What follows is a long essay by the French communization theorist, Gilles Dauvé translated by Ediciones Inéditos. It is a long read, a read which varies in content and tone but a text which masterfully summarizes the communist critique of work. The original can be found here at Troploin. He also dutifully notes that without the abolition of work there can be no communist revolution or communism. We hope you enjoy reading this as much as we enjoyed translating it. ¡A la chingada con el trabajo!

Here you will find a lightly modified chapter 3 from the book “From Crisis to Communization” published in 2017 by Editions Entremonde.

If human societies have over the last few centuries moved towards the evermore precise and rigorous measure of time, it is so that they may economize it so that production time may be reduced. The obsession with “winning” time and the fear of “losing” it are integral to capitalism. To work is to struggle against time.

On the contrary, human beings for whom the frantic search for productivity is not an imperative, have no need to measure everything by the seconds and minutes as they produce.

The best way to render energy-use in the most productive way possible is to measure it by time so as to shorten it. For this reason the separation between work and the rest of life is essential to the accounting of time which finds itself at the core of value: one cannot measure a moment and the effort expended in that moment unless that segment of time is detached from all others.

We know how much to pay for a housekeeper: we cannot know the “worth” of what a housewife does in their own home. Even if the two accomplished the same tasks between 9AM and noon, those 180 minutes do not have the same meaning for the employee who came to perform a three-hour task and for the housewife who is busy at home performing various tasks.

Even the “by piece” wage of a single worker alone at his machine will be calculated according to the number of seconds need to make each piece.

Indeed, one cannot really reduce labor time, because labor time, by its socially-average definition, is not calculable for each task or for each object. A worker’s wage at their machine will be the priceof a work whose value cannot be calculated, the specific contribution of this worker to all the value created in the firm. Money really is crystallized labor, only existing as an instrument within the circulation of goods under the condition that these commodities also set in motion other commodities and not by the calculation of the quantity of labor each carries within it. A specific loaf of bread and a teapot can be comparable in weight and not by the energy expenditure need to produce either of them. Whatever Taylor may have believed, no scientific method will ever quantify the new value added by a specific work task within a workshop or an office.

“Rational madness,” Taylorism is none the less consistent with the necessities of Capital. As soon as a computer mousepad plant begins to use equipment which requires the worker to produce more but at the same wage, management ignores the precise resulting increase of value, meanwhile it knows exactly how much it will pay the worker, how many mousepads the worker is supposed to make within a given time and how much they will sell each mousepad for. What is important here is that the introduction of new equipment forces the worker to be more productive. All the bourgeois knows, and which they count, are the prices, first the wages and the profits and although economists speak of value and creation of value, they openly consider “value” to be a metaphysical speculation.

The capitalist struggle against time bears the effect of a planned permanent obsolescence of commodities. Another consequence is the obsession with saving time in everyday life. These two phenomena have accelerated in the last twenty and thirty years, giving rise to a denunciation of speed and “the dictatorship of immediacy”; we see eulogies to slowness, slow food…reactions with little impact because they do not ascend to recover labor time.

30 years ago, a study by Barbara Garson showed how computers are transforming the office of the future into the factory of the past.The wage worker charged with taking airline ticket reservations by phone sees their work cut up into four mandatory phrases, timed and monitored. “To control everything, that’s the goal of the system,” declared one employee. It’s not simply that “the system” knows everything done at each moment but that for this end “the system” decomposes each gesture to such a degree that the work becomes more and more incomprehensible for those who do it (at the very moment where the operation of our daily objects become infinitely more mysterious to us than the motor in the fridge).

In 1966 when an MIT researcher came up with the ELIZA program, an automated therapist who responded without human intervention to medical questions, this expert system found widespread approval, many considering it already a human therapist “as an information processor and decision-taker.”If this shortening of human skills was possible, it was because knowledge and social relations have already previously been reduced to mechanics, to the quantifiable.

