*****The really important tendencies in the long-term evolution of capitalism should not be looked for in the realm of market economics, and this for a very simple reason. The class struggle and other factors bring about changes in the economic structure of capitalism, and a more or less profound transformation of its 'laws'. The relations and 'laws' of a competitive capitalist economy are not the same as those of an economy dominated by monopolies. The relations and 'laws' of 'private' monopoly capitalism are different from those of an economy of integral bureaucratic capitalism (where the means of production are totally nationalized and a general plan of production is applied). All this should be elementary to 'marxists'. What are common to these different stages in the evolution of capitalism are certain tendencies within production itself: increasing concentration, increasing alienation of the worker, the increasing mechanization and rationalization (from the outside) of the work process itself. What is also common to all stages of capitalism is, of course, the determining factor of this whole evolution, namely the class struggle. We have tried succinctly to show that the economic system developed by Marx in [i]Capital[/i] (not  to speak of its vulgarizations) does not give an adequate account of the functioning and evolution of capitalism. What appears to us as questionable in [i]Capital[/i] is its methodology. Marx's theory of wages and its corollary, the theory of the increasing rate of exploitation, begin from a postulate: that the worker is completely 'reified' (reduced to an object) by capitalism. Marx's [i]theory of crises[/i] starts from a basically analogous postulate: that men and classes (in this case the capitalist class) can do nothing about the functioning of their economy. Both these postulates are false. But both have a deeper significance. Both are necessary for political economy to become a 'science', governed by 'laws' similar to those of genetics or astronomy. But for this to be achieved, the things to be studied must be objects. It is as objects that both workers and capitalists appear in the pages of [i]Capital[/i]. If 'political economy' is to study the mechanisms of society, it must deal with phenomena ruled by objective laws, i.e. laws not constantly modified by the actions of men and classes. This has led to a fantastic paradox. Marx, who discovered and ceaselessly propagated the idea of the crucial role of the class struggle in history, wrote a monumental work ([i]Capital[/i]) from which the class struggle is virtually absent!  Marx did not live in a vacuum. Some of his views of capitalism reflect the influence of capitalist ideology itself. Some of his postulates and some of his methods express, in their depths, the essence of the capitalist vision of man. In concluding this critical examination of marxist economics we will seek to bring out its political implications. [i]Political Implications of the ‘Classical’ Theory[/i] What is working class consciousness, according to the traditional marxist conception? It is a consciousness of misery, and nothing more. The worker has economic demands, created by the system. He learns from experience that the system prevents their satisfaction. This may lead him to revolt. But what will be the aim of this revolt? A greater satisfaction of material needs! If this conception were true, all that the worker could ever learn under capitalism would be that he wishes to consume more and that capitalism prevents him from doing so. The workers could destroy such a society. But with what would they replace it? Nothing positive, nothing capable of building a new society, could ever arise out of a mere awareness of misery. From their experience of life under capitalism, the workers could derive no principles which might help them create a new society and determine its purpose and the pattern of its organization. In the classical theory, the proletarian revolution appears as a simple biological reflex. It is a revolt against hunger. ...a demand for fuller bellies. It is impossible to see how socialism, which implies new relations between human beings (and between man and his labour) could ever result from this. And what about the origin of the 'contradictions' of capitalism, of its periodic crises, and of its profound historical crisis? According to the classical conception, the roots of all these lie in private appropriation, in other words in private property and the market. These, it is claimed, constitute an obstacle to the development of the productive forces, which is seen as the sole, true and eternal objective of social life. This type of criticism of capitalism consists, in the last analysis, in saying that what is wrong with capitalism is that it is not capitalist enough, that it is not doing its job well enough. To achieve 'a more rapid development of the productive forces' it is only necessary, according to the classical theory, that private property and the market be eliminated. Nationalization of the means of production and planning would then solve the crisis of contemporary society. The workers don't know all this and can't know it. Their position in society forces them to suffer the consequences of the 'contradictions' of capitalism; it does not lead them to discover its causes. This knowledge cannot come to them from their experience in production. It can only come from a 'theoretical' knowledge of the 'laws' of capitalist economy. This knowledge is certainly accessible to individual, 'politically conscious' workers. But it is not available to the working class as a class. Driven forward by their revolt against poverty, but incapable of leading themselves (since their limited experience cannot give them a privileged viewpoint of social reality as a whole), the workers can only constitute an infantry at the disposal of a general staff of revolutionary generals. These specialists know (from knowledge to which the workers as such do not have access) what it is precisely that does not work in modern society. They know what must be done to modify it. It is easy to see why the traditional concepts of economics and the revolutionary perspectives which flow from them can only lead to – and historically have only led to – bureaucratic politics. To be sure, Marx himself did not draw these conclusions from his economic theories. His political positions were usually, in fact, the very opposite. But what we have outlined are the consequences which objectively flow from these ideas. And these are the practices that have become more and more clearly affirmed in the historical development of the working class movement. These are the ideas that have fin- ally culminated in Stalinism and which -shared by Trotskyism -have made it impossible for Trotskyism clearly to differentiate itself as a political tendency. For [i]objectivist views of economics and history can only be a source of bureaucratic politics[/i], that is, of politics which in the last analysis attempt only to improve the workings of the capitalist system, whilst preserving its essence. [i]The Fundamental Contradiction of Capitalism[/i] Capitalism is the first society in history whose organization contains an insoluble internal contradiction. The term 'contradiction' has been misused by generations of marxists and pseudo-marxists until it has lost all meaning, At times it was used in an improper way by Marx himself, when for instance he spoke of 'the contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production'. This is quite meaningless, as we will show further on. Like previous societies in history capital ism is a society divided into classes. In every society so divided, these classes struggle against one another, for their interests are in conflict. But the mere existence of classes, of exploitation and class struggle does not create a 'contradiction'. They simply determine an opposition, a conflict between social groups. There is no [i]contradiction[/i] in a slave society or in a feudal society, however violent at times the conflict between rulers and ruled. In these societies there were certain social norms. The domination of one class over another required of the rulers a certain conduct, at times certainly inhuman and oppressive, but nevertheless possible and internally coherent. What the master imposed on the slave, what the feudal lord imposed on the serf, contained no internal contradiction. It was realisable, provided the master did not 'go too far'. But if he went too far, he was outside the norms of the system: he was defeating his own ends, which required that he take care of the condition of his slaves, in order to maintain their output. The slave-owner treated his slaves no better and no worse than he would have treated an item of his own livestock. Even when circumstances obliged masters to treat their slaves in a way which led to their extermination there was no 'contradiction'. Farmers often do the same thing. It is logical to kill lambs when meat is expensive and wool is cheap. That the lambs may have a different view of the matter, or may even react, is quite another story. Once established, these pre-capitalist societies were not moulded in their daily evolution by the class struggle. True, the slaves would periodically revolt against their masters. True, the serfs would at times burn down the castles of the landlords. There was certainly a permanent conflict, but the two elements of the conflict were in a sense outside of one another. There was no living dialectical process, no constantly interacting relationship between rulers and ruled. The daily struggle of the exploited did not constantly compel the exploiters to change both themselves and their society. Capitalism on the other hand is built on an intrinsic contradiction – a [i]real[/i] contradiction – a contradiction in the most literal meaning of the word, a contradiction which determines its whole evolution. The capitalist organization of society is in conflict with itself in the strict sense that a neurotic individual is: [i]it has to pursue its objectives by methods which constantly defeat these same objectives[/i]. Let us look at this first at the most fundamental level: in production. The capitalist system can only maintain itself by trying to reduce workers into mere order-takers, into automatons, into 'executants' of decisions taken elsewhere. At the same time the system can only function as long as this reduction is never achieved. Capitalism is constantly obliged to solicit the participation of workers in the process of production (if the workers didn't participate to some extent the system would soon grind to a halt). On the other hand capitalism constantly has to [i]limit[/i] this [i]participation[/i] (if it didn't the workers would soon start deciding themselves and would show in practice how superfluous the ruling class really is). The same contradiction is to be found in an almost identical form in politics and in cultural life. It is this that constitutes the fundamental fact of capitalism, the kernel of capitalist social relations, both yesterday and today. Historically, this ‘contradiction’ can only appear when certain pre-conditions appear together. These are: <ol><li>Generalized wage labour.</li> <li>An evolving, as distinct from a static, technology.</li> <li>The general political and cultural background provided by the bourgeois- democratic revolution.</li></ol> 1) PRODUCTION BASED ON WAGE LABOUR MUST HAVE BECOME THE DOMINANT PATTERN OF PRODUCTION. This has a double significance. <ul><li>In wage labour direction and execution of activities are virtually separated from the start. They tend to diverge more and more. Not only the objectives of production but also the method and manner of production – the unfolding of the labour process itself – are to an increasing degree determined by someone other than the producer, by someone other than the worker who will be doing the job. The command of the activity tends to be taken outside of the subject of the activity.