A WORLD

WITHOUT
MONEY:
COMMUNISM

BY The Friends of
4 Million Young
Workers
 Anti-copyright 1975 - 2020

No rights reserved. This book is encouraged

to be reprinted and stolen and made accessi-
ble by any means necessary.

Print ISBN : 978-0-4229-1506-9

A Radical Reprint

PATTERN
BOOKS
1. What is Communism? 1
Science Fiction? 1
2. Communism or Capitalism? 4
The Corkscrews 4
The Capitalist Mode of Production 8
Private Property 11
Profit 12
Wage Labour and Industrialization 15
The State and Capitalism 18
Recuperation 24
Primitive Society 27
Marx and Engels 29
3. The End of Property 33
What Is Property? 34
The Agrarian Question 40
From Scarcity to Abundance 47
The Transformation of Products 52
4. Beyond Work 54
Work and Torture 55
Science and Automation 59
Class Society and Robotics 67
Remuneration 69
Laziness 72
Allocation of Tasks 76
Undesirable Jobs 82
The End of Separations 85
Production and Consumption 89
Production and Education 94
5. Money and the Estimation of Costs 100
Money 101
Congratulations 105
The Law of Value 108
Free Distribution 114
Labour Time 119
Fanciful 131
Elevator or Stairs? 143
Calculation 154
6. Beyond Politics 160
The End of the State 161
The Workers’ Councils 165
Democracy 176
The Electoral Circus 184
The Strike 192
The Party 195
7. Insurrection and Communization 200
Violence 201
The Army 205
Vengeance 211
Reconversion 214
Rupture 227
Internationalism 234
8. Proletariat and Communism 241
Lenin 242
Bourgeois and Proletarians 244
Waiting for Godot 262
9. Becoming Human 269
History 269
Communism among the Guarani 276
The Levellers 285
Scientific Socialism 291
Communist Activity 301
Activity and Program 309
Index 313
1. What is Communism?
Communism is the negation of capitalism. A
movement produced by the development and
success of the capitalist mode of production, which
will culminate with the destruction of the latter and
the birth of a new type of society. Where there
currently exists a world based on wage labour
and the commodity, there must instead be a world
where human activity will never take the form of
wage labour and where the products of that activity
will not be objects of commerce. Our era is the era
of this metamorphosis. It displays the conjuncture
of the basic elements of the capitalist crisis and all
the requisite means for a communist resolution of
this crisis. To describe the principles of communism,
to examine how they will ensure the future life of
humanity, and to show they are currently unfolding
2 * A World Without Money: Communism

right before our eyes—these are the objectives we

shall try to achieve in this text.

Science Fiction?
We would like to depict the world of tomorrow,
the communist society we desire. This will not take
the form of an attempt to rival science fiction or
journalism by presenting a report on the life of the
peoples and the animals of the future. We do not
have a time machine.
Despite the intriguing nature of the question we
cannot predict who will win the war between slacks
and skirts, or between the sausages of La Garriga
and those of Mallorca. Nor can we even guarantee
that humanity will have a future. What makes us so
sure that we will not be erased by a nuclear war or
a cosmic cataclysm?
Nevertheless, prediction is desirable and
possible. We want to describe communist society
on the basis of its general regulatory principles. It is
necessary to show that tomorrow can be more than
just an improved or reformed version of today.
In order not to give the impression of taking too
much for granted, we shall go into detail and we
shall provide examples. You do not have to take this
seriously. You can take it or leave it.
 What is Communism? * 3

The future is not neutral. Capital has a tendency

to occupy and subjugate all social space. But it
cannot organize the commerce of its commodities
and its wage workers between past and future
the way the science fiction authors imagine it will
be done. Capital takes revenge for this failing on
the field of publicity and ideology. It invites us to
live in the future now, to buy the clock or the car
or the washing machine of the future. Images of a
capitalist future fill our present.
To discuss the communist organization of
society, despite the risk of error, is to begin to lift the
stone slab that is crushing our lives.
The old question of the reactionaries, “But
what do you propose as an alternative?”, must be
immediately rejected. We are not in the business
of selling ideas. We do not have to advertise a
society that does away with the market the way
one advertises a new brand of soap. Communism
is neither an object of commerce nor of politics. It is
their radical critique. Communism is not a program
that can be submitted to the vote of electors or
consumers, not even if it is a democratic vote. It is the
hope of the proletarian masses to abandon forever
their condition of being mere electors or consumers.
Those who put themselves in the position of simple
spectators, who believe they can judge without
4 * A World Without Money: Communism

getting involved, are excluded from the debate.

If it is possible to speak of the revolutionary
society this is because it is already being born
within the society of the present.
Some people will find our propositions insane
or naïve. We do not expect to convince everyone.
If such a thing were possible, it would be very
disturbing. We would rather have readers who
have to rub their eyes before granting credence to
our positions.
The proletarian revolution will be the victory of
simplicity over a servile and sterile science. All of
this calls for care around demonstrations. There is a
risk that they will take place not in the tranquillity of
the laboratory but violently and palpably.
Before saying what communism is, we
have to make some things clear right away. It is
necessary to denounce the lies surrounding it and
to clearly express just what communism is not. Since
communism is such a simple reality, so closely linked
to everyday life, with which it is identified, the worst
counter-truths have not failed to proliferate around
communism. This is a paradox only for those who
are unaware of the fact that in the “society of the
spectacle” it is precisely the meaning of what is
quotidian and familiar that must be rejected.
 Communism or Capitalism ? * 5

2. Communism or
Capitalism?
The prevailing view holds that communism
is in principle a doctrine elaborated in the 19th
century by the famous Siamese twins named Karl
Marx and Frederick Engels, and that this doctrine
would be perfected a little later by the founder
of the Bolshevik State, Lenin. It would be applied
with more or less nastiness in a certain number
of countries: the USSR, Eastern Europe, China,
Cuba .... In this context people debate whether
Yugoslavia or Algeria are socialist, capitalist, or
mixed regimes. The reader will forgive us if we do
not sing the praises of the benefits of such socialism
or communism. We will not confuse apples with
oranges, the grey monotony of the countries of the
East or the personality cult of China with humanity's
radiant future .

The Corkscrews

Communism was not founded by Marx, or by

Engels, or by the Pharaoh Ramses II . There might be
a brilliant inventor behind the origin of the corkscrew
or gunpowder or Valencian paella. There is no such
inventor at the origin of communism, nor is there
6 * A World Without Money: Communism

one at the beginning of capitalism, either. Social

movements are not the affair of brilliant inventors.
After Marx, Engels synthesized a movement
that had become conscious of its existence. They
never claimed to have invented either the reality
or the word. They wrote little about communist
society. They helped the Movement and communist
theory to dispel the fog of religion, rationalism and
utopianism. They encouraged the proletariat not to
rely on the plans of reformers or prophets.
Real revolutionaries do not fetishize the ideas of
Marx and Engels. They know that they are the fruit of
a particular era and that they have their limitations.
Both men underwent development and sometimes
clashed. One can find “anything” in the works of
Marx. It is necessary to exercise discrimination!
We do not claim to be Marxists. But we deny
to those who do claim to be Marxists the right to
appropriate and falsify the thought of their heroes.
The proof that great men are powerless in the
face of historical movements is provided for us
by the shameful way that the work of Marx and
Engels was distorted in order to be used against
communism.
Some individuals are more gifted and perceptive
than the mass of their contemporaries. Class society
cultivates these differences. Their impact is felt within
 Communism or Capitalism? * 7

the communist movement. We are not talking about

whether the leaders or the people make history. We
are saying that the work of Marx, like that of Fourier,
Bordiga or any other spokesperson for communism,
transcends the simple point of view of the individual.
Communism does not deny differences in ability, it
does not reduce its theoreticians to playing the role
of simple amplifiers of the will of the masses but to
the contrary is the bitter enemy of careerism, the
Führer principal and celebrity worship.
Communism is neither an ideology nor a
doctrine. Just as there are communist actions there
are also communist words, texts, and a communist
theory, but action is not the application of an
idea. Theory is not the pre-established battle plan
or social blueprint that can be most effectively
translated into reality. Communism is not an ideal.
The countries that proclaim their adherence
to Marxism-Leninism are not just places where the
principles of communism have been misapplied for
one reason or another. These countries are capitalist
countries. Their regimes display some anomalous
characteristics but they are just as capitalist as any
liberal regime. It could be argued that a country like
Poland or East Germany is much more capitalist
than many underdeveloped countries in the “free
world”. In these countries “communists” are fighting
8 * A World Without Money: Communism

against certain spontaneous tendencies of capital .

This is being done for the good of capitalism's
general development and is by no means peculiar.
Mandatory planning, collective ownership of
the means of production, proletarian ideology
none of this has anything communist about it. These
are aspects of capitalism that have been accentuated
in these countries. All the basic characteristics of the
system and of the logic of capital accumulation ( re-
baptized as " socialist accumulation " ) are ideally
suited for such a regime.

The Capitalist Mode of

Production

To see socialism or communism in the Marxist-

Leninist regimes is to demonstrate a lack of
understanding of the reality of these regimes, and
above all it demonstrates a lack of understanding
of the nature of capitalism .
This shows that one thinks that capitalism is
based upon the power of a particular class (the
bourgeoisie) , private property in the means of
production, and the unbridled quest for profit. None
of these features are fundamental .
The bourgeoisie is the heir of the old mercantile
class. After having spent many years consolidating
 Communism or Capitalism? * 9
an important but strictly delimited position within
agrarian societies, the commercial bourgeoisie
began, over the course of the Middle Ages in
Europe, to no longer control just commodities but
also the instruments of production. Among the latter
was human labour power, which it transformed, via
wage labour, into a commodity. This was the origin
of capitalism.
The bourgeoisie was in power from the moment
that it became the ruling class thanks to the power
of the economic and industrial forces it controlled
which rendered the old forms of production
obsolete. But the bourgeoisie can only submit to the
laws of its economy. As the owner of capital, it must
obey this force that drags it along, deranges it and
sometimes drives it to bankruptcy.
The individual or the separate enterprise has
some room for manoeuvre, but neither can swim
against the current for very long.
No historical class has ever been able to satisfy
all of its whims by using the power it ostensibly
wielded. Even the worst tyrants could only remain in
power by acknowledging the strict limits of their real
sovereignty. It is a mistake to seek to explain social
phenomena in terms of power. Such an explanation
is even less applicable to the capitalist system than
to its predecessors.
10 * A World Without Money: Communism

The class of those who direct the course of

capital has been subject to constant permutations
by the action of capital itself. What do the rich
merchant of the Middle Ages and the modern
CEO have in common? Their motivations and their
tastes are different. This divergence is necessary
so that they can perform the same function in two
different moments of capitalist development. The
class of feudal lords was distinguished by tradition
and inheritance. This was no longer the case for a
bourgeoisie whose fortunes could rise and fall by
virtue of business success, marriage connections
and bankruptcy.
The relations that unite master and slave, lord
and serf, are personal relations. Now, however,
instead of being bound to one boss the modern
proletarian is bound to the system. The chains that
bind him are not those of a personal alliance or
a particular contract, but those of a direct need
to survive, the dictatorship of his own needs. The
proletarian, uprooted from his ancestral land on
his lord’s manorial domain, and separated from the
means of production, has no other choice than to
prostitute himself. He is free, marvellously free. He
can even, should this arouse his enthusiasm, refuse
to sell his labour power and starve to death.
A bourgeois or politician could fail as an
 Communism or Capitalism? * 11

individual. In Russia and China an entire section

of the international bourgeois class was left in
the lurch. It was replaced by a bureaucracy. This
bureaucracy is not a radically different class with
respect to its predecessor! A “communist” banker
or industrial director bears more of a resemblance
to his capitalist enemy than the latter does to his
counterpart from only fifty years ago, not to mention
the 15th or the 18th centuries.
If capitalism, whether of the western or eastern
variety, cannot be explained by the power of the
bourgeoisie, it is even less possible to explain
communism by the power of the proletariat. The
advent of communism means the self-destruction of
the proletariat.

Private Property
Private property in the means of production is
not a constitutive feature of the capitalist mode of
production. It pertains only to the juridical sphere.
It subsists in the East in the form of the lands owned
by individual peasants. In the West it is being
progressively diminished by the encroachments of
public ownership.
The State often owns large industrial complexes.
Although nationalized, the postal services and
12 * A World Without Money: Communism

the railroads have not lost their capitalist nature.

Frederick Engels interpreted this tendency of the
State to become the owner of productive forces as
a general development that would relegate private
capitalism to the museum of antiquities.
The development of modern capitalism is
tending increasingly to dissociate private ownership
from the management of the productive forces. Not
only are the directors of nationalized companies not
the owners of the capital they control; even in the
big private industries, if they are privately owned,
ownership is divided into tiny percentage shares
of the total capital. The capitalization requirements
of big industry are far larger than any particular
personal or family fortune could encompass. These
corporations function with the money that is provided
to them by a mass of small stockholders and savings
account depositors who have practically no power
at all over the corporations’ operations.
The situation of the countries of the East must
be understood in the context of this general
developmental trend of capital.

Profit
The capitalist is supposed to be motivated by
the quest for the maximum profit. The expression
 Communism or Capitalism? * 13

“maximum profit” does not mean much. A business

owner can try for one day, or for a week, or even
for a whole month, to drive men and machines at
full capacity if he was assured of a market for his
products. But he would run the risk of regretting his
imprudence soon enough for having exhausted his
capital. The failure of an attempt of this kind took
place in China with “the great leap forward”. The
scale of the expected profits, and consequently, the
volume of dividends for the stockholders and the
salaries of the managers, and the rate of economic
growth are not arbitrarily decided by omnipotent
capitalists.
Making money, that is what motivates the
capitalist, whether for personal enrichment or for
investment. If he does not make money, whether
as a result of negligence, virtue or because it is
no longer objectively possible, his business will
be eliminated. This is also true for the bureaucrat,
in the form of fear of administrative sanctions. As
for the rest, neither in the USSR nor in China has
it been proclaimed that profit has disappeared; to
the contrary, profit is sought for the good of the
people, to construct communism. It has become an
instrument of economic measurement at the service
of the planned economy!
In neither the East nor the West, as Marx
14 * A World Without Money: Communism

explained, can capitalist development be explained

by the profit motive. The truth is quite the contrary. The
ideas of profit or land rent do not explain the laws
of motion of the system. They are only categories by
means of which the ruling classes become aware of
economic necessities and take action.
Unlike the humanists of the left who see
or pretend to see profit as their great enemy,
revolutionaries do not allow themselves to succumb
to this illusion. They do not blame the system for
being immoral; we are not mired in an attachment
to a few unprofitable archaic sectors.
Profit will disappear with the revolution. And
without delay! Until that moment arrives it will to
some extent play a protective role for the workers.
It imposes limits on the tyranny of the owners; it
obliges them to be careful with their human material.
If it were possible to abolish profit while preserving
capital, the average business would be inclined to
welcome the return of the concentration camps and
society would unravel and collapse into the most
absolute barbarism. Nazism was not a historical
accident; it was the unleashing of forces that were
lurking in the lowest rungs of capital’s civilization.
Profit fixes some limits on the authoritarianism and
on the will to dominate and to destroy that are
spawned by an inhuman system.
 Communism or Capitalism ? * 15

Blame profit! But then you will also have to

blame the whole society in which the life of man
has become a commodity.

Wage Labour and

Industrialization

The capitalist mode of production is constructed

on two solid pillars that distinguish it from all modes
of production that preceded it.
The first of these pillars is the system of wage
labour. There have already been men who rented
their charms, their political loyalty, their military
ability and even their labour power to other men .
But these activities remained marginal in societies
composed of small groups among which money
and the commodity did not circulate widely.
The development of capitalism meant the real
introduction of wage labour in the sphere of
production, which it would transform into the
general form of exploitation .
The second pillar is industrialization, the
transformation of man's relations with nature and
with respect to his own activity. Man was no longer
content with scratching out a bare subsistence
from the soil . With industrialization he would
assume the task of systematically transforming
16 * A World Without Money: Communism

nature on a constantly increasing scale. Capitalism

is an uninterrupted revolution in the methods of
production; it is the progress of “science” and
“reason”, as opposed to fatalism and obscurantism.
It is the movement that succeeds the stagnation of
agrarian societies.
Communism is not a return to the past. The
end of the system of wage labour does not mean
the return to slavery or serfdom. The overcoming
of the process of the “conquest of nature” and of
industrial organization does not mean a return to
the stagnation of the past. Communism will render
the aggressive and disorderly nature of the action
of capital a thing of the past. Its purpose is not to
destroy, to compartmentalize and subjugate, but to
act comprehensively to humanize the world, and
to make it habitable. It will transcend our current
industrial practices so as to reconcile the useful and
the pleasant. The lost sense of belonging that once
connected the human being with his environment
will be rediscovered on a higher level.
Capitalism did not emerge one fine day
because people suddenly noticed how efficient it
is. Its advent was not a triumph of the intellect; it
was imposed on the workforce by way of social
convulsions that were often cruel and irrational. It
encountered resistance; it would retreat for a while
 Communism or Capitalism? * 17

only to seize more ground. It “harvested” its wage

labourers from the masses of peasants who had
previously been uprooted from their lands and
reduced to mendicancy.
The movement of capital has a two-faced
aspect. On the one hand it is the development of
the human and material forces of production, and
consequently use values and useful things. On the
other hand it is the development of exchange value.
The commodity thus already presents this double
character; capital is still a commodity but it is also
value that must be constantly enlarged.
For many years capital took the form of the
commodity. The merchant could, thanks to his
ingenuity and cunning, possess and set in motion
a growing mass of products. The moneylender
did likewise, but only with respect to money.
These primitive forms of capital, however, could
not continue indefinitely; value was still parasitic
and did not create the means required for its
accumulation. Only by the unceasing appropriation
and crystallization of value in the means of
production as capital did it become capable of
real expansion. It is a vampire that feeds on value,
i.e., human labour; in order to fulfil its purposes,
it must develop machinery and productivity. For
capital the latter are only means to an end; for us,
18 * A World Without Money: Communism

in the last analysis, these factors are of the utmost

significance. This technological development
often assumes unsavoury forms—unemployment,
deadly weapons, devastation of nature—but it will
permit the revolutionary transformation of human
activity and create the preconditions for leaving the
barbarous era of class societies behind us.
Communism will not overthrow capital in
order to return to the early days of the commodity.
Commodity exchange is a link in the chain of
progress, but it is link between antagonistic parts.
It will disappear without however occasioning a
return to barter, that primitive form of exchange.
Humanity will no longer be divided into opposed
groups and enterprises. It will organize to plan and
utilize its common heritage, and to distribute tasks
and enjoyments. The logic of the gift (sharing) will
replace the logic of exchange.
Money will disappear. It is not a neutral
instrument of measurement. It is the commodity in
which all other commodities are reflected.
Gold, silver and diamonds will have no other
value than the value that derives from their specific
usefulness. Following Lenin’s suggestion we will be
able to reserve gold for the construction of public
urinals.
 Communism or Capitalism? * 19