Computerization is not the cause: a machine does not create a social relation. Capitalism privileges the result (the product) over the process, the (measurable) object over relations and privileges the decomposable and quantifiable tasks over the continuity of the ensemble. But why bother to reduce the cost of labor which remains a small part of the cost of production? According to official statistics, around 1980, in the metal industry, direct work accounted for 10% of total costs. 30 years later, a pair of Nike Air Pegasus would sell for $70 in the United States, which includes a $3 wage for Asian workers, $16 for raw materials and $16 for design and advertising which adds up to $35. In summary, $3 in labor, a production cost of $35 for a sale price of $70.

This is so because the game is not played from an accounting point of view. It is about controlling the direct workers who, unlike executives, advertisers and machines, are likely to resist or strike. “That’s why,” concluded B. Garson,” any large mass of workers that can be automated will be. Automated does not necessarily mean that robots will replace them, but that their work is organized so as to become controllable at all times. At least in theory, because it is always the one who execute the work that will be best able to control the work. As the old worker at Renault said: “Your boss pays you for your work, not for the way you do the work.” At the beginning of the 20th century, counters were installed on typewriters to check the number of keystrokes: some typists responded by leaving wider spaces, by not hitting the space bar one time, but two, three, four, even five times.

2.7 The society of king-labor

Our order of presentation is not chronological: we did not go back to the origin of work, knowing that in real history these elements related to work did not take on the same importance at the same time. It has taken millenia before there was an exchange of equivalents, that is to say, an exchange based on the more or less rigorous estimates of necessary labor time and that “the law of value” would come and equalize private work. Moreover, “money,” as the means to count in terms of value and production and to circulate goods according to an exchange of equivalents indeed precedes currency as we know it: there were not instruments specifically reserved for the function of money (which also did not have other uses, whether everyday or ritualistic). The arrival of coinage is late (7th. Century B.C.).

In the world in which we live, each of the aspects which we have conveniently distinguished in the exposition are the conditions for all the others. For example, to force humans to “make a living” via the wage, it was necessary to deprive them of autonomous means of existence (§2.1). Further, measuring work supposes that it is separated from all other activities (§2.4). It is only modern capitalism which has fully developed the constitutive elements of work.

Despite the fact that only a minority of the world’s population receive a wage and that even smaller minority benefits from a good labor contract (with fixed & duly paid wages, labor rights, social security contributions and union dues), the wage-employment nonetheless dominates.

Capitalist forms determine pre-capitalist forms. A 9 year old Turkish girl shepherding her parent’s herd of goats contributes to the family’s income. Meanwhile, one of her brothers lives by working odd jobs in a neighboring city, and the eldest brother works in a factory in Germany, where in 10 years maybe the young Turkish girl may work as a cleaning lady. This family is integrated into the global reproduction of the Capital/labor relation. The global market brings in more and more people into its logic, a minority of Earthlings today live on a purely “economy of subsistence” and work and money penetrate into the heart of slums.

It all depends on the point of view. For a sociologist or an anthropologist the activity of the young girl remains “entrenched” in precapitalist relations and he would describe how her kinship ties are saturated with archaisms, since, for example, her family has destined her to an arranged marriage. The anthropologist is not wrong. But for those who want to understand the nature of work, the method consists in finding what is in common between the young Turkish girl and a worker of Maruti Suzuki, or with a Bolivian bank employee (which is not to say that the three would have the same impact on the course of history).

The dominant social relation (wage labor) is not the sole one, but it determines all the others, including any sort of benevolent activity (which is labor indirectly remunerated), as well as including slavery (forced unpaid labor with absolute boss control over the worker, estimated at between 20 and 30million worldwide). And while we may read that the informal economy makes up 40% (made up of mostly women) of the so-called active world population, this statistic utilizes a category produced by the existence of wage-laborers which distinctly classifies that which does not enter its strict framework (labor contract) of work.

