitalism and the establishment of socialism?
2. By what real criterion or criteria do we judge the sufficiency of this development?
3. How does the growth of these forces and the degree of their necessary maturity occur under the domination of capitalist relations, and in what form does this development take place?
4. How, and through which mechanisms, do these forces, under the prevailing conditions of wage slavery, acquire the capacity required to replace those relations?
5. In the present global situation, where does the development of the productive forces—and the adequacy of that development for the dissolution of capitalist relations and the establishment of socialism—fall short?
6. Even if we disregard more distant historical periods and focus solely on the powerful upsurges of the European working class from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, we have still witnessed more than a century and a half of struggle by the working masses of the world against capitalism. The global working class possesses this immense and prolonged record of struggle, while capitalism today has passed beyond its highest frontiers of development. The economic crises of this system are more violent than ever, and the dynamics of their turbulence have become continuous. Yet despite all this, not only is there no sign of the collapse of capitalism or the dawning of socialism, but the international working class, in terms of radical class alignment against the system of wage slavery, is more fragmented, more helpless, and more disoriented than ever. How do we understand the relation of this situation to all the components mentioned above, in light of the Marx quotation cited, and how do we explain it?
The list of questions above could be extended further. Numerous historical events that occurred throughout the twentieth century and before and after it could be cited; for example, the October Revolution and many other developments of the past hundred years can and must be re-examined with reference to that important statement by Marx, and many questions can be raised regarding each of them. Taken together, these questions are not only of the greatest importance; in my view, the real key to unlocking the iron impasse confronting the world working class lies precisely here, in the depths of the answers to these questions.
The social productive forces have a clear definition: they consist of a combination of the human factor that sets the labour and production process in motion, together with the tools and means employed in that process.
(Part 1)
No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room within it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. Thus humanity invariably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation… (Marx)
It is highly unlikely that among those familiar with Marx’s writings—whether supporters or opponents—one could find an individual who has not repeatedly read or heard the passage above, defended or criticized it, and perhaps even cited it in their own work. Finding such individuals is difficult; yet finding people who have sufficiently investigated the real substance of this statement, in the sense intended by Marx and in a manner worthy of his materialist conception of history and of class struggle, is no less difficult. Let us begin examining the issue by posing several questions.
1. In the contemporary era, which factors and forces constitute the productive forces to which Marx refers, whose development is the necessary condition for the dissolution of capitalism and the establishment of socialism?
2. By what real criterion or criteria do we judge the sufficiency of this development?
3. How does the growth of these forces and the degree of their necessary maturity occur under the domination of capitalist relations, and in what form does this development take place?
4. How, and through which mechanisms, do these forces, under the prevailing conditions of wage slavery, acquire the capacity required to replace those relations?
5. In the present global situation, where does the development of the productive forces—and the adequacy of that development for the dissolution of capitalist relations and the establishment of socialism—fall short?
6. Even if we disregard more distant historical periods and focus solely on the powerful upsurges of the European working class from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, we have still witnessed more than a century and a half of struggle by the working masses of the world against capitalism. The global working class possesses this immense and prolonged record of struggle, while capitalism today has passed beyond its highest frontiers of development. The economic crises of this system are more violent than ever, and the dynamics of their turbulence have become continuous. Yet despite all this, not only is there no sign of the collapse of capitalism or the dawning of socialism, but the international working class, in terms of radical class alignment against the system of wage slavery, is more fragmented, more helpless, and more disoriented than ever. How do we understand the relation of this situation to all the components mentioned above, in light of the Marx quotation cited, and how do we explain it?
The list of questions above could be extended further. Numerous historical events that occurred throughout the twentieth century and before and after it could be cited; for example, the October Revolution and many other developments of the past hundred years can and must be re-examined with reference to that important statement by Marx, and many questions can be raised regarding each of them. Taken together, these questions are not only of the greatest importance; in my view, the real key to unlocking the iron impasse confronting the world working class lies precisely here, in the depths of the answers to these questions.
The social productive forces have a clear definition: they consist of a combination of the human factor that sets the labour and production process in motion, together with the tools and means employed in that process.
The relations between these two components differ across different modes of production, and even across distinct forms and phases of a given mode of production. The slave and the serf possess the non-organic conditions of the labour process; they have no proprietary relation to the objective conditions of their own labour. For the slave owner or the landlord, they occupy the same position as herds of livestock or as appurtenances of cultivated land. This, however, is not the case with peasants and artisans. They establish a certain relationship to their land and their tools—that is, to the non-organic conditions of production—a relationship that determines the juridical form of their property. When we turn to wage workers, the matter once again assumes a fundamentally different character. The worker is not the property of the capitalist. He is not even a condition of production; he is merely the bearer of labour power, and the owner of capital may—and to a certain extent does—replace him with machinery. The worker has no proprietary or intervening relation to the conditions of his labour and production.
Indeed, the very emergence of the wage worker presupposes the dissolution of all relations that entailed any form of ownership or appropriation between the living, active human being engaged in production and the non-organic conditions of labour. There is no need to elaborate further here. The purpose is simply to emphasize this point: that when we speak of the development of the productive forces, of the adequacy of this development for the occurrence of a social revolution, and of the conditions for the victory of such a revolution, we are, first, confronted with a complex combination of all these forces; second, the role of the human factor that reproduces the totality of labour conditions has a special and vital significance; and third, the process of the unfolding, transformation, and maturation of all these elements—particularly of the latter human factor—exhibits, in different historical periods and in relation to different modes of social production, complexities and subtleties such that any neglect of them leads to the gravest forms of misdirection.
Twentieth-century communists of various ideological currents—from Leninists and Maoists to European Marxists, Trotskyist circles, and other tendencies within this spectrum—have gravely distorted the core of the Marxian account of the material development of history, particularly where it concerns the process of the development of the social productive forces within capitalist society and the conditions for the proletariat’s transcendence of these relations. This is a distortion whose proper removal is, first, a vital necessity for the anti-capitalist movement and the working-class revolution aimed at the abolition of wage labour; and, second, whose correct removal requires the most careful and thorough dissection.
The customary approach of the forces and circles mentioned above, when examining the development of the productive forces within contemporary society, is to turn directly to the level of industrial development; the expansion of information technologies; the manner in which the achievements of the informatics revolutions are utilized; the degree of growth in the productivity of social labour; gross domestic product figures; per capita shares of the annual social product; the number of universities and institutions of higher education; the abundance of graduates; the number of hospitals and the ratio of medical staff or facilities to the total population; the scope of organized research activity and the extent of its diffusion across different economic and social fields; the level of development of political, civil, cultural, and legal superstructures; and similar factors on the one hand, and, on the other, the existence, growth, degree of organization, range of influence, and mobilizing power of organizations known as “communist” or “workers’ parties.” These are phenomena, institutions, and transformations that, in some cases, are undoubtedly decisive and
Indeed, the very emergence of the wage worker presupposes the dissolution of all relations that entailed any form of ownership or appropriation between the living, active human being engaged in production and the non-organic conditions of labour. There is no need to elaborate further here. The purpose is simply to emphasize this point: that when we speak of the development of the productive forces, of the adequacy of this development for the occurrence of a social revolution, and of the conditions for the victory of such a revolution, we are, first, confronted with a complex combination of all these forces; second, the role of the human factor that reproduces the totality of labour conditions has a special and vital significance; and third, the process of the unfolding, transformation, and maturation of all these elements—particularly of the latter human factor—exhibits, in different historical periods and in relation to different modes of social production, complexities and subtleties such that any neglect of them leads to the gravest forms of misdirection.
Twentieth-century communists of various ideological currents—from Leninists and Maoists to European Marxists, Trotskyist circles, and other tendencies within this spectrum—have gravely distorted the core of the Marxian account of the material development of history, particularly where it concerns the process of the development of the social productive forces within capitalist society and the conditions for the proletariat’s transcendence of these relations. This is a distortion whose proper removal is, first, a vital necessity for the anti-capitalist movement and the working-class revolution aimed at the abolition of wage labour; and, second, whose correct removal requires the most careful and thorough dissection.
The customary approach of the forces and circles mentioned above, when examining the development of the productive forces within contemporary society, is to turn directly to the level of industrial development; the expansion of information technologies; the manner in which the achievements of the informatics revolutions are utilized; the degree of growth in the productivity of social labour; gross domestic product figures; per capita shares of the annual social product; the number of universities and institutions of higher education; the abundance of graduates; the number of hospitals and the ratio of medical staff or facilities to the total population; the scope of organized research activity and the extent of its diffusion across different economic and social fields; the level of development of political, civil, cultural, and legal superstructures; and similar factors on the one hand, and, on the other, the existence, growth, degree of organization, range of influence, and mobilizing power of organizations known as “communist” or “workers’ parties.” These are phenomena, institutions, and transformations that, in some cases, are undoubtedly decisive and
of undeniable importance in describing the social productive forces of any country or region of the world. The essential point, however, is that, first, none of these factors—nor all of them taken together—despite their particular or even extraordinary importance in creating the necessary conditions for the dissolution of wage-labour relations and for the revolutionary class to move beyond this system, provide, even in their most explosive development, any indication of even the likelihood of the initial emergence of a real dynamic of collapse of the dominant relations and the dawn of the formation of a replacement system. Second, some of these factors—for example, conventional forms of party building—not only do not assist in the process of forming the conditions under discussion but serve merely to exhaust and squander them. The components listed above tell us nothing about whether contemporary society is pregnant with a social revolution or not, and recourse to them clarifies nothing for us in this specific domain.
