The Historic
Mission of Capital is not to be confused with the Civilising Mission of Capital. The latter is an inevitable consequence of the former.
For Marx, as set
out in his and Engels' theory of historical materialism, the
evolution of new social formations is a process of natural history,
just as much as the evolution of new species is a process of natural
history, as set out by Darwin. New species do not suddenly appear
from nowhere, but depend upon a long process of evolution before
them, what goes before is a necessary precondition for what comes
after. So too with social formations.
According to
Historical Materialism, the level of the productive forces
determines productive relations, and productive relations determine
the social relations that arise on the back of them, as well as the
ideas that flow from these relations, which form the foundations of
the political and ideological superstructure. The totality of the
productive relations, social relations and superstructure
constitutes the mode of production. New social formation evolve
because of development of the productive forces, productive
relations, and social relations. This evolution is driven by
natural laws, therefore, in the same way that biological evolution
occurs.
Because production
is, therefore, the foundation of historical materialism, the
fundamental natural law that governs it is The Law of Value, because
it is the determinant of the how, what, where and when of
production. Similarly, the driving force of historical materialism
is the rise in social productivity, because it is that which acts to
relax the constraints imposed by The Law of Value, but it is also
that, which brings about the changes in the productive forces, and
in the relations of production. Only if society could raise social
productivity to such a level whereby it no longer has to make
choices about how to allocate resources, to obtain desired ends,
i.e. where there was abundance, so that the principle of “From
each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”
applied, could The Law of Value cease to operate.
Capitalism and
Socialism are not two separate channels of historical development,
as is the case, for example, with humans and chimpanzees, but flow
down the same historical channel, in the same way that humans flow
down the same channel as the common ancestor of both humans and
chimpanzees. Before Socialism could be possible, humanity first had
to pass through the social formation of capitalism. Capitalism
creates the material conditions for Socialism.
Socialism is not
possible without the collective ownership of the means of
production, and without the forces of production having been
developed to a very high level, which itself requires an extensive
development of the social division of labour, which requires large
open markets, and development of a global economy. It is only
capitalism that can bring this about, and this is its historic
mission.
Unless these
material conditions are fulfilled, the same forces that resulted in
the dissolution of the primitive commune, as described by Engels in
The Origin of The Family, and in Anti-Duhring, would
again lead to the same process of dissolution, formation of private
property, and of classes based upon it, along with the erection of a
class state. That is why all notions of peasant socialism, guild
socialism and so on are both Utopian and reactionary.
But, in Theories
of Surplus Value, Marx also sets out why the individual
producers could never have voluntarily come together to collectivise
their small scattered means of production. Being determines
consciousness, and the existence of each individual producer is what
creates their own individualistic world outlook. The individual
producer necessarily looks to their own well-being and that of their
family. In so far as they must engage in commodity production, that
in itself forces them into competition with other individual
producers, and is what leads them, ultimately, to accumulate
capital. There is nothing in the existence or the psyche of the
individual producer that would lead them to develop a socialistic,
collectivist mentality that would lead them to voluntarily pool
their means of production with other individual producers. So, as
Marx says, this first collectivisation of the small scattered means
of production can only, historically, take the form of capital.
The closest to it
comes in the form of the guilds, and forms the basis of Guild
Socialism. But, the guilds were simply a form of production that
flowed from the nature of feudalism. They reproduce within
themselves all of the aspects of feudal society. The guild contains
within it the antagonism between Master and Apprentice, it contains
all of the same paternalistic relations of feudalism, and it is
based upon the reproduction of the same feudal monopolies. The
guilds and Guild Socialism, like Peasant Socialism, is reactionary,
because it is based upon these feudal social relations, and feudal
monopolies that are anti-competitive, and restrain the development
of the productive forces as a consequence.
It is only as
capital that the scattered means of production can first be
effectively brought together, as a result of the dispossession of
the individual producers, and concentration and centralisation of
them in the hands of a tiny group of capitalists. As Marx sets out,
this process of dispossession and expropriation, bemoaned by the
moralists and moral socialists, is the greatest progressive event in
human history, because, in creating capital and capitalism, it opens
the door to the greatest development of the productive forces the
world has ever seen, it breaks down regional and then national
borders, it creates a world market and world economy, and it creates
the industrial proletariat, the agent that can take hold of all of
this social capital, and on the basis of it, establish socialism.
This is the Historic Mission of Capital.
No comments:
Post a Comment