(Click here for the first part)
https://umanitanova.org/allarrembaggio-del-futuro-necessita-e-problemi-del-superamento-del-capitalismo/---- Ernest Mandel asks "How is it possible to simultaneously increase
the pace of accumulation and the real volume of world consumption? The
key to the mystery is evidently found in the existence of an immense
fund of unproductive consumption, the most considerable part of which -
military expenditure - has most likely reached 120 billion dollars a
year for many years now". ---- In the years in which Mandel was writing,
the early 1960s, the capital needed for the rapid industrialization of
underdeveloped countries was estimated by a United Nations publication
at 2,500 billion dollars, just the investments that would have allowed
the entire Asian continent to be assured of a production per capita
equal to that of Japan on the eve of the Second World War. Taking into
account the population of Africa and Latin America, Mandel estimated the
funds needed for a tearless industrialization of all underdeveloped
humanity at around 3,000 billion dollars. If the resources squandered at
that time on rearmament had been allocated for 30/40 years to the
development of the Third World, the world problem would have been solved
before the beginning of the year 2000.
Today, UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development)
estimates that bridging the financing gap for the objectives of
sustainable development and climate will require about 500 billion
dollars of international public funding and 500 billion dollars of
international private funding per year; a total of one thousand billion.
The amount allocated in the United States budget for military spending
in 2024 is 850 billion dollars.
Mandel continues by emphasizing the human problems linked to the change
in customs and habits, urbanization, problems of education (technical
education and vocational training). These problems would risk
considerably delaying the process of transformation of the production
process in the direction of satisfying the needs of humanity.
I actually believe that the process of transformation of production is
much slower than the representation in monetary terms would lead us to
believe. If it is relatively easy to transfer public funds from military
spending to the needs of the masses, it is much more difficult to
transform a factory that produces weapons into one that produces, say,
bicycles. The same goes for agricultural production, oriented by
multinational agri-food companies to produce for the market, especially
for industry and not for the satisfaction of collective needs.
To achieve this result, we must begin to think of the relationship
between production and consumption, mediated by distribution, outside of
market logic, not as a monetary relationship. Start from needs and from
these build the new mode of production and the new social organization.
The abolition of private property will eliminate the waste inherent in
production for profit. Here we must seek the main, if not exclusive,
source of any additional funds necessary for faster economic development
and the additional consumption fund necessary for a parallel increase in
popular well-being.
Accordingly, we list below the main sources of socialist production.
1) The permanent full utilization of the existing productive forces.
Production, in the capitalist system, is organized by each capitalist
for his individual profit and not to satisfy, as would be natural, in
the best possible way, the needs of the population. Therefore,
production ceases not when all social needs are satisfied, but when the
capitalist's profit ceases. In the capitalist mode of production, the
existing productive forces (primarily workers and equipment)
periodically undergo considerable underutilization as a result of
cyclical oscillations. Even during the years of high economic growth,
underemployment of men and underutilization of equipment assume
considerable proportions. Finally, another form of underutilization of
existing resources must be mentioned: the hoarding (open or disguised)
of these resources in the form of excessive stocks, accumulation funds
hidden by the particular financial practices of large companies, etc.
2) Elimination of luxury expenses. In Italy, "The transfer of wealth
from labor to capital has been crazy. The partners have taken 80% of net
profits as dividends and left 20% as self-financing for new investments,
when instead it should be in their best interest to grow the capital in
their own business. Furthermore, the miserly investments of companies
have been only 40% material in factories and 60% financial in
shareholdings." (Riccardo Gallo "Quel travaso di ricchezza dal lavoro al
capitale" - Il Sole 24 Ore 22/10/2024). The equivalent of this figure is
made up of goods, assets and services, which must be considered as a
superfluous dissipation. No man of common sense can consider a situation
in which a country spends on sports betting, gambling or alcohol more
than on scientific and medical research, on the fight against cancer and
on university education as normal.