Capitalism has long since advanced to the furthest possible limits of its own development. Although in this system the aim of humanity is merely production, and the aim of production merely profit, the annual product of global labour and production at the present time is sufficient to provide all the inhabitants of the planet with an affluent and modern life, equipped with comprehensive material, welfare, and social provisions in all spheres of human existence. Let us pause for a moment to consider that since the emergence of the internet in its contemporary form, not even twenty years have passed; yet according to statistics, the number of internet users worldwide has long exceeded five billion. Less than forty years ago, when the American Martin Cooper invented the first mobile phone, with an approximate weight of two kilograms, acquiring such a device was regarded as a dream for the majority of the world’s population. For several years thereafter, this phone was sold at a price of around 30,000 Swedish kronor. Cooper’s two-kilogram invention could, at best, perform only the function of a very simple telephone conversation. There is no need to explain the astonishing and far-reaching transformations that mobile-phone technology has undergone during this period, or how far it has progressed. The crucial point is that the number of mobile devices in the world has surpassed 5.3 billion, and the number of people using this technical means worldwide has risen to more than five billion individuals, or 71 percent of the Earth’s total population.👇👇
Capitalism has long since advanced to the furthest possible limits of its own development. Although in this system the aim of humanity is merely production, and the aim of production merely profit, the annual product of global labour and production at the present time is sufficient to provide all the inhabitants of the planet with an affluent and modern life, equipped with comprehensive material, welfare, and social provisions in all spheres of human existence. Let us pause for a moment to consider that since the emergence of the internet in its contemporary form, not even twenty years have passed; yet according to statistics, the number of internet users worldwide has long exceeded five billion. Less than forty years ago, when the American Martin Cooper invented the first mobile phone, with an approximate weight of two kilograms, acquiring such a device was regarded as a dream for the majority of the world’s population. For several years thereafter, this phone was sold at a price of around 30,000 Swedish kronor. Cooper’s two-kilogram invention could, at best, perform only the function of a very simple telephone conversation. There is no need to explain the astonishing and far-reaching transformations that mobile-phone technology has undergone during this period, or how far it has progressed. The crucial point is that the number of mobile devices in the world has surpassed 5.3 billion, and the number of people using this technical means worldwide has risen to more than five billion individuals, or 71 percent of the Earth’s total population.👇👇
Only 80 million automobiles are produced worldwide each year, and if this figure is multiplied by the average lifespan of this means of transportation, we arrive at a very striking number for per-capita automobile ownership, including private cars. In the United States this figure reaches more than 830 vehicles per thousand people, in Iran about 200 per thousand, and in Monaco roughly 840 per thousand inhabitants.
The figures cited above concern industrial products and advanced technological facilities whose very conception, until just a few decades ago, would scarcely have crossed the minds of the overwhelming majority of human beings; even the oldest of these inventions dates back no more than around a hundred years. Once again, we emphasize that the very foundation of capital’s existence and the entire orientation of this mode of production consist in sacrificing humanity on the altar of profit. Yet even so, what is produced each year merely as the basic necessities of human life suffices to sweep away all hunger, lack of hygiene, absence of medicine, homelessness, displacement, educational deficiencies, and other widespread deprivations afflicting humanity today. According to FAO reports, the production of wheat and other grains has surpassed 2.5 billion tons annually—this under conditions in which governments, especially those of the European Union, North America, and some other regions, each year add hundreds of billions of dollars extracted from the exploitation of the working masses directly to the profits of landlord capitalists in these countries, in order to induce them to refrain from producing more foodstuffs and clothing.
The annual social product of the labor of the international working class—what the bourgeoisie calls gross world product—has increased more than six and a half times in just thirty years, between 1979 and 2010, rising from approximately 11 trillion dollars to 71 trillion dollars. Under present global conditions, the per-capita share of this figure amounts to nearly 10,145 dollars per year. Calculated for a family of four, this reaches about 40,500 dollars. To this day, Sweden sits at the summit of the existing world in terms of living standards, the level of social welfare, and the care provided for the elderly, the disabled, and socially vulnerable groups. The average annual cost of subsistence and social provisions for a four-person household in this leading capitalist society does not exceed the figure mentioned above. This means that the social product of the labor of the international working class, in its present, living form, is fully capable of transforming the lives of the entire seven billion inhabitants of the planet and raising them to the living standard of Sweden’s nine million people. These examples are merely a handful from a vast store, presented solely to convey an image of the degree of capitalist development, the growth of social labor productivity, and the magnitude of the annual product of labor and production of the working masses under this system.
The central point of the discussion is that this immense and breathtaking level of productive development, this astonishing and awe-inspiring growth in industrial, technical, and productive capacity and in the productivity of the social product of labor, the moment the question turns to identifying or determining the material conditions corresponding to the decline of capitalism and a socialist transcendence of this system, all become mute components, devoid of any leading role whatsoever. Let us assume that this already astonishing level of economic development were not multiplied by a mere two-digit factor, but—however impossibly—by millions or billions. The outcome would still, without question, be the same. The entire world could be filled to the brim with the products of industry and technology, yet even then no sign of any inevitable, fundamental transformation would appear anywhere on the horizon of capitalist existence.
The figures cited above concern industrial products and advanced technological facilities whose very conception, until just a few decades ago, would scarcely have crossed the minds of the overwhelming majority of human beings; even the oldest of these inventions dates back no more than around a hundred years. Once again, we emphasize that the very foundation of capital’s existence and the entire orientation of this mode of production consist in sacrificing humanity on the altar of profit. Yet even so, what is produced each year merely as the basic necessities of human life suffices to sweep away all hunger, lack of hygiene, absence of medicine, homelessness, displacement, educational deficiencies, and other widespread deprivations afflicting humanity today. According to FAO reports, the production of wheat and other grains has surpassed 2.5 billion tons annually—this under conditions in which governments, especially those of the European Union, North America, and some other regions, each year add hundreds of billions of dollars extracted from the exploitation of the working masses directly to the profits of landlord capitalists in these countries, in order to induce them to refrain from producing more foodstuffs and clothing.
The annual social product of the labor of the international working class—what the bourgeoisie calls gross world product—has increased more than six and a half times in just thirty years, between 1979 and 2010, rising from approximately 11 trillion dollars to 71 trillion dollars. Under present global conditions, the per-capita share of this figure amounts to nearly 10,145 dollars per year. Calculated for a family of four, this reaches about 40,500 dollars. To this day, Sweden sits at the summit of the existing world in terms of living standards, the level of social welfare, and the care provided for the elderly, the disabled, and socially vulnerable groups. The average annual cost of subsistence and social provisions for a four-person household in this leading capitalist society does not exceed the figure mentioned above. This means that the social product of the labor of the international working class, in its present, living form, is fully capable of transforming the lives of the entire seven billion inhabitants of the planet and raising them to the living standard of Sweden’s nine million people. These examples are merely a handful from a vast store, presented solely to convey an image of the degree of capitalist development, the growth of social labor productivity, and the magnitude of the annual product of labor and production of the working masses under this system.
The central point of the discussion is that this immense and breathtaking level of productive development, this astonishing and awe-inspiring growth in industrial, technical, and productive capacity and in the productivity of the social product of labor, the moment the question turns to identifying or determining the material conditions corresponding to the decline of capitalism and a socialist transcendence of this system, all become mute components, devoid of any leading role whatsoever. Let us assume that this already astonishing level of economic development were not multiplied by a mere two-digit factor, but—however impossibly—by millions or billions. The outcome would still, without question, be the same. The entire world could be filled to the brim with the products of industry and technology, yet even then no sign of any inevitable, fundamental transformation would appear anywhere on the horizon of capitalist existence.
It is precisely here, in explaining the real reason for this, that we must turn our attention to the essential and profoundly decisive difference between the concept of the development of the social productive forces in capitalist society on the one hand, and in earlier societies or pre-capitalist relations on the other. This is a crucial issue which, in the present discussion and in relation to the conditions for the occurrence of a socialist revolution, plays a revelatory role.
The growth of new productive forces within the economic formations of the Middle Ages—whether these formations took the form of serfdom in the West or Asian and Eastern feudalism—nevertheless manifested itself as a fully distinct mode of production and within the framework of an economic and social structure clearly defined and differentiated from previous relations. That mode of production and that new society were the relation of buying and selling labor power, and capitalist society. There we witnessed, in a naked and real manner, the gestation, blossoming, and expansion of this new mode of production, this new social order, and the ever-widening contradiction between the dynamic development of this new economic and social form and the old relations.
Parallel to the expansion of the buying and selling of labor power, medieval craft workshops gradually—or at times rapidly—closed the book on their historical existence. The owners of these workplaces lost their ownership of their tools of labor. The masses of serfs, smallholding or landless peasants, and agricultural laborers on feudal estates likewise began and completed their process of separation from the land. Each day larger numbers of those bound to the land or possessing small tools of labor joined the ranks of the dispossessed and made their way to the market for the sale of labor power. The pole of capital grew continuously. Large factories and workshops were established, each exploiting considerable numbers of the dispossessed masses as workers. Large commercial enterprises and banks emerged; the embryos of cartels, trusts, and giant industrial institutions began to form and grow. National markets moved toward integration and rapidly advanced toward the formation of a world market. Land, tools, and means of production, on ever broader, more comprehensive, and more international scales, were transformed into capital. Human inventions and discoveries grew in unprecedented and colossal fashion, and at the same time, in every fiber of their being, became mechanisms for producing ever greater masses of capital and ever more astronomical profits.
The relation between labor and capital became a powerful platform for the formation and growth of a new social structure. In order to increase the productivity of social labor and generate greater profits, capital embarked upon successive industrial and technical revolutions. It turned toward the development of schools, universities, and research centers. Capitalism, in various dimensions of its existence, entered into conflict with serfdom and feudalism. As it grew, the new system required conditions whose realization was inseparable from the decline of pre-capitalist relations.
