Entrepreneurial Communism Ben Turk The communist revolution

Entrepreneurial Communism
Ben Turk
The communist revolution will be better served by going into business than by going to
the barricades. Most attempts to pursue communism have used exclusively political means.
Lenin’s revolution and Bernstein’s socialism through democracy aim to bring about changes
only by working through the government: Lenin by uprising and creating a new government and
Bernstein by voting socialism in through the existing government. These methods will always
fail because they invert the relationship between politics and economics. A society’s political
system is built on its economic foundations. The arrangement of those economic foundations
largely determines the society’s governmental, social, and political arrangements.1 Economics
determine politics, not vice versa.
By focusing only on the political most communist methods do not change the
fundamental arrangements of the capitalist system. Lenin’s violent revolution will only result in
The Communist State simply taking over the role of the bourgeoisie. Bernstein’s social
democracy will result in no more than a redistribution of the wealth created by the capitalist
system. Real change will primarily be the result of the development of a new economic system,
one that changes the form of these class arrangements.
This revolution will be primarily economic. Political changes may be necessary but a
political route needs the new economic framework as its base. We cannot simply over-throw
bourgeois governments without being able to replace the capitalist mode of production itself. We
need a revolutionary change in the mode of production.
1
“The sum total of [the] relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society- the real foundation on
which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.” –
Marx, preface to a Critique of Political Economy, Selected Writings, 389.
The Revolution in Theory
The capitalist mode of production is based upon the division of society into two particular
classes and the relationship between these classes. The bourgeoisie are defined by their
ownership of the means of production (through land or capital). The proletariat is defined by a
lack thereof, which leaves them with no option other than to sell their labor-power to the
bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie does little or no labor, produces little or no value and reaps most
profit because they own and control the means of production. The proletariat does all the labor
and receives only wages sufficient to keep them alive so they can continue to work2.
If this is the reality of the capitalist system, then these are the arrangements that the new
system must challenge and replace. True communism must eliminate this class division and
conflict at its economic root. The new economic system must be defined by new classes, or an
abolition of class altogether.
The abolition of all private property is not necessary. The only relevant property relations
are in terms of the means of production. Luxuries and those commodities that are not economic
tools are not our direct concern. What gives the bourgeoisie its power is ownership of the means
of production. The important questions relate to this ownership. In the capitalist mode, the means
of production are owned by individuals or by stock holders. This creates a division between labor
and investment and separates society into the two classes. Changing capitalism requires
developing a new relationship between investment and labor.
2
See, Marx, Capital 1 chapter 6, 270-280.
2
The capitalist system is a necessary step in history because it is so efficient that all people
no longer need to struggle to survive3. The efficiency of capitalism creates enough value that all
people’s basic needs (and most of their wants) could be met if wealth were distributed evenly.
The political cause of social justice demands this equal distribution of wealth but in doing
so it threatens the efficiency that created the wealth in the first place. Inequality is built into the
capitalist system, in the privileged relationship of capital over labor. So we cannot solve this
problem within capitalism. Political communism (social democracy or authoritarian communism)
attempts to further the cause by imposition of social justice at any cost. This kind of communism
takes a moral stand on issues of equality, justice and consumption. In the process it sacrifices
efficiency.
No system can expect its adherents to share with others when they are unable to feed
themselves, nor should it. True freedom and equality require efficiency. If we want greater
equality, we must develop a way to create it without sacrificing efficiency. The new mode of
production must be at least as efficient if not more efficient than capitalism. The system must be
set in such a way that people are able to work for the sake of working or for recognition of the
common benefits of their work, not as a struggle to survive.
To create this system we should attack the inefficiencies of capitalism. The two most
obvious inefficiencies built into the capitalist system are alienation of workers and productive
loss through investor profit. Under capitalism the relationship between capital and labor is such
that the value produced by a worker is greater than the value received as compensation.4 If a
worker produces a value of x through her labor she will only receive a wage of y and the
3
4
Capital 1 chapter 13, 439-454.
See Marx’s account of surplus value in Capital 1 (chapter 9, 320-329).
3
capitalist who owns her position appropriates the remaining x-y of value5. The worker under
capitalism does not receive the full product of her labor. This system is designed so that the
capitalist and the laborer are set up in direct conflict with each other6.
