1. Statement of the question
The fact that the deepest crisis of the labor movement was established on the territory of the post-Soviet space was not said unless only the lazy one. Many parties, movements, organizations of the left are constantly repeating this, offering a way out of this situation, discussing the reasons for the stagnation in the labor movement, etc. But none of them came close to resolving this issue.
Some are hindered by dogmatism, others by leftist adventurism, and others by opportunism. It is also noteworthy that calling the new organizations communist has become unpopular due to the total discrediting of this name by opportunists of various kinds. But to call the organization a "labor movement" - please! And this despite the fact that very often in such "movements" there is nothing working, except for the name. In today's situation, to call any movement a worker is nothing more than an advertising PR move designed for an unprepared worker or even a layman. Any political activist, let alone a communist, who had to work with the masses in practice, in life, and not from a warm office via the Internet, knows that there is no need to talk about any real organized labor movement. There is simply no such movement. Furthermore,finding a sufficiently politically conscious worker today is extremely difficult, usually their number is one in a million, and this despite the fact that such workers are completely scattered. The greatest thing that the masses of workers can do today is to go on a strike, and only when extreme poverty pushes the workers towards it, and stops at the first concessions from the bourgeoisie. Not to mention even such cases when strikes are organized by trade unions of enterprises, the task of which is to lull the spontaneous intensity of class contradiction with the help of a strike through collusion and compromise.and only when extreme poverty pushes the workers towards it, and stops at the first concessions from the bourgeoisie. Not to mention even such cases when strikes are organized by trade unions of enterprises, the task of which is to lull the spontaneous intensity of class contradiction with the help of a strike through collusion and compromise.and only when extreme poverty pushes the workers towards it, and stops at the first concessions from the bourgeoisie. Not to mention even such cases when strikes are organized by trade unions of enterprises, the task of which is to lull the spontaneous intensity of class contradiction with the help of a strike through collusion and compromise.
Any political action of the masses, any protest is usually nothing more than a struggle of the working people for the government's observance of equality in bourgeois rights, and not for their class interests, and the occasional rebellion against the war is just an open unwillingness and fear of going to death. It may well be expected that none of the workers will now wish to go to their deaths for the sake of the socialist revolution.
In a political sense, the workers today are absolutely powerless. Any political events in which workers can participate en masse are always organized either by the bourgeoisie, or by petty bourgeois activists or opportunists. The same protests that occasionally spontaneously arise in the working environment are usually disorganized, lacking a politically conscious nucleus, so these protests are quickly suppressed, or they still have a political nucleus - in the person of the nationalist bourgeois opposition, which simply “merges” class protest.
The question of class consciousness is even more acute. The highest percentage of ordinary people among the proletariat and a very difficult, inert perception by them of the simplest foundations of class theory, which he should, first of all, learn from his own life, and not from communist propaganda, is a direct consequence of the underdevelopment of the community of views, the lack of solidarity between the communists and the masses, as well as mutual assistance, trust and solidarity between individual proletarians.
And then, when "dying and decaying" capitalism every day worsens the economic situation of the workers, they, instead of rebelling against this situation even with massive riots, on the contrary, increase competition among themselves, in their struggle with each other becoming to the side of the bourgeoisie.
Until now, a real communist party has not been created that would express the fundamental interests of the working class, despite the fact that a great many opportunist parties have been created, and a relatively conscious part of the workers is forced to rush between them, since to create a true communist party, a movement of workers is needed, and its can not see. Even organizations calling themselves “workers or communist movements,” “workers or communist parties,” “workers or communist fronts,” etc., are forced to admit that the labor movement is paralyzed and is in a deep more than a dozen years has not been found.
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2. The place of the party in the labor movement
The most progressive representatives of the revolutionary intelligentsia have already partially solved the problem of the causes of the crisis in the labor movement. However, their analysis of these reasons did not go deeper than the question of the role and place of the Communist Party in this movement. Thus, the question of the party stood in front of the economic substantiation of the crisis of the labor movement, the analysis of the causes turned out to be superficial, and the theoretical constructions based on this analysis were idealistic.
It could not be otherwise, since even the most revolutionary intelligentsia, being cut off from the working masses, being cut off from participation in the life and work of workers, from understanding the mood and mentality of the workers, from the peculiarities of the way of life and the interaction of workers with each other, loses its practical experience of work with the masses, cannot properly interact with the masses, which means that he draws incorrect conclusions and incorrect theoretical constructions. Theory breaks away from practice, inferences slide towards idealism. The revolutionary intellectuals themselves did not notice how they put the question of the party, that is, the political question, ahead of the economic question.
The revolutionary intelligentsia drew an erroneous conclusion, the content of which is that the place of the communist party turns out to be primarily the labor movement. The revolutionary intellectuals consider the absence of a real communist revolutionary party to be the cause of the entire crisis of the labor movement. At the same time, they forgot that the party is the organizing force of the labor movement, and not at all a force, it is the movement that creates. No subjective premise can cause any objective process, any subjective cause is a consequence of an objective cause. Denying this means going over to the side of idealism, which means a departure from Marxism and a departure from revolution.
The Communist Party cannot emerge outside the labor movement and then “awaken” this movement or create it in any way. This is a perfectly idealistic formula, approaching Blanquism. On the contrary, the party is the product of the labor movement; it arises in the process of uniting the most conscious elements of the spontaneous labor movement with representatives of the revolutionary intelligentsia into a single progressive organization of the working class. The party organizes a spontaneous labor movement and raises its consciousness to the level of a political force. The party is the foremost organized and organizing detachment of the labor movement, but it is not the force that creates the labor movement as a whole. In other words, the workers' movement itself creates, gives birth to the party, pushing its most class-conscious representatives forward,who then lead the working class. Before the emergence of a party, there must be a sufficiently developed spontaneous labor movement.
