I am continuing with my examination of a series of essays on communization published by Clever Monkey in the book, Communization and its discontents. The book presents the idea of communization through the lens of writers who, allegedly, embrace the idea.

The essays raise several questions regarding communization, the answers to which should cause anyone reading them to take pause.

Where do we begin communizing society?

We begin, of course, with an idea of communism.

What does the term communism mean?

It means a society without classes, property or the state; a society characterized by the principle, “to each according to need.”

Simple enough, right? Why then does the idea of communization cause so much confusion among communists? The reason may be found in the answer to a third question:

Is communization possible?

We don’t know.

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In his critique of the essay, Reflection on The Call, Leon de Mattis points to what he says is the problem bedeviling the Communization School at least with regards to communizers associated with Tiqqun:

“The need for communism traverses the entirety of the society of capital. the merit of Call lies in taking note of this, and of trying to design strategies which live up to this realization. Its weakness comes from the continually resurgent temptation to think that the desire to establish different relations suffices to start producing them.”

[NOTE: The original document can be found here.]

Mattis raises a relevant point for communization. It is one thing to aspire to a society where the principle “to each according to need” prevails, quite another thing to realize it practically. A society characterized by the communist principle requires certain definite technical material conditions so that the social product can be distributed without regard to the labor contribution of its members.

These conditions may not necessarily require the complete automation of production, but they must at least guarantee that whatever living labor is required can be met by voluntary contribution of the members of society. Basically, communism requires that wage labor is already superfluous to the production of material wealth at present.

If Mathis had begun his critique of The Call this way, I would have no problem with the laundry list of defects in The Call he then begins to catalogue. Instead he basically builds a case for a conclusion he had arrived at before he even began his critique:

“Call falls into a common trap for those who try to pose the question of communization in an at least somewhat practical manner: the responses that we try to bring forward today seem to define a space which only veritable insurgents could populate, whilst the others, those who remain apart from this insurgency, remain nothing but proletarians integrated to capital.”

Which is to say, for Mattis, the question is not whether wage labor can be abolished today, but whether immediately aiming to abolish wage labor is a politically realistic strategy for communists.

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Let us be very clear on this point. As I stated in response to a comment by Thomas Lord in my previous post, certain folks passing themselves off as part of the communization current want to dismantle and eviscerate communization.

I include TC and Endnotes on this list.

Communist theory doesn’t tell us how to communize, says Theorie Communiste.

We cannot simply declare the end of wage slavery, says the Endnotes collective.

To this rather short list — so far — we can now add Leon de Mattis.

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Communism can only be defined as the complete abolition of wage labor, capital and the state, and the realization of the principle of “to each according to need”. If communization has any meaning, it is that the complete abolition of wage labor, capital and the state — a fully communist society — is possible right now, immediately.

With hundreds of millions of proletarians locked out of all productive employment and with the state absorbing 40, 50, even 60% of GDP in every industrial country, those making the argument against the idea that communism is possible — right now — have a very heavy lift to make.

The opponents of communization cannot base their argument on the technical question of superfluity of labor power with millions now streaming across the Mexican border and the Mediterranean seeking employment in the advanced countries. Instead, they suggest, as Mattis does, that those who call for the immediate abolition of wage slavery have no idea what they intend to replace it with:

“Any workers’ cooperative can abolish ‘[capitalistic] relations of production’ between its members in the sense understood by Call. Would it thereby free itself from capitalist valorization? Financial circuits, commercialization, productivity standards… everything is there so that the workers of the cooperative self-exploit as surely as if the boss was still physically looming over them. Similarly, would a community whose members worked in common and didn’t engage in monetary relations among themselves thereby escape ‘relations of production’? On the condition of transforming communism into a series of principles to be respected we might perhaps be able to maintain the illusion for a while. But this would be to forget that every point of contact between the community and its exterior would be the occasion to see the ‘relations of production’ reassert their rights and reintroduce the whole community into class relations: juridical statutes of occupied buildings and land, the supply of provisions, energy, the sale of the surplus”.

Capitalism, says Mattis, encompasses the whole of society. It is not just restricted to the production process. It follows from this that any activity — even self-managed worker cooperatives — can become a site of capitalistic valorization.

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How then do we escape a process that constitutes, (or is capable of constituting), everything? Having thus directed us into a philosophical dead end, Mattis then offers us his own practical solution:

“‘The overthrowing of capitalism will come from those who are able to create the conditions for other types of relations’

Really? Mattis has just shown us that no place, no amount of sharing, no mode of living, nor any amount of self-management, can escape the evil clutches of capital. Now he advises us to find,

“a process that is not itself capitalist – since in the end it has the capacity to destroy capitalism – and yet is nonetheless born within the capitalist social relation.”

This sounds a lot like instructions for “How to live like a billionaire on a wage workers salary”:

First of all, get a billion dollars.

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What Mattis has done here is deliberately pose the question, “How do we communize society?” in such a way that it only returns an irrational answer. If every process in society is a site for capitalistic valorization and every relation, activity and individual is simply a specific form of this process of valorization, it would seem that exit from the mode of production is impossible.

The question, as Mattis poses it, deliberately ignores Marx’s dictum that there is no need to find a process that is not itself capitalist precisely for the reason that capital itself creates the material condition for communism:

“The rate of profit is the motive power of capitalist production. Things are produced only so long as they can be produced with a profit. Hence the concern of the English economists over the decline of the rate of profit. The fact that the bare possibility of this happening should worry Ricardo, shows his profound understanding of the conditions of capitalist production. It is that which is held against him, it is his unconcern about “human beings,” and his having an eye solely for the development of the productive forces, whatever the cost in human beings and capital-values — it is precisely that which is the important thing about him. Development of the productive forces of social labour is the historical task and justification of capital. This is just the way in which it unconsciously creates the material requirements of a higher mode of production.“ [My emphasis]

What Mattis should have told the authors of The Call is that we have no need to look beyond capital for individuals who can bring about communism. Capital itself is creating the material conditions for communism. We need only recognize this creation practically.

Capital has already rendered wage labor superfluous (or almost superfluous) to the production of material wealth. The practical recognition of this fact of modern society can only take the form of actually putting an end to wage labor.

We may not yet have a realistic strategy for accomplishing the immediate abolition of wage labor, but it is clear Endnotes, Theorie Communiste and Leon de Mattis want to avoid discussing the problem.