Kautskyism and Autonomism

 

The other day I joined the aut-op-sys (autonomist) mailing list on a short-term basis in order to post my Zizek piece. I was all set to remove myself when a post came through asking whether the "ruling class" in Cuba had already instituted "neoliberalism" like in China, or some such nonsense. My reply that that there was no ruling class in Cuba has led to a furious debate, including Harry Cleaver who is a 'eminence gris' figure in these circles and who was subbed here briefly until he saw what was going on.

 

http://lists.village.virginia.edu/cgi-bin/spoons/archive1.pl?list=aut-op-sy.archive

 

The debate has revolved around the question of whether it was *objectively* possible for Cuba to break with capitalism after Batista was overthrown since commodity production could not have been superseded. Since Cuba pays workers a wage, since the economy still uses cash, and since commodities are produced largely for the export market, there is still capitalism. The ruling class is constituted as the Cuban Communist Party. It does not matter that plant managers make less than doormen at foreign-owned hotels. It also does not matter, as Carlos Tablada pointed out in "Che Guevara: Economics and Politics in the Transition Period", that:

 

"Even in the period when commodity production still exists as a sector of production, however, *the law of value no longer governs in a 'pure' form*. (Emphasis in orginal.) Measures taken by the revolutionary state, on social questions as well as on strictly economic matters, tend to distort the way the law of value functions. These measures include lowering the rent on housing; providing medical care and social assistance either free of charge or at prices below those set by the market; setting and controlling prices in order to combat counterrevolutionary speculation; establishing control over foreign currency, foreign trade, and domestic wholesale trade; bringing previously marginalized sectors of the population into the economic life of the country; and taking steps to reduce and eventually eliminate unemployment. *In practice, such measures make it impossible for the law of value to reign*.

 

Just as long as there is an element of commodity production, Cuba is still capitalist. This is a far more radical analysis than that found in Tony Cliff's current, which at least can conceive of alternative paths to socialism in a place like Cuba (leaving aside the question of whether they get Castro right). This is not just a question of alleged privileges, lack of democracy, failure to extend the revolution, etc. It really a form of Kautskyism in which revolution is condemned as futile in countries whose forces of production have not ripened sufficiently to support either communism, or a rapid transition to communism.

 

I have seen one version or another of this argument from these people. It either takes the form of Cleaver's autonomism, council communism or--probably the most uncompromising expression--analyses from an obscure current called 'aufheben' that says things like:

 

"In the USSR these relations of production were essentially the same. The workers alienated their labour. As such they did not produce for their own immediate needs but worked for the management of the state enterprise. Equally, the management of the state enterprise no more appropriated the labour from its workers for it own immediate needs any more than the management of a capitalist enterprise in the West. The labour appropriated from the workers was used to produce products that were objects of use for others external to the producers.  Like in any capitalist enterprise, the management of the state enterprises in the USSR, at least collectively, sought to make the workers produce a mass of products that were worth more than the labour-power and means of production used up in their production. As such the labour process was both a process of exploitation and alienation just as it was a two-old process of both abstract and concrete labour that produced products with both a use-value and a value i.e. as commodities."

 

My response to this line of reasoning has focused on two issues:

 

1. While Marx began V. 1 of Capital with an explanation of certain abstractions on a very high level, including the commodity itself, the preponderance of the work was about the specific historical origins of the British capitalist class. He amassed a mountain of data about the Enclosure Acts, the lengthening of the workday, child labor, etc. They have provided no such data with respect to the development of a ruling class in Cuba. Additionally, they seem to lack a proper historical appreciation of the uniqueness of capitalism. In fact, there has been commodity production, wage labor and money since the very beginnings of complex class society going back to Rome at least. Marx developed an analysis of capitalism as a specific conjuncture of all these elements taking place in the context of the rise of primitive accumulation, colonialism, etc. The fact that Cuban workers are paid a wage proves nothing actually.

 

2. The other side has absolutely no concrete proposals how a revolutionary society in a former colony can make progress, let alone achieve socialism, without a process that superficially looks like "capital accumulation" which turns out to be nothing more than investment, shorn of the jargon. If Cuba had not allocated a portion of the profits made from sugar sales into advanced machinery, people would still be breaking their backs cutting cane.