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Title: The Democratic Mystification Author: Jacques Camatte Date: 1969 Language: en Topics: communist, democracy Source: Retrieved on December 3, 2009 from http://www.marxists.org/archive/camatte/demyst.htm Notes: The Democratic Mystification was first published unsigned in Invariance Series I, no. 6 (April-June 1969). It was intended to form part of a longer work ‘La Revolution Communiste — thèses de travail’ the first parts of which appeared in that issue. The paragraph numbering relates to its place in this proposed work. The part reprinted here was originally planned to be just the opening section (part 5.1) of a longer chapter on democracy. It was accompanied by a part 5.2 consisting of a set of six ‘schémas’ — diagrams intended to set out the relations between individuals and the state. Cammatte subsequently explained that this second section was « incomplete insofar as there was to be a more detailed commentary on the diagrams which, lets remember, were by Bordiga ».The original plan of the ‘thèses de travail’ as published in Invariance Series 1 No. 5 (Jan-March 1969) invisaged a further section 5.3 in sixteen parts about democracy and the proletarian movement, and a section 5.4 in nine parts about democracy and fascism. These together with many other of the projected parts of the ‘thèses de travail’ never appeared. However unlike some of the other unpublished sections work had been done on them. In 1972 Camatte reworked this material in light of the developments in his thinking. The result was not published until 1991. This english translation is a modified version of one made by David Brown which was originally published with other texts by Camatte in ‘Origin and Function of the Party Form’ (London, 1977)
The proletariat’s assault on the citadels of capital only has a chance
of success on condition that the proletarian revolutionary movement
finishes with democracy once and for all. Democracy is the last refuge
of all disavowals and betrayals, because it is the first hope of those
who believe in purifying and re-invigorating the current movement which
is rotten to its core.
5.1. The General historical phenomenon
“Social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which misled theory
into mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the
comprehension of this practice.”
(Marx, Eighth thesis on Feuerbach)
5.1.1. Broadly speaking, one can define democracy as the behaviour of
humans, the organisation of those who have lost their original organic
unity with the community. Thus it exists during the whole period which
separates primitive communism from scientific communism.
5.1.2. Democracy was born from the moment that there was a division
between men and the allocation of possession. That is to say, it arose
with private property, individuals and the class division of society,
with the formation of the state. It follows that it becomes increasingly
pure as private property becomes more general and as classes appear more
distinctly in society.
5.1.3. It presupposes a common good which is divided-up. Limited
democracy in ancient society presupposed the existence of the ager
publicus and slaves who were not men. In modern society this common good
is more universal (touches a greater number of men). It is also more
abstract and illusory: the homeland.
5.1.4. Democracy in no way excludes authority, dictatorship and thus the
State. On the contrary, it needs the State as a foundation. Who can
guarantee the allocation, who can regulate the relations between
individuals and between them and the common good, if not the State?
In fully developed capitalist society the State also presents itself as
the guardian of redistribution from two different angles: it prevents
the proletariat from nibbling away the surplus-value and it guarantees
the distribution of this surplus value as profit, interest, rent etc.,
among the different capitalist spheres.
5.1.5. Democracy thus implies the existence of individuals, classes and
the State; with the result that it is simultaneously a mode of
government, a mode of domination by one class, and a mechanism of union
and conciliation.
Actually, in the beginning the economic processes divided men (process
of expropriation) who had been united in the primitive community.
Ancient social relations were destroyed. Gold became a real power
replacing the authority of the community. Men were opposed to each other
because of material antagonisms that could break up society and make it
impossible. Democracy appeared to be a means of reconciling opposites,
as the most suitable political form to unite what was divided. It
represented conciliation between the old community and the new society.
The mystifying form lay in the apparent reconstruction of a lost unity.
Mystification was progressive.
In our day, at the opposite pole of history, the economic process has
led to the socialisation of production and men. Politics, on the
contrary, tends to divide them, to maintain them as simple surfaces of
exchange for capital. The communist form becomes more and more powerful
within the old capitalist world. Democracy seems like a conciliation
between the past, still acting on our actual present, and the future —
communist society. Mystification is reactionary.
