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تنتهي الحرية حيثما يبدأ الاقتصاد

بوب بلاك

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بالسلم لو ممكن، بالعافية لو ضروري

ش��ار الميثاقيين

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تحاول الماركسية المفتوحة ببساطة أن تجعل من الماركسية منهجية -لا أيدولوجية- لرؤية الصراعات القائمة والمستمرة في كل شيء حولنا من الدولة إلى السلعة والنقود

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ليست الماركسية نظرية عن سلطة رأس المال، بل هي نظرية عن قوّة العمّال المتمرّدين.

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إن خطر التعرض للذبح يجب أن يكون حجة لصالح القيام بالثورات الناجحة، وليس لرفض الثورات برمتها. بالتأكيد يمكن للثورات أن تفشل، وكذلك النضالات الإصلاحية. لكن بعض أسوأ المذابح وقعت بعد فشل الناس في القيام بالثورات، لأنهم اتبعوا البرامج الإصلاحية فقط. وصلت النازية إلى السلطة بعد فشل السياسات الإصلاحية التدريجية التي انتهجها الديمقراطيون الاجتماعيون الألمان. استولى بينوشيه على السلطة بفضل السياسات الإصلاحية التي انتهجها الليندي في تشيلي في السبعينيات التي أزعجت الأغنياء والعسكريين لكنها لم تهدد بإسقاطهم.

واين برايس

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الطريقة التي أميز بها العلم عن الأيديولوجيا بسيطة، إذا أعطت المعرفة السلطة لأناس محددين دون غيرهم، فهي أيديولوجيا، فهكذا قد تمنح كل أنواع العنصرية والتحيز الجنسي وكل الأيديولوجيات البرجوازية السلطة لأناس بعينهم، لكن على حساب بقيتنا.  إذا كانت المعرفة علمًا، فهي تمكن الجميع بلا تفرقة. فلا يهم من أنت حقًا -غنيًا أم فقيرًا، رجلاً أم امرأة. العلم معرفة تعطي البشر جميعهم سلطة.

كريس نايت - الجنس والثورة الإنسانية 

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احبس مئات الناس في غرفة صغيرة بمنفذ واحد فقط للهواء، ولسوف يتقاتلون للوصول إليها، أطلق سراحهم ولسوف ترى منهم طبيعة مغايرة، فكما تقول إحدى شعارات ثورة مايو 1968 بباريس "الإنسان ليس هَمجيَّ روسو الطيب، ولا منحرفَ الكنيسةِ الفاسد. إنه عنيفٌ حين يُقمَع، ورقيقٌ حين يكون حرًّا".

كين ناب

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ودي حاجة كس أم الأحا

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What, then, is ‘New’ about this dialectic? What is implicitly referred to here as the ‘Old Dialectic’ is the Soviet school of ‘Diamat’, rooted in a vulgarized version of the ideas of F. Engels and G. Plekhanov. It was presented as a universal ‘world outlook’ and universal method.  Engels was especially influential in drawing attention to the importance of dialectic and in elaborating his own version of it. He put forward ‘three laws’ of dialectic: namely quantity into quality, interpenetration of opposites, and the negation of the negation. Engels proceeded by applying these abstract schemas adventitiously to contents arbitrarily forced into the required shape. The result consisted of a set of examples and it lacked systematicity. But if it turns out that Marx’s Capital has a systematic dialectical exposition, this should not be because it applies abstract universal formulae, but because the movement of the material itself requires it. Systematic dialectic draws on Hegel’s work. This interest in Hegel is unconcerned with recovering the grand narrative of Hegel’s philosophy of history and relating it to historical materialism; rather it is focused on Hegel’s Logic and how this fits the method of Marx’s Capital. The effort is to deploy a systematic dialectic in order to articulate the relations of a given social order, namely capitalism, as opposed to a historical dialectic studying the rise and fall of social systems. Now, where the interpretation of Marx’s Capital is concerned, I also draw upon a relatively new tendency in Marxian theory, which emphasizes Marx’s notion of the ‘value-form’. It is the peculiar form of commodity-exchange that is theorised as the prime determinant of the economy rather than the content regulated by it. The developed form of value (commodity, money, capital) is the characteristic social form of present economic relations. Hegel is a natural reference for value-form theory because his logic of categories is well suited to a theory of forms.  Moreover Hegel’s systematic development of categories is directed towards articulating the structure of a totality, showing how it supports itself in and through the interchanges of its inner moments. This presupposes that the totality is structured by internal relations; by definition so in the case of a logic of course. But I argue capital is just such a totality. As we know Marx acknowledged the influence of Hegel’s Logic on his work. Some, such as Althusser, dismiss this influence as merely stylistic, picking on a phrase where Marx said he flirted with modes of expression peculiar to Hegel. But I think it is worth taking the relevance of Hegel seriously. My original research project was to see if I could show this textually. However I concluded that this was not easy to do because I do not think Marx himself understood why he found his arguments relying on Hegelian figures. So my current ambition is to reconstruct Marx’s work in the spirit of a systematic dialectical logic.

