Towards A Communist Mode of Production: A Draft Outline

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This is the most difficult post that I have ever tried to write here at this site. In fact, it is the most difficult piece I have ever written in my entire history as a writer. I have taken upon myself the unenviable task of trying to propose a kind of mega-solution to the problems of the world.

Am I going mad? The entire world seems to think there is really no solution. Even the interviews and writings of Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr Rajendra Pachauri do not seem to inspire confidence that we are living in a carefree world. Party time, boys and girls! No, he is not saying that.

But I am risking my neck to say yes, there is a solution, a kind of mega-solution. In that case, have I gone bonkers? Am I some kind of megalomaniac? Maybe, but I seem inspired by history to write what I sincerely believe can show us a way out. I am quite convinced that what I am proposing is meaningful, implementable and if we put all our heads to it – rich and poor alike – all of us humans – we can find a quick way out to create a truly beautiful world. No more killings. No revenge and retribution. Nobody has to die. Nobody has to give up their basic life-styles. If at all, there will be improvement in life styles for all. Crazy?

To really understand what I am trying to say, a total reversal of thinking is needed. Thinking that is powering us, Spaceship Earth, towards a black hole of human, biotic and environmental disaster. A huge amount of force and acceleration is needed to stop the Spaceship and then reverse its direction. From problem. To solution.

We have to think different. Dialectical. Opposites!

If we have Capitalism now, we should have Communism now onwards.

Private property, collective property.

Many MNCs owned by a few people. One single mega global MNC owned by all people.

Exchange values. Use values.

Wages. No wages, all owners.

Market forces. Direct barter.

Guns. No guns.

Army. No army.

State. No state.

200 states. 1 Globe.

Few rich, most poor. All rich.

One divides into two. Two lives in one.

Antagonism. Non-antagonism!

What I write in the following paragraphs is not easy reading. You cannot hope to solve all the problems of the world in a few paras. I am suffering from pain because I feel I have seen the light. I am not crazy. I am not going mad. I am not megalomaniac. Even if everybody else in the world may think so about me. I know sometimes I slip into the bourgeoisie thought that I am probably the only sane guy left on this planet. That is what is making me go crazy and suffer pain in a lonely, lonely way. Nobody can feel my own isolation and loneliness. The solution is right in front of our eyes. We have to just see it and change. Simple. But very complex. Because it requires a total reversal. Enormous force and acceleration.

Despite the immense complexity of the problem at hand I try to present below a highly simplified approach to understanding contemporary global social reality. Reality is multi-dimensional and comes in several layers, just like a club sandwich. Although I am otherwise quite loquacious while writing and arguing, I have found it difficult to write the following paragraphs as I have tried to grapple with reality in terms of trying to change it in favor of the poor.

This is not a neutral document. It is slanted totally in favor of the poor. It says, if we think this way we can solve the problems that the poor of this world are facing.

That’s why I know I am not crazy. The truth is, nobody who writes is poor, or really bothers about the poor. But I am both and that’s why I know I am not crazy – I want a solution, others don’t want it. That’s why they can’t see it. Its not a matter of whether I have any brains to understand reality or not. I want to change this reality, the rest of the world couldn’t care less. Thats all there is to it.

That’s where I also know that ultimately I am not alone. The world’s silent, suffering, slowly suffocating poor are with me. I am merely giving voice to what the poor think.

The poor want change, the rich are quite happy with the status quo.

But let the world’s scientists think. This is my meager scientific contribution to humanity’s relentless march towards a new, better tomorrow .

A passing thought & a warning to the rich: Get off this tiger that you can’t control!

I reserve the right to edit and revise this first draft as presented here in the coming days. I am making this post, however, without further editing mainly to facilitate the start of discussion and thinking by and among those Leftist comrades who care to read what I write and have been writing for the last one and a half months.

No one from the Leftist camp has yet bothered to comment on my last post. But one person, the Modern Mullah, who calls himself a rightist, I doubt if he is really one because I suspect he is just another Leftist comrade as no real rightist would really be bothered about my post, has posted a comment. I think his/her comment and my reply to that comment is important so I am making a new post out of that comment and my reply to it.

I am taking this opportunity to not only address the specific thoughts of Modern Mullah but also the thoughts of all my Leftist comrades who are feeling shy of recognizing the huge significance of the truth that is staring them in the face and admitting the terrible mistake we have all committed for the last 150 years or so.

There is no shame in admitting a mistake and rectifying it for the greater good of all. It is only the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie who feel ashamed of admitting mistakes and rectifying them because they cannot go beyond their petty individualism. But we the workers of the world have a historical task before us – the complete overthrow of the rule of private property and its replacement by the rule of collective ownership by all. So we communists have to admit our mistakes, rectify them and make progress for the greater good of all.

It is time we recognized that we can lose our chains now – today if we wish, if we all unite in this task – communism is not some distant dream and quite unachievable as most Leftists seem to believe now. It is not so and here is the starting point for thinking in practical, real terms as to how we can all unite to lose our chains.

In my last post I had exposed the hollowness of “revolutionary” work when it is confined entirely to the realm of politics and the vain and false attempt to capture political power. This task was relatively easy and the complete silence with which that post has been greeted with by my Leftist comrades seems to indicate that they do not have much to say about the political part of it anymore.

Modern Mullah, has, however, quite rightly raised the most important of all issues: how do we create a communist economy which is structurally different from capitalism?

That is why I do not think he is rightist at all but he is a Leftist and a genuine one at that. He has not tried to dismiss me out of hand as some people do when they find they cannot win an argument on the basis of facts and logic but has instead challenged me on my own promise – that I seem to be claiming that I have some idea about how to create a communist economy.

So I will try to address this most difficult of questions and I call it the most difficult of all issues because now I have to necessarily enter the realm of speculation – take up the task of outlining how future events are likely to unfold – and, therefore, I have to take the risk of venturing out of the solid ground of past historical facts and try to show how, on the basis of this past, we can build a new future.

