Sie sind auf Seite 1von 7

The Capitalist Road to Communism: Groundwork and Practicability

Author(s): Johannes Berger


Source: Theory and Society, Vol. 15, No. 5 (Sep., 1986), pp. 689-694
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/657305 .
Accessed: 21/06/2014 11:18

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Theory and Society.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.212 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 11:18:43 AM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
689

The capitalist road to communism

Groundwork and practicability

JOHANNES BERGER
Fakultdt fur Soziologie, Universitit Bielefeld

Looking at the intellectual history of Marxism during the last fifteen


years, one sees an ever increasing destruction of central assumptions.
Main parts of Marxian theory were affected by this process of decompo-
sition: the theory of value, Historical Materialism, class analysis, and the
theory of socialism were subjected to a serious critique in the light of
"bourgeois" science and led to what was called the "crisis of Marxism."
Marxism came into crisis because of the peculiar "unity of theory and
praxis" it claimed to have realized. This unity can be expressed in one
plain sentence: determined by capitalist crises, the working class gains by
fighting for socialism.

Whereas it was shown that crises neither uniquely determine the course
of development ("final breakdown") nor shape the consciousness of the
working class, and whereas the idea of the proletariat as agent of fun-
damental change became completely implausible, socialism still re-
mained an aim worth fighting for. What makes van der Veen and Van
Parijs's article so stimulating is the resoluteness with which they question
whether socialism is desirable. Of course, the critique of socialism as an
economic order is nearly as old as socialism itself. This critique tried to
show that socialism is not only unworkable but also undesirable: the
"road to serfdom."' What is really new in van der Veen and Van
Parijs's article, however, is that they regard socialism as a totally super-
fluous stage in the evolution of humankind and regardcommunism as the
telos of history. Instead of "socialism" the authors propose an incon-
spicuous change in social policy: to reach a communist society, it is suffi-
cient to introduce an unconditional guaranteed income for everybody.
Such a proposal is not entirely new. As the authors realize, it can be
traced back to Fourier. It also plays a major role in recent discussions
within the Green movement about the reform of social policy. But new
is to treat the universal grant as a lever for the transition from capitalism

Theory and Society 15: 689-694 (1987)


? Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht - Printed in the Netherlands

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.212 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 11:18:43 AM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
690

to communism and thus to reject collective ownership as the means to


that end.

It is this connection of a social reform proposal with the problem of


transition to a higher stage of society that makes van der Veen's and Van
Parijs's article so appealing. Certainly one could question the sociologi-
cal validity of such a "transition." But as the authors seem to accept the
idea, I will too. My comments will deal with two problems: the fun-
damental question of economic order raised in the article and the viabili-
ty of the change in social policy its authors propose. I think they are right
to reformulate the prerequisites of a communist society, but they are
wrong to play down the specific objections to a universal grant and the
difficulties such a proposal implies.

"The essence of socialism is this: all means of production are exclusively


controlled by the polity. This and nothing else is socialism. All other
definitions are misleading."2 If the means of production are collec-
tivized, central planning is inevitable. Of course there have been different
concepts of socialism (economic democracy, social equity), but in the es-
tablished view, the main index of socialism (and communism) remains
nationalization of the means of production and central planning. Van
der Veen and Van Parijs repudiate this "ownership of the means of
production" approach, and classify economic systems by principles of
distribution. They say distribution according to needs in a communist
society is compatible with markets and private enterprise. Thus their
fundamental change of capitalism would leave the market and private
enterprise as they are. To call a private enterprise economy "communist"
is at first sight rather strange. But one can explain the idea by adding an
argument about capitalism that van der Veen and Van Parijs do not
sufficiently discuss.

The fundamental feature of capitalism is not private property, but the


employment relation. If anything is wrong with capitalism, it must be
rooted in this relation. It is possible to trace back the typical deficiencies
of a capitalist society, such as insecurity of workers, income inequality,
deterioration of working conditions, and alienation and domination at
the point of production, to the employment relation. Marxists regard it
as the separation of the "immediate producer" from the means of
production. It does not simply arise as a consequence of private proper-
ty, but from the fact that private property is monopolized by firms and
the success of the firm does not coincide with that of its employees.
What is wrong with being separated from the means of production is ob-

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.212 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 11:18:43 AM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
691

vious enough from the point of view of the working class: access to the
means of living is dependent on finding a profit-maximizing employer
interested in one's labor power. Insofar as the capitalist employment rela-
tion is seen as the main obstacle to self-realization of workers, the overall
improvement of the working class will depend on overcoming that rela-
tion. There exist altogether four alternatives for dealing with the central
problems of the employment relation:

Firstly, classical socialism. Its watchword is: "expropriation of the ex-


propriators." The antagonism between employers and employees is re-
moved by abolishing the social category of "employer." If there are no
entrepreneurs around, the unequal distribution of property no longer
regulates access to the means of living. Everyone then has the same sta-
tus as a state employee. Such a solution raises questions of efficiency and
civil rights. In a society without private rights to hire and fire, the wor-
kers' free choice of vocation is limited, too. The labor market is replaced
by job rationing, with little regard for optimum performance.

The second solution to the problem of the employment relation is mar-


ket socialism. Here, the category of "employee" is abolished. Everyone
becomes an entrepreneur; not individually, but as member of a
producers' collective. Oddly, van der Veen and Van Parijs do not men-
tion labor management as a way out. Perhaps they consider the objec-
tions to this solution conclusive. And indeed, the market would quickly
distinguish between successful and unsuccessful firms, thus generating
inequality and unemployment. Not everybody is born as an en-
trepreneur. If one chooses growth as the overriding objective, one is
forced to make accumulation the concern of a separate group, and one
cannot allow other interests to interfere. Capitalists are a class of people
responsible for mastering the future. Only insofar as entrepreneurs are
successful in absorbing uncertainty are they able to ensure the security
of a regular payment for their employees. The development of produc-
tive forces is a result of this special ability to cope with uncertainty. This
is what advocates of centrally planned and market socialism tend to
overlook.