The class representing this new mode of production, in response to the needs of this form of production, began to assert itself and take the stage in various spheres of social life. It demanded changes in prevailing laws, clashed with the dominant religion of the day and the power of the ecclesiastical lords, raised the banner of nationality and “national interests,” and proclaimed itself the “representative of the interests of the whole society.” At the same time, it repressed the labor movement, using all the levers of power of the existing system to do so. In short, we witnessed the emergence, growth, and full branching-out of a mode of production, a definite economic formation, together with all its political, cultural, civil, legal, social, moral, and ideological superstructures, within the womb of the old relations.
The growth of new productive forces within the economic formations of the Middle Ages—whether these formations took the form of serfdom in the West or Asian and Eastern feudalism—nevertheless manifested itself as a fully distinct mode of production and within the framework of an economic and social structure clearly defined and differentiated from previous relations. That mode of production and that new society were the relation of buying and selling labor power, and capitalist society. There we witnessed, in a naked and real manner, the gestation, blossoming, and expansion of this new mode of production, this new social order, and the ever-widening contradiction between the dynamic development of this new economic and social form and the old relations.
Parallel to the expansion of the buying and selling of labor power, medieval craft workshops gradually—or at times rapidly—closed the book on their historical existence. The owners of these workplaces lost their ownership of their tools of labor. The masses of serfs, smallholding or landless peasants, and agricultural laborers on feudal estates likewise began and completed their process of separation from the land. Each day larger numbers of those bound to the land or possessing small tools of labor joined the ranks of the dispossessed and made their way to the market for the sale of labor power. The pole of capital grew continuously. Large factories and workshops were established, each exploiting considerable numbers of the dispossessed masses as workers. Large commercial enterprises and banks emerged; the embryos of cartels, trusts, and giant industrial institutions began to form and grow. National markets moved toward integration and rapidly advanced toward the formation of a world market. Land, tools, and means of production, on ever broader, more comprehensive, and more international scales, were transformed into capital. Human inventions and discoveries grew in unprecedented and colossal fashion, and at the same time, in every fiber of their being, became mechanisms for producing ever greater masses of capital and ever more astronomical profits.
The relation between labor and capital became a powerful platform for the formation and growth of a new social structure. In order to increase the productivity of social labor and generate greater profits, capital embarked upon successive industrial and technical revolutions. It turned toward the development of schools, universities, and research centers. Capitalism, in various dimensions of its existence, entered into conflict with serfdom and feudalism. As it grew, the new system required conditions whose realization was inseparable from the decline of pre-capitalist relations.
The class representing this new mode of production, in response to the needs of this form of production, began to assert itself and take the stage in various spheres of social life. It demanded changes in prevailing laws, clashed with the dominant religion of the day and the power of the ecclesiastical lords, raised the banner of nationality and “national interests,” and proclaimed itself the “representative of the interests of the whole society.” At the same time, it repressed the labor movement, using all the levers of power of the existing system to do so. In short, we witnessed the emergence, growth, and full branching-out of a mode of production, a definite economic formation, together with all its political, cultural, civil, legal, social, moral, and ideological superstructures, within the womb of the old relations.
The bourgeoisie did not lack solid ground beneath its feet. Even in the days when it occupied a subordinate position, it surged forward astride an immense, growing material force with a future of its own. It rode on the creative power of capital. It derived its ideas from capital, formulated its politics from the relation of surplus-value production, and deduced its ethics, conduct, and behavior from the processes of production and the capitalist market. It viewed the world through the eyes of capital and examined all of existence from a capitalist standpoint. It learned law in the school of capital, made the requirements of capital valorization the mortar of legislation, and turned this law into a banner of struggle against feudal predecessors and future proletarian adversaries alike. The more capital grew, the greater its social power became; the more capitalist accumulation expanded, the more dominant its ideas grew. Even in the days when it still bore the name “middle class” and was absent from the structure of political power, the bourgeoisie was already a decisive and powerful force in all domains, because capital itself played the role of an immense and fate-shaping power throughout society. The capitalist class, in its social existence, is capital personified—capital that thinks, prescribes policy, plans economic and political life and modes of living, proposes models of civilization, turns the requirements of its own profit expansion into the substance of thought, culture, consciousness, order, morality, and social values, and performs all other such functions. This discussion could be extended across the entire history of capitalist development and the growth of the bourgeoisie, but it seems sufficient at this level. The core of the argument is this: the source of the bourgeoisie’s existence, intervention, dominance, and exercise of power, from the very day of its emergence, was capital as a mode of production and as a social relation—a mode of production and social relation that not only existed in a living, concrete form, but whose existence constituted a central axis of the actual social processes of its era.
Socialism is absolutely not such a case. The proletariat is fundamentally devoid of such a position within the wage-slavery system, and it is precisely in the depths of this stark historical difference that the process of the material development of history and the dynamic of the social revolution of our era—both in the great human manifesto it proclaims and in all the mechanisms of its realization—appear as phenomena essentially new and fundamentally different from all previous epochs. Under capitalism, in no sense, at no level, and under no conditions does a socialist economy develop. The unfolding, growth, and maturation of the social productive forces under the domination of wage slavery, regardless of the path they take, are not the growth or structural formation of socialism, but only the further, stronger, and more deeply entrenched growth of capitalism. It will certainly be said that the socialization of labor and production is a necessary and unavoidable condition of socialism, and that this occurs within the existing system. This statement is entirely correct; yet it is precisely this correct point that has become the source of countless misunderstandings. The socialization of production, so long as capitalism remains dominant—even if it advances to its final explosive phase and its highest possible peak—remains nothing more than the golden, mythical, and unbridled expansion of capitalism. At best, it merely indicates that if one day the destruction of this system becomes reality, if all the prerequisites for socialism are fulfilled, and if society witnesses the establishment of socialism, human beings will then enjoy a certain degree of material abundance, freedom from want, and unprecedented physical and spiritual leisure.
Socialism is absolutely not such a case. The proletariat is fundamentally devoid of such a position within the wage-slavery system, and it is precisely in the depths of this stark historical difference that the process of the material development of history and the dynamic of the social revolution of our era—both in the great human manifesto it proclaims and in all the mechanisms of its realization—appear as phenomena essentially new and fundamentally different from all previous epochs. Under capitalism, in no sense, at no level, and under no conditions does a socialist economy develop. The unfolding, growth, and maturation of the social productive forces under the domination of wage slavery, regardless of the path they take, are not the growth or structural formation of socialism, but only the further, stronger, and more deeply entrenched growth of capitalism. It will certainly be said that the socialization of labor and production is a necessary and unavoidable condition of socialism, and that this occurs within the existing system. This statement is entirely correct; yet it is precisely this correct point that has become the source of countless misunderstandings. The socialization of production, so long as capitalism remains dominant—even if it advances to its final explosive phase and its highest possible peak—remains nothing more than the golden, mythical, and unbridled expansion of capitalism. At best, it merely indicates that if one day the destruction of this system becomes reality, if all the prerequisites for socialism are fulfilled, and if society witnesses the establishment of socialism, human beings will then enjoy a certain degree of material abundance, freedom from want, and unprecedented physical and spiritual leisure.
Here, unlike what occurred under serfdom and feudal domination, no new economic or social relations are growing and maturing, and the proletariat, as the revolutionary class and antithesis of capitalism, is not riding the wave of power of any developing mode of production that endows it with authority. On the contrary, it is suppressed from every direction, worn down, and even in its processes of protest, struggle, and confrontation with the dominant relations, it encounters, as far as the eye can see, cemeteries, dead ends, and barren deserts that destroy every measure of its conscious exertion of power.
There, capitalism expanded and each step of its development opened new fields for the ascent of bourgeois power. Here, what expands and expands again is not socialism but capitalism itself; the class that gains power through this expansion remains the bourgeoisie, while the proletariat’s share, by contrast, is only more terrifying exhaustion and deeper ruin. There, capital grew gigantically and unchecked; with each increment of its growth it dismantled the structures of feudal domination, and the bourgeoisie, as personified capital, extended the boundaries of its authority, occupying all spheres of social life—from the economy to politics, culture, literature, law, and civilization—in place of feudal lords and former rulers. Here, there is no sign whatsoever of the growth of a socialist economy, and the proletariat is not mounted upon the chariot of power of any post-capitalist material relations. What is real is precisely the reverse: with each passing minute, the wage-slavery system becomes ever more octopus-like, employing ever more tentacular mechanisms to block every form of social self-assertion by the working class. There, capital grew, invigorated the wage-labor market, and simultaneously dismantled petty production, patriarchal economies, producers’ relations to land or tools of labor, and the communal ownership forms characteristic of Eastern feudalism. Here, the proletariat grows; yet mere numerical growth, increasing size, and even many conventional forms of unity and organization inflict not the slightest scratch upon the capitalist economy.