Although I will try to discuss this question in as concrete and realistic terms as possible, I must point out that ultimately, I am trying to talk about what can or will happen in the future. Hence, I will not be able to provide proof or evidence for everything I say. I am in fact, trying to build a new hypothesis, a new model of communist society, having shown that the earlier hypothesis, what Modern Mullah has called the “same old failed model of state ownership” does not lead us to communism.

So I now have a duty towards my comrades to show what this new model could be like. I do not expect to give a fully worked out system in the following paragraphs as the issues involved are actually very very complex, but I do expect to show that there is much to think about regarding what I am proposing here. It may take many hours and days of discussions to finally fine tune a truly workable hypothesis but here is a starting point.

Read on, comrades but do please bear with some redundancies and long-windedness as I am writing off the cuff and developing my own thoughts in the process although I have now spent 30 years thinking, studying and researching these issues. But I am trying to write down my findings and conclusions only now so my mode of expression may be a little haphazard, unsmart and cumbersome.

Also my thoughts are evolving constantly. Several years back, sometime in 1995-96 when I had first written Thesis on Marx I had intuitively felt that the IT revolution was that kind of a technological revolution that could bring about the far reaching changes that communism demands. But then I had not fully understood its full significance. I understood only that it was a new force of production that was fettered by capitalism since capitalism cannot afford full automation but communism can. I did not realize the significance of IT from the point of view of how it could also replace market mechanism and also complete the socialization of labor. I have understood that a lot more clearly only very recently through the dialectical process of arguments and progress in the realm of thought.

As a result my thoughts are somewhat disorganized at the moment. If some comrade comes forward to help me in editing these thoughts and presenting them in a more organized manner, I will be extremely grateful and more than that we the poor of the world will be extremely grateful.

Another point is that when I first started replying to Modern Mullah I did not fully grasp the significance of the issue he was raising – I felt he had merely failed to see the issue of private property being replaced by collective property like a typical bourgeoisie rightist who keeps dreaming and hoping that capitalism is eternal. But as I wrote I realized that this was not the case and that perhaps I am actually replying to my old comrade radicalhypocrite and my other Leftist comrades whom I had so severely criticized in my earlier post. So the entire scope of this piece has changed completely. However, in case my guess is wrong and I am really replying to an ordinary bourgeoisie rightist I am retaining the first part which is more rhetorical and critical in nature and takes a long time to come to the real issue.

In this first part (just a few initial paras) I am in the critical-criticism mode (or inter-class hatred mode) but as I write I gradually go into proposal mode – a proposal of intra-class love to all my Leftist comrades – come let us think together and we shall overcome. I want to tell my comrades please try to read this piece with sympathy and not anger. Please try to understand the full significance of what I am trying to say before trying to pick holes in these views. We, the poor, have no one else to appeal to except you, the political parties and individuals who claim to represent the poor. But anyway here goes:

Modern Mullah writes:

At the outset I have to inform Arjun Sen that I am a right wing capitalist and economics is not my strong point. Its great to see some leftist suggesting a different economic structure rather than stick to the same old failed model of state ownership. However this new structure, where people key in their needs and producers manufacture accordingly is very much similar to what capitalism is heading towards in the internet age. Companies are getting a lot of feedback and requirements from comments/surveys left by users and are modifying production accordingly. Even the so called balance of power and wealth is shifting towards an equitable pattern. The prerequisite though is that consumers must be technologically savvy and well informed. It is no longer easy for companies to indulge in price gouging (one of the complaints against Capitalism) and no we don’t need to wait for market forces to affect this change, all we need is information.
So Mr Arjun Sen’s romantic idea of a new economic structure might after all turn out to be another idea of ‘capitalism’!

My reply:

Quite Rightly so my dear Mr Rightist! Because it is all about information, the answer to market forces is right in front of our eyes. And it is the information technology revolution that is making it possible to think of how to replace market forces with actual direct consumer-producer-consumer feedback loop based on full information; not partial information and the resulting madness that market forces impose upon us.

And it is the information technology revolution again that will also make possible the rock solid unity of the people against Mr Rightists like you – your days are numbered and you can start counting them!

Just as IT is helping to complete the socialization of capital so is it helping to complete the socialization of labor.

Today it is possible to think of just one global corporation owned by all the people – a communist mode of production – which will replace the capitalist mode of production where due to private ownership of property there will always be several MNCs and smaller businesses competing with each other and fighting with each other despite the most frenzied M&A activity that greedy capitalists can think of and work out, and where there is always the internal contradiction within capitalist units between the owners and the workers.

This fighting and these antagonistic contradictions are at the root of all trouble – exploitation of human labor and the forceful maintenance of poverty and the army of unemployeds in a bid to keep down wages; wars and genocide as in Iraq to grab more private property and to grab more of the world’s resources; production of destructive goods to somehow maintain the falling rate of profit (one aspect of Marxian overproduction) and unnecessary and wasteful production of the same product (use-value) but under many competing brands or exchange-values (another aspect of Marxian overproduction), with all the unnecessary overproduction resulting in overuse of the Earth’s resources and destruction of its environment, and so on – the litany of crimes of capitalism against humanity is too long to list. But it cannot be otherwise since it is a system based on the basic crime of stealing of the wealth produced by the poor by the rich – so everything it gives rise to, everything within the system stinks and is criminal in nature.

The antagonistic external contradictions between and among capitalist units and the equally antagonistic internal contradiction between owners and workers within capitalist units will, however, following the laws of dialectics, go on creating the conditions for a resolution of these antagonistic contradictions until they are resolved and replaced by the non-antagonistic contradiction where there will be many producers or production units but one single owner – the people of the world collectively owning all the many production units under the control of the global multinational corporation, the Peoples’ Global Production Company Inc, or better still the People’s Company, a result of the mother of all M&A activity; and, where the employer-employee contradiction too will become non-antagonistic and become the non-antagonistic employer-employee combined in the same person – the communists, the new owners of the world replacing private owners like you Mr Rightist. This is elementary dialectics and elementary Marxism, Mr Rightist Watson.