Chris Arthur

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Employment is accurately described as a voluntary self-rental, where a person exchanges their own labor for a salary or wage. But whether voluntary or not, the human rental (employment) contract is incompatible with workers’ inalienable rights. A legitimate labor arrangement requires workplace democracy and worker ownership whenever peoples’ labor is involved.  The theory of inalienable rights is only useful to the extent it is widely known and consistently applied in practice. Inalienable rights are based on the already broadly held principle of the non-transferability of responsibility for one’s actions. The issue is notone of coercion or willfully choosing to be rented. And it is notabout the level of compensation being to low for workers, though it is about workers appropriating the fruits of their labor, good or bad.  Inalienable rights proponents have already scored major social achievements including, the abolition of slavery (human sales contract), women’s suffrage (voting rights), the abolition of coverture marriage (wife’s rights to husband), and modern political democracy (prohibition of disenfranchisement through vote selling). The abolition of human rentals will be last remaining social victory in this category. The abolition of human rentals will be no small task given their widespread prevalence and firm entrenchment in the economic system. The modern abolitionist movement must begin by destroying the false perception of legitimacy that human rentals currently maintain. Inalienable rights arguments pose a lethal threat to the practice of renting humans. At stake is nothing less than the employment system and the stock market through which ownership of human rental contracts are exchanged.  Inquiry into the legitimacy of human rentals has long been buried by a barrage of propaganda, with the complicity of the economic establishment. Such a fundamental question is notably absent from our education system, political discourse, and media. These ideas must be revived in the public conscious. As with slavery, inalienable rights issues cannot be addressed directly by proponents of human rentals without inviting destruction of the system. There are only two possible responses: Silence in the hope that inalienable rights are never widely understood, or vilification and harassment of the advocates in the event they gain traction. The strategy has thus far been successful in diverting attention from a profound idea and its revolutionary implications.  The alternative to human rentals is universal self employment in democratically managed worker owned businesses, or worker cooperatives. Workplace democracy eliminates the alienation of decision making power, and worker ownership means workers appropriate any resulting profits or losses, thus achieving financial responsibility for their actions. This will result in real worker sovereignty.

Abolish Human Rentals: Support Worker Cooperatives

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برتولت بريشت - التحقيق مع الرجل الصالح

تقدّم! نسمع أنك رجل صالح ولا يمكن شراء ذمتك لكن الصاعقة التي تضرب المنزل أيضًا لا يمكن شراؤها. وإنك تتمسك بما تقول ..لكن ما الذي تقوله؟ وإنك أمين، وتقول رأيك ..لكن ما هو رأيك؟ وإنك حكيم ..لكن لمن؟ ولا تخدم مصلحتك الشخصية ..لكن أي مصلحة تخدم؟ وإنك صديق طيب ..لكن هل أنت صديق طيب لأناس طيبين؟

اسمعنا إذن: نحن نعلم أنك عدونا ولذلك سنوقفك أمام حائط لكن نظرًا لفضائلك وحسن أخلاقك سنوقفك أمام حائط طيب ونضربك برصاصة طيبة من مسدس طيب وندفنك بمعول طيب في الأرض الطيبة.