5.1.6. It is often said that the seeds (or some even say the forms) of
democracy are to be found in the origins of the life of our species, in
primitive communism. However it is a misunderstanding to see the
manifestation of the seeds of a higher form appearing sporadically in an
inferior form. This “democracy” appeared in very specific circumstances.
Once these had ended, there was a return to the former mode of
organisation. For example: military democracy at its beginnings. The
election of the leader took place at a particular time and for specific
tasks. Once these were accomplished, the leader was reabsorbed into the
community. The democracy which appeared temporarily was reabsorbed. It
was the same for those forms of capital which Marx called ante-deluvian.
Usury was the archaic form of money-capital which could appear in
ancient societies. But its existence was always precarious, because
society defended itself against its solvent effects and banished it. It
was only when man became a commodity, that capital could develop on a
safe foundation, and could no longer be reabsorbed. Democracy can only
really appear from the moment when men have been completely divided, and
the umbilical cord linking them with the community has been cut; that
is, when there are individuals.
Communism can sometimes manifest itself in this society, but it is
always reabsorbed. It will only be able to really develop from the
moment when the material community has been destroyed.
5.1.7. The democratic phenomenon appears with clarity in two historical
periods: at the time of the dissolution of the primitive community in
Greece; and at the time of the dissolution of feudal society in western
Europe. It is incontestable, that during this second period the
phenomenon appeared with greater intensity, because men had really been
reduced to the status of individuals and the ancient social relations
could no longer unite them. The bourgeois revolution always appears as
the setting in motion of the masses. From which arises the bourgeois
problem: how to unify them and fix them within new social forms. Hence,
the institutional mania and the outburst of right in bourgeois society.
The bourgeois revolution is a social revolution with a political soul.
During the communist revolution, the masses will have already been
organised by capitalist society. They will not seek new forms of
organization but will structure a new collective being, the human
community. This appears clearly when the class acts in time as an
historical being, when it constitutes itself as party.
It has been said a number of times in the communist movement that the
revolution is not a problem of forms of organisation. For capitalist
society, on the contrary, everything is an organisational question. At
the beginning of its development, this appears as the search for good
institutions; at the end as the search for the best structures to
enclose men in the prisons of capital: fascism. At both extremes,
democracy is at the heart of this search: first political democracy,
then social democracy.
5.1.8. Mystification is not a phenomenon planned by the members of the
ruling class, a hoax that they perpetrate. If so it would be enough to
have a simple adequate propaganda to eradicate it from men’s minds. In
fact it acts in the depths of the social structure, within social
relations:
“A social relation of production appears as something existing apart
from individual human beings, and the distinctive relations into which
they enter in the course of production in society appear as the specific
properties of a thing — it is this perverted appearance, this
prosaically real, and by no means imaginary, mystification that is
characteristic of all social forms of labour positing exchange-value.”
(Marx — ‘Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’, Collected
Works Vol 29 p.289)
It is thus necessary to explain in what ways reality is mystifying and
how this simple mystification at the beginning, becomes greater and
greater and reaches its maximum with capitalism.
5.1.9. Originally, the human community was subject to the dictatorship
of nature. It had to fight against it to survive. The dictatorship was
direct and the community in its totality was subjected it.
With the development of class society, the state presents itself as
representing the community and pretends to embody man’s struggle against
nature. However, given the weakness of development of the productive
forces, nature’s dictatorship is always effective. It is indirect and
mediated by the state and weighs especially on the most underpriviliged
strata. When the state defines man, it takes the man of the dominant
class as the substratum of its definition. Mystification is complete.
5.1.10. Under capitalism, there is a first period when, although the
bourgeoisie has taken power, capital only dominates formally. Many
remainders of previous social formations persist, hindering capital’s
domination over the whole of society. This is the epoch of political
democracy when there is the apology of individual liberty and free
competition. The bourgeoisie presents this as a means of liberation for
men. However this is a mystification because:
“In free competition, it is capital that is set free, not the
individuals.”
(Marx ‘Grundrisse’ Collected Works V. 29 p. 38)
“Hence...the absurdity of regarding free competition as the ultimate
development of human freedom, and the negation of free competition as
equivelant to the negation of individual freedom and of social
production based upon individual freedom. It is merely the kind of free
development possible on the limited basis of the domination of capital.
