Communization for People in a Hurry

When reading literature on communization you may find that the idea is defined in different ways. Whether it be the evolution of the mode of production, the disappearance of both classes, or the abolition of productive society’s productive nature; the way that many(but not all) theorists engage with the theory can cause newcomers a great deal of confusion. To set things straight, we need to first define what communization is not. Communization is not a program, it is not a goal to be achieved, it is a process to be acknowledged and understood. Communization is the way a revolting proletariat will adapt to the conditions forced upon them by class struggle, this being continuous throughout the development of capitalism. During this process, social relations become communist in nature, as the struggle necessitates it. This process may be pushed forward also by a series of crisis modes, times in which members of the proletariat violently revolt against the reproduction of value. Production changes radically, the value form, commodity production, and work are abolished, in turn, ridding society of its productive nature. Interpersonal changes such as individual autonomy in the aftermath of class, the abolition of the nuclear family, ambiguous gender expression and destruction of the gender binary, freedom and ambiguity of sexuality, and the abolition of conventional morality, are also often theorized to occur. Communization is a process which can lead us to analyze a broad range of topics, and through the understanding of these changes, we can guide ourselves through late capitalism.

Communization refers to the shift from capitalist social relations to communist ones caused by the contradictions of capitalism and during crisis modes. Crisis activity refers to an apparent, out of the ordinary insurrection, almost always violent, between the classes due to social antagonisms between the two. It is important to note that while economic destitution can play a role in inciting struggles and is something which those who are revolting have to adapt to during a crisis, communization is a social process, not an economic one, and arises from social conditions. A social antagonism can be just as simple and universal as the authority of the employer over the employee. The reasons as to why social relations become communist during this activity are partially due to necessity and partially due to consciousness; when the position of classes are opposed, the opposition can only achieve their goal if that position is abolished, which effectively abolishes both classes as they are defined by their relations to one another. Revolts against the activity of work itself have always tapped into the heart of capitalist reproduction, the production of commodities and the exploitation of value. Communization takes the position that there is simply no other alternative for the anti-work person but to do away with the creation of commodities, hence, to become communist. Communism is the only relation which does not produce commodities and therefore does not require value for the sake of commodity production to be produced.
Communization is also not defined by stages, a multitude of different relations communize at once and do not necessarily follow defined stages of the movement from capitalism to communism. Stages are only one way of looking at the same process.
The concept of the value form is one of those Marxist ideas that I time and time again see people misinterpreting. I don’t blame them, it is a subject which Marx tended to beat around instead of concretely define and explain. In short, a value form is a method or form of expressing value, the value form is the commodity, the method and content of value expressed under capitalism. When we say that we want to abolish the value form, what we are actually saying is not just some vague abolition of capitalist domination(obviously we do want that regardless of semantics) we mean that we want to abolish the commodity and the pattern of value expression and social perception of commodities. Commodity production is also something you probably hear a lot of in arguments among communists. Commodity production is the production of goods and services which are exchanged according to their labor and exchange value.

When this antagonism is threatened, so do a number of institutionalized separations. The proletariat is abolished as well as the bourgeoisie, something which is often ignored by many so-called Marxists, their position as those who create value in the form of the commodity must be destroyed in order for class struggle to end. This is why communization relies on anti-work movements among the proletariat being synonymous with the communist movement. Communizers find it irresponsible to ignore the fact that the relation of one class to the other and the function that class has in society is one in the same. The proletariat is defined not only by their condition as those without ownership of the means of production but also by the consequence of that, the consequence being that they have to sell their labor in order to survive. A classless society cannot be achieved if the proletariat is simply given ownership of the means of production yet obligated to continue to sacrifice their labor for the sake of production alone. Simply making things is not the issue, the expectation to be systematically productive is, furthermore to be consistently productive for the sake of more efficient means of distribution, is. Whether work is inherent or just closely linked to capitalism is unimportant, the institution of work has always been and will be the hub of class conflict. Work, the workplace, the social relationship of work, the embodiment of the proletariat condition, and the most immediate form of oppression onto individuals is by far the most likely area from which insurrection and communization will spring from. With that in mind, anti-work is not just a position held by ultra-leftists, it is the logical conclusion of this observation; if a revolt occurs due to the fundamentals of work and aims to abolish those fundamentals then there isn’t any option but to communize. With the abolition of work comes the abolition of both class and commodity production, and with the abolition of commodity production comes the abolition of the value form. You will find that each movement within communization creates sub-movements like these ones, which follow each other in a similar pattern.

Communization occurs because those who revolt do so because, as you would expect, they are dissatisfied with their fundamental condition within capitalism; and in turn seek to live completely antagonistically to it out of a desire to survive and spite. But what or who stirs the widespread anger necessary for this? Many communizers agree that as capitalism progresses and class antagonism arises, the alienation caused by such will create more unrest among the proletariat. This alienation, in turn, causes factions of disgruntled and radical proletarians, such factions can form a revolutionary party, meant to encourage more workers to revolt and communize. The revolution is not strictly hierarchical or military-like, the party doesn’t exist to boss people around, it is a means of protection and education. The party is determined more by the relations between the most radical revolutionaries than by its function. Decisions would be made organically, not democratically, but by being discussed among its members and a course of action is agreed upon.