Leftists hitherto have failed to see how to resolve antagonistic contradictions because they have been stuck in these very antagonisms, wasting time, energy and effort fighting each other, unable to see the blue, beautiful beyond. They have never bothered to look at the synthesis – the non-antagonisms, going beyond antagonisms.

But the laws of social dynamics have not stood still for that – the development of capitalism itself has created the conditions for its unceremonious and unsung burial.

Communism is no “romantic” Manna that will drop from heaven when God wills so – it is right here in front of us because it can happen only when reality is ready for it – when both objective and subjective conditions are such that it can happen in reality. And those conditions are now ready because capitalist development itself has created those conditions. That is again elementary dialectics and elementary Marxism.

“Romantic” capitalists on the other hand like you dear Mr Rightist can see everything but cannot see the end of capitalism because in your romance for capital and private property you think your love is eternal.

You can see how capitalism itself has created conditions for destruction of one of the most important pillars of capitalism – market forces – which is inseparable from and intrinsic to a system of production based on wages and prices, and a system that produces exchange values rather than use values.

But you cannot at the same time see how it has created the conditions for the destruction of the other big pillar of capitalism – private property itself.

Today, all it takes for us workers is rock-solid global unity to declare that we, the united workers, are taking over all your property because the world belongs to us – a simple question of change in ownership that can and will happen overnight once we have the unity to declare so – no need for violence, no need for more wars and killing, no need for the false and idiotic idea of armed revolution.

Everywhere, all workers, whoever is wherever, simply unites, declares the immediate means of production facing them as the property of the Peoples Global Production Company Inc and asks the private owners of such means of production to take a walk into the dark, dreary distance – into oblivion. And they claim such means of production as their own and take it over on behalf of the Peoples Global Production Company Inc. whose shareholders are all equal shareholders, the people of the world.

Of course, these private owners of means of production like you Mr Rightist have a choice – you can join the people and become collective owners yourselves, equal shareholders with all others in the world in the Peoples Global Production Company Inc. Or you can take a walk into oblivion! The choice is yours.

Everywhere the people, or, what is but the same thing, workers, heavily outnumber the private owners of means of production so their, the people’s, unity is all that is required to take over the private property of private owners and make such property the property of the Peoples Global Production Company Inc.

In the final analysis the task is hugely simple. What was difficult was achieving the rock-solid unity of the people – and this is now possible thanks to development of IT because now the world is a single small village – ideas from one single individual, sitting in one small corner of the world can travel fast across the world in real time and one small spark can light a prairie fire.

Just opening the window to the new, beautiful world is enough to make all see this beautiful world and unite! Today! Now!

Leftists around the world can today unite in a few minutes – as long as it takes for them to see the simplicity of the solution that is staring them in the face.

Ultimately, the only thing that matters to the poor, the working classes, is capture of the means of production, the world’s resources, nay the world itself. Not political power. All political power comes not from the barrel of the gun but from the ownership of all wealth, all means of production, the world itself when it rightfully belongs to us, the poor, the working classes, the people. So if we have to fight, we should fight for the basis of all power, political included, namely, the ownership of the world.

So you can continue to remain quite happy and content in your love – your eternal love for private property, and in that lustful romance not see how Leftists like me are talking about one single MNC owned by all the people – you can see everything but the mortality of the idea of private property and its replacement by collective ownership.

Your romance or rather your eternal love for private property makes it impossible for you to see that once private property is replaced by collective ownership of the people, your “capitalism” will be well and truly buried for ever – no amount of your romance and crying for it will be able to revive it again.

So you may dream and hope that what we “Romantic” Leftists are saying “might after all turn out to be another idea of ‘capitalism’” but you will be rudely woken up from your romantic dream when you realize that we are not talking only about how information can help producers and consumers link up but we are also saying how information will help link up all the workers of the world so that we will unite and throw out you greedy Mr Rightist and romantic lovers of private property and instead we will have a single MNC owned by all of us – your private property will be replaced by our collective property.

We are also romantic no doubt – we do dream too – but we do not dream about space colonies – we dream about taking and snatching what you call your property but which is really our property so we will simply recapture the world that you have stolen from us. We do not dream of some other world but we dream of this world – we dream of snatching and loving and nursing the same woman that you have snatched from us and have raped, maimed and almost killed – our mother, our sister, our lover, our wife – the womb of all life – Planet Earth.

The key issue of the new economic structure is ownership – whether you Mr Rightists will continue to have your system of private ownership or whether we the workers, the real owners of all wealth, will be able to recapture the world that you have stolen from us and declared to be your private property.

It is a question of your private property of the thieves or the collective property of the real producers of all property.

We do not dream of owning some other world – we dream of owning this world – what you claim to be your world – our romantic idea is to romance the very same world that you are “romancing” now – your property will become our property, that is what we want – and if even after we dispossess you, you still feel this new world – where you, the lovers of private property have nothing, and, we, the lovers of collective property own everything – is the same as capitalism – well, who am I to dissuade you from your romantic and lustful dreams and hopes that your love is eternal, that capitalism will survive for ever and that it can never be replaced by the “romantic” ideas of some Leftists like Arjun Sen?

Dreaming and hoping are fundamental rights of all humans! You too have those rights! But when we take your private property and make it our collective property that dream and that hope of eternal love for private property will be shattered for ever! It will spell the death of capitalism and the birth of communism. For eternity! Eternally!

Rightists like you dream and hope that private property will never get abolished while Leftists hitherto under the very same hypnotic dream of private property have dreamed and hoped that somehow state ownership and therefore this mad search for capturing political power will replace private property when all it takes to replace private property is to take it over collectively by the revolutionary association of workers – does that ring any Marxian bell, my comrades?