Thus, the absence of a communist party is an indicator of a crisis in the labor movement, not its cause. The fact that during more than two decades of capitalist exploitation and imperialist oppression, the working class was never able to create its own party, expressing the fundamental interests of this class, testifies to what a difficult situation the working class is in, how paralyzed its liberation activities are, he cannot even recognize himself as a class.
Revolutionary intellectuals cannot explain the reasons for the absence of a revolutionary party in the presence of a labor movement, therefore, in order to justify their position, they tend to declare the high consciousness of the working class and, at the same time, the small number and low consciousness of the communists. As if the second does not follow from the first. As if the consciousness of a communist is not formed in the labor movement.
It was a banal misunderstanding of the place and role of the party in the labor movement that led to the erroneous conclusion of the revolutionary intellectuals regarding the bourgeois-reactionary coup in Ukraine in 2013-2014. The essence of their mistake was that they considered the situation established at that moment as a fully formed revolutionary situation in which all the objective conditions for the revolution had already matured and only the subjective condition - the Communist Party - was lacking.
At the same time, the fact that the working class as a whole, even as a spontaneous force, did not take part in the unfolding events at all, completely escaped the gaze of the revolutionary intellectuals, but there were only separate, disunited workers, completely led by bourgeois propaganda. At that time, the working class did not even rise to the level of trade unionism, there was no elementary solidarity between the workers, there was not even a hint of class struggle. In those events, the proletariat was only an instrument in the hands of the bourgeoisie, which played its role in the redistribution of property between the imperialist parties to the conflict. Simply put, the main objective condition of the revolutionary situation - “the lower classes do not want to live in the old way” - was absent. If only because the "lower ranks" did not represent any independent mass.
This is precisely what the revolutionary intelligentsia did not notice and did not understand, taking the mass upsurge of the working people for the independent initiative of the "lower ranks". Constantly pointing out that the reason for the “failure of the revolutionary situation” was the absence of a revolutionary party, it did not reveal the most important question: what are the objective prerequisites for the emergence of a revolutionary party of the working class? Why has the working class not yet nominated its most class-conscious representatives into a single organization? Why did the individual protest actions of the workers not even grow into a mass economic movement?
Attempts to cling to a party that does not exist, the conditions for the creation of which are not disclosed, in order to explain their arguments, is nothing more than theoretical impoverishment, which leads either to khvostism, like the majority of opportunists who are simply waiting for the independent emergence of a party, or to Blanquism, as among the revolutionary intelligentsia, who wants to create a party independently of the working class, and then impose it on it, introduce it into it.
From this we can draw a conclusion that revolutionary intellectuals absolutely do not want to draw, namely: the party cannot be the engine of the labor movement. It only brings the labor movement to a higher level. But before doing this, the labor movement must at least reach such a level that a party is formed. Today we do not have such a party, which means that we must look for the reasons at the very root of the class struggle - production relations. The revolutionary intelligentsia, without drawing such a conclusion, is doomed to walk in a vicious circle.
3. Experience of the class struggle
Some revolutionary intellectuals believe that since class consciousness is a subjective concept (i.e., depending on consciousness), then objective reasons for its formation are not required. Here there is a separation of consciousness from being, which means a transition to idealism. There is no doubt that such conclusions can only be drawn by the intelligentsia that devotes more time to theory than practice. After all, every practicing revolutionary knows how difficult it is to convince workers of the need to study Marxism in a political lull, but it becomes dramatically easier to do this in a political crisis. Here it is obvious that the spontaneous upsurge of the masses is followed by the growth of consciousness. Therefore, it is necessary to draw a conclusion: class consciousness, as a subjective factor, is a consequence of objective reasons, the totality of which is the class struggle.
So, firstly, we know that without the Communist Party, not only can the transition from a revolutionary situation to a proletarian revolution be impossible, but also elementary, the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie cannot rise above trade unionism. Secondly, we realized that the communist party cannot arise without a sufficient level of class consciousness of the proletariat, at which it understands the need to form such a party. And, finally, thirdly, the class consciousness of the proletariat is nurtured and developed in the process of the class struggle.
Class consciousness is a body of knowledge necessary for representatives of a particular class to understand their class goals and objectives. It follows from this definition that consciousness is a quantitative characteristic of a subject, which is directly related to his practical experience. Practical experience is the result of the accumulation of knowledge gained through practice, trial and error, victories and failures. Any scientific theory is based on it. Likewise, Marxism is based on the entire historical experience of the class struggle.
Consequently, with the accumulation of practical experience in the class struggle, the class consciousness of the proletariat grows. Of course, it cannot be argued that a spontaneous struggle can lead workers to an awareness of the need for Marxist scientific knowledge. However, it directly prepares workers to embrace Marxism. Until the workers exhaust all economic ways to improve living conditions, all bourgeois methods of politically defending their interests, until they see the ineffectiveness of such methods, Marxist scientific knowledge for them will be the same utopia divorced from life, like "heaven in the kingdom of heaven."
Marxism is a generalization of the experience of the entire history of the class struggle. The communist teaching was the result of the development of the long-term struggle of the oppressed classes against the oppressors. However, this doctrine is not limited to the attitude of workers to capitalists. The area of knowledge that this experience summarizes, “is the area of relations of all classes and layers to the state and government, the area of relationships between all classes” [1]. Thus, Marxism goes beyond the boundaries of the "relations of workers to owners", assuming a sufficiently high development of consciousness, higher than it could be developed in the sphere of economic struggle.