The State and Capitalism

In the so-called “communist” countries money
continues to circulate undisturbed. The division by
international borders, and within these borders, the
division of the economy into separate enterprises,
works wonders.
The role played by the State in the economy, a
role that is legally founded in the public ownership
of enterprises, can be explained by the capitalist
nature of these countries.
The State and the commodity are old friends.
The merchants wanted society to be unified, so that
thieves and robbers could be suppressed and the
standard of monetary exchange regulated. With
the increasing circulation of goods and people, the
State and its bureaucracy discovered the means to
become free of the dominant power of the agrarian
sector.
The modern State, whether monarchy or
republic, is the product of the dissolution of feudal
structures by capital. The latter set itself in opposition
to particular interests as a representative of the
general interest. Capital had to do this because
this helped it to overcome those contradictions
and oppositions that it could not avoid provoking.
The monarchy and the bourgeoisie, despite some
20 * A World Without Money: Communism
momentary friction, stuck together against the
feudal powers. Political unification was necessary
for the development of commercial and industrial
enterprises. Large fortunes and accumulated wealth
made the State stronger and more independent.
The State often intervened directly to allocate
or consolidate the capital necessary for one or
another industrial sector. It established the legal
arsenal necessary for the development of a supply
of free labour. It liquidated the old customs and
dissolved ancient bonds. When the bourgeoisie
made its appearance on the political stage it had
already been a dominant force for many years and
the monarchy had long been its servant.
In Russia and Japan, countries that made their
appearance on the international stage while still
barely industrialized, it was the State that initiated
and organized the development of capitalism. It did
so in order to preserve the basis of its own power, so
as to have a supply of modern weapons. By putting
capital at its service it only bowed to the superiority
of the latter. The monarchy initiated a process that
would end with its own destruction. The necessary
preconditions for this grafting operation were not
present everywhere. If it was successful in Japan this
was because the State was already independent
and trade was already highly developed. In China
 Communism or Capitalism? * 21

the process at first failed to take hold, and the

same was true for most of the other pre-capitalist
countries.
The State must often intervene in order to
constrain a capital that is acting irresponsibly and
to invest more in one place than in another. The
bureaucratic regimes only accentuate this tendency
towards a never achieved goal.
Does the capitalism of the East create the
conditions for a more harmonious or more rational
expansion of capital than the capitalism of the
West? The question does not make much sense. That
such a question can arise is the result of the defects
of traditional capitalism. If this traditional capitalism
is now re-imported to Moscow or Leningrad it is
because of the defects of the capitalism of the East.
Wherever the bourgeoisie remained in a
state of underdevelopment due to the economy,
the bureaucracy conquered political power by
relying on the support of certain social forces like
the proletariat or the peasantry. But this could not
reduce the impact of the disintegrating effects of
international capitalism on traditional society. The
bureaucracy had no other choice; it could not, as it
wished, establish traditional capitalism and make it
fertile; this was because of its social base of support
and its lack of capital. Learning from experience
22 * A World Without Money: Communism

it found a way that conformed with its nature and

which allowed it, at the expense of the peasantry,
to accumulate industrial capital.
The bureaucracy is a unifying force that has
facilitated the authoritarian transfer of wealth from
one sector of society to another. It modifies the
spontaneous development of capital in favour of its
goal of retaining power. But capital is not a neutral
force that can be used for any purpose whatsoever.
The bureaucracy plans, it rules. But what does it
plan, what does it rule over? The accumulation of
capital. It restricts the free market, it fights against
the black market that is constantly re-emerging; but
this is not the proof of its anti-capitalism but only a
sign that the essential basis of capital is still alive
and well.
The western States themselves have been led
to intervene even more directly in the play of the
economic forces. They must have a social policy and
they must undertake planning. Bureaucratization is
not a phenomenon restricted to the East. It affects
the democratic and the fascist States as well as the
big private corporations. It is the product of and
the bleak remedy for the increasing atomization of
society.
In a certain sense it is incorrect to speak of the
bureaucratic capitalism or State capitalism of the
 Communism or Capitalism? * 23

countries of the East. All modern capitalist forms are

bureaucratic and statist.
State ownership of all industry does not,
however, signify absolute control; legal power is
not the same thing as real power.
In liberal capitalism, the State, relying on the
support of popular, military or even bourgeois
forces, can confront this or that major corporation;
it has the power. This does not, however, allow it to
rise above economic laws. It can stand up to the
power of the monopolies, but it cannot return to the
world of small businesses of the past.
In the capitalism of the East, the bureaucratic
State, regardless of the location of its headquarters,
cannot abolish commercial categories and
competition between enterprises. As long as
separate enterprises exist there will be competition
even if prices are subject to regulation.
This lack of unity is not limited to the economic
sphere. The bureaucracy itself is incessantly rent
by factional struggles and conflicts between
individuals. Due to a lack of real unity it is the image
of unity that must be maintained. The enemy is not a
party colleague, but anti-party.
What the bureaucracy gains with regard to
economic efficiency, is immediately lost again. The
lie and the loss of reality totally suffuse the social
24 * A World Without Money: Communism

body. The silent struggle behind the scenes replaces

open competition.
Although it was capable of initiating a burst of
economic development in unfavourable conditions,
the bureaucracy always trailed behind the
technological level attained by the liberal capitalist
societies.

Recuperation
Why would capitalists try to pass themselves off
as communists? As a general rule capitalists do not
like being called capitalists!
The origin of the capitalist claim to the name of
communist can be precisely dated to the Russian
revolution. The word communist conveys more of
the sense that one would bend over backwards for
the working class rather than that one recognizes
the fact of exploitation. It can give inhuman
development of the system a human face: the
construction of communism. Or else the masses
are presented with some projects called “the new
frontier” or the “new society”!
When capital claims to be communist, when
it recuperates the thought of Marx in order to
denature it in its universities of intellectuals or in
order to facilitate the brutalization of the workers
 Communism or Capitalism? * 25

in factories, it is only imitating a movement that was

completely fulfilled elsewhere. Capital does not
create, it recuperates; it feeds on the passion and
the initiative of the proletarians, which is to say: it
feeds on communism.
You will not be able to understand much about
communism if you do not understand the capitalist
nature of the countries of the Eastern Bloc. The
revolutionary battles of its past must not be allowed
to rehabilitate Stalinism, since it is a fundamentally
anti-communist system and ideology. The fact that
bastions of the working class still exist within its
domains must not cause us to become indulgent,
but to the contrary, it must incite us to refuse any
compromise with it.
One does a great service to Stalinism by
not criticizing it as a capitalist system. Some
revolutionaries, anarchists in particular, have
recognized Stalinism as communism so as
to be able to associate the latter term with
authoritarianism. Authority—that is the monster!
Under the guise of analysis the search for the origin
of this authoritarianism goes all the way back to the
personality of Karl Marx.
The Trotskyists, following in the footsteps of
their leader, the unfortunate enemy of Stalin, have
manufactured explanations as elaborate as they
26 * A World Without Money: Communism

are silly. Socialist base and capitalist superstructure

coexist, at least, in the USSR; as for the other
countries, the jury is still out. In any event, they
never understood anything about communism;
no more than Trotsky, who thought compulsory
labour was a communist principle. They are not
revolutionaries; Trotsky was, but he was never
anything but a bourgeois revolutionary and then
a reluctant bureaucrat. We shall leave this clique
with its intellectualism, its Byzantine disputes and its
ridiculous organizational fetishism.
The Maoists, those “Stalinist-mystics”, reduce
the entire problem to a question of politics and
morality. The USSR has become social-imperialist
and maybe even capitalist. Fortunately, China and
Albania, under the wise proletarian leadership of
Mao, Enver Hoxha and Bibi Fricotin, have not been
contaminated. Communism is profit and politics put
at the service of the people!
As communist ideas spread, even in the USSR
and China, to satisfy the needs of a proletariat that
will become revolutionary, these sects will become
increasingly more incomprehensible! They are
trying to keep the process of the revolution on the
terrain of politics. They are in the vanguard, it is true,
but it is the vanguard of capital; in a revolutionary
period all the political puppets will try to assume
 Communism or Capitalism? * 27

revolutionary airs so as not to be cast aside. It has

become something of a tradition for the revolution
to be combated in the name of the revolution. The
Stalinist or leftist militants who have gone astray will
be incorporated into the real party of communism.
Some, not so blind, have acknowledged the
fact that society in the capitalism of the Eastern Bloc
is divided into social classes. Unfortunately, they
have also thought that this capitalism represents a
new and superior mode of production. This is doing
too much honour to Stalin and his cohorts.

Primitive Society
We see nothing communist about the regimes
that claim to be communist. On the other hand, we
see communism where it is usually not discerned.
Primitive societies that, rejected by “civilization”,
subsist in arid or inaccessible corners of the
earth are communist, although their members live
from hunting and gathering or from rudimentary
agriculture. This is why we can say that the USSR is
not communist but the United States of America was
communist several centuries ago!
We do not expect to make humanity return to
this stage. Such a project would in any case be very
difficult because such a condition requires a very
28 * A World Without Money: Communism

low population density. It is important, however, to

rehabilitate primitive and prehistoric humanity.
The Indian was happier and, in a certain
sense, more civilized, than the modern American
citizen. The cave man did not die of hunger. It is
in today’s world where hundreds of millions of
humans have an empty stomach. Primitive man,
as Marshall Sahlins has demonstrated, lived in a
state of abundance; he was wealthy, not because
he accumulated wealth, but because he lived as he
wished. The western traveller who was sometimes
paradoxically impressed by his good health before
giving him smallpox pities his seeming poverty and
his nakedness. Primitive man possessed practically
nothing; but for those who live from hunting and
gathering this is no disadvantage. His lack of
possessions allowed him to move about freely and
take advantage of the bounty of nature. His security
was not maintained by savings but by his knowledge
and his ability to use what his environment provided.
He spent less time than a civilized man in earning his
livelihood. His “productive” activity had nothing to
do with the boredom that characterizes the office or
the factory. Fortunate are the Yir-Yiron of Australia,
who have the same word for ‘work’ and for ‘play’!
There is a profound difference between the
communism of the past and the communism of
 Communism or Capitalism? * 29

the future. The former is a society that uses its

environment by knowing how to adapt to it, while
the latter is a society based on the continuous and
profound transformation of that same environment.
Between these two communist societies, the period
of class societies will appear to be, when viewed in
this perspective, a painful but relatively short stage
of human history. A small consolation for those who
are still immersed in it!

Marx and Engels

Marx and Engels tried to acquire an

understanding of the development of capitalist
society. They did not spend much time describing
the future world that monopolized the attention of
the utopian socialists. But one cannot not draw a
hard and fast line between the critique of capitalism
and the affirmation of communism. The correct
understanding of the historical role of money or
of the State can only be attained from the point of
view of their disappearance.
If Marx and Engels did not have more to say
about communist society this is undoubtedly, and
paradoxically, not only because this society was
not as easily comprehended due to the fact that it
was so distant, but also because it was all the more
30 * A World Without Money: Communism

present in the spirits of the revolutionaries of that

time. When they spoke of the abolition of wage
labour in The Communist Manifesto they were
understood by those in whom these words found an
echo. Today it is more difficult to envisage a world
without the State and without the commodity since
both have become ubiquitous. But by becoming
so ubiquitous they have also lost their historical
necessity. Theoretical effort must take over from
spontaneous consciousness, before it renders itself
superfluous by virtue of the fact that its conclusions
have become simple banalities.
Marx and Engels may not have understood
the nature of communism as well as Fourier, in the
sense of its liberation and harmonization of the
emotions. On the other hand, Fourier did not fully
reject the wages system insofar as he envisioned,
among other things, that doctors should not be paid
for treating the illnesses of their patients but rather in
accordance with the general state of health of the
community.
Marx and Engels nonetheless expressed
themselves clearly enough so that they cannot
be held responsible for the bureaucracy and the
financial policies of the “communist” countries.
According to Marx, money disappears immediately
with the advent of communism and the producers no
 Communism or Capitalism? * 31

longer exchange their products. Engels spoke of the

disappearance of commodity production with the
advent of socialism. In order to clarify the fact that
these statements were not youthful errors, as is so
often claimed by the Marxological rabble, we shall
draw upon the “Critique of the Gotha Program”
and Anti-Dühring.
Stalinists of every stripe will speak of the dross
in the works of the masters. They will perform a song
and dance that proves they are Marxists rather than
dogmatists. According to them, money, capital and
the State have shed their bourgeois character in
order to become proletarian. The boldest will even
say that once communism is constructed it might be
possible to leave such trinkets behind. According
to others communism will be simply a society in
which the standard of living will be very, very high.
In any event, communism, lost in heaven and the
stairway that leads to it, is composed of a multitude
of additional modules that form so many transitional
stages.
It is true that communism is being constructed in
the Eastern Bloc, but its construction is neither better
nor more conscientiously undertaken there than it is
anywhere else. A revolution will be required for it to
be exposed.
The concept of building communism by means of
32 * A World Without Money: Communism

economic and social instrumentalities is a typically

bourgeois idea. Communism is represented in the
same way as the production of a manufactured
object. Society is seen as an immense factory; it is
thought that the whole functions just like the part.
Therefore it is a question of will, of planning, of the
correct political line....
The error into which these Stalinists fall with
respect to the road to follow affects the result. It is no
longer a question of making the private enterprise
economy disappear, but of transforming the
economy into one big enterprise. The conundrum
represented by the existence of a police force will
disappear; the augmentation of the moral sense by
"communist" education will be enough to cause
theft and subversion to disappear!
The best solution is of course the one proposed
by Joseph Stalin himself. When we cannot change
reality, we will change the words. The little father
of the people tells us: you want the employees to
receive a wage and, through the agency of the
State, they are the owners of the enterprises that
hire them . You cannot be your own employee ! So
the wages system is abolished in the Soviet Union .
If you are under the impression that you receive a
wage, if you are afraid of being fired from your job,
this is because you are delusional . Fortunately, our
 The End of Property * 33

socialist fatherland possesses re - education centres

and psychiatric hospitals!
Stalin admitted that commodity production and
the division of the economy into separate enterprises
still existed, but this was not capitalism because in
capitalism the means of production are the property
of individuals. Everything boils down, in practice, to
questions concerning the legal definition of terms. It
is enough for a State to proclaim that it is communist
for it to be so.
Since Stalin explained all of this in The
Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, those
who have studied this question have had nothing
new to contribute to our understanding of the issue.
One can see Mao Tse Tung or Fidel Castro
as brave guerrillas and capable politicians. One
could maintain that the Chinese suffer less hunger
than the Indians and have fewer political freedoms
than the Japanese. But regardless of these details, it
is still just capitalism .

3. The End of Property

Communism is the end of property. Everyone
knows this and it arouses a great deal of discomfort;
some of it totally justified. The owners of large
estates, of numerous sumptuous homes will be...

obliged to moderate their lifestyle. Industrial and

34 * A World Without Money: Communism

commercial fortunes will disappear. Those who

will be expropriated, although today they possess
a large part of society’s wealth, are a small and
well-defined caste. On the other hand, we shall
not as a general rule attack individuals; we shall
act with reference to the nature of the goods in
question. We shall seize the castles but will leave
the houses alone, whether they belong to the poor
or the rich! The concerns that have penetrated the
consciousness of the proletarians and, above all,
that of the peasants, are not justified. Communism is
not the seizure from the oppressed of the little they
possess.

What Is Property?
This question is not so easy to answer. For proof
of this, we call the reader’s attention to the polemic
that pitted Marx against Proudhon. The latter had
asserted, “property is theft”. Proudhon understood
quite well that the origin of property was not nature,
but that it was the product of a society in which
relations of force, violence and the appropriation of
the labour of others prevailed. But if one says that
property is theft, and since theft can only be defined
in relation to property, we find ourselves in a vicious
circle.
 The End of Property * 35

The problem only becomes more complicated

when one proceeds from the question of property to
the question of its abolition. Is it necessary to abolish
all property, whether in the means of production
or personal possessions? Is it necessary to act
selectively? Should we replace private property
with collective or State property? Or is it a matter of
the radical abolition of all property?
Communism opts for the latter proposal. It is
not about the transfer of titles of ownership, but
precisely the disappearance of property, plain and
simple. In the revolutionary society you will not be
able to “use and abuse” something just because
you own it. There will be no exceptions to this rule.
A building, a pin, a parcel of land: none of these
things will belong to anyone, or, if you prefer, they
will belong to everyone. The very idea of property
will soon be considered to be an absurdity.
In that case, will everything belong equally to
everybody? Will the first person who comes along
be able to evict me from my house, strip me of my
clothing, and take the bread from my mouth because
I no longer own my house, or my clothing, or my
food? Of course not; the material and personal
security of each person will, to the contrary, be
reinforced. Simply stated, it will no longer be the
right of ownership that will be invoked for protection
36 * A World Without Money: Communism
but the interest of the person in question will be the
direct criterion. Each person must be able to feed
himself in proportion to his hunger and seek lodgings
and clothing at his convenience. Each person must
be able to enjoy peace of mind. Certain ideologues
want to see property as merely the extension of the
animal’s territoriality into human society; in this way
property would no longer be a fact pertaining to
a specific era or even of a specific species, but as
belonging to all animals. However, no one has ever
seen a fox or a bear rent the territory that he owns,
or inhabit a territory where he is only a tenant! Such
things are nonetheless frequent in our society. It is
precisely property which permits the use and the
possession of something to be dissociated.
The fact that a good is not property provides
no indication regarding the use to which it will be
put; all that is certain is that it will be put to some
use. A bicycle will be used to travel, and not only so
that Mr. Martin, its legitimate owner, may travel. The
question regarding whether or not human beings,
for sentimental or personal reasons, need a fixed
territory and objects with which they identify is not
a question that can be answered with reference to
the concept of property. So, the dental hygienists
can rest assured: we are not proposing to make
toothbrushes into common property.
 The End of Property * 37