Just to help remind you, perhaps you should go back to the writings of the early Marx, the pre-Paris Commune Marx and then maybe you will recognize the language. The idea of a revolutionary association of workers establishing collective ownership at the unit level, has, of course, been repeated several times in his work, even after the Paris Commune, even in the third volume of Capital, because when dealing with economic questions Marx had always been his brilliant self not getting misled into mistakes – mistakes caused by the simple fact that the objective economic conditions for a communist revolution had not developed yet although he was seeking a political solution there and then – hence, mistakes in the realm of politics, but absolutely brilliant in the realm of economics where he is sticking to criticizing capitalism and showing how to solve its economic contradictions. Plus, as he himself has pointed out and quoted by me in an earlier post – mankind sets itself such tasks as it can solve…………..etc. etc. But since I am not writing a treatise or book now I have to treat the question of providing such support for my views casually for the moment rather than formally and rigorously.

The basics of the communist mode of production

When private property is replaced by collective property of the people, capitalism is structurally transformed into communism – overnight. All revolutionary, qualitative change takes place like that – from small quantitative changes socializing both the means of production (despite its private ownership) on the one hand and the workers that these means of production enslave (despite their non-revolutionary association till date) on the other until suddenly a time is reached where both socializing processes come to a point when the private character of the means of production can be overnight changed into their collective ownership by the global revolutionary association of the workers.

This time has come because the capitalists themselves have developed the forces of production to a point when we can think of one single MNC, the Peoples Global Production Company Inc in practical, realistic terms and when we can think of running this company on a global scale in practical, realistic terms and all that is needed is the united, socialized workers of the world declaring we have nothing to lose but our chains – let us take over all the world and bring it under the ownership of this people’s company, the People’s Global Production Company Inc in the mother of all mergers & acquisitions that capitalism has ever seen and where all the people of the world are equal shareholders of this new fully merged company, the Peoples Global Production Company Inc.

This is very simple to understand and there is absolutely no difficulty in seeing that this single act by the united workers will bring to a complete end all development of the forces of production under capitalism and private property and will overnight (theoretically, while practically, as long as it takes to physically take over all the productive units and resources across the world and bring them all under the ownership of the Peoples Global Production Company Inc) establish communism, a situation in which the forces of production can grow unfettered but serving the needs of humanity, serving the needs of existence and not serving the greed of private owners who have to produce destructive goods in their desire to make profits for themselves, individually. At one go this resolves both the external contradiction among and between private owners of capital and the internal contradiction between owners and workers by converting these antagonistic contradictions into non-antagonistic contradictions.

All existing individual companies and pieces of land owned by private owners replaced by one single merged entity owned by all the people who will then immediately begin to utilize all these resources to produce, distribute and consume such things that ensures a decent existence for all while bringing to a halt all such industrial production that we do not need for existence.

Unit level possibility vs Global level impossibility

My Leftists comrades may argue but this is also in effect state ownership, Arjun, on a global scale, so how can you then establish such global state ownership by not first taking up the task of smashing the existing bourgeoisie state machinery and capturing political power? See how foolish and “romantic” your ideas are?

Yes, this is also in effect state ownership on a global scale but it is achieved through unit level collective ownership, something that is achievable at the unit level. It does not get stuck with the idea of smashing the bourgeoisie state machinery and capturing political power to impose global state ownership from the top and thereby engaging in tasks that are impossible to achieve, mere dreams, because of the way the owners of private property have continually strengthened the state machinery to give them armed protection plus the very fact that there can be no real change at the global level unless there is first change at the unit level. (I will come back to this theme later).

How do you defeat the mighty armed forces of the world’s bourgeoisie led by the United States? Even if we theoretically argue that they are paper tigers and if we can build up a global Maoist People’s Army then we can defeat them, what is your time frame for achieving that? Few years, few decades, eternity? Is it not just a high hope, a false dream?

We have to recognize that we have to change now, we have to defeat the global bourgeoisie now and we simply don’t have the time to indulge in the luxurious day dream of somehow building up a global Maoist Peoples Army over many many years, in the dim and distant future, perhaps an eternity, to defeat the mighty armies of the global bourgeoisie – we cannot defeat those armies on their terms now or ever, but we can defeat them all the same starting today and within a few months or years, at the most a decade. Provided you are ready to think unit level change.

What happens if you think at the unit level? Who can stop a fully united group of workers taking over a single production unit? We have already done it or have shown our ability to do it. Why not engage the private owners themselves in battle without giving the private owners a chance to bring in their state machinery and their police and army to break our collective resistance? And, by logical extension why not do this unit level take over on a global scale, everywhere, in every country?

Yes, there will be resistance but as the Kanoria Jute Mill movement showed, a movement by the united unarmed workers can stay very much within bourgeoisie laws and still demand direct take over of the means of production that faces them and enslaves them. As the United Airlines case in the USA shows this can even be done in the United States, where probably this needs to be done first, in fact.

We have to shift our attack from where the enemy is strong – its state machinery – to where the enemy is weak – the isolated few private owners facing the united unarmed might of the people – victory for us is obvious and a foregone conclusion!

We have to also shift our attack to trying to capture what matters – the means of production, the world and its resources – knowing that victory in this battle will also give us victory in the battle of political power. The bourgeoisie kills us economically, by denying us our very existence. That’s why they can also kill us politically.

By concentrating our forces to fight them politically, the bourgeoisie has succeeded in its diversionary tactics of misleading us into battle where they have the high ground and their strength, their police and army, their guns and swords. And while engaging us where they are strong they have continued to kill us economically, where they are actually weak.

By shifting the battle to the realm of economics – to the question of capture of means of production utilizing their own laws, using the same laws that protect their property to protect our own re-acquisition of this property – we can defeat the bourgeoisie because they can do nothing as we go on defeating them in one battlefield after other, as we go on recapturing their property, thereby continually weakening them till they are all gone and all property is ours. The very police and army, the very arms and ammunitions they have stockpiled to use against us will become the cause of their own nemesis.