The capitalist will always attempt to get the largest chunk of the value created by labor
possible, by both driving up productivity and driving down wages. The money “earned” by the
capitalist is not being used to create wealth or to reward labor. Continuing to pay investors after
their investment has been reimbursed (a defining aspect of the capitalist system) is a waste of
money. Overall productivity goes down due to the loss of capital to investors or owners7. The
positions of stockholder and owner must be eliminated. We have to downsize the stock market.
The laborer on the other hand will of course fight for higher wages and if she fails to get
them she will not work as hard because she isn’t earning what she’s worth.8 If we can eliminate
this conflict, laborers will be working for no one but themselves. They will obviously have
greater motivation to work harder and the benefit for everyone collectively will be higher. The
system will be ultimately more efficient.
We can pursue the elimination of productive loss through investor profit and alienation of
workers by structuring our economic activity in such a way that there is not this division of
economic roles. Class differences will subsequently dissolve with the dissolution of these roles.
The new mode of production will achieve this if each worker also owns the means of production
his or herself, or if the means of production are owned in common by a collection of workers.
5
And even classical liberal theorists agree, “labor makes the far greatest part of the value of a thing” and labor
creates “a right of property” Locke, 26-27.
6
See, Wage-Labor and Capital.
7
As opposed to the theory of trickle down economics, investors do not reinsert their money into the economy as
quickly as others. Saving is a luxury, more money in the hands of those who can afford to save it means less being
put back into the economy by those that have to spend it.
8
For Marx’s view onthis subject see, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Selected Writings, 63-113 and
Alienation and the Proletariat, Selected Writings, 131.
4
Investment will work harder because it will all be going back into value produced through
worker’s labor. Workers will work harder because they will receive the full product of their labor.
In the past this classless society has been pursued politically by state ownership of the
means of production. The claim of these political communists is always that people will not
accept the necessary changes because they are trapped within the bourgeois system. The modern
incarnations of this thought are that we are controlled by our corporate culture and we have to be
forced to be free of our childhood in front of the TV. Apparently a revolt, violence and a
powerful centralized state is supposed to shake up and destroy that programming.
The error in this thinking is proven by history. The USSR and other Communist States
have demonstrated that state ownership of the means of production is no different than bourgeois
ownership of the means of production. Claims can be made that Russia wasn’t ready for the
revolution. Lenin’s opportunistic changes to Marxist thought did skip over the capitalist stage of
economic historical development, but I do not believe that this is the extent of the USSR’s flaws.
The mass uprising and revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat will succeed no better in a
modern industrialized nation, nor should it.
Supposedly, the proletariat needs control of the state because capitalists will not allow the
revolution to occur without great resistance9. The bourgeoisie has power and will not give it up
without a fight. Dogmatic revolutionaries use this reasoning to justify creating a dictatorship of
the proletariat. This dictatorship of the proletariat is supposed to wither away after the revolution
is complete10.
There is no reason to believe that a revolution carried out in this manner will ever be
complete. First, creating a centralized proletariat state will not institute a beneficial economic
9
See Marx: The Civil War in France, The Critique of the Gotha Programme, and more, Selected Writings, 539-558,
and 564-571.
10
See Lenin, The State and Revolution, 16-21.
5
change. The structure of the system will continue to be a division of economic actors. The state
will own the means of production and the citizens will be exploited for their labor.
Second, capitalist competition will be replaced by state monopoly. This will create a
major loss in efficiency. If efficiency is reduced then economic development will stagnate.
Economic revolution is most likely to result when capitalism is free to run at its best and still
proves to be ineffective.
Third, the political system itself will be adversely affected. The dictatorship of the
proletariat’s attempts to force people into new social roles will inhibit their freedom and give the
government much greater control. No government is going to give up that kind of control
voluntarily. If the political revolution is necessary because the capitalists will not give up state
control, then why do we expect that the dictatorship of the proletariat will?
Finally, the proletariat is defined by its opposition to the bourgeoisie. A dictatorship of
the proletariat does not even try to eliminate the class structure, only to invert it. We need to
eliminate or emancipate the proletariat, not put it in power.
These pragmatic and theoretical flaws of political communism and its history of failure
have left the left floundering for a position. They can no longer justify using their communist
dogmas to create a new society through government. In this way traditional communism is in
much the same position as religion. Both ineffectually guilt people into following an obsolete
moral code. What’s more, the adherents of this ideology are confronted with being opposed to
the means of their own subsistence. They cannot reconcile their actions with their ideals. They
settle for doing their best to live right, screw over capitalism, and hate themselves for their many
inevitable sins and guilty pleasures. The left has become defined only by what it stands against
and many leftists even stand against themselves.
