I know I said I would review Nicole Pepperell’s essay next, but I still haven’t figured out what the fuck her argument is, yet. I apologize for that. I will keep at it until I have something relevant to say about it.

In the meantime, one of the more interesting takes on the notion of communization as a strategy is offered by Jasper Bernes’ “The Double Barricade and the Glass Floor”. Bernes explains how really difficult it may be to produce a strategy based on communization theory. I think he is right. Communization theory seems to get the relation between the class struggle and the immediate abolition of labor exactly backwards.

Trying to produce a strategy based on the premise that class struggle leads to the abolition of wage labor may not just be difficult, it may be impossible.

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Bernes begins his discussion by citing an argument from Theorie Communiste (TC):

“For TC, the proletariat now finds itself confronted with a paradoxical condition where ‘acting as a class has become the very limit of class action.’ In recent struggles (basically since the mid-1990s) TC note the emergence of new forms of struggle in which ‘class belonging [is] an external constraint.’ It is no longer possible to propose a politics based upon the affirmation of working-class autonomy, as there is no longer an independent ‘workers’ identity.’ Every affirmation of the class of labor becomes, by necessity, an affirmation of capital: ‘in each of its struggles, the proletariat sees how its existence as a class is objectified in the reproduction of capital as something foreign to it.’ This is a limit in the double sense above – a fetter on revolutionary action, but also a generative condition which produces the possibility of superseding the capital-labor relationship. The self-abolition of the proletariat is now possible because ‘being a class becomes the obstacle which its struggle as a class has to overcome.’”

According to Bernes, in the course of its battle with capital, the proletarians encounter, not just the capitalist class, but their own position as a class of workers. They find that their ultimate obstacle is their own class position. Their position as a class becomes a fetter on their struggle against capital. The workers must put an end to their position as workers, not just to emancipate themselves, but merely to guarantee their own survival.

There is some fine print, of course.

At the beginning of their life-long collaboration, Marx and Engels observed that communism implied the universal dependence of the revolution in one nation on the revolution of all the others. The capital-(wage)-labor relationship is a global relationship. Because of the global character of the class of proletarians, the self-abolition of the proletariat can only be effected all at once by all of the proletarians together. If this conclusion is not obvious, just think what would happen if you just decide on your own to stop selling your labor power to capital all by your lonesome. You would be homeless and hungry within weeks, if not days.

*****

This is an unimaginably high bar for proletarians to clear: they can’t put an end to wage slavery unless they do it together as a class. In practice, however, the class struggle is like a game of whack-a-mole, with conflicts between the classes breaking out here and there with little relation to one another.

Egypt and Tunisia may be popping off, while the streets of the United States and Europe are deathly quiet; Athens and Madrid may be in turmoil, while Berlin is indifferent or even hostile. You can’t really put an end to wage slavery this way. Ending wage slavery is like a symphony; everybody has to be on the same sheet of music or the result is just cacophony.

Add to this the fact that In the 21st century, no one can simply grab a factory, office building or campus and declare a liberated zone. As Bernes observes, even if you could seize a strip-mall, the DMV or an industrial park, what would you do with it?

“The project of the ‘seizure of the means of production’ finds itself blocked, or faced with the absurd prospect of collectivizing Wal-Mart or Apple, workplaces so penetrated to their very core by the commodity-form that they solicit nothing less than total destruction.This is different than France in 1871 or even 1968, different than Russia in 1917 or Spain in 1936, places where the industries of the means of subsistence were ready to-hand and expropriable, where one might have found, in some reasonable radius, the food, clothing, housing and medicine necessary for a future society liberated from the exigencies of value.”

Moreover, even when the proletarians struggle side by side they often find that their immediate aims are incompatible with one another. Are we trying to negotiate a wage agreement or occupying the university campus? Shutting down the campus or making it available to everyone?

Unfortunately, it is one thing to say the workers encounter the paradoxical condition where acting as a class has become the very limit of class action; it is quite another thing to say the proletarians realize that to overcome the limits of class action, they must put an end to their class. It is just as likely that the proletarians, having encountered the limits of class action, become discouraged after beating their heads against a brick wall for decades without success. This is the real problem we face now. In Europe and America, there is no class struggle to speak of and an atmosphere of despair hangs over everything.

*****

There is a certain fallacy that the class struggle against capital and the abolition of wage labor are joined at the hip, so to speak. The relation is stated along lines similar to the argument of 20th century socialism. Roughly, it goes this way:

In their struggle against the capitalists, the workers come to see that they must put an end to wage labor

As this argument suggests, 20th century socialism proposed that the workers become conscious of the need to abolish wage labor through their struggle with the capitalists. As this class struggle deepens and intensifies, so will the communist consciousness of the workers.

I would like to throw cold water on this rather overly optimistic argument.

In fact, the class struggle has no direct relation with the consciousness of the need to abolish wage labor. The two — the class struggle and communist consciousness — are concerned with two different things. The class struggle is concerned with the class conflict between the proletarians and capital; while the communist consciousness of the working class concerns the conflict within the proletariat itself: on competition among workers as individuals over sale of their labor powers.

I want to emphasize that I am not saying there is no relation between the class struggle and the abolition of wage labor; rather, I am arguing that there is no direct relation between the class struggle and the abolition of wage labor. Not even a relationship as tenuous as the one Theorie Communiste proposes.

There is an indirect relationship, but it is not a relationship where the abolition of wage labor arises directly from the class struggle as TC and Bernes appear to argue.

*****

At one point we could have argued that there is a direct relationship between the class struggle and the communist consciousness of the proletarians. It still would not have been accurate even then, but it was effectively true.

This was the case prior to the Great Depression, when rapid industrialization required ever greater masses of workers to feed the hungry maws of capitalist factories. The rapid expansion of capital required an equally rapid expansion of workers available to produce still more capital. Labor power was at a premium and the competition among workers over sale of their labor power was less of a factor than the conflict between the two classes.

Today, the era of rapid industrialization is behind us in the most advanced capitalist economies. (Not all countries, of course; late-comers like China and India are still in a period of rapid industrialization. But let’s leave them out of the equation for the moment.) With most of the advanced industrial countries now mired in stagnation, barely growing at all, competition among the workers is now a larger factor than it was during what many are calling fordist industrialization.

This is a big problem because the class struggle is attenuated by intensified competition over the sale of labor power. To put an end to competition of the sale of labor power, however, the proletarians must put an end to the sale of labor power; they must abolish wage labor. To state this another way, the movement to abolish wage labor is not a product of the class struggle; rather, at this point the class struggle is a product of the movement to put an end to wage labor.

*****

Our attention has been misplaced. For decades communists have understood the relationship between the class struggle and the abolition of wage labor to be the exact opposite of what it really is. It is not the class struggle that prepares the proletarians for the complete abolition of wage labor, but the fight for the abolition of wage labor that propels the class struggle.