The bearer of Marxism, or, more precisely, of the entire revolutionary experience of the working class, is the most class-conscious part of the proletariat, its advanced organized and organizing detachment, the vanguard - the revolutionary party.
With the victory of revisionism in the CPSU, the party opposed itself to the masses, ceased to express the class interests of the proletariat, and most importantly, ceased to transmit to the masses the revolutionary experience of the class struggle. This means that the working class of the USSR has lost its vanguard, has lost all the historical experience accumulated in the process of fighting the oppressors. There was no one else to raise the consciousness of the masses, which the working class could not acquire within the framework of its economic position, and could not acquire its own experience, since it lived in conditions without exploitation. This led to the fact that when the counter-revolution passed into an active phase, when the bourgeoisie revived in the USSR deprived the working class of ownership of the means of production, the Soviet people were completely paralyzed, unable to even assess the events that took place. The proletariat lost its class consciousness, ceased to be aware of its class interests. The party, which was called upon to be an inseparable part of the working class, was opposed to the working class and became its enemy. What happened was exactly what Stalin had warned about: the split between the party and the masses and their opposition to each other. [2]
I will not go deep into the reasons why the revisionists were able to take a majority in the party and carry out a coup in it. This question is beyond the scope of this topic, although this question is undoubtedly very important. However, the current position of the proletariat, the current crisis of the labor movement, lies precisely in this - in a contradiction that no one in the Soviet Union previously could have thought of, but which turned out to be much more serious than the contradiction between mental and physical labor, between town and country, etc..d. It was the contradiction between the party and the masses. The working class was thrown far back, to a state in which it could not have been even a hundred years ago. He lost his own political experience of the class struggle.
4. Production of means of production
Marxism reveals the role of man in nature as a transformer of nature. Man transforms nature to satisfy his needs, and this transformation of nature is labor. Man differs from animals primarily in that he brings the labor process to a new level. Of course, animals are also able to work, creating homes for themselves, obtaining food, etc. However, human labor is qualitatively different from animal labor in that man is capable of producing means that facilitate this labor. These funds are called tools of labor. Man has separated from the animal world since he became capable of producing tools. Facilitation of labor consists in the growth of labor productivity, and this growth in productivity is carried out by improving the tools of labor. And if in ancient times a person created consumer goods only by applying tools of labor to objects of nature, then with further development he began to create them by applying tools of labor to the objects of his own labor, to its results. In the future, the use of instruments of labor for objects of labor for the production of consumer products became the predominant, basic, inseparable whole - the means of production. Improving the means of production requires the interaction of many individuals with each other, the exchange of labor experience between them, joint, collective labor. Thus, new relations arose between people that could not arise in the animal world - relations in the process of labor and in the process of distribution and consumption of products of labor - production relations. Industrial relations are the basis of human society. It is the production of the means of labor, or rather, the means of production, that makes man a man, separating him from the entire animal world, forming his mental, moral, cultural and other human characteristics.
The improvement of the means of production leads to an increase in human needs, and the growth of needs, on its part, requires an increase in production necessity, and, as a consequence, further improvement of the means of production. In the process of improving and complicating the means of production, man himself is being improved and developed. This cumulative development is called an increase in the level of productive forces. The continuous growth of the level of productive forces at a certain moment requires a cardinal change in production relations, a revolutionary transformation of society.
It is obvious that the means of production play a key role in the formation of human society. That is why the attitude of a person to the means of production affects the entire life of human society.
Private ownership of the means of production has split human society into two irreconcilable camps: those who own and dispose of the means of production, and those who directly put them into action, who constitute the productive forces of society. Owners and workers. On the exploiters and the exploited.
“The history of all hitherto existing societies was the history of class struggle” [3]. And to this we can add - the history of the struggle for the liberation of the productive forces from class oppression. There is no doubt that private property has become a brake on the development of productive forces, and they must inevitably free themselves from this brake. All the efforts of the capitalists to retain the productive forces, preserving private property, in order to preserve their dominance and high privileged position, lead to the most difficult contradictions in society, the main one of which is the contradiction between the growing level of productive forces and outdated production relations. And the further the productive forces grow, the more labor improves, the sharper and deeper this contradiction, which is acquiring global significance today. It ceased to be nationally closed and moved to the world level. It is precisely this contradiction that has caused the modern working class in the post-Soviet space (and not only) to become incapable of waging the class struggle.
But it is precisely the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production that should push him towards revolutionary action! How did it happen that the gravedigger of capitalism, the working class, which constitutes the productive forces of society, found itself in such a situation?
In order to get an answer to this question, it is necessary to study in detail the structure of modern capitalism. In doing so, revolutionary intellectuals use the knowledge gained before the middle of the last century, ignoring the entire subsequent process of the development of capitalism, thereby sliding into dogmatism. This dogmatism does not allow them to see the whole picture as a whole, so they are forced to resort to theoretically erroneous justifications, like the question about the party, which we discussed above.