Let us not confuse work with employment. The undeniable fact that there are and will be fewer hires than the unemployed in the world does not prevent productive work from remaining the center of the world today. What is called “social security” refers to the place of work: the money paid (or not) to the student, the unemployed, the sick, to families, to the elderly, the disabled is granted to categories that either cannot, cannot yet or cannot any longer work. Although public opinion denounces king-money (and more subtle theoreticians denounce the domination of value), it would be more accurate to say that we live under the reign of work, that is to say, wage labor.

3. Neither work nor economy

§2 sought out to identify six characteristics which altogether constitute work: necessary work/surplus-labor and class divisions; value; commidification; separation; productivity and accounting; and time. Our ambition was not to construct a theoretical machine which would cease to function as soon as you remove one piece, as though, missing three of these six components, work would only partially continue to exist: only abstraction requires the separation into categories that which in reality is nested.

To comprehend the possible link between capitalism and a revolution which would abolish work, instead of taking these six elements separately, let’s consider them next as a whole.

3.1 Production is not economy

“Production” is often assimilated into artisanal or industrial fabrication of objects. It would seem to be more apropos to consider, as Alain Testart, does that there is production “whenever the means of work are applied to raw material to turn it into a consumable product in a form in which it was not before.” Hunter, harvester and fisher, unlike predators, make use of weapons and knowledge. By producing, the human also produces instruments and means of production, for example a bow for hunting. With agriculture, the human modifies nature with the intentional sowing of nutritional plants: from hunter-gather, the human becomes a “producer.”

But production is not synonymous with economy.

The difficulty lies in understanding that the production of the material conditions for existence has become a reality we call economy, progressively more autonomous from the rest of life, to the point where in the modern era it is a distinct sphere, with a separation between the time-space consecrated to making a living (work) and all other activities.

There is no “economic history,” because economy is a historical fact that has not reigned at all times and everywhere. For example, the noting of “per capita income” or “of households” only has any meaning when there exists individual persons or nuclear households.

Malthus attributed the possible crisis of capitalism to a growth of population that goes over the growth of resources, particularly food. Ecologists explain history by the capacity or the incapacity for societies to adjust to the environment to their needs. Rejuvenated by its taking into account of natural resources and the need to renew these resources, economic thought is nonetheless economic: it’s number one problem is the creation of a balance between means and ends. It’s a morality based on accounting.

Gregory Clark wrote in a well-documented book: “during the Malthusian era economic laws governing human society are the same as those governing all animal societies.” The driving thread within history would be the evolution of the relationship between available resources and the population, whether human or animal: the same reasoning was applied to the residents Charleville-Mézières, as the deer of the nearby Ardennes [forests].

Nonetheless, far from being an apologist for progress, Gregory Clark argues, with backing figures, that hunter-gathers spent between 4 and 5 hours a day gathering food; that in 1800 the average Earthling did not live better than those who lived 100,000 years before Christ; that in Asia the conditions were even worse, and that the so-called primitive “produced” more calories per hour of “work” than the civilized did in England. These facts are sobering, but what these figures show is a desire to reduce everything to measurability, as if the Amazonian and the Yorkshire laborer lived the same social relationship, separated only by different degrees on a scape of production and consumption.

The dominant mental schema has changed little since [Henri de] Saint-Simon’s time: “the production of useful things is the sole reasonable, and positive goal that political societies can propose for themselves.” The ideal would then be a society where “all men work. This obligation is imposed on all to constantly give their personal efforts toward a useful direction for society.” (L’Industrie, 1811-1812). For Saint-Simon, the merchant or farmer are as much “producers” as the worker or the industrialist (For him socialism would mean the suppression of the merchant and to meld the worker and the industrialist into one figure).

