futures volume 6 issue 4 1974 [doi 10.1016%2f0016-3287%2874%2990078-0] john sanderson -- 3.2....

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given what arx called the poverty and restricted consump tion of the masses


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344

From Prophecy to Prediction

ruptcy

of less efficient capitalists;

increased exploitation and increased

mechanisation thus engendered a solid

and violently resentful working class,

ultimately capable of taking its destiny

into its own hands: What the bour-

geoisie produces above all, are its

own grave-diggers.

Proletarian bitterness reached a peak

with an economic crisis when an un-

usually large number of workers would

be unemployed and the lot of those

remaining in work was scarcely more

enviable than that of those without.

Moreover, it was in an economic crisis

that the restrictive character of the

capitalist relations ofproduction became

most apparent, for when the capitalist

saw no prospect of profit, the logic of

the system obliged him to shut down

his works and to lay off his men. Marx

further insisted that it was only the

restricting rationale of capitalist produc-

tion which wastefully allowed un-

employment to be the consequence of

technological innovation. But just as

bourgeois) man had broken through

the restrictions imposed upon human

creative potential by feudal society,

so proletarian) man would break

through those imposed by bourgeois

society.

Although exploited and oppressed,

the workers are brought by the impera-

tives of capitalist production into close

contact with each other. This fact,

coupled with the relative ease of the

communication of ideas in modern

society, facilitates the formation of a

united proletariat as a history-making

force, conscious of its degraded position

within the system, knowing who its

class enemies are, and realising that it

can liberate itself by revolution. Indeed,

Marx writes in the Communist Mani-

festo of the organisation of the pro-

letarians

into a political party,

arguing at the same time that non-

proletarian men of ideas such as himself

and Engels could hasten this process

by revealing to the proletarians the

nature of the system whose victims

they were: Just as, therefore, at an

earlier period, a section of the nobility

went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a

portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to

the proletariat, and in particular, a

portion of the bourgeois ideologists,

who have raised themselves to the level

of comprehending theoretically the

historical movement as a whole.

Marxs own theoretical comprehen-

sion of history indicated that there

could be no flinching from the emerg-

ing struggle between capital and

labour, and he urged other intellec-

tuals who sympathised with the prole-

tarian cause to recognise that this

struggle was inescapable. In reality,

he wrote in

The German Ideology,

the

actual property owners stand on one

side and the propertyless communist

proletarians on the other. This opposi-

tion becomes keener day by day and is

rapidly driving to a crisis. If the

theoretical representatives of the prole-

tariat wish their literary activity to

have any practical effect, they must

first and foremost insist that all phrases

be swept aside which tend to dim the

realisation of the sharpness of this

opposition,

all phrases tending to

conceal this opposition and giving the

bourgeois a chance to approach the

communists for safetys sake on the

strength of their philanthropic enthusi-

asms. The Communists therefore

aimed not at any kind of accommoda-

tion with the bourgeoisie, but at the

dictatorship of the proletariat.

Now the dictatorship of the prole-

tariat was the outcome of the seizure

of power by the proletariat. This

hitherto oppressed mass would use

political power as it had been used in

previous eras: to coerce the enemies

of the ruling class. But the dictatorship

of the proletariat, unlike any previous

regime, would oppress only a small and

diminishing minority in society and

would gradually disappear as the

remaining enemies of the proletariat

disappeared. Thus Marx was able to

envisage a society in which as he

FUTURES August 1974


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From Propheg to Prediction/Conferences

345

puts it in the Manifesto the public

power will lose its political character;

he believed that a society unbedevilled

by class-divisions would be able to

dispense with politics, and would evolve

non-coercive ways of arriving at, and

of implementing, the public decisions

about priorities, allocation of resources,

etc, which any modern society had to

make. As well as the elimination of

politics as thus understood), post-

revolution society would also see the

control of all production concen-

trated in the hands of a vast association

of the whole nation, an arrangement

which would make possible a more

rational exploitation of Natures re-

sources, together with an equitable

distribution of the proceeds. From the

standpoint of a higher form of

society, Marx declared in Capital III,

private ownership of the globe by

single individuals will appear quite as

absurd as private ownership of one

man by another. Production would

be expanded and would be free from

the insane fluctuations characteristic

of capitalist society. And the impact of

the division of labour would be sub-

stantially mitigated by encouraging

the worker to undertake a plurality of

functions, involving both manual and

intellectual skills, in a single day, thus

producing what Marx called in Capital

I

the greatest possible development

of his varied aptitudes.

It has become a notorious paradox

that the areas where men claiming

intellectual descent from Marx have

come to power are not the economic-

ally-advanced areas indicated by his

own analysis. This analysis suggests

that in general the proletarian revolu-

tion can succeed only where the capita-

list mode of production has run its

course

and exhausted its creative

potential. Thus in what is often regarded

as his definitive theoretical statement,

The Preface to the Critique of Political

Economy 1859), Marx wrote that no

social order ever perishes before all

the productive forces for which there

is room in it have developed; and new,

higher relations of production never

appear before the material conditions

of their existence have matured in the

womb of the old society itself. There-

fore mankind always sets itself only such

tasks as it can solve . . . Now it can

scarcely be argued that capitalism had

run its course in Russia in 1917, or in

China in 1949; but in these instances

history would not wait, even for the

Red Terrorist Doctor himself.

ONFEREN ES

Second European meeting on cybernetics and

systems research

de Cybernetique. These occasions are

proving a useful clearing house for

trends within the systems movement as

they attract up to 200 delegates from

Europe and the Americas and cover

most aspects of systems research. Re-

porting on such a meeting is difficult

as the four parallel sessions encom-

passed nine sections ranging through

Systems Theory General 10, Techno-

logical 13),* Biocybernetics 19), Cog-

*

Numbers refer to the number of papers in each

section.

A

list of authors and papers mentioned

in the report appears on p. 348.

VIENNA 16-19 April 1974

Organised by the Austrian Society

for Cybernetic Studies

With commendable enthusiasm the

Vienna

Systems Circle held its

second biennial European meeting

under the benign patronage of the

Federal Minister of Science and Re-

search, and in association with the

Society for General Systems Research

as well as the Association Internationale

FUTURES August I@74

E

futures volume 6 issue 4 1974 [doi 10.1016%2f0016-3287%2874%2990078-0] john sanderson -- 3.2....

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