PASOS PARA EL DISEÑO, IMPLEMENTACIÓN Y EJECUCIÓN DEL

secure their loose leafs by means o f a stapler, or if individuals prefer to wear polo pique tops rather than button-down collar shirts.

What I want to question here is his assumption that ‘production’ for mundane consumer wants inevitably requires a mass o f labour factors coupled with capital factors o f production. I furthermore want to question whether income earned through such market production can continue to be the primary means by which we distribute, ration and consume the capitalist social product given developments in production technology. Miller claims that income earned through producing with respect to markets for mundane consumer goods is, and can continue to be, the primary source o f income for most people. This is because a production constraint - human production for mundane market wants - cannot be lifted. I want to dispute both o f these assumptions.

I will argue that, first, the development o f production technology under oligopolistic capital is in the process o f lifting ‘the curse of labour which Jehovah bestowed upon Adam’ (Grundrisse, p.661). Technological development under oligopolistic capitalism is in the process o f perfecting production, distribution and retail facilities which are becoming increasingly capital intensive and are diminishing the amounts o f abstract socially necessary (mental and muscle) labour hours which have to

^"^^Later I will be making a distinction between the evaluative basis for the production o f mundane consumer goods and production which services the educational, healthcare, intellectual, artistic, sporting and recreational life o f the community. The production value o f different kinds o f bread ultimately depends on prevailing and prospective preferences for granary, ciabatta, baguettes, bagels, etc. The production value o f goods internal to the educational, healthcare, intellectual, artistic, sporting and recreational life o f the community is not ultimately reducible to the actual wants o f those who produce for such needs or those who benefit from such production. Rather, in such cases the individual has her wants constituted by the practices which form the educational, healthcare, intellectual, artistic, sporting and recreational life o f the community. See below, section 3.12 entitled ‘Associations o f Producers’.

be performed in order to produce primary, secondary and tertiary goods for consumer wants.

Second, because o f such developments in production technology ‘income earned through the market’ can no longer serve as the primary means by which to augment, distribute and ration consumption o f the capitalist social product. The development o f productive forces, and the satisfaction o f human wants, becomes ‘fettered’ in a system o f production in which distribution is primarily dependent upon capitalist wage-labour. An unconditional basic income (to meet basic needs) and returns to the performance o f associative production are necessary if we are aiming to optimise the servicing o f needs in a post-capitalist/wage-labour society. I will first discuss the replacement o f labour by capital factors o f production and then go on to discuss fettering, a basic income and the consumption o f the capitalist economic product.

3.111 The Marxian Technological-Fix

Technological development under oligopoly capital holds the prospect o f a post

wage-labour economy. That is, the end o f a state o f affairs in which man is compelled to enjoin production simply, or largely, for the sake o f a wage (exchange-value). The advent o f the capitalist mode o f production ushered in a specialisation and division o f labour in which work became largely stupefying and stultifying for the individual. However, the replacement o f labour factors by capital factors o f production within oligopoly capitalism is consigning such work to history. Alienation Marxists aim for a

^"^^There are tendencies within capitalism, which fulfil the communist aim o f a post wage-labour global economy. Under communism capital intensive production facilities would be charged with extraction o f raw materials, its processing into capital and consumer goods and the distribution o f such goods to consumers across all nations. High technology extraction, processing and distribution facilities should service the wants o f a global consuming base. A communist aim is to have such goods, and this realm o f production, almost wholly serviced by technology, and driven by groups o f technocrats (computer programmers, engineers, production managers, etc.). Instead o f saying that w e should ‘oblige producers’ we should be saying that we aim to primarily ‘oblige technology’ to produce for such mundane consumer wants.

particular finition o f oligopolistic capitalist development. We want such systems of production and consumption, in primary (commodity), secondary (manufactures) and tertiary (service sector) products, to be almost wholly driven by technology. Technology must replace mundane work. Machines must replace the stultifying exercise o f human muscle power and computers must replace the stupefying application o f human brain power.

To be absolutely clear. Alienation Marxists are not claiming that there can and should be an end to human production altogether and that future communism will enable man to sit back and simply enjoy a life of consumption.^^® Properly constituted, production can and should be a means to individual freedom and self-realisation. Capitalism holds the prospect for a post wage-labour future. Developments in technology holds for us the prospects for an increase in leisure-time and/or an increase in the amount o f human skill and effort devoted to the kinds o f production which machines and computers cannot perform. In theory, any dull, mundane or repetitive productive task can be performed by technology. I will be arguing that capitalism tends towards the replacement o f such labour by capital factors within the production process. However, with technology (capital) at hand, man will be still be required to perform those aspects o f production which machines and computers cannot service. That is, those aspects o f production which necessarily require human skill, creativity and judgement. A problem remains as to how we should organise that human effort and endeavour that necessarily requires the development, exercise and expression o f our generically human powers and capacities.

course a life o f leisure would be an option under communism if an individual really considered this the best life to be lived. However, as I argued in part two, if individuals are able to develop their capacities then, in general, they count the exercise and expression o f those capacities as part o f their good. That is.

An Alienation Marxist aim is for all forms o f work will become professional, vocational and ‘associative’ in nature. That is, most, if not all, human production will require the development, exercise and expression o f judgement, skill and creativity as is particular to the kinds o f theoretical and practical knowledge which are generated, accumulated and applied within particular professions and vocations. Professions and vocations arise within particular social practices and are rooted in the practical and/or expressive needs o f the community. I will say more about such matters in sections (3.12) and (3.13) below. For now I want to return to the claim that capitalism tends towards the replacement o f labour factors by capital factors o f production.

Alienation Marxists believe that we should be in the business o f encouraging those economic forces which can put mankind beyond the need for mass employment (wage-labour) in the production o f agricultural, industrial and certain service sector goods. Developments within oligopoly capitalism are carrying us to the realisation o f such a goal. Technological development has already resulted in radical displacements o f

mass human labour from the primary-to-the-secondary sector o f the capitalist economy, and subsequent displacements o f labour from industry-to-service sector production.^^’ Such displacements of human labour can and must be followed by the wholesale replacement o f wage-labour by capital factors o f production in agricultural, industrial and main strands o f (capitalist) service sector production.^^^

they com e to prefer, or take pleasure in, those vocations and pursuits, which enable them to secure a self- identity through the exercise and expression o f their developed capacities.

^^'For the OECD Labour Force Statistics illustrating this displacement o f human labour see David Harvey’s book The Condition o f Postmodemitv An Enquiry into the O risins o f Cultural Chanse

(Blackwell, 1990), p. 157.

^^^There is still those aspects o f the mainly service sector portion social product, and the satisfaction o f human needs and wants, which necessarily requires human production and the development, exercise and expression o f our generically human powers and capacities. The organisation o f such necessary human production will be addressed in section (3.12) and (3.13) below.

Throughout history man has had to act upon inorganic earth with his labour, and with tools in hand, in order to service the needs o f himself and wider society. Such labour has, in different modes o f production - Ancient, Feudal and Capitalist - been conducted within distinctive relations o f production - Master/Slave, Lord/Serf, and Capitalist/Wage-Labour. Our aim must be to largely consign wage-labour to history and have mostly capital factors mediating the metabolism that man needs to effect between inorganic nature and his mundane material needs.

Marx writes:

... the degree that large industry develops, the creation o f real wealth comes to depend less on labour time and on the amount o f labour employed than on the power o f agencies set in motion during labour time, whose ‘powerful effectiveness’ is itself in turn out o f all proportion to the direct labour time spent on their production, but depends rather on the general state o f science and on the progress o f technology, or the application o f this science to production. The development o f this science, especially natural science, and all others with the latter, is itself in turn related to the development o f material production.) Agriculture, e.g., becomes merely the application o f the science o f material metabolism, its regulation for the greatest advantage o f the entire body o f society. Real wealth manifests itself, rather - and large industry reveals this - in the monstrous disproportion between labour time applied, and its product, as well as in the qualitative imbalance between labour, reduced to pure abstraction, and the power o f the production process it superintends. Labour no longer appears so much to be included within the production process; rather the human being comes to relate more as a watchman and regulator to the production process itself. (What holds for machinery holds likewise for the combination o f human activities and the development o f human intercourse.) No longer does the worker insert a modified natural thing as middle link between the object and himself; rather, he inserts the process o f nature, transformed into an industrial process, as a means between himself and inorganic nature, mastering it. He steps to the side o f the production process instead o f being its chief actor.

A communist aim is for ‘man to step to the side o f production instead o f being its chief actor’. How has capitalism have careered us towards such an aspiration? How far have we got towards the realisation o f this aim? What tendencies within capitalism have set us on the path for capital-intensive production and the exclusion o f wage-labour from the production process?

Over the course o f twentieth century capitalist development there has occurred radical transformations in the organisation and conduct o f both capital and labour.

First, capital. As mentioned earlier, the era o f competitive capitalism evolved into an epoch o f oligopoly and monopoly capitalism.^^"^ A history o f vertical and horizontal mergers has resulted in the centralisation o f financial and physical capital within monopolistic and oligopolistic corporations that now dominate almost every aspect o f capitalist economic life. Such development occurred in virtue of the economies o f scale that can be secured through gearing primary, secondary and tertiary sector enterprises for mass production (consumption).

Second, labour. Such mass production (consumption) initially required a mass o f wage-labourers whose labour power was joined with physical capital in order to produce for mass market wants. Such workers were subject to a stupefying and stultifying specialisation and division o f labour. Each worker performed a mundane and routine task in return for a wage.^^^ Productive tasks tended to be made as simple as possible for two main reasons.^^^ First, it is easier to train workers, and to replace workers. Second, the supply o f potential workers is maximised, thus wage is kept as low as possible.