<fn>In a sense, the command of activity is always 'outside the subject of the activity', wherever value is extracted by exploiters from the labour of those they exploit. This would apply for instance to slave society and to feudal society. But in these societies this outside command remains outside of the activity itself. The master fixes the objective of the activity. He sets the slave his task. He or his agents make sure that the slave does not stop working. But the process of labour itself is not penetrated: the methods (and the instruments) of labour are traditional and fairly permanent. They are in a sense incorporated in the slave once and for all. At most there is a need for supervision. The slave-owner has no need constantly to meddle with the labour process, constantly to modify it. The contradiction of capitalism is that it implies at one and the same time a command which is external to productive activity and a command that is forced constantly to penetrate this activity, to dictate its methods, to determine its most elementary gestures.</fn></li> <li>In the wage relation both tI1e remuneration of the worker and the effort he must furnish are essentially arbitrary. No objective rule, no calculation, no accepted social convention permits one to say what is a ‘just’ wage – or just how much effort should be furnished by a worker during an hour of labour time. At the beginning of the history of capitalism, this indeterminacy was masked by habits and by traditions.<fn> Marx himself did not succeed in breaking free from and going beyond this conception. The theory of wages expounded in [i]Capital[/i] refers explicitly to these 'historical elements' as factors which determine the standard of living of the working class, i.e. the total of goods a worker 'needs' to live and reproduce himself. But 'in any specific country, in any specific period' these were seen as 'a fixed quantity'. (See [i]Capital[/i] p. 159). Objective factors of this kind determined, for Marx, the value of labour power, of which wages are the monetary expression. </fn> It comes clearly to the forefront, however, as soon as the working class begins to contest the existing state of affairs. From this point on, the provisional and constantly renewable labour contract is based solely on the relation of forces between the two parties. Its implementation can only take place through an incessant war between capitalists and workers, the battlefield being the labour process itself.<fn> Detailed accounts of this struggle will be found in the texts by Paul Romano ([i]Socialisme ou Barbarie[/i], issues 1-6), Georges Vivier ([i]Socialisme ou Barbarie[/i] issues 11-17), Daniel Mothé ([i]Socialisme ou Barbarie[/i], issue 22). The text by Paul Romano [i]The American Worker[/i] was originally published in New York in 1947.</fn></li></ul> 2) THE CONTRADICTION IN PRODUCTION MOST CLEARLY AFTER THE APPEARANCE OF AN EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY. In previous societies technology was fairly static. An evolving technology prevents any permanent sedimentation of the modes of production, such as might form a basis for a stabilization of class relations in the factory. At the same time it prevents technical knowledge from becoming permanently embodied in specific categories of workers.  3) THESE FACTORS ONLY BEGIN TO OPERATE IN A PARTICULAR TYPE OF SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND CULTURAL ENVIRONMENT. Capitalism can only develop and assert its innermost tendencies in the conditions achieved by bourgeois-democratic revolutions of the classical type (or by their bureaucratic variants).<fn> Or where the capitalist revolution and the bureaucratic transformation are telescoped into a single process (as for instance in China, since 1949). </fn> These revolutions, even when they don't result in an active intervention and participation of the masses, nevertheless liquidate previous feudal relations and ideologies. They proclaim that the only foundation of social organization is [i]reason[/i]. They talk of the equality of rights, of the sovereignty of the people, etc. IT IS THE SUM TOTAL OF THESE CONDITIONS WHICH DETERMINE THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE UNDER CAPITALISM AND WHICH GIVE TO CAPITALIST PRODUCTION ITS HIGHLY CONTRADICTORY CHARACTER. Under capitalism the class struggle is permanent, both in relation to wages and in relation to conditions of work. Far from appearing 'natural' or ordained for all time, the ever-changing productive methods are soon shown up for what they are: methods for the maximum exploitation of labour and for the increasing subordination of the worker to capital. The ruling class cannot avoid constantly stirring up opposition to its methods of production. Nor can it avoid constantly providing workers with the means of retaliation. This rapidly influences all aspects of the organization of the factory. The proletarian struggle is unlike the struggles of slaves or serfs. It is not reduced to the ‘all or nothing' objective of the total organization of society. Incessant guerrilla warfare at the point of production educates the working class and makes it become aware of itself as a class. The success of partial struggles demonstrates to the workers, at small cost, that they can modify their conditions through action. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is because there is this possibility of reform that the working class becomes revolutionary class. As the working class struggle develops, it affects the evolution of production, of the economy, and finally of society as a whole. When they win wage increases, the workers are influencing the level of demand, the rhythm of accumulation, and in the long run the structure of production itself. When, through struggle, they win improvements in the tempo and conditions of work, workers oblige capitalism to pursue technological developments in a determined direction: in the direction which offers the best possibilities of overcoming future working class resistance. In struggling against unemployment the workers oblige the capitalist state to intervene to stabilize economic activity by exercising more control over this activity. The direct and indirect repercussions of the working class struggle leave no sphere of social life untouched. Even the holiday resorts of the capitalists had to be altered when the workers won holidays with pay. It is only on this basis that we can understand why the history and the dynamic of capitalism is the history and the dynamic of class struggle. [i]The Real Dynamic of Capitalism[/i] For traditional marxists, the dynamic of capitalism is that of an ever deeper, ever more 'insoluble' crisis, with ever -increasing misery, ever more massive unemployment, ever more colossal over-production, etc. This is epitomized in the famous passage of [i]Capital[/i] where Marx describes the 'historical trend of capitalist accumulation'. <fn>'What has now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working on his own account but the capitalist, who exploits many labourers. This expropriation is brought about by the operation of the immanent laws of capitalist production, by the centralization of capital. (...) While there is thus a progressive diminution in the number of capitalist magnates (. ..) there occurs a corresponding increase in the mass of poverty, oppression, enslavement, degeneration and exploitation; but at the same time there is a steady intensification of the wrath of the working class – a class which grows ever more numerous and is disciplined, unified and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist mode of production. Capitalist monopoly becomes a fetter upon the method of production which has flourished with it and under it. The capitalization of the means of production and the socialization of labour reach a point where they prove incompatible with their capitalist husk. This bursts asunder; the knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. With the inexorability of a law of nature, capitalist production begets its own negation'. ([i]Capital[/i], pp. 845 -846).</fn> Contrary to appearances, this view of the history of capitalism implies that there is no real history of capitalism at all -any more than there is a 'history' of a chemical mixture, in which the predetermined interactions of the various ingredients take place and proceed at an increasing tempo, eventually culminating in the explosion of the whole laboratory. In this 'traditional' conception the recurrent and deepening crises of the system are determined by the 'immanent laws' of the system. Events and crises are really independent of the actions of men and of classes. Men cannot modify the operation of these laws. They can only intervene to abolish the system as a whole. In the traditional schema capitalists do not and cannot act in an effective and conscious manner. They are 'acted upon' by economic laws. These guide them on, in much the same way as the laws of gravity guide the fall of bodies. The capitalists have no control over reality. The economy evolves independently of their actions and according to the 'laws of development of capitalism', of which the capitalists are the more or less unconscious puppets. It is inconceivable that the capitalists could effectively control their economy. They could not possibly learn how to eliminate slumps – in order to consolidate their power. Historical experience cannot teach them how best to serve their own long-term interests. In the traditional schema even the workers are seen as 'acted upon' rather than as initiators of action. Their reactions are determined by the same automatic movements of the economy. They are conditioned by biological misery. The revolution is almost directly connected to hunger. Class action can do little to influence the evolution of society as long as social relations are not overturned. And the revolution, of course, can only lead to pre-ordained results. Of those holding such views one could rightly enquire what precisely the working class could possibly learn in the course of its history, except that capitalism is bad and must be fought to the death? Working class knowledge of capitalist society could only mean working class knowledge of capitalism as the source of its misery. The conditions of proletarian life and work cannot allow the working class to understand society's internal mechanisms, nor the real causes of what happens to the workers as a class. Only the theoreticians can understand these problems, for they are the only people who have studied the laws of the enlarged reproduction of capital and understood all about the falling rate of profit. If a socialist consciousness exists, its origin must be looked for elsewhere than in the proletariat. This problem of the relation between proletarian action and proletarian consciousness has never been properly analysed in classical marxism. In his [i]History and Class Consciousness[/i], Lukacs<fn> Georg Lukacs was Minister of Culture in the Hungarian Soviet Republic of Bela Kun, in 1919. His [i]History and Class Consciousness[/i], the 'cursed book' of marxism, consists of a series of essays written between 1919 and 1922 and first published in Berlin in 1923. They were immediately denounced as 'unorthodox' both by the Communist International and by the social- democrat Kautsky, whose common 'positivist' conceptions the book had dared to question. Lukacs recanted. After the collapse of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Lukacs lived in Berlin and Vienna. When the Nazis came to power he sought refuge in Moscow. He returned to Hungary in 1945, as professor of Aesthetics in Budapest University, where his writings on literature and philosophy again incurred official displeasure. In 1949 he was denounced for 'cosmopolitanism' and indulged in a public 'self-criticism'. 