By taking up arms in a vain and foolish bid to capture political power we do exactly what the bourgeoisie want us to do – fight where they want us to fight against their armed might. By taking up democratic, peaceful agitation based on rock-solid workers’ unity we should force the bourgeoisie to fight where we want them to fight – against the unarmed, peaceful, democratic political might of the people united.

The communists/Leftists/Marxists/Trotskyites/Leninists/Maoists/Stalinists over the last 150 years have definitely led the battle of class struggle and has helped us, workers to win many political and democratic rights. Now the time has come to utilize those hard won democratic and political rights to win the real crux of all power – economic power.

Leftists/Trotskyites, Leninists and Maoists, should realize that the united unarmed people having a single clear goal of taking over the private property that face them and enslave them is mightier than the power of a few private owners, whether armed or unarmed.

Stalinists are so hypnotized by the greed of enjoying state power that it may take a little more time for them to give up their dream of first coming to power at the Center (New Delhi) and then may be south east Asia and then maybe the world itself, all through the route of bourgeoisie democracy, which again is obviously a dream. But they too would have to ultimately fall in line when they find themselves to be standing against the united will of the people.

Moreover, if they see reason and fall in line then they can provide great help, they can provide us cover, using the bourgeoisie state machinery itself (wherever they control it like in West Bengal, Kerala, Tripura, Venezuela and many other places in the world where Leftists are enjoying some degree of political power) to help workers take over one by one production units of the bourgeoisie.

Birth of the new in the womb of the old

When the ownership of the world is changed from private ownership by a few people to collective ownership by all – that is, when we achieve global collectiveness – only then we can complete the creation of a new global economy and a new global economic structure. But this is the final situation and such a final situation will not fall from heaven like manna. It will be reached through a process of birth, growth and finally maturity – exactly the same way that all previous modes of production in history including feudalism and capitalism were born, grew and became mature.

The major Leftist mistake hitherto has been to think that since it is ultimately state ownership that we want, it has to be established from the top by capturing state power etc etc. This has also led to the contradiction between the thesis of revolution in one country (of Lenin and Stalin) and the anti-thesis of permanent revolution (of Trotsky), nobody realizing that in reality and so far in history the relations of production first change at the unit level and then initially gradually and later in a rapid revolutionary mode the whole world becomes dominated by these new relations of production, and that relations of production always manifest themselves at the unit level and never at a society-wide level at one go. Again see one of my earlier posts on this issue. The attempt to establish new relations of production at one go globally or failing which in one country is a refusal to learn the lessons of history and social dynamics.

But to start this process of achieving global collective ownership (it is time we dumped the notion of state ownership where the state stands above the people. In the new communist structure, although there will be global collective ownership, the state standing separate from the people withers away – I will come to this later) we have to begin at the unit level – first one unit, then another and as the revolutionary association of workers of each such liberated unit link up and bring all such units under one company, the Peoples Global Production Company Inc, the economic and political power of the united revolutionary association of workers will grow, and that of the bourgeoisie will weaken.

Each such act of economic linking will create each building block of the fully united, fully linked final entity, the global company, the Peoples Global Production Company Inc. What will then happen is a series of mergers and acquisitions very much within the bourgeoisie laws and something that the bourgeoisie can do nothing about – they will have to ban the concept of the corporation itself, they will have to ban mergers and acquisitions – they will have to ban capitalism itself. This is the meaning of a new society taking birth in the womb of the older society – just the way it has happened throughout history.

The mechanics of change: Act local, think global!

How each such unit will be taken over and linked up with other such liberated production units will have to be worked out on the basis of concrete conditions obtaining in each unit. Some units that have greater workers’ unity now will be liberated faster, while some will take a little longer as the politically united revolutionary association of workers, the true 5th International of the International Communist Party helps unit level revolutionary associations of workers to organize themselves both politically and economically (the role of building collective households is crucial here and should never be forgotten and I will take up this issue later).

It is a little too much to expect one single individual sitting in some vague corner of the world to work out this entire program theoretically all by himself. But a truly international communist party can do the job. Such a party must be organized on the basis of unit level organizations of revolutionary associations of workers, and those who actually manage to take over any unit will lead and help the others to do so.

The party will have as members real communists – people who have already become owner-workers in their respective production units. They will be the vanguard which will lead other revolutionary association of workers to take over their respective production units and become communists. Initially, these revolutionary associations of workers will be just that – revolutionary associations of workers, pre-communist workers’ cells, but only those associations that manage to take over production units will become full-fledged communist cells of the party.

Please note that this rules out individuals claiming to be communist. Only if you are part of a revolutionary association of workers’ cell that has taken over a unit and has established collective ownership of all the workers over that unit do you become a communist – so nobody can alone become a communist. Political disputes among individuals who claim to be “communist” will be replaced by an objective criterion for being a communist – only if you have achieved liberation of your unit and have become a collective owner-worker. So there can be only cells of communists, no individual communists.

Thus an objective criteria will be laid down to distinguish between who is a communist and who is not – no useless, sterile political debates. The key question is: have you taken over the unit in which you work on behalf of the people and brought it under the control of the Peoples Global Production Company Inc (or simply Peoples Company Inc)? This Peoples Company will be a legally floated entity under bourgeoisie laws and will be legally owned equally by all those who manage to become communists by taking over their respective production/business units and then merging it with the Peoples Company.

All this can be done legally within the confines of bourgeoisie law so that the bourgeoisie can do nothing but see their own nemesis growing by the day. To ban it they will have to ban all their own organizations for doing business and making profit – so they cannot ban the Peoples Company either.

The activities of the Peoples Company Inc will be determined democratically but under conditions of proletarian dictatorship – all people can give their views, but the communists (that is existing shareholders who have already liberated themselves from the yoke of private ownership) will decide which views to accept and which views to reject because for them the key question always will be whether a particular idea helps the Peoples Company to liberate more units and take them over. That will always be the single point objective criteria for all decisions. (There is some vagueness here but we will have to sort it out – please always remember this is an approach paper and not a final document of recommendations).