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The Manual of Revolutionary Leaders purports to be a primer, a how-to handbook. In Chapter One, the author, “Michael Velli,” recounts the familiar story, the Marxist story, of how the development of the productive forces has created the material conditions for realizing “the modern model of revolution.” But unfortunately (continues Velli) the further development of the productive forces has engendered forms of resistance which contradict, not only capitalism, but the modern model of revolution itself. The capitalist mode of production (or so the story goes) was, for awhile, the liberation of the forces of production from the the fetters of feudalism. But the liberation of the forces of production is not the liberation of the producers. It now almost looks like the modern model of revolution, formerly the form for the realization of the revolutionary forces engendered by capitalism, is itself a fetter upon the realization of proletarian self-activity! The modern model of revolution is time-tested, verified by the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent history. (This was written before 1989, which would have thrilled him.) In its essentials, the modern model consists of the leadership of self-appointed, middle-class revolutionaries; and their mobilization of the masses to seize state power on behalf of the revolutionary vanguard – themselves. This vanguard is drawn from the disaffected but ambitious elements of the ruling class, often intellectuals. By its authoritative promulgation of a revolutionary theory, which the masses are to believe in, but not think about too much, the vanguard explains and justifies why the revolutionary elite expropriates from the toilers, for their own good, the self-powers that the producers briefly recaptured from the previous elite. However, this scenario has never played out, except in countries such as Russia, China and Cuba, which were characterized by a relatively low level of development of the productive forces, contrary to the theory.

WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND THEY ARE US: THE MANUAL FOR REVOLUTIONARY LEADERS By Bob Black

إحنا قابلنا العدو وطلع العدو إحنا

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According to Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, populism and Marxism-Leninism constitute two radically opposed political and theoretical traditions. However this is a completely misleading characterisation, for Russian Marxism emerged directly out of populism, and the distinctiveness of Marxism-Leninism can be traced directly back to the theoretical traditions of Russian populism.

Was Lenin a Marxist? The Populist Roots of Marxism-Leninism - Simon Clarke

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Parliamentarism appeared with the domination of the bourgeoisie. Political parties appeared with parliament. In parliaments the bourgeois epoch found the historical arena of its first contentions with the crown and nobility. It organised itself politically and gave legislation a form corresponding to the needs of capitalism. But capitalism is not something homogeneous. The various strata and interest groups within the bourgeoisie each developed demands with differing natures. In order to bring these demands to a successful conclusion, the parties were created which sent their representatives and activists to the parliaments. Parliament became a forum, a place for all the struggles for economic and political power, at first for legislative power but then, within the framework of the parliamentary system, for governmental power. But the parliamentary struggles as struggles between parties, are only battles of words. Programmes, journalistic polemics, tracts, meeting reports, resolutions, parliamentary debates, decisions – nothing but words. Parliament degenerated into a talking shop (increasingly as time passed). But from the start parties were only mere machines for preparing for elections. It was no chance that they originally were called "electoral associations. The bourgeoisie, parliamentarism, and political parties mutually and reciprocally conditioned one another. Each is necessary for the others. None is conceivable without the others. They mark the political physiognomy of the bourgeois system, of the bourgeois-capitalist system.

Otto Ruhle

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But justice is not all. A living morality needs something that will carry men beyond the mere recognition of reciprocal equality, giving to other men what is their exact due. For human society to grow, for the relationship of men to become fruitful, it is necessary for another quality, which Kropotkin called magnanimity, to be exercised. Magnanimity has often been shown in the past by exceptional individuals who have given their efforts freely in various ways, as revolutionaries, as artists, as scientists, that men in general may enjoy fuller and more ample lives. For society to go forward to anarchy, for anarchy itself to be fruitful, it is necessary for men to develop this quality of magnanimity, for them to learn to give their efforts freely in whatever way they have chosen to help humanity, and to go always beyond what justice itself might demand of them in their relations with other men. It is a mistake to think that such action necessarily means any kind of mystical self-sacrifice on behalf of others. On the contrary, pure altruism as envisaged by the moralists does not exist, and the man who gives and continues to give does so because he finds that in this way he gains a greater personal fulfillment.