1956 found Lukacs one of the main intellectual instigators of the Revolution. In October, he again became Minister of Culture, this time in the short-lived Nagy Government. After the second Russian intervention in Budapest he was arrested, refused to recant and was later deported to Rumania. He subsequently returned to Hungary. [i]History and Class Consciousness[/i], his major work, was recently translated into French and published in Paris (Editions de Minuit, 1960).</fn> attempted to deal with it but only succeeded in obscuring the problem and in showing up the inadequacies of classical conceptions. In the main essay contained in this book Lukacs implies that there is no proletarian consciousness outside of proletarian action. Proletarian consciousness is action, pure and simple. The proletariat embodies the objective truth of history because its actions tend to transform history into its next historically necessary stage. And the proletariat achieves this transformation without really knowing what it is doing. Self-knowledge can only come to it through and after the Revolution. This hocus-pocus whereby a dumb object is transformed into an absolute subject comes straight from Hegelian metaphysics. It is absolute idealism, or even worse: absolute spiritualism. It places into 'the things themselves' a perfected and total reason - a reason which does not know itself, is not conscious of itself, and can therefore never be a concrete subject of history. For according to this conception the working class is a thing under capitalism. It has been well and truly 'reified'. Thus, working class action has simply replaced the 'absolute spirit' of Hegel. Lukacs's main essay was written at the height of the revolutionary upsurge of 1919. But a consciousness which is not a self-consciousness cannot transform history. The working class did not seize power in Europe. It did not succeed in holding power in Russia. Another 'self- consciousness' emerged and triumphed: the Bolshevik Party. Then, in September 1922 Lukacs wrote his [i]Methodological Remarks on the Question of Organization[/i]. The Party here appeared as the embodiment of actual class consciousness. As always, spiritualism ended up by finding a concrete historical subject in which to embody a transcendental entity, which would otherwise have to remain what it really is: a ghost. So God becomes the Catholic Church. Hegel's 'absolute spirit' animates the Prussian State bureaucracy. And the 'praxis of the proletariat' becomes the activities of the Third International – already under strong Zinovievist control! For us, the evolution of capitalism is history, in the real meaning of the term. It is a process in which the actions of men and classes constantly and consciously modify the very conditions in which the struggle takes place.<fn> This obviously does not mean that the consciousness is perfect, still less that every modification of the system is clearly seen and fought for.</fn> In the course of this process new structures and new ideas are constantly created. THE EVOLUTION OF CAPITALISM IS THE HISTORY OF THE CONSTITUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF TWO CLASSES OF MEN AND OF A STRUGGLE IN WHICH NEITHER CLASS CAN ACT WITHOUT ACTING ON THE OTHER. Capital produces the worker and the worker produces capital – not only quantitatively, but qualitatively as well. The [i]history[/i] of a society in which capitalism is developing is first of all the history of its increasing proletarianization, of its invasion by the proletariat. It is at the same time the history of the struggle between capitalists and workers. The dialectic of this society is the dialectic of this struggle, in which each of the adversaries constantly create weapons, methods of fighting, ideas and forms of organization to cope with an ever-changing situation. The consequences of this struggle, whether wished or not - and whether fully understood or not -constantly modify the stage on which the next battle is fought out (i.e. the norms and organizational patterns of society). To constitute and develop itself the capitalist class must accumulate capital. It must rationalize and concentrate production on an ever vaster scale. To accumulate means at one and the same time to transform labour into capital, to give to the life and death of millions of men the face of factories, offices and machines – and, to this end, to create an ever -increasing number of wage -earners. To 'rationalize' production, within the capitalist framework, means to enslave living labour to machines and to those who manage production. It means to reduce more and more wage-earners to the role of mere 'executants'. In the course of this process the working class is at one and the same time created as an objective class and attacked by capitalism from the day of its birth. By counter-attacking capitalism, the proletariat makes itself a class in the full meaning of the word, a class with objectives and finally a consciousness of its own, a 'class for itself'. The' working class fights capitalism at every level affecting its existence. The struggle takes on its clearest form in the fields of production, of economy and of politics. The workers struggle against the capitalist rationalization of production: first against the machines themselves, later against the increasing tempo of work. They attack the spontaneous and erratic functioning of the economy by demanding wage increases, reductions in hours, and full employment. They also soon raise themselves to a total conception of the problems of society. They form political organizations, seek to modify the course of events, revolt, seek to seize power. The development and inter-connections of these various aspects of the struggle would need volumes to be properly studied. This is not here our purpose. We simply want to shed some light on the [i]real dynamic of capitalist society: the dynamic of the class struggle[/i]. By the class struggle we do not only mean the massive and grandiose pitched battles which are well-known features of working class history. We also mean the permanent struggle in production, where, so to speak, half of each gesture made by a worker has as its objective to defend himself against exploitation and alienation. This hidden, silent, informal and daily resistance plays a formative role in history, quite as important as that of great strikes or revolutions. As long as the struggle lasts – and it will last as long as exploiting society lasts – each action by one of the adversaries will sooner or later lead to a counter-action by the other. This in turn will call forth another reaction, and so on. But each of these actions alters the one who performs it as well as the one against whom it is directed. Each antagonist is changed by the actions of the other. The summation of these effects leads to profound alterations of the social milieu, of the battlefield on which the struggle is fought out. In its culminating moments the activities of the antagonists give rise to new historical creations, to the discovery of new forms of struggle, of organization and of social life, forms neither contained in the previous state of society, nor pre-determined by it. During this all-out struggle both the contending classes develop an historic experience. In the working class, this is part of the development of a socialist consciousness. Let us give an example from production. The large scale introduction of machines by capitalism during the first half of the 19th century was correctly sensed by the workers as a direct attack upon them.<fn> It is still sensed as an attack, over a century later. The reactions of the working class to the introduction of automation, particularly in the United States, leave no doubt on this point. (See for instance the [i]News and Letters[/i] pamphlet [i]Workers Battle Automation[i/], by Charles Denby.)</fn> They reacted by breaking the machines. On this plane they were soon defeated. But the struggle in the new factories then took on an invincible form: the resistance of workers to production. Capitalism reacted by the widespread introduction of piecework. Piecework then became the object of a bitter struggle: the norms are contested. Capitalism reacts by Taylorism: the norms will be determined' scientifically' and 'objectively'. Further resistance of the workers makes it plain that 'scientific objectivity' in this field is a joke. Applied psychology and industrial sociology then appear on the scene: their object is to 'integrate' the workers into the enterprise. These methods collapse in practice, partly under the weight of their own contradictions, but mainly because the workers won't play along. It is precisely in the most advanced capitalist countries -the United States and Britain -countries where the employers increasingly apply these 'modern' methods and where wages are the highest that the daily conflict in production is the most intense. While these attacks and counter-attacks succeed one another in industry one can find, if one studies the productive process as a whole, two great and well-known trends which express the permanent tendency of capital to enslave labour. <ol><li>[i]The division of tasks[/i] is carried out ever further, and is pushed to an absurd degree. This is not, as is so often assumed, because it is an indispensable means of increasing production. In fact, beyond a certain point it undoubtedly decreases production both directly and indirectly, through the enormous overhead costs it entails. It is pushed to an absurd degree because it is the only way of dominating the worker who resists, by making his labour absolutely quantifiable and controllable, and the worker himself completely replaceable.</li> <li>[i]Mechanization[/i]. Its pattern follows the same course. To minimize resistance in production, the worker must be dominated by the machine (i.e. his output must be determined by the machine). Production must be automated as much as possible, i.e. made independent of the producer. Increasing division of tasks and mechanization of the capitalist type advance hand in hand. But at each stage, working class resistance partially disrupts the plans of the capitalists.