There, every increment of capital’s growth meant the growth of the political order of capitalism; here, by contrast, every degree of economic expansion becomes a foundation for the ever-greater separation of the proletariat from labor, production, and control over its own social destiny. There, the development of capitalist accumulation became the bourgeoisie’s indictment of the political, legal, and social structures of earlier eras, and its weapon for establishing, formulating, consolidating, and enforcing laws, policies, forms of civilization, and rights suited to its own interests. Here, there is no trace of socialist accumulation, nor of the emergence of socialist political, legal, or civil structures grounded in such a material and economic transformation. There, capital branched out and gave birth to capitalist culture. The ideas, beliefs, and ideology of the capitalist class became the very fabric of the intellectual and mental atmosphere of society as a whole. Bourgeois art and literature flourished; the morals, customs, and traditions of this class spread and solidified, becoming the real substance of the dominant outlook, horizons, and convictions of society. Here, everything is reversed. The dynamic of the dissolution of the relation of buying and selling labor power does not become materialized; this dissolution does not take shape as a tangible, concrete social occurrence.👇👇
There, capitalism expanded and each step of its development opened new fields for the ascent of bourgeois power. Here, what expands and expands again is not socialism but capitalism itself; the class that gains power through this expansion remains the bourgeoisie, while the proletariat’s share, by contrast, is only more terrifying exhaustion and deeper ruin. There, capital grew gigantically and unchecked; with each increment of its growth it dismantled the structures of feudal domination, and the bourgeoisie, as personified capital, extended the boundaries of its authority, occupying all spheres of social life—from the economy to politics, culture, literature, law, and civilization—in place of feudal lords and former rulers. Here, there is no sign whatsoever of the growth of a socialist economy, and the proletariat is not mounted upon the chariot of power of any post-capitalist material relations. What is real is precisely the reverse: with each passing minute, the wage-slavery system becomes ever more octopus-like, employing ever more tentacular mechanisms to block every form of social self-assertion by the working class. There, capital grew, invigorated the wage-labor market, and simultaneously dismantled petty production, patriarchal economies, producers’ relations to land or tools of labor, and the communal ownership forms characteristic of Eastern feudalism. Here, the proletariat grows; yet mere numerical growth, increasing size, and even many conventional forms of unity and organization inflict not the slightest scratch upon the capitalist economy.
There, every increment of capital’s growth meant the growth of the political order of capitalism; here, by contrast, every degree of economic expansion becomes a foundation for the ever-greater separation of the proletariat from labor, production, and control over its own social destiny. There, the development of capitalist accumulation became the bourgeoisie’s indictment of the political, legal, and social structures of earlier eras, and its weapon for establishing, formulating, consolidating, and enforcing laws, policies, forms of civilization, and rights suited to its own interests. Here, there is no trace of socialist accumulation, nor of the emergence of socialist political, legal, or civil structures grounded in such a material and economic transformation. There, capital branched out and gave birth to capitalist culture. The ideas, beliefs, and ideology of the capitalist class became the very fabric of the intellectual and mental atmosphere of society as a whole. Bourgeois art and literature flourished; the morals, customs, and traditions of this class spread and solidified, becoming the real substance of the dominant outlook, horizons, and convictions of society. Here, everything is reversed. The dynamic of the dissolution of the relation of buying and selling labor power does not become materialized; this dissolution does not take shape as a tangible, concrete social occurrence.👇👇
This event does not occur, and it is not in this way that the process of the growth of socialist ideals, ideas, politics, ethics, civility, and culture proceeds toward development, maturity, authority, and consolidation. There, capital grew and, in the cycle of its growth, instilled an inverted vision of everything into the minds and consciousness of the working masses, turning the whole of these inversions into instruments of power and weapons of its rule. Here, no such new relation is born—one that would shoulder the task of developing anti-capitalist consciousness, understanding, deliberation, and the search for solutions. More important and more decisive than all of this is the fact that there, any degree or form of bourgeois unity and organization constituted a very powerful fortress for its war against the old relations. Here, all the prevalent forms of workers’ organization—from party-building to gigantic trade unions—are instruments for burying working-class power in the graveyard of capitalist order, or for sinking that power into swamps that swallow it up for the benefit of the bourgeoisie. There, it was the capitalist class that organized its power in response to the urgent and future needs of capital. Here, it is various strata and tendencies of the bourgeoisie that prescribe the modes and methods of workers’ organization with the aim of decorating the labour movement like a candle—so that it may burn itself out in the service of the conditions for the endurance of wage slavery. In short, between the proletariat’s path of struggle to smash capitalism and advance toward socialism, and what existed for the bourgeoisie in its battle against the various formations of Eastern or Western feudalism, there is no affinity of any kind in any sphere. These two paths are, in all aspects and mechanisms, as contradictory and essentially alien to one another as the foundations of capitalist production and socialism are opposed and alien to each other.
Perhaps many, on hearing these words, will feel the ground give way beneath their feet and imagine that, indeed, socialism is nothing but an ideal—an ideal lacking firm material foundations in the existing society, and perhaps for that very reason it has remained, up to today, a mere bundle of dreams and fantasies; it has not become reality anywhere. Those who may feel the ground slip from beneath them upon hearing these words would do well to experience precisely such a reaction. They are the very people who take the colossal development of capitalism, the construction of a handful of syndicates or unions, the reactionary party-dwelling of a group thirsty to seize political power, and the despairing attachment of the working masses to these syndical and party institutions of capital, to be the entire apparatus and the full set of material, political, intellectual, and social prerequisites for the realization of socialism. It is the same Leninist, “people’s communism” account of socialist revolution that has wrecked the entire twentieth century upon the head of the international working-class movement and has brought the world working class to the condition we have long been witnessing. Let us turn to the core issue. Sooner or later, the working masses of the world have no choice but to believe, with communist insight and abundant awareness, that passing beyond capitalism and charging toward Marxian socialism—the abolition of wage labour—is absolutely impossible without the radical, conscious, and complete sweeping away of all pseudo-communist parties and all turbaned workers’ unions. Let us return to the real import of Marx’s statement and to the essence of the radical materialist understanding of history regarding the age of social revolutions and the conditions for revolutions to occur.
Perhaps many, on hearing these words, will feel the ground give way beneath their feet and imagine that, indeed, socialism is nothing but an ideal—an ideal lacking firm material foundations in the existing society, and perhaps for that very reason it has remained, up to today, a mere bundle of dreams and fantasies; it has not become reality anywhere. Those who may feel the ground slip from beneath them upon hearing these words would do well to experience precisely such a reaction. They are the very people who take the colossal development of capitalism, the construction of a handful of syndicates or unions, the reactionary party-dwelling of a group thirsty to seize political power, and the despairing attachment of the working masses to these syndical and party institutions of capital, to be the entire apparatus and the full set of material, political, intellectual, and social prerequisites for the realization of socialism. It is the same Leninist, “people’s communism” account of socialist revolution that has wrecked the entire twentieth century upon the head of the international working-class movement and has brought the world working class to the condition we have long been witnessing. Let us turn to the core issue. Sooner or later, the working masses of the world have no choice but to believe, with communist insight and abundant awareness, that passing beyond capitalism and charging toward Marxian socialism—the abolition of wage labour—is absolutely impossible without the radical, conscious, and complete sweeping away of all pseudo-communist parties and all turbaned workers’ unions. Let us return to the real import of Marx’s statement and to the essence of the radical materialist understanding of history regarding the age of social revolutions and the conditions for revolutions to occur.
From this standpoint, let us probe the necessary preconditions for the victory of the workers’ revolution and the establishment of communism as the abolition of wage labour—and, finally, from within this inquiry, let us seek the real secret of the international working class’s defeats to date.
Marx’s point was that “new, higher relations of production never replace the old relations of production before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.” The fundamental question, then, is: within capitalism, what must grow and mature to testify that all conditions are ready for the real birth of a socialist society? We saw above that here, whatever grows and expands is still capitalism; and the growth of capitalism—even if it were to advance as far as occupying all the galaxies—would still be the development of wage slavery and the further consolidation of the power of capital. If, under feudalism and serfdom, it was the relations of wage labour that grew and moved along the path of maturity—if it was the economy, industry, technique, politics, civility, culture, law, order, and state of capitalism that matured ever further and shattered the previous economic and social formations—then here, what is it, and which material force, which economy and thought and politics and power, that must become robust and unruly in order to roll up the scroll of capitalist life? This is the essential question before the workers of the world—a question whose answer is clear, even if this clear answer is agreeable to no circle, party, or faction of right or left reformism.
The material condition for the establishment of socialism is only one thing: the conscious, nationwide (and international), council-based movement of the working masses for the abolition of wage labour. This alone is the comprehensive and decisive condition for the victory of the anti-capitalist revolution and the establishment of a society free of exploitation, classes, state, and wage labour. What must grow and mature in the depths of capitalist relations is precisely this movement—with these characteristics, these components, and all of them together. Neither the mere existence of the working class, nor the unchecked numerical expansion of its masses, nor the rapid growth of capitalist industry and technique, nor any level of this system’s “galactic” expansion, nor the unionization of all workers of the world, nor the filling of the world with so-called communist parties, nor even an organic combination of all of these without any deficiency—none of these is the real force or forces whose growth, maturity, and completion testify that the conditions for the dissolution of capitalism and the dawn of socialism have been prepared. But the conscious, council-based, global movement of the working masses for the abolition of wage labour is exactly that real and material force. Why this is so, and what grounds this claim, is a matter that requires explanation—an explanation I have addressed in other writings on various occasions, but which, so long as capitalism endures, and especially so long as reformism dominates the labour movement, must be unfolded, stated anew, completed, and extended to every fiber of the class struggle.
In its class existence, the movement to abolish wage labour is the living and growing embryo of socialism. Every degree of its growth is a root-and-branch assault on the existence of capitalism. The working masses organized within this movement carry the head of communism upon their shoulders—meaning that their “head” is not something called a party; on the contrary, in their broad social and class composition they think anti-capitalistically, they are educated against wage labour, and they make the war against capital their social practice. In all spheres of life they rise up against capital; they do not separate any immediate demand from the axis of struggle against capital.
Marx’s point was that “new, higher relations of production never replace the old relations of production before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.” The fundamental question, then, is: within capitalism, what must grow and mature to testify that all conditions are ready for the real birth of a socialist society? We saw above that here, whatever grows and expands is still capitalism; and the growth of capitalism—even if it were to advance as far as occupying all the galaxies—would still be the development of wage slavery and the further consolidation of the power of capital. If, under feudalism and serfdom, it was the relations of wage labour that grew and moved along the path of maturity—if it was the economy, industry, technique, politics, civility, culture, law, order, and state of capitalism that matured ever further and shattered the previous economic and social formations—then here, what is it, and which material force, which economy and thought and politics and power, that must become robust and unruly in order to roll up the scroll of capitalist life? This is the essential question before the workers of the world—a question whose answer is clear, even if this clear answer is agreeable to no circle, party, or faction of right or left reformism.