The third type of solution is social democracy. Whereas socialism strives


to achieve free access to the means of living by getting rid of private
property and replacing market allocation by political control, and
whereas under market socialism everyone is endowed with producers'
rights, social democracy retains both private property and the market. Its
solution is to turn the wage contract from a coercive relationship into a

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.212 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 11:18:43 AM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
692

source of economic independence, analogous to a property right. The


more social democratic politics succeeds in achieving this goal, the more
the capitalists' rights to dispose of the labor force are attenuated by the
political right to employment.

Not surprisingly, the main problem here is to combine economic effi-


ciency and guaranteed full employment. Thus enters the fourth way of
overcoming the problem inherent in the employment relation: the capi-
talist road to communism. It aims at replacing the right to work by a
right to income covering basic needs. Indeed, if being separated from the
means of production does not endanger subsistence, what would be
wrong with it? If everyone was given a monthly payment with no ques-
tions asked, the compulsion to sell one's labor power in order to earn a
living would be lessened. A basic equality of all market participants
would be established and the cleavage of society into classes caused by
the unequal distribution of wealth would be less deep. The universal
grant would also establish the basic right not to work and therefore en-
large the range of options open to every citizen. The life history of in-
dividuals would no longer be dominated by the labor market, and this
is characteristic of a communist society.

To distribute the net product more according to basic needs and less ac-
cording to labor contributions would shift what Habermas calls the
"system/lifeworld-border" outwards, by increasing free time at the ex-
pense of working time. Also, one could expect a universal grant to lead
to an improvement of work (because it makes low-paid work less attrac-
tive) and to a more uniform distribution of a smaller demand for labor
(because full-time employment would no longer be required for subsis-
tence). But at the same time this strategy aims at releasing the labor mar-
ket from obstructing prescriptions, thus allowing firms to select the la-
bor force according to strict performance principles. One should be
honest enough to make this point clear.

To fully judge the policy measure the authors propose as a means to the
ends of communist society, one could start with detailed questions:
Which kinds of public expenditures are replaced by the universal grant?
What kind of taxation does it require? Though the devil usually is "in
nuts and bolts" I leave a discussion of these questions aside. I will focus
on three major points:

First, the main problem is not whether the tax rate should correspond
to a Rawlsian or a Marxian criterion, but whether there is a tax rate that

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.212 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 11:18:43 AM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
693

can serve two contradictory aims simultaneously: "to keep growth at a


sufficiently high level for productive development to continue" and to
cover basic needs. Whether such a tax rate can be established depends
not only on whether advanced capitalist societies have reached a state of
"weak abundance," but on agreement about which needs belong to basic
needs. "The distribution principle, 'to each according to his needs,'" von
Mises points out, "remains meaningless as long as it is not indicated to
which degree each individual is allowed to satisfy his needs."3 Whether
a basic income has the beneficial effects ascribed to it above depends
crucially on its level. The same income level might be judged by propo-
nents of a universal grant as the beginning of communist society and by
critics as the dismantling of the welfare state.

Second, can one really say that a society is the more communist, the
more its net product is distributed according to needs? I think that the
two components of the communist distribution principle - covering ba-
sic needs and complete independence of individual income from labor
contribution - become contradictory beyond a certain point. Van der
Veen and Van Parijs concede this by stating that "there is, clearly, a
trade-off between the freedom to satisfy one's needs and freedom from
drudgery." A communist society is not only one in which income and
labor contributions are completely decoupled; it involves not only libera-
tion from coercion of the labor market, but the chance to participate in
both parts of the economy, the informal and the formal one, in order
to satisfy one's needs above a basic level. If the decision to participate
in acquisitive activities is not forced by need, one cannot call it anticom-
munist - at least van der Veen and Van Parijs cannnot.

Certainly one problem remains if the economy grows: the possible de-
struction of the natural environment. As freedom from drudgery be-
longs to a better society, so does a definite improvement of ecology and
economy. The expansion of the latter must not be paid for by the de-
struction of the former. If a monetary economy is not incompatible with
communism, it becomes difficult to ascertain how much such an econo-
my can grow before it becomes incompatible with a healthy environ-
ment. But as long as growth does not impair the ecology, why should the
transition to communism exclude further growth? Moreover, a universal
grant alone is clearly insufficient to protect the natural environment. Un-
der ecological hardship a transition to communism requires more than
this simple policy.

Third, van der Veen and Van Parijs focus on the question of how the

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.212 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 11:18:43 AM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
694

economy will evolve once a universal grant has been adopted. They avoid
the question of how the universal grant will be introduced in the first
place. At the end of their article they say "human rationality" will bring
this change about, because material conditions make it feasible. I con-
sider this a weak argument. After saying "good-bye to the proletariat"
one should not rely on any kind of evolutionary mechanism. Whether
there will be a universal grant depends less on human rationality than
on the rational pursuit of interests. Will enough people want it? The in-
terest in a universal grant will change with its level. Quite different coali-
tions of classes will be interested, depending on whether it fosters or im-
pairs growth. So, much as I sympathize with the universal grant, I must
judge its probability as being pretty low.

Notes

1. Cf. L. von Mises, Die Gemeinwirtschaft: Untersuchungen uber den Sozialismus (Jena,
1932), and F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago, 1944).
2. Von Mises, Gemeinwirtschaft, 209.
3. Von Mises, Gemeinswirtschaft, 132.

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.212 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 11:18:43 AM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen