💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › gilles-dauve-capital-and-state.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 10:29:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Capital and State Author: Gilles Dauvé Date: 1972 Language: en Topics: the state, capitalism, theory Source: http://libcom.org/library/capital-state-gilles-dauvé Notes: An extract of “The communist movement”, 1972, on communism, capital and their relation to the capitalist state. A section from Le mouvement communiste, Editions Champ Libre, 1972, Troisième partie : Révolution et contre-révolution., pp 166–176.
In the course of its evolution, communism has been driven to determine
itself both practically and theoretically in relation to the capitalist
State. The State is the government of men organised into classes.
Politics is the art of organising men. Political life is the
confrontation of social ( = class) interests over the direction of the
state, that is to say, to determine how to organise men ( = the
relations between classes). Under capitalism, democracy is the political
meeting place of different class interests and social groups (the
economic meeting place is the market, which even those elements situated
outside of the capitalist mode of production are obliged to enter, since
everything tends to become a commodity). [1] With the development of
capital, there are no longer any fundamental social oppositions between
the classes and groups that meet in the political sphere : a) the
bourgeoisie liquidates the remains of the former propertied class by
incorporating them; [2] b) the bourgeoisie itself is unified by the
centralisation of capital. There only remain conflicts of interests
between the various industrial and financial monopolies : but these are
not opposed class interests, and the State reconciles them almost
automatically. The only class opposition is between capital (unified and
presenting an almost single face) and the proletariat. [3] Of course the
unification of the bourgeoisie is nothing but a tendency, whose complete
realisation is impossible because of the existence of competition (cf.
Part One : “Value and development”). But it is precisely capital itself
that opposes elements, its elements, its representatives, one against
the other. Politics no longer opposes classes but the different layers
inside the class of functionaries of capital.
Under these conditions, the decisive role of politics and democracy is
to fool the proletariat. There are always political struggles, which
cannot be completely reduced to struggles for power by persons and clans
: in effect there are different programs. But on the one hand, this is
above all a matter of different aspects of one and the same essential
programme (this was not previously the case, for example in France
before 1914, and especially at the start of the Third Republic, when
certain political fractions attempted to restrain economic development).
On the other hand, the parties exchange and reciprocally take as their
own whole pieces of their respective programs. This state of affairs
particularly developed after the crisis of 1929, and again to an even
greater extent after the Second World War. In France, governments of
right and left each brought their own solution to the crisis in the 30’s
: Laval through deflation (freezing civil service wages), then Blum
through devaluation and an increase in spending power. By contrast,
since 1945, governments of the big capitalist countries, whether they
are of the right or the left, all use the same panoply of anti-crisis
weapons : monetary politics (control of the mass of currency in
circulation), budgetary politics (control of state credits, given a much
greater importance since the state is itself a principal economic
agent), and fiscal politics are used either alternately or
simultaneously by all governments. In addition for Europe the movement
of the constitution of nation States finished in 1870; in the same way,
World War I marked the moment when, in Europe, capital destroyed the
external hindrances to its development. From that point on, the State
was above all the means for containing the productive forces, and for
struggling against other States : which doesn’t prevent rival States
from uniting against the proletariat. Thus the action of the state is
political, but above all it is economic : the struggle against
overproduction. [4] The national setting has became too narrow : the
only possible dimension for social development is the world.
