[Marxism] Liebowitz: "The Knowledge of a Better World".

[Ernie & Jess <mackenzie.tate@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A very interesting talk by Mike Liebowitz in Caracas.
Ernie Tate

The Knowledge of a Better World
[Presented at Encuentro Mundial de Intelectuales y Artistes en Defense
de La Humanidad, 3 December 2004)
Michael A. Lebowitz
Canada
mlebowit@xxxxxx

There is an old saying that if you don’t know where you want to go, then
any road will take you there. I think that recent years, years of
neoliberalism, imperialist outrages and the virtual destruction of
almost every effort to create an alternative, have disproved this
saying. Our experience tells us that if you don’t know where you want to
go, then no road will take you there.

        Our greatest failing is that we have lost sight of an alternative. And,
because we have no grand conception of an alternative (indeed, we are
told that we should have no grand conceptions), then the response to the
neoliberal mantra of TINA, that there is no alternative, has been---
let’s preserve healthcare, let’s not attack education, let’s try for a
little more equality, a little more preservation of the environment.
Because of our failure to envision an alternative as a whole, we have
many small pieces, many small ‘no’s; indeed, the only feasible
alternative to barbarism proposed has been barbarism with a human face.

        Let us think about a real alternative to barbarism, a grand conception
but yet a very simple one. I have in mind a simple idea expressed by
Karl Marx in 1844 (but which runs throughout his work)--- the unity of
human beings based upon recognition of their differences. That is a
conception which begins from the recognition that people are
different--- that they have differing needs and differing
capabilities--- and that they are interdependent.

        Whether we act upon the basis of this understanding of our
interdependence or not, we cannot deny that we produce for each other,
that as beings within society, there is a chain of human activity that
links us. We produce inputs for each other, and the ultimate result of
our activity is the reproduction of human beings within society. We can
think of this as the activity of a collective worker, as that of the
human family, or as that of the family of workers; but, this chain of
human activity exists whether we consciously produce on this basis or
not--- whether we understand our unity or not.
        In fact, as we know only too well, outside of little oases (some
societies, some families), in this society we do not consciously produce
for the needs of others, and we do not understand our productive
activity as our contribution to this chain of human activity. Instead of
valuing our relationship as human beings, we produce commodities, we
value commodities; instead of understanding this chain of human activity
as our bond and our power, we understand only that we need these
commodities, that we are dominated by them.

The Knowledge of Commodities

        This, as is well-known, is what Marx called the ‘fetishism of
commodities’ in the first chapter of Capital. It is a powerful concept.
In my view, no one has ever communicated this idea better than an
artist--- Wallace Shawn, an actor and playwright from the United States.
In his play ‘The Fever’, Shawn’s protagonist at one point finds a copy
of Capital and begins to read it at night. He thinks about the anger in
this book, and then he goes back to the beginning which he had initially
found to be impenetrable. Here I’ll quote a long passage from Wallace Shawn:

I came to a phrase that I'd heard before, a strange, upsetting, sort of
ugly phrase: this was the section on "commodity fetishism," "the
fetishism of commodities." I wanted to understand that weird-sounding
phrase, but I could tell that, to understand it, your whole life would
probably have to change.

His explanation was very elusive. He used the example that people say,
"Twenty yards of linen are worth two pounds." People say that about
every thing that it has a certain value. This is worth that. This coat,
this sweater, this cup of coffee: each thing worth some quantity of
money, or some number of other things—one coat, worth three sweaters, or
so much money—as if that coat, suddenly appearing on the earth,
contained somewhere inside itself an amount of value, like an inner
soul, as if the coat were a fetish, a physical object that contains a
living spirit. But what really determines the value of a coat? The
coat's price comes from its history, the history of all the people
involved in making it and selling it and all the particular
relationships they had. And if we buy the coat, we, too, form
relationships with all those people, and yet we hide those relationships
from our own awareness by pretending we live in a world where coats have
no history but just fall down from heaven with prices marked inside. "I
like this coat," we say, "It's not expensive," as if that were a fact
about the coat and not the end of a story about all the people who made
it and sold it. "I like the pictures in this magazine."

