Labouring Individuals and Association

Congrès Marx International V - Section Etudes Marxistes – Paris-Sorbonne et Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007

OTANI, Teinosuke (Hosei University, Tokyo)

Labouring Individuals and Association

In this report my aim is to consider the significance that the development of human individuals has for the development of Association.

I want to take a simple look at why Marx used the term “Association” to refer to the new society that would be generated by capitalist society, and what is the nature of the mode of production that constitutes the base of this new society. In addition, I want to consider what sort of significance the development of labouring individuals has within the development of the newly emergent Association towards its “higher phase.”

“Association” is the term that Marx employed most frequently to refer to the new society that would be born out of capitalist society. We can discern Marx’s view of this new society from the various descriptions that he has left us, which also allows us to assess why he frequently used the term “Association.”

One of the aspects of the new society that Marx envisaged as differing decisively from the various historical societies leading up to and including capitalist society is that the new society will be a society formed through the voluntary and active combination of free labouring individuals—in other words, it will be a society that is formed through the conscious actions of those individuals themselves. The term “association,” in its general usage, refers to individuals who actively and consciously join together and act, so that the individuals act in a social manner by entering that sort of mutual relationship, which is to say, through being associated with each other. It is in this fundamental sense that Marx uses the term “association.”

We know of course that a capitalist society is a social system in which “the capitalistic mode of production prevails.” (MEGA2 II/5. S. 17.) We can draw a distinction between capitalist society as a social system and the capitalistic mode of production that constitutes the base of that social system. Likewise, in the case of the new society that is born from capitalist society, it is vital to grasp the mode of production that constitutes the base of Association as a social system and which qualitatively determines that social system.

In 1865, in the first manuscript of Book III of Capital, Marx used the term “the mode of production of associated labour” (MEGA2 II/4.2. S. 662) to refer to the mode of production that constitutes the base of Association. He also used the term “associated mode of production” (MEGA2 II/4.2. S. 456) but it seems to have been an abbreviated version of “the mode of production of associated labour.”

The term “associated labour” within the “mode of production of associated labour” was employed the previous year, in 1864, in his “Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association” (MEGA2 I/20. S.10) and then six years later in “The Civil war in France” (MEGA2 I/22. S. 59, 62 u. 143) which he wrote in 1871. Here we need to consider what sort of labour this “associated labour” is.

First of all, it is the labour of labouring individuals who subjectively, actively, and voluntarily associate with each other. This naturally means that the economic compulsion of wage labour no longer exists. And there would no longer be a labour market where labour-power is bought and sold.

Second, the labouring individuals are producing goods communally to satisfy their own needs and their labour is directly social labour. Private labour would no longer exist, so products of labour would not take the commodity form and hence money and the market would also not exist.

Third, the total production of the labouring individuals is carried out communally in a conscious and planned manner. Thus, for the first time the human essence of behaving productively to consciously alter an object of nature is fully realized.

Fourth, this labour is social labour of a large number of labouring individuals that is carried out cooperatively. The productive power of social labour is manifested, as such, as the social productive power of labour.

Fifth, through the cooperative labour that takes nature as its universal object, this labour is a practical act of comprehensive control of nature. In other words, it is the conscious application of science to the production process.

Sixth, this labour is the species act or human praxis that brings about one’s own joyousness by means of bringing the natural process under one’s own control in line with one’s own power, in other words, by realizing one’s own objectives. This means that for the individuals labour is not “something that has to be done,” but rather “something one wants to do,” which is to say, it is “life’s prime want.”

Seventh, this labour is an action in which the individuals freely display and fully develop their own individuality and capabilities. In short, this is labour in which the individuals, within their communal social activities, at the same time fully display and develop their own individuality, and this is precisely the decisively human essence of associated labour.

In this way, labour sheds the alienated guise it has had as wage labour so that human beings return their life activity to their species being. At the same time, all of these attributes of labour make possible the high development of social productive power, which also makes possible and ensures the production of the social products to meet the increasingly diverse and expanding needs of individuals. The “mode of production of associated labour” which constitutes the foundation of Association is a mode of production in which labour has become this sort of thing.

Next I want to look at Marx’s thoughts regarding how the associated individuals that exist within this emergent Association develop and what significance this has for the development of Association.

In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx draws a distinction between the “first phase” of Association and the “higher phase.” (MEGA2 I/25. S. 11-16.) If we read the part where he refers to the “higher phase,” we can clearly understand that the criteria for this distinction are the development of the manner of labour and the corresponding development of the individuals within the society.

Marx uses the term “higher phase” to refer to the stage at which the following four things have been achieved (MEGA2 I/25. S. 15). First, the individual is no longer subservient to the division of labour. Second, the division between mental labour and physical labour has ceased to exist. Third, labour is no longer simply a “means of life” but “life’s prime want” for individuals. And fourth, along with the individual’s comprehensive development, the productive power of these individuals, which is to say their capacity to labour, also expands, so that all of the sources of social wealth gush forth more abundantly.

