The
Communist Manifesto foresaw the predatory and polarised global
capitalism of the 21st century. But Marx and Engels also showed us
that we have the power to create a better world.
by
Yanis Varoufakis
Part
4 - It is our duty to tear away at the old notion of privately owned
means of production and force a metamorphosis, which must involve the
social ownership of machinery, land and resources
If the
manifesto holds the same power to excite, enthuse and shame us that
it did in 1848, it is because the struggle between social classes is
as old as time itself. Marx and Engels summed this up in 13 audacious
words: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the
history of class struggles.”
From
feudal aristocracies to industrialised empires, the engine of history
has always been the conflict between constantly revolutionising
technologies and prevailing class conventions. With each disruption
of society’s technology, the conflict between us changes form. Old
classes die out and eventually only two remain standing: the class
that owns everything and the class that owns nothing – the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
This is
the predicament in which we find ourselves today. While we owe
capitalism for having reduced all class distinctions to the gulf
between owners and non-owners, Marx and Engels want us to realise
that capitalism is insufficiently evolved to survive the technologies
it spawns.
It is
our duty to tear away at the old notion of privately owned means of
production and force a metamorphosis, which must involve the social
ownership of machinery, land and resources. Now, when new
technologies are unleashed in societies bound by the primitive labour
contract, wholesale misery follows. In the manifesto’s
unforgettable words: “A society that has conjured up such
gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer
who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom
he has called up by his spells.”
The
sorcerer will always imagine that their apps, search engines, robots
and genetically engineered seeds will bring wealth and happiness to
all. But, once released into societies divided between wage labourers
and owners, these technological marvels will push wages and prices to
levels that create low profits for most businesses. It is only big
tech, big pharma and the few corporations that command exceptionally
large political and economic power over us that truly benefit.
If we
continue to subscribe to labour contracts between employer and
employee, then private property rights will govern and drive capital
to inhuman ends. Only by abolishing private ownership of the
instruments of mass production and replacing it with a new type of
common ownership that works in sync with new technologies, will we
lessen inequality and find collective happiness.
According
to Marx and Engels’ 13-word theory of history, the current
stand-off between worker and owner has always been guaranteed.
“Equally inevitable,” the manifesto states, is the
bourgeoisie’s “fall and the victory of the proletariat”.
So far, history has not fulfilled this prediction, but critics forget
that the manifesto, like any worthy piece of propaganda, presents
hope in the form of certainty. Just as Lord Nelson rallied his troops
before the Battle of Trafalgar by announcing that England “expected”
them to do their duty (even if he had grave doubts that they would),
the manifesto bestows upon the proletariat the expectation that they
will do their duty to themselves, inspiring them to unite and
liberate one another from the bonds of wage-slavery.
Will
they? On current form, it seems unlikely. But, then again, we had to
wait for globalisation to appear in the 1990s before the manifesto’s
estimation of capital’s potential could be fully vindicated.
Might it
not be that the new global, increasingly precarious proletariat needs
more time before it can play the historic role the manifesto
anticipated? While the jury is still out, Marx and Engels tell us
that, if we fear the rhetoric of revolution, or try to distract
ourselves from our duty to one another, we will find ourselves caught
in a vertiginous spiral in which capital saturates and bleaches the
human spirit. The only thing we can be certain of, according to the
manifesto, is that unless capital is socialised we are in for
dystopic developments.
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