Bibeau.robert@videotron.ca Éditeur. http://www.les7duquebec.com
27.12.2017
THE ARTICLE IS AVAILABLE ON THE WEBMAGAZINE:
http://www.les7duquebec.com/7-au-front/capitalisme-et-socialisme-sont-ils-identiques/
There is only one globalized mode of production.
Everywhere in the world the capitalist mode of production presents itself in substance in a unique form, but superficially under different appearances. At the same level of the means of production and the productive forces (industries, technologies, energy, sciences, transport, raw material, labor), but differentiated at the level of social relations of production, reflecting, thus, a certain level of autonomy of the political and ideological authorities.
Sometimes, capitalism will be described as savage, “liberal” and even “neoliberal“, competitive, non-interventionist and libertarian. Sometimes we will say a right-wing capitalism, a democratic-electoral and parliamentary capitalism, or a nationalist and patriotic capitalism (Italian fascism and Salazar or Francoist corporatism). At other times capitalism will be called “social”, socialist, leftist and interventionist, authoritarian, or even totalitarian (German National-Socialism).
Sometimes it will be called “communist” as in Soviet Russia, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, Burkina Faso, Albania, communist China and in the Cambodian Khmer Rouge of sad memory (1). Forget the centrist claims that try to operate a shirker dosage between center-right measures and center-left programs, two and a half doses of deceit will never deliver the potion to save the dying person.
The variety of political effigies is immense and increases with economic misery, political duplicity and social decay. Thus, in the Malagasy Republic forty-five candidates, representing 45 “different” political tendencies, will compete in the presidential elections of 2018. This was the case in 2016 in Haiti, the country ahead of Madagascar on the global poverty scale (2). They were ten in the French presidential elections in 2017 and 28 in the 2016 US presidential elections, withering away from the socialist Alyson Kennedy to the libertarian Gary Johnson via the unclassifiable Donald Trump and the ineffable Hilary Clinton (3).
Currency and socialism?
Recently our web-magazine has published an article entitled “Currency, Currency! Capitalism or socialism?“ Http://www.les7duquebec.com/7-dors-invites/monnaie-monnaie-capitalisme-ou-socialisme/ generating a great deal of confusion reflected by the interventions that came from different horizons of the eclectic left. We have thought that if the author came to attempt to compare two modalities of a single variable (currency) in what he presents as two different modes of production (capitalism and socialism) it may reflect the unconscious confession that capitalist currency and socialist currency are equivalents, because capitalist mode of production and socialist mode of production are similar, if not identical, from which two similar ones are compared (4).
Some sentences from the literature of left of the last fifty years, and repeated by the author of the article, have put us in the ear, sentences as: “It is obvious that a state can be independent only if it completely controls his own currency. Even if this is not the only criterion of independence, just as obviously the control of money creation involves to control the banks, that is, in practice, to nationalize them. But this is not enough to determine the social or non- social nature of the policy followed, the
management choices (…) It is the democratic development of the plan with the participation of all, which makes the difference between real socialism, proletarian democracy, and bureaucratic power, the regenerator of capitalism“(5).
Since Bukharin and since Stalin the left characterizes the so-called new mode of socialist production (a form of transition to communism, claimed the Bolsheviks) by two political characteristics, two particularities of the social relations of production, namely:
- A) nationalization, that is to say privilege a form of state capitalist property (socialist,say the Proudhonian reformists and Stalinist opportunists).
- B) Planning, that is, putting in place programs and policies that organize the social production of goods and services required by the wider reproduction of society. But any mode of production, including capitalist, involves a dose of planning. Even as, to choose the political bun presenting the best planning is the pretext to the frequent bourgeois electoral masquerades. The real problem of the capitalist and / or socialist mode of production is not one of “nationalization – planning“, but of being able to overcome the contradictions that paralyze the social productive forces in Soviet Russia, as in Communist China, as in capitalist France and Canada
The author’s allegations suggest that the mere choice of a so-called “socialist”, ie, supposedly independent, nationalistic, and planning monetary policy, could open up otherwise non-existent economic opportunities in a mode of production without populist national planning. This amounts to claim that the development of the means of production and the social productive forces, are determined by the social relations of production, or that the political, governmental and ideological authorities determine the economic authority and the whole mode of production.