The simple elimination of luxury spending, waste, and manifestly harmful
spending would very probably allow a doubling of the useful public
consumption of the Western world, that is, first of all spending on
education, health measures, public transportation, the conservation of
natural resources, etc.
3) The reduction of distribution costs. The increase in distribution
costs has partly technical causes, but it also involves an increasingly
considerable part of costs that are linked to the particular nature of
the contemporary capitalist economy. The rationalization of the
distribution network by reducing the transportation of products
thousands of kilometers away, the elimination of intermediaries, the
elimination of advertising, the organization of stocks on the basis of
the needs of the population, this alone would allow a halving of the
distribution costs that today weigh about 50% on the price of retail
products.
4) The rational organization of industry. The free enterprise system,
even when it functions under conditions of full employment, involves
considerable waste. Just think of the environmental crisis, caused by
the expansion of production at all costs, by extractivism and by the
dispersion of production waste into the environment. An important
component of the immense mass of waste that is produced every year
(about 2000 million tons of solid urban waste) is made up of products
that have rapidly deteriorated due to obsolescence planned by
multinationals. Added to this is the packaging needed for the
long-distance transport of perishable goods, and to advertise the
product contained within. Added to this is the system of private patents
and corporate secrecy that delays the adoption of technical innovations
capable of reducing the environmental impact of production.
5) The liberation of the creative energy of workers. In capitalist
industry, people involved in manual operations feel reduced to the
function of living appendages of an inanimate mechanism in an extremely
complex production process. These same people, invested with direct or
indirect responsibility in the management of production, would unleash
immense forces of inventiveness and ingenuity, especially if experience
showed them that every increase in production and every reduction in the
cost of goods produced automatically translates into an improvement in
the standard of living of the communities in which they live.
Who is responsible for such a profound transformation of production and
distribution?
As Luigi Fabbri comprehensively writes in "Dittatura e Rivoluzione", the
day after the victorious insurrection, production activities will have
to continue to function under the direct control of unions and workers'
councils; it will be necessary to immediately set up territorial bodies
that allow the needs of the community to be gathered, and production to
be oriented according to these needs. It is a slow and complicated
process of building relationships, networks of consumption and
production, for which there are no shortcuts. The shortcut is
represented by the authoritarian solution: entrusting the care of this
complicated process to a central authority that decides what to produce,
how much, where and how. A government, in short. But to obtain this
result the most incapable and incompetent of all is precisely a
government, composed of a few people, who direct everything from the
center according to rigid directives. The greater and better
organizational virtue (without the defects and dangers of the creation
of a new state bureaucracy) has the proletarian and popular direct
action. The exploited classes must act without delegating anyone,
through specific organisms formed within them. These bodies, charged
with carrying out the functions of production and distribution - and
which at the same time will guarantee a minimum of indispensable order
and coordination - could be, in addition to the nuclei that will arise
spontaneously from the revolution, the already existing organizations,
the unions and the category and territorial organizations, the
territorial bodies for the environment, health, school etc., the factory
councils, and finally the councils of municipal, regional and
interregional delegates, elected with an imperative mandate and
revocable at any time.
From the very beginning, self-management must take the place of
hierarchical organization, in production and in society. A central body
would not be able to respond to the multiple needs of a society that has
become increasingly complex. Organization studies confirm that peer
networks are in reality more efficient than centralized structures.
Historical experience also shows us the impossibility of the communist
revolution starting from a central government.
From this brief reflection, two conclusions emerge: the first is that
the communist revolution is possible, it is necessary, and ultimately it
will lead to the improvement of the living conditions of all humanity by
reducing total production; the second is that this revolution must have
as protagonists the great oppressed and exploited masses, not a minority
of rulers, in other words communism must be accompanied by anarchy.
To complete these reflections, I will return to the topic to better
address the issues of the relationship between production and
consumption, the role of money, the climate emergency, free
experimentation and overcoming gender differences.
Tiziano Antonelli
https://umanitanova.org/allarrembaggio-del-futuro-2-parte/
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