To oppose individualism to collectivism,

personal use to social use, in order to make this
opposition the crux of a “choice between forms of
society” is bourgeois cretinism. From this perspective
it would be absolutely necessary to support rail
transport against the personal automobile; in this
way the communists would be in favour of the
collective orgy and the bourgeois would be in
favour of masturbation! We laugh at these kinds
of disputes, they make no sense outside the context
of practical circumstances. What is clear, however,
is that we are not the ones who are responsible
for the depersonalization and atomization of our
existence.
Under current conditions the rights of property
constitute a barrier against the destruction of
personal life. It is in every possible way a derisory
guarantee. It does not stop noise from penetrating
the walls of poorly insulated apartments, it is of
little avail against eviction; the peasant might be
the owner of his land, but his title deed poses no
obstacle to the advancing depopulation of the
countryside.
Today there are fallow fields, uninhabited
houses, wealth of every kind lies unused, and all
of this is accepted as necessary; unfortunately
the owners do not want, or, what is worse, are
38 * A World Without Money: Communism

incapable, of either using or giving away these

goods.
The idea of ownership does have some
relationship to reality; it is also, however, a
mystification : one can own something without
having any power of control over it. It is a double
lie: social and economic; and it also affects the
relations between man and nature.
Property rights are necessary in capitalism .
Exchange requires that everything be clearly
defined . When it is a question of business dealings
it is necessary to know who really owns a particular
commodity and who does not. In the past, local
custom could provide a framework for deciding
how to use things and arrange matters; but when
things acquired a degree of independence from
men and could pass from hand to hand, custom was
no longer enough . Only faint traces of it remain in
the countryside: easement rights, the right to access
springs and other sources of water, the right to glean
after the harvest.... The commodity and capital
need a discreet body of rules that are applicable
regardless of the particular circumstances.
In the Middle Ages landed property in the
modern sense did not exist. With regard to any
particular parcel of land, the rights of the serfs,
the local lord, the king, and the church could
 The End of Property * 39

be exercised .... Until the 19th century a certain

number of rules continued to restrict the power of
the landowner by restricting him to taking no more
than the harvest of the first mowing of a meadow,
forbidding him from fencing off his land, forcing him
to allow gleaning rights and pasturage of animals
on fallow land .
In the world of bourgeois equality everybody
is a free proprietor. The peasant owns his land,
the industrialist owns his factory and the worker
owns his labour power. There is no theft, but there
are people who become wealthy and accumulate
riches completely out of proportion to what their
own labour would make possible. Property
conceals relations of exploitation .
If the peasant has become an agricultural
landowner and possesses the parcel of land he
cultivates, he is no less subject to certain price
fluctuations that are completely outside his power.
Working constantly, he is nonetheless unable to
become rich .
Property does not explain the power of the
capitalist enterprise . The enterprise is the owner of
fixed capital : buildings, machines, etc. But this does
not take into account the wealth that passes through
its owner's hands and which constitutes his turnover.
The complex interconnections of the economy
40 * A World Without Money: Communism

lead to a restriction of the rights of property. What

you do in your house can have a negative impact
on your neighbour. You cannot throw your wastes
in a river with impunity just because you own part
ofthe shoreline.
The absolute character of the right of property-
it is " sacred and inviolable" according to the
Declaration of the Rights of Man —is insignificant in
relation to the forces and the unpredictable events
of nature. The most intransigent landowner will
be powerless if an erupting volcano were to bury
his land; he can call the police, but he will not be
able to evict the intruder. As a general rule, natural
objects and phenomena do not punctually obey us.
As the nephew of the great chief Cochise noted,
the white men spend their whole lives fighting over
land . It is not men, however, who can possess the
land, but, to the contrary, it is the land that possesses
and feeds men . We all end up buried in it sooner or
later.

The Agrarian Question

The agrarian question is intimately linked to

the solution of the problem of property. It is a vital
question for the revolution. In the past, peasant
armies suppressed the workers' insurrections. The
 The End of Property * 41

opposite also took place, as in Mexico. The small

peasant has always been easily mobilized by the
counterrevolution in the name of the defence of his
sacred right to property.
In the industrialized countries, capital has done
what it has accused the "reds" of wanting to do.
It has expelled the majority of the peasants from
their land . It can therefore no longer rely on the
frightened masses of peasants to form the ranks
of the counterrevolutionary armies. The supply of
subsistence goods to the cities is still provided by
the countryside, however. The party of order will
always be happy to use this situation as a weapon
against the revolution .
Where the agricultural workers do not own
the land they cultivate, but are tenant farmers or
wage labourers working for large estates, they will
organize to carry on production . They will not have
to answer to their old landlord or boss : the land will
go to those who work it! If their former landlord or
boss wants to join them in order to contribute his
knowledge and labour, this would be of some help,
but he will only be able to do so on the basis of
equality.
Where ownership and cultivation of the soil
coincide, where the peasant employs few or no
wage labourers, the problem must be apprehended
42 * A World Without Money: Communism

in a different manner: we must take into account,

on the one hand, the interest of society as a whole,
which cannot be supplied with food by discontented
farmers; on the other hand, we must also take into
account the proletarianized peasant, who depends
on the capitalist system for his inputs and markets
and who should understand that he has everything
to gain from the communist revolution.
Capitalist development has taken place at the
expense of agriculture. It has absorbed manpower
and resources for industry. Communism will reverse
this trend. Agriculture is its particular concern
because of its role in food production as well as
environmental protection. These are two areas
where capitalism has demonstrated a distinct lack
of prudence.
The institution of property, whether or not it is
based on the family, will disappear along with the
State and the legal system that legitimizes it. The
use and habit of cultivating a particular parcel of
land will continue and will even be organized by
the revolutionary authorities. The peasants may
organize upon this basis or, if they prefer, they may
continue to occupy their parcel in isolation. It is likely
that, at least for a certain period, both methods will
be combined, each peasant being ensconced on
his parcel but practicing more mutual aid than is
 The End of Property * 43

presently the case for certain kinds of work and for

the shipment of their products. Inheritance in the
strict sense of the word will disappear—but who
is more likely to possess the qualifications and the
interest to succeed a farmer than his son!
The general rule will be to allow the peasants
to organize agricultural production as they see
fit. Coercion would be the worst and the most
expensive solution of all.
The agricultural collectivization implemented
by East Bloc capitalism has nothing to do with
communism. It was not for ideological but for
economic and class reasons that these programs
were put into effect. It was necessary to combat the
resurgence of the bourgeoisie in the countryside.
The rich peasants were getting rich at the expense
of the poor peasants by lending money at usurious
rates of interest. They thus created a pole of
accumulation for this interest capital that competed
with the industrial pole of accumulation upon
which the bureaucracy was based. This is why it
was necessary to impose and to pay the price of
agricultural collectivization.
And a heavy price was paid. In the early stages
of collectivization in the Soviet Union, peasant
resistance was so strong that the sharecroppers
sector was decimated. The long-term consequence
44 * A World Without Money: Communism
was the stagnation of agricultural productivity due
to the lack of incentive on the part of the members
of the Kolkhozes. This led to frequent policy
changes with regard to family-owned farm parcels.
Collectivization helped keep the peasants in the
countryside by insulating them from the effects of
direct economic pressure. This resulted in lower
pressure and less competition in the labour market.
The USSR preserved an exceptionally large number
of peasants considering its level of industrial
development. These peasants were dragged in the
wake of industrial development like a prison chain
gang.
By rejecting collectivization, do we therefore
reject the task of revolutionizing and communizing
the countryside? Absolutely not! To the contrary!
The communist revolution is the liquidation of the
commodity economy. This also holds true for the
countryside.
The farmer will not make money in exchange
for his labours if he is a wage labourer, nor from
his commodities if he is an independent producer.
He will gratuitously deliver his surplus production to
society; in compensation, he will not have to pay
for the goods required for his personal needs or his
farm operations. He will no longer be motivated by
the desire or the need for money. His motivation will
 The End of Property * 45
be directly rooted in his interest in the work, by his
love for his chosen way of life or by the desire to
be useful.
The peasant will not have to work as hard as
before. He will be able to request assistance from
labour power made available by society. This will
be made possible by the closure of a plethora of
more or less parasitic enterprises and a reduction
in the labour power utilized for the purposes of
industry and the tertiary sector. It will be possible
to provisionally shut down some productive
enterprises in the era of giant agriculture in order to
free up labour power. This would be unimaginable
today.
Distribution, as well as production, will be
transformed. The road that leads from the farmer
to the consumer will be shortened by as much as
possible. Products will be transported directly from
a particular agricultural region to a particular city
and this process will be organized by those directly
involved. When one considers the difference
between the price of production and the price
paid by the consumer one will understand the
significance of such a process of simplification.
The peasants will conduct the labour of
cultivation and raising livestock either alone or
with assistance from others. They will not work in
46 * A World Without Money: Communism

isolation from the rest of society. We do not promise

them absolute freedom. Agriculture depends
today, and will continue to depend in the future, on
other sectors of the economy. The most prominent
such sectors are those that provide fertilizers and
agricultural equipment; the independence of the
peasants is thus necessarily restricted as a result of
this condition. Furthermore, agriculture plays such
an essential role that all those who depend on it
cannot afford to ignore it.
Let us imagine an extreme case: if some farmers
allow land to go uncultivated and herds to go
untended because they no longer need to make
money, it would be naïve to think that some people
will quietly accept their fate and die of hunger. In such
a situation it would be possible to cut off supplies to
the lazy farmers as a countermeasure. The farmers
are responsible for conserving their farmlands and
must be able to live a comfortable life, but they must
not be allowed to become parasites and, above all,
they must not be allowed to hoard certain goods
that others could use immediately.
Overcoming the separation of town and
countryside is one of the goals of the revolution. This
can only be accomplished very slowly since this
separation is inscribed in stone and concrete. One
cannot wave a magic wand and move skyscrapers
 The End of Property * 47

here and forests there. It will be possible, however,

to rapidly implement measures that will lead in this
direction. For example, the provisional or permanent
resettlement of urban populations in the countryside
where small industrial centres can be established to
complement the new population centres and, where
this is possible, as adjuncts to local agricultural
activities. Many people who were forced to leave
the countryside or who find city life unsuitable will
be happy to return to the country. Individual and
collective gardens will multiply and will beautify
these rural settlements and even the urban centres.
This will be facilitated by tearing up the pavement
of streets that will no longer be necessary due to
reduced traffic. This will make it easier to recycle
household wastes, reduce transport expenses and
provide fresh vegetables to the population. One
of the defects of capitalist agriculture is that it has
become so separated from the consumer and the
latter’s wastes and has had to compensate for these
deficiencies by means of chemical or biological
inputs that have to be constantly increased. In these
gardens, children, the elderly and the handicapped
who are today refused a role in production and
are often destined to lives of boredom, can have
something to do and make themselves useful. This
will be a magnificent terrain for teaching a de
48 * A World Without Money: Communism

schooled young generation. Finally, this will help

clean up our polluted air!

From Scarcity to Abundance

The legal right and the mental attachment to
property will die out in communist society because
scarcity will become a thing of the past. It will no
longer be necessary to hold on tightly to an object
in fear of never being able to enjoy it if you turn
your back on it for even a single instant.
What kind of magic do you intend to use in order
to give birth to this fabulous era of abundance? This
is the question that will be sarcastically asked by
the bourgeois. There is nothing magical about it: we
can make abundance arise because it is already
here right in front of our noses. Nothing needs to
be done to give birth to abundance except to free
it from its bonds. It is capital which, by squeezing
humanity and nature for the last two or three
centuries, has made abundance possible: it is not
communism which, all of a sudden, will produce
abundance, but capitalism which has artificially
maintained scarcity.
The formidable increase in the productivity of
labour has not, or not yet at any rate, changed
much with regard to the fate of the proletariat; it
 The End of Property * 49

has even had negative effects. The power of capital

has destroyed the traditional societies of the Third
World without allowing its population access to the
industrialized world. This factor, together with an
enormous demographic expansion has plunged
a large part of humanity into profound misery.
Under these conditions, wage slavery is a veritable
improvement compared to living as a beggar or a
pauper.
The impact of nuclear energy and electronics
has so far been experienced with respect to their
military uses. Scientific progress has fortunately
delivered us from those barbarous times when one
had to see those one killed and sometimes was
even splashed with their blood. Disgusting!!!
Even those inhabitants of the “rich” countries
who have benefited from this increase in productivity
are exploited. Wage increases and the progressive
growth of consumption hardly compensate for
the deterioration of their living conditions. Having
more or better objects than were available in a
previous era does not mean that one lives better.
The worker has the car his father did not have, but
his workplace and the countryside that he visits on
weekends have become more distant. He loses in
traffic jams the time he won with the shortening of
the working day, and he has traded his physical for
50 * A World Without Money: Communism

nervous exhaustion. With regard to its conditions

of development, what industrialization gives with
one hand it takes back with the other. It boasts of its
remedies but it omits to mention that it was the origin
of the illness in the first place. Nor is this accidental:
the logic of commodity production requires that
conditions of dissatisfaction be maintained. The
doctor needs illness. As Fourier pointed out: in
civilization scarcity is born from abundance and
society moves in a vicious circle.
The human being has been gradually reduced
to the passive role of consumer. His moribund state
is reanimated with the artificial life of commodities.
His misery becomes the technicolour reflection of
commodities displayed in all the store windows and
on sale for low prices.
In communist society goods will be freely
available and free of charge. Social organization
will be thoroughly disencumbered of money.
How would it be possible to prevent some
people from hoarding wealth to the detriment of
others? After a period of euphoria during which we
will help ourselves to the existing stock of goods,
won’t our society risk collapsing into chaos and
inequality before totally succumbing to disorder
and terror?
These concerns are not restricted to a small
 The End of Property * 51

handful of privileged elements with a direct interest

in maintaining the present system; they also express
the point of view of those among the oppressed who
are paralyzed by the fear that a social upheaval
will make their situation worse. In the storm the big
fish will be better armed for killing the little fish!
In the fully developed communist society the
productive forces will be sufficient to provide for all
needs. The feverish and neurotic desire to consume
and to hoard will disappear. It will be absurd to
want to accumulate goods: there will no longer be
any money to pocket or wage workers to hire. Why
accumulate cans of beans or false teeth that you
will never use? In this stage of society, if some form
of imposition still exists it will not be a restriction on
the distribution of products but rather on the nature
of the products, in the conditions that are imposed
by the various specific use values of the products;
there will necessarily be a selection of some
possibilities and a rejection of others at the level of
their manufacture.
When revolutionary society has first emerged
from the fetters of the old world, the situation will be
different. The revolutionary authorities, the workers’
councils, will have to formulate and guarantee the
observation of a certain number of rules to prevent
the resurgence of the habits and procedures of
52 * A World Without Money: Communism
commodity society. Perhaps it will then be necessary
to limit the number of cans of beans or pounds of
sugar each person may possess in his home. It is not
possible to predict just how long this stage will last; it
will vary according to the greater or lesser poverty
of the regions in question and will depend on the
power and the resolve of the revolutionary party.
A war provoked by the party of capital, which
would cause setbacks for production and transport,
would only prolong this transitional phase. If we
base our estimate solely on the time required for the
communist reconversion of the productive forces,
the transitional period could be very brief; we saw
how quickly the American economy was able to be
transformed into a war economy during the Second
World War!
With communism, the nature of production as
a whole and the nature of the objects produced
a

will undergo radical transformation. The

disappearance of exchange value will have a
major impact on use value.

The Transformation of Products

The commodities offered for sale on the market
comprise an extremely hierarchical set of objects.
There are not just one or even several commodities
 The End of Property * 53
for each particular need; there is a multitude of
commodities from the same enterprise or from the
competition. Of course, this is all about satisfying
the public and responding to the variety of its
needs. The customer must have a choice! In practice
his choice is restricted by his financial means and
his social function. Numerous commodities respond
to the same need but each one is distinguished by
its quality and price; this is true of cookware, for
instance. On the other hand, different products
correspond to different uses; but these different
uses are not available to the same individuals.
For example, some people conduct their affairs
by means of supersonic jets and other people by
means of bicycles.
This hierarchy and differentiation of commodities
is the reflection of competition between groups,
extreme wage inequality, and the living conditions
of the capitalist world. It leaves its mark on industrial
development. The needs of the rich play the role of
bellwether. Goods like the automobile lose a large
part of their quality as articles of use when they
cease to be the privilege of a minority and come
within the reach of just anybody.
Communism does not propose to make
everyone wear the same uniform and eat the
same soup; but it will put an end to this disastrous
54 * A World Without Money: Communism

diversification and hierarchy of products. New

goods that are still scarce will be put to use first for
collective purposes or else on a first-come, first-
served basis.
With regard to clothing we can imagine that a
reduced number of high quality articles of clothing
will be produced, but in sufficient quantity to
provide for all sizes and customary uses. They will
be produced on a massive scale and by means of
as much automation and machinery as possible.
At the margins, workshops can be opened where
machines and fabrics will be available for those
who want to make different clothes for themselves
or their friends.

4. Beyond Work
Capitalism has continuously revolutionized
the means of production but it has been incapable
of really liberating and transforming productive
activity. Industrial labour signifies the most extreme
form of alienation. The proletarian in blue overalls
or white shirt is chained to his machine or to his
work routine. He has lost the freedom to give his
labour a personal touch or to carry it out in his own
way that was the prerogative of the artisan or even
the slave and the serf. The impersonal character
of this contemporary form of domination makes it
 Beyond Work * 55
unendurable .
Work has been separated from the rest of life .
Life is dominated by the fatigue and the brutalization
that it engenders and by the wage that it provides.
With the control exercised by modern capital
over social life in its entirety, our whole existence
has ended up monopolized by the principles of
work. The logic of efficiency and productivity
dominate our “free” time. Everything must be
rational and profitable, including pleasure and
"affairs" ! Everyone is cordially invited to take over
from the system by transforming it.
Communism is first and foremost a radical
transformation of human activity. In this respect one
can speak of the abolition of work.

Work and Torture

If there is a word that is safely neutral it certainly

is not the word for work.
In French and Spanish one of the words for
"work" or "labour" (in Spanish, "trabajo”, in French,
"travail ", and with a slightly modified meaning, the
English "travail " ) originated from the Latin word,
"trepalium ", which denotes an instrument of torture
similar to the "rack" . Before assuming its modern
meaning, this word designated mine labour and
56 * A World Without Money: Communism

then certain kinds of especially hard work. Today

its meaning has been considerably extended but
its boundaries are still unclear. There is a constant
tendency to provide it with a natural justification,
however.
In English the word originated in a particular
form of activity of the peasant. What characterizes
the word for work or labour is precisely its abstract
quality. It no longer designates this or that special
activity but activity and effort as such. One no longer
plants cabbages, or weaves, or herds cattle; one
works. All work is basically the same. What counts
is the time spent working and the wage earned. As
Marx said: “Time is everything, and man is nothing;
at most he is the carcass of time.”
It is not the word for work that has such an
impact as the hateful reality that it represents. It does
not even matter if the word disappears. If the word
survives it will have to undergo a profound change
of meaning. Maybe it will end up as a synonym for
the greatest of pleasures!
In communist society productive activity will
lose its strictly productive character. The obsession
regarding efficiency and punctuality will disappear.
Labour will be based on a life transformed in its
entirety.
Such a change implies the end of hierarchy, of
 Beyond Work * 57

the division between order-givers and order-takers,

of the separation of decision and execution, of the
opposition between mental and manual labour.
Man will no longer be ruled by the products of his
activity and by his tools. The subjugation of nature
to the productive process and its monopolization by
groups or individuals will come to an end.
This revolution will be accompanied by a
technological transformation. The very nature of
industrial development will be called into question.
The parasitic nature of capitalism is expressed
in the fact that it is possible to provide a secure
foundation for social life even when most businesses
are closed. A test regarding the resources contained
by a highly developed country was provided by the
strike of May 1968 in France. All industry can be
shut down for a whole month without any significant
consequences for social life.
Maybe there will be a shortage of bread in a
revolutionary period. But this shortage cannot be
attributed to a lack of productive capacity. It would
be due to special causes. This will not prevent us
from closing parasitic industries. To the contrary, it
would be all the more necessary in order to be able
to redirect existing resources towards vital sectors.
One cannot say in advance and in detail what
will be eliminated and what will be retained. We
58 * A World Without Money: Communism

are convinced of the despicable role played by

war industries. They will have no reason to exist
once communist society has been fully established.
In the meantime one cannot rule out its further
development in communism’s early stages!
Such decisions, in all cases, will not be taken
by a committee of technocrats but directly by the
workers affected by the decisions. The threat of a
loss of wages will no longer play a role in their
deliberations!
If some workers, due to corporativism or for
less respectable reasons, cling to useless or even
harmful enterprises, they will have to answer to the
entire communist proletariat. The right to property
or self-determination will be no excuse for police or
financial workers to seek to perpetuate the routine
of their usual work!
Everything that serves finance and the state
machine will be eliminated or at least profoundly
transformed, as these sectors require onerous
labours to satisfy secondary needs. Products or
“services” like the telephone, and the electricity
that is currently being used for the most part by
businesses, will be largely redirected to individual
consumption. Buildings and machines can be put
to different uses. Numerous needs will be satisfied
with a minimum expenditure of social labour.
 Beyond Work * 59

Transportation, for example, will be based upon

a more rational use of individual or collective
vehicles. The “demand” for punctuality will be
greatly relaxed. The need to travel will arise much
less frequently.
Many activities will not simply be completely
abandoned but will instead be profoundly
transformed. Education will escape to the greatest
degree possible all capitalist influence. The press
will cease to be the tool of the big newspapers
in order to be made available to a multitude of
publishers of small newsletters.
The essence of the new society will no longer
consist in producing and competing in order to
preserve market share, but in reducing arduous and
boring industrial labour as much as possible.
The closure of useless sectors will allow for the
variation and amelioration of those productive tasks
that will still be necessary. The social forces thus
liberated will be able to engage in new activities.
Children, students, the elderly and housewives
will be able to participate according to their abilities
in social activities; this participation will no longer
take the form of competition on the “labour market”.
These transformations are not luxurious baits
the revolution will use to attract doubters. They
are immediately necessary for combat and to
60 * A World Without Money: Communism

concentrate forces against that portion of capital

that poses the threat of temporary resurgence.

Science and Automation

All of these measures only give us a vague
idea of what is to come. Communism will use the
material basis bequeathed from the old world. It will
above all develop the technological and scientific
achievements of the latter. And it will do so more
rapidly and better.
It is fashionable to express surprise at the
technological progress achieved after the last
world war. In fact, one would be more justified
to express surprise at the slowness with which
scientific discoveries have penetrated industry. The
latter is characterized, in principle, by its inertia.
It advances when historical “accidents” force it
to change its suppliers and markets, and when it
modifies its technical basis when interest rates fall,
in order to try to escape from economic stagnation.
Contemporary industry functions by finding
new uses for inventions and discoveries made
decades ago. For example, vehicles based on the
combustion engine and petroleum-based fuels, such
as our state of the art automobiles, are veritable
fossils compared with the scientific possibilities.
 Beyond Work * 61

Industry has not really been able to make much

progress with regard to either the automobile or
new sources of energy. Nor can it do so unless such
an effort is profitable from its narrow point of view.
Communism will allow for the construction
of machines or industrial facilities that would be
unprofitable from the point of view of the single
enterprise or even of a capitalist state. Communism
will judge that the achievement of progress is worth
the effort even if it does not confer any immediate
advantages. It will often perceive such advantages
where capitalism was blind to them: increasing the
quality of products, spurring interest in research,
and improving working conditions, for instance.
From the capitalist point of view it would not
be profitable to manufacture a silent jackhammer
since the price of such an invention would not be
less than or equal to that of a noisy jackhammer.
It is of little importance to the capitalist that an
economy of this kind has to be paid for with such
obvious inconveniences. The fact that some day
the production of a silent jackhammer could be
perfected in such a manner as to become less
expensive than the noisy jackhammer. This does not
enter into the projections made when the product
is offered for sale. Why should a business risk
bankruptcy or any kind of sacrifice in the name of
62 * A World Without Money: Communism

technical progress or the betterment of humanity?

Communism will not be content to just take over
from capitalism and carry on with business as usual.
It will transform science and technology. From
conscious or unconscious servants of the industrial
hell, it will transform them (science and technology)
into instruments of human liberation.
Science will never again be a sector separate
from production.
Capital has a vital need for innovation. It
cannot cause it to arise directly from the productive
sector. The latter must proceed smoothly and the
imagination must by no means be given free reign.
Science is carried on elsewhere.
For many years science was marginal; it was
the work of dedicated amateurs. Capital had a
great need for their services and took them under
its wing. Under the tutelage of the State and
industry, science became an investment. It became
bureaucratized, and came under the control of
mandarins and managers. The freedom of creation
was corralled.
In the eyes of scientific opinion, this can be
good or bad. The man of knowledge is the sorcerer
transformed into a wage worker. What is actually
the result of the spirit of critical inquiry appears to
popular opinion as magic.
 Beyond Work * 63

The ideology of production recuperates what

it had to concede to the experimental impulse.
Science appears as the sector where a special
commodity is produced: Knowledge. Knowledge
ceases to be the delicate result of specialized
research in order to be transformed into a sacralised
product offered up for the contemplation of a mass
of mental defectives.
For us it is a question of liberating the impulse of
initiative and experimentation so that these qualities
will come within the reach of all. Science will no
longer be the exclusive possession of a caste of
specialists and will instead once again be the taste
for risk and play, the pleasure of discovery.
The “conquest” of space has illustrated the
possibilities of automation and electronics. All
that is necessary is to apply all this technology to
everyday life, to the transformation of our daily life.
Automation will allow humans to be disencumbered
of boring jobs, which will be mechanized.
The first steps of automated systems—systems
that, once set in motion, can function and operate
without human intervention—were taken during the
times of the Pharaohs. They were used to regulate
the floodwaters of the Nile. With the passage
of time such systems began to flourish. The first
automated “factories” appeared. There was, for
64 * A World Without Money: Communism

example, the mill invented and displayed near

Philadelphia which in 1784 received wheat and
turned it into flour without human intervention.
Along with automated machines for production,
calculating machines were also developed. In 1881
the telephone was invented.
Automation in this sense has existed for a long
time. It is nothing but an extreme form of machine
production. Electronics will allow such automation
to become more widespread and even an ordinary
form of machine production.
The electronics associated with the control of
important sources of energy will allow action to be
conducted at a distance and the centralization of a
great number of operations.
Automation not only represents the promise of
transferring painful or distasteful tasks to machines.
It also, and perhaps most importantly, represents
the possibility of doing things that would have
otherwise remained impossible. It makes possible
operations that require very fast reactions and
very complicated calculations that surpass human
abilities. Machines can operate in conditions
that are hostile to life. Without automation the
development of nuclear energy or space travel
would have been impossible.
Those who want revolution but reject the
 Beyond Work * 65

accursed science and technology are in a dead-

end. The massive destruction of our natural
environment is certainly not unconnected with
technological possibilities but one cannot blame
them for it either.

Nuclear energy or computer science can

present very dangerous characteristics . This is the
reflection of their power. But these aspects are
prejudicial to society only insofar as they are used
carelessly or are employed for the purpose of
reinforcing social control .
Up until now capitalism has only applied
automation to this or that detail of the system . This
does not imply that it can stop here. Its logic, the
need to bolster or to find an appropriate rate of
profit, commits it to continual advance. By this we
do not mean to suggest that the generalization of
automation is compatible with the preservation of
the current system . Automation's very principles are
contrary to the survival of class society: it renders
the proletariat useless.
"Automated machinery ... represents the exact
economic equivalent of slave labour" ( Norbert
Wiener) . The logical result of the development of
automated production would make the human
machines superfluous.
The solution is therefore either the communist
66 * A World Without Money: Communism

revolution or the annihilation of the proletariat,

who would be reduced to a layer of refugees or
else totally eliminated. The prophets of doom have
predicted the latter outcome. Our optimism is not
based on the humanity of our masters: history has
shown us that those who carry out genocide have
absolutely no hesitation to do so. We believe that
they are simply incapable of exercising control
over the situation and implementing a consistent
policy. For good or for ill we are not governed by
supermen but simply by veritable cretins, skilled at
manipulation but incapable of viewing events from
a historical perspective. They are themselves in part
separated from the productive process. The really
decisive point with regard to this question is that the
proletariat must not prove to be too weak.
The proletarians dispose of an immense force.
Their degree of consciousness of this force is
extremely slight. The working class always possesses
its force in the place it occupies in the productive
apparatus. The first stirrings of automation have
only strengthened this force. Small teams of workers
and technicians hold enormous power in their
hands. Economic upheavals can instil them with the
inclination to use it.
The bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy cannot
negate the proletariat without also negating
 Beyond Work * 67

themselves. They are chained to value, which is

to say that they are chained to the human labour
power that forms the basis of value. They do not seek
progress for the sake of progress but only for the
sake of money. If they develop machine production
this is only because they want to free themselves of
workers who are too unruly. The proletariat is not just
a simple tool of the ruling class but also the latter's
reason for existence . Capital (or labour) relegates
man to the level of the machine but cannot cease to
be a social relation between classes.

Class Society and Robotics

All class society tends to turn man into a robot,

to reduce him to an object whose body and mind
are used. When part of society does not work for
itself but toils to feed another part of society, this
implies that it must perform supplementary labour
but also, and even more importantly, that the nature
of its activity has changed . What is of interest to the
master is not the pleasure or the pain, the happiness
or the punishment of the slave, but his productive
output. Class society is based on the human
possibility of creating goods that can be separated
from their producers in order to be used by others.
The human being is no longer a human being but
68 * A World Without Money: Communism

a tool. The innately human capacity to make tools

and decide in advance what is to be produced is
turned against man in order to transform him into
a tool.
The exploiter can be kind or cruel to the
exploited. The former does not have to be totally
without any feelings. Rather, feelings are necessary
to grease the wheels of the system. But they are
limited and secondary products of the system. The
exploiter can be “good” but he cannot cease to
exploit. He can be a sadist but he cannot destroy his
human material. Where capitalism does reach such
a condition, however, it is under great economic
pressure.
The ruling classes of the past preyed upon
the agrarian communities. These communities
were destroyed in order to bring a mutilated and
atomized human material under their rule. One
commodity among others, the proletariat came face
to face in the market of “factors of production” with
its mechanical competitors. In this war the machine
won one battle after another and conquered space
in the productive process from the proletariat.
Communism will transform the nature of this
development. Man will not compete with the
machine because he will no longer be a “factor of
production”.
 Beyond Work * 69

The communist use of machine technology

signifies the possibility of applying automation
to a great number of activities. This is not to say
that generalized automation will be the key to the
“social question”, however.
The abolition of wage labour does not
mean the replacement of man by machine but
the transformation of human activity in a human
sense by means of machines. It is not merely a
question of the gradual or sudden reduction of the
working week from forty hours to zero. A world in
which an entirely automated industry working on
an inexhaustible raw material supplies him with
everything desirable and imaginable would lead
man to a vegetative condition. It would be a frozen
world and without a sense of adventure since all
that happens would be programmed in advance.
Regardless of the faith put in science, this
myth is deeply capitalist. It considers as natural
a complete separation between work time and
leisure time. It wants to reserve the hell of production
machinery and the paradise of consumption for
humans. Depending on how strictly the limits to
such a process were set, it would lead to either a
permanent Club Med or the generalization of the
condition of a foetus.
Communism is the end of the separation
70 * A World Without Money: Communism
between labour time and free time, between
production and consumption, between life and
experience.

Remuneration
The disappearance of the wages system
is sufficient to shake the foundations of the old
society. The compulsion to work in order to survive
will disappear. Labour will no longer be a means
of earning a livelihood. It will no longer be an
intermediate term between man and his needs. It
will be the direct satisfaction of a need. In this sense
it will no longer be labour. What impels a person
to action will cease to appear as a necessity that is
external to the individual in order to become instead
an internal necessity: the desire to do something,
the will to be useful. This dissociation of activity
and remuneration, if by remuneration one does not
mean the pleasure that such activity can concretely
provide, must proceed hand in hand with a
profound transformation of man: it asks individuals
to take responsibility for what they do, it requires
that they develop intelligence and initiative and that
egoism and mean-spiritedness should disappear.
It is customary to explain all the evils of
humanity by the incorrigibility of human nature.
 Beyond Work * 71
Everyone knows that man is a wolf to man. This
explains nothing but demonstrates the kind of
contempt that human beings have for themselves.
It is the reflection of the fatalism that capitalism
engenders by reducing the human being to the role
of a spectator to his own development.
The idea that we should preserve some kind
of remuneration for a transitional period, as Marx
proposed, in the form of a distribution of coupons
reflecting hours worked, is not desirable. If it is the
development of the productive forces that makes
the communist revolution possible, and today it
certainly does, then the revolution cannot delay the
full application of its principles. A system of coupons
for remuneration and therefore to compel men to
work would be a contradiction of the spontaneous
revolt of the oppressed, of all those who participated
in the insurrection without any expectation of
power, or money, or compensation of any kind. A
system of coupons would only have the sympathy
of bureaucrats, leaders, and of all those who would
like to exercise control and power over others. Such
a system would only have the effect of dampening
the ardour of the active elements and would not
attract the opponents of action. If it becomes
necessary in a particular case to make someone
do something we would prefer the method of the
72 * A World Without Money: Communism

kick in the ass. It is more straightforward and more

effective.
We are not totally opposed in principle to
the use of coupons. It would be absurd to allow
diamonds to be subject to free distribution! In
such cases the relevant authorized committees will
allocate the coupons. When the goods in question
are production goods, a factory council will allocate
the coupons. When the coupons are for rare or
dangerous medicines the hospitals or doctors will
allocate them ... these coupons will not serve the
purpose of remuneration . They will fulfil the role that
is currently fulfilled by a medical prescription . More
generally, the coupons' use will be determined by
the nature or by the scarcity of the goods for which
they will be " exchanged " .
Most of the goods subject to distribution,
especially food, must be distributed at no cost
and with no restrictions under the auspices of
the revolutionary committees and councils in the
revolutionary zones or by means of expropriations
in the non -liberated zones. This is the simplest,
the least costly and the most pleasant method
of distribution . It is the most suitable method
for popularizing communism . It is advisable to
apply this as a general rule, with the exception
of rigorous action against abuses resulting from
 Beyond Work * 73
petty enforcement of complicated rules and from
dissatisfaction with distribution norms.

Laziness
Won’t such a program be an invitation to mass
laziness? If it were possible to abolish the principle
of remuneration for labour while simultaneously
preserving the world as it is today, this would most
assuredly be true. Communism, however, transforms
the conditions of life and work in their entirety.
The revolutionary spirit is not a spirit of sacrifice:
each individual forgetting himself in order to serve
the collectivity. This is not communism—it is Maoism!
Communism presupposes a certain degree of
altruism but it also presupposes a certain degree
of egoism. Above all, it does not oppose love for
one’s neighbour to love for one’s self, asking each
individual to serve his neighbour. We don’t love
either the priests or the scroungers. It is capitalism
that causes the interest of the individual and that of
the collectivity to be constantly opposed to each
other: to give is to renounce.
Communist man will be neither the man of
self-abnegation nor the man who submits to fate.
The spiritual transformation that accompanies
communism will not be a mere substitute for
74 * A World Without Money: Communism

education. There will be no ideal image to which

one must conform. There will be no separation
between the transformation of social structures, on
the one hand, and the transformation of individuals,
on the other. It is capitalism that separates things
like that. The proletariat will dis-alienate itself and
can only do so by changing the world and its
conditions of existence. A few weeks of revolution
will shatter decades of conditioning. Cowardice,
greed and weakness of character are the results
of a certain kind of social condition. Deception,
the truncheon, or education will only be capable
of making people reject such base characteristics if
the situation that engendered them and made them
seem useful does not disappear. With communism
these kinds of approaches will disappear because
their corresponding objects have disappeared.
If there are egoists, incurable slackers and
irremediable incompetents they will not necessarily
pose a serious threat. The greatest enemy of such
people is not repression but boredom. The least
avid of them will surrender. Men are social animals.
They lack the courage to be useless in a collectivity
where they live. Even today the parasite and the
egoist have to dissimulate. Once the system of
wage labour is abolished it will be hard to nourish
illusions about one’s activity. Each person will be
 Beyond Work * 75

judged not by the time spent on some task but by

what they really accomplish.
Communism does not exclude disagreements
between individuals and groups. Slackers risk
being asked to account for themselves. If they are
supported and allowed to fatten themselves at
the expense of the community that is because the
community wants it that way.
Communists have nothing against a healthy
laziness. The revolutionary society was not created
so that we can work ourselves to the bone. We
have no problem with the lazy person who does
not demand from others what he rejects for himself.
We don’t mind if some high-spirited individuals
play their practical jokes, as long as they don’t try
to impose their personal tastes on everybody!
By replacing compulsory labour with
passionate activity the majority of the causes of
systematic laziness will disappear. Gone too will
be the irritation that the workaholic feels when he
sees someone goofing off, which is often nothing
but disguised envy.
Those who are lazy today are not necessarily
those who will be lazy in the world of tomorrow.
Among the latter will be those who now exert
themselves to exhaustion in the pursuit of profits;
they will need to be watched carefully.
76 * A World Without Money: Communism
In an established communist society, machinery
will grant man great power. Each person will be
able to choose his work rhythm. One person will
devote great efforts to costly adventures and will
spend more in terms of resources than he produces
for society. Another will not do much and society
will be in debt to him. Such debts shall not be
subject to accounting.
Once the financial incentive has disappeared
will the spirit of free inquiry and invention disappear
as well? No one will be satisfied doing his job in
a routine manner! It is a mistake to think that the
desire for profit and the spirit of free inquiry go
hand in hand. The merchant negotiates using the lie
and illusion. The scientist must always reject both.
Science makes its contribution and the invention
makes money but there is often a discrepancy
between those who discover and those who profit.
Even in the capitalist world the motor of scientific
passion is not money. Creativity and imagination
are recuperated for the purpose of making money.

Allocation of Tasks
By allowing laziness doesn’t our society run
the risk of collapsing into chaos? Even if good will
generally prevails, will it be enough to regulate
 Beyond Work * 77

the coordination of all necessary activities?

Won’t everybody rush to try to get an easy job
and abandon the hard jobs before machinery
is developed to perform the latter? In short, each
person, by doing what he wants, will lead the whole
world to catastrophe!
The view that modernsociety is very complicated
and that this complexity is inevitable is very
common. This is not just an illusion. The individual
feels lost in the capitalist jungle. He does not identify
with it, much less understand how it functions as a
whole. It is a mistake, however, to think that this
impression would apply to any modern society.
This idea is not necessarily due to the multitude of
operations and relations that constitute society as a
whole. It originated in the separation of the function
of decision and coordination, on the one hand, and
execution, on the other.
This impression of complexity and permanent
disorientation that capitalist society produces has
influenced some depictions of the socialist world
of the future. It is widely believed that the main
problem that has to be solved in the society of
the future is that of planning and coordination. A
“Plan Factory” has been imagined, an enterprise
that is responsible for evaluating the state of the
economy and determining the technical coefficients
78 * A World Without Money: Communism

that express the relative inputs of one product in the

production of another product: the quantity of coal
needed to produce one ton of steel, for example.
This “Factory” will propose attainable goals and
assume responsibility for the necessary revisions as
the plan is implemented. The problems of the future
society are thus understood primarily as problems of
management. (Chaulieu (Castoriadis), Socialisme
ou Barbarie No. 22)
The communist society will also have complex
problems to solve. The resolution of these questions
will not be the purview of any particular committee
or group. There is nothing to be gained from an
attempt to predict the forms that human activity will
take, but only in the determination of its content. It
will no longer be necessary to unite or to manage
something that will no longer be separate and
scattered. The free producer will address himself to
both his own activity and his connections with the
totality of general needs and possibilities.
In the revolutionary society relations between
men will be clear and transparent. The fear of
competition that renders the trade secret compulsory
will disappear. What is essential is not that every
person should attain competence in universal
science and that every brain should be a “Plan
Factory” in miniature. What good does it do me to
 Beyond Work * 79

know where the minerals came from that were used

to manufacture my fork! What matters is that the
necessary information should circulate freely and
should be available.
In a fluid society where the spirit of individualism
and enterprise patriotism will have disappeared,
where each person will have many useful skills,
individuals and groups will be oriented towards the
fulfilment of the needs of society.
Social needs will not be imposed from the
outside by means of a centralized office: whether
a democratic assembly or a dictatorial committee.
The individual or the group will no longer have to
submit to their consciousness of the situation if we
imagine this consciousness as a simple reflection
of external imperatives. We shall act safely in
recognition of our consciousness of social needs
and possibilities but not independently of our own
tastes and inclinations. Often, no compromises will
be necessary. We shall perceive in social needs
our own aspirations. We shall be more inclined to
apply a remedy where we perceive a deficiency. If
I lack wine it will not be necessary for me to acquire
information regarding the details of production on a
computer in order to deduce that perhaps the vines
need to be tended!
The communist man of the future will not separate
80 * A World Without Money: Communism

the fulfilment of his tastes from its social impact. He

will not throw himself into tasks that someone else
has already attended to. In any event it would
be stupid to think that the whole world should be
standardized and that those who work the same
jobs should follow the same fashion trends.
There will be a more acute awareness of what
society needs than is now the case. The whole
world will be able to be informed about and will
be capable of understanding what works and what
does not work, even if it does not have a direct effect
on everybody. Computers will be essential tools for
the circulation and interpretation of information .
Society's general organization has absolutely
no need for either one or several central planning
offices . Perhaps there will be certain individuals
who will be responsible for gathering data, and
drawing up projections for the future, but they will
not have to elaborate a "plan" in the compulsory
sense of the word. Such planning would amount to
a desire to chain the future to the present!
Coordination will not be the permanent job of
a particular caste. It will be carried out continuously
at all levels of society. Because men will not
be separated by a thousand barriers, they will
spontaneously associate.
This is not to say that everything will go
 Beyond Work * 81

smoothly. Conflicts will be inevitable. But the task

of the revolution is not to liberate society from all
kinds of conflict and thus to bring about a society
where everything is harmonized “a priori " . Certain
kinds of conflicts will be utterly eliminated, those
which sundered social classes and nationalities, for
example.... In the world we want there is a place
for both agreement and opposition . Harmony
and equilibrium will be brought about by way of
discussion and debate .
The basic difference with regard to the current
situation is that in the future society each individual
can only rely on his own personal forces in a conflict.
There will be no appeal to abstract rights derived
from the world of conflicts and concrete relations
of force. The opportunity to resort to a specialized
social force like the army or the police in order to
impose the " recognition " of the truth of a cause will
not be possible .
Communism will transform conflict into
something normal and necessary, subject to the
obvious condition that the possible gains from
conflict outweigh the damage it incurs. Capitalism
is profoundly conflict- ridden. It is based upon
the opposition between classes, nations and
individuals. It is a battle of all against all. Love and
"fraternity " were preached in order to exorcise
82 * A World Without Money: Communism

this reality. Aggression rules all, but the image of

" peace " must reign . If someone must be killed it is
not done in the name particular interests but for the
advancement of civilization, for universal values,
etc....

Doesn't a communist society run the risk of

wasting a great deal of time in talk and debate? This
is a risk we can take, considering the scale of the
problems of coordination and adjustment. The idea
that time is something that can be lost or gained
is itself somewhat odd . From the communist point
of view the problem cannot be narrowly focused
on discovering which method achieves the best
economy of time. What matters is the way this time
isused.
Will people get pleasure and become
interested in debates and attempts to bring about
harmony, or would they prefer to be satisfied with
implementing without debate the decisions of an
executive committee that will have arranged that
there will be no opposition ? Men will learn how to
debate and polemicize in a way they find pleasant.
The more tedious debates will be limited by the
boredom of the participants but also by the simple
fact that many things do not have to be debated, for
we can rely on past experience.
 Beyond Work * 83

Undesirable Jobs
There are some jobs that are frankly nasty and
unpleasant. We hope to reduce their number with
the use of machinery, but until then they will still
have to be done; nor can we eliminate all of them.
It would be unacceptable, and would not in any
case be accepted by those involved, for these bad
jobs to always be done by the same persons. It will
be necessary to allocate them among the greatest
number of persons who will take turns doing them.
The resulting loss of efficiency will be a matter of
secondary importance.
In the factories and other productive facilities
we will be able to peacefully divest ourselves of
unpleasant jobs.
At the level of society as a whole these bad
jobs will also be subject to the principle of rotation
of personnel. Everyone will have at least one
assignment each year as a garbage collector.
The impact of the bad jobs will seem much
less when compared to the time spent on pleasant
activities. Today jobs are extremely specialized,
as the requirements of the “rational” use of labour
power demand that each worker should do one
particular routine and leave the rest for other
workers. In communist society the researcher will
84 * A World Without Money: Communism
be able to participate in cleaning the lab he uses,
the driver will be able to help pave the roads, and
who is better-placed than the dead man to dig his
own grave?
Disagreeable activities will be much less
disagreeable if those who do them only devote a
small part of their time to them, and do not labour
under the impression—as is now the case—that they
will be chained to them their whole life. Above all,
such activities can be carried out in an environment
quite different from the one they take place in today:
without harassing foremen, without the obsession
for profit. Garbage collection could, for example,
take on a carnival-like aspect.
Many undesirable jobs are considered as such
not so much by virtue of their actual nature as due
to the fact that, in the name of the rationalization of
labour, they are executed in mass production and
always by the same persons.
These transformations in the rhythm, the
distribution and the very nature of jobs will not
be programmed in advance and planned from
“above”. They will be carried out in the workplace
in the context of the desires of the people involved.
If someone involved in a particular productive
process is passionately attached to driving a forklift
or some other task that is not generally held in high
 Beyond Work * 85

esteem, it would obviously be absurd to deprive

him of his pleasure.
We are not fanatics of equality. It would be
stupid if, with surgeons in short supply, we forced
them to work as nurses. Such inequalities cannot be
attenuated except by means of the retraining and
transfer of people to truly useful sectors.

The End of Separations

Communism means the end of the separations
that compartmentalize our lives.
Work life and emotional life will no longer be
opposed. There will no longer be separate times
for production and for consumption. Schools,
production facilities, sites for entertainment … will
no longer be distinct and separate universes with
nothing in common. They will gradually disappear
withthe disappearance of theirspecialized functions.
Within the productive process, hierarchical divisions
and the fragmentation of human activities will be
confronted. This will mark the end of the situation
where the worker is the executor of the designer,
the designer the executor of the engineer, the
engineer the executor of the financial department
or management.
Bringing these changes to fruition will take some
86 * A World Without Money: Communism

time. We cannot immediately erase our current way

of life, or our type of technological development,
or certain human customs and defects. We shall
nonetheless immediately implement measures to
initiate this process and to make its effects felt by
abolishing commodity production and the wages
system.
The separation of one’s work life on the one
side and one’s emotional and family life on the
other is linked to the development of wage labour.
The peasant was uprooted from his land and his
family to be integrated into the industrial universe.
Previously, the family constituted the unity of life and
of production. The man and his wife, but also the
children and the elderly, participated in farm labour
and gathered wood. Each person found something
useful to do that was within his capacities.
Reactionaries like to defend the endangered
“family”. These cretins just cannot understand that it
is precisely the order they defend that transformed
the family into what it is today. Kinship ties were
elements of mutual aid in the agricultural world.
They extended beyond the immediate family and
its direct descendants. Today the family is only the
place where babies are produced—and sometimes
not even babies: its economic role is that of a unit
of consumption! The basic institution, the elemental
 Beyond Work * 87

cell of highly developed capitalist society, is not the

family, but the business enterprise.
It is not our intention to restore the old patriarchal
family so it can take over production from the
capitalist enterprise. Blood ties were capable of
playing a great role in the past. They no longer play
such a role in the modern world.
In communist society, in order to carry out
productive or non-productive activity, people will
not be brought together by the power of capital.
We shall associate freely in accordance with our
shared tastes and affinities. Relations between
persons will be as important or even more important
than production itself.
We are not claiming that occupational and
amorous connections will exactly coincide. This will
be a matter of choice and of chance. It will be much
more likely than it is now.
Some people wish to depict communism as a
system that makes women and children common
property. This is stupidity.
Amorous relations have no other guarantee
than love. Children will not be tied to their parents
by the need to eat. The feeling of ownership over
persons will disappear along with the feeling
of ownership over things. This is very disturbing
to those who need the guarantee of the priest or
88 * A World Without Money: Communism

the judge . Marriage will disappear as a state-

sanctioned sacrament. The question of whether two
or three... or ten people want to live together or
even enter into an agreement to do so is nobody's
business but their own . We shall not determine or
limit in advance the forms of sexual relations that
are possible, healthy or desirable. Even chastity will
not be totally rejected . It is a perversion that is just as
worthy as any other! What is important, besides the
pleasure and the satisfaction of the couple, is that
the children live in an environment that responds to
their need for material security and affection . This is
not something that can be left to morality.
Hypocrisy rules over the remains of the family
putrefied by the commodity. Love is said to exist
where there is actually nothing but economic or
emotional security or sexual gratification. Relations
between parents and children have reached the pit
of degradation . Under the veil of affection the will
to exploit answers the desire for possession . The
birth of a child burdens the parents with worries
about the child's future. The child must play with
his toys, get good grades in school, and show that
he is intelligent and well behaved, alert and full of
initiative . In exchange he receives a little affection
or pocket money.
The family, in need of security and love
 Beyond Work * 89

in a cold, hard world, is not immune to the

commercialized reality in the workplace, where the
expenditure of too much emotion is avoided. The
superficial amiability and constant handshaking
conceal contempt, rivalry and exploitation.
Everyone is good, everyone is friendly, everyone
communicates, but above all everyone is terribly
annoyed by each other’s presence.

Production and Consumption

The separation of production from consumption
appears to be a natural division between two very
distinct spheres of social life. Nothing could be
more false. This can be viewed from two angles.
First, the frontier between what is called
production time and consumption time is quite
mobile when considered historically, and quite
confused when considered in its ideological
dimension. In which category should we put
cooking, or sports? It depends on whether those
involved are professionals or amateurs. The cardinal
point is not the nature itself of the activity: cooking
is more productive than the postal service in the
sense that it presupposes a material transformation,
whether or not those engaged in it are paid wages.
Many activities that pertain to consumption
90 * A World Without Money: Communism

have fallen under the sign of production. The

astronaut or the invalid who breathes from an
oxygen tank and the housewife, who buys ground
coffee or jars of jam, participate in the shifting of the
frontiers between these two spheres.
The split between production and consumption
conceals the continuing importance of unpaid
housework in the modern world. It confers a fixed
and natural appearance on a separation that is
actually flexible and socially determined.
Secondly, all productive activity is also
necessarily consumption. It does nothing but
transform matter in a certain way and in a certain
sense. At the same time that it destroys, or, if you
prefer, consumes certain things, we obtain, or,
if you prefer, we produce others. Consumption
is productive; production is also consumption.
Production and consumption are the two
inseparable sides of the same coin.
The concepts of production and consumption
are not neutral. It cannot be said that they are
bourgeois. But bourgeois society uses them. A
fruit tree is not bourgeois because it produces fruit.
The notion of production assumes an ideological
character because behind the idea of creation and
growth lies the idea of consciousness and planning.
The confusion of the two concepts is preserved.
 Beyond Work * 91

Everything ends up being interpreted in the terms

of production. A chicken becomes a factory to
manufacture eggs.
The continuity of the cycle through which
primitive or civilized, capitalist or communist man
modifies the world in which he lives in a simple
or an intelligent way, individually or collectively,
irreversibly or temporarily, on a large scale or in
minor details, and transforms himself as well, is
thus disguised. The totalitarian use of the idea of
production conceals the radical insertion in and
dependence of the human being on his environment
and natural laws. Everything is interpreted in
terms of domination and instrumentality. Man the
producer, self-conscious and self-controlled, starts
with the conquest of nature. The vast power that
humanity conferred upon the image of divinity can
be directly attributed to humanity’s own self-image.
Communism is not the victory of consciousness over
unconsciousness. It is not the stage in which, after
having been devoted to the production of things,
man will at last be able to produce himself, and take
over in a way from the divine creator. To say that
man will be his own master just as he is the master
of the object that he produces is to seek to reunite
what has been separated and thus separation itself
under the sign of production. The producer will thus
92 * A World Without Money: Communism

not cease to be an object; he will simply be his own

object.
The split between production and consumption
is confronted in order to abolish the separation—a
separation that is concrete enough but arbitrary
from the point of view of nature and psychology—
between the time employed on making money and
the time employed on spending it.
For the communist man consumption will not be
opposed to production since there will no longer be
a conflict between acting for oneself and acting for
others. This is because by producing for others, he
creates use values that can serve him as well. He
will not produce shoes in order to later be obliged to
buy them on the market. Above all, production will
be transformed and it will become creation, poetry
and potlatch. Groups or individuals will express
themselves through their activity. In this respect
the revolution is the generalization of art and its
supersession as a separate commercial sector.
Extending our reflections within the context of the
opposition between consumption and production,
it can be said that by having found satisfaction
and pleasure (or the opposites, dissatisfaction and
displeasure) through his productive activity, man
will be a consumer. The computer or the shovel
he will use will not have a fundamentally different
 Beyond Work * 93

value from the automobile or the food that he will

use at another time.
Communism is by no means production finally
put at the service of the consumer, nor can it be,
as is the case with capitalism, the dictatorship of
production. By engaging in an activity, one will
acquire a certain power. Up to a point one will
be able to do what one wants with the fruit of
one’s labours, and give up or keep what one has
produced. Above all, by providing this or that good
or service and giving it a particular form, one will
have an impact on the possibilities of society. The
activity of the end-users will be determined by that
of the producers. There is no incentive for the latter
to abuse a power that by no means can assume the
form of political or separate power but is the simple
expression of the usefulness of their jobs.
The “consumer” will not be able to reproach
the producer for the imperfection of what he does
in the name of the money that he did not give in
exchange, but will be able to simply criticize him
not from the outside but from the inside. The object
of his criticism will be their common labour if he
participates in the same production process. If an
individual is not satisfied with what the producer is
doing or not doing he will not be able to appeal
to his abstract rights as a consumer. He will have
94 * A World Without Money: Communism

no other recourse than to oppose his own ability to

do it better or at least to attempt to make his own
suggestions or contributions prevail. Criticism will
be impassioned and positive. It will not take the
form of complaining and then not doing anything
about it.