It is clear that each of the four concern the manner of labour and the capacity of labour. Moreover, all of them are realized through the development of human individuals.

The first two points regarding the division of labour and split between mental and physical labour are characteristic figures of alienated labour under capitalistic production, and Marx repeatedly emphasized that eliminating these two aspects is an important task for Association. In other words, the ultimate sublation (or Aufheben) of the alienated appearance of labour.

In the case of Association, the individuals that form that society have become “fully developed individuals…to whom the different social functions they perform are but so many modes of giving free scope to their own natural and acquired powers,” so that the previous “division of labour” and the “antithesis between mental and physical labour” are completely done away with. Marx said that the “higher phase” of Association is when the manner of labour has been completely developed in that way. This means that the “first phase,” or “communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society,” is a period during which the labouring individuals develop themselves towards this higher phase and bring about a change in the manner of labour.

Regarding the third point, Marx is saying that the manner of labour will develop until the point where labour itself becomes “life’s prime want.” Needless to say, this change and development in the manner of labour is first brought about through the change and development of the labouring individuals.

In Association, even its first phase, not only has wage labour been eliminated but private labour also has disappeared so that labour is directly social labour. However, at the first phase, the “bourgeois limits” remains where the quantity of the labour that an individual provides to society determines the quantity of the means of consumption that the person receives from society, so for each person one’s own labour is still something that “must be done” to live. Association begins as a society constituted of members for whom labour is something that “must be done.”

In contrast, at the “higher phase” labour itself has become “life’s prime want.” Labour still remains a “means of life” in the sense that it is the associated individuals themselves who alone provide the material wealth of Association that includes the individual means of consumption that each person receives, but the quality and quantity of the products that each person receives no longer has any relation to the quality and quantity of labour that the person performs, so that labour no longer must be performed but is done because the person wishes to labour. Marx, in discussing the primitive accumulation of capital, says that, “the advance of capitalist production develops a working-class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature,” and in the same sense, the associated individuals develop to the point where, “by education, tradition, [and] habit” they look upon the labouring in accordance with their own capabilities in line with the needs of Association as a “self-evident law of Nature.” Furthermore, as far as the individuals are concerned labour has become “life’s prime want” and they labour in order to satisfy this desire.

The essence of human activity in the first place is the activity of human individuals as subject in consciously altering an object according to play, which is to say praxis. Human beings satisfy their own needs through achieving an objective through praxis. And of all the practical activities carried out by human beings, labour is precisely the most primary and fundamental type of praxis, so that labour is the primary existence form of human beings. This means that human individuals are primarily and essentially labouring individuals. Originally, therefore, labour to satisfy a desire by means of achieving a goal must have been the most important source of joyousness for human beings, and not only appealing in itself but the object of human desire.

Under capitalism, labour has become something that “must be done” as far as the labouring individuals are concerned because labour under capital—or labour subsumed under capital—is labour that must be done in order to live so that the idea has become firmly established in this society that labour itself has that nature. The classic theoretical expression of this is what Marx called “Smith’s [value] theory of sacrifice.” (MEGA2 II/1. S.501.)

Marx, in “Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association,” says that “hired labour is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labour plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart.” (MEGA2 I/20. S. 10.) The fact that there are people who think that this is an outrageously optimistic “utopia” that could never be realized is because the view of human beings and labour held by the labouring individuals in today’s society takes the historically determined form of the upside-down view of human beings based on the fallacy of homo economicus which arises inevitably from commodity production—in other words, the illusion of the rational individual—and the upside-down view of labour resulting from the alienation of labour under wage labour and alienation of human beings.

The process of revolutionary social change—moving from a capitalist society that necessarily generates this sort of labour among labouring individuals to the “higher phase” of Association that is formed by individuals who perceive labour to be “life’s prime want”—is at the same time the process of the revolutionary change in labouring individuals. Moreover, this is not a revolutionary process that can be suddenly carried out, on a certain day or in a short period of time. This is a process that first progresses by a consciousness being formed in those among the labouring individuals, who form society and continually carry out reproduction, to revolutionize society, and through the practical actions that are carried out based on this consciousness in pursuit of that revolutionary change. Moreover, this is a revolutionary change whose pivot is the revolutionary change and development of the individuals themselves who are the subject of the revolutionary change of society.

Next, let’s consider the fourth point I mentioned. This point concerns how, on the one hand, there is a development of the manner of labour, in terms of an expansion of productive powers that is the social aggregate of the labour capacity of the individuals in society to the point where individuals receive means of consumption that correspond to the particular needs of each individual, while on the other hand, the human individuals completely develop themselves to the point where that expansion of productive powers is reached. For Marx, the development of productive powers to the point that makes Association possible is already nothing more than the complete, overall and universal development of human individuals.