</li></ol> This daily struggle in production has moulded the face of modern industry. It has determined the way men live in factories. But it has also moulded the economy and the development of modern society in general. For a long time the economic .struggle was mainly expressed in wage demands. These were bitterly opposed by capitalism. Having almost lost the battle on this front, capitalism ended up by adapting itself. It accepted an economy of which the dominant feature in relation to demand was the regular increase of the mass of wages and a constantly enlarging consumer market. This type of economy in expansion is the one in which we live. It is essentially the product of the incessant wages pressure exerted by the working class. And its problems, from the capitalist's point of view, result from this pressure. On the political plane, the first attempts of workers to organize usually met with capitalist repression, either open or disguised. Defeated sooner or later at this level, capitalism succeeds, after a whole process of historical evolution, in converting the political organizations of the working class into essential cogs of its own system. But even this has important repercussions. Capitalist 'democracy' cannot really function without a large 'reformist' party. This party cannot be purely and simply a capitalist puppet party, for it would then lose its electoral basis and be of no further use. It has also got to be a potential' government' party. In fact it has to 'govern' occasionally. But 'reformist' policies, in turn, inevitably taint even the 'conservative' parties. In no country in the world is there any real question of the capitalists wiping out the reforms that provoked such bitter battles only a few decades ago, reforms such as social security, unemployment insurance, progressive taxation, and relatively full employment. The more farsighted and in places now dominant sections of the capitalist class, after resisting for a long time the very idea of state interference in economic life (wrongly considered 'revolutionary' and 'socialist'), have finally accepted it. In so doing modern capitalism has sought to divert to its own ends working class resistance to the uncontrolled functioning of the economy. Through its state machine, modern capitalism has instituted a control of the economy and of society which in the final analysis serves its own interests and reinforces its power. The various mechanisms we have separated here for the purpose of analysis are not in reality separate, but inextricably intertwined. Let us give an example: the political pressure of the working class in modern capitalist society pre- vents the state from permitting more than a certain amount of unemployment. This however creates a very difficult situation for the capitalists in relation to wages (because the negotiating strength of the workers is increased by full employment). The capitalists try and more or less succeed in maintaining relative stability on the wages front. But, given a certain combativity of the workers, this itself creates an intolerable situation for the capitalists in their factories, from the point of view of 'discipline' in the labour process itself. Each 'solution' found by the ruling class always leads to further trouble. All this only reflects the incapacity of capitalism to surmount its fundamental contradiction. We will return to this later. All the means used by capitalism flow from the same requirements: to maintain its domination and to extend its control over society in general and over the working class in particular. ; Other factors – such as the struggle between capitalists, or a relatively autonomous evolution of technique – were undoubtedly important during earlier stages of capitalist development, but their importance has progressively decreased in direct proportion to the proletarianization of society and to the extension of the class struggle. The class structure of previous societies did not have much direct influence on spheres of social life other than production, economy and politics. Today all aspects of social life are affected and quite explicitly integrated into the vast network in which the ruling class seeks to enmesh the whole of society. All sectors of human life must be submitted to the control of those who manage. Every possible method is used regardless of expense. Scientific knowledge is mobilized. Psychology and psycho- analysis, industrial sociology and political economy, electronics and mathematics are all called in. Together these measures seek to ensure the survival of the system, fill the breaches of its defences, help it permeate the exploited class, assist it in understanding the motives and behaviour of the workers, the better, to harness them to the interests of production, to the sale of useless objects, and to the stabilization of the system as a whole. Thus modern capitalist societies, whether 'democratic' or dictatorial, are always totalitarian. To maintain itself the domination of the exploiters must invade all fields of human activity and attempt to control them. Totalitarianism may no longer take the extreme forms it did under Hitler or Stalin. It may no longer use terror. Basically this changes nothing, for terror is but one of the means that can be used to break down all opposition. It is not always applicable nor does it always yield the best results. 'Peaceful' manipulation of the masses and the gradual assimilation of all organized opposition can be just as effective. [i]Capitalist Ideology Yesterday and Today[/i] Capitalism has transformed society and in the process has itself been profoundly modified as a result of the class struggle. We have already examined some of the structural changes in the economy that have been brought about. Let us now look at some of the modifications at the level of ideology<fn> We have described events in this order for the sake of clarity of exposition. For us ideology neither ‘follows’ nor ‘precedes’ – it is neither ‘cause’ nor ‘effect’ – it is simply the expression of the same social reality, at its own level.</fn> and of capitalist politics. The politics of the capitalist class are becoming increasingly conscious and explicit.<fn> The question of the degree, nature, homogeneity and social basis for this consciousness is far from simple. We cannot unfortunately study it here.</fn> This will best be understood if they are contrasted with the capitalist politic s of the 19th century. It will be seen that there were then no coherent capitalist politics<fn> We use this term to denote the whole system of reference, the leading ideas, the web of means, even the reflexes of the individual capitalist or of the capitalists acting as a class (through their institutions, parties, Parliaments, state administrations, etc.) when dealing with the problems that confront them.</fn> in the proper sense. The policies that passed as such are well known. Let us summarise them: Each capitalist should be free to pursue his enterprise within the rather elastic limits set by law and morality. In particular, the labour contract should be 'free' and determined by the ‘agreement’ of both parties. The state should guarantee the social order, give profitable orders to particular enterprises when possible, favour the activity of given groups of capitalists by means of tariffs and commercial treaties, wage wars to protect the 'national interest' - i.e. the interests of this or that group of capitalists. But the state should not intervene directly in the orientation or the management of the economy which it could only disturb. It should levy as little taxation as possible, because state expenses are unproductive. Workers' demands are unjustified a priori – concretely because they diminish profits, abstractly because they 'violate the laws of the market'. They must be fought to the finish – even the army must intervene if necessary. All manifestations of working class resistance (strikes, demonstrations, the formation of unions or of political parties) must be outlawed, restricted, denounced or made as difficult and ineffective as possible. What is relevant here, of course, is not the brutality or even the absurdity of this 19th century capitalist ideology, with its mixture of childishness and bad faith. It is not even the degree to which, even today, certain fractions of the capitalist class and of its politicians (the 'liberal- reactionary' wing, so to speak)<fn> The Enoch Powells, Nabarros, Martells, etc… to give but a few examples drawn from the contemporary British experience. </fn> remain under the influence of these ideas. What is of interest to us is that this ideology corresponded to a given phase of the development both of capitalism and of the working class movement, and that it played a crucial role in the history of the class struggle. These ideas inspired the harsh resistance of capitalists to wage demands, were responsible for the classic economic crises, and conditioned the whole functioning of capitalism during long phases of its history. For, left to themselves, it is true, the 'automatic' mechanisms of the market could only bring about recurrent crises – and the recovery from these crises, also left to itself, might last for considerable periods. Marxists vigorously and quite correctly denounced this ideology and the politics that flowed from it. But it is a remarkable fact that marxism shared quite a number of its fundamental postulates with 19th century capitalist ideology. Marxists thought that nothing could alter the functioning of capitalist economy. They too held crises to be inevitable and their control beyond the scope of the capitalists as a class. Only the value signs were different. For marxists, the crises were manifestations of the 'insurmountable contradictions' of the system. They would 'become more frequent and more violent'.<fn>‘As the capitalists are compelled (…) to exploit the already existing gigantic means of production on a larger scale and to set in motion all the mainsprings of credit to this end, there is a corresponding increase in industrial earthquakes… in a word, crises increase. They become more frequent and more violent…’ K. Marx, [i]Wage Labour and Capital [/i], p. 79.</fn> For the capitalists, the crises were natural and inevitable evils, which might even have some positive aspects (the elimination of less efficient enterprises, etc.). Marxists and bourgeois ideologists shared another basic assumption: that real wages could not lastingly improve as they were condemned by the laws of the system to fluctuate around a more or less unalterable mean.<fn> In relation to wages there has always been a certain duplicity in the marxist movement. In practice it was proclaimed that such and such an enterprise or capitalist sector could and ought to pay higher wages (often by reference to its balance sheet) while in theory it was demonstrated that workers’ demands in relation to wages could not be satisfied within the system.</fn> Until about 1930, in all these essential areas of the appreciation of social reality, marxist politics and capitalist politics shared a common point of view. But marxism went even further. It identified 19th century capitalism and its politics with the essence of the system. Capitalism appeared to marxism as a system fundamentally characterized by impotence and anarchy. 'Laissez -faire' implied an absence, even a negation of policy. This was what capitalist society was, had been, and necessarily had to be. The system was incapable of achieving an insight into its own organization or an effective will concerning its own administration. The marxists saw anarchy at the subjective level of those who ruled society. The capitalists did not want to, could not want to, and anyway couldn't intervene in the running of the economy. And even if they sought to intervene, they would obviously be powerless when confronted with the inexorable march of the economic 'laws', When capitalists made decisions, they were, by their very nature, incapable of adopting any larger or wider viewpoint, They were rigidly bound by the profit motive in the very narrowest sense of the term, To traditional marxists the very being of the individual capitalist was this 'immediate' type of being, incapable of taking a long-term view of reality, a view coinciding with his own clearly perceived long-term interests. It was only with difficulty that capitalists could come to understand that workers, like machines, needed adequate lubrication. The average capitalist would prefer to see his enterprise grind to a halt rather than concede an increase in wages. He would always wage war to conquer a colony or to avoid losing one. In relation to the class struggle capitalism was incapable of tactics, of strategy, of adaptation. If despite all this 'impotence' and 'anarchy' the system still functioned it was because behind the capitalist puppets there operated the great, impersonal and objective 'laws'. These functioned and guaranteed capitalism its coherence and its expansion – but only up to a point; for behind this coherence one encountered again, at the most profound level, the ultimate anarchy of the system, its ultimate objective contradiction. Such, broadly speaking, was the ideology of traditional marxism, Let us say, before we go any further, that although historically surpassed, this image has been partly true. To a large extent – and during a considerable period – the capitalists were this kind of being. The excusable methodological error of previous generations of marxists was to elevate to the rank of eternal features of capitalism certain characteristics ('anarchy of the market', slumps, etc.) which only really pertain to an early phase of capitalist development. The inexcusable error of contemporary 'marxists'<fn> The same applies of course to many in the ‘non-marxist’ revolutionary left.