from the Editorial Board
We have entered a revolutionary era. New electronic means of production are destroying the society based on industry. It is only a matter of time until there will be a political decision as to what kind of society will replace this one. Herein lies the importance of revolutionaries strategically understanding which social force is capable of overthrowing the existing order and reconstructing society on the basis of social ownership of socially necessary means of production. Only after answering this question can we set about the task of educating and politicizing this social force.
Revolution is a change in quality. Therefore we begin our inquiry by answering the question, how does quality change? Scientists for centuries have agreed that simply re-arranging quantitative aspects or relations will not change quality. To change a quality, something must be extracted from or added into the process. While this is obvious in the material world, it is not so easily seen in the process of social change. Social scientists such as Frederick Engels touched upon this concept a hundred and forty years ago. However, he believed that the introduction of large-scale industrial production would be the introduction of the “something new” that would create the conditions for the workers to overthrow capitalism.
Industrialization brought about a great social revolution in Europe and America; however it did not go far enough and deep enough to bring about the kind of political revolution that could lead to the elimination of private property. Why? We think that since all the social elements that overthrew the political shell of feudalism (or in America, chattel slavery) were within capitalist society, they were restricted to reforming that system – no matter how militant the struggle. The industrial workers were in antagonism with feudalism and slavery because they were external to that system. They were in contradiction to the capitalists because they were inside that system. Industry got bigger, manufacturing and agriculture got smaller. The existing elements were re-arranged, but nothing was extracted or added. Therefore, the quality could not change. The industrial revolution changed the productive forces – i.e., the means of production and the resultant skills of the working class — but could not change the mode of production, which remained capitalist.
A social force capable of such a change must be outside capitalist society and antagonistic to it. True to the dialectic, electronics itself is creating this force. As more and more production is taken over by electronics, the displaced workers are forced into lower and lower paying jobs and many of them end up in the growing mass of permanently unemployed. Today over a third of the work force is unemployed, contingency, parttime or temporary workers. A huge section works at or below minimum wage. They are forming a new class that has few or no ties to capital. This class is revolutionary because it is increasingly outside of and hostile to the wages system. It is revolutionary because it cannot fight the individual employer – it must fight the state. It is revolutionary because robotics makes it impossible for them to co-exist with private property. The only way for them to prevent these gigantic means of production from crushing them is to make them public property.
We hope our ongoing statements on the new class will become the basis of discussion and inquiry. It is sorely lacking in the American Left. As in all social transitions, we revolutionaries will have a small and very temporary window of opportunity. If we do not understand the historical line of march and have not worked out a strategy of transition, that window will close.
February.2006.Vol16.Ed2
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