A naked woman leans over a fence. A man buys a magazine and stares at
her picture. The destinies of these two are linked. The man has paid the
woman to take off her clothes, to lean over the fence. The photograph
contains its history—the moment the woman unbuttoned her shirt, how she
felt, what the photographer said. The price of the magazine is a code
that describes the relationships between all these people—the woman, the
man, the publisher, the photographer—who commanded, who obeyed. The cup
of coffee contains the history of the peasants who picked the beans, how
some of them fainted in the heat of the sun, some were beaten, some were
kicked.

For two days I could see the fetishism of commodities everywhere around
me. It was a strange feeling. Then on the third day I lost it, it was
gone, I couldn't see it anymore.

        In this quotation from Wallace Shawn a certain type of knowledge is
described--- price. Price is the form in which that chain of human
activity and human relationships appears to us. This knowledge comes in
monetary units. We know the prices of the things we need. We know the
price we have ourselves received. And, now we must take that knowledge
and make individual rational decisions…as consumers, as capitalists---
we’re all the same, maximizers on the basis of the knowledge we have,
maximizers on the basis of money.

        Think about the knowledge we do not have in this world where money is
the medium of knowledge. We know about nothing that does not come to us
with a price--- the natural environment around us, our own needs for
development of our potential; we know nothing about the lives of all
those people who have produced the things we purchase, all those people
with whom we have entered into a relationship by buying the results of
their activity. Our situation is one of social ignorance, and that very
ignorance is what permits us to be divided, turned against each other
and exploited by the owners of commodities, the owners of the chain of
human activity.

        When our knowledge is the price of things, how can we avoid being
divided? When we don’t recognise our unity, how can we avoid competing
against each other to the benefit of the owners of knowledge?

Another Kind of Knowledge

        Think about another kind of knowledge--- a knowledge based upon
recognition of our unity, knowledge based upon a concept of solidarity.
It is a different knowledge when we are aware of who produces for us and
how, when we understand the conditions of life of others and the needs
they have for what we can contribute. Knowledge of this type immediately
places us as beings within society, provides an understanding of the
basis of all our lives. It is immediately direct social knowledge
because it can not be communicated through the indirect medium of money.

        Knowledge of our needs and capacities is radical because it goes to the
root, to human beings. And, when it is obtained because we recognise our
unity, it is knowledge which differs qualitatively and quantitatively
from the knowledge we have under the dominant social relations. It is
quantitatively different because existing relations no longer make its
monopolisation and restriction a source of private gain. It is inherent
in knowledge that it is a public good. Knowledge can be reproduced
almost costlessly, and unlike scarce commodities, I do not have less
knowledge if I give you some of mine. In a rational society, knowledge
should be shared without any restriction.

        The existence of institutions which make knowledge property and a
source of private gain, then, are contrary to the concept and ethos of
knowledge and demonstrate the social irrationality of those
institutions. Take the grading mechanism in many universities, for
example. It is a common practice for professors in North America to
grade according to a normal statistical curve--- so, many A’s, B’s, C’s.
etc to F’s—regardless of over-all student performance. What kind of
behaviour does this make rational for those who function within such a
structure? Clearly, it is to keep knowledge to themselves (or to a small
subset of friends). The more other students know, the lower are one’s
own chances for a good grade. (In fact, it makes rational giving other
students false information.) The structure in this case puts students in
competition--- a situation that Robert Wyatt, the British singer, once
sang about with the line, ‘How can I rise, if you don’t fall?’ This
artificially created structure produces a zero-sum game in the case of
knowledge which, by its very nature, is not zero-sum. Thus, whereas
ideally a university might be viewed as an environment dedicated to the
fullest possible development and dissemination of knowledge--- something
which a collective learning process would encourage, we can see that the
creation of an environment which rewards private ownership of knowledge
is contrary to the idealised concept of the university.