Capital itself expresses this contradiction in practice, by rising up
against the national limits which often hold back valorization. The
tendency towards the destruction of national limitations is achieved by
communism, but it appears under capitalism, and is developed by it to
the extent that it advances the productive forces. However, just as it
cannot itself suppress value, in the same way it cannot itself suppress
the nation State. Only communism offers the possibility of an end to
national and ethnic struggle, the perspective of the reconciliation of
the species with itself, the birth of humanity as the only subject of
history; [5] which doesn’t exclude shocks and jolts during the period of
transition. Communism thus presents itself as the destruction of
national limits, and fights any demonstration of nationalism as
counter-revolutionary. [6]
Our times thus mark the completion of a whole evolution of political
forms. In the United States, in France, in England, the classic
bourgeois revolutions had created a representative system from which the
people (petit-bourgeoisie, isolated peasants, wage earners) were
excluded, but which united the interests of fractions of the
bourgeoisie. [7] The newly created capitalist society assured its
cohesion [8] through this place of meeting and compromise, where one
fraction sometimes established its domination over the others. The
groups making up the bourgeoisie were different, even opposed : some
more progressive (in the sense of the development of capital), others
more conservative (because tied to the old layers of the vanished feudal
society). It is not enough to denounce democracy as the government of
the bourgeoisie. For there is in this political system the possibility —
and necessity — of a theoretical and practical self-criticism by the
bourgeoisie which progressively purifies itself of its links with the
former society. These links were still very strong in the 19^(th)
century, in Germany, but also in England and in France. Here democracy
played a progressive historic role : [9] it was the political means by
which capital came to dominate society. [10] At the end of the 19^(th)
century the Third Republic was obliged to pursue an anticlerical policy
in order to definitively eradicate the remainders of monarchist and
religious reaction. Schools were one of the essential weapons in this
fight : the teacher representrd a force for (capitalist) progress
compared to the priest. From this point of view, the workers movement
supported the efforts of capital to get rid of these obstacles. But the
secular state school system and the separation of Church and State are
not in themselves instruments of social progress : at the completion of
this movement, the capitalist school revealed all of its mystifying and
obscurantist (thus finally reactionary) function, for example by
disseminating nationalist ideology. The fact remains that in one
specific historical period the democratic state fulfilled some
revolutionary functions. [11] It was for this reason that in the 19^(th)
century communism in certain phases supported democracy, in order that
it fully played its destructive revolutionary role. [12]
In the phase of formal domination, it put pressure on the state against
the bourgeoisie (laws for a 10 hour working day, etc.). In the phase of
real domination, workers reformism seeks to assure for itself a function
that is already fulfilled by the State, and to integrate itself into the
State (industrial legislation, etc.). Its action is
counter-revolutionary.
Capital thus develops a political realm which is different from the
State of the Ancien RĂ©gime. It introduces a new relationship between
production and government, between economic agents and political
subjects. The sum of the interests of the bourgeoisie is different from
the sum of the interests of the former ruling classes. Strictly speaking
there was no economic struggle between landowners : by contrast,
capitalists are in opposition to one another. Thus it was necessary to
create a body which stands above society, a bureaucratic and military
apparatus which can at the same time reconcile their interests and cause
them to triumph. The counter-revolution was able to present the creation
of a State with autonomous power as a monstrous phenomenon, contrary to
nature, opposed to the balance of the previous hierarchical system. [13]
Of course, their presentation of the social body as a harmony disturbed
by revolution rested on pure illusion. There were classes and class
struggles before the bourgeois revolution. But that illusion was made
all the more credible since politics and economics had formerly tended
to go hand in hand. The rich had almost naturally been the political
chiefs. The appearance of a separate political world was precisely a
sign of change : thus the increasingly important role of ministers in
England and France in the 17^(th) and 18^(th) centuries. In place of the
pyramid of king/subjects, with its fixed intermediate groups (orders,
corporations), a duality was substituted comprised of an economic sphere
and a political sphere.
The state operates a relatively peaceful conciliation of the conflicts
internal to capital and the struggles between capital and the
proletariat. But it has recourse to the most energetic violence whenever
it becomes necessary. [14] The phase during which democracy was
revolutionary saw the use of violence against the proletariat, and
against the undisciplined fractions of the petit bourgeoisie (1871) and
even of the bourgeoisie itself. [15] The harmonisation of the interests
of capital, with respect to itself and others, thus combines what is
commonly called “democracy” and “dictatorship” (including the employment
of systematic and organised terror and massacres : cf. the struggle
against the Commune).
When capital generalises large-scale industry, its total domination of
society has begun to be set in place. The real domination of capital
over labour takes place with the development of relative surplus-value
(cf. the previous section). [16] From this point it becomes necessary to
obtain the worker’s involvement in his work and to control his work, and
at the same time to force him into a certain type of work, the intensity
and productivity of which must constantly be increased (the development
of the category of the semi-skilled worker and of assembly-line work,
governed by the “scientific organisation of work”, starting after the
First world war).
At the same time, the organisation of the economy becomes necessary. It
is well known that capitalism organises production rationally at the
level of each business, [17] but that the ensemble of businesses,
meeting in the market, do not form a harmonious whole : balance is only
established through fights and destruction (under all kinds of forms :
stocks of unsold goods, bankruptcies of companies). Capital is now
obliged to organise society like a business because it is necessary to
stifle, to reabsorb, the contradictions between business enterprises,
and between capital and the proletariat.
