(Taken from Against Capital , no. 57)
Civil society must be explored in political economy. Democracy is a form of the political, legal and civil order of capitalism which is the mechanism for imposing this order of slavery on the working masses. Historically, John Locke, Rousseau, John Dewey, Karl Popper and the like, haven´t been who made assignment for capital and prescription for political-economic order. Even today, it´s not August Von Hayek and Milton Friedman who dictate their civil and social legal patterns to this relations. The reality is the opposite, in all conditions, that is capitalism has been and still is which makes the civil, political and governmental needs of the production cycle, self-expanding and value-added into the intellectual preoccupation, the axis of solution seeking and the center of theorizing of the intellectual representatives of the bourgeoisie. Thoughts, ideas and theories aren´t which create and form the life, work and production, ownership, classes and basic relations between social classes, rather, these are the latter which create and form , bring up and change and replace the former and it identifies also these denial and proofs and transformations such as philiosophy, politics and economic theory and social doctrine that also gives the designers and providers of these ideas and theories a position, credibiliity, role and power. Some will surely say that impacts and impressives aren´t an one-way path, if capital and capitalism makes its dynamic needs of production and self-expanding into subject of thought, dissection and political theorizing of the thinkers or bourgeois statesmen, the philosophical beliefs, intellectual discoveries, scholastic opinions, the ideological achievements of philosophers, the sociologists and ideologists also in their trun impress the deepest effects on the head of the economy, the structure of order, legislation and civilization and the government of capital.
The basis of this argument is metaphysical and in best situation as Hegelian or Neo-Hegelian type, is like creating a wall between material and consciousness, rationality and objectivity, thought and action. The debate is over the denial of these separations, but accepting their organic unity. When we take the path of separating concepts from reality, there´s no choice, except in darkness of interpretations, engage ourselves in playing with words to determine the precedence and latency of fictitious duals and discovery of the process of impact and interaction. What is real is that material production is also the production of thoughts. Capital isn´t an object and capitalist production isn´t the production of a handful of objects. Capital in its origin such as a social relation enters the history, a relation that lays the foundation for a new form of human division into classes and the whole social relations between them. Capital declares with this nature and as a social relation with this identity that it commodifies labor force, divides humanity into a majority of labor-force sellers and a minority of labor-force buyers, it deprives the former from any kind of interference in the fate of their work, and transforms them into components of the profit generating cycle, and produces and reproduces the economic-political, socio-legal and ideological order similar to the process of capitalist reproduction and globalization, and it locks this order in the hands of its producers and the whole of humanity. The concept of capital means an articulation of the unit, deeply contradictory and at the same time it´s a fusion of all these components and aspects. Here with the separation of economy from politics we don´t face the relation of material production of thought production, the relation between the production of surplus value and legislation, government, civil society or the legal structure of capital. Finding out their interactions, in precise describtion is an interpretive preoccupation which is in the service of capitalist perpetuation and brainwashing of the working masses. It can not talk about liberalism and democracy, fascism and conservatism and religious or secular forms of each of them but hide or deny the hard core of the material or their foundation of origin, real expansion and boasting. These approaches, doctrines and ideologies aren´t immaterial concepts, and separating them from capital existence, and from the reaction of capital against the working class, separating them from the function of capital in the challenge of contradictions and to overcome the problems of its survival which closes the correct path which can lead us to identify and understand the phenomenon, it misleads and prevents from knowing the root and reality of that. What that has existed in the present age under name of democracy, it´s a form of political, civil and legal order of capitalism and naturally it has the effects of struggle of working masses on its content and realization. Accordingly, the first question that can be asked and analyzed, it is that why it happened in some countries, even is there any traces of it ? why not happened in the widest part of the world and its admirers remained in the grief of its absence ? To answer this question, a few points must be explained in advance.