6
If state sponsored revolution will always lead to stagnation then we must find an
alternative method. This alternative does exist. The economic changes can and will grow
organically out of the capitalist system. Capitalism itself has historically proven that
revolutionary changes in the economic system are possible without state control, indeed they
have only occurred against the best efforts of the controlling governments.
The feudal mode of production was based upon agriculture. Society was divided into two
classes, the nobility and the serfs. The nobility were defined by their birthright, granting them
ownership of land. The serfs were defined by a lack thereof, which left them with no option but
to be owned by the nobility in exchange for protection and an opportunity to work the land. The
lords held the serfs in a situation similar to a mafia insurance scam on a broad scale. The serfs
mainly needed protection from the lords who were supposedly protecting them.
Feudalism was an amazingly stable system for centuries. It only fell apart when a new
class grew out of the existing feudal system. The merchant class destroyed feudalism when they
replaced the feudal mode of production. They changed the means of production, invented new
types of products, new relationships between workers and labor and developed banking and
investment. This new mode of production is capitalism and it proved more efficient. The
merchant class grew stronger, richer, and more powerful.
The early capitalist mode of production was inhibited by feudal laws that restricted
ownership of land and control of the political system to the nobility. The capitalists fought
against these laws. They won these political battles because their more efficient economic system
allowed them to dominate and eventually eliminate the nobility. The political revolution
followed after the economic revolution. This is the model of revolutionary change that the
communist revolution ought to follow.
7
The political revolution advocated by most communists bears no resemblance to this
revolution. It is the equivalent of serfs marching into the manor house, killing the king, putting
on the crown, saying, “I’m in charge” but continuing to be serfs. This idea is absurd. The serfs
could not be revolutionary. The same holds true today. The proletariat will not have the means to
successfully achieve even a political revolution until they cease to be the proletariat.
Workers will advance the revolution when they go into business for themselves. They
will then cease to be proletariat. By pooling resources and becoming equal investors and equal
laborers, or arranging themselves so that their investment and labor are proportionally equal,
they will in the long run prove to be more efficient than their capitalist competitors. They will
beat capitalism at its own game. Freedom cannot be forced down from above. Economic changes
cannot be politically created. Revolution is only needed if the government stands rigidly on an
obsolete law that inhibits the new economic system from functioning.
The capitalist revolution also changed the political system. Authoritarian communism
disregards these changes. It claims that the ideals of freedom, equality and democracy are just
part of the ruling class norms.11 I disagree. The capitalist revolution created significant changes
in how the political system works. These changes are very relevant to the current revolution.
Democracy creates the possibility of nonviolent governmental change. This means that even if
the bourgeois state imposes restrictions on the economic activities of the new mode of
production revolt against those laws may not need to be violent.
Political activity, violent or non-violent should not be the revolutionary’s main concern.
Economic activity is. We’ve got to develop our mode of production, prove capitalism obsolete
and then remove whichever aspects of bourgeois state stand in our way.
11
See German Ideology, Selected Works, 159.
8
Revolutionary Praxis
The capitalist revolution succeeded because advancements in technology and human
relations created new products that were better produced under the capitalist mode of production.
Feudalism was a primarily agricultural system. Capitalism grew out of the merchants and guilds
who were producing non-agricultural commodities. By developing a proletariat class, exploiting
them, and mass-producing commodities capitalism created great wealth and eventually replaced
serfdom even in the agricultural sector of the economy.
Today advancements in technology and human relations are creating new products that
are similarly better produced under a new mode of production. The fastest growing and most
important industries in the developed nations of the world are the entertainment industries.
Material goods are becoming less important than things like films and music. New technology
has made these products primary, but entertainment products are not best produced by capitalism.
A hierarchically organized corporation is not an efficient means to produce entertainment
products. These products are art and art is best produced by enterprising individuals (artists) not
corporations.
Art is the new mode of production. What is a worker who is not alienated if not an artist?
This revolution is not made by the proletariat masses. It is made by entrepreneurial artists who
structure their economic activity by new assumptions and relationships. These artists own the
means of production themselves, either individually or collectively. They receive the full product
of their labor. Their enterprises are structured more efficiently than the capitalist businesses and,
unless they are inhibited by government intervention, they will beat capitalist businesses in free
competition. This is a new free market revolution, Entrepreneurial Communism.
9
Once the new structure proves itself useful in the production of art and entertainment the
same basic principles can be applied to production of consumer commodities. Larger groups of
people will be able to collectivize, invest and follow the path laid out in the entertainment sector
by the Entrepreneurial Communists.