The material condition for the establishment of socialism is only one thing: the conscious, nationwide (and international), council-based movement of the working masses for the abolition of wage labour. This alone is the comprehensive and decisive condition for the victory of the anti-capitalist revolution and the establishment of a society free of exploitation, classes, state, and wage labour. What must grow and mature in the depths of capitalist relations is precisely this movement—with these characteristics, these components, and all of them together. Neither the mere existence of the working class, nor the unchecked numerical expansion of its masses, nor the rapid growth of capitalist industry and technique, nor any level of this system’s “galactic” expansion, nor the unionization of all workers of the world, nor the filling of the world with so-called communist parties, nor even an organic combination of all of these without any deficiency—none of these is the real force or forces whose growth, maturity, and completion testify that the conditions for the dissolution of capitalism and the dawn of socialism have been prepared. But the conscious, council-based, global movement of the working masses for the abolition of wage labour is exactly that real and material force. Why this is so, and what grounds this claim, is a matter that requires explanation—an explanation I have addressed in other writings on various occasions, but which, so long as capitalism endures, and especially so long as reformism dominates the labour movement, must be unfolded, stated anew, completed, and extended to every fiber of the class struggle.
In its class existence, the movement to abolish wage labour is the living and growing embryo of socialism. Every degree of its growth is a root-and-branch assault on the existence of capitalism. The working masses organized within this movement carry the head of communism upon their shoulders—meaning that their “head” is not something called a party; on the contrary, in their broad social and class composition they think anti-capitalistically, they are educated against wage labour, and they make the war against capital their social practice. In all spheres of life they rise up against capital; they do not separate any immediate demand from the axis of struggle against capital.
They dig to the root of every form of rightlessness and oppression in the depths of the relation of buying and selling labour power, and for their removal they advance along the path of assaulting the very existence of the capitalist system. It is a movement that makes the struggle for higher wages, better working conditions, shorter working hours, more effective health care and treatment, more modern education, more comfortable housing, deeper political freedoms, the fullest possible elimination of gender and ethnic inequalities, broader civil rights, a healthier environment, higher social welfare, the fuller guarantee of children’s physical and spiritual flourishing, the preparation for the overthrow of the capitalist state, and every possible change or improvement in present-day life, organically and inseparably one with the process of struggle for the dissolution and complete destruction of capitalism and the replacement of this system by socialism.
This movement is the living, growing, and generative framework of communism. In the dynamic of its growth it pursues the process of capitalism’s destruction, and it does to this system exactly what capitalism did to feudalism—with the profound difference that it bears the banner of humanity’s real emancipation. It is the cornerstone of a society free of exploitation, oppression, classes, and wage labour; and in each link of its unfolding it demolishes parts of the edifice of wage slavery. This movement is anti-syndicalism; it is the enemy of every kind of party game. It is against “legal struggle”; it does not cling to any political, juridical, or civil mechanism of capitalism. Its sole support is the organized, conscious, anti–wage-labour power of its class masses.
An anti-capitalist movement with the perspective of abolishing wage labour does not hang its struggle for wage increases on the hook of contracts. It relies on class power; in the level of increase it demands, it is not bound by the criterion of “mutual consent,” and it ties the ceiling of its expectations not to consent but to the power of struggle. It does not “ask” the bourgeoisie for better health, medicine, treatment, or education; it strives to impose the best of these demands upon the capitalists and their state by mobilizing the force of its daily struggle. It does not see capitalist society as the scaffolding of its life; it organizes its struggle around smashing that scaffolding. It turns the Marxian anatomy of capitalism and the paths of assault on the relation of surplus-value production into the mortar of its consciousness, and it makes this consciousness a material weapon for destroying this system. Always, and at every stage, it holds in its hands a vivid, living, practical image of council-based socialist planning for the abolition of wage labour—an image concretely rooted in the everyday reality of a specific capitalist society—and it hammers this clear communist alternative down upon the bourgeoisie as its class indictment. With this indictment it tells humanity what capital does to our work and our lives, and what we would do if we were to prevail today. Against every decision, every program, every plan, every action of the bourgeoisie, it advances the communist alternative of its own class—and it makes this alternative the surging bastion of daily struggle.
The axis of its words everywhere and under all conditions is this: the entire labor of its class masses must be devoted to a more affluent life, to ever greater physical and intellectual flourishing, and to a more splendid freedom from need for human beings. This movement walks step by step with socialism—with the living practice of socialist planning of the economy, politics, and social life—and each of its steps is a powerful indictment of capital’s existence. It is the real embodiment of communism’s war against capitalism, and it turns existing society into the broad field of that war.
This movement is the living, growing, and generative framework of communism. In the dynamic of its growth it pursues the process of capitalism’s destruction, and it does to this system exactly what capitalism did to feudalism—with the profound difference that it bears the banner of humanity’s real emancipation. It is the cornerstone of a society free of exploitation, oppression, classes, and wage labour; and in each link of its unfolding it demolishes parts of the edifice of wage slavery. This movement is anti-syndicalism; it is the enemy of every kind of party game. It is against “legal struggle”; it does not cling to any political, juridical, or civil mechanism of capitalism. Its sole support is the organized, conscious, anti–wage-labour power of its class masses.
An anti-capitalist movement with the perspective of abolishing wage labour does not hang its struggle for wage increases on the hook of contracts. It relies on class power; in the level of increase it demands, it is not bound by the criterion of “mutual consent,” and it ties the ceiling of its expectations not to consent but to the power of struggle. It does not “ask” the bourgeoisie for better health, medicine, treatment, or education; it strives to impose the best of these demands upon the capitalists and their state by mobilizing the force of its daily struggle. It does not see capitalist society as the scaffolding of its life; it organizes its struggle around smashing that scaffolding. It turns the Marxian anatomy of capitalism and the paths of assault on the relation of surplus-value production into the mortar of its consciousness, and it makes this consciousness a material weapon for destroying this system. Always, and at every stage, it holds in its hands a vivid, living, practical image of council-based socialist planning for the abolition of wage labour—an image concretely rooted in the everyday reality of a specific capitalist society—and it hammers this clear communist alternative down upon the bourgeoisie as its class indictment. With this indictment it tells humanity what capital does to our work and our lives, and what we would do if we were to prevail today. Against every decision, every program, every plan, every action of the bourgeoisie, it advances the communist alternative of its own class—and it makes this alternative the surging bastion of daily struggle.
The axis of its words everywhere and under all conditions is this: the entire labor of its class masses must be devoted to a more affluent life, to ever greater physical and intellectual flourishing, and to a more splendid freedom from need for human beings. This movement walks step by step with socialism—with the living practice of socialist planning of the economy, politics, and social life—and each of its steps is a powerful indictment of capital’s existence. It is the real embodiment of communism’s war against capitalism, and it turns existing society into the broad field of that war.
Discussion of the characteristics of this movement will immediately provoke the outcry of party-builders, syndicalists, and all right and left reformists—those who, historically, acting in concert and in harmony with bourgeois reaction, have shot at the very shadow of any talk about the possibility of such a movement forming, expanding, consolidating, and gaining power. The gist of their view is that workers, fundamentally, are not capable of preparing and organizing a conscious, nationwide (and international), council-based anti-capitalist movement. They fight only for higher wages, shorter hours, greater welfare, and the like; hence they build syndicates. Their protests are not against wage slavery, and in order for them to take an anti-capitalist direction, they must make the party their qibla, pray toward it, and bow to the threshold of party-dwellers in obedience. Some of these people, in deep complicity with the bourgeoisie, treat any talk of a council movement that is at the same time anti–wage-labour as pure anarchism, and they label every radical Marxian critique of syndicate-building and party-worship an anarchist approach.
We do not refute a small portion of this crowd’s claims in a fragmentary form, outside their organic articulation; rather, we see the entire organic scaffolding of these claims, in all respects, as nothing but the bourgeoisie’s misanthropic reactionary prescription for the working-class movement of the world. Of course, the working masses have not been molded from the potter’s clay of anti-capitalism, nor baptized with the holy water of anti–wage-labour. Yet in their class and social existence they are at odds with capital, with capitalists, with the state, and with the capitalist system. The foundation of their lives rests on conflict with this system. At the same time, elements, groups, and perhaps the overwhelming majority of them are driven, under the poisonous spur of bourgeois ideas, beliefs, horizons, models, and culture, to think not with the conscious head of their class. They are deformed, frozen, and dissolved in the swamp of consciousness and understanding produced by the wage-slavery system, and they imagine that they must pursue their forced conflict with capitalists, the state, and wage-labour relations within the framework of the bourgeoisie’s conventional prescriptions and “solutions,” or within the diverse oppositions of this class. Another real component of this class is that its members, like all human beings, are not cast from identical molds of reason, insight, experience, and knowledge. There are conscious individuals among them, just as there are far more numerous and massive layers of the less conscious. Thus, we have a class that, first, is compelled to fight capital; second, is captive to bourgeois prescriptions regarding how to wage this fight; and third, whose members stand at different levels in terms of awareness, the capacity to discern the correct path of struggle, and the ability to recognize radical mechanisms of that struggle under different conditions and at different levels.
