Re: AUT: a rejuvenated communist

["Chris Wright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for the response.  Allow me to clarify.

First, while I recognize the importance of the state in the formation of the
working class and capital, I think that the state as we know it today is
radically different from the Absolutist states that, in a contradictory way,
nurtured the rise of capital.  The formation of the state has to be tackled
both theoretically and historically.  In that sense, to have a theory of the
state not grounded first in the relation of capital to labor, i.e. in the
class relationship, mistakes the genesis of capital and the state for the
current relationship of capital to the state.  Capital did ultimately have
to do away with the pre-capitalist state and/or take it over and radically
alter it for its own purposes.  This becomes obvious if we consider that
capitalist society is the first in which the 'political' and the 'economic'
(or as Hegel described them, the state and civil society) become distinct
spheres.  This reification of separate spheres is based on the separation of
exchange and production as distinctly different spheres.  Of course, we also
recognize that this hides the actual interconnection of the state and
capital, their ultimate unity.  But those who dismiss the reality of the
separation of 'economic' and 'political' as a mere abstraction miss the
point that the separation is also a real abstraction (a determinate
abstraction), in which the fetishization of the separate spheres reflects
the really fractured nature of capital.  To miss this misses how capital
actually fetishizes human social life into 'separate spheres' or academic
disciplines, cf. the end of your comments:
>The division between the political power of the state and the
> capitalist power of money is a liberal delusion. They are two sides of the
> same, er... , coin (sorry :).
If we fail to grasp this real abstraction, we fail to grasp why capital
succeeds in maitaining what is also an illusion.

At the same time, the state comes into being as part and parcel of the class
struggle and the formation of the working class.  I would argue that the
modern capitalist state is created as much by the response of capital to the
insurgent power of labor, as it is some kind of pre-existing structure.  To
treat the state as somehow always-already existing is to give the capitalist
state a transhistorical quality.  The form of state is essential, because
form and content cannot be separated.  By losing sight of the central role
of the creation of the formation of the state as capital's response to the
power of labor costs us two insights: 1) that the capitalist state as we
know it today is a historically unique formation, not just "a state like all
others throughout history", and therefore born to die, and 2) we lose sight
of the contradictions in the state, its contingent formation in relation to
a variety of attempts by a heterogeneous capital to respond to many and
varied struggles by the working class.

I feel that anarchism (again, not all, but much of what I have read) tends
to not be able to grasp these aspects of the historic specificity of the
state, its form.  Some do better than others, just as most of Marxism has
been as blind to the relationship of the state to capital and labor.  Since
I was not clear, I happen to think that Marxism suffered from a relative
poverty of theory in relation to the state until the 1970's (with the
exception of some work by Marx, but most of that is more inferred than
explicit, and some work by Luxemburg, Pannekoek, Pashukanis, and Lenin's
notebooks in preparation of State and Revolution, which was as close as
Lenin ever got to an anti-statist position, a position he regressed from
rapidly.)  So I am not posing Marxism historically against anarchism, but
the current state of theory in which the Marxism inspired by autonomism (I
am thinking here explicitly of Holloway, Bonefeld, et al, from Common Sense)
has done exemplary work that I do not see forthcoming from anarchism.

I feel that the traces of a fetishizing of the state is present in your
response.  for example, Leo Huberman, an old Stalinist who ventured into
Monthly Review, could have made the same statements below you did (in fact,
his Man's Worldly Goods does exactly that)...
> Mmm, not very historical or materialist Chris. The state historically
> invented money and was the main consumer for much trade (originally for
> logistical reasons of keeping an army in the field). I don't think there
> would be much contention that the needs of the state gave birth to
> capitalism. And of course for the proletariat to exist they must be
> alienated from the means of production (at least the land) - historically
> again this has only been executed by state power. The state provides the
> power to maintain class divisions, which in turn leaves the "people of no
> property" no choice to enter into wage slavery. You have it upside down.
> However, I would braodly agree that...

I am glad for your remarks on Malatesta.  I have only read a few things by
him and I highly respect his capacities as an organizer and principled
internationalist, esp. in the face of WWI.  However, I also think Marx
largely dumps the higher stage-lower stage approach after the Paris Commune.
If you read his conspectus on Bakunin from 1875, for all his criticisms he
also basically says that over the state and workers power, they have no real
disagreements.  However, you have to read the full set of notes, not the
fragments sectarian anti-anarchists put on the web or in "selected works".
(that BTW was the
> original contribution of the Italian International - Cafiero, Costa,
> Malatesta et al - to recognise that communism in the results of production
> is the necessary complement to the common property in the means of
> production, otherwise capitalism would be re-introduced - unfortunately
this
> aspect of il communismo libertario does not come across well in
Malatesta's
> writing, Galleani's "End of Anarchism" is probably the clearest summary of
> this departure from Marx's "lower phase" or Bakunin's collectivism -
> Kropotkin also developed the theme but unfortunately more from a more
> ethical point of view).


> However, it is impossible to get rid of value exchange and the wage
relation
> without abolishing the state, the latter being no more than a organisation
> of people bound into an authoritarian structure by the authroity of the
> wage -
Do you really think that money keeps the soldiers in line?  I don't think
that is true at all.  If that was the case, the army would just offer a good
paycheck and skip all the psychological and ideological violence it imposes
on recruits.  For all the attacks on Marx and Marxists as economistic ( a
valid critique of much Marxism but not of Marx), this is high grade
economism.  If we do not understand capital as a social relation, a relation
between people mediated by things, then we miss the importance of Marx's
notions of alienation (1844) and commodity fetishism (1867), which are
really the same discussion.  The fetishization of social relations, their
reification into relations between things (like nations or commodities)
provides the ground for nationalism and the maintenance of militarism, not
money as such.  In fact, money is just another form of fetish, the king of
all fetishes since money is fetishism at its most abstract, most pure and
most meaningless.
>a soldier who obeys orders not because his wage, bread and future
> existence depends on it, but because he or she chooses to is no longer a
> soldier but a volunteer - soldiers who don't get paid are notoriously
> useless or even dangerous from the point of view of state power (c.f.
Zaire,
> etc.).

Basically true, but anarchist 'theory' and marxist 'theory' are not.  (I put
'theory' in quotes because I don't thin either anarchism or marxism are
sociological theories of society (itself a fetish of dubious existence), but
theories AGAINST exploitation and oppression, against society.  The only
'theory of' they contain is a theory of the possibility of universal human
liberation.
Communism _is_ Anarchism, Anarchism _is_
> Communism.

Comradely greetings, nice to be here,
Chris



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