1. The bourgeoisie, before becoming a political ruling class and in the process of asserting itself, forced itself to cling to democracy. Public voting right, free elections and right of party organization, freedom of expression, press and demonstrations, secularism and free competition was the inescapable needs of this social class for liquidating with feudal lords and feudalism, masters of religion and monarchy or totally the old relations. Capitalism simultaneously advanced the process of commodification of labor force, its accumulation boom and concentration, increasing of labor-force productivity and market expansion and competition, changing of consumption structure, the capitaliist class also with accelerating was the only power fielding the historical conditions of the day. The bourgeoisie to respond to the needs of the development and establishment of a new mode of production, it needed this power and role to play and it had to challenge the economic, legal, civil, ideological and social barriers, and attain the power to do these things and to achieve this power get involved to confronting with monarchy and church and all guardian institutions of the old system, and simultaneously suppress the protests of the emerging working class or its historical contradictory and hostile twins. The bourgeoisie, in the conflict with the feudal rulers, seeks help from the working masses and relies on the workers´ illusion in one hand , but on the other hand it resots to monarchy and hurch to suppress the labor movement. The bourgeoisie had no choice in this particular historical circumstances except that to raise the flag of democracy and the dynamic needs of capitalist development and the empowerment process, and formulates its own domination and rule into content of civil and legal claims in the form of deceptive slogans.
2. With the rise of the bourgeoisie to the realm of political power, so the life of the bourgeois opposition´s demand for democracy is coming to an end. From this date onwards, democracy for the bourgeoisie is a political, legal and social order of capital, that has to be imposed on the working class. Freedom of expression turns into deprivation of liberty for struggle against wage-labor, and the right to organize turns into eliminating any right to organize anti-capitalist struggle, and freedom of demonstration into prohibition of any struggle against wage slavery. The criterion and basis of all freedoms and rights as far as the bourgeoisie is concerned it´s the needs and materials of self-increasing and sustainability of capital which determines. The law of value into constitution, civil law, legal and judicial ruling and all that is pure injustice against the working masses turns into permit of absolute right and general freedom. Democracy from this time on is such as memorandum of understanding contradictory in every aspects, fragile and in changing term between the labor movement and wage-slavery system. From point of view of capital, democracy is the model of a system which dissolves the class struggle of the working masses in itself and replaces with degraded class compromise. But instead it becomes merely a lot of illusion, inverted vision and misleading that falls over workers´ consciousness and it shutdowns workers´ class struggle against wage-labor. It will certainly be said why this happens, why the working masses can not take advantage from the right to vote, freedom of speech, press and demonstration, right of organizing or civil activities, in one word, the democracy, to advance the process of class struggle ? The answer is clear and the history of capitalism has enhanced on its clarity and transparency moment by moment. There´s no doubt about the importance of political freedoms and social rights for advancing the class struggle, but it´s question of how political freedoms and rights are obtained, through which process and over which fortifications. After earninng it, what form and with what approach, by what movement and with what social perspective are used. The question is that democracy in its real and terrestrial meaning and not with imposed mythical and utopian concepts, it has been the bourgeoise´s flag to deal with the rulers of old relations, and this bourgeoisie as soon as becoming the dominant economic-political class, used to utilize democracy such as wage-slavery imposition tool on the working class. Democracy, even in its most advanced phase and at the peak of its exaltation and flourishing, isn´t container of freedom and social political rights for an anti-capitalist struggle. Conversely, it´s the quagmire of interaction and class compromise, and it´s serving the eradication of the class struggle of the working masses. It´s a protocol between the workers and bourgeoisie on the basis of which the former commits to give up the fight against wage-slavery and the latter accepts that workers, within the framework of capitalist laws, call for improved wages and social welfare facilities.