</fn> is to look for the truth about the world around them, not in the contemporary world itself but in the books of a hundred years ago. Capitalist politics were, for a long time, characterized by this absence of policy, by this mixture of anarchy and impotence. The behaviour of individual capitalists (as well as of their politicians, their state and their class as a whole) was for a whole period based on this short-sighted outlook. It lacked perspective, tactic or strategy. For as long as they could, capitalists treated their workers worse than beasts of burden. Their attitude was only modified by the workers' struggle. It only remains modified as long as the struggle persists. It is finally true that the only 'coherence' in this society which 'let things alone' was the coherence introduced by economic laws and this coherence, in a complex and rapidly developing world, only concealed a lack of coherence at the fundamental level. But things have changed. To retain this outdated image of capitalism is to commit the  most serious error one can make in a war: to ignore and underestimate the enemy. The changes that have occurred were not due to genetic mutations, making the capitalists more 'intelligent'. The proletarian struggle itself obliged the ruling class to modify its real organization, its politics and its whole ideology, as well as the structure of its economy. Capitalist rulers and ideologists have accumulated, often against their own will,<fn> Even today, a 'modern' capitalist encounters an enormous resistance within the capitalist class. The policy of the Eisenhower administration kept the American economy in a morass for seven years, partly as a result of this resistance. One could say as much for the Baumgartner policy in France which for a whole period led French capitalism to progress at a snail's pace under the pretext of safeguarding price stability. The same thing was again noticeable in the USA quite recently, in the opposition which the Kennedy tax-cuts proposals met with in Congress. But this resistance to the understanding of the realities of modern capitalism is even more true for 99% of the marxists, who in this respect are far behind the most class -conscious representative of capitalism. When pressed a little these revolutionaries reveal that their image of capitalism is a 19th century one.</fn> a whole historical experience in the management of a modern society. New policies have been imposed on them by the struggle of the working class. But working class victories have shown in practice that an exploiting system could very well tolerate certain reforms. It could even profit by them. The capitalists have even begun to use ideas, methods and institutions which originally came from the working class movement itself. Thus for instance at a certain stage wage increases could no longer be opposed and fought to a finish. Working class pressure had become too great. Little by little the capitalists discovered that it was unnecessary to oppose an absolute resistance. In fact, from the moment a wages movement becomes generalized – and massive collective contracts in industry playa big part in this process – no capitalist is put in an intolerable position with regard to his competitors from the mere fact that a wage increase is granted. He even benefits from it, in the end, because overall demand is increased. And of course he can catch up by stepping up productivity in his plant or enterprise, thus maintaining the wage-profit ratio roughly constant. He will often in fact try to buy the docility of the workers in the most important field – that of production – by means of wage concessions.<fn> See for instance [i]The Truth About Vauxhall[/i] by K. Weller (Solidarity pamphlet no. 11) where these methods are fully documented in relation to a specific enterprise.</fn> Of course, what is useful for the capitalist class as a whole is not necessarily good for the individual capitalist. This is one of the reasons why [i]this new attitude only appears when the concentration of capital on the one hand, and the growth of the workers' organizations on the other, have reached a certain point[/i]. But from this moment on, a conscious policy of 'moderate' wage increases becomes an integral part of the whole ideology and mechanism of capitalism. More and more capitalists come to see the link between a steadily controlled increase in mass purchasing power and the regular expansion of the capitalist market. Let us take another example. The working class of today would not tolerate for a minute a repetition of the great depression of 1929-33. Awareness of this fact imposes on the ruling class the need to maintain relatively full employment. The key sections of the capitalist class have finally grasped, have had driven into their heads, the link between full employment and the rapid expansion of capital. The capitalists discovered -in fact rather sooner than either workers or revolutionaries – that state control is not the same as socialism. Finally the unions, for long bitterly fought by the capitalist class, are recognized today as an estate of the realm. They have become transformed into essential cogs of the whole machine.<fn> This process of transformation of the unions has taken almost a century in most capitalist countries. It took place within a few years in the USA. It started there around 1935-37, when the great strike wave compelled the bosses to recognize the CIO. By the end of World War II, the transformation was more or less complete: the unions were essentially preoccupied with maintaining discipline in production in exchange for wage concessions.</fn> One arrives thus at contemporary capitalism, at the policies that are applied in practice by the majority of the capitalist class – even if fought in words by some of their Don Quixotes. At the deepest level these policies represent the repudiation of the ideology of 'free enterprise' and of the belief that the 'spontaneous' functioning of the economy and of society will necessarily produce the best result for the ruling class. As a result of the class struggle our rulers now accept the idea that ‘society’ - i.e. they themselves - have a general responsibility for what happens. They recognize the central role of the state in the exercise of this responsibility. And hand in hand with this realization grows the idea that the most extensive control possible is necessary in all spheres of social life. The intervention of the state in social affairs becomes the rule and not the exception, as formerly. The content of this intervention is now quite different from what it was under classical capitalism. The state is no longer supposed simply to guarantee a social order within which the capitalist game will proceed 'freely'. The state is now explicitly asked to 'ensure full employment' and to 'maintain economic stability'.<fn> See for example the [i]Full Employment Act[/i] of 1947 in America – or more generally any official programmatic declaration by any contemporary government on economic matters.</fn> It must both ensure an adequate level of general demand and intervene to prevent the pressure of wages from becoming 'too strong'. It must keep an eye on the growth of the labour force. It must invest in sectors where private capital does not intervene sufficiently or rationally enough. It must ensure the development of science and culture. Its key ideas are now expansion (of a capitalist type), the development of consumption (of a capitalist type) and of leisure (of a capitalist type), the enlargement of education (of a capitalist type) and the diffusion of culture (of a capitalist type). All this means organization, selection, hierarchy, control.<fn> These laws were written in 1960, long before the return of Mr. Wilson’s government!</fn>  It should be unnecessary to insist on the class content of these objectives. Some will obstinately refuse to admit this reality of con- temporary capitalism. They will feel that to recognize it is tantamount to admitting that capitalism can 'do the job'. But what job are they talking about? What was their conception of socialism? Only those who continue to equate 'socialism' with an expansion of [i]this[/i] type of production and [i]this[/i] type of consumption, with the enlargement of [i]this[/i] type of education and the diffusion of [i]this[/i] type of culture, need feel the ground sink steadily under their feet. Those who see socialism as the transformation of relations between men (and between man and his work) will realize that such a change is impossible under capitalism. It will never come about as long as the management of work and of collective activities are the function of a specific social stratum and remain outside the hands of the producers themselves. And it will not come about under "these conditions whatever the level of the productive forces. Subjectively, these new policies of our rulers are the product of their experience of the class struggle and of their continuing need somehow or other to manage their society. Objectively, these policies are the corollary to the real transformation of capitalism. They are the explicit logic of capitalism's new structure and of the mechanisms it has evolved to ensure its domination over society. Because modern capitalism must provide the means to achieve these ends it seeks to accelerate the development of these new structures and to amplify these mechanisms. It is to this aspect of the evolution of capitalism that we now wish to turn. [b]Part II – Bureaucratic Capitalism[/b] [i]Bureaucratization: the Intrinsic Tendency of Capitalism[/i] The result of two centuries of class struggle has been a profound objective transformation of capitalism which can be summed up in one word: bureaucratization. [i]Bureaucratic capitalism[/i] is a class society based on wage labour in which the management of collective activities is in the hands of an impersonal apparatus, hierarchically organized, economically privileged, recruited according to rules proclaimed and applied by itself, yet supposed to act according to 'rational' methods and criteria. The bureaucratization of capitalism has three main sources. These are: <ol><li> IN PRODUCTION. The concentration and 'rationalization' of production leads to the appearance of a bureaucratic apparatus within big capitalist enterprises. Its function is the management of production and of the relations of the firm with the rest of the economy. In particular the apparatus manages, from the outside, the whole labour process. It defines tasks. It imposes rhythms and methods of work. It controls the quantity and quality of the product. It supervises and disciplines. It plans. It seeks to manage men and to integrate them into their places of work. It handles both the stick and the carrot. Working class resistance to capitalist production requires of capitalism an ever more strict control of the process of labour and of the activity of the worker. This control, in its turn, entails a complete transformation of managerial methods in the factory, compared for instance with those prevailing in the 19th century. It leads to the creation of a managerial apparatus which tends to become the real locus of power in the factory.