2. The Crisis of Capitalism

The capitalist organization of social life (both East and West) creates a constantly renewed crisis in every aspect of human activity. This crisis appears most intensely in the realm of production,[1] although in its essence, the problem is the same in other fields, i.e., whether one is dealing with the family, with education, with culture, with politics or with international relations.

Everywhere, the capitalist structure of society imposes on people an organization of their lives that is external to them. It organizes things in the absence of those most directly concerned and often against their aspirations and interests. This is but another way of saying that capitalism divides society into a narrow stratum of order-givers (whose function is to decide and organize everything) and the vast majority of the population who are reduced to carrying out (executing) the decisions of those in power. As a result of this very fact, most people experience their own lives as something alien to them.

This pattern of organization is profoundly irrational and full of contradictions. Under it, repeated crises of one kind or another are absolutely inevitable. It is nonsensical to seek to organize people, either in production or in politics, as if they were mere objects, ignoring systematically what they themselves wish or how they themselves think things should be done. In real life, capitalism is obliged to base itself on people’s capacity for self organization, on the individual and collective creativity of the producers. Without these it could not survive for a day. But the whole “official” organization of modern society both ignores and seeks to suppress these abilities to the utmost. The result is not only an enormous waste due to untapped capacity. The system does more: it necessarily engenders opposition, a struggle against it by those upon whom it seeks to impose itself. Long before one can speak of revolution or of political consciousness, people refuse in their everyday working life to be treated as objects. The capitalist organization of society is thereby compelled not only to structure itself in the absence of those most directly concerned, but to take shape against them. The net result is not only waste but perpetual conflict.

If a thousand individuals have among them a given capacity for self-organization, capitalism consists in more or less arbitrarily choosing fifty of these individuals, of vesting them with managerial authority and of deciding that the others should just be cogs. Metaphorically speaking, this is already a 95 % loss of social initiative and drive. But there is more to it. As the 950 ignored individuals are not cogs, and as capitalism is obliged up to a point to base itself on their human capacities and in fact to develop them, these individuals will react and struggle against what the system imposes upon them.

The creative faculties which they are not allowed to exercise on behalf of a social order which rejects them (and which they reject) are now utilized against that social order. A permanent struggle develops at the very kernel of social life. It soon becomes the source of further waste. The narrow stratum of order-givers has henceforth to divide its time between organizing the work of those “below” and seeking to counteract, neutralize, deflect or manipulate their resistance. The function of the managerial apparatus ceases to be merely organization and soon assumes all sorts of coercive aspects. Those in authority in a large modern factory in fact spend less of their time in organization of production than in coping, directly or indirectly, with the resistance of the exploited – whether it be a question of supervision, of quality control, of determining piece rates, of “human relations,” of discussions with shop stewards or union representatives. On top of all this there is of course the permanent preoccupation of those in power with making sure that everything is measurable, quantifiable, verifiable, controllable, so as to deal in advance with any counteraction the workers might launch against new methods of exploitation. The same applies, with all due corrections, to the total organization of social life and to all the essential activities of any modern state.

The irrationality and contradictions of capitalism do not only show up in the way social life is organized. They appear even more clearly when one looks at the real content of the life which the system proposes. More than any other social order, capitalism has made of work the center of human activity and more than any other social order capitalism makes of work something that is absurd (absurd not from the viewpoint of the philosopher or of the moralist, but from the point of view of those who have to perform it). What is challenged today is not only the “human organization” of work, but its nature, its methods, its objectives, the very instruments and purpose of capitalist production. The two aspects are of course inseparable, but it is the second that needs stressing.

As a result of the nature of work in a capitalist enterprise, and however it may be organized, the activity of the worker instead of being the organic expression of his human faculties becomes something which dominates him as an alien and hostile force. In theory, the worker is only tied to this activity by a thin (but unbreakable) thread: the need to earn a living. But this ensures that even the day that is about to start dawns before him as something hostile. Work under capitalism therefore implies a permanent mutilation, a perpetual waste of creative capacity, and a constant struggle between the worker and his own activity, between what s/he would like to do and what s/he has to do.

From this angle too, capitalism can only survive to the extent that it cannot fashion reality to its molds. The system only functions to the extent that the “official” organization of production and of society are constantly resisted, thwarted, corrected and completed by the effective self-organization of people. Work processes can only be efficient under capitalism to the extent that the real attitudes of workers towards their work differ from what is prescribed. Working people succeed in appropriating the general principles relating to their work – to which, according to the spirit of the system, they should have no access and concerning which the system seeks to keep them in the dark. They then apply these principles to the specific conditions in which they find themselves whereas in theory this practical application can only be spelled out by the managerial apparatus.

Exploiting societies persist because those whom they exploit help them to survive. But capitalism differs from all previous exploiting societies. Slave-owning and feudal societies perpetuated themselves because ancient slaves and medieval serfs worked according to the norms of those societies. The working class enables capitalism to continue by acting against the system. But capitalism can only function to the extent that those it exploits actively oppose everything the system seeks to impose upon them.{6} The final outcome of this struggle is socialism namely the elimination of all externally-imposed norms, methods and patterns of organization and the total liberation of the creative and self-organizing capacities of the masses.