Re: Venture Communism

[sartesian <sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I don't just allude to a reference, I pointed out the historical failure of
such notions as "venture communism."  Your entire argument is based on a
form of voluntarism:  "Currently my  labour enriches capitalists. If I stop
doing this then my family faces  poverty. Should I feed my child Das Kapital
instead of food?"  This sort of "me-ism" has nothing to do with the actual
development of capitalism or class struggle.   The "commanding height" of
the society is the organization of the economy, which is class relation,
property and labor.  You cannot supplant that organization without
overthrowing that class relation, without expropriating the property that
encapsulates the means of social production.

What do I propose you do?  Sorry to be so blunt, but I couldn't care less.
What do I propose workers do?  That's a voluntarist question which has
nothing to do with the actual concrete reality.  What workers do do is
struggle with and against exploitation.  That's what they will continue to
do, just as they are forced to continue to be workers.  From those
immediate, real, concrete struggles, revolutionary programs emerge,
articulating the necessary expropriation.

To say there is nothing wrong with "capital," but all is wrong with
capitalism is fetishism to the max.  As if one could exist without the
other.  Capital is not some product, material, inventory.  It is a social
relation of production.

Money is an abstracted value, nothing more, nothing less?  OK, but that
abstracted value is exchange value, which means wage-labor, which means the
appropriation of surplus-value in the service of further empowerment of
private property .  That's somewhat more than an "artifact."

Your "system" will exist, if it ever exists, inside the system of world
markets, inside the demands of exchange value and will necessary absorb
those demands if and when it ever attempts to expand, if and when it
reproduces itself-- the realization of your "equal profits" will not be
coincident with the costs of production.  Your labor money and peoples banks
won't mean shit when it comes to paying your suppliers-- see for example the
history of Poland 1970-1992.