<fn>  No one denies that private capitalism remains in the West – or that private capitalists continue to play an important role. What the holders of ‘traditional’ conceptions are incapable of seeing, however, is that where he exists the capitalist tycoon can only function in business as the summit of a bureaucratic pyramid and through its intermediary strata.</fn></li> <li>IN THE STATE. The state has always been a bureaucratic apparatus par excellence. Its profound change of role now makes of it an instrument of control and even of management – and this in an increasing number of sectors of economic and social life. This transformation is accompanied by an extraordinary numerical growth of administrative personnel, at all levels.</li> <li>IN THE POLITICAL AND TRADE UNION ORGANIZATIONS. Complex factors, which we have analyzed elsewhere,<fn> A full analysis of the bureaucratization of the trade unions and political organizations of the working class will be found in the article ‘Proletariat et Organisation’ ([i]Socialisme ou Barbarie[/i], issue 27). An abbreviated version of this article was published under the title ‘Working Class Consciousness’ in [i]Solidarity[/i], vol. II, Nos. 2 and 3.</fn> lead at a certain stage to the degeneration and bureaucratization of the working class movement. As this takes place the objective function of the large workers' organizations changes. It becomes the maintenance of the working class within the system of exploitation and the diversion of its struggle towards the regulation rather than the destruction of this system.<fn> This is true even of Stalinist organizations. Their coming to power only means, in the final analysis, an immense rearranging of the form of their exploitation, the better to preserve its substance.</fn> This 'cooping-up' of the proletariat – and more generally of the entire population – this manipulation and control of its political activities and economic demands, require a specific apparatus. This is the labour bureaucracy.<fn> The same kind of factors (to which are added the need to struggle against the bureaucratized workers’ organizations) bring about the bureaucratization of ‘conservative’ political formations.</fn></li></ol> A t a certain stage the management of all activities, from the outside, by various hierarchically organized types of apparatus becomes the very logic of this society. It becomes its response to everything. Bureaucratization has by now extended far beyond the spheres of production, of the economy, of the state and of politics. Consumption is bureaucratized, in the sense that neither its volume nor its pattern are left any longer to the spontaneous mechanisms of the economy or to the psychology of the consumer ('free choice' has of course never existed in an alienated society). Both the volume and the pattern of consumption are now subjected to an ever more refined and intensive type of manipulation. This activity itself requires a specialized bureaucratic apparatus (sales services, advertising, market research, etc.). Leisure itself is becoming bureaucratized.<fn> A full account of this process will be found in D. Mothe’s article ‘Les Ouvriers et la Culture’ ([i]Socialisme ou Barbarie[/i], issue 30).</fn> So is culture, to an increasing degree. This is inevitable in the present context. If not as yet the production, at least the distribution of modern culture has become an immense organized activity, again requiring its own apparatus and special devices (the press, publishing, radio, cinema, television, etc.). [i]Scientific research[/i] itself has been caught up in the process, at a terrifying rate, whether the research be under the aegis of large corporations or of the state.<fn> See for example [i]The Organization Man[/i] by W.H. Whyte (Penguin, 1960) and [i]The Scientist and the Commisar[/i] in [i]Solidarity[/i], vol. II, No. 12.</fn> Such an analysis of our society creates new problems at every level. We cannot even attempt to answer them all here. What is essential, however, is to recognize and proclaim the general direction in which capitalism is evolving and to see how this affects the fate of men in society at the deepest possible level. [i]The Real Meaning of Bureaucratization[/i] For over a century, the immense majority of marxists have seen in capitalism little more than production for profit. Their main criticism of the system was that it condemned workers to misery (as consumers). They also criticized it because it corrupted social relations through money. This corruption itself was often only seen in its most crude and superficial aspects. The idea that capitalism was above all an enterprise of dehumanization of the workers and that it destroyed work as a significant<fn> Significant = creator of meaning </fn> activity would, if it had ever occurred to them at all, have struck them as foggy and abstract philosophizing.<fn> These ideas were first formulated by Marx himself. One of the symptoms of the degeneration of the marxist movement is the way Marx's early ideas have been systematically played down – or attributed to youthful immaturity – by contemporary marxists, For instance when Marx's [i]Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844[/i] were first published in Britain, in 1959, they were prefaced by a note from the 'Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the C. P. S. U. I warning that in these essays Marx is 'overestimating Feueurbach' by 'making use of such Feueurbachian concepts as ..."humaneness' etc. Not to be outdone the [i]International Socialist Review[/i], theoretical journal of the American Trotskyists, makes similar disparaging comments in its winter 1959 issue about 'the first writings of the immature Marx': 'In the early 40's, as he evolved from the Hegelian idealism of his university years to dialectical materialism. the youthful Marx at one point adhered briefly to Humanism and called his philosophy by that name', Far less profound elements of Marx's writings tend to be selected for study today by his 'orthodox' disciples.</fn> There is today just as superficial a view of the process of bureaucratization. Some only see in bureaucratization the appearance of a managerial stratum, which adds itself to or replaces the private bosses and which institutes an unacceptable type of command in production and in political life, thereby intensifying the revolt of the 'executants' and creating a new and immense waste. All this is both true and important. But one can understand little of contemporary society if one stops the analysis at this point.<fn> As many, both in the marxist and non-marxist left undoubtedly do. These people are aware of the process of bureaucratization, but have not fully understood its ramifications.</fn> Bureaucratization does not only mean the emergence of a privileged social layer whose weight and importance constantly increase. It does not only mean that the functioning of the economy undergoes important modifications through concentration and statification. Bureaucratization leads to a profound transformation of values and meanings. As these are the basis of the life of men in society it leads to a remodelling of their attitudes and conduct. If one does not understand this aspect, the deepest of all, one can understand neither the cohesion of contemporary society nor the real nature of its crisis.Capitalism imposes its logic on the whole of society. The ultimate objective of human activity (and even of human existence) becomes maximum production. Modern capitalism seeks to subordinate everything to this arbitrary end. Capitalist 'rationalization' seeks to achieve it by methods which both flow from the alienation of men as producers<fn> Since men are now only considered as means to be subordinated to the end of production.</fn> - and constantly recreate and deepen this alienation. In practice this is brought about by the increasing separation of management and execution, by the reduction of workers to mere 'executants' and by the transfer of the function of management outside of the labour process itself. Capitalist 'rationalization' and bureaucratization are thus inseparable.<fn> Max Weber was the first to show the intimate relationship between rationalization and bureaucracy. He started from the analysis of rationalization in Marx's [i]Capital[/i] and suggested that the future of capitalism lay with the bureaucracy, which he considered the rational system of management par excellence. The fundamental error of his analysis was that for him bureaucratic rationalization was a genuine one. In other words he considered that it could escape internal contradictions. See the last chapter of his great work: [i]W irtschaft und Gesellschaft [/i].</fn> It can only proceed inasmuch as a body of 'rationalizers' is formed: that is of managers, controllers, organisers, people who prepare and direct the labour of others. [i]This externally imposed 'rationalization' with the maintenance of exploitation as its objective. soon destroys the meaning of work and of all social activities. It leads to a massive destruction of the responsibility and of the initiative of men.[/i] Everyone should be familiar with these phenomena, particularly at work. It is at work that the consequences of bureaucratization and of 'rationalization' have longest been felt. For the vast majority of people capitalism has largely destroyed work as a meaningful activity. Work is no longer an activity into which the wage earner puts a genuine part of himself and in which he performs creatively. All meaning drains out of work when tasks become so fragmentary that there is no longer really an object being worked on, but only fragments of matter whose full 'meaning' is only achieved elsewhere. There is no longer even a whole human being doing the work. The person of the worker is dissected into his separate faculties. Some of these are arbitrarily chosen, extracted from the whole and intensively utilized. The worker is only present in production as an anonymous and r:eplaceable faculty: the faculty of indefinitely repeating some elementary gesture or other.<fn>  The fragmentation of the labour process creates practically insurmountable obstacles from the point of view of production itself. These have been analysed in detail in 'Le Contenu du Socialisme' ([i]Socialisme ou Barbarie[/i], issue 23). Briefly, the increasing division of labour and of tasks requires that the unified conception of the process of production, which is removed from the J producers, should exist elsewhere (other- wise production would collapse under the weight of its own internal differentiation). In practice 'elsewhere' comes to mean in the hands of the managerial bureaucracy of the enterprise, who direct production 'from outside' and whose function it is to reconstitute ideally the unity of the production process. The meaning of work in other words is now to be looked for in the offices, not amongst those who do the work. This managerial bureaucracy proliferates and subdivides, allocating different tasks to different parts of itself. It is finally no easier to find the unified conception of productive operations in the office than it is in the. workshop. At the limit the meaning of the productive process is in nobody's possession.