An important aspect o f the argument that follows is that the de-skilling o f work prepared (prepares) the ground for the eventual replacement o f labour by capital factors o f production. Capital-intensive production facilities provide for what used to be the

^^''Karl Marx Capital V ol.l (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990), ch.25 sect.2.

de-skilling o f work over the course o f industrial capitalism is documented in Harry Braverman’s book Labour & Monopoly Capital The D egradation o f Work in the Twentieth Century (Monthly Review Press, 1974). Braverman’s classic study is up-dated in Case Studies on the Labour Process (Monthly Review Press, 1979), ed. Andrew Zimbalist. This later study documents trends towards de-skilling within the service sector and ‘white-collar’ production.

^^^Karl Marx Capital V o l.l (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990), p.517 ‘The Most Immediate Effects o f Machine Production on the Worker’. A lso see Harry Braverman’s Labour & Monopoly Capitalism The

preserve o f mass labour. Along with this tendency is the trend towards the super-s]d\\m%

o f work for those who drive, service and develop capital-intensive systems of production. For Communists, the highly skilled and high-salary work o f technocrats and managers working with capital-intensive factors o f production, and within oligopolistic capitalist corporations, can, will and should produce in the place o f mass labour. I will return to this issue later, first I want to examine the tendency towards the displacement and eventual replacement o f mass labour within the capitalist production process.

The unionisation and politicisation of labour issued in ‘struggles’ (at factory gates and within the State) to improve the lot o f the worker within the capitalist mode o f production. Unions tried to promote the interests o f the worker against the interests o f capital (profit). The advent o f mass production brought about mass employment and the prospect o f collective bargaining of pay and conditions for workers who harboured a coincidence o f such interests. Some unions tried to stem tendencies towards the dumbing down o f working practices by maintaining ‘closed shops’ o f semi-skilled workers. On the back o f the union movement arose labour-orientated political parties dedicated to promoting the interests o f the worker within the State. Union-sponsored political parties sought to promote goals such as full employment, re-distributive taxation, rights to union membership, a minimum wage, sickness and paternity leave, limits to the working week, health and safety regulations within the work-place, as well as more general rights o f access to education, healthcare, welfare benefits and cultural

goods.^^^

D egradation o f Work in the Twentieth Century (Monthly Review Press, 1974), p.82, on the ‘Babbage Principle’.

^^^The success o f labour movement over the course o f twentieth century capitalism was contingent upon the fact that there were three basic operating assumptions that constrained the power o f oligopolistic corporations. First, econom ies within which unions exerted their power were relatively closed. Second, there obtained the political will, opportunity and practice, o f Keynesian demand-management and deficit-

The activities and aim o f unions and union-sponsored political parties upped the employment ante/^^ Whether the worker secures better terms and conditions through a union or the political process, such demands impose costs upon profit-maximising (cost- minimising) oligopolistic employers?^^ Also, union and political demands restrict the ‘flexibility’ o f oligopolistic corporations to adapt to changing conditions o f supply and demand within markets for particular goods. Higher production costs and restrictions upon corporate freedom to adapt the conditions o f supply lead to either or both o f two courses o f action. First, to go ‘global’ and seek a work-force in developing countries with more modest (or even meagre) expectations as regards remuneration and conditions

financing in order to sustain full employment. (Conditions o f full-employment give unions relatively greater bargaining strength; there is no alternative source o f labour for capitalists to use.) The success o f Keynesian demand-management policies rested on the fact that the State could largely contain/predict the effects o f fiscal expansion within the confines o f the national econom ic border. Third, there was the relative ‘inertia’ o f private financial and physical capital.

The demise o f traditional union movement and the rise o f new labour thinking can be accounted for in terms o f the fact that there are no longer industrial centres which employ a mass o f labour factors and the fact that all three operating assumptions o f the capitalist political economy have been transformed through the so-called ‘globalisation’ o f financial and physical capital and increased world trade. First, capitalist econom ies are more open. Second, Governments cannot contain the effects o f Keynesian deficit- financing and demand management policies within their national borders. The Social Democratic State (and mainstream political parties) have come to accept high unemployment as a fact o f advanced capitalist econom ic life, or else they attempt to falsify the facts and convince the general population that things are better than they are (see later). Third, private financial and physical capital are more ‘fluid’ and can traverse the globe seeking the most profitable conditions within which to produce and trade goods and services.

^^^The fast-food service sector o f the late capitalist economies is notorious for paying low wages and having stultifying and stupefying conditions o f work. This situation has persisted because the work-force is non-union. However, in 1998 the first M acD on ald’s outlet was unionised. In Canada the Canadian Auto