In exploring how to go “beyond capitalism,” we need to first ask why it has been so difficult to develop a comprehensive alternative to capitalism. One reason is the nature of capitalism, which creates the false impression that alienated human relations are natural and immutable. Capital’s ability to naturalize conditions of oppression is central to its ideological dominance. Another reason for the difficulty in envisioning an alternative is the failed attempts to emancipate humanity from capitalism. The failure of many revolutions to create a truly new society solidifies the view that there is no alternative to being subordinated to social laws outside our control. And there is yet a third reason that it has been hard to develop an alternative—the decline of interest in Marx’s work over the past few decades. Marx was not just one of many important thinkers. Marx was the founder of a unique philosophy of revolution that contained a specific concept of a new society. The less direct study and discussion there is of Marx’s works, the harder it becomes to envision an alternative to capitalism itself.

For this reason, we aim to seriously explore Marx. It will not do to focus on bits and pieces of his work that may or may not be to our liking. We instead have to grapple with his ideas as a whole. But grappling with his ideas as a whole entails grappling with his ideas in their specificity. Without doing so it is not possible to grasp Marx’s ideas at all. So let’s take a closer look at the work that contains Marx’s most detailed discussion of a non-capitalist society—his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program.

In Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution, Raya Dunayevskaya wrote: “Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program has not yet been fully digested” (p. 189). This is a startling statement, given that Marx wrote the Critique in 1875. What has “not yet been fully digested” about it? Dunayevskaya states: “What must tower above all struggles against exploitation, nationally and internationally, is the perspective of a totally classless society; the vision of its ground would be ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’ To this day, this remains the perspective for the future.” This refers to Marx’s discussion in the Critique of what prevails in the “higher phase” of communism. She then adds: “The Marxists who keep quoting [“from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”] never bother to study just how concretely that arose from the critique of the supposedly socialist program, and what would be required to make that real” (pp. 156-57). Please note that she does not say that the Marxists ignored Marx’s concept of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” She says instead that they kept quoting it without bothering to study “what would be required to make that real.” This defect applies not just to other Marxists, but to us too—since only now, with our last Convention and these classes, have we begun to explore what is needed to make “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” a reality.

Let’s begin with “what must tower above all struggles”—Marx’s concept of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” in his Critique of the Gotha Program. The paragraph in which this phrase appears reads as follows:

“In a higher phase of communist society, after the tyrannical subordination of individuals according to the division of labor and thereby also the distinction between manual and intellectual labor, have disappeared, after labor has become not merely a means to live but is itself the prime necessity of living, after the powers of production have also increased and all the springs of cooperative wealth are gushing more freely along with the all-round development of the individual, then and then only can the narrow bourgeois horizon of rights be left far behind and society will inscribe on its banner: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need’” (p. 31).

Marx here lists no less than five factors that must exist before it is possible to reach “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” One, the enslavement of the individual to the division of labor—which has existed for some 6,000 years of human civilization—must end. Two, the division between mental and manual labor—which has existed for at least as long, if not longer—must end as well. Three, labor must cease to be a means to an end by becoming “the prime necessity of living.” Four, the powers of economic production must increase to the point where material wealth is available for all. And five, the fragmentation of the individual must give way to our all-rounded development. “Then and only then,” Marx says, can society practice the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Clearly, it is going to take a long time to achieve all of this, even after the greatest of revolutions. Marx never wavered from this view. As he wrote during the Paris Commune of 1871: “The working class knows that in order to work out their own emancipation…they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and people.” To reach “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” we will first need to rid ourselves of what Marx has earlier called “the muck of the ages”—and that is going to take time. For this reason, Marx distinguished between a “lower” or defective phase of communism and a “higher” phase in which the vestiges of the old society are finally fully left behind.

Before going into Marx’s discussion of the lower or initial phase of communism, we need to take note of the grave confusion that characterizes most discussions of this issue. All serious Marxists know that “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” cannot be achieved immediately following a revolution. But many wrongly conclude that a lengthy “transitional” society is needed before full communism could be reached. Some call this “transitional” society “socialism,” to distinguish it from the “higher” stage of communism—even though Marx never made any distinction between socialism and communism. Others define a transitional society as state-capitalism under the control of a “workers’ party.” And others define a transitional society as one of “freely associated” cooperatives that have not yet freed themselves from the capitalist law of value. None of these concepts have anything to do with Marx’s view of the lower and higher phases of communism.

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Fuente: U.S. Marxist-Humanists