Production and Education

The separation between productive life and
education is not the fruit of necessity. It cannot
be explained by the increasing importance
of knowledge and training. Instead we must
understand why it is necessary for knowledge to no
longer be the direct fruit of experience.
The basis of this split lies in the fact that the
proletariat must not be able to attend to his own
self-improvement, his pleasure or his education,
when he is engaged in production. This separation
that is so essential for the survival of the world
of the economy comes at a very high price. It
implies the immobilization of a major part of the
population in schools, vocational training centres
and universities who could be much more useful
and have much more fun outside these institutions.
This does not allow for the effective adaptation of
human abilities to the requirements of the activities
 Beyond Work * 95

they must later undertake. This kind of in vitro

training is complemented by an apprenticeship in
the workplace that is often carried out secretly.
The education system is presented as a “public
service” that is above the distinctions of social
classes. We are supposed to take its usefulness
for granted. Who would dare to be an apostle of
ignorance? Enlightened minds attack the curriculum.
They accuse it of being archaic, of being separated
from real life, that it is contributing to subversion.
According to their recommendations students
should be taught to read the Bible, The Communist
Manifesto or the Kamasutra!
The most extreme critics put the blame on the
education system itself. They do not do so in the
name of combating its deadly “efficiency”, but
rather its inefficiency! They take on the school in
order to thereby defend pedagogy all the more
effectively.
It is necessary to learn and to learn forever. To
swallow this insipid paste called culture. The world
is so complicated! You do not understand it? Then
you need a “refresher course”.
People have never before learned so much
and never have they been so ignorant with respect
to what concerns their own lives. They have been
crushed, beaten to a pulp by the mass of information
96 * A World Without Money: Communism

that oozes from the university, the newspapers,

and the television. The truth will never come from
the accumulation of commodity-knowledge. It is a
dead knowledge that is incapable of understanding
life because its nature is precisely to be separated
from experience and real life.
The school is where one learns to read, to write
and to add and subtract. But the school is above
all else an apprenticeship in renunciation. That is
where we learn to do what we do not want to do,
to respect authority, to compete with our friends, to
dissimulate, and to lie. That is where the present is
sacrificed for the sake of the future.
Communism is the decolonization of childhood.
There will never again be the need for a particular
institution for education. Are you worried about
how children will learn how to read? You should be
more concerned about how they will learn how to
speak.
The school dissociates and inculcates the
dissociation of the effort or process of learning and
its necessity. What matters is that the child learns to
read because it is necessary to learn to read rather
than to satisfy his curiosity or his love for books. The
paradoxical result is that literacy is on the decline at
the same time that the taste for reading and the real
ability to read has been eliminated in most people.
 Beyond Work * 97
In communist society the child will learn to read and
write because he will feel the need to learn and to
express himself. The world of childhood, because
it will not be separated from the rest of the world
and from social life in general, will engender in the
child an imperative need to learn. He will learn to
read and to write as naturally as he will learn to
walk and talk. He will not do this entirely on his
own. He will find that his older friends or his parents
will help him. The difficulties he encounters will
prove useful. By overcoming them he will learn how
to learn. By not receiving knowledge in the form
of a pre-digested baby food from the hands of a
teacher, he will become accustomed to observing
and listening, he will be capable of elaborating his
understanding and making deductions on the basis
of his experience. This will be the reward of real
life as opposed to the educational or vocational
programming of human beings.
Men will share their experience and will
communicate their discoveries. The times and
places for this sharing and communication will be
chosen on the basis of their convenience. The form
this relation will assume will not be determined
in advance. It will depend on the content of the
knowledge mutually exchanged by those interested
in the topic. At the risk of displeasing the fanatics of
98 * A World Without Money: Communism

intensive pedagogy, if 10 or 10,000 people want

to know what one individual knows, the simplest
solution would be to reinvent the lecture hall.
The modern interest in pedagogy reflects the
fact that teaching methods are not imposed on
the basis of a particular content. When there is no
longer anything to say, the content of the lesson
becomes interchangeable, and then the form of the
lesson is debated. It is when the soup is bad that
one becomes interested in how clean the bowl is.
What will happen in the world of capitalist
production if the workers were to frequently really
avail themselves of the right to experiment and were
not judged by their immediate profitability? They
would quickly forget why they were hired. They
would get experience from their experiments, and
their experiments would lead to further experience.
By not producing they will quickly abandon
efficiency in favour of pleasurable research, since
no one is interested in what is being produced.
The joy of discovery and the elation of freedom,
total chaos and a festive atmosphere, will replace
the repetitive routine. The contacts that will be
developed among the workers under the pretext of
improving production by means of the exchange of
experience will be able to take new forms. Why not
surrender to the intoxicating happiness of collective
 Beyond Work * 99
sabotage, why not organize games, why not
reorganize and transform production in a way that
would make it directly useful to the workers?
The principle of the system of wage labour
militates against the possibility of trusting the workers,
and instead subjects them to the requirements of a
system of production that does not interest them.
The most alienated, the most beaten down, and the
most menial wage workers will not be retained by
this slippery system. One cannot leave a worker to
his own devices during the production process. If
he is left on his own he will amuse himself by taking
action against the capital that denies his humanity.
He must be treated like a tool.
The capitalist division between production and
training has its limits.
It is impossible to completely dissociate
production, education and research. In production,
even the least difficult job demands a certain degree
of adaptability in the worker and the ability to deal
with unforeseen circumstances. Similarly, the most
abstract learning must find practical realization in
some “product”, even if it is a “crib” used to pass an
examination. The necessity of external control has
an impact on production.
The student is not a sheet of paper on which
knowledge is inscribed. He will not be able to learn
100 * A World Without Money: Communism

anything as long as he is completely passive. The

period of apprenticeship cannot be totally separated
from experience and the production process, even if
it is separated from the strictly economic sphere. The
school serves to provide a boundary and content to
this limited activity and to disconnect it completely
from real life. Teaching functions and continues to
exist thanks to the principles it rejects. This is just as
true of reading as it is of writing. Thus, the latter is
the negation of all communication . The student must
learn to express himself in writing, regardless of
what he has to say and regardless as well of whom
he is addressing(!).... It is a completely vacuous
exercise. If the student writes, because he is forced
to write, he will not be able to do so except by
engaging in some type of communication. In this
respect the student is like the worker who, compelled
to work, can only carry out his assigned labour in
collaboration up to a certain point. He cannot be a
simple executor or machine.
The production system would collapse if the
workers did not engage in experiments, if they
did not assist one another, if they did not carry on
discussions among themselves. The hierarchical
organization of labour can only survive if its
rules are constantly ignored. The hierarchical
organization of labour imposes certain limits on
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 101

these illicit and disrespectful activities as well as on

the spontaneous activity of the workers in order to
prevent them from spreading and becoming really
subversive and a threat to the system.

5. Money and the Estimation

of Costs
Communism is a world without money. But
the disappearance of money does not signify the
end of all evaluation of costs. The societies and
human activities of the past, present and future are
necessarily faced with this problem whether or not
they use monetary symbols. The criteria selected for
these evaluations obviously vary according to the
essential nature of the society in question.

Money
In a highly developed capitalist society, where
money has become the general equivalent for
products, money appears in the eyes of all as a
necessity even if everyone does not have the same
amount and does not use it in the same way. It is
a good that is almost as necessary for human life
and almost as natural as oxygen. Can one survive
without money? Both the rich and the poor have to
102 * A World Without Money: Communism

reach for their wallets to cover their most essential

needs or their most frivolous whims.
Corresponding to the objective, although
limited, place occupied by money, there is the
subjective and imaginary place occupied by
money in the social consciousness. All wealth is
eventually assimilated by monetary wealth by the
servants of the economy. Things that have no price
seem to lose all value even if they are the most
indispensable goods required for life: air, water,
sunlight, sperm and soap bubbles. Paradoxically,
our era has finally, although in the sense that the
triumphant commodity assumes responsibility for
turning everything into a commodity value, bottled
water and deposited sperm in a bank.
Where the vulgar are content with noting
the ubiquity and the omnipotence of money and
attempt to avail themselves of the favours of this
capricious divinity, the learned economists assume
responsibility for apologetics in its favour. Not only
is money indispensable in today’s society, and
indeed is based upon an unfortunately undisputed
everyday experience, but it is indispensable for
all social existence that is even minimally civilized.
Monetary circulation is to the social body what the
circulation of the blood is to the human body. The
history of progress is the history of the progress of
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 103

money, from the primitive forms of money to today's

letter of credit. Do you want to liberate society
from money? You must be mentally retarded, an
advocate of a return to barter. We may mention in
passing that not only has capitalism not eliminated
this much -discredited barter but has constantly
reinvented it, notably at the level of international
exchange.
Money has become a veil that has dissimulated
economic reality. Gone are the milling machines,
the engineers, spaghetti ... only dollars or roubles
appear. It is always necessary for the control over
money, its creation, its circulation and its distribution
to correspond to an in-depth control of the entirety
of use values into which the economy is converted.
Hence the deception .
Money is often the focus of dissatisfaction but
it is not the existence of money itself that arouses
discontent but the parsimonious way it finds its way
into our wallets. The more it is criticized, the more
of it is demanded . Everyone wants to destroy the
golden calf and abolish idolatry, but only in order
to more effectively fill their own pockets. You have
the choice between the brutalization of labour, the
risk of getting mugged, and the randomness of the
lottery....
Although the economists will object, we have to
104 * A World Without Money: Communism
say that money is a very strange thing. This becomes
clear the moment that one ceases to think about it
and its undeniable economic utility in order to focus
instead on its usefulness for humanity.
Let us try to be naïve for a moment.
How is it possible, by what kind of infernal
magic, that wealth, which makes possible the
satisfaction of needs, has come to be interred in
money? It was free to take any particular form
to become visible, it could have appealed to our
memories of the good times and to the example of
Our Lord Jesus Christ, by choosing bread and wine
which are things that are useful and agreeable. But,
no! It preferred to embody itself in the form of gold
and silver, which are among the most rare and least
useful metals. Even worse, today it only shows itself
to the common run of mortals in the form of paper.
The only need that money responds to is the
need to exchange, and it will disappear with the
disappearance of exchange.
It is monstrous to want to abolish money while
preserving exchange or wanting to equalize
exchange in all of its applications. During the early
19th century some “Ricardian Socialists” proposed
that commodities should be exchanged directly
with respect to the quantity of labour required
for their production. The Bolsheviks Bukharin and
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 105

Preobrazhensky advocated the same illusion in

1919 :

"Thus, from the very outset of the socialist

revolution, money begins to lose its significance.
All the nationalised undertakings, just like the
single enterprise of a wealthy owner will have
a common counting- house, and will have no need
of money for reciprocal purchases and sales. By
degrees a moneyless system of account-keeping
will come to prevail. Thanks to this, money will no
longer have anything to do with one great sphere
of the national economy. As far as the peasants are
concerned, in their case likewise money will cease
by degrees to have any importance, and the direct
exchange of commodities will come to the front
once more .... The gradual disappearance of money
will likewise be promoted by the extensive issue of
paper money by the State.... But the most forcible
blow to the monetary system will be delivered
by the introduction of budget- books and by the
payment of the workers in kind .... "

– Nikolai Bukharin and Evgeny Preobrazhensky,

'The ABC of Communism , The University of Michigan
Press, Ann Arbor, 1966, pp. 334-335
106 * A World Without Money: Communism

Attempts were made to at least partially de-

monetize the economy by expressing transactions
between enterprises only by means of quantifiable
operations. Nothing very notable or very communist
was thereby achieved.

Congratulations
In the communist world products will circulate
without money having to circulate in the opposite
direction. A balance will not be established at either
the household or the enterprise level: all output of
commodities will not correspond to an entry of
money and vice-versa. It will be established directly
in a comprehensive way and will be measured
directly for the satisfaction of needs.
By the end of exchange we obviously do not
mean that children will no longer be able to trade
marbles or baseball cards or affectionate caresses.
A limited degree of barter will subsist on a small
scale. Above all at the beginning it will fill gaps in
the general network of production and remedy any
of its rigidities.
The best proof that the secret of money does not
lie in its material nature is that monetary standards
have changed according to time and place. Salt and
cattle were once able to play this role. The precious
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 107

metals, notably gold, were finally selected only due

to their uselessness. In a time of scarcity gold cannot
be withdrawn from circulation and consumed.
When gold is withdrawn from circulation in order to
be hoarded or to be used in ornamentation this is a
result of its economic value. Its qualities and above
all its rarity have given it priority at a certain level
of economic development. In the first stage of the
commodity system salt could be used as money due
to its usefulness and due to the fact that its sources
were concentrated in certain locations. It was the
perfect object of circulation.
Today money demonstrates a tendency
towards dematerialization. Its value is no longer
backed by any other particular commodity but by
the banking and financial system that control and
manipulate it. It is still a means of exchange but has
become above all an instrument at the service of
capital. This allows it to be managed and utilized
adequately to finance investments, and to provide
credit to capital.
The destruction of money does not mean
burning banknotes and confiscating or melting
down gold coins. Such measures may be necessary
for symbolic or psychological reasons, in order to
disorganize the system. But they are not enough.
Money would reappear under other forms if the
108 * A World Without Money: Communism

need for and the possibility of money were to

persist. Wheat, canned sardines, sugar could be
means of exchange and payment for labour. "You
do this work, I will give you ten kilos of sugar with
which you can obtain meat, alcohol or a straw hat. "
The problem is, first of all , that of the struggle for
production, for organization, against scarcity. Next
comes the enactment of repressive and dissuasive
measures with respect to those who would seek to
use the period of reconversion to operate on the
black market. Gold and other precious materials
will be requisitioned by the revolutionary authorities
so as to eventually be exchanged with those
sectors not yet under revolutionary control, for arms
and for subsistence goods.
Money is the expression of wealth, but of
commodity wealth . It is not itself the direct satisfaction
of needs, but the means to satisfy them . It is therefore
also the wall that separates the individual from his
own needs.
The aspirations of men are the reflection of
the things, the commodities that confront them . To
have needs and to satisfy them is to be capable
of buying and consuming. In this game one can
only be swindled . Wealth, real happiness, cannot
be acquired and must be publicly displayed as an
unattainable dream .
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 109

The Law of Value

Money is used for exchange. But money also
signifies measurement. What money measures in
exchange, the price of the commodity, has its origin
outside the sphere of exchange.
How is an equilibrium established, within the
capitalist system, between what is produced and
what is consumed? Between the effort expended
and the benefit obtained? How is one choice
determined to be more rational than another?
The problem applies to each particular
commodity, which is a use value and an exchange
value at the same time. The use value is the benefit
that the commodity can supply. The consumer is
thought to be able to directly assess this use value.
Exchange value, expressed in the price, corresponds
to the expense for which this good is purchased. It
takes the form of monetary expenditure for the buyer
but is above all and in principle an expenditure of
labour.
The price of a good is determined by the forces
that are exercised at the level of the market, by supply
and demand. Beyond this aspect, however, price
refers to the cost of production that is expended in
labour directly utilized and in the labour contained
in the materials used for production.
110 * A World Without Money: Communism

Each commodity therefore expresses the need

for an equilibrium between the social expenditure
and the social profit, which is reflected in the need for
a financial equilibrium between business enterprises
and households . The need for an equilibrium, but
not of exactly that equilibrium ! A good's price only
corresponds in a very distorted way to the quantity
of real labour effectively expended in its production
and likewise to the socially necessary quantity of
labour needed for its production . Equilibrium is not
established at the level of the individual commodity
but at the level of the system as a whole. And here
this equilibrium is rather a kind of disequilibrium .
So, is the price of a commodity determined by the
quantity of labour that it contains ? Yes and no . Yes,
because price has a tendency to vary in proportion
to the increase of productivity, because a product
that requires twice the time to produce than another
runs the risk of costing twice as much, because the
total mass of labour determines the total value of
commodities . No, because one cannot establish a
necessary and direct link between each commodity
and the labour it contains . And this is true because
if the price of a commodity were actually to be
determined by the concrete labour crystallized
in it, then the lower the productivity, the lazier the
workers and the more expensive the commodity! In
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 111

reality, those that have high cost prices are not at all
favoured on the market. Those that win the market
competition are those that economize on the costs
of production and labour. And this is so because
the formation of prices is affected by the tendency
towards the establishment of an average rate of
profit.
What then remains of the law of labour-value
inherited from the classical economists that says
that the value of things is determined by the labour
contained in them? This law is a general law that,
by means of the formation of prices, determines
the general developmental trends of the system.
Capital expands and is distributed as a result of
the economies of labour time that it can realize.
Like a river, even if its path is not the shortest route,
even if it meanders in oxbows, even if it has many
bends, finally it blindly follows its natural slope
by destroying everything that stands in its way.
The unnoticed profit that capitalism generates in
order to invest here or there, to choose this or that
technology or machinery, far from contradicting this
tendency is nothing but the tortuous path by which
it is imposed.
Finally, the law of value does not refer so much
to the connection between the commodity and its
price on the one hand, and on the other between the
112 * A World Without Money: Communism

creative labour and its dissociation. By converting

labour into value, the particular task is separated
from labour and from the worker in order to be
situated as a satellite in economic space, in which
it moves according to its own laws. When all the
commodities become autonomous and compete
with each other they end up by obtaining the value
among themselves by way of exchange and by
means of money. With communism, the law of
value disappears, a law whose development was
intimately bound with that of exchange and that of
the latter’s influence on human activity.
What about the global equilibrium between
expenses and income within the system itself? This
equilibrium is a disequilibrium. From the point of
view of value society produces more than it spends.
The surplus is accumulated. Without this capital
would not be capital.
Marx has shown that there is a special
commodity that has the property of producing
more value than is required for its production.
This explains why capital in motion grows, from
transaction to transaction, instead of remaining the
same. This commodity is labour power; its price,
which is lower than the value it creates, is the wage.
The difference is the surplus value.
The worker does not sell his labour on what
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 113

is falsely called “the labour market”, but his

capacity to work, a part of his time. Labour is not a
commodity; it has no value. It is the basis of value.
Labour, Engels said, has as much value as gravity
has weight.
When capital emerges from the sphere of
circulation in order to enter the den of realization,
the expenditure of the unpaid labour of the workers
is increased, without which the law of value would
be a joke; if this were not so then profit would
appear to arise from mere price gouging or else
would have to break with the laws of exchange.
Each commodity-capital can be broken down
into constant capital, which corresponds to the
amortization of the raw materials and machinery
utilized, variable capital, which corresponds to the
wages, and surplus value or added value, which
corresponds to unpaid labour.
Money is the bearer of a profound mystification.
It conceals the original nature of the expenditure
that really created the product. Behind wealth, even
mercantile wealth, are nature and human effort.
Money seems to produce interest, it seems to breed.
The only source of value, however much it appears
to derive from commerce and all the more so the
more it does derive from commerce, is labour.
It is true that the most servile economists assign
114 * A World Without Money: Communism

a small place to labour as a source of wealth

alongside capital and land. This does not even
partially abolish the mystification. It is not labour as
such to which this favour is conceded, it is labour
as a counterpart of labour as an accounting entry.
It is not money that is reduced to labour but the
contrary, it is labour that is reduced, by way of the
wage, to money.

Free Distribution
One might be tempted to conclude that, with
the disappearance of money, communist society
will no longer have to regulate costs, and that it will
not have to calculate the value of things. This is a
fundamental error.
The fact that a good or service is distributed free
of charge is one thing. The assertion that this costs
nothing is something else entirely. This illusion is a
direct legacy of the functioning of the commodity
system. We are accustomed to identify cost with
payment. We only see the payment, the monetary
expenditure. We overlook the expenditure in effort
and materials that gave rise to the product in the
first place.
In capitalism as well as in communism free
distribution is not equivalent to the absence of costs.
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 115

The difference between communist free distribution

and capitalist free distribution is that the latter is
merely a semblance of free distribution; in the
capitalist version, payment has not been eliminated,
but has simply been deferred or shifted to another
party. The fact that education and advertising are
free does not mean that they are external to the
commodity system and that the consumer does
not ultimately pay for them. The freely distributed
commodity is a very perverse thing. It implies
an imposed or semi-imposed consumption, and
hinders our ability to make choices and to refuse
what is “offered” to us.
In the new society the cost of things will have
to be ascertained and if necessary calculated
in advance. Not because of a Manichaeism of
accounting procedures or to avoid fraud, which will
no longer have any reason to exist. It will be done in
order provide the framework for deciding whether
the particular expense incurred was justifiable,
and to reduce it if at all possible. There will have
to be an effort to assess the positive and negative
effects on the human and natural environment of the
satisfaction of a need or the implementation of a
new project.
A needle, or a car—are the time and the
effort devoted to their production as well as all the
116 * A World Without Money: Communism

concomitant social costs of their use justified? Is it

better to build a production facility in this location
or somewhere else? Is a certain production process
justified in consideration of its utilization of finite
mineral resources? One cannot leave such things to
chance or intuition. It is easy to see that all of this
implies evaluation, calculation and forecasting.
If we retain the notion of cost, which is so
redolent of economism, this is because it is not simply
a matter of choice and measurement, an intellectual
process, but a physical expenditure. Regardless of
the technical level there will be activities that are
more costly and jobs that are more arduous than
others. It would be especially sad and strange if
everything were to become easy and a matter of
indifference in a communist society, even more so
than it would be if this were to happen to other kinds
of societies.
The commodity presents a double face: use
value and exchange value. They seem to depend
on two irreducible orders.
Use value, or utility, depends on the qualitative.
The user compares and evaluates the airplane and
the orange, in order to decide which would suit him
better. The choice cannot be made independently
of his situation and his concrete needs.
Exchange value depends on the quantitative.
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 117

Goods are all evaluated and objectively arranged

in the framework of a single standard, whether the
goods in question are airplanes or oranges.
Communism is not so much a world that
perpetuates the realm of use value, finally liberated
from the exchange value that parasitized it, as a
world where exchange value is repudiated and
becomes use value. Advantage and disadvantage
come from the same order of things and are no
longer either united or separated back to back.
Value ceases to be value in order to reappear
as concrete and diversified expenditure. Labour
ceases to be the basis and the guarantee of value.
There is no longer a single standard that allows
for quantitative comparisons between all things,
but concrete expenditures and labours, of various
degrees of burdensomeness which should also be
taken into account. Having ceased to perform its
role as the basis of value unified by the exchange
process, labour ceases to be LABOUR.