The fact is that modern capitalism has long ago reached the limit of development of the productive forces that allows capitalism to exist. The world market is saturated with goods, and its further saturation threatens with devaluation of these goods, that is, with overproduction crises. The first world crisis of overproduction occurred in 1974-1975, and the process of getting out of it lasted for many years, through a barbaric reduction in production, continuous stagnation in the development of production [4]. But the world never fully emerged from the crisis until the counter-revolutionary collapse of the USSR, which thereby opened new sales markets for the capitalist world, postponing the onset of the general crisis of capitalism. Naturally, under such conditions, the highest productive forces of the USSR were simply not needed by foreign capitalists. They needed to saturate the new free market with their surplus of goods, which meant that there was no need to produce anything beyond that. Therefore, the productive forces inherited by capitalism from the USSR were simply destroyed. The process of their destruction is known to us as deindustrialization - the mass destruction of factories, factories, state farms and other enterprises, the productivity of which was simply enormous by the standards of capitalism. Nevertheless, this did not allow the crisis to be postponed for long. The level of the productive forces of society continues to grow, therefore, world capital is forced to further reduce production so that the scale of production does not go beyond the limits that make it possible to sell the produced goods without sacrificing profit. The more labor productivity grows (the number of products per unit of working time),- and its growth is deliberately accelerated by the capitalists, striving to increase their profits as much as possible, - the less interested world capital is in expanding the scale of production (the total amount of output). It undoubtedly follows from this that the productive forces of society will continue to decline. And first of all, this will affect the developed, but dependent countries.
Modern capitalism is in the stage of imperialism, moreover, in the process of globalization. Globalization is the process of forming a single world economy for which there are no national borders. If earlier it was profitable for capitalists to concentrate the entire production cycle within the boundaries of one state, today, during the period of unprecedented development of transport technologies and methods of transferring information, which significantly reduced the cost of interaction between enterprises, it has become profitable to locate enterprises of one industry, or even one production process, in different points of the globe. Even global enterprises have emerged, consisting of many separate workshops and branches scattered around the world, each of which performs a very narrow part of the functions. The same applies not only to production, but also to the financial sector. The entire world of capitalism has become a single interconnected and interdependent organism. In general, the process of globalization itself does not bear anything negative for humanity, but, on the contrary, is a rather progressive process. It is another matter that it develops under capitalism, which means that it is used by capitalists all over the world to exploit the proletariat of the whole world. Globalization still serves the same private property, and the main principle of capitalism - getting the maximum profit by private owners - goes to the world level [5].which is used by capitalists all over the world to exploit the proletariat of the whole world. Globalization still serves the same private property, and the main principle of capitalism - getting the maximum profit by private owners - goes to the world level [5].which is used by capitalists all over the world to exploit the proletariat of the whole world. Globalization still serves the same private property, and the main principle of capitalism - getting the maximum profit by private owners - goes to the world level [5].
If earlier the imperialist metropolises for colonization had to seize backward countries by force, overthrow the local government and brazenly appropriate their industry, today everything has changed. As a result of globalization, states have lost their economic independence, and now it is enough to simply stop buying or selling products, or lending to enterprises, and the state thereby completely loses the entire economy. The production process breaks down, and enterprises are simply not able to sell even a minimum of products, since they produce highly specialized semi-finished products made from semi-finished products, units made from parts, components from components. Today the colonized countries are formally independent. They can have their own independent government, their own laws,electoral system and even their own army. But not having its own production, all independence becomes just a formality. Therefore, the era of globalized imperialism is often called neo-colonialism.
The imperialists seek to deprive the dependent countries of the opportunity to revive their own, independent domestic production. However, any production requires a means of production. The neocolonies have at their disposal only those means of production that are supplied by the metropolises. Thus, the dependent countries are deprived of the opportunity to start any production without the consent of the metropolises. Countries deprived of their own heavy industry are unable to organize the production of their own means of production. The industry of such countries becomes one-sided, usually only one branch of production develops in them. Such production is very sensitive to any market fluctuations and especially to crises. This is the reason for constant unemployment, a drop in the quality of education, medicine, culture and other areas of social security.
The industrial proletariat of the developed dependent countries is a minority of the population, and is often not in demand. The imperialists, striving to reduce the scale of production, taking advantage of the economic dependence of these countries, at the time of crises, primarily reduce the production of these countries. The working class, deprived of the opportunity to participate in the production of the means of production, loses its own awareness of itself as a creator, as a creator of productive forces. Due to constant reductions, it becomes unclaimed, work in production ceases to be respected, but at the same time it becomes more and more difficult. The labor force is increasingly spilling over into the service sector, where workers are losing class solidarity. The vast majority of the working class is marginalized. A worker who does not take part in the production of the means of production,cannot afford to claim ownership of the means of production. The working class, deprived of the opportunity to produce what it is hired to apply its labor power to, alienates not only its labor, but also alienates itself from its own class consciousness, loses its sense of its own significance, ceases to feel like a human being.
5. The situation in the global capital system
Imperialism allowed the monopolists to control, to some extent, the amount of commodity put on the market. In the pre-monopoly period, capitalists were forced to produce as many goods as possible at their own peril and risk. This made it possible to squeeze out competitors, but inevitably led to crises of overproduction, leading to the reduction of many enterprises and even entire industries. It was mainly those enterprises that “survived” that produced a significantly larger amount of goods, that is, the largest ones. Crises largely contributed to the formation of monopolies: they sifted out small enterprises and thereby strengthened large ones. Today we have a small number of gigantic monopolies, producing eight, or even nine-tenths of the total mass of commodities, as well as many small enterprises, whose influence on the market is completely insignificant. Even if new enterprises suddenly begin to produce too many goods in order to supplant the monopolies, the sale of these goods will be possible only in the event of an unimaginably sharp increase in demand, otherwise the excess of goods will reduce prices to a level that is unprofitable for either the new enterprise or the monopolies. Thus, the monopolies are able to keep an approximate account of the demand in the market, and therefore produce no more goods than is necessary to meet this demand; small enterprises simply plug up the gaps and inaccuracies in this accounting with their mass of goods.disadvantageous neither for the new enterprise, nor for the monopolies. Thus, the monopolies are able to keep an approximate account of the demand in the market, and therefore produce no more goods than is necessary to meet this demand; small enterprises simply plug up the gaps and inaccuracies in this accounting with their mass of goods.disadvantageous neither for the new enterprise, nor for the monopolies. Thus, the monopolies are able to keep an approximate account of the demand in the market, and therefore produce no more goods than is necessary to meet this demand; small enterprises simply plug up the gaps and inaccuracies in this accounting with their mass of goods.