Capital no longer merely subjugates the worker inside production, in the
factory, but in the whole of his life. To this end it fights against the
worker’s spontaneously communist tendencies. Its action is at the same
time economic, ideological and political. It develops a mind-numbing
mass consumption. [18] It speaks in praise of the worker and the waged
condition, thus creating a mythical world of work where the worker is a
king. “Workers” parties play a primary role in this mystification :
Labour Day as a national event, workers festivals, workers culture,
which are grafted onto the workers traditional attempts at
self-expression, dating from the time when a minority of skilled workers
reached a level of cultural consumption (and perhaps, to a certain
extent, of cultural creation) denied to other workers — quite simply,
for example, because they could not read. One speaks in praise of work,
and one celebrates its “dignity”, whereas another type of activity is
possible and necessary for economic and social development. The
organisations of the labour movement also claim to continue the efforts
towards the advancement of workers during the last century, an attempt
which is purely reactionary today. The only social “advancement” which
is possible is that of all workers (and of humanity) producing social
relations adapted to contemporary social development. One could show the
extent of this ideology of work : in the reformist labour movement; in
the most brutal counter-revolution (Nazism); in the Russian
counter-revolution and generally in all “socialist” countries which
glorify the proletariat and the proletarian condition. [19] This is the
opposite of the Communist position which is the destruction of the
proletarian condition as an out-of-date social relation. The goal of
capital is to simultaneously drown the proletariat in the ideology of
consumption, and in the consumption of ideology. It also meets an
economic need : to fight against the tendency to overproduction. [20]
Exchange must be spread as widely as possible : it is the colonisation
of society by the commodity. But, in its function, the commodity is only
at the service of capital : any destruction of the reign of the
commodity by-passes that of the domination of capital.
At the same time, capital uses armed struggle whenever it is necessary.
[21] But alongside this it regroups the proletariat around the national
State, developing nationalism and all the ideologies of a nationalist
type (here again the “workers” parties play a major role). In the same
way as it mobilises men, capitalism mobilises their consciousness and
attempts to impose on them an ideological mould. Hence the development
among intellectuals of forms of tragic and unhappy consciousness.
But one of the most important weapons of capital is the democratic
illusion. [22] Most of the time, capital preserves the parliamentary
facade. Of course, parliament was always the instrument of the
bourgeoisie. [23] The difference is that in the past it used it to
discipline itself. Today, the State bureaucracy fulfils this role much
more simply since all fractions of the bourgeoisie [24] (that is to say
of the class that manages capital : whether classic or State
bourgeoisie) understand the object to be realised : to master and
contain the development of capital. This doesn’t mean : not to develop
it, because capital is dynamic by definition, but to control its
development, to use all economic and political means to avoid great
economic crises and the communist revolution. Parliament, deprived of
any real power is used today, rather effectively, as an instrument of
mystification. It is curious to note that most of the countries which
have carried out their bourgeois revolution in an original manner (the
“socialist” countries) either preserve or create all the parts of a
democratic machine under the most ridiculous conditions (99% votes in
favour of the government). In certain countries, for historic reasons,
democracy may have disappeared, even as a facade, in giving way to “new”
political systems : thus it was in Germany and in Italy under fascism.
In fact, the innovation only lay in the systematisation of processes
already employed by capital during its “democratic” period. [25] Fascism
doesn’t bring anything new as regards economic or social programme, nor
in its use of violence, [26] still less in its ideology. Its only
innovation consists in the organisation of a whole ensemble of
counter-revolutionary means, at all levels (economy, politics...). [27]
The only foreseeable solution for capital is the reduction of its
contradictions, by obtaining through violence (fascism), or through
reformism the agreement of workers (Popular Front). But this is only for
a period and in the end the result is the same : in both cases, the
reduction of contradictions is necessarily accompanied by nationalism
and militarism (both of which flourished under the Popular Front) and
leads to preparations for a new imperialist war (the difference is that
Germany could prepare for it under favourable conditions). After the
downfall of the fascist countries, in 1943 and 1945, democracy presented
itself all over again in those countries, as an alternative permitting
progress in relation to the fascist regime. Actually, it had itself
given birth to those systems and had never fought against them. [28] It
had made itself the instrument of anti-proletarian violence and had been
the first to set up special bodies of repression outside of the police
and the regular army (Germany, 1919). Democracy served after 1914–1918 :
a. to make the proletariat believe that its democratic-parliamentary
framework permitted a progressive evolution toward greater collective
well-being and internal and international peace;
b. to allow counter-revolutionary forces to organise in parallel, (and
generally in close connection), to itself, which then liquidated it as
it became useless. [29]
Democracy thus fulfilled its role perfectly. First by crushing the
proletariat (physically and ideologically). And when this appeared
insufficient, the counter-revolution, for which democracy was only one
instrument among others, got rid of it. After the defeat of the fascist
countries, essentially due to their relative weakness compared to the
other imperialist countries, democracy reappeared while participating
all over again in the crushing of the proletariat :
a. during the last part of the war by organising (with the full
collaboration of the workers parties) national anti-German coalitions in
France and in Italy;
b. during the reconstruction and boom that followed the war.