This type of individual freedom is therefore, at the same time, the most
sweeping abolition of all individual freedom and the complete
subjugation of individuality to social conditions which assume the form
of objective powers, indeed of overpowering objects — objects
independent of the individuals relating to one another. To bring out the
essence of free competition is the only rational answer to its
glorification by the prophets of the middle class and to its
anathematising by the socialists.”
(Marx ‘Grundrisse’ Collected Works V. 29 p. 40)
5.1.11.
“Democracy and parliamentarianism are indispensable for the bourgeoisie
after its victory by force and terror because the bourgeoisie want to
rule a society divided into classes.”
(‘Battaglia communista’ no. 18, 1951)
It required conciliation to be able to dominate for it was impossible
that domination should endure solely through terror. After its conquest
of power by violence and terror, the proletariat does not need
democracy, not because classes disappear from one day to the next, but
because there must no longer be any masking or mystification.
Dictatorship is required to prevent any return of the opposing class.
Moreover, the accession of the proletariat to the State, is its own
negation as a class, as well as the negation of the other classes. It is
the beginning of the unification of the species, of the formation of the
community. To demand democracy would imply the need for conciliation
between classes and that would amount to doubting that communism is the
solution to all antagonisms, that it is the reconciliation of man with
himself.
5.1.12. With capital, the economic movement is no longer separate from
the social movement. The union took place with the purchase and sale of
labour power, but it led to the submission of men to capital. Capital
constitutes itself as material community and there are no more politics
since it is capital itself which organises men as slaves.
Until this historical stage there was a more or less clear separation
between production and distribution. Political democracy could be
envisaged as a means of distributing products more equitably. But when
the material community is achieved, production and distribution are
indissolubly linked. The imperatives of circulation thus condition
distribution. However circulation is no longer something completely
external to production but is, for capital, an essential moment of its
total process. It is thus capital itself which conditions distribution.
All men fulfill a function for capital which fundamentally presupposes
their existence. In relation to their execution of this function, men
receive a certain distribution of products through the intermediary of a
wage. We have a social democracy. Incomes policy is a means of achieving
it.
5.1.13. In the period of the formal domination of capital (political
democracy) democracy is not a form of organisation opposed as such to
capital, it is a mechanism used by the capitalist class to attain
domination over society. During this period all the organisational forms
included in this struggle achieved this same result. That is why the
proletariat can also can for a certain time intervene on this terrain.
On the other hand, oppositions can also occur within the same class,
between the industrial and financial bourgeoisies, for example.
Parliament is therefore an arena where these various interests clash.
The proletariat can use parliament as a platform to denounce the
democratic mystification and can use universal suffrage as a means to
organise the class.
When capital arrived at its real domination, and constituted itself as a
material community, the question was resolved: it seized the State. The
conquest of the state from inside no longer poses itself because it is
no more than:
“a formality , the haut goût of popular existence, a ceremonial. The
estates element is the sanctioned, legal lie of constitutional states,
the lie that the state is the people’s interest, or that the people is
the interest of the state.”
(Marx, ‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Law’
Collected Works V. 3 p65 — the word “people” is substituted for “nation”
to match the french translation cited in the original)
5.1.14. The democratic state represents the illusion of control over
society by man (that man can direct the economic phenomenon). It
proclaims man sovereign. The fascist State is the realisation of this
mystification (in this sense it can appear as its negation). Man is not
sovereign. At the same time, this is in fact, the real acknowledged form
of the capitalist state: the absolute domination of capital. Social
unity cannot exist with a divorce between theory and practice. Theory
said: man is sovereign; practice affirmed: it is capital. Only insofar
as the latter had not come to dominate society absolutely, was there
possibility of imbalance. In the fascist state reality subjugates the
idea to make a real idea of it. In the democratic state the idea
subjugates reality to make an imaginary reality of it. The democracy of
capital’s slaves suppresses mystification the better to achieve it. The
democrats wish to highlight it when they believe it can reconcile the
proletariat with capital.
Society having found the being of its oppression (which abolishes the
duality, the reality/thought imbalance), it is necessary to oppose to it
the liberatory being which represents the human community: the communist
party.