An increase in labor productivity increases the number of goods produced by one worker per unit of time. This means that in order to prevent overproduction and preserve profits, capitalists are forced to reduce the number of jobs. If back in the last century the capitalists threw goods onto the market, completely not knowing what the demand would be for them, today the picture is completely different. Modern information technologies allow monopolies to quickly respond to reduced market demand - monopolies keep their finger on the pulse of the market. Fluctuations in the market are smoothed out by cheaper and faster transport deliveries and an almost instantaneous rate of transmission of information about the state of demand at any end of the earth. More and more automation and more and more computerization of production leads to more and more reductions. World production has entered an era of continuous creeping crisis (as bourgeois experts say, “systemic crisis”), characterized by a continuous reduction in the number of workers employed in the production of goods.
On the other hand, as we said above, monopolies have ceased to be nationally closed, they have become transnational (that is, international), which means that any local crisis, be it a crop failure, earthquake, epidemic, war, strike, etc..p., no longer significantly affects the state of affairs of the monopoly itself. It is enough for a capitalist to close a branch or subsidiary in a local crisis zone and open it in another country or on another continent, where the situation is conducive to maximum profit. In this sense, the global operations system is flexible enough to avoid significant fluctuations caused by local market areas. However, this does not in any way improve the situation on the world market as a whole. On the contrary, this system at the same time contributes to more and more consistent and continuous stagnation. And the more the capitalists strive to protect themselves from crises and secure the greatest profit for themselves, the more systematically they bring the entire capitalist system closer to their common end.
But if the capitalists can postpone the crisis of overproduction of goods to some extent by continuously reducing the scale of production (equivalent to an increase in labor productivity), the situation in the financial sector is somewhat different. It is simply impossible to postpone the global financial crisis in any way, except by reducing the number of financial players. And that's why. The point is that as the degree of division of labor and the degree of socialization of production in capitalist society increases, the number of commodity-money transactions increases. And more commodity-money transactions require more money supply. Globalization is an extreme degree of division of labor, in which individual enterprises perform a very narrow scope of tasks, and an extreme degree of socialization of production,which becomes truly global. In addition, the bulk of commodity-money exchange falls not on the supply of consumer goods directly to the population, but on the interaction between industries, enterprises, branches, workshops, that is, within the production process itself. Thus, a reduction in the mass of commodities supplied to the population does not in any way reduce the number of commodity-money transactions carried out in the production process. And on the contrary, an increase in the level of productive forces requires the implementation of an ever greater division of labor and an ever greater socialization of production. That is, the number of commodity-money transactions is constantly growing as the crisis deepens. This means that in order to ensure the efficiency of capital and liquidity of banks, the money supply also has to be continuously increased. A continuous increase in the money supply, like an increase in the number of any other commodity, leads to a continuous depreciation of money, to continuous, creeping inflation, which can be stopped only temporarily, by, as we have already said, reducing the number of financial monopolies. Financial monopolists reduce the number of financial monopolies, that is, they reduce themselves. However, this measure will subsequently lead to the consolidation of these monopolies, which will only cause even greater stagnation. However, this measure will subsequently lead to the consolidation of these monopolies, which will only cause even greater stagnation. However, this measure will subsequently lead to the consolidation of these monopolies, which will only cause even greater stagnation.
The most developed, advanced countries have long ago reached the limit of capitalist development that still allows them to be profitable. Therefore, in the pursuit of even greater profits, the capitalists seek to export capital to the so-called developing countries, i.e., to those backward countries in which the local government, along with the national bourgeoisie, has provided sufficient conditions for the development of production. These conditions are low taxes, developed infrastructure, tolerable education and medicine, and cheap labor. The better these conditions are provided, the more capitalists invest in production in these countries, since this provides them with the opportunity not to invest in the development of industry from scratch, which promises large profits. Financial investments in these countries make it possible to further develop infrastructure and further develop production. Subsequently, the local national bourgeoisie grows richer, becomes stronger and itself becomes a transnational owner, a participant in global competition, in which it can either win by absorbing other monopolies or be defeated by joining already existing monopolies. Thus, in recent years, production has been increasingly concentrated in developing countries, the main features of which are: 1) high population density, which ensures high competition between workers, and, as a consequence, low labor costs; 2) sufficiently rich natural resources (for example, minerals), which provide the local bourgeoisie with relative independence and the possibility of developing the country's infrastructure;3) a strong social stratification into rich and poor, which is a consequence of the merciless exploitation of workers.
For the most part, it is in the developing countries that the bulk of the production industry is concentrated, the proletariat of these countries "feeds" the rest of the world with products, including providing other countries with the means of production. But at the same time, none of the developing countries hosts a full cycle of production of means of production. This is especially true of mechanical engineering, which is the basis of such production. The capitalists are trying to atomize this branch as much as possible. In developed countries, enterprises are located for assembling assemblies already produced in other countries into finished products, mainly highly intelligent industries are developing and financial centers are located. The rest of the countries, the number of which is constantly growing, remain without more or less serious production,and therefore become subsidized.