Reformists see these realities, but the core of their claim is that “whatever is real is rational, and whatever is rational is real.” They even turn this Hegelian dictum—indeed, even in Hegel’s own manner—into the leaven of reformism. They throw away entirely the fact that workers, in their class existence, are an inexhaustible reservoir of anti-capitalist radicalism, and they dress the deformation and alienation of workers’ consciousness by capital—indeed all the calamities capitalism has inflicted on workers—as a grand “ideal discovery,” clothing their reformism in the mantle of history’s supreme reality. From this conciliatory Hegelian reading, right and left reformism shouts that workers are not anti–wage-labour; they are not suited to a council-based anti-capitalist movement; they are syndicate-loving and unionist. Therefore one must build syndicates and create unions for them.
We do not refute a small portion of this crowd’s claims in a fragmentary form, outside their organic articulation; rather, we see the entire organic scaffolding of these claims, in all respects, as nothing but the bourgeoisie’s misanthropic reactionary prescription for the working-class movement of the world. Of course, the working masses have not been molded from the potter’s clay of anti-capitalism, nor baptized with the holy water of anti–wage-labour. Yet in their class and social existence they are at odds with capital, with capitalists, with the state, and with the capitalist system. The foundation of their lives rests on conflict with this system. At the same time, elements, groups, and perhaps the overwhelming majority of them are driven, under the poisonous spur of bourgeois ideas, beliefs, horizons, models, and culture, to think not with the conscious head of their class. They are deformed, frozen, and dissolved in the swamp of consciousness and understanding produced by the wage-slavery system, and they imagine that they must pursue their forced conflict with capitalists, the state, and wage-labour relations within the framework of the bourgeoisie’s conventional prescriptions and “solutions,” or within the diverse oppositions of this class. Another real component of this class is that its members, like all human beings, are not cast from identical molds of reason, insight, experience, and knowledge. There are conscious individuals among them, just as there are far more numerous and massive layers of the less conscious. Thus, we have a class that, first, is compelled to fight capital; second, is captive to bourgeois prescriptions regarding how to wage this fight; and third, whose members stand at different levels in terms of awareness, the capacity to discern the correct path of struggle, and the ability to recognize radical mechanisms of that struggle under different conditions and at different levels.
Reformists see these realities, but the core of their claim is that “whatever is real is rational, and whatever is rational is real.” They even turn this Hegelian dictum—indeed, even in Hegel’s own manner—into the leaven of reformism. They throw away entirely the fact that workers, in their class existence, are an inexhaustible reservoir of anti-capitalist radicalism, and they dress the deformation and alienation of workers’ consciousness by capital—indeed all the calamities capitalism has inflicted on workers—as a grand “ideal discovery,” clothing their reformism in the mantle of history’s supreme reality. From this conciliatory Hegelian reading, right and left reformism shouts that workers are not anti–wage-labour; they are not suited to a council-based anti-capitalist movement; they are syndicate-loving and unionist. Therefore one must build syndicates and create unions for them.
They go on to say that communism is a “science” known by the scholars of the possessing classes; it is they who must establish a communist party and, riding the wave of workers’ syndical protests, become the workers’ saving force.
The abolition-of-wage-labour approach of the working class is fundamentally opposed to these reactionary prescriptions. Its concise point is this: the submersion of working masses in bourgeois ideas, culture, ideology, strategies, and methods is a fact—but the conscious, council-based, broad and nationwide (and international) anti-capitalist organization of those masses is also entirely possible and rational; and this rational and possible thing can and must become real. There is certainly no other way, and the only outcome of clinging to the right reformists’ philosophizing is the eternal imprisonment of the world working class in the foul, bloody, savage hell of capitalism.
The abolition-of-wage-labour approach stresses that workers constitute one of the two basic classes and the overwhelming majority of society. By virtue of their social existence, they are in struggle against capital. Among them, people with an awakened, anti-capitalist consciousness are not few. Despite all the deprivations, pressures, and misery they endure, they still have conscious layers; they include educated and literate people. They are human beings, and like other human beings they learn, they accumulate experience, and they are capable of understanding, consciousness, and knowledge. Their awakened, conscious, and advanced elements, instead of playing party games, living in parties, and prescribing syndicates, can set about organizing their class in a council-based, anti–wage-labour way. They can—and it is entirely possible—to search out, discover, and practice the mechanisms, strategies, and methods for advancing such organization, in the cold, dark night of capital’s rabid dictatorship and in the foggy wasteland of bourgeois ideas, beliefs, and misdirections. They can, together with, bound to, fused with, struggling alongside, and organically linked to their class masses—as comrades, companions, and fellow fighters—make real what is deeply rational: the communist, anti-capitalist rationality of the working class.
The argument here is not that every workers’ struggle, or every effort by some workers outside the orbit of such an approach, should, without any qualification, be rejected, boycotted, or subjected to raids. The whole point is that the only real option for the working class—both to impose its immediate demands upon the bourgeoisie and to reach the emancipatory horizon of liberation from capital’s octopus-like grip—is conscious, council-based, broad, nationwide (and international), anti–wage-labour organization. Without taking this path, and without moving along the tracks of this approach, no window opens for securing any enduring demand, and no opening exists for the destruction of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. More importantly, without the formation, growth, and maturation of this movement, no path exists toward socialism at all. Those who deny the possibility of realizing this communist and Marxian rationality, whether they know it or not, place before the working masses the road to capitalism’s eternity and the perpetual enslavement of the working class in the depths of the hell of wage slavery. Throughout the twentieth century they did exactly this, and in imposing the present condition upon the global labour movement they were step by step partners, fellow travelers, and accomplices of bourgeois reaction. Party-building and syndicate-making, regardless of any particular features, regardless of how “radical” they may or may not be, are nothing but the digging of swamps in the path of the growth of the movement whose organization and consciousness are the real manifestation of living socialist power within the womb of capitalist society—and whose maturity is the decisive, comprehensive prerequisite for the dissolution of this system and the establishment of socialism.
The abolition-of-wage-labour approach of the working class is fundamentally opposed to these reactionary prescriptions. Its concise point is this: the submersion of working masses in bourgeois ideas, culture, ideology, strategies, and methods is a fact—but the conscious, council-based, broad and nationwide (and international) anti-capitalist organization of those masses is also entirely possible and rational; and this rational and possible thing can and must become real. There is certainly no other way, and the only outcome of clinging to the right reformists’ philosophizing is the eternal imprisonment of the world working class in the foul, bloody, savage hell of capitalism.
The abolition-of-wage-labour approach stresses that workers constitute one of the two basic classes and the overwhelming majority of society. By virtue of their social existence, they are in struggle against capital. Among them, people with an awakened, anti-capitalist consciousness are not few. Despite all the deprivations, pressures, and misery they endure, they still have conscious layers; they include educated and literate people. They are human beings, and like other human beings they learn, they accumulate experience, and they are capable of understanding, consciousness, and knowledge. Their awakened, conscious, and advanced elements, instead of playing party games, living in parties, and prescribing syndicates, can set about organizing their class in a council-based, anti–wage-labour way. They can—and it is entirely possible—to search out, discover, and practice the mechanisms, strategies, and methods for advancing such organization, in the cold, dark night of capital’s rabid dictatorship and in the foggy wasteland of bourgeois ideas, beliefs, and misdirections. They can, together with, bound to, fused with, struggling alongside, and organically linked to their class masses—as comrades, companions, and fellow fighters—make real what is deeply rational: the communist, anti-capitalist rationality of the working class.
The argument here is not that every workers’ struggle, or every effort by some workers outside the orbit of such an approach, should, without any qualification, be rejected, boycotted, or subjected to raids. The whole point is that the only real option for the working class—both to impose its immediate demands upon the bourgeoisie and to reach the emancipatory horizon of liberation from capital’s octopus-like grip—is conscious, council-based, broad, nationwide (and international), anti–wage-labour organization. Without taking this path, and without moving along the tracks of this approach, no window opens for securing any enduring demand, and no opening exists for the destruction of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. More importantly, without the formation, growth, and maturation of this movement, no path exists toward socialism at all. Those who deny the possibility of realizing this communist and Marxian rationality, whether they know it or not, place before the working masses the road to capitalism’s eternity and the perpetual enslavement of the working class in the depths of the hell of wage slavery. Throughout the twentieth century they did exactly this, and in imposing the present condition upon the global labour movement they were step by step partners, fellow travelers, and accomplices of bourgeois reaction. Party-building and syndicate-making, regardless of any particular features, regardless of how “radical” they may or may not be, are nothing but the digging of swamps in the path of the growth of the movement whose organization and consciousness are the real manifestation of living socialist power within the womb of capitalist society—and whose maturity is the decisive, comprehensive prerequisite for the dissolution of this system and the establishment of socialism.
In recent years, many people have spoken of the council movement. Many have spoken, or speak, of anti-capitalism. Not a few criticize the party, rebel against Lenin, and, with flourish, cast his account of the relation between object and subject into the fire of criticism; they shout against syndicalism and the trade-union movement. There are also quite a few who say and do all of these things together. These people may be real activists of the working class’s abolition-of-wage-labour movement—but they may also not be. “Not everyone who composes verse is Faez; nor is every Turk-speaker an Afrasiab.” Belief in the council movement, critique of right or left reformism, critique of the party, critique of Leninism, and any other words or deeds become the real praxis of the working class’s anti–wage-labour approach only when all of this is carried out from the standpoint of the needs and unavoidable requirements of the flourishing, growth, consolidation, and strengthening of the conscious, broad, council-based anti-capitalist movement of the working class— a movement that is the living organism of communism in advance, in motion, and in maturation within the womb of dominant capitalist relations. For such a movement to branch out, take shape, and become ready to erase capitalism and establish communism as the abolition of wage labour, it is necessary to put an end to party games, syndicate-building, and the other mechanisms of right and left reformism.