5.1.15. Hence most nineteenth century theorists were statists. They
thought that they could resolve the social facts at the level of the
state. They were mediatists.
Only they did not understand that the proletariat not only had to
destroy the old state machine, but also had to put another in its place.
Many socialists believed that it was possible to conquer the state from
inside and the anarchists believed that one could abolish it from one
day to the next.
Twentieth century theorists are corporatists because they think that it
is only a matter of organising production and of humanising it to
resolve all problems. They are immediatists. This is an indirect proof
of the theory of the proletariat. To say that it is necessary to
reconcile the proletariat with the economic movement, is to recognise
that a solution can only emerge on this terrain. This immediatism arises
from the fact that communist society is forever strengthening inside
capitalism itself. It is not a question of reconciling the two, but of
destroying the power of capital, its organised strength , the capitalist
State, which maintains private monopoly when all economic mechanisms
tend to make it disappear. The communist solution is mediate. Reality
seems to evade the state, it is necessary to highlight it and, at the
same time, to indicate the need for another transitory state: the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
5.1.16. The development towards social democracy was discounted from the
start:
“While the power of money is not the relation of things and men, social
relations have to be organised politically and religiously.”
(Marx)
Marx always denounced the swindle of politics and laid bare the real
relations:
“Therefore it is a natural necessity , the essential human properties
however estranged they may seem to be, and interest that hold the
members of civil society together; civil , not political life is their
real tie.”
(‘The Holy Family’ Collected Works Vol. 4 p. 120)
“Precisely the slavery of civil society is in appearance the greatest
freedom because it is in appearance the fully developed independence of
the individual, who considers as his own freedom the uncurbed movement,
no longer bound by a common bond or man, of the estranged elements of
his life, such as property, industry, religion, etc., whereas actually
this is his fully developed slavery and inhumanity. Law has here taken
the place of privilege.”
(‘The Holy Family’ Collected Works Vol. 4 p. 116)
The question of democracy only remains in another form as the false
opposition between competition and monopoly. The material community
integrates the two. With fascism (= social democracy), democracy and
dictatorship are also integrated. It is a means for overcoming anarchy.
“Anarchy is the law of civil society emancipated from diverse
privileges, and the anarchy of civil society is the basis of the modern
public system, just as the public system in its turn its the guarantee
of that anarchy. To the same extent that the two are opposed to each
other they also determine each other.”
(‘The Holy Family’ Collected Works Vol. 4 p. 117)
5.1.17. Now that the bourgeois class, which led the revolution which
allowed the development of capital, has disappeared, and been replaced
by the capitalist class which lives on capital and its valorization
process, capitals domination has been assured (fascism) and because of
this there is no longer a need for a political conciliation, since it is
superfluous, but for an economic conciliation (corporatism, doctrine of
needs etc.), and it is the middle classes which are adepts of democracy.
Only the more capitalism grows, the more the illusion of being able to
share management with capital vanishes. All that remains is the demand
for a social democracy with political pretensions: democratic planning,
full employment etc.. However by creating social security, while trying
to maintain the full employment that it claims, capitalist society
achieves the social democracy in question: that of slaves to capital.
With the development of the new middle classes the demand for democracy
takes on a tinge — only — of communism.
5.1.18. What has been written above deals with the European/North
American area and has no validity for the countries where the Asiatic
mode of production for a long time predominated (Asia, Africa) or where
it still dominates (e.g. India). In these countries, the individual has
not been produced. Private property could appear but it could not
autonomise itself; it is the same for the individual. This is related to
the geo-social conditions of these countries and explains the
impossibility of capital developing itself there, as long as it has not
constituted itself as community. To put it another way, it is only when
it has reached this stage that capitalism will be able to replace the
ancient community and thus conquer immense zones. Only, in these
countries, men cannot behave as in the West. Political democracy is
necessarily avoided. One can have, at most, only social democracy.
This is why in those countries most racked by the implantation of
capitalism we have a double phenomenon: a conciliation between the real
movement and the ancient community, and another with the future
community: communism. Hence the difficulty in dealing with these
societies.