New politics and culture will flow from this economic change. Today’s political and
cultural realities are rooted in our economic system. By looking at the political realities created
by capitalism and comparing them with the assumptions of the new economic system we can
predict what political and cultural changes will occur.
Capitalism divides society into classes and privileges one class over another. This
produces massive and always growing inequality. Competition between laborers results in the
immiseration of the masses.12 By competing for wages, starving workers will always settle for
less rather than for nothing. One worker who insists on making $6 an hour will be quickly
replaced by one willing to work for $5. As long as there are people who have no other means of
subsistence there will be someone willing to work for less, and under worse conditions. This
process will always drive down labor standards leading to a lower living standard for all the
proletariat.
Competition among capitalists has an inverse effect. Each time a capitalist enterprise
successfully beats its competitors; it improves its position and increases the likelihood that it will
succeed again in the future. The successful capitalist eliminates many others.13 This eventually
results in monopolies. The successful business has achieved great wealth through complete
control of its product’s market.
12
13
See Capital 1 Chapter 32, 929.
Ibid.
10
These laws have two important political effects. First, they create massive inequality and
second, they create the requirement of a strong centralized state. The reason they create massive
inequality is obvious. The reason they create the necessity of a strong centralized state is not so
obvious.
Eventually these factors will cause capitalism to break down completely. If all labor is
driven to poverty then the capitalist will have no one to sell to. Monopolies, by eliminating
competition, also create economic stagnation. When the laborers find themselves without safe
and legitimate means of subsistence they seek out alternative methods, usually involving
thievery, exploitation, and force. Historically, these problems have been solved by state
intervention in the form of regulations for capitalists, welfare for the pauperized proletariat and
prison for the unruly proletariat. Maintaining regulations and controlling crime requires strict
laws and a large intrusive government. Maintaining welfare and prisons requires steep taxation.
Therefore maintaining capitalism requires a powerful state. There is no alternative to government
regulation through morality or social norms within capitalism because any capitalist who resists
the temptation to drive down wages, abuse workers, and eat up the market will simply lose to
those who aren’t so scrupulous.
If our new economic system is classless and is not structurally determined to create gross
inequality then the society will be more equal and the political system will be much different.
The state will no longer need to reconcile class conflict because there will be no more conflict.
Poverty and the necessity of welfare will be reduced because the reserve army of labor will no
longer be a system requirement, there will be far fewer able bodied people who are willing to
work but unable to find work. Also, more people will be willing to work and less likely to resort
11
to crime because they will receive the full value of their labor-time. This means there will be a
smaller less intrusive government and more equality, more justice and more freedom.
These political changes cannot be fully realized under capitalism, and there’s no such
thing as a quick and easy revolution to make them happen immediately. They have to flow from
a new economic system, which will only succeed correctly and fully through free market
competition with the capitalist system. We don’t need to use politics to create freedom, equality
and justice directly. The only political action necessary is removal of restrictions to the economic
revolution.14
The Revolution in Practice
The revolution will begin when the historical context is right for it. There are two
important conditions of this historical context. First capitalism must be fully developed and
submerged in the muck of its own internal contradictions. Second, a new mode of production
must be underway to replace it. The form of this new mode of production is determined by new
technologies, new products, and finally new modes of human organization.
The first condition of the revolution has been met since at least the great depression.
Modern capitalism is highly dependant on government controls. Society has reached extremes of
economic inequality. Businesses continue to override existing government restrictions. Indeed in
America the political system is so corrupt that the capitalists have taken over the political arena
and are not only dismantling their stabilizing restrictions, but have completely abandoned the
free market to receive government subsidies, and become totally dependant on profits from
political maneuverings domestically and internationally.
14
This is not to say that politics are irrelevant. Social concerns will continue to be hammered out through political
and social struggles. These struggles are important here and now, but fighting them cannot permanently change the
system that creates the problems.
12
The second condition is presently coming together. As discussed earlier new technologies
are shifting the economic focus to new products. All that is needed is the new form of human
organization in business. Even this is beginning to happen.
The time for Entrepreneurial Communism is now. The capitalist system has proven its
inability to create superior art and entertainment products. This is indicated by the growing
success of independent film, music, and media and the failures of corporate giant media
producers. The most telling of these economic sectors is the music industry.
According to the June 6th 2002 edition of USA Today the top five record companies are
all losing money. They blame pirating, lack of radio variety, increased CD prices, and a "dearth
of good music." These factors are caused by the failure of the capitalist mode of production.
