It is in free time, however, that the principle of free association is fully realized — of universal labor as the free universal cooperation of creative activity. "Beyond it [the realm of necessity — A.K., A.B.] begins the development of human power, which is its own end, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can only flourish upon that realm of necessity as its basis."3
The character of the relations that take shape during free time becomes dominant in the higher phase of communism, and extends its influence to activity during working time as well. "It goes without saying that mere labor time itself — by being confined to a normal length and, moreover, being spent no longer for another but for myself — together with the abolition of the social antagonisms between masters and workers, etc., will acquire a wholly different, freer character as genuinely social labor and, finally, as the basis of free time — and that the working time of a person who is at the same time a person with free time at his disposal must be of a far higher quality than the labor time of a beast of burden."4
The structure of the relations of production of communist society in its higher phase is approximately the same as in its first phase. The main difference lies in the degree of maturity of communist relations of production.
In the higher phase of communism, all relations of commodity production disappear entirely, and production acquires a fully and directly social character. This corresponds to the complete overcoming of the alienation of people from their social relations, and the triumph of the free social association of people (the principle of free association), on the basis of which people organize production according to a deliberately conceived common plan.
Since the production of the means of subsistence, together with the provision of the whole set of material conditions for this, will occupy a relatively small part of time as the productive forces of society grow, the main goal and content of productive activity will be to ensure conditions for the development of human individuality. This development, in turn, will become the main source of growth in the productivity of social labor. Hence the main source of the growth of social wealth will no longer be people's labor efforts (in contrast to what is said in the Old Testament: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread..." — Genesis 3:19), nor even the improvement of the means of production employed, but the development of the human being himself in the course of scientific, artistic, pedagogical, and other such activity.
In the higher phase of communism, with the development of universal property (that is, everyone's property in everything1), special property relations fall away. This does not mean that in the free association of workers the appropriation of social wealth — whether in production or in consumption — will not be mediated by social relations among people. However, together with the disappearance of the relations between owner and non-owner (corresponding to which cultural values, which are unlimited by their very nature and can be freely appropriated by every member of society, are transformed into the principal form of wealth), this mediation will no longer take the form of specific property relations.
Together with this, the relations between owner and direct producer, which constituted the main content of any economic order of society, also disappear. The social order of communist production ceases to be an economic order, and the figures of owner and direct producer finally merge into one. In material production (the "realm of necessity"), however, functional distinctions between owner and producer remain — for performing the functions of an owner and performing the functions of a producer involve different kinds of activity. But this difference in kinds of activity will not lead to the formation of distinct social roles, that is, to the singling out of people who are chiefly assigned to one kind of activity or another.
The changed character of activity is the main precondition for the transition to distribution according to needs. When the main form of activity becomes the creative self-activity of individuals, and the main wealth becomes the attainment of all-roundedness both in individual development and in the social ties through which it is achieved, then the main human need becomes self-development through creative activity and the wealth of communication. Once the main motive and outcome of activity has changed, the character of distribution changes correspondingly.
No social obstacles remain to participation in creative activity and communication (and although the material means of activity available at any given moment are limited, human activity is precisely directed at the constant overcoming of this limitation). Under such conditions the main problem of distribution becomes access to creativity and communication — and in the higher phase of communism this access is limited only by a person's own abilities. Thus distribution according to needs becomes a reality, for
a person independently engages in the process of creative activity precisely to the extent of his own needs.
Of course, a certain — and fairly high — level of satisfaction of needs for the means of life is a necessary condition for the transition to such a mode of distribution. This level of consumption appears here not as an end in itself, but merely as a condition for full engagement in creative activity, and the person perceives the necessary volume of means of life precisely from the standpoint that it presents no obstacle to self-development. As the classics of Marxism already noted in their early works, "...in case of dire need the struggle for necessities would begin again, and all the old filthy business would have to be restored."1
The main condition for the transition to distribution according to needs, however, is not an abundance of the goods of life, but such changes in the character of human activity as eliminate man's subordination to the social division of labor, ensure the all-round development of individuals, and turn labor into the first necessity of life (which, in fact, ensures the necessary level of production and consumption of the goods of life as a side result of its own).
19.4. The Liberation of Man.
Man as the Subject of History. Sources of Development
Marxism is often portrayed as a philosophical system that proclaims, together with the achievement of communism, the completion of human history. Marx himself, it would seem, gives grounds for this when he states: "As soon as exchange value ceases to constitute a limit for material production and its own limit begins to be defined by its relation to the integral development of the individual, then all this history with its convulsions and its sufferings would fall away."12
For Marx, however, the end of the previous history means only the possibility, achieved for humanity for the first time, of living a genuine historical life. Speaking of the "integral development of the individual," of the boundless universality of human development, Marx adds: "Hence also the understanding of his own history as a process, and the recognition of nature (equally present as practical power over that nature) as his real body. The process of development itself is posited and recognized as a presupposition of the individual. But, above all, this requires that the full development of the productive forces has become the condition of production, and not certain conditions of production a limit to the development of the productive forces."1
On the changing content of the historical process: from the struggle for existence to human development:
Previous history has been a history of the struggle for existence. Man did, of course, develop in the course of this history as well — but such development occurred as a by-product of the struggle for existence; the development of some individuals was secured at the expense of others, and humanity as a whole — since its own social relations dominated over it as forces alien to it — did not control this spontaneous process of development. But once the struggle for existence falls away, and people, having brought their productive forces under their own joint control, become free to establish social ties among themselves independently, their own development becomes the immediate goal of their activity and thereby also constitutes the content of the historical process.