Against Capital pinned «About Us We are workers. From the moment we opened our eyes, we have witnessed the savage exploitation of our fathers and mothers, our neighbors, the residents of our working-class districts, and workers everywhere by capitalists and by capital itself. With…»
“The Council Movement”
The Nature of Workers’ Labor, Life, and Struggle
The Most Natural Form of Workers’ Organization
The Only Anti-Capitalist Form of Workers’ Organizing
The Socialist Power of Society-Running and the Abolition of Wage Slavery
Many people from our class, within our ongoing movement, under the influence of the teachings that capital has planted and cultivated in their consciousness, say things like this:
Workers are not capable of having a council movement!!
Councils are an organization for the time of insurrection!!
Councils must be led by a party!!
We should pursue the right to build a syndicate!!
We must have the right to strike!!
We must build an organization to bargain with the capitalists!!
To save ourselves we must line up behind parties and party leaders!!
These are the words of some workers inside our class and our movement. But the ground and sky of our life, our social existence, and the history of our class struggle say exactly the opposite. All of the statements above are the outflow of the needs of capital, the ideas of the capitalist class, and the weaponry of the system of wage slavery—designed to butcher consciousness and smash the process of our anti-capitalist struggle.
Our movement, at the moment of its gestation and its first steps of emergence—seven centuries ago—took the path of council-like self-expression: it fought in a quasi-council form, organized in quasi-council forms, and in a council form sounded the trumpet of capitalism’s death. The history of our class life and struggle screams this on every page.
Syndicate-building was placed before us by capitalists, by the intellectual representatives of the capitalist class, and by workers who had “capital’s head on their shoulders.” The party—as a mechanism of sections of the bourgeoisie, aimed at replacing one form of capitalist economic and political planning with another—has been imposed on our movement. The history of wage slavery and the history of our class struggle say this clearly.
Our fundamental question to all our chain-mates is this: where, from which sky, did the cursed verse descend that says, “Workers are not capable of establishing councils and an anti-capitalist council movement”?! Why, and on what basis, can we not organize ourselves in a council form—anti-capitalist and nationwide?!
For a moment, look at the hundred-year record of our class in our own society. Compared with most capitalist societies of the world, we have had the greatest number of strikes—precisely while not having a “right to strike.” To organize this exceptional number of strikes we were not clinging to any syndicate or union. We began all these strikes through spontaneous quasi-council relations, carried them forward in quasi-council forms, and in certain periods brought them to major victories through the same quasi-council practices.
A council does not need a name and title, a flag, or official status. Wherever we, under the pressure of intense exploitation, deprivation of rights, and capitalist crimes, put our hands together; wherever we rely on the power of all of our members; wherever we do not bury this power inside the order of capital, do not hang it from the gallows of “legal struggle,” do not hand over the determination of its ups and downs, its beginning and end, its continuation or suspension to a handful of syndicalists and party-sitters above our heads—whenever and wherever we have done this, we have displayed a form, even if purely embryonic, of council organization of struggle.
Between 1973 and 1976 (1352–1355 in the Iranian calendar; during the late Pahlavi monarchy in Iran), through vast, numerous strikes based on quasi-council relations, we raised wage levels from 3 and 5 tomans to 25, 30, even 70 tomans per day, and forced capitalists and their state to accept all these increases.
The Nature of Workers’ Labor, Life, and Struggle
The Most Natural Form of Workers’ Organization
The Only Anti-Capitalist Form of Workers’ Organizing
The Socialist Power of Society-Running and the Abolition of Wage Slavery
Many people from our class, within our ongoing movement, under the influence of the teachings that capital has planted and cultivated in their consciousness, say things like this:
Workers are not capable of having a council movement!!
Councils are an organization for the time of insurrection!!
Councils must be led by a party!!
We should pursue the right to build a syndicate!!
We must have the right to strike!!
We must build an organization to bargain with the capitalists!!
To save ourselves we must line up behind parties and party leaders!!
These are the words of some workers inside our class and our movement. But the ground and sky of our life, our social existence, and the history of our class struggle say exactly the opposite. All of the statements above are the outflow of the needs of capital, the ideas of the capitalist class, and the weaponry of the system of wage slavery—designed to butcher consciousness and smash the process of our anti-capitalist struggle.
Our movement, at the moment of its gestation and its first steps of emergence—seven centuries ago—took the path of council-like self-expression: it fought in a quasi-council form, organized in quasi-council forms, and in a council form sounded the trumpet of capitalism’s death. The history of our class life and struggle screams this on every page.
Syndicate-building was placed before us by capitalists, by the intellectual representatives of the capitalist class, and by workers who had “capital’s head on their shoulders.” The party—as a mechanism of sections of the bourgeoisie, aimed at replacing one form of capitalist economic and political planning with another—has been imposed on our movement. The history of wage slavery and the history of our class struggle say this clearly.
Our fundamental question to all our chain-mates is this: where, from which sky, did the cursed verse descend that says, “Workers are not capable of establishing councils and an anti-capitalist council movement”?! Why, and on what basis, can we not organize ourselves in a council form—anti-capitalist and nationwide?!
For a moment, look at the hundred-year record of our class in our own society. Compared with most capitalist societies of the world, we have had the greatest number of strikes—precisely while not having a “right to strike.” To organize this exceptional number of strikes we were not clinging to any syndicate or union. We began all these strikes through spontaneous quasi-council relations, carried them forward in quasi-council forms, and in certain periods brought them to major victories through the same quasi-council practices.
A council does not need a name and title, a flag, or official status. Wherever we, under the pressure of intense exploitation, deprivation of rights, and capitalist crimes, put our hands together; wherever we rely on the power of all of our members; wherever we do not bury this power inside the order of capital, do not hang it from the gallows of “legal struggle,” do not hand over the determination of its ups and downs, its beginning and end, its continuation or suspension to a handful of syndicalists and party-sitters above our heads—whenever and wherever we have done this, we have displayed a form, even if purely embryonic, of council organization of struggle.
Between 1973 and 1976 (1352–1355 in the Iranian calendar; during the late Pahlavi monarchy in Iran), through vast, numerous strikes based on quasi-council relations, we raised wage levels from 3 and 5 tomans to 25, 30, even 70 tomans per day, and forced capitalists and their state to accept all these increases.
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Throughout the 1970s (the 1350s in the Iranian calendar), with these same spontaneous quasi-council relations—or embryonic council-building—we launched a massive movement of house-building and securing housing in the areas around Tehran and in most provincial centers. With the weapon of these solidarities and comradeships—interwoven with embryonic council formation—we broke the bloodiest and most savage military and police assaults of the Shah’s predatory regime (the monarchy under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) and, on the roof of these victories, created dozens of large workers’ townships.
Over the last 40 years, under the rule of the “Islamic state of capital” (the Islamic Republic of Iran), our record of struggle is also full of such examples. Look at just the last few years: we brought the passionate and magnificent uprisings of December 2017 (Dey 1396 in the Iranian calendar) and 2019 (including the major nationwide unrest of November 2019, Aban 1398) into the streets on the basis of these quasi-council connections—connections with the greatest capacity for council-building. We unleashed a storm and trapped different sections of the bourgeois state in fear.
The workers of HEPCO (a major industrial company in Iran; workers there led prominent protests) did not block rail lines by decree of this syndicate or that party; rather, purely through their own spontaneous quasi-council connections, after days and weeks of strikes, they moved to disrupt and shut down the nationwide railway lines of capital. A few days later, this initiative was adopted simultaneously by protesting railway workers in many Iranian cities and threw the capitalist class and its state into turbulence and panic. A little further on, our chained-together driver comrades, precisely by drawing on the same inherent spontaneous quasi-council capacity of their movement, paralyzed the transport network of capital on the widest scale.
Pay attention to this point: in this hell of terror—capitalist Iran—we have done these things for a hundred years, on a vast scale and more than in most other places, without having a legal right to strike, a legal right to organize, or a syndicate placed above our heads. All of this cries out in the loudest voice that to erupt in a council form, unite in a council form, fight in a council form, organize in a council form—and ultimately to establish a powerful nationwide anti-capitalist council movement—is absolutely not impossible.
Those who, for this hundred years, have filled earth and sky with demands for the right to strike, the right to organize, the right to build syndicates and parties, have reached none of them. They have “displayed themselves and burdened us,” but we workers—through these spontaneous quasi-council relations that carry the capacity for council formation—have filled this hundred years with strikes, struggle, uprisings, rebellions, and overthrow.
Friends! Comrades! Fellow-sufferers! Fellow chain-mates!
It is a profound lie that we cannot organize ourselves in a council form and in an anti-capitalist way!! We can do all of this very well, and the history of our life and struggle is clear testimony to this ability. But our real and deadly problem is that we have always imagined that our spontaneous quasi-council surge is only for a strike—and nothing more!!
At the end of a strike, instead of persistent and continuous effort to elevate these relations that have grown out of shared working conditions, exploitation, and life; instead of fighting to extend these connections into durable councils; instead of developing these quasi-council, anti-capitalist comradeships into thick-boned, class-based, anti-capitalist council solidarities—yes, instead of all this, we immediately issue a verdict of shutting everything down!! Whatever stone we place upon stone, we let it fall apart and surrender it to the storms of events!! As if we have reached the end of struggle!!! As if we have removed forever the pressure of exploitation, barbarism, and the predatory violence of capital from above our heads!! As if there will be no
Over the last 40 years, under the rule of the “Islamic state of capital” (the Islamic Republic of Iran), our record of struggle is also full of such examples. Look at just the last few years: we brought the passionate and magnificent uprisings of December 2017 (Dey 1396 in the Iranian calendar) and 2019 (including the major nationwide unrest of November 2019, Aban 1398) into the streets on the basis of these quasi-council connections—connections with the greatest capacity for council-building. We unleashed a storm and trapped different sections of the bourgeois state in fear.