“The bourgeois economy is a double economy.

The bourgeois individual is not a man, but a

trading company. We want to destroy all trading
companies. We want to abolish the double
economy in order to found a new one that is one
118 * A World Without Money: Communism

single unit, which history already knew during the

times when the cave man went to collect as many
coconuts as there were comrades in his cave, with
his hands as his only tools.”

– Amadeo Bordiga, ‘Property and Capital’,

1950

Everything will be free because the “gift” will

replace the act of selling. Those who carry out
one or another kind of labour with the object of
satisfying their own desires or being useful to others,
will be paid directly by their own efforts.
Is this something new? No, since even today it
never occurs to anybody to charge anyone else for
the price of the saliva they used up in the course of a
debate. In a conversation one does not exchange a
certain time for speaking or a certain decibel level,
one attempts to say what one has to say, because
one feels that it has to be said. The interlocutor or
the auditor does not owe us anything in exchange
for their attention. Awaiting a response, the risk
of running into incomprehension, silence, or the
lie, are all part of the game. They are neither the
expectation of payment nor the risks of the market.
In everyday life the word is not a commodity;
speaking is not a job.
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 119

What is true today of the word, when it is not

recorded and sold as a commodity, will be true
tomorrow for all of production. The estimation of
the cost of production will no longer be distinct from
the effort dedicated to its fulfilment. The very first
step in this calculation will be the impulse that will
lead towards this or that kind of activity. A book or
a pair of shoes will be “offered” in the same way
that words can be offered today. The gift implies, up
to a certain point, reciprocity, the word implies the
response, but this is no longer the anonymous and
antagonistic process of exchange.

Labour Time
Since the time of Ricardo, the official economist
of the English bourgeoisie, who during the early
1800s maintained that the value of a product was
based on the quantity of labour necessary for its
production, there has been no lack of people who
demanded that the worker should receive the whole
value of his product. Profit was morally condemned
as theft. The problem of socialism was thus the
problem of remuneration, of a fair day’s pay.
An American communist, F. Bray, went even
further. He saw equal exchange as not the solution,
but a means for preparing the solution which is the
120 * A World Without Money: Communism

community of goods. He envisioned a transitional

period when no one could get rich by receiving
only the value of his labour. Each worker would
receive from the public warehouses the equivalent
of what he had produced in the form of various
objects. Equilibrium would therefore be maintained
between production and consumption .
In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx rendered
homage to Bray but also criticized him . Either equal
exchange leads to capitalism :

"Mr. Bray does not see that this equalitarian

relation, this corrective ideal that he would like to
apply to the world, is itself nothing but the reflection
of the actual world; and that therefore it is totally
impossible to reconstitute society on the basis of
what is merely an embellished shadow of it. In
proportion as this shadow takes on substance,
far from being the transfiguration dreamt of, is the
actual body of existing society. " [/i ] Or else it leads
to exchange: "What is today the result of capital
and the competition of workers among themselves
will be tomorrow, if you sever the relation between
labour and capital, an actual agreement based
upon the relation between the sum of productive
forces and the sum of existing needs. But such
an agreement is a condemnation of individual
exchange .... "
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 121

– Karl Marx, ‘The Poverty of Philosophy’,

Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1978, pp. 70-72

Not wanting to resort to exchange, certain

revolutionaries, Marx and Engels in the forefront,
understood the imperious need to regulate the
problem of costs and their accounting in the future
society. They looked for a standard of measurement
to evaluate and to compare costs.
The standard proposed has commonly been
that of the quantity of labour. This quantity has been
measured by time, corrected at times by taking the
intensity of the labour into account. All of society’s
investments can in this way be reduced to a certain
expenditure of time. The orange and the airplane no
longer correspond to a certain quantity of money
but to a given number of hours of labour. Despite
the differences in their nature they can be compared
according to the same scale of measurement.
This procedure seems logical. What could
different goods have in common besides the labour
they contain? This was where Marx started in [i]
Capital when he was describing labour as the
source of value. What other standard could be
found?
122 * A World Without Money : Communism

Marx and Engels adopted this idea without

pausing to consider the practical details. Others
have tried to elaborate it in more detail, basing
it upon a precise accounting of hours of labour,
that would allow for the evaluation of every good
produced.
For our part, we have not evoked the call to
go " beyond labour" only to immediately fall back
miserably upon the measurement of labour time, at
the very moment when the time comes to tackle the
really hard practical problems.
The theory of the measurement of goods or of the
forecasting of investments by means of the quantity
of labour is false. It must be radically rejected . This
is not a methodological dispute but a basic problem
that affects the very nature of communism itself.
Measurement by means of labour is still
economistic. It seeks to bring about the end of the law
of value but it does not take into account everything
this implies. Capitalist society has a tendency to
perpetuate itself even while unburdening itself of the
division into classes and of exchange value!
A solution was sought to a problem that has
two aspects. The first is that of the workers' pay.
The second, more general , aspect concerns the
distribution of the productive forces at the level of
society as a whole.
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 123

How to distribute consumption goods without

money? How to justly recompense the worker in
view of the efforts he has contributed to production ?
With respect to these questions Marx fell back
in The Critique of the Gotha Program on the point
of view of Bray, while purging it of its most tedious
aspects. In a transitional period where the principle
"to each according to his needs" still cannot be
applied, remuneration will be based on the labour
provided by each worker. It will only be based upon
but not equivalent to it, since one part of what this
labour represents must go to a social fund devoted
to the production of production goods, support for
invalids and the elderly, etc.... The worker cannot
receive the full product of his labour. On the other
hand, because the coupons that testify to the
labour contributed by the worker do not circulate,
exchange is totally destroyed at its source.
This is Marx's purpose in demanding that
society should have some kind of accounting unit:

" ... labour, in order to serve as a measure, must

be defined by its duration or intensity; otherwise it
would cease to be standard. "

Karl Marx, ' Critique of the Gotha Program', in

Marx: Later Political Writings, Cambridge University
124 * A World Without Money: Communism

Press, New York, 1996, p. 214

For Marx, the problem of remuneration is of

secondary importance and only applies to the lower
stage of communism. The question of the distribution
of the productive forces, on the other hand, is of
fundamental and permanent importance.

“On the basis of socialized production the scale

must be ascertained on which those operations—
which withdraw labour-power and means of
production for a long time without supplying any
product as a useful effect in the interim—can be
carried on without injuring branches of production
which not only withdraw labour-power continually,
or several times a year, but also supply means of
subsistence and of production.”

– Karl Marx, ‘Capital: Volume II’, International

Publishers, New York, 1967, p. 362

The calculation of necessary labour does not

however imply that the law of value is perpetuated
while money-capital disappears. The quantity of
labour is allocated with reference to needs. In The
Poverty of Philosophy, Marx wrote:
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 125

" In a future society, in which class antagonism

will have ceased, in which there will no longer
be any classes, use will no longer be determined
by the minimum time of production; but the time
of production devoted to different articles will be
determined by the degree of their social utility. "

Karl Marx, ' The Poverty of Philosophy',

Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1978, p . 58

The law of value is nothing but an expression

peculiar to commodity society of a more general
rule that applies to every society:

" In reality, no society can prevent production

from being regulated, in one way or another, by
the labour time available to society. But insofar
as this positing of the duration of labour is not
effected under the conscious control of society-
which would only be possible under the regime
of communal property - but by the movements of
commodity prices, the theory set forth with such
precision in the Franco-German Yearbooks is
completely vindicated. "

That is what Marx wrote to Engels on January

8, 1868. What did Engels have to say with regard
126 * A World Without Money: Communism

to this issue?

"As long ago as 1844 | stated that this

balancing of useful effects and expenditure of
labour on making decisions concerning production
was all that would be left of the politico- economic
concept of value in a communist society. [ Deutsch-
Französische Jahrbücher, p. 95] The scientific
justification for this statement, however, as can be
seen, was made possible only by Marx's Capital.”

Frederick Engels, 'Anti- Dühring , Foreign

Languages Press, Peking, 1976, p. 403 )

What Marx and Engels are telling us about

communist society and we see that they did have
something to say about it! -follows directly from
their analysis of capitalist society. Their ideas about
the communist society of the future partake of both
the assets and the deficiencies of their analysis of
capitalist society.
The assets consist in demonstrating that the
problems of the allocation of consumption goods
and the remuneration of labour are not fundamental
ones. It is the mode of production that determines
the mode of distribution . To claim, contrary to the
view of the beautiful souls, that the worker cannot
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 127

receive the whole product of his labour, proceeds

directly from an analysis of capitalism which shows
that the value of a commodity represents, besides
the wage and the surplus value, the constant capital.
Instruments of production must be produced . Unlike
previous social forms, capitalism and communism
are societies provided with an abundance of tools.
Capitalism and communism are also societies
undergoing constant change. There is no such thing
as an unchanging condition . In these societies, it is
not the case that everything is regulated in advance
by reference to its past use and then eventually
corrected by common sense. The estimation of
costs is not so much a problem of accounting
as a problem of forecasting . With regard to
this fundamental point, there was a significant
regression in the communists who came after Marx.
Certain councilists would reduce the question to
that of an almost photographic copy of reality and
economic trends .

The following passage shows that, for Marx,

today's society and the society of the future have
to resolve the SAME problem. The former, thanks
to money- capital and credit, and the latter, by
dispensing with both .
//
on the basis of capitalist production,
more extensive operations of comparatively long
128 * A World Without Money: Communism

duration necessitate large advances of money-

capital for a rather long time. Production in such
spheres depends therefore on the magnitude of the
money-capital which the individual capitalist has
at his disposal. This barrier is broken down by the
credit system and the associations connected with
it, e.g., the stock companies. Disturbances in the
money-market therefore put such establishments out
of business, while these same establishments, in their
turn, produce disturbances in the money-market.”

“On the basis of socialised production the scale

must be ascertained on which those operations
— which withdraw labour-power and means of
production for a long time without supplying any
product as a useful effect in the interim — can be
carried on without injuring branches of production
which not only withdraw labour-power and means
of production continually, or several times a year, but
also supply means of subsistence and of production.
Under socialised as well as capitalist production,
the labourers in branches of business with shorter
working periods will as before withdraw products
only for a short time without giving any products in
return; while branches of business with long working
periods continually withdraw products for a longer
time before they return anything. This circumstance,
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 129
then, arises from the material character of the
particular labour-process, not from its social form. "

Karl Marx, ' Capital : Volume II ', International

Publishers , New York, pp . 361-362

Marx and Engels placed too much emphasis

on the continuity of communism with capitalism . This
is their deficiency.
They preserve the bourgeois separation
between the sphere of production and the sphere
of consumption . Already in The Manifesto, they
distinguished the collective property in the means
of production from the personal appropriation
of consumption goods. They thus emphatically
affirmed that they did not want to socialize
anything but what was already common social
property: the instruments of capitalist production .
In The Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx still
opposed individual and family consumption to the
labour time contributed to productive and social
consumption. But he does not say how the latter will
be established.
There is some confusion between the mode
of distribution of the products and their nature as
"consumption goods" or instruments of production .
On the one hand are the individuals and on the other
130 * A World Without Money: Communism

is society conceived abstractly. There are isolated

individuals, individuals in groups, and individuals
in communities, who confront one another and
organize.
In reality, however, when the State or the
owner of an enterprise as the representative of the
“general interest” disappears, Society as separate
from the individual also disappears. There are then
nothing but isolated men, men in groups, and men
in communities, who organize in this or that way.
An individual can lay claim to a power tool and
a neighbourhood committee to several tons of
potatoes.
The separation between, on the one hand,
labour power composed of separate individuals,
and social and collective capital, on the other,
will disappear. One cannot invoke the necessity
for remuneration in a transition period to preserve
this separation. To the contrary, the advocacy of
this necessity in Bray or in Marx is the reflection of
the limitations of an era when communism was still
immature.
Despite his critical and pertinent observations,
Marx was still dominated by the fetishism of time.
Whether considered as an instrument of economic
measurement or as an instrument of extra-economic
measurement:
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 131

" For real wealth is the developed productive

power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is
then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but
rather disposable time. "

Karl Marx, ' Grundrisse', Penguin Books,

Baltimore , 1973, p. 708

Labour time is the basis of free time . The realm

of freedom can only be based on the realm of
necessity.
The error does not lie in continuing to see
necessity, sacrifice and production in the new
society. The error lies in consolidating these
elements under the rubric of “labour time ”, reduced
as much as possible, and universally opposing this
to free time .
In " The Critique of the Gotha Program ", Marx
says that some day labour will constitute the
most imperious human need . The Stalinists have
constantly exploited this formula in a most odious
manner. There is in any event a contradiction . Will
labour in the communist society become a waste
of time or a source of satisfaction ? Is it therefore
necessary to reduce labour time to a minimum, or
should we, to the contrary, produce the maximum
amount of labour possible to satisfy the demand
132 * A World Without Money: Communism
for it? Only in capitalist society can labour appear
as the most imperious need, as the only means to
satisfy all the others. Only in capitalist society can it
be both detested and demanded.

Fanciful
The whole idea of using labour time as a
standard of measurement is somewhat fanciful.
The idea of measuring all productive activities
by the time they require would be like measuring
and comparing all liquids only by their volume. It
is true that every activity takes a certain amount of
time, just as a particular liquid occupies a certain
volume. This is not a trivial point. A one-litre bottle
of water could instead contain a litre of wine. But no
one would ever deduce from that fact that a bottle
of water is always equal to a bottle of wine, or
alcohol, or soft drink, or hydrochloric acid. Strictly
speaking, only from the narrow point of view of the
wholesale dealer would this make sense.
Time is the only objective language that can be
used to express the creative force of the slave or
the worker, from the point of view of the exploiter.
This implies external measurement, control and
conflict. The duration and the intensity of the activity
are privileged above its nature and its particular
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 133

difficulty, which become matters of indifference.

The subjectivity of what is experienced is sacrificed
in favour of the objectivity of the standard of
measurement. Creation and life are forced to submit
to production and repetition.
Measuring by means of time is older than the
commodity system. Instead of providing a certain
quantity of a particular product, the exploited put
a certain amount of their time at the disposal of the
exploiter: the labour services of the feudal era, for
example. This procedure was especially developed
in the system of the Incas, a great agrarian empire
under the unified rule of a bureaucracy where
money was unknown. The labour services were
performed in the form of days of labour spent in
one or another task. This required a very rigorous
system of accounting.
In the peasant or rural communities, an
individual spent one day harvesting the fields of
another person and vice-versa. The peasant and
the blacksmith bartered their products on the basis
of production time. The activity of a child was valued
as a portion of that of an adult. These practices
can be seen as the beginning of the use of time
as universal standard and even of the submission
of the planet to the commodity economy; but only
the beginning. These marginal practices were more
134 * A World Without Money: Communism
of the order of mutual aid than of exchange. The
activities subject to measurement were of the same
or concretely comparable nature. Measurement by
time was not yet independent of the content of what
was being measured.
With the dual development of the commodity
system and the division of labour, measurement
by means of time began to assume its fanciful
character, becoming detached from the content of
activity as the latter was diversified.
This process was accentuated when exchange
penetrated into the sphere of production.
Measurement by means of time developed in
relation to the tendency of the economy to be
based on labour time. The maximum amount
must be produced in the least amount of time. The
possibility to use time as a standard of measurement
is inseparable from the compression of human
activity within the smallest possible span of time.
Not only did labour produce the commodity; the
commodity produced labour through the despotism
of the factory.
With this development, the practice of
measurement by means of time lost its innocent airs,
but was concealed behind money and justified by
financial necessities.
Bourgeois ideologists, especially those who
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 135

invoke Saint Marx, project this fetishism of time

and production over all of human history. In their
view, the latter is nothing but an incessant struggle
for free time . If primitive peoples remained primitive
this is because, dominated by their low level of
productivity, they did not have the time necessary
for the accumulation of a surplus. Time is scarce;
one must concentrate into it the densest activity
possible.
Instead of thinking only about how to save time,
primitive peoples were instead busy with the most
effective means of squandering it. These peoples
often present the most indolent character. Besides
the tools needed for hunting, they hardly sought to
accumulate goods of any kind .
In the 18th century, Adam Smith renounced the
attempt to base value on labour time with reference
to modern times. But this labour-value did play a
role, according to Smith, in those primitive societies
where things were still relatively uncomplicated.
Imagine, if you will, some hunters who want to
exchange among themselves the various animals
they took in the hunt. Upon what basis can they do
this, other than the basis of labour time, as a function
of the time required to get the animals ? This is the
assumption made by an economistic and banker's
mentality when confronted by a situation where the
136 * A World Without Money: Communism

rules of sharing and reciprocal bonds prevail.