6. Productivity and distribution. Class strata
Labor productivity grows continuously, and the bourgeoisie, in its pursuit of profit, itself contributes to the growth of this productivity. Long gone are the days when the worker produced no more food and consumer goods than he and his family could consume. Today workers produce hundreds of times more products than they can use themselves. For example, according to the norms of the Russian Federation, a bakery with a number of workers of 200 people can produce about 100 tons of bread per day [6]. For the meat-processing industry, the figures are approximately the same - 200-300 workers per 100 tons of finished meat products per day [7]. Critics may dispute the numbers, as the production of the final product requires intermediate production steps, such as making flour for baking bread and harvesting and processing grain for flour. But in these intermediate productions the numbers are even higher! In the grain processing industry, there are no more than 50 workers for every 10 tons of grain per season [8]! The performance of a modern combine (for 2013) is 30 tons of grain per hour (with a yield of 5 tons per hectare) [9]. In cattle enterprises for the production of milk and beef, milk yield per head per year is about 5000 kg of milk, and about 150 kg of meat at slaughter. One enterprise for the production of milk can contain 1000 heads, for the production of meat - up to 12000 heads of cattle, depending on the age of the calves, with a staff of 300 workers [10]. The same applies to the entire food industry: the production of poultry and eggs, various cereals, confectionery, sugar, vegetables, fruits, not counting the alcoholic beverage industry, in which productivity is even higher [11]. According to general estimates, each branch of the food industry produces 200-300 times (at least) more finished products than all workers employed in these branches can consume. Of course, not all businesses comply with these standards and not all countries can achieve such productivity. But in general, the numbers are more than indicative. A similar situation occurs in other branches of industry - workers produce hundreds of times more products than they can consume themselves. For example, the AvtoVAZ company produces about a million vehicles a year with a total number of employees of just over 50 thousand people [12]. And this despite the fact that the number of workers is continuously decreasing, and the number of cars produced remains the same [13]. Former phone manufacturer Nokia,with a staff of 100 thousand people produced 400 million phones in 2011. Two years later, the number of employees was almost halved, and the output remained approximately the same. Then the company was absorbed by Microsoft, such a crisis [14].
Today, labor productivity is so high that it is enough to involve no more than 2-3% of the world's population in the entire food industry in order to completely end hunger on the planet [15]. However, the number of hungry people in the world is growing, and production continues to decline. Why? For the sake of the profit of a small handful of capitalists. As production decreases, the number of unemployed grows, who sometimes have to get jobs in areas of activity that are completely unnecessary for society as a whole. As the productive forces of society increase, natural resources become richer due to their more economical extraction, processing and use. Manufacturing is becoming easier and more efficient. The means of production created by all mankind are becoming more convenient and easier to master, making it easier for workers,if it was aimed at ensuring the contentment of the whole society. Thousands and even millions of working hands strive to apply their labor to these means, and the enormous potential created by humanity and nature awaits when this labor will be applied to it. However, the entire capitalist way of doing business is on this path. We are ready to sacrifice the labor and livelihood of the overwhelming majority of the population for the enrichment of a small handful of the world's most influential capitalists. While in Europe tons of produced food is being destroyed, in the backward countries of Africa, hundreds of people are dying of hunger. While in China workers are exploited by thousands of 70 working hours a week, in Ukraine the same thousands of workers cannot find employment for their labor. This contradiction becomes so blatant, so blatantwhich often breaks out in the bloodiest imperialist wars.
Summarizing the above, we can say that workers who produce material goods produce much (hundreds of times) more than they can use themselves. And if wages are calculated in the aggregate value of those goods that a worker needs in order to remain a worker, then the obvious conclusion arises: the worker produces much more than he receives in the form of wages. And it does not matter at all whether the worker receives his wages in cash or in kind, the essence remains the same: the worker receives in the form of wages hundreds of times less than he produces. Surplus, the value of which is not included in the value of wages, is a surplus product that takes the form of surplus value, due to the addition of which to the initial amount of money invested in production, capital is formed. Who is consuming this surplus? Is the capitalist himself? No, since the capitalist is not interested in the products themselves, he is interested in capital, and the product itself, for example, bread, is sold. For sale to whom? To other workers who are employed in other industries? But the workers employed in other industries also create the same surplus that they cannot consume. The entire working class, which is engaged in the production of goods, can buy up the quantity of goods for no more than that amount of money, which is the equivalent of the entire basic value as a whole (that is, for the total wages). Who then buys up the rest of the commodity, the value of which takes the form of total surplus value? If this surplus of goods is not realized, then the very process of capitalist reproduction and the formation of capital will not be closed. The capitalist needs to sell all the goods produced.
It cannot be the workers themselves, because, as we have already found out, their salary simply does not allow doing this. These cannot be capitalists, because they do not need a commodity in such quantities (especially consumer goods), but they need capital, an additional amount of money as a result of the sale of this commodity. It must be some third party who does not participate in the production of material wealth, but lives off surplus value, because this someone must have a sufficient amount of money equivalent to the entire total surplus value. It turns out that the capitalists must allocate enough money to this party so that it can buy most of the goods, except for those that the capitalists themselves buy. It seems absurd, but if you do not draw such a conclusion, it will turn out,that money must come from somewhere outside the capitalist mode of production. Some opportunists who have asked this question have come to precisely this conclusion. Let's take a closer look at this embarrassment.
First, it should be taken into account that the bulk of material goods produced by workers are goods for domestic industrial use - units, parts, components, semi-finished products and finished means of production. At the same time, consumer products constitute a smaller part of all goods. But at the same time, do not forget that the cost of the final product supplied to the consumer is made up of the total cost of all production costs of this product, including the cost of units, parts, components from which this product is made, equipment wear, labor costs … speaking, the capitalists shift all their costs to the buyer of the final consumer product, including the purchase of these intermediate goods.