        In many respects, this can be seen as a parable of intellectual
property rights. What intellectual property rights do is to attempt to
create an artificial scarcity that will compel people to pay more for
knowledge than its actual cost of reproduction. Their purpose is to make
what Marx called the products of the social brain a source of private
enrichment. In a society, on the other hand, which begins from the
recognition of the needs of all its members, the logical and rational
impulse is to make knowledge available to all at its true cost of
reproduction—zero.

        Where our social relations and institutions are not such as to lead us
to view our knowledge as property, there is another way by which the
knowledge available to all is expanded. Much knowledge—especially about
how we work is not codified; it is ‘tacit knowledge’--- knowledge, eg.,
of how work could be done better, knowledge of how it could be easier.
Within antagonistic productive relations, the situation especially of
the wage-labourer, this is knowledge to be kept to yourself --- in order
to ensure that it is not used against you. In a rational society,
though, it is knowledge we would share. ‘Gold in the workers’ heads’ is
what Japanese labour relations experts called it when they introduced
mechanisms to induce workers to share ideas about improving products and
production processes. This knowledge is wealth which would flow
naturally in a society which is based upon the recognition of our
interdependence.

        Tacit knowledge is an example of a type of knowledge available freely
under a different set of social relations. It is not, however, the only
difference in the knowledge which would be available. When we begin from
the conception of an alternative society, it becomes clear that a
certain type of knowledge is hidden from us under our existing
relations. The knowledge that is not communicated in a commodity economy
is that which has no price in the market. The natural environment in
which we live, the air we breathe, the sights we see, the sound we hear,
the water we drink (ah, once the water we drank) has no price and thus
does not enter into our monetary calculus. And, without that price, it
is invisible when we as atomistic maximizers make our decisions. It
means that these decisions, based upon partial knowledge, are inherently
biased. If we were able to place an appropriate price upon clean air,
our actions as calculating producers and consumers would produce
different decisions--- ones more likely to ensure the maintenance of
clean air. Hypothetically, too, if we were able to place a price upon
the full development of human potential or upon the ability to live in a
just society, faced with this altered set of prices, our individual
decisions (and certainly that of those who currently purchase our
abilities without the need to consider these) would differ.

        But, how, in the absence of commodity exchanges can such information
which takes into account what Marx called ‘the worker’s own need for
development’ be generated? If we share Marx’s emphasis upon the
importance of the rich human being, ‘the totally developed individual’,
then certainly we must concern ourselves with the mechanisms by which
the knowledge of needs and capabilities can be produced.
The Accumulation of Knowledge for Human Development

        Those who are here to discuss ways to defend humanity against the
barbarism it currently faces begin from certain values. They are values
embodied in the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela---
in the goal described in Article 299 of ‘ensuring overall human
development’, in the declaration of Article 20 that ‘everyone has the
right to the free development of his or her own personality’, and in the
focus of Article 102 upon ‘developing the creative potential of every
human being and the full exercise of his or her personality in a
democratic society.’

        That Constitution also is quite specific on how this human development
occurs—participation. Much like Marx’s stress upon human activity as the
way people transform both circumstances and themselves, the Bolivarian
Constitution in Article 62 declares that participation by people is ‘the
necessary way of achieving the involvement to ensure their complete
development, both individual and collective.’ Human development, in
short, does not drop from the sky--- it is the result of a process, of
many processes, in which people transform themselves. It is the product
of a society which is ‘democratic, participatory and protagonistic’ (to
quote the Constitution once again).