3. Democracy is a form of capitalism order, but this order is costly for bourgeoisie, in general, especially its ruling part. It´s not ideal and doesn´t choose it, it refuses to accept it and at some time it accepts the democracy that it has to. Even, merely isn´t enough to welcome it, in addition to coercion it must be able to pay for it. Capital in the general sense, as global capital or a certain historical form of material and social production isn´t willing to bear this cost and unable to accept it. The bourgeoisie with the weapon of democracy, with the help of civil society organizations such as trade unions and syndicates shutdowns the class struggle of working masses against capitalism, but in confrontation with the same trade union movement, union strike and civil legal struggle of the workers, finally, must be satisfied with acceptance of low and humble demands. Capital is inherently reluctant to accept the same amount too, and the foundation of functions of capitalism is based on turning the unrestrained labor of the working masses into surplus work and degrading as much as possible the component of necessary work (wages) of the working class. Capital is constantly increasing labor-force productivity and increases its average organic composition, reduces its value-added component (labor-force) relatively and the component that lacks any value-making (fixed capital or formerly condensed labor) turns into highly level. A trend that includes falling interest rates and the crisis outbreak. Capital with these characteristics of nature and identity in general and as global capital is unable to accept the cost of democracy. Only if it pays for it and makes it as its social-political order of its value-adding cycle that the whole cost, or more drastically, in elsewhere would be imposed on livelihood of the working masses in the world. If in Scandinavia and Western Europe it´s forced to retreat in the face of some workers´ demands, it immposes many times of the cost of this retreat on workers´ livelihood in Asia, Latin-America, Africa and elsewhere. Historical, capital has done so and exactly in this direction that democracy is merely a procedure of the polygonal charter of its predatory bourgeois dictatorship.
4. Capital has the necessary levers to bear the emergency cost of democracy in a corner of the world and derail this cost on the livelihood of workers elsewhere. Surplus-values which is produced throughout the year globally by the working class it´s distributed among all capitalists and social capital of all countries. Each component of capital which has a higher technique, more labor-force productivity and more competitive power, relatively, takes a bigger share of the total surplus-values produced by workinng class worldwide. If the bourgeoisie of Western Europe in a period of history by calculating the risks posed to capitalism by the continental labor movement it steps backwards in the face of this labor movement and reduces the pressure of workers´exploitation and it makes this retreat as material basis for the establishment of democracy that´s because of this reason that before this the pressure to exploit multi-continental workers has become more deadly thanks to the anti-worker dictatorship of capitalism. The production of surplus-values has become more highest and the social capital of Europe countries have a larger share of profits, all these facts shout out that means that every praise of democracy is sanctification of the wildest and savagery dictatorships.
5. Democracy even in societies that are established as the legal, civil and political order of capital isn´t a stability pattern and it´s constantly changing. The process of its changes is also determined by the amount of wealth of capitalism at the expense of democracy. The most developed democracy under the pressure of the rogue crisis of capital which launch a storm of aggression against livelihood of the working masses. The capitalist class does everything to turn the part of daily work of the working masses into surplus work, and in such circumstances will be annonced the legal strike to illegal and savage strike, free demonstration to action against the security of citizens.
6. And the last word is that speaking of “workers´democracy” , “workers´ council democracy” and the like is merely the poisonous weapon and deception of the reactionary bourgeoisie to brainwash the workinng masses. We said before that as soon as the bourgeoisie becomes to the economic and political ruling class, democracyhas been merely a model of capitalism order and a machine for engineering the thoughts of the working class, a reactionary power of capital against the labor movement and iron barriers on the way of any amount of anti-capitalist activity of the working class. Free election, civil society and the right to form trade union and free speech is another bourgeois version for coffinning the anti-capitalist movement of working masses. The labor movement can not turn the pattern of capital order and the bourgeois suppressing machine which is always against workers´consciousness into its weapon of class power against capital. If once the bourgeoisie was dominated by feudalism and was trying to pave the way for fight during the historical struggle recoursed to democracy, but the way to struggle against capital isn´t exhumation and diggings the ultra-reactionary implements of capitalism made in couple of hundred years ago, but it is making the anti-wage movement of the working class stronger. If the bourgeoise was involved to democracy, the working masses must resort to communism of the working class. Emphasizing that working-class communism is not any ideology, doctrine or religion, but it´s only the anti-wage movement of the working class. This movement must be council organized in worldwide scale, and any better livelihood, increased welfare, most political freedom and a more flourishing human rights of the working masses is depending on the worldwide uprising, more organized and powerful and council of this movement.
Mazdak Kohkan
March 2022