It should also be recognized that to take over other units, the Peoples Company (PC, the economic organization of the people, economic opposite of CP, Communist Party, the political organization of the people, will complete the dialectical process of creating the synthesis of economics and politics to create a communist political economy, a new politico-economic structure) will have to always economically empower other workers – that is the liberated people will provide the economic backing to the non-liberated to launch agitations for take over and then sustain these agitations till the take over is complete.

As the movement grows, in many cases simple strikes leading to take over will become possible because the striking workers will be economically helped by the already liberated workers to carry on the strike even if wage payments come to a stop. Again let me say I cannot work out all the answers but if we think together – the answers are blowing in the wind! Let us simply grab them and make this world our own. Today. Now.
And I will again invoke the laws of dialectics to say – when you think unit level, the world is yours, when you think global level, all you get is zilch because global level ownership by all is not possible unless we have unit level collective ownership by all working in any unit – the revolutionary association of workers has to be organized at the unit level – that is the foundation on the basis of which a global revolutionary mega-association of workers can be built.

Leftists hitherto have engaged in the futile task of building the top story of a multi-storied building without first building its base, its foundation, on which all the stories can stand. There can be no global state ownership of the people imposed from the top unless there is unit level collective ownership by the people which grows in a bottom-up approach to ultimately achieve total global people’s ownership (I hate the term state ownership because the structure I am describing will see the state wither away leaving behind only an administrative system to carry out production- not a state sitting on top of the people). In short think global, act local!

We all know this slogan – think global, act local, it is a truism. It just appears that the onerous task and painful burden of pointing out what we all already know has fallen upon an individual like me – but again it is individuals who make up society and it is ultimately individuals who make history although they are always the products of the collective class struggle of humanity! A Marx or a Hitler are individuals but they are also the social products of the collective class struggle of humanity. This is how it has to be as it physically cannot be otherwise, so it is not the fault of the individual if he or she recognizes a major historical truth arising from the collective class struggle of humanity and expresses this as an individual – he is still the voice of all!

My apologies for being an insignificant individual making tall claims but I cannot help it because we humans cannot be anything but individuals, but that is the last reason why we should get bogged down in individualistic ego fights and miss the larger truth in the process. The individual is zilch, but the truth is great. Let us recognize and act upon the hugely significant truth – all of us! Let us forget the insignificant individual who is saying it!

Communist inside, Capitalist outside: Walking on Two Legs!

Incidentally, for the sake of completeness, I can’t end here and have to write some more and I again repeat – this task of trying to solve all problems myself, individually, is killing me, this burden of truth is too painful and I hope some comrades will come forward and help. Anyway, the take over of units and the establishment of collective ownership at the unit level will also create business units which are revolutionary inside but bourgeoisie capitalist units outside till such time that a sufficiently large number of such liberated units reach a stage where all the business units, all the capitalist units of the whole world can be brought under the ownership of the People’s Company, that is till we achieve global collectiveness.

What do we mean by communist inside, capitalist outside? What do we mean by walking on two legs?

First, relations of production obtain in specific production units and not in a vague society-wide way. So a communist relations of production is one where a production unit is owned collectively by all the people who work in that unit thus resolving the first antagonistic contradiction between owners and workers or employers and employees by creating a new class of people employer-employees or owner-workers, people who are at the same time owners as well as workers – thus transforming the antagonistic contradiction into a non-antagonistic contradiction. The nature of ownership is thus collective resolving the antagonistic class contradiction and thus doing away with classes as opposed to the private character of ownership in all previous relations of production – capitalism, feudalism and slavery – all of which are class riven.

Contrast this with the transition from feudalism to capitalism – the antagonistic contradiction of feudalism did not get resolved, so when new capitalist relations of production emerged on the historical proscenium, two new antagonistically related classes appeared – the bourgeoisie and proletariat – the employer and employee because the nature of ownership remained private instead of collective.
Second, the distribution principle in such a new production unit having a new relations of production, the communist relations of production is: from each according to his ability to each according to his needs. That is, the mode of appropriation of the social production is such that the equal contribution of all in social production is recognized and achieved through direct entitlement of a part of the production as per needs – the character of such appropriation is collective. Thus there is no exploitation of labor. Contrast this with capitalist wage labor where the mode of appropriation of social production is private – the capitalist takes the lion’s share and gives a small share to the worker by way of a wage. There is exploitation just as there is exploitation in all previous class-riven relations of production.

Third, although all production units throughout history are in fact social organizations for social production, in class-riven situations, the laborer is first alienated from his point of actual existence – his household, and goes through another round of alienation when the product of his labor power is alienated from him and appropriated by the slave master, the feudal landlord or the capitalist. So the individual although participating in what is ultimately social production is subjected to two rounds of alienation to a point where his existence is totally individualized, totally lonely – the existential dilemma of the existentialist thinkers come in here – being and nothingness. The worker exists, he works for his existence but he is constantly faced with a situation of nothingness because nothing belongs to him. The rest of his family is even further alienated – they have no direct source of existence at all and has to depend on the worker for their existence. Its really a Kafkaesque situation.

I don’t want to go into the philosophical and psychological implications of all this here and instead I will stick to the economic part only to point out that the social basis of private property is the private family. If the family is collective in character, as it was in primitive communism and before the development of private property (and as it still remains so in relic form in some Adivasi communities like the Kanas that I have written about earlier) there is no private individual who can own private property, similarly there is no individual whose labor power can be alienated individually. Whatever property is there has to be owned collectively and exists as community property. Similarly whatever labor power is expended by the individual is done collectively, the product of such spending of human labor power to be appropriated collectively, not individually.
So in modern communism as well, the collective ownership of workers is possible and workable only when they also organize themselves into a single collective household sharing the same kitchen and living as a single family. This creates the social conditions for implementing the each according to his ability, each according to need principle. Just as even nuclear families follow this principle in one way or the other – the budget is limited so priorities are decided and spending is done on priorities. Priorities are decided on a consensus basis between husband, wife, children and elders, or some combination of these protagonists – of course, this is a simplified and idealized example because there are many families where the family head, say the father decides everything – but many nuclear families, whether rich or poor, take decisions through fairly democratic processes. So implementing this principle does not require unlimited production, as claimed by Leftists hitherto, a terrible lie to fool us, the poor – when you can implement this even when there is a budget, that is even where there is limited production (I have written about this earlier, please check on this site) but the key is that it should be done through a democratic consensus among the people concerned. Such consensus is impossible at the state level or global level, but very much possible at the unit level.