The problem is not that there is a lack of good music in general, or even that music is not
making money. It is just that the good music is being made by musicians who fall below the USA
Today radar. Thriving indie labels and totally self-sufficient bands are filling the “dearth of good
music” capitalism has encountered15.
No single indie entity will be as large as the corporate giants, and none of these bands
will make as much money as the current popular music. This is as it should be. The collection of
mildly successful indie labels and artists are collectively producing greater value more efficiently
than the few corporate behemoths. The capitalist music machine is sinking to be replaced by a
large number of highly eclectic music groups. The end result is as I predicted earlier: all the
economic actors are on more level ground, monopoly is impossible, and greater value is being
produced. Similar movements are happening in other areas of mass media. Independent films
15
See, USA Today, June 6th, 2002, and “The Imminent Death of Capitalism” by Ben Turk @
actionmanmagazine.com
13
have become increasingly more popular, but the music industry is moving along faster because it
requires less initial investment.
Capitalism is resisting this change. Capitalists use the government to control distribution
and ownership of music. The capitalists still have a stranglehold on the primary outlets of music
and film products. By controlling the radio, television, and movie distribution corporations
control art. This control is exercised in two ways, politically and economically.
The government by annexing and limiting bandwidth use has made the otherwise free
and open mediums of television and radio restricted. By doing so they made bandwidth rare and
valuable, this forces the airwaves into the capitalist mode of production. Capitalism requires
strict controls on these mediums that are naturally better suited to free mass distribution.
Artists have fought back by developing alternative systems of distribution and pirating
the existing structure. Again, this is clear in the area of music. Bands are burning and distributing
their own CDs, printing their own CD cases, t-shirts and posters, booking their own tours, and
basically running their own businesses. Film distribution is following these methods. Touring
underground film festivals are becoming more possible and prevalent.
New technology works to benefit the Entrepreneurial Communist. The Internet allows
new forms of distribution and media. The effect of Napster is very interesting in this way.
Napster is basically a system of free and shared distribution. It is the communist dream. The
bourgeois state stepped in to protect capitalist businesses from this mode of distribution. The
copyright laws used to justify this intervention are an exclusively political method employed by
capitalists to hold onto the means of production.
Intellectual property laws are designed to restructure economic sectors that don’t make
good capitalist sense. That is, any sector where the value of a product is not in the cost of its
14
physical production, but in some other aspect. CDs, for example are only the delivery system of
the music. It is the music that contains the real value. These laws also impact other more serious
sectors of the economy. Capitalism has a perverted effect on the production and cost of
prescription drugs for the same basic reasons.
The economic method capitalism uses to counter the entrepreneurial revolution is
imitation and buying up of successful bands. The major music industry is always clamoring to
create street cred and to find new bands to exploit with promises of quick fame and fortune. I
don’t need to use this space to recite the typical “don’t sell out” litany of solutions to this
problem. Historically, music has been a cycle of trends. Artists invent a new genre, capitalists
buy them out or imitate them, the quality evaporates, the audience rejects that genre, and new
artists develop another new genre. As the capitalists lose control of the means of distribution and
bands no longer need the record industry to thrive, this cycle will die out, it’s already dying.
The Future of the Revolution
Communism as a political movement is dead. Attempts to change the capitalist economic
system into a communist system through politics have failed. A new movement is rising. This
movement proceeds to tear down the assumptions of capitalist economics and replaces capitalism
at its roots. The DIY and indie rock ethics are more than an aesthetic or a trend. They create the
economic structure of a new society, rising out of the contradictions of the capitalist economy
and the hypocrisy of liberalism’s failure to achieve its ideals in any material reality.
The hopes of progressive change cannot be realized within a social structure born out of
capitalist economics. The artistic achievements of independents flounder within a wash of
banality produced by corporate capitalism. Indie rock and progressive politics are fighting the
15
same foe. They hack futile against capitalism’s walls from two sides. When the material forces
of DIY economics are joined with consciousness of their progressive role obsolete capitalism
will be replaced with a new world rising from the underground.
16
Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. Indianapolis:Hackett, 1980.
Lenin, V.I. State and Revolution. London: Penguin,1992.
Marx, Karl. Capital 1. London: Penguin, 1976.\
Marx, Karl. Wage-labor and Capital. New York: International, 1933.
McLellan, David. Karl Marx: Selected Writings. Oxford: University Press, 1977.
17