Today the defence of democracy against “reaction” only has an
anti-communist content. [30] The only reaction today is capital, as it
well shows by reproducing after 1945 all the horrors which it would like
to make the responsibility of a particular political form, whereas they
constitute the contents of the dictatorship of capital in its phase of
real domination (militarism, permanent wars, waste, massacres, misery,
organised famine, etc.). [31] Democracy is no more than part of the
counter-revolution, a screen used parallel to the most savage
dictatorship. [32] It is not an ideological but a practical phenomenon :
if it has been so successful after 1945, this is because its economic
and political conditions were met by prosperity and peace in Europe, all
the large social and political conflicts taking place outside western
Europe. In the same way, if its counter-revolutionary character now
begins to appear, it is because real social contradictions appear and
oblige it to reveal its repressive face : capital is forced to become
more and more totalitarian, because it needs to include and to contain
the totality of the components of its society. [33]
[1] Marx, Fondements de la critique de l’économie politique (Ebauche de
1857–1858), En annexe : travaux des années 1850–1859, Trad. Par R.
Dangeville, Anthropos, 1967. Vol. II, pp. 1–65 suiv.
[2] “The bourgeoisie (...) finally absorbs all propertied classes it
finds in existence” (Marx & Engels, The German Ideology, MECW vol 5 p.
77).
[3] Le 18 Brumaire, dans Marx Les Luttes de classes en France
(1848–1850), Ed. Sociales, 1948, pp. 255–256.
[4] Letter of Engels to Schmidt, 27 October 1890, Selected
Correspondence. Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1957. pp.
500–507.
[5] The re-appropriation of the conditions of life can be only global,
universal : (Marx & Engels, The German Ideology, MECW vol 5, p. 87 (?)).
[6] Id., p. 73 (?). While pushing the movement of national State
formation, communism prepared the following stage : “in recognising no
homeland, the international aims at the unity of humanity (... ) it is
against the watchword of nationality, because this formula has the
tendency to divide the peoples” (Marx and Engels, exposition to the
meeting of the general Council of the A.I.T., 25 July 1871,) There is no
contradiction therefore between positions on the constitution of
national States, when they represent historic progress, and the
principle according to which the proletariat doesn’t have a homeland
(Marx & Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, in Marx, The
Revolutions of 1848, Penguin 1973., pp. 84–5 (?) and the commentary that
is made in the critique of the Gotha programme).
[7] On the bourgeoisie and the state after the French revolution, cf.
Marx & Engels, The Holy Family. MECW vol 4 pp. 123–4 (?), and Marx &
Engels, The German Ideology, MECW vol 5, p. 89 (?).
[8] On this cohesion see Marx & Engels, The Holy Family. MECW vol 4.,
pp. 120–21 (?).
[9] Marx, Engels, La Nouvelle Gazette Rhénane., t.1, 1er juin-5
septembre 1848, Tra., introduction et notes par L. Netter, Ed. Sociales,
1963, passim.
[10] “Everything that centralises the bourgeoisie is of course
advantageous to the workers.” (Letter of Marx to Engels, 27 July 1866.
Marx & Engels, Selected Correspondence, Foreign Languages Publishing
House, Moscow, 1957 p.221).
[11] Yet since 1845, Marx and Engels affirmed that the “independence of
the state” exists only in the backward countries : “The most perfect
example of the modern state is North America.” (Marx & Engels, The
German Ideology, MECW vol 5. pp. 90.)