All this is only sophistry. Since Marx we know that the social relations of production such as currency, capital, administrative measures, political programs, diplomacy, commercial and military treaties, etc. emanate from the mode of production, and depend in their evolution on the level of economic development, the degree of productivity, the conditions of evolution of the social productive forces.
Thus, how could the Malagasy Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti and Canada be totally independent and completely control their currency, their banks and their planned economy, while these countries, to name only those I have recently visited, produce less than half of the goods needed for their daily needs? Via the globalized capitalist trade (and the currencies used for trade), these and other countries, including the United States, European Union, China, Russia, Vietnam, Korea, and Cuba, are interdependent, as well as their interchangeable currencies (at a rate standardized by bankers) on international stock markets. The last country to date, the Soviet Union, which tried to free itself from the constraints of globalized capitalist financial agreements collapsed lamentably after a few years, and then rallied to the hegemonic imperialist powers. You will have noticed that Communist China did not make this mistake and this State is a member of the World Trade Organization since 2001, of the World Bank since 1945 and a permanent member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since its creation, and wham for the Maoists (6).
We can compare the behavior of the monetary variable between capitalism and socialism, because this variable plays an identical role and is interrelated in the two systems of the capitalist mode of production, the liberal model (which is far from liberal, we agree) and the totalitarian or authoritarian model, called “socialist”.
Knowing that the two models of the capitalist mode of production are interlocked, especially via international trade, and through their complementary banking, monetary and exchange systems. So that in the so-called “socialist-authoritarian” states, just like in those so-called “bourgeois democratic liberals” resort to measures of nationalization – socialization of capital intensive losses – and measures to privatize profits from the confiscated proletarian surplus value (7).
How to get out and build a real new mode of production?
Only the worldwide (and not in one country) elimination of the production of proletarian surplus value by the complete eradication of property (in its nationalized or private forms) from the means of production, exchange, and communication (the currency having no more utility will be eliminated) and by the disqualification of the national state borders (the governmental structures having no utility will be eliminated), all measures which will make the proletarian class truly independent, sovereign, master of its destiny and able to erect the new mode of production derived from capitalism to transcend it, namely the proletarian communist mode of production (8).
NOTES
- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmers_rouges
- http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2017/01/04/haiti-jovenel-moise-confirme-president-de-la-republique_5057254_3222.html
- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Élection_présidentielle_américaine_de_2016
- TML (2017) Money, currency! Capitalism or socialism
http://www.les7duquebec.com/7-contenders-invites/currency-currency-capitalism-or-socialism/ and a truly socialist currency. https://www.legrandsoir.info/une-monnaie-reellement-socialiste-sera-t-elle-forcement-devalorisee.html
- TML (2017) Money, currency! Capitalism or socialism
http://www.les7duquebec.com/7-dors-invites/monnaie-monnaie-capitalisme-ou-socialisme/
- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisation_mondiale_du_commerceand https://www.wto.org/french/thewto_f/countries_f/china_f.htm and http://www.banquemondiale.org/fr/news/press-release/2015/07/16/china-launches-first-world-bank-trust-fund-to-end-poverty-and-promote-development and https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonds_mon%C3%A9taire_international
- In fact, all over the capitalist world we have observed the passage in one direction or another of the capitalist liberal – democratic – bourgeois model – to the totalitarian-authoritarian socialist capitalist model. One has even come to graduate the level of socialism of one state compared to others. We refer the reader to the whole of leftist literature that today is quibbling about leftist governments in Latin America, and yesterday about the governments of the socialist left in Europe. The feudal Nepal would have been equipped even with a nationalist – patriotic Communist-Maoist left-wing government!
- Robert Bibeau (2017) The national question, the proletarian revolution and the modern imperialism. L’Harmattan. Paris. 145 pages. ENGLISH BOOK FREE ( HERE) http://www.les7duquebec.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/bon-NATIONAL-QUESTION-AND-PROLETARIAN-REVOLUTION-UNDER-THE-MODERN-IMPERIALISM-revision.docx AND ITALIAN BOOK ( HERE ) FOR FREE ON DOWNLOAD. And ORDER ON AMAZON
Traduction by Claudio Buttinelli. Roma
Éditeur du webmagazine http://www.les7duquebec.com