«The point is that capitalism for the first time since the end of ‘primitive communist’ hunter-gatherer society makes communism possible. It does so, on the one hand, because the development of productivity makes it possible to go beyond the division of labour. It does so, on the other, because capitalism both socialises the major means of production and throws up a class - the proletariat - which lacks property in the means of production. In pre-capitalist society communism is desirable because it is more consistent with the basics of human nature than class society. Witness the persistent reappearance in many periods and cultures of utopian communist ideas. But it is impossible, for two reasons. The first is that the economy is insufficiently productive to free the large majority of people from immediate labour to enable them to acquire the skills of, and participate in, social-decision-making.17 The second is that communism requires social decision-making; and this is inconsistent with small-scale private ownership and petty family-based farming and artisan production. Capitalism removes both obstacles to communism. The proletariat as a class is the class whose growth expresses this transformative possibility. Workers, because they are separated from the means of production, are forced to create voluntary associations - trade unions, tenants’ associations, cooperatives, political parties - to defend their interests. These voluntary associations foreshadow a future world of the “freely associated producers”. It is therefore through the class rule of the proletariat that it is possible to pass to the end of classes and communism.»
Posted on: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:49:36 +0000