[12] The interest of the bourgeoisie in this topic is sometimes
contradictory : cf. 18^(th) Brumaire in Marx Les Luttes de classes en
France (1848–1850), Ed. Sociales, 1948, pp. 200, 236, 254. Besides, the
Communist position is always preparation of the ulterior stage, and by a
struggle against the nation and the national State : “The working class
alone constitutes a real active force of resistance against national
swindles” (letter of Marx to Engels, 3 August 1870, Marx, Engels, La
Commune de 1871, Lettres et déclarations pour la plupart inédites, Trad.
et présentation de R. Dangeville, U.G.E., 1970. p. 49).
[13] “Bourgeoises abolish the natural state to erect and make a State
that is them own.” (Marx, Engels, L’Idéologie allemande. Présentée et
annotée par G. Badia, Ed. Sociales, 1968., p. 381.)
[14] In June 1848, cf. Marx, Engels, Écrits militaires, Violence et
constitution des Etats européens modernes, Trad. et présenté par R.
Dangeville, L’Herne, 1970., pp. 199–219”It (the people) didn’t suspect
that methods of war experimented in Algeria would be used in full in
Paris” (p. 204).
[15] Le 18 Brumaire, in Marx Les Luttes de classes en France
(1848–1850), Ed. Sociales, 1948, pp, 180–181.
[16] Fondements de la critique de l’économie politique (Ebauche de
1857–1858), En annexe : travaux des années 1850–1859, Trad. Par R.
Dangeville, Anthropos, 1968., vol. II, p. 86 on “regimentation” in
production (also pp. 89–90).
[17] Cf. the summary of Capital by Engels in Engels, Pour comprendre “Le
Capital”, Suivi de deux études de F. Mehring et R. Luxembourg sur le
“Capital”, Ed. Gît-le-coeur, s.d., pp. 57–58.
[18] Fondements de la critique de l’économie politique (Ebauche de
1857–1858), En annexe : travaux des années 1850–1859, Trad. Par R.
Dangeville, Anthropos, 1967. Vol. I, pp. 236–237.
[19] Letter from Marx to Engels, 12 June 1863, Marx & Engels, Selected
Correspondence, Lawrence & Wishart, 1934 VII, pp. 151–2.
[20] Marx, Fondements de la critique de l’économie politique (Ebauche de
1857–1858), En annexe : travaux des années 1850–1859, Trad. Par R.
Dangeville, Anthropos, pp. 368–371.
[21] On the role of violence and phases of capitalism, cf. Marx, Engels,
Écrits militaires, Violence et constitution des Etats européens
modernes, Trad. et présenté par R. Dangeville, L’Herne, 1970.,
Introduction, pp. 16 17 and 23 24.
[22] Le fil du temps, no 8, p. 27.
[23] On “parliamentary cretinism”, cf. The 18^(th) Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte, in Marx Surveys From Exile, Penguin. 1973, pp. 210–211.
[24] “The state is nothing but the organized collective power of the
possessing classes (...)” (Engels, The Housing Question., Martin
Lawrence. n.d., p. 71).
[25] See the description of the Société du Dix-Décembre (Bonapartist),
The 18^(th) Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in Marx Surveys From Exile,
Penguin. 1973, pp. 220–222.
[26] In respect of June 1848, Marx speaks of “war of extermination”
against workers proclaimed as “enemies of society” (Marx Les Luttes de
classes en France (1848–1850), Ed. Sociales, 1948, pp. 142–143).
[27] Communisme et fascisme, Ed. Programme communiste, 1970 (texts of
the P.C. italien, 1921–1924).
[28] On Spain see articles in Invariance, nos 7 and 8, and various
articles (1936–1938) in Bilan, journal of the communist left.
[29] “Le P.C. d’Italie face à l’offensive fasciste (1921–1924)”,
Programme communiste, nos 45 to 50.
[30] Thèses de la gauche communiste (1945), Invariance, no 9, pp. 24–30.
[31] See for example “Le nouveau statut des entreprises d’Etat en
Russie” (1965), Programme communiste, no 35.
[32] “Everything which used to be reactionary behaves as if it were
democratic” (letter of Engels to Bebel, 11 December 1884, (Marx &
Engels, Selected Correspondence. Foreign Languages Publishing House,
Moscow, 1957., p. 456).
[33] “In any case our sole adversary on the day of the crisis and on the
day after the crisis will be the whole of the reaction which will group
around pure democracy, and this, I think, should not be lost sight
of....” (Marx & Engels, Selected Correspondence. Foreign Languages
Publishing House, Moscow, 1957. p.457.)