In other words, a whole immense section of humanity will not know the
democratic mystification as it is known in the West. This is a positive
fact for the coming revolution.
With regard to Russia, we have an intermediate case. We can note with
what difficulty capitalism was established there. It needed a
proletarian revolution. There too, western political democracy did not
have a basis for development and we may note that it cannot flourish
there. As in the contemporary West, we will have social democracy.
Unfortunately over there also, the counter-revolution brought poison in
the form of proletarian democracy and, for many, the involution of the
revolution is to be sought for in the non-realisation of democracy.
The communist revolution will begin again, by recognising these facts
and granting them their full importance. The proletariat will
reconstitute itself as class and thus as party, in this way superseding
the cramped limits of all class societies. The human species will
finally be unified and form a single being.
5.1.19. All historical forms of democracy corresponded to stages of
development where production was limited. The various revolutions which
followed one another were partial revolutions. Economic progress was
unable to take place, and to advance, without the exploitation of a
class occuring. We may note that since antiquity revolutions have
contributed to the emancipation of an increasing section of humanity.
From which arose the idea that we are moving towards perfect democracy,
a democracy gathering together all men. As a result many are in a hurry
to make the equation: socialism = democracy. It is true that it is
possible to say, that with the communist revolution and the dictatorship
of the proletariat, a greater section of humanity than before enters the
domain of this ideal demoracy; and that by generalising the proletarian
condition to the whole of society, the proletariat abolishes classes and
achieves democracy (the ‘Communist Manifesto’ stated that the revolution
is the conquest of democracy). However it is necessary to add, that this
passage to the limit, this generalisation, is at the same time the
destruction of democracy. Because at the same time, the human mass does
not remain constituted with the status of a simple sum of individuals,
all equivalents in right if not in fact. That can only be a reality for
a very short moment of history, due to forced equalisation. Humanity
will constitute itself in a collective being, the Gemeinwesen. This is
born outside the democratic phenomenon, and it is the proletariat
constituted as party which transmits this to society. When one passes on
to future society, there is a qualitative change, and not merely a
quantitative one. For democracy is “the anti-marxist rule of this
powerless quantity, for all eternity, to become quality”. To demand
democracy for post-revolutionary society is to demand impotence. In
addition, the communist revolution is no longer a partial revolution.
With it, progressive emancipation finishes, and radical emancipation is
achieved. Here again there is a qualitative leap.
5.1.20. Democracy is based on a dualism, and is the means to surmount
it. Thus it resolves the dualism between spirit and matter, which is
equivelant to that between great men and mass, through delegation of
powers; that between citizen and man, through the ballot paper and
universal suffrage. In fact under the pretext of the accession to
reality of total being, there is a delegation of the sovereignty of man
to the state. Man divests himself of his human power.
The separation of powers requires their unity and this is always done by
violation of a constitution. This violation is founded on a divorce
between situation in fact and situation in right. The passage from one
to the other being assured by violence.
The democratic principle in reality is only the acceptance of a given
fact: the scission of reality, the dualism linked to class society.
5.1.21. Often some wish to oppose democracy in general, an empty
concept, to a form of democracy which would be the key to human
emancipation. Now what is a fact, whose characteristic is not only in
contradiction with its general concept, but must be its negation? In
reality theorising a particular democracy (proletarian democracy for
example) still evades the quantitative leap. Indeed, either the
democratic form in question really contradicts the general concept of
democracy, and thus is really something else (why, then, call it
democracy?), or it is compatible with this concept, and there can only
be a contradiction of a quantitative nature (for example that it
includes a greater number of men), and, because of this, it does not go
beyond the limits of the concept, even if it tends to push them back.
This thesis often appears in the form: proletarian democracy is not
bourgeois democracy, and one will talk of direct democracy to show that
while the second needs a break, a duality (delegation of powers), the
first denies this. The future society is thus defined as being the
realisation of direct democracy.
This is only a negative negation of bourgeois society, and not its
positive negation. It still wants to define communism as a mode of
organisation that would be more adequate to various human
manifestations. But communism is the affirmation of a being, the true
Gemeinwesen of man. Direct democracy appears to be a means for achieving
communism. However communism does not need such a mediation. It is not a
question of having or of doing, but of being.