Under economic thought, society relies on the production and the allotment of resources. The socialist economist also brings into the fold the criterion of utility and of justice; the ecological economist brings the obligation of harmony with nature; but it is still a question of administrating a surplus: the relation between necessary labor and surplus labor become thought of as self-evident: it is a matter of producing something to eat, somewhere to live, somewhere to heal oneself…then finally arrive to the spice of life. Utility before what is pleasant. Soup before the concert. We must first be ants to then become a cicada.

To retain the relationship between necessary labor and surplus-labor is to retain work itself.

The fundamental mistake is to make everything about meeting the need to satisfy basic needs. Without food, I die: this self-evident statement only makes sense if it is connected to the fact that human existence is social. I don’t eat first so I can then be in society. Hunger is always lived and treated in function to the conditions imposed upon by human beings (whether they’re in Alaska or Tahiti) and their social organization. Hunger does not further intervene: both play at the same time: the cold is not more the cause of social life of the Inuit than the tropical humidity is the cause of the Tahitians. No vital necessity takes precedence over social links: between the two there is a simultaneity. The same is true under capitalism. Likewise in revolution. Similarly in communism. Except that production will no longer play the same role.

It is not a question of how do human beings produce themselves?; nor, what do they produce? (whether education software or assault weapons) But rather: what place do they take within the production of human life.

According to a widespread idea in the radical milieu, the objective will not be to “produce just to produce,” but rather to create the minimum abundance necessary without which human emancipation will not be possible.

Alfred Rosemer wrote in 1923: “Communism supposes and demands abundance because the distribution of products should be simple and easy.”

The real motive of this imperative for production is to not allow overconsumption: Rosmer prioritizes abundance because he sees in it the necessary condition for a just distribution.

Inversely, others make of a frugal moderation the condition of a free and solidarity-based community. In The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin (1974), on the planet Anarres owes much of its rather libertarian way of life to its harsh climates, which lends itself to favor mutual aid and also makes accumulation difficult.

Whether one prefers abundance or a soberness in production, in both visions, the priority is economic. This what we must criticize.

3.2 Communism as an activity

A frequent criticism of capitalism is that it fabricates goods without taking care of real needs, and then goes on to sell its wares on the market: the satisfaction of needs is but a side consequence. This conception then leads some to do the opposite: to start off based on needs, but this time based on supposed real needs which are decided upon collectively; a conception which desires to satisfy these needs through adequate production and equitable distribution, without the mediation of the market, thanks to a communitarian, democratic and self-organized organization.

This ignores that needs also make up an economic category.

Let’s observe that needs are almost always defined in the negative: to not die of hunger, of cold or of sickness; to not be forced to sleep in the rain, etc. When we speak of needs, we speak of a lack.

It is self-evident that human beings have basic necessities, such as to eat and to sleep, just as it is imperative to match these with existing resources. That which is untrue is the idea that human life consists of, above all, satisfying these needs. The only way we satisfy these needs, or fail in doing so, is by way of social interrelations. It is only under exceptional circumstances that we eat just so that we will not die. For human beings, to eat will always be more than just eating. Generally, we eat in the company of others, chosen or not, or we choose to eat alone, or we are forced to eat alone, which is also itself a social situation. Often we follow a diet, either dietary or not. Sometimes we have to skip a meal so as to not eat or drink too much. The same is true of all our other vital activities. As Marx wrote in The German Ideology, meeting vital needs also creates new needs, and “this production of new needs is the first historical fact.”

Contrary to a common error, the “materialist conception of history” does not say that “the economy” leads the world. This is often the way that the first part of The German Ideology is read, although Marx intended something else altogether. Firstly, social relations depend on how we produce our material conditions for life and not what our ideas are of the world. Secondly, we produced these material conditions in relation with other human beings, and in class societies, we create them through class relations. The “materialist conception” does not make “the economy” the motor of human evolution, but it can explain how the current domination of the economy over our world is a historical phenomena; a phenomena that was unknown in pre-history and one which was less important in Athens 500b.c. than in Athens 2015; and it is a phenomena which will disappear with communism.