Secondly, it should be understood that capital is not at all the personal wealth of the capitalist, but money invested in production and thus capable of making a profit. The money that the capitalist spends on personal needs is withdrawn from capital turnover, and therefore ceases to constitute capital. This means that if the capitalists themselves buy up all the surplus product from each other, then capitalist production will be completely stopped (this can only be said conditionally) until the money received from the sale is again invested in production. Thus, the sale of the surplus product itself is needed only for the turnover of commercial capital, its transformation from a commodity to a money form.
How is this process carried out?
Even before the workers start production, the bank issues the necessary money supply, at the value of which the workers will then produce the goods. This sum goes first of all to the capitalist, and with the help of it he pays costs and taxes, which are then distributed among many civil servants, and also allocates sufficient sums to advertise his products, etc. After that, the workers of all these institutions buy up the goods produced by the workers with this money. The money received goes to the bank and the process is repeated.
From this it becomes clear that the capitalists maintain the entire state apparatus, with its huge staff, which, among other things, includes the police, prosecutors, courts, ministries, the army, special services, prison workers, a huge number of workers serving these institutions, in addition, honey. institutions, schools, state universities, mass media (if they are not private), utilities (if they are not private), pension funds, orphanages, etc., etc. A special place is occupied by the sphere of advertising services, which under capitalism expands to unimaginable sizes and penetrates into all corners of human activity. Even an independent line of business has appeared - the advertising business, which is often more profitable than the production itself.
The activities of all employees of these institutions, on the one hand, are aimed at preserving and strengthening the capitalist economic system, on the other hand, they carry out capital circulation, as we discussed above. This activity is almost not connected with the development of productive forces, and often directly contradicts this development. The employees of these institutions, although they are hired workers, are not the proletariat, even if they occupy low-paid positions, since they do not produce a material product, but are supported by subsidies from the capitalists, living at the expense of surplus value, at the expense of capital. For these reasons, these workers cannot have their own class consciousness, they are representatives of a non-class stratum, which is extremely fragmented, socially variegated, and does not have an independent ideological position.
As labor productivity grows, the number of workers employed in the production of material goods is continuously decreasing. The dismissed workers replenish the unoccupied reserve labor army, and not being able to get hired again in production for some time, they become forced to get jobs as employees, to move into the interclass stratum of society. Thus, with an increase in the level of productive forces, deproletarization (in other words, declassing) of the working class occurs in favor of the huge and fragmented declassed social reserve of the proletariat. Everyone is at risk of getting into this social reserve - both technical intellectuals and manual workers. Capitalism does not spare anyone. With each step in the growth of productive forces, the scale of production falls - only this allows capitalism to exist to this day.
7. Declassification (disintegration and stratification) of the proletariat
The main condition for the solidarity of the proletariat is its unity and solidarity in the labor process. It is joint labor activity, expressed in a common form for all, that acts as a force that unites the proletariat into a single whole, which becomes not just a collection of workers, but an integral subject capable of accumulating collective experience and developing collective consciousness. Revolutionary intellectuals regard the proletariat only in its unity and solidarity, as if these qualities are inherent in it once and for all. However, this metaphysical approach is wrong. The proletariat, like any other class, like the whole of society, is continuously developing. Therefore, one cannot mechanically treat the proletariat of today, living in the same conditions, in the same state of development of society, in the same way as the proletariat of the early XX century,living in different conditions, in a different state of development of society. If then, as now, there was capitalism, this does not mean that the conditions were the same. What are these conditions and what is their difference?
First of all, this is the transition of capitalism to a new stage - the stage of globalized imperialism, which we have already analyzed above. And, as a consequence of the first, a creeping crisis, signifying the beginning of a general crisis of capitalism. The peculiarity of the position of the proletariat under these conditions differs substantially. At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. capitalism was still in a state of development, and therefore the regular crises that hit it were replaced by periods of rapid growth, an increase in the scale of production, when labor, thrown into the reserve as unnecessary, became in demand. The productive forces of that time required a large concentration of workers in one production. The plant or factory was considered the larger the more workers work for it. The bourgeoisie itself was interested in driving the workers into a single workers' army, engaged in a single labor process.
Today the unprecedented growth of the productive forces has played a cruel joke on the proletariat. Labor productivity has become so high that a great rallying of the proletariat is no longer required. The largest enterprises can get by with hundreds of workers, mainly engaged in various types of labor. This division of labor leads to the uselessness of trade unions within enterprises, because different types of labor activities take place in different conditions, pay differently, etc., this does not allow workers of different professions to put forward common demands. The continuous crisis of overproduction of material goods is no longer replaced by periods of sharp rises, and therefore production undergoes regular job cuts. Reducing the number of workers employed in the production of material goods,means a reduction in the number of workers in each individual branch of industry, and therefore, in each individual enterprise. The dismissed workers seek to get a job in other industries, and if they fail, they move into the sphere of the so-called “non-material production”. In pursuit of profit, capitalists seek to open up new markets by imposing new needs on the population, often consisting only of a need for form. This leads, in turn, to an increase in the number of new industries involved in the production of new forms. As we can see, due to the development of the productive forces and the increasing division of labor, the proletariat is continuously stratified into numerous small, often isolated groups, differing in the nature of labor, its conditions,the size and method of calculating salaries, etc.
The proletariat is divided not only in production but also in everyday life. Modern urban workers can live in the same house, but never see each other. Go to the same places, but never communicate. Communicate constantly, but never meet. Modern communication communications allow workers to feel comfortable, doing without live communication with each other. The alienation of workers from each other becomes so strong that it manifests itself even in their personal lives, to the point that members of the same family can become completely strangers to each other.