History, for the first time in the full sense of the word, now becomes the history of human development.
But the achievement of a whole series of conditions is necessary for this. Marx supposed that the historical mission of capital would be accomplished when its development led to the point "...that, on the one hand, the possession and preservation of general wealth require only a relatively insignificant amount of labor time on the part of society as a whole, and, on the other hand, the laboring society relates scientifically to its progressive process of reproduction, its reproduction in ever-increasing abundance — hence, when labor in which man himself does what he could make things do for himself, for man, ceases."1
Capital creates these preconditions because "...capital drives labor beyond the limits of its natural paltriness, and thus creates the material elements for the development of a rich individuality which is all-round in its production as well as its consumption, and whose labor therefore no longer appears as labor at all but as the full development of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its immediate form has disappeared, because a historically created need has taken the place of the natural one."12
As a result of such historical development, it becomes possible to cast off its limited bourgeois shell: "In fact, if we drop the limited bourgeois form, what is wealth other than the universality of individuals' needs, capacities, pleasures, productive forces, etc., created through universal exchange? What is wealth other than the full development of human control over the forces of nature — both the forces of so-called 'nature' and of man's own nature? What is wealth other than the absolute unfolding of man's creative talents, with no presupposition other than the preceding historical development, which makes this totality of development — i.e., the development of all human powers as such, unmeasured by any previously established yardstick — an end in itself? Man does not reproduce himself in any determinate form, but produces his totality; he does not seek to remain something he has already become, but is in the absolute movement of becoming."3
Thus man, no longer bound by the necessity of spending most of his time procuring the means of subsistence and securing the accumulation of material wealth in the hands of others, will freely develop his own individuality. And the free union of people appearing as independent individuals (a free and equal association) becomes here the basic form of their social tie.
"Only within the community has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible. <...> In a genuine community individuals gain their freedom in and through their association."1 Freedom is understood here not as negative freedom from any and all constraints ("will," arbitrariness), nor as freedom in its liberal interpretation — as a forced compromise between opposing interests (my rights end where the rights of others begin) — but as the constant overcoming of any and all boundaries, grounded in a community of interests and in the voluntary cooperation of people.
Man thereby overcomes any and all bounds of his social life — his social ties become potentially boundless both in space and in time. Although man (to borrow a thesis of V. Mezhuev) pays for the uniqueness of his individuality with the finitude of his existence — every human being is a distinct universe, and there has never been and never will be another like it — in free association, man also overcomes the limitedness of individual existence. The activity of man, reproducing himself in the universality of his activity and his social ties, is here based on cooperation with any and all of his contemporaries, predecessors, and descendants.
Such an overcoming of individual limitedness, however, is impossible without cooperation with other people, impossible without people perceiving one another as unique individualities.1
This contradiction underlies the driving contradiction of the development and reproduction of man in communist society as the reproduction of the integral social human being. The contradictions of development specific to the first phase of communism — between the material and the activity-based components of wealth, between the striving to expand free time and the limited possibilities of using it for individual development, and so on — are removed in the higher phase. 1
1 "The presuppositions of both autonomy and individuality retain a strictly intersubjective significance in communicative action: whoever makes moral judgments and performs moral actions must be able to count on the assent of an unlimited communicative community; whoever lives out a life history chosen with a sense of responsibility must be able to count on the recognition of this individual audience," writes Jürgen Habermas. "Accordingly, my identity — namely, my conception of myself as an autonomously acting and fully individuated being — can be stable only if I receive this kind of confirmation and recognition both as a person in general and as this particular individual person" (Habermas, J. The Concept of Individuality // Voprosy Filosofii, 1989, No. 2).
Yet there remains man's boundless striving to go beyond the bounds of his individual existence. Today it is difficult to imagine in full concreteness what human dramas, what tension of passions this contradiction will give rise to, but both our ancestors and our contemporaries have had occasion to encounter this contradiction. And the fact that it is capable of giving rise to a surge of human creative energy is beyond doubt.
All of the foregoing discussion of the character of production and social relations in the higher phase of communism has been quite abstract in nature. It could hardly be otherwise. The higher phase of communism has not yet become a historically full-scale reality (although in a certain sense it is already manifesting itself in reality). Much more concrete judgments about the higher phase of communism can be drawn if we turn our attention not to what will exist in this higher phase, but to what will not exist under communism. What is negated by the higher phase of communism is known to us in full concreteness, and this is why the negative characterizations of communism are considerably more detailed and tangible.