        Through social forms (as set out in Article 70) such as
‘self-management, co-management, cooperatives in all forms’, through
democratic planning and participatory budgeting at all levels of
society, people develop their capabilities and capacities. This process
of transformative activity, though, is precisely the process of
developing the knowledge required for this alternative society. That
information can not come from markets, from surveys nor negotiations at
the top--- it comes neither from the fetishism of commodities nor the
fetishism of the plan. It is through democratic discussions and
decisions at every level that we can identify our needs and our
capabilities. The creation of democratic institutions is precisely the
way in which we expand the quality and quantity of knowledge that can
make a society based upon unity and the recognition of difference work.
How else can we understand the needs of others except by hearing their
voices? How else can we consciously insert ourselves in the chain of
human activity? The knowledge needed to build and sustain an alternative
society, a society based upon human bonds, is necessarily ‘democratic,
participatory and protagonistic’.

The Battle of Ideas

        Knowing where we want to go is a necessity if we want to build an
alternative. But, it is not the same as being there. We live in a world
dominated by global capital, a world in which capital divides us, sets
the people of each country against each other to see who can produce
more cheaply, who can drive wages, working conditions, environmental
standards to the lowest level in order to survive in the war of all
against all. We know, too, that any country that would challenge
neo-liberalism faces the assorted weapons of international capital---
foremost among them the IMF, the World Bank, finance capital and
imperialist power (including in forms such as the U.S. National
Endowment for Democracy and other faces of subversion).

        The most immediate obstacle, though, is the belief in TINA, i.e., that
there is no alternative. Without the vision of a better world, every
crisis of capitalism (such as the one upon us) can bring in the end only
a painful restructuring--- with the pain felt by those already exploited
and excluded. The concept of an alternative, of a society based upon
solidarity, is an essential weapon in defence of humanity. We need to
recognise the possibility of a world in which the products of the social
brain and the social hand are common property and the basis for our
self-development--- the possibility (in Marx’s words—1973: 158) of ‘a
society of free individuality, based on the universal development of
individuals and on their subordination of their communal, social
productivity as their social wealth.’ For this reason, the battle of
ideas is essential.

        That battle can be fought in many ways. For one, it points to the
importance of the deepening of the real process in societies where the
beginnings of an alternative have been made. The glimpses of a better
world that they provide--- even in the midst of concerted attacks by
imperialism--- are an inspiration for struggles everywhere around the
world, a demonstration that there is an alternative.

        But, it is only in those struggles themselves that we spread an
understanding of that alternative. These are struggles which start from
people’s needs, from their discontent over the gap between what society
promises them and what they are able to obtain. The battle of ideas
begins here by communicating knowledge of the nature of capitalism--- by
demonstrating that poverty is not the fault of the poor, that exclusion
is not the fault of the excluded, that wealth is the result of the chain
of human activity.

        These struggles, too, are explicitly about knowledge--- the struggle
against property rights that deny free access to the intellectual
accomplishments of humanity. They are struggles against commodification,
against the invasion of money and price into all aspects of life. But,
they are also struggles for new democratic forms that are a means of
tapping the gold in the heads of all people and of communicating all our
needs and capacities. They are struggles, in short, for a democratic,
participatory and protagonistic alternative.

        In this era of capitalist globalisation and neoliberalism, however, it
is obvious that more than local democratic institutions are needed. How
can we understand the needs and capacities of people who are
geographically distant but intimately close as parts of the human chain
of activity? How can we see other limbs of the collective worker as
human beings with needs rather than as competitors? We develop our
understanding of our unity and interdependence with those who capitalist
globalisation has assembled around the world through solidarity with
those people--- not only with their specific struggles as workers or
citizens but also by linking up with them directly on the basis of
community to community.

        To build a world based upon solidarity, we must practice solidarity—and
in that way transform both circumstances and ourselves. If we know where
we want to go and we know what is necessary to get there, we have begun
the battle to defend humanity against barbarism.
        Finally, to take up a theme introduced last night by President Chavez
and Pablo Gonzalez Casanova about the need to make real changes in the
world, let me close by paraphrasing Marx, using the language appropriate
to this conference: the idea of human society is sufficient to defeat
the idea of barbarism. But, it takes real human action to defeat real
barbarism.

                         -- 30 --



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