The proletariat can successfully get the bourgeoisie to fulfill its economic demands only when the bourgeoisie is ready to make concessions and not curtail production [16]. Today, curtailing production has become preferable for the bourgeoisie. Therefore, economism, as a stage of the labor movement, is becoming less and less successful. However, as F. Engels wrote, "strikes are a military school in which workers prepare for a great struggle … they are a manifestation of individual detachments of the working class, announcing their joining the great labor movement … And as a school of struggle, strikes are irreplaceable" [17]. Economism is irreplaceable as a school of struggle. The proletariat, without going through this school, will not be able to cultivate the necessary level of cohesion in this struggle, will not be able to develop class consciousness.
And today we see the absence of this consciousness. The revolutionary intellectuals argue that the calls of some communists for the economic struggle of the workers are untenable, because, they say, the workers have long outgrown the economic struggle and realize the need for a political struggle. In fact, the workers (for the most part) have not even grown to understand the need for any kind of struggle at all. And the economic struggle is untenable because the bourgeoisie itself has long been waging an economic struggle against the continuously growing productive forces. And the seeming, at first glance, political activity of the proletariat proceeds from the fact that the bourgeoisie uses the proletariat for its own political purposes, which usually consist precisely in coping with the hands of the proletariat with an ever deepening crisis. That is, the hands of the proletariat do whatwhich is completely opposite to his interests - capitalism is strengthening.
When revolutionary intellectuals put their hopes on strikes, they completely forget that these strikes themselves lead to an even greater disunity of the workers, to their competition among themselves for knocking out better working conditions from the bourgeoisie. And this despite the fact that the positive results of such strikes are very doubtful. Workers need a new economic approach that does not stratify but unite workers. Unfortunately, revolutionary intellectuals do not see any other approach, not understanding that what worked during the development of capitalism cannot work during its demise.
Following the stratification of the proletariat, the left movement itself is stratified. This is because it is impossible to defend the interests of the entire proletariat, ignoring the contradictions between individual strata and groups of the proletariat, whose economic interests often do not coincide. The stratification of the proletariat is an obvious fact that, undoubtedly, the revolutionary intellectuals could see if they communicated with the real working class, and did not dream of an abstract, a priori revolutionary, proletariat.
8. Conclusions
The proletariat is a class generated by capital and exploited by capital. Therefore, this class must disappear along with capital. With an increase in labor productivity, the material well-being of capitalists increases, but at the same time their number decreases. With an increase in labor productivity, according to all laws of the market, the demand for labor is falling. The fall in the demand for labor leads to a reduction in the number of the proletariat. So, at the present stage of development of capitalism, with the development of the productive forces, the number of both capitalists and workers decreases.
We are witnessing the disintegration of the two leading classes in favor of a huge stratum that has grown to incredible proportions, which is still subject to the laws of the market - the more numerous it is, the poorer. The revolutionary intellectuals, having forgotten about all logic, boldly ascribe this classless mass to the proletariat. But this is a big mistake. We know perfectly well that the proletariat is a producer of material goods, applying its labor power to the means of production. The social group we are considering does not have the ability to produce, has no access to the means of production. This is the proletarianized part of society, it is close to the proletariat in spirit, it continuously comes from the proletariat and again merges into it. It is the constant creative reserve of the proletariat.
And it will become the proletariat. But not a slave proletariat, but a new, free proletariat, the proletariat of socialism. However, this will not happen before she gets her hands on the means of production. This cannot happen by any political action, because neither politically nor morally, this social group can claim to own the means of production. This cannot happen through traditional economism, since the proletariat is losing its position in the life of society every day. This can happen only in economic union, merging with the proletariat into a single class, under the leadership and dictatorship of the proletariat. And the factor of this unification can be only one thing - the transfer of the means of production into the ownership of this single class. The proletariat cannot remain united without this reserve, and the reserve cannot be a class. Only the transfer of the means of production into the hands of the united proletariat makes it possible to get rid of the contradiction between the level of productivity and the scale of production.
Therefore, the main slogan that the communists should put forward today, if they really stand up for the interests of the working class, should be:
"Expropriation of the means of production!"
Sources of information:
1. V. I. Lenin "What is to be done?", Collected Works, volume 6, p. 79;
2. I. V. Stalin "On the Questions of Leninism", Collected Works, vol. 8, pp. 44-48;
3. K. Marx and F. Engels "Manifesto of the Communist Party", Collected Works, volume 4, p. 424;
4. "Economic history of capitalist countries", Textbook. guide for economics. specialist. universities, ed. V. T. Chuntulova, V. G. Sarycheva. - M.: Higher. school., 1985, p. 280;
5. K. Dymov "Capitalism is a system without a future", book one, Kiev, 2010;
6. NTP 16-93 Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Russian Federation;
7. VNTP 540 / 699-92 Committee of the Russian Federation for the food and processing industry;
8. VNTP 05-88 of the USSR Ministry of Agriculture;
9. Independent tests of grain harvesters, Russian Federation, Oryol region, Mtsensk district, July 25 - August 1, 2013;
10. VNTP 8-93 Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Russian Federation, Moscow, 1995;
11. VNTP 35-93 Committee of the Russian Federation for the food and processing industry;
12. Official site of AvtoVAZ
13.https://ria.ru/crisis_news/20100205/207816139.html;
14.https://tass.ru/ekonomika/1147442;
15. Klimko G. N. Basics of economic theory. Political Economy (1997);
16. F. E. Dzerzhinsky "How do we fight?", Selected works in two volumes, v. 1, 1957, pp. 9-12;
17. K. Marx and F. Engels "The Condition of the Working Class in England", Collected Works, volume 2, p. 448;
Author: Alexander Pyatigor