</fn> The daily struggle against the exploitation which accompanies work provides the worker with a framework for positive socialization, a background against which collective awareness and class solidarity are developed. Despite what it does to him the factory remains for the worker the place of community with others. In the first place it is a community of struggle. Those who manage production not only don't understand this aspect of the worker's life in the factory but fight against it by every means, rightly sensing it as something 'hostile'. They constantly seek to destroy the solidarity and positive socialization of the workers. This is done in a hundred ways, of which one of the most important is the introduction of infinitely multiplied differentiations within the working class itself. Different rules are allocated to different jobs. Jobs are arranged according to a hierarchical structure. This attempt is artificial and usually fails to achieve its own objectives. For bureaucratic capitalism, labour should have only one meaning for the person who performs it: it should be a source of revenue, the condition for wages. Bureaucratic organization has another equally important consequence: [i]the destruction of responsibility[/i]. From the formal point of view, bureaucratic organization means the division of responsibilities, areas of authority and control being strictly defined and circumscribed. Responsibilities are accordingly fragmented. This fragmentation of responsibility reflects the division of labour within the bureaucracy itself. Its ultimate consequence is the total destruction of responsibility itself. How does this come about? The organization 'of the labour process from the outside and the reduction of the great mass of wage earners to mere tasks of execution, more and more limited 'in scope, means that responsibility is taken out of the hands of the producers. The vast majority of people are thereby reduced to a 'couldn't- care-less' attitude. This is true of all their activities, not only of their activities in production. In the first instance it applies to everyone, except the organizers themselves. But it finally applies to them too. The increasingly collective character of work within the bureaucracy –and the division of labour which develops with it - constantly creates new bureaucrats: bureaucrats, of the bureaucracy. Further, like the division of tasks, the increasing fragmentation in the fields of authority and responsibility creates an enormous problem of synthesis. The bureaucracy cannot solve this problem rationally. It can only respond according to its by now well-established norms. It creates further categories of bureaucrats: specialists in synthesis. Their function is to bring about the reunification of what the bureaucracy itself has torn asunder. But their very' existence creates new divisions.. Areas of authority and responsibility can never be defined in an exhaustive or rigid manner. The question of where the responsibility of A ceases and that of B begins, the question of where the responsibilities of subordinates stop and those of superiors start can never be decided rationally within the bureaucracy. They are therefore settled by intrigues and squabbles between various bureaucratic cliques and clans. The very kernel of an attitude of responsibility – namely that one should control one's own activity – now disappears. As work is now only a source of wages all that matters is that one should be covered in regard to formal rules. This is the prevailing mood in industry and offices today. It flows absolutely logically from all we have said before. [i]Initiative tends to disappear for much the same reason[/i]. The system denies initiative to its 'executants' and seeks to transfer it all to the managers. But since more and more layers are turned into 'executants', at one level or another, the transfer means that initiative tends to disintegrate in the hands of bureaucracy at the very rate at which it is concentrated there. We have described these trends, taking as a starting point the process of production. But as bureaucratization penetrates and dominates all other spheres of social life these trends become more and more general. The disappearance of the meaningfulness of work and the dissolution of responsibility and initiative become increasingly important characteristics of a bureaucratized society. [i]Motives in Bureaucratic Society[/i]How does this society tick? What assures its cohesion? What keeps its various parts together? How does it guarantee, in 'normal' times, the subordination of those it exploits? What ensures that their conduct conforms to the needs of the system? Partly – without a doubt – violence and coercion. The ruling class is always ready to use force to guarantee its social order. But for obvious reasons violence and coercion are not sufficient. They have never sufficed to ensure the functioning of exploitation, except perhaps in the galleys of bygone days.  The problem goes much deeper. For 24 hours out of 24, all the gestures of men must concur, in one way or another, to maintain this society according to its own norms. Men must produce. The products must be distributed and consumed. Men must go to the places of entertainment that society proposes. The children it needs must be procreated and raised according to its social requirements. Whatever the contradictions and conflicts within a society, it can only survive if it inculcates adequate motives in its members, if it induces them continually to act coherently both between themselves and in relation to the functioning of the system as a whole. It is irrelevant in this respect that these motives are, or appear to us to be, false or mystified. The important thing is that they exist,<fn> The non-existence of God, the internal contradictions of the Catholic dogma or the contradictions between Catholic dogma and the social practice of the Church did not prevent the Christian serfs of Western Europe from recognizing, for centuries, the 'values' of the Feudal order (even if, at times, they burnt down their landlord's castle).</fn> that they are fairly widely accepted and that society somehow succeeds in reproducing them in each successive generation. Adequate motives – other than those based on direct or indirect constraint – can only exist if there is a system of values, more or less accepted by the whole of the population. But the result of two centuries of capitalism -and more particularly of the last fifty years -has been the disintegration of most traditional values (religion, the family, etc.) and the utter failure of all attempts to substitute more 'rational' or 'modern' values.<fn> It is enough to recall the utter failure and insipidity of the new ‘lay and republican’ morality of France, of which the Radical Socialists were the most noteworthy proponents. Or, of course, of the less rational ‘moralities’ of Rotarians, Buchmanites, Boy Scouts, etc. </fn> What then is the response of bureaucratic society to the problem of human motives? How does it seek to get men to do what it asks of them? In discussing the meaning of work we described how the only lasting motive the bureaucracy could offer was income. One might add another: promotion within an increasingly hierarchical structure. Yet despite the constant attempt to attach differences of status to the various rungs of the bureaucratic ladder, these differences, in a 20th century context, cannot acquire a decisive importance. In the final analysis promotion is only important because it represents an increase in income. But what is the meaning of income? For the vast majority of people accumulation is excluded. Income can therefore only mean the consumption that it allows. But what is this consumption? In the countries of fully developed capitalism 'traditional' or 'minimal' needs have largely been satisfied. Consumption can therefore only remain meaningful if new needs, or new ways of satisfying old needs, are constantly created. (This as we have seen is also indispensable if the economy as a whole is to be kept in constant expansion). Here bureaucratization intervenes anew. Work has lost all meaning except as a source of income. Income itself only has meaning inasmuch as it allows individuals to consume, in other words to satisfy needs. But this consumption itself now loses its original meaning. 'Needs' become less and less the expression of an organic relationship between an individual and his natural and social milieu. They become more and more the object of secret or open manipulation. At worst they are created out of thin air, by a special fraction of the bureaucracy: the bureaucracy of consumption, advertising and sales. Whether or not one really 'needs' an object becomes of little importance. Besides, as any intelligent sociologist will know, the words 'really to need' have no meaning. It is enough that one should feel that the object 'needed' is indispensable or useful, that the object should exist, that others should have it, that it should be the 'done thing' to have it, etc., for the 'need' to arise. But then welfare, the standard of living, and the acquisition of wealth on the scale of the whole of society become concepts suspended in mid-air. Is a society which devotes an increasing part of its activities to creating out of nothing an awareness among its members that they 'lack' something – and which then exhausts them in savage labour in pursuit of this 'lack' – really 'fuller' or 'better' than another, which has not created an awareness of such 'needs'? Even private life, where one would have thought that the individual alone could give meaning to his existence, does not escape the process of 'rationalization' and bureaucratization. The 'spontaneous' or 'cultural' attitudes of the consumer are absolutely insufficient to generate demand for the enormous mass of goods turned out by the modern productive machine. The consumer must be led to behave according to the needs of the bureaucratic society. He must be led to consume, in increasing quantity, the goods that the production lines provide. His behaviour and his motives must be calculated and manipulated. This manipulation now becomes an integral part of the whole pattern of social organization. Manipulation is clearly the result of the destruction of meaning. It soon also becomes its cause and completes this destruction. In politics, one can see the same process at work. Whatever their policy, present day political organizations are thoroughly bureaucratized. They are something apart from the mass of the population. They no longer express the political attitude or will of any important social group.No category of the population gives them substance. No category really participates in them. None of them is the vehicle for genuinely collective political action (whether revolutionary, reformist or conservative). How then can public support for these organizations be guaranteed? Partly, but to a diminishing degree, through political reflexes incorporated into the population long ago ('Dad voted Labour: we do too'). To an increasing degree, however, support has to be generated through the conscious and continuous efforts of the 'general staffs' of the bureaucratized parties and through the intermediary of various specialized services. Although Western society has behind it 25 centuries of political history, political propaganda remains essentially a creation of the last 50 years.In the past people would join a party, or support a politician, whom they thought would express their interests. No one attempted to 'create political interest' in the population. Today this interest is lacking. This is the case despite (and because of) the desperate and permanent efforts of organizations attempting to , elicit this 'political interest'. Political propaganda has become more and more of a mystifying manipulation. Its content has disappeared. What counts today is the 'image' of the party or of the candidate with the electors. A President of the United States is sold to the population like a brand of toothpaste. The process is obviously not all in one direction: to a certain extent the manipulators are themselves manipulated by those they seek to control. But the wheel remains in the same rut. The same process is at work: the meaning of politics has been destroyed. But as society needs a minimum of political behaviour from its subjects, a political bureaucracy emerges and manipulates the citizens in order to ensure it.What then is the most profound meaning of bureaucracy in relation to the social destiny of men? It is the insertion of each individual into a little niche of the great productive machine where he is doomed to perform an alienated and alienating labour. It is the destruction of the whole meaning of work and of the whole meaning of collective life. It is the reduction of life to private life, outside of labour and outside of all collective action. It is the reduction of even this private life to material consumption. And it is finally the alienation of consumption itself through the permanent manipulation of the individual as consumer.  