The workers of HEPCO (a major industrial company in Iran; workers there led prominent protests) did not block rail lines by decree of this syndicate or that party; rather, purely through their own spontaneous quasi-council connections, after days and weeks of strikes, they moved to disrupt and shut down the nationwide railway lines of capital. A few days later, this initiative was adopted simultaneously by protesting railway workers in many Iranian cities and threw the capitalist class and its state into turbulence and panic. A little further on, our chained-together driver comrades, precisely by drawing on the same inherent spontaneous quasi-council capacity of their movement, paralyzed the transport network of capital on the widest scale.
Pay attention to this point: in this hell of terror—capitalist Iran—we have done these things for a hundred years, on a vast scale and more than in most other places, without having a legal right to strike, a legal right to organize, or a syndicate placed above our heads. All of this cries out in the loudest voice that to erupt in a council form, unite in a council form, fight in a council form, organize in a council form—and ultimately to establish a powerful nationwide anti-capitalist council movement—is absolutely not impossible.
Those who, for this hundred years, have filled earth and sky with demands for the right to strike, the right to organize, the right to build syndicates and parties, have reached none of them. They have “displayed themselves and burdened us,” but we workers—through these spontaneous quasi-council relations that carry the capacity for council formation—have filled this hundred years with strikes, struggle, uprisings, rebellions, and overthrow.
Friends! Comrades! Fellow-sufferers! Fellow chain-mates!
It is a profound lie that we cannot organize ourselves in a council form and in an anti-capitalist way!! We can do all of this very well, and the history of our life and struggle is clear testimony to this ability. But our real and deadly problem is that we have always imagined that our spontaneous quasi-council surge is only for a strike—and nothing more!!
At the end of a strike, instead of persistent and continuous effort to elevate these relations that have grown out of shared working conditions, exploitation, and life; instead of fighting to extend these connections into durable councils; instead of developing these quasi-council, anti-capitalist comradeships into thick-boned, class-based, anti-capitalist council solidarities—yes, instead of all this, we immediately issue a verdict of shutting everything down!! Whatever stone we place upon stone, we let it fall apart and surrender it to the storms of events!! As if we have reached the end of struggle!!! As if we have removed forever the pressure of exploitation, barbarism, and the predatory violence of capital from above our heads!! As if there will be no
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more strikes ahead!!
This is our essential problem, and our sincere class-based request of all of you is that we pause on precisely this issue. This problem is certainly solvable, and every improvement in our working conditions, exploitation, and life—and every success in our class’s struggle for its own liberation and the liberation of humanity—depends on this serious pause.
Friends! Comrades! Fellow-sufferers! Fellow chain-mates!
Capital, by every route, with all its economic, political, intellectual, cultural, and ideological weapons, through all its parties and organizations, using the immense ranks of thinkers, policy-makers, economists, sociologists, philosophers—and especially with the help of reformism inside the ongoing labor movement—has inculcated in us that we must not pursue these tasks and must not persist until these efforts bear fruit.
It has injected these deadly poisons into our consciousness: that wage slavery is our eternal destiny; that any improvement in our lives depends on enduring capitalist exploitation; that if we protest we must take the path of bargaining; that if our protests are extensive we must replace one form of capitalism with another; that for these things we must cling to syndicates and parties; that we must regard the council as a vessel only for the days of uprising; that we must imagine councils as recruitment grounds for parties; that we must hang the council from the party. All of these are theories, ideas, “solutions,” and strategies that different factions of bourgeois reaction—from rulers to opposition, from “left” to right—under various banners have injected into our understanding and consciousness, and have blocked our struggle to elevate quasi-council solidarities—carrying the growing embryos of council formation—into the establishment of a nationwide anti-capitalist council movement.
Friends! Comrades! Fellow-sufferers! Fellow chain-mates!
If for a long time the living conditions and minimal means of life of our five billion worker inhabitants of the earth worsen with each passing day; if one and a half billion people of our class burn and turn to ash every day amid flames of lack of medicine and lack of treatment; if one and a half billion have no access to safe drinking water; if at this very moment sixty-nine million people of our class in the world, just under bombardments—under rains of cluster bombs, microbial and chemical bombs—have lost home and shelter and become refugees across countries or prey to the fishes of the sea; if four billion members of our class do not have their daily plain bread; if the number of people sleeping in cardboard and graves grows explosively each day; if prostitution and addiction swallow the entire life of our five billion working people—if every shout of Trump, every piece of nonsense of Netanyahu, every roar of any ruler of the Islamic Republic or every belch of any butcher-statesman of global capital is enough to cut 30 percent or 40 percent from the real price of our labor power—yes, all of this is because we have moved farther and farther away from the real trench of our anti-capitalist struggle: from the permanent fight to establish a nationwide anti-capitalist council movement of our class.
Capitalism, the capitalists, and the various factions of bourgeois reaction have succeeded in this work and have pushed us into an appalling defeat. We have no more than two paths before us:
Either continue our black twentieth-century past and witness, moment by moment, the worsening of our conditions of work, exploitation, and life—for ourselves and for future generations—while the barbarism of capital becomes ever more unchecked and the predatory violence of capitalist states grows ever greater;
Or, the second path: to cleanse away all the poisons that different tendencies within the capitalist class have injected into our class movement for our brainwashing.
This is our essential problem, and our sincere class-based request of all of you is that we pause on precisely this issue. This problem is certainly solvable, and every improvement in our working conditions, exploitation, and life—and every success in our class’s struggle for its own liberation and the liberation of humanity—depends on this serious pause.
Friends! Comrades! Fellow-sufferers! Fellow chain-mates!
Capital, by every route, with all its economic, political, intellectual, cultural, and ideological weapons, through all its parties and organizations, using the immense ranks of thinkers, policy-makers, economists, sociologists, philosophers—and especially with the help of reformism inside the ongoing labor movement—has inculcated in us that we must not pursue these tasks and must not persist until these efforts bear fruit.
It has injected these deadly poisons into our consciousness: that wage slavery is our eternal destiny; that any improvement in our lives depends on enduring capitalist exploitation; that if we protest we must take the path of bargaining; that if our protests are extensive we must replace one form of capitalism with another; that for these things we must cling to syndicates and parties; that we must regard the council as a vessel only for the days of uprising; that we must imagine councils as recruitment grounds for parties; that we must hang the council from the party. All of these are theories, ideas, “solutions,” and strategies that different factions of bourgeois reaction—from rulers to opposition, from “left” to right—under various banners have injected into our understanding and consciousness, and have blocked our struggle to elevate quasi-council solidarities—carrying the growing embryos of council formation—into the establishment of a nationwide anti-capitalist council movement.
Friends! Comrades! Fellow-sufferers! Fellow chain-mates!
If for a long time the living conditions and minimal means of life of our five billion worker inhabitants of the earth worsen with each passing day; if one and a half billion people of our class burn and turn to ash every day amid flames of lack of medicine and lack of treatment; if one and a half billion have no access to safe drinking water; if at this very moment sixty-nine million people of our class in the world, just under bombardments—under rains of cluster bombs, microbial and chemical bombs—have lost home and shelter and become refugees across countries or prey to the fishes of the sea; if four billion members of our class do not have their daily plain bread; if the number of people sleeping in cardboard and graves grows explosively each day; if prostitution and addiction swallow the entire life of our five billion working people—if every shout of Trump, every piece of nonsense of Netanyahu, every roar of any ruler of the Islamic Republic or every belch of any butcher-statesman of global capital is enough to cut 30 percent or 40 percent from the real price of our labor power—yes, all of this is because we have moved farther and farther away from the real trench of our anti-capitalist struggle: from the permanent fight to establish a nationwide anti-capitalist council movement of our class.
Capitalism, the capitalists, and the various factions of bourgeois reaction have succeeded in this work and have pushed us into an appalling defeat. We have no more than two paths before us:
Either continue our black twentieth-century past and witness, moment by moment, the worsening of our conditions of work, exploitation, and life—for ourselves and for future generations—while the barbarism of capital becomes ever more unchecked and the predatory violence of capitalist states grows ever greater;
Or, the second path: to cleanse away all the poisons that different tendencies within the capitalist class have injected into our class movement for our brainwashing.
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We must believe—believe, and believe again—that council-building and the establishment of the most powerful nationwide anti-capitalist council movement is the nature of our life, our work, and our struggle; the most natural form of organizing our class struggle; the only vessel of thick-boned anti-capitalist fighting by our class; the expression of our organized class power against wage slavery; and the firm force of socialist, council-based society-running—the abolition of wage labor—after bringing down the political power of capital.
We must forever cleanse from the body of our movement the fantasy of clinging to any faction, party, syndicate, or any force above our heads. Let us strike back, on the chest of the entire bourgeoisie and the degraded reformism inside and around our ongoing movement. Let us pause on this issue as the most vital, most urgent, most immediate, most decisive, and most fate-determining question always raised by our movement.
Our word is this: let us set out and organize ourselves in a council form. Let us put to the test the possibility and impossibility of this remedy. Let us give hand to hand and establish a nationwide anti-capitalist council movement.
We must forever cleanse from the body of our movement the fantasy of clinging to any faction, party, syndicate, or any force above our heads. Let us strike back, on the chest of the entire bourgeoisie and the degraded reformism inside and around our ongoing movement. Let us pause on this issue as the most vital, most urgent, most immediate, most decisive, and most fate-determining question always raised by our movement.
Our word is this: let us set out and organize ourselves in a council form. Let us put to the test the possibility and impossibility of this remedy. Let us give hand to hand and establish a nationwide anti-capitalist council movement.
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