Communizers theorize that communism will abolish the separation between production and “consumption”. Useful objects would not be made necessarily just to distribute but instead would be created more so for the sake of creating them. This doesn’t mean that somebody can’t create or do something for others because they want others to benefit from their creations. This type of relationship is in a sense, the alternative to work, at least in a debate setting for communizers. An example that Gilles Dauve points out in “Everything Must Go”, is one of a community caring for a garden together for the sake of the relationship they build with one another because of that shared activity and in turn, shared harvest. In this case, the production of food and its consumption are ambiguous, the experience is consumed but a harvest is also produced, a harvest is consumed but that relationship is reproduced. Through communism, these types of activities would be common because, without specific activities and environments set aside for work and play(production and consumption), the two can mesh together freely.

Part 2

Capitalism has shown the tendency to create a culture in which people are so isolated from each other that they can only relate to each other through that isolation. This is likely because social interaction under capitalism often ends up being determined entirely by work, by its reproduction; and time off of work is spent either alone or with the same small group. Many jobs put restrictions on socialization at work, therefore, giving people little time to socialize. We simply don’t need to know and connect with a large group, we don’t even need to connect with others at all, so we don’t. People need a certain degree of freedom to talk to and connect with a wide variety of people, we are expected to rely on either ourselves or our families in order to be physically and psychologically healthy yet most people are depressed and anxious. We are alone, confined, and scheduled constantly; as these constraints wither away and former workers are able to mingle freely we will be able to overcome this separation. We will find safety and community in the fact that we know that we rely on everybody for our material needs, and in turn, our emotional ones. Communization is one of the only tendencies that addresses this phenomenon.
The social autonomy of the individual is expected to flourish once societal restrictions caused by class, race, and gender are made obsolete. Under capitalism, many social groups tend to be atomized, as previously stated, even the individual, as reinforced by the liberal notion of the self-existing independently of the awareness of others. The categories previously mentioned are felt psychologically as labels forced upon us externally, and this isn’t wrong, however, it’s important to understand that the individual reinforces these labels constantly as they continue to reproduce the conditions in which these categories get their nature. The family is one of the most obvious, it is completely designed around hierarchy, especially the nuclear family, with the father being the head, the mother nothing more than a head servant, and the children being both burdens and social prizes at the same time. Children are thought of as empty canvases in need of molding instead of allowing them to pursue their own sense of self. The relationship between mother and father, a toxic inequality, is merely a distribution of labor, with the men traditionally creating economic value and women traditionally creating emotional and interpersonal value. One explanation for sexism is that the former is thought of as more important than the latter, and holds more power overall. It is, however, not out of the question to theorize that over time the two reinforced each other’s position within the hierarchy as inherent to the gender. The nuclear family is very much based upon financial well being, this isn’t to say that all family structures do not evolve based around material necessity, they are, however under capitalism that necessity is managed efficiently with that specialization of labor and status. Communism, of course, does not have such a necessity, as the society no longer has a productive nature the degree of efficiency of the nuclear family is not needed by any degree, and it is surely too much pain and trouble for that model to continue as the most widely accepted family structure. There is no need for such inequality and labels because Communization as a process blurs the lines of genders and distorts ideas of family, eventually abolishing both as definite concepts, gender will be either nonexistent or extremely fluid, and the structure of the family will be far more fluid, not genetically but socially perhaps, extending to the entire community. In the process, the hierarchy of gender and the nuclear family are done away with.

Many leftists claim the moral high ground as they preach about the ‘evils’ of capitalism; many communizers find fault in that logic. If we are to acknowledge that capitalism has a significant effect on social norms, ideologies, values, and beliefs, then we must also acknowledge that capitalism plays a part in shaping conventional morality. This is not just assumed, hard work and sacrifice are some of the highest valued moral truths of capitalist culture; the implications that mean in regards to the proletariat condition are obvious. Furthermore, these encouragements only seem to apply when an individual is working hard and making sacrifices within the benefit of the capitalist system. Does the” hard work” put into sabotaging a factory dumping toxic waste into a nearby river receive praise from more than a few “weirdos” on the internet? No. Even the effort put into a simple strike is seldom acknowledged much less supported by the general public. A counterargument to the sabotage example would be to explain that the idea of your rights ending where another person’s begin, or otherwise put, do what you want as long as you don’t hurt anybody else, is pretty damn convenient for the bourgeois liberals when they claim that making a political point violently is fascism. You can’t justify revolution on moral grounds, even though the bourgeois as a class cause a great deal of suffering most of them don’t realize it, most of them are just doing as they were raised to and abide by conventional social norms. They have to make a profit in order to continue their careers and in the process become slaves to the capitalist system as well. There are a great many leftists who disagree on the basis that the revolution rests on the proletariat’s moralizing against capitalism, however, Marx certainly never says this specifically; and once more proletariat uprisings in the past have never been about morality, they all happened due to necessity, due to survival and individual well being. Killing members of the bourgeoisie and seizing their property is just plain wrong by conventional moral standards; which is why some communizers choose to stop trying to justify their beliefs in that fashion. The revolution is going to happen whether we like it or not, it’s not the right thing to do, but it’s not the wrong thing either. We will have to wait and see how the conditions of communism impact morality.

Communization is the acknowledgment that capitalism not only will create communism, but is accelerating the contradictions in which communism will arise right now. If we can put away our tendency to look at communism as a far off goal, we can acknowledge that the antagonisms that capitalism creates between the classes are resulting in the conditions of communism, this is, briefly, a summary of communization.