Without developing what is said within From Crisis to Communization, let us say here that our problem lies not in inventing a new society which will put in parallel our needs and resources (as the economists may want), or transform artificial and extravagant needs into reasonable needs so as to attain a sufficient frugality (as the ecologists may want). It is rather a matter of understanding what our basic needs truly are. The first human need, wrote Marx, is the need for the other. We would say: the need to feed ourselves is indissoluble from the need of the other, and the two are satisfied (or not) at the same time. We must eat, that much is self-evident, and social relations do not fill empty stomachs, but we eat within those social relations.

All of this is verified during revolutionary periods: “without reserves,” the proletarian having neither money or food, or arms (at first), find their only strength is their acting with other proletarians.

Admittedly, at first the pressure of circumstances (internal conflicts, armed struggle, shortages…) will sometimes lead the insurgents to share and distribute as justly as possible (in both sense of the word), so, whether it they like it or not, they must ration. But the revolution would be damned if it proved incapable of distinguishing a social emergency from the rest of its fundamental “program,” it would be damned if it were to allow social emergency to determine its base.

We will not ask ourselves: “How many roof tiles are necessary for that house?” but rather: “how many could it house?” Starting from there, we will then figure out how many x tiles are necessary by how many y squared meters for the roof: to suppress accounting does not mean we will renounce the use of measurements.

The communizing motor of action will not be the search for the best or the most equal way of distributing goods, but rather the human relations and activities found therein: within communization, activity is more important than its productive result because this result depends on an activity and of ties that could and would strengthen bonds among the insurgents. That which stirs the proletarian to act is not the need to eat, it is the need to create among other proletarians a social relation, which among other things will also feed them.

The need to create food, to cultivate carrots for example, will be satisfied by way of social relations which, among other activities, will cultivate beans, which will not mean that each minute or hour of horticulture will be lived as a kind of a joy without cloudy skies.

Counter-revolution will of course exploit our inevitable disarray and local shortages. The revolution will not respond by bringing back to life an even-more productive industry, nor will it do away with bourgeois armies by creating an even stronger army. “Realism” is to be found where you least expect it. It is the bureaucrats whom of course will try to pass themselves as “practical,” explaining that after insurrectionary spontaneism must follow productive organization, which solely could resolve the most vital and urgent problems. Through means of some large and small transformations, the ideology of “common sense” (a hammer or computer are neutral, they will tell us, and that they’re neither capitalist nor communist) will promote a concern for efficiency which, despite a shift in discourse, will contain all the traits of productivity. However, work and productivity are linked. Work normalizes things. Keeping track of time during production demands that we separate it from the rest of the day, thus we detach it from life by distinctly calling it work.Revolution cannot make time-saving one of its priorities.

The division of labor will neither be overcome by a simple permanent sharing of duties. A varied form of work remains work. Working cooperatively is also work: collective work is also work. Working two hours a day is also work. The replacement of private producers with communitarian production, or the systematic re-distribution of tasks, only makes communist sense if the products are not compared – and thus incomparable – among each other (nor the activities which have produced them) by way of some calculus (implicit or not) of the real or supposed average labor time to make them. Because if we count, if social life revolves around this measure, whatever the mode of association, sooner or later value will reappear, even in a community with the most fraternal intentions.

This text started with a fictitious boss who offered illusory employment. In the so-called real world, many of our contemporaries “make a living” by making up marketing campaigns, which others print, then are deposited into mailboxes, which then are recovered at the dump to make into recycled paper, on which will be printed new prospectus, while experts are hired to analyze it all and intellectuals are hired to deplore them. The surrealists asked themselves if we suffered either too little or too much from reality… At any rate, the “absurdity” of work will never be enough to do away with it. We will need nothing less than a revolution. We do not ignore that “there is something ridiculous in talking about revolution”: “But the whole rest of it is even more ridiculous, since it is that which exists, along with the various forms its accepted.”

G.D.