Equality of pay does not lead to actual equality. One worker may have a small family size while another worker can have a larger family size. So even if there is equality of pay it does not actually lead to existential equality – the worker with the smaller family will be better off while the worker with the larger family will be worse off and new tensions will appear. The worse off worker will try to get more out of the collectively owned unit and again all the problems of capitalism appear. But suppose all workers of a production unit are organized into a single collective household then the total production of the unit can be shared equally among not only all workers but also their family members as well – in short among all who depend on that production unit for their existence. The problem of alienation gets solved at all the two or three levels I have mentioned above.

(In this post I am deliberately and consciously not going into the equally important issue of relations of reproduction – the sexual relations between men and women and the social task of production of children except to point out that it is possible to work out how to collectivize these relations as well to resolve the existing antagonistic private character of these relations as reflected by the rising incidence of divorce and breakdown of such relations with the more developed a community the higher being its rate of divorce, as also resolving the antagonistic contradictions inherent in the mode of appropriation of what is really social reproduction, children becoming the property of society as a whole rather than being left to the mercy of antagonistically related private individuals).

Thus, collectively owned production units will have to be collectively owned by the collective household of all workers involved. At this stage this may sound vague and impractical but conceptually and intuitively it should be obvious that somehow collective households are necessary to establish real collective ownership and collective appropriation of the social product. I will have to devote at least another separate post on this issue to bring in more clarity but for the moment this will have to suffice. Just think dialectics – private property goes with private families, collective property goes with collective families and let us leave it at that for the moment.

Main thing is that such production units which are collectively owned by collective households, all the antagonistic contradictions of class-riven societies – at both the firm as well as the household level get transformed into non-antagonistic contradictions. Since it is pointless to keep repeating things that I have said before, I will assume that readers have read all that I have written and posted at this site – then they will find it easier to follow what I am saying.

Anyway this is how such units are communist in character from the inside even if they are operating in a capitalist economy and where they are selling their products to capitalist economy since we have not yet achieved global collectiveness where we can afford to do away with money and exchange and achieve distribution through direct barter making use of a global production information system mentioned in my earlier post. The earnings from the sale of production of such units is shared by all in the collective household collectively owning such a unit based on the distribution principle of from each according to his ability to each according to his needs. Please also note that in such a situation – it is not only the individual workers who can contribute to production – since the unit is collectively owned by the collective household comprising spouses and children of the individual workers, in effect all can participate in production unlike in capitalist units where only the individual worker participates in production – spouse and children have to either take employment in some other unit or do not participate in production at all. Please also try and grasp the new concepts – in reality, we will have all kinds of mixed solutions in the interregnum before global collectiveness is achieved – for example, an individual may be part of such a collective household, collectively owning a production unit but spouses and children may still be working in production units that have not yet been liberated. In short, till global collectiveness is achieved we will have to walk on two legs – we have to be communist inside, capitalist outside.

Communist economy’s growth means Capitalist economy’s decline

Thus while such units are communist in character internally they will be dealing with the capitalist economy till such time that all or at least a large majority of production units can be brought under the ownership and control of Peoples Company. Also please note that the first such unit will be renamed after take over by workers as the first unit of the Peoples Company. The second such unit, immediately after take over by workers, will be merged with the Peoples Company and this process will go on till all productive units become one single global MNC – the Peoples Company.

Collectively owned units will be more productive than capitalist units – I have already discussed some of the reasons why this would be so in a previous comment against my friend Shubhash Agrawal – I request readers to click here to read it – and it is possible to show that collectively owned units will be able to quickly start building up an alternative economy which is profitable from a bourgeoisie point of view and therefore, will be increasingly gobbling up one bourgeoisie unit after another.

The key idea of social dialectics and social dynamics is that when a new structurally different mode of production, perhaps, more accurately it should be called a new type of relations of production, appear in the womb of old society then it is these new units with new relations of production that prove to be more efficient in carrying out production than units with older relations of production. This is the reason why land reforms work – when feudal relations are replaced by capitalist relations, the fettered forces of production are freed and the productive unit in question, in this case a given piece of land becomes more productive.

Collectively owned units can introduce full automation as they do not have to sack anyone – all the workers are owners so full automation means all the owner-workers become free to think about innovation, about taking over other units, about how to take over other competing bourgeoisie units in the same line of production while not having to grapple with the problem of wages. Labor in fact becomes free once automatons are introduced. From the revenue of such units all owner-workers merely take whatever they need for existence, not to satisfy their individual wants and greed. Since needs are limited, once basic needs of a capital nature (requiring one time investment such as housing, schools, hospitals, public transport etc) are met, there remains only running costs of existence to be met – beyond that all production is surplus value but surplus owned by the collective owners. To defeat bourgeoisie units such units can start selling goods/services at cost and at times at no cost because the entire production is surplus value, – they can afford to voluntarily not realize this surplus value – the bourgeoisie is defeated, it cannot compete anymore.

(This concept again requires a separate post to explore the full, mind blowing implications of what happens when communist units begin to compete with capitalist units – the bottom line is that in such competition the capitalist units do not stand any chance, any chance at all – they will simply die, kaput!)

What I mean is the establishment of collectively owned units has to be done within capitalism and initially these new collectively owned units will have to operate within a capitalist framework till all the resources of the world are brought under Peoples Company. So there will be a period of time – hopefully short and sweet – when collectively owned communist units and privately owned capitalist units will be operating simultaneously. The destruction of privately owned capitalist units will take place through two distinct and separate processes.