This is the ideal tendency of bureaucratic capitalism. We will now attempt to make it more precise by describing what one might call a model of bureaucratic society. Reference to this model will make the whole evolution of modern society easier to understand. [i]The Bureaucratic Model[/i] A bureaucratic society is one which has succeeded in transforming the immense majority of the population into wage and salary earners. Only marginal layers of the population remain outside of the wage relationship and of the hierarchy that goes with it (5% of farmers, 1% of artists, intellectuals, prostitutes, etc.).In a totally bureaucratized society the population is integrated into vast impersonal productive units (which may be owned by an individual, by a corporation or by the state). The people occupy a pyramidal hierarchical structure. Only to a minor degree does this hierarchy reflect differences in knowledge, ability, etc.<fn> Differences in knowledge are themselves the product of education and of differences in income – and therefore tend to reproduce themselves from generation to generation.</fn> It is based for the most part on the creation of arbitrary technical and economic differentiation, which are necessary from the exploiters' point of view. Work has lost all real meaning, even for the majority of skilled personnel. It only retains meaning as a source of income. The division of labour is pushed to absurdity. The division of tasks only allows fragmentary tasks to subsist, themselves devoid of meaning. For all practical purposes full employment has been permanently achieved. Provided they conform, wage earners, whether manual or intellectual, can face the prospect of endless employment. Except for minor fluctuations, production expands by a significant percentage from year to year. Wages also increase from year to year, by a percentage which does not differ significantly from that of production. Wage increases, plus the investments needed to bring about the regular expansion of production, plus the regular increase in state expenditure, together absorb the increases in production. The market problem has been essentially solved. 'Needs' (in the commercial or advertising sense) increase regularly with purchasing power. Society creates enough 'needs' to sustain the demand for the goods it produces. The 'needs' are either created directly, by advertising or consumer manipulation, or indirectly through the action of social differentiation or hierarchy (more expensive models' of consumption being constantly proposed to the lower income categories) . The hierarchy of jobs in the factories has attained a sufficient degree to destroy the solidarity of the exploited. The system is open and flexible enough to create significant opportunities for promotion (say, a 1 in 10 chance for example) for the upper half of the working class. Consequently relations among workers in the factories are no longer modelled on the workshops of today, but on the offices of yesterday (sordid competition, intrigues, boot-licking, etc.). The factory ceases to be a place of positive socialization, a potential locus of resistance. City life and housing evolve in a direction which dislocates all integrated community living. This evolution tends to destroy local community life, both as a milieu for socialization and as a basis for viable organic collectivities. These collectivities now cease to exist. There is only a monstrous juxtaposition of individuals and of families, each living for itself or anonymously coexisting. Whatever his work and wherever he may live the individual is confronted by surroundings that are either hostile or impersonal and unknown. The only remaining motivation is the race after the carrot of consumption, after an 'ever higher standard of living' (not to be confused with true living, which has no 'standard'). As there is always another standard of living higher than the one enjoyed, this pursuit turns out to be a treadmill. Social life as a whole keeps up its democratic facade (with political parties, trade unions, etc.). But these organizations, as well as the state, politics and public life in general are profoundly bureaucratized.<fn> The political bureaucracies are not of course simple replicas of the bureaucracies in production.</fn> Any active participation by individuals in the life of political or trade union organizations can have, properly speaking, no meaning at all. Objectively, nobody can do anything. Nobody can effectively struggle against the existing state of affairs. Most individuals see such a struggle as void of meaning. Only a small minority of the population remains mystified in this respect and acts as a link between the bureaucratized organizations and the population at large. When the population 'participates' in politics, it is only in an opportunist and cynical way, at election time. Not only have politics and political organizations become bureaucratized and abandoned by the people but so have all organizations and all collective activity. As someone once put it, 'amongst bowls players there are still people who play bowls. But there is no one to elect officers, order new bowls or discuss questions of importance to bowls players'. [i]Privatization[/i] has become the characteristic attitude of individuals.<fn> Of course, privatization is not disappearance of society, it is modality of society, a type of social relations.</fn> Social irresponsibility becomes the dominant feature of human behaviour. For the first time, irresponsibility becomes possible on a massive scale. Society no longer has any challenges before it, either internal or external. Its capacities to produce enormous wealth give it margins unimaginable in any other historical period. These allow it almost any errors, almost any irrationalities, almost any waste. Its own alienation and inertia prevent it from confronting new tasks and asking itself new questions. No crucial problem is ever posed to it, which might put its fundamental incapacity to the test. Nothing ever makes it confront an explicit choice, however irrational the terms. Nothing even makes it understand that the possibility of such a choice exists. Art and culture have become simple objects of consumption and pleasure without any connection with human or social problems. Formalism and the Universal Museum become the supreme manifestations of culture. The philosophy of society becomes consumption for consumption's sake in private life, and organization for organization' s sake in collective life. The description we have just given is partly an extrapolation from present social reality but much of this 'air-conditioned nightmare' is already around us. Society is evolving in this direction at an ever increasing tempo. This is the final objective of the ruling classes: to annihilate the revolt of the exploited and their struggle to be free by diverting it into the rat race of consumption, to break up their solidarity through hierarchy, to prevent all possible resistance through the bureaucratization of all collective endeavours and channels of protest. Whether conscious or not, this is the goal of bureaucratic capitalism, the actual meaning which unifies the policies of the ruling strata and the means they adopt to cope with the world around them. But this aim is utopian. It must fail and it is failing. It cannot overcome the fundamental contradiction of modern society, which on the contrary it multiplies a hundredfold. It cannot suppress the struggle of men and transform them into puppets, manipulated by the bureaucracies of production, consumption and politics. It is to the analysis of this failure that we now wish to turn. [i]Problems of Bureaucratic Capitalism[/i] Capitalism tends integrally to bureaucratize society, In so doing it spreads its own fundamental contradiction everywhere, Whether they are aware of it or not, whether they explicitly wish it or not, our rulers can only seek to cope with the problems presented to them by the evolution of the modern world in one way: by trying to submit more and more sectors of social life to their organization, by penetrating further and further into the life and labour of men, by directing them according to their own minority interests. The objective of modern capitalism is a state of affairs where the managerial apparatus would decide everything. Nothing would interrupt the 'normal' functioning of society planned by bureaucrats and governments. Everything would take place according to the plans of the organizers. The indefinite manipulation of men would lead them to behave as docile producing and consuming machines. Our rulers hope that the contradictions and crises of the system would thus finally be overcome. Capitalism has already taken several steps along this road. It has succeeded in controlling the economy sufficiently to eliminate depressions and massive unemployment. It manipulates consumers so that they absorb the constant increases in production. It has integrated the workers' organizations into the system. It has transformed politics into an innocuous game. The apologists of the system consider that the 'control of the economy' already achieved is proof that capitalism can 'overcome its contradictions'. When confronted with this reality, traditional marxists react in one of two ways. They either deny the facts or they give up revolutionary politics. They fail to see that modern capitalism has only eliminated from the social milieu what was [i]not[/i] capitalist in it. What they are accustomed to think of as the 'contradictions of capitalism' are not the fundamental contradictions of the system but the incoherence of a society that capitalism had not yet sufficiently permeated and transformed. They don't understand for instance that slumps were conditioned by the scattering of production over a multitude of independently man- aged units. This scattering of production, although it corresponded to a definite phase in the development of capitalism, had nothing essentially capitalist about it. On the contrary. The separate management of these scattered units was as absurd from the point of view of the system as a whole as would be the independent management of the different shops of a big factory today. [i]The logic of capitalism is to treat the whole of society as one immense, integrated enterprise. The problems that capitalism encountered as long as this integration had not been achieved, far from revealing the essence of the system in fact served to mask it.[/i] If we get rid of this superficial viewpoint of the traditional marxists we can see that the real contradictions of capitalism cannot be suppressed without the system being abolished. These contradictions, as we saw earlier, were implicit in its very structure. They were inherent in the fundamental relations of the capitalist organization of production and labour. These constantly tend to reduce workers into pure and simple 'executants'. But the system would collapse if this reduction were ever integrally to be r This is 95078 characters.