George Woodcock

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The power of a dominant class doesn't result simply from its economic and political strength, or from the distribution of property, or from the transformation of the productive system; it always implies a historical triumph in the combat against the subaltern classes.” Michael Löwy The Michael Löwy quote placed as an epigraph to this chapter is a faithful and effective synthesis of the thought of Walter Benjamin, one of the rare Marxists to have fully grasped the rupture represented by total wars and fascism. The definition he gives of capitalism broadens and radicalizes that of Marx, since for Benjamin capital is both production and war, power of creation and power of destruction: “only triumph over the subaltern classes” makes possible the transformations of the productive system, of law, of property, and of the state. Consequently, the difference between my analysis of neoliberalism and those of Foucault, of Luc Boltanski and Éve Chiapello or of Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, is radical. Those authors erase the fascist origins of neoliberalism and the “world revolution” of the 1960s—which means limiting oneself to the French ’68—but also the neoliberal counter-revolution, the ideological framework of capital's revenge. This difference has to do with the nature of capitalism which those theories “pacify” by erasing the political-military victory which is the precondition of its deployment. The “triumph” over the subaltern classes is part of the nature and the definition of capital, just like money, value, production, etc.

Chapter 1: When Capital goes to War From “Capital Hates Everyone: Fascism or Revolution” Lazzrato (2021)

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من هو البرجوازي الصغير؟ يشير المصطلح الاقتصادي إلى رجل أعمال صغيرة، أو شخص إما يعمل لحسابه، أو يعمل لدى أفراد عائلته، أو بضعة أصحاب عمل أو تاجر. قد يحوز البرجوازي الصغير الاسم التجاري لمتجره، لكن البنك يحتفظ برهنه العقاري، وربما يحب -أو لا يحب- العولمة النيوليبرالية، وربما يتذمر بشأن مظالم الرأسمالية الاحتكارية، لكن هذه هي شكواه الوحيدة بشأن التنظيم الرأسمالي -لأن البرجوازي الصغير ما زال رأسماليًا يعتمد على تبادل السلع من أجل الربح، مهما كان صغيرًا. يستعمل هذا التعبير الماركسي (لأن الماركسية تؤكد أن المكانة الاقتصادية تحدد أيدولوجية الاجتماعية الثقافية للمرء) لوصف عقلية محددة تتوائم مع الوضع الاقتصادي المقلقل والأناني لهذا الشخص الذي ليس لديه نفس العلاقة بوسائل الإنتاج مثل التي يحظى بها البرجوازي الكبير (مالك الأراضي، صاحب البنوك، رئيس العمل الرأسمالي). أما بالتعبير الطبقي، فالبرجوازي الصغير دائم صراع مع البروليتاري، وقد يميل إلى إحدى جانبي الصراع، لكنه أقرب إلى معاداة البروليتاري. إذا كانت المهمة التاريخية للبروليتاري هي مصادرة الملكية الخاصة والثروة الاجتماعية للرأسماليين، فالبرجوازي الصغير سيبقى وفيًا في النهاية للنظام الرأسمالي والملكية الخاصة والدولة. البرجوازي الصغير شخص ضيق الأفق، محافظ، مولع بالاقتناء، بخيل، وسهل التأثر بالغوغائية. تعد الشعبوية عادة التعبير النموذجي عن السياسات البرجوازية الصغيرة (التي تتمثل في معاداة الثقافة، وإلقاء اللوم على أهداف سهلة/مجردة، السعي وراء القادة الكاريزميين المرغوبين الترويج لرأسمالية السوق الصغير).

لورانس جاراش