On the one hand workers by achieving unity and establishing revolutionary association of workers will agitate and through their democratic unarmed movements take over bourgeoisie units. Once a few such units come up they will start another process of take over – that of defeating the capitalist units in the market place and taking them over through bourgeoisie methods – often simple buying up as is done in capitalism – the usual M&As .

Simultaneously, the first process of take over – through revolutionary movements of workers will continue – taken over liberated units will help the workers of non-liberated units to organize themselves and take over their respective units. It will take a few years, a decade at the most, for collectively owned units to take over all existing capitalist units, including the great MNCs that seem so impregnable now.

The bourgeoisie will find that their world is disappearing fast in front of their own eyes and they can do little about it because the entire battle is being fought in the economic battle field and not in the political battle field where their police and army can play a repressive role.

To ban collectively owned units and launch armed repressive measures against them the bourgeoisie will have to first ban their own capitalist corporations and declare them illegal – this they cannot do, so all their arms and ammunition that they have stockpiled to use against the workers and communists will become a millstone around their necks – costly but useless. They will drown in their own petard.

Bottom-up planning

The final aspect that should be touched upon to complete a very rough and general outline of the communist mode of production is to touch upon the nature of planning in this mode of production.

Since take over of units by workers will take place one by one there is a question of how such units will link up among themselves even as they operate as capitalist units in the capitalist economy. Also what about agriculture?

Initially, if we look at actual reality and leave the realm of theoretical speculation for a moment, we find that in most industrial units the workers come from peasant family backgrounds – many of them are also small and marginal landowners – just as it obtained in Kanoria Jute. When these workers unite to form a collective household they can also pool together all their land and create a joint farm collectively owned. This farm can be brought under the ownership of Peoples Company and immediately you have a situation where a mixed agro-industrial people’s economy is created that has both industrial and agricultural means of production.

The first objective of all collectively owned units should be to achieve minimum existential self-sufficiency. The collective household will have to use the available means of production so that all members of the household can work on the available means of production and (a) produce as much of their own food, shelter, clothing and other items of daily use, (b) produce a marketable surplus of both industrial and agricultural goods that can be sold in the capitalist economy and these earnings can be used to buy all other goods/services needed for a decent existence.

As more new units come under Peoples Company they work out linkages between themselves in a bottom up fashion – that is first between Collective Unit 1 and Collective Unit 2 to create Collective Unit 3, then between this already one-round-united Collective Unit 3 with the new Collective Unit 4 to create a larger Collective Unit 5, then between Collective Unit 5 and another new Collective Unit 6 to create a larger Collective Unit 7 and so on. This process will go on till all collectively units across the world are all united.

And just as MNCs do, these merged entities will have to organize their many tiered unity in terms of regional logistics and synergy – all units remain units but they are organized bottom up from local to regional to national (as long as nation states exist) to global. The bourgeoisie has already developed all the techniques and methods of working out such many tiered organization both politically and economically. We have to simply appropriate these ways of organization and the organizations themselves for us, the poor, the working classes, the people.

As each level of unity is achieved, the planning is done synergistically for all units brought under the Peoples Company fold – just as a capitalist company growing in this inorganic fashion would do. The only difference would be that the capitalist company will bother about profits but these collective units will bother about how to produce at lowest cost in terms of energy, transport costs, raw material usage, especially items of non-renewable resources (basically on physical terms but as long as global collectiveness is not completed in price terms as well) and still maximize the production of all marketable surplus after taking care of meeting as much of direct existential needs as possible.

The withering away of the state

It should be recognized that the collective ownership of production units by collective households – this atomic social organization of collective household-collective firm combine – will be a self-administering social organization which is both a political and economic organization at the same time – again a dialectical resolution of antagonistic contradictions into their non-antagonistic version. Each such household-firm combine will be at the same time the atomic unit of the people’s economic organization, the Peoples Company (PC), as well as the atomic unit of the people’s political organization, the Communist Party (CP).

Thus, when the entire globe’s resources and people are organized into atomic social organizations that are at the same time units of the people’s economic organization, the PC, as well as the people’s political organization, the CP, there remains no need for any state. As more and more such atomic social organizations are set up, the state withers away. Ultimately, the entire world gets organized into self-administering atomic social organizations, the collective household-collective firm combines. There remains no need for a state standing separate from and above the people.

The state disappears, yet there is global state ownership, which should more accurately be now called global collective ownership rather than state ownership since how can you have state ownership when the state itself disappears? Leftists should please note that this also resolves the silly contradiction that now exists in their theoretical position – in a class-less society the state which is nothing but the instrument of the ruling class to impose its rule over the ruled class must disappear and yet these Leftists claim everything will be under state ownership – how can the state own anything if it has to also disappear at the same time; conversely, if it has to wither away, how can it at the same time own everything?

Concluding remarks

The whole point of writing all this is to show that it is possible to create collectively owned units at the unit level and it is possible to gradually build up a new economy by continually linking these collectively owned units to create a global collective economy. Although I may not have achieved full clarity, I think I have still been able to show why this new economy would be qualitatively different from capitalism and why such an economy would be able to resolve the antagonistic contradictions of capitalism in a non-antagonistic way.

Undoubtedly, the above thinking will probably need a lot more clarity before it can be practically implemented, but the limited project of trying to show that it is possible to think of building a qualitatively different communist economy from within the womb of capitalism is not a “romantic” idea.

I also think that the responsibility of making this a truly practical project lies not only with me but with all others who are seriously interested in building a new communist mode of production.

I think I have also shown, however unclearly, that the process of social change I have outlined above is according to the laws of social dynamics as discovered by Marx, namely, according to the historically verifiable processes of social change that we have empirically observed throughout history so far and captured by the rubric Historical Materialism.

I would like to end with the claim that the actual process of emergence of a communist mode of production, if and when it does happen in history will be similar to what I have outlined above in the main, although there may be differences in the actual details; mainly because this is the only scientific process of historical change as indicated by the past history of humanity!

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