As already noted above, the higher phase of communism is characterized by the abolition of commodity production and of the social relations peculiar to it. Universal production for sale, and the chase after money as a measure of success, wither away. The elimination of commodity production inevitably raises the question of the social form in which the determination of the social necessity of labor expenditures, and their accounting and measurement ensuring their economization, will take place. In Marx we find no answer to this question. He knew for certain only that such a mechanism must take shape, that in place of commodity production some other social form must arise which, no longer by an indirect route but directly, ensures individuals' control over their labor and the time spent on it.
The illusion that in place of commodity production there might arise labor accounting directly in natural (in-kind) form rests on a failure to understand that people cannot produce without entering into certain social (production) relations with one another. The question of exactly how, in what concrete social forms, the free association will regulate its aggregate labor time, distributing it among the production of various products, belongs, however, to the future — to that future when the conditions for separate, private production for the market disappear, and when no labor can any longer be reduced to a simple abstraction of activity. Only then will new social forms of labor manifest themselves with objective necessity. Although various conjectures on this score can already be made, none of them yet looks sufficiently well-grounded.
Together with the fall of commodity production and of the private character of labor in general, private property also falls away, and, as a result of all this, the alienation of labor is eliminated — the alienation of man from the products of his activity, and, along with it, the alienation of man from man and of man from society.
Naturally, there will be no exploitation under communism (this problem is already resolved in its first phase).
In the higher phase of communism, social-class distinctions will be erased. At the same time, the enormous diversity of people's individual traits will not lead to their division into social classes. No distinctions will serve as grounds for acquiring a socially privileged status, for an unequal position within the system of social relations. All people will have equal opportunities to take part in any kind of activity, access to which will be determined solely by the particularity of people's personal abilities, and there will be no social gradations in the conditions of personal consumption.
Another social institution not destined to survive into the higher phase of communism is the state. The state organization of society will be replaced by social self-government. What self-government on a global scale will look like cannot yet be pictured in concrete forms. For now, one can speak only of the still-tentative prototypes of such voluntary coordination of socially organizing activity found in the contemporary "network democracy" practiced by today's global social movements.
Together with the state, the principal forms of organized violence will also fall away, war above all. The disappearance of wars will also have as its precondition the gradual withering away — a slower process than the establishment of social self-government — of national contradictions. But even before their final withering away, it will become possible to exclude war as a means of resolving conflicts of national interest; the first steps toward this will be the complete elimination of weapons of mass destruction, a sharp mutual reduction in military spending and in the arsenals of military confrontation, and the introduction of additional international restrictions on the customs and rules of war.
A significant stratum of crime bound up with mercenary motives disappears entirely, and the social-psychological basis for crimes against the person is sharply reduced, owing to the removal of the social tension caused by the most diverse manifestations of social inequality. No social system, however, can eliminate conflicts arising from personal relationships, nor attempts to resolve them by criminal means. It can only create conditions that reduce such excesses to a minimum, which will make it possible to dispense with a special law-enforcement apparatus (courts, the office of the prosecutor, and so on), together with the withering away of the institution of law itself.
Significant changes will take place in social consciousness. Religious forms of social consciousness will lose their significance, and the spread and influence of the church as a social institution will, at the very least, sharply diminish. Although the social preconditions for the existence of religious consciousness will practically disappear, a number of other preconditions (the existence of limits to human capability — the finitude of individual existence, the limitedness of the knowledge of the world, and so on) will remain. Moreover, traditional forms of social consciousness will be transformed more slowly than the objective preconditions for their existence will change. For this reason, the complete and absolute elimination of every last vestige of superstition is scarcely possible within any foreseeable horizon.
The form of the family will, without doubt, undergo significant change. If even over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the form of the family has already changed more than once, then all the more should substantial changes in this area be expected with the transition to a new historical epoch. What will be the concrete forms of family relations? F. Engels formulated the best answer to this question:
"What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman's surrender with money or any other social instrument of power, and a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other consideration than real love, or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people exist, they will not care a rap about what we today think they should do; they will establish their own practice and their corresponding public opinion on the practice of each individual — and that will be the end of it."1
Thus family and marital relations will no longer be bound up with concern for the conditions of subsistence; the fixing of private family property as one of the foundations of the family's existence will fall away, along with the use of the family as a springboard to material success. There will likewise be a shift in the balance between upbringing based on the biological tie between parents and children (a tie that should by no means be disregarded — but only for as long as both the biological tie itself and the social community of parents and children that has grown up on its basis continue to matter) and the social upbringing of the rising generation.
This brief overview of the higher phase of communism leaves, of course, a great many questions open — including some we have not addressed at all. We hope, however, that the key points outlined here give a sufficient sense of what the foundations of the future social order look like.
Self-Check Questions
- 19.1. What changes in the content of human activity determine the transition to the higher phase of communism?
- 19.2. How does the proportion and social role of working time and free time change in the higher phase of communism?
- 19.3. In the higher phase of communism, how does the character of activity within free time differ from the character of activity during working time?
- 19.4. In the higher phase of communism, what is the difference between the relations of production during working time and during free time?
- 19.5. Which structural elements of the relations of production fall away in the transition from the first to the higher phase of communism?
- 19.6. On what basis does distribution according to needs become possible?
- 19.7. What will not exist under communism — that is, what are the currently known negative characterizations of the higher phase of communism?
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