Let us assume, however, that exchange already
existed or that our primitive peoples decided to
rationally employ their forces to acquire meat with
the least expenditure of effort. Would they have
constructed their system on the basis of necessary
labour time?
There are pleasures and risks involved in hunting,
concerning which the time employed in hunting
is totally uninformative. What is the comparative
value of a lion as opposed to an antelope, when
considered on the basis of the duration of the hunt
without reference to the different risks involved in
each hunt? Certain modes of hunting may take more
time but may also be more certain of success, less
arduous, less dangerous, and more or less cruel.
If they still wanted to practice this type of
measurement, could they do so? It is hard to
evaluate with precision the time necessary to obtain
this or that animal. By systematically hunting the
most productive animals, from this narrow point of
view, they would risk modifying the conditions and
the necessary time for the hunt. In any event, one
often goes out to hunt antelopes and comes home
with rabbits. It is useless to predict the unpredictable.
Will we be told that this is no longer valid for
our civilized epoch, and that the hunt is a very
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 137

special case of productive activity? Let's face the

facts. It is the ubiquity of exchange that conceals
reality. Measurement by means of labour time does
not exempt us from the hazards of human existence
or of the exhaustion of natural resources . These
problems are not specific to primitive man but apply
to all societies . Not acknowledged by the logic of
capital they return with a vengeance....
Measurement by time only indirectly accounts
for any repercussions on the environment and the
difficulty of the activity concerned . Can it be used
in communism by translating the transformation or
destruction of a rural region, the exhaustion of a
mine's resources, or the production of oxygen in a
forest, into its language? The inherent advantages or
drawbacks of a production process will be reckoned
in terms of the labour time that is virtually saved or
virtually expended. It would surpass the absurdity
of capitalism if it were to seek to consciously
reduce use values and qualities to labour-values.
What value does a stretch of countryside have?
Should it be based on the expenditure that would
be required to rebuild it from scratch ? At this price,
nothing would be worth undertaking.
To assess the different values of two labour
processes of equal duration in which the risks or
the discomfort of the jobs are different, do we have
138 * A World Without Money: Communism

to find a single standard by which they can be

compared? One hour of bricklaying would count
as one and a half hours of carpentry. Let us say
that the difference would be accounted for by the
expenditure of time necessary to provide for the
bricklayer, to wash his clothing … and we refuse
to reduce everything to the expenditure of labour
time, but then how can we establish the coefficients
that express the differences in value or discomfort
that distinguish the two jobs? Why, on the other
hand, should we want to establish such coefficients
when these differences depend on the conditions
and the rhythm of the activities concerned and the
inclinations of the participants?
When the workers take over, the advocates of
measurement by time or remuneration as a function
of labour time run the risk of being left behind.
From the moment when activity ceases to be
compulsory, its nature will change and its duration
will be extended. The quantity and the character of
production will no longer be evaluated with respect
to the duration of the consumed labour. One person
will produce enough in a little time, while another
will take a long time to produce little. If remuneration
were to be based on the time expended then we
will need to have strict prison guards on the jobsite
or we would soon be faced with an incitement to
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 139

laziness.
Whether the workers will agree to guarantee
a certain amount of production or devote a certain
number of hours each day to productive labour, is a
question of practical organization that is not directly
pertinent to the determination of the cost of what
they produce. In one factory it might take twice as
long as another factory to produce objects of the
same cost.
One can certainly speak of the social allocation
of labour time at the community’s disposal, but one
must not forget that time is not a material that one
can dish out with a ladle. It will be men who will
go to such and such a location in order to assume
responsibility for such and such a task. From the
moment when free time is no longer extraordinarily
scarce and is not devoted to the satisfaction of
absolutely vital needs, there will be some jobs that
are more urgent than others, and men who work
faster than other men.
With capital it is necessary to dissociate the
price, the expenditure of labour power and what
this expenditure contributes, and the labour that
does not have any value. With communism this
dissociation makes no sense. Labour power and
labour, man and his activity, can no longer be
separated.
140 * A World Without Money: Communism

This means, first of all, that there is no more surplus

value, not even for the benefit of the community, or
a new form of social surplus. One can no longer
speak of accumulation or of expansion except in
physical and material terms. To speak of socialist
accumulation is an absurdity even if at any given
moment more steel or more bananas are produced
than before, even if more social time is devoted to
production. These processes no longer assume the
form of value or time employed.
As a result, this means that labour, which
in capitalism has no value, acquires value in
communism. This value that it acquires is neither
moral nor monetary. This is not the apotheosis of
labour but instead expresses its supersession.
Labour, the source of value, is not susceptible to
numerical measurement. One can economize on it,
but its identity is unquestionable. In communism this
or that activity will no longer be distinguished from
the effort made by the human beings who engage
in it. Not all jobs have the same human cost. It is a
matter of developing the least costly ones.
In capitalist society, ifone shifts one’s perspective
from that of capital to that of the worker, labour also
has a cost; one job is preferable to another. When
night arrives one feels one’s fatigue or anxiety. But
finally the differences are small. Labour is always
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 141

considered time that is more or less lost. No one

devotes any time to calculating boredom or health
damage. For the worker the price of all of this shit is
his wage. One already knows that it is a mystification
and that the wage is not determined by the effort
expended or the discomfort experienced.
The superiority of communism lies in the
fact that is not content with the satisfaction of the
needs of “consumption”. It applies its efforts to the
transformation of productive activities, that is, to
the conditions of labour. As a matter of principle,
investment decisions will not be made on the basis
of the economy of labour time, even if the possibility
exists that the task can be expedited. These decisions
will have the objective of producing the conditions
in which activities can be enriched, favouring
the most pleasant ones. The determination of the
conditions of activity does not mean that the activity
itself and the behaviour of the producers themselves
will be determined in advance. The producer
will still be master of his activity, but he will act in
certain conditions, within the framework of certain
limitations that constitute the arena in which he can
act.
The production by men of the instruments and
the plan of production allow for this transformation
of human activity. The development of technology
142 * A World Without Money: Communism
can be oriented so as to be more or less favourable
for the producers. This or that kind of machine or
ensemble of machines could allow those who use
them to experience less exhaustion and be less
subject to a certain rhythm of production. Those
characteristics that would allow men to be as free
as possible can be systematically developed in the
productive process.
Don’t tell us that personal preferences or
subjectivity would objectively prevent any such
choices. There are some things that do not change.
We are not saying that the criteria must have a
universal scope. They will vary according to the
time and the situation. Men will make agreements
to determine what suits them best. The diversity
of personal preferences and the willingness to
experiment can follow different roads in the context
of a similar objective.
The estimation of costs cannot be reduced to
the need to balance “income and expenditures”;
equilibrium must be conceived as a dynamic
equilibrium. Starting from the basis of the conditions
inherited from capitalism, what is required is to give
development a certain direction. Is the estimated
cost of constructing a particular productive facility
or way of life justified? Does the automation of this
or that unit of production justify the efforts required
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 143
for the fabrication of the automated machinery? The
logic of the economy of labour time that serves as the
organizing principle of the construction of situations
in the capitalist world will yield to a different logic,
a logic that is no longer external to the men that put
it into practice. Humanity will organize and control
the construction of situations in view of its needs. In
this sense it will become situationist.

Elevator or Stairs?
Behind the economic idea of cost we once
again find the most ordinary and banal reality,
which that idea has ended up concealing.
Each person reflects on the question of whether
what he is doing is worth the effort. Does the
inevitable result justify the expense or the risk?
Are there less costly, that is, more pleasant, ways
to obtain an equivalent result or one that is good
enough?
If such questions arise concerning the economy,
they are only asked by economists or managers. In
fact, economic and financial problems comprise a
special, and rather strange, case of a more general
problem.
The spontaneous and ingenuous evaluation
of costs took place long before the advent of
144 * A World Without Money: Communism

capitalism. It subsists at the margin of the economic

sphere even though our choices must always
take financial necessities into account. What
characterizes this kind of evaluation is that it is
effected without monetary subterfuges and is not
reduced to temporal criteria.
Strictly speaking, the ability to evaluate costs
is not a natural endowment peculiar to the human
species. The pigeon that hesitates before pecking
at the seeds you offer it is, in its own way, also
evaluating costs. That he might make a mistake
in his calculations and end up in the pot does not
constitute a contradiction of this claim. Evaluation
does not necessarily exclude the possibility of error.
The bird’s choice depends more on instinct and
habit than any other factor. With human beings we
move to another level.
The individual who finds himself at the entrance
to a building, and intends to go to an upper floor,
and who has to choose between using the elevator
and walking up the stairs, confronts a problem of
evaluating costs. He might spend an hour reflecting
on the problem or he might automatically make his
decision without thinking about it.
The problem is simple if it is reduced to the three
solutions that are obviously available: the elevator,
the stairs, or cancelling his appointment in the
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 145

building in question. It becomes more complicated

if the elements that may or may not consciously
intervene in the decision making process are taken
into consideration. What floor does he have to go
to? Does he know which one? Is he in good health?
Is he elderly? Tired? Handicapped? How high are
the steps? How steep is the stairway? How fast is
the elevator and how often does it run? How urgent
is his errand in this building?
The decision will not be an economic decision.
It will be subjective, directly connected to a concrete
situation. It is not a monetary decision. It does not
involve an inquiry regarding which possible solution
would be more expensive, since the elevator is free
to use. The question of speed may play a role in
his choice, it could prove to be decisive, but it is
not necessarily connected with the situation. The
economy of time would be given top priority if he
were a fireman, if he did not prefer to use the ladder
on his fire truck.
How can a procedure that is properly
foreign to the economic sphere be applied to the
economy? This is a false problem. The real problem
is to go beyond the economy and to dissolve it as a
separate sphere.
It is a question of doing away with the economy.
This will not be achieved by suddenly discovering
146 * A World Without Money: Communism

that we can replace today’s methods with more

direct and simpler procedures. Paradoxically, the
development of the economy, the socialization of
production, the generalized interdependence of
enterprises, and the implementation of economic
forecasting and calculation, make this rupture
possible.
In the future, the principles that inform our
choices will be as simple and as transparent as the
ones we presently apply on a daily basis. They will
be concerned with the reduction of effort, fatigue,
and expenditures in general. These considerations
will not in themselves constitute the goals of social
life, but will comprise one aspect of the projects
of the future depending on the nature of the latter.
Perhaps very difficult and dangerous problems will
have to be solved but we will have to try to address
them. A team of mountain climbers can attempt to
reach the summit of a difficult mountain, but this
does not mean they have to do so with their bare
hands.
Simple principles do not always entail easy
methods and solutions. The degree of difficulty of
an undertaking derives from the nature and the
complexity of the problems that have to be solved.
It could also be the result of the unsuitability of the
methods of calculation applied to the object in
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 147

question or a difficulty in determining the criteria of

choice . The risk of error and the need to be satisfied
with approximations by no means invalidate the
procedure. In any event this would not constitute a
step backwards with respect to current conditions.
What applies today to the use of the elevator or
the stairs, will also apply tomorrow to their production
and installation . The objective foundations of the
individual's choices will no longer be economically
determined .
Is it better to construct a stairway, an elevator,
both, or nothing at all ? These questions imply a
whole series of subsidiary questions. Is it worth the
effort to go to the upper floors? Is this requirement
so important or so frequently necessitated that it
justifies the necessary expense to build the stairway,
the elevator, the rope or the kick in the ass that will
get you to the desired floor? We can reverse the
perspective. Given the cost of elevators should
we construct such tall buildings? On the other
hand, given the pleasures experienced by those
who manufacture elevators, should we build more
skyscrapers ?
The list of questions that can be posed is
practically endless. This may seem discouraging . In
reality only a small number will be posed . Many
will be ruled out by simple common sense . Our
148 * A World Without Money: Communism

mountain climbers cannot demand an elevator for

their expedition. Each decision will be made on the
basis of a concrete situation in which a vast number
of questions will already have been answered in
advance by the facts themselves. Custom plays
tricks on us, but it also spares us much trouble. It
is quite likely that the man who is standing at the
front door of the building will base his decision on
habit. The evaluation of costs only acquires its full
significance when one encounters a new situation,
when a new productive process emerges. The
problem of the fabrication and the installation of
the elevator and the stairway could very well be a
common problem that is solved according to known
parameters. A special or unprecedented situation
will be addressed as a modified form of a more
classical situation.
There is a hierarchy of solutions. When the
decision is made to build a house, the costs of the
means to get to the upper floors will probably be
of secondary importance. Once the more general
decision is made, the builders will have to construct
a stairway, an elevator, or both. The existing options
will depend on the nature and the quality of the
available materials. Choices can only be made in
accordance with the products and the technologies
that are currently in use and development within
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 149

this sector. Every choice tends to miss the optimal

solution, but every choice is made in accordance
with a certain number of unavoidable objective
conditions. The optimal solution may end up being
a compromise between the interests of the different
groups of people affected by the decision in
question.
The end of the division of the economy into
separate competing enterprises does not mean that
all social production will assume the form of one
big coordinated enterprise where every activity
will be immediately subsumed to another, where
there will be only one common interest and where
the evaluation of costs will be undertaken directly
on a worldwide scale. For human and technical
reasons, the producers will be fragmented into
separate groups whose interests will no longer be
antagonistic, but whose opinions may very well be
divergent. Since individuals may move from one job
to another, from one workshop or construction site
to another, and the membership of work crews may
not be permanent, this fragmentation in time and
space will persist.
The construction of a building implies the
involvement of various skilled trades. We can
imagine that in communism the architect will also
be a labourer, a bricklayer or a painter. This will not
150 * A World Without Money: Communism
obviate the fact that, especially if the construction
project is very important, the workers will be divided
into different teams and their tasks will be carried out
at different stages of the project. The builders may
be obliged to ask for outside help. They will have to
get advice. They will have to obtain machinery and
materials.
How will the cost of these products that
come from outside the work unit be established
and accounted for? The builders could attempt
to facilitate the work where it is a question of the
allocation and utilization of their own resources
and capabilities. But when they have to avail
themselves of warehoused goods that they did not
themselves stock, such self-reliance is no longer
possible. Certain materials that are easier to install,
or that may have a reputation for providing more
satisfaction to the users of the building, might
nonetheless be rejected because of the cost of their
manufacture. In every situation it is necessary for the
advantages obtained to justify the expense incurred
in order to avoid problems.
Products, and even production processes, must
have an objectively determined cost. The users will
make a rational choice on the basis of these costs.
Does this mean that each product will have
a “price tag”? Will the housewife, when grocery
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 151

shopping, find a bar code on her carrots and

cabbages?
That would be an unfortunate recrudescence
of today’s society. As a general rule, each person
will take what he needs when it is available and
pay no attention to any other more urgent claim
than his own. The calculation of costs is first of all
in the nature of a forecast and its direct outcome
is manifested in the nature and the quantity of the
available goods. There is no need to put price labels
on goods in order to put pressure on the intentions
of the user, not to speak of his wallet.
There are various kinds of cement that presently
have, and will continue to have, different costs
of production. It would be stupid to use a kind of
cement that is twice as expensive as another that
would serve the same purpose. As a general rule,
the nature of the product or its mode of employment
is sufficient to determine its desired use; where there
is a risk of confusing the different grades of products
it will be enough to specify along with the mode
of employment of the product the cost differences
among the various products.
Today, dead labour weighs upon living
labour, and the past weighs upon the present.
In communism, the cost of a product is not the
expression of a value that has to be realized, or of
152 * A World Without Money: Communism
equipment that has to be amortized. This means that
the cost of an object will not necessarily represent
the expense required to produce it. It will not even
be the average necessary expense required to
produce all products of the same kind.
A product will have the cost that will reflect
the cost of replacing it under the prevailing
conditions. There will be no reason for a rise or fall
in productivity to be translated into a difference
between the cost of production and the cost of
sale. This will apply immediately even to the objects
that were manufactured previously. This variation
could result in an expansion of the production in
question if it becomes more worthwhile. Decisions
to increase investment in a productive process will
not be based on a surplus of profits.
There may be differences in cost in the
production of the same product or of two similar
products. This difference may result from the
preservation of relatively antiquated production
processes. Or they may be determined by natural
conditions. Agricultural output is quite variable, and
not every mine is as easily exploited as another.
Does this mean that similar products will have
different costs, or that there will be an average cost
that will be the same for all of them, just like today’s
average market price?
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 153
It will be very important for the differences
in costs to be known. But this will not affect the
users of the products in question. There will be no
advantages for some and disadvantages for others;
it will simply be a matter of developing the most
advantageous production processes.
If the increase of the cost of production of a
product implies a decrease in its cost-effectiveness,
this does not mean that it must be rejected. First
of all, its decrease in cost-effectiveness may be a
temporary or periodic phenomenon; also, because
one must evaluate the importance of the needs
that have to be satisfied. Thus, with regard to food
production, a rise in the cost of production often
signifies a decreasing crop yield. Let us assume
that less fertile soils are cultivated. This would be no
reason to refuse to feed part of the population and
instead shift the resources in question to more cost-
effective activities.
Decreasing yields could on the other hand be a
short-term phenomenon. Sowing crops in a desert
is not very promising; but major investments, such
as irrigation projects and new methods of farming,
could make a big difference. A sun-baked desert,
once it is watered, or a fish farm, could be more
productive than traditionally fertile soils.
What seems to be impossible today will be
154 * A World Without Money: Communism

possible tomorrow. Modern technologies, instead

of furthering the arms race, will be used to make the
deserts bloom.
From the moment when there is a rising demand
for a good, there is a risk that this could lead to a
fall or a rise in the production cost incurred by the
new production units. A fall in the production cost
will have a tendency to increase the demand for
the product. If on the other hand there is a rise in
the production cost of a product, then we will have
to know when the cost becomes prohibitive. In this
case it must be determined if it is the recent increase
in demand that must be curtailed or whether, to
the contrary, this demand must be satisfied by
abandoning or reducing the demand for other
products.

Calculation
In communism, just as in capitalism, in order to
estimate costs and to select the optimal solutions,
comparisons must be made. How are we to
compare?
As long as there is money, that is, a universal
equivalent, everything is simple since any good
can be evaluated in accordance with this single
standard. There is a quantitative relation between
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 155

all products. When, however, we decide to do

without money and even without measurement by
the quantity of labour, on what basis can we make
comparisons? What else do all goods have in
common that makes them comparable?
There is no other single and universally valid
standard. We shall therefore have to do without
one. But this will not prevent comparisons from being
made. These comparisons will be qualitative and
will be based on different and variable standards.
They will no longer be carried out in accordance
with an abstract and universal reference, but will be
connected to concrete situations and goals.
What is bizarre is the fact that different goods
can be equal to each other regardless of their
specific natures. It is understandable for foods to be
compared in accordance with their protein content
or their freshness. But these distinct criteria do not
allow for the definition of a general standard of
equivalence.
The need for a general standard of equivalence
cannot be dissociated from the need to engage in
exchange. All things must be capable of being
subjected to comparison from a universal point of
view because they have become exchangeable
goods and economic values. This is precisely what
must disappear and this is what the dream—or the
156 * A World Without Money: Communism

nightmare of measurement by means of labour

time seeks to preserve by giving it a new disguise.
Even under the rule of capital, not all
comparisons can be reduced to comparisons of
value. Goods still have use values. The buyer's
evaluation is made not only with reference to price,
but also with reference to the usefulness and the
quality of the product.
When a housewife goes shopping and chooses
between a lettuce and a bunch of radishes she does
so according to the taste of her son, the meal of the
day, the appearance of the product, how much
room she has in her basket.... Price is not really
determinate except when two identical products
have different values.
The multiplicity of criteria that come into
play does not prevent this person from making
his comparisons and his choice. His criterion is
subjective. It is not universally valid. This does not
mean that it is irrational with respect to the situation
in question .
When the situation involves choosing
between various manufacturing procedures it will
be necessary to find a more general basis for
comparison. The choice will be less subjective in the
sense that it must not depend on a passing whim,
because it will have long-term repercussions.
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 157
Under current conditions it is sometimes the
case that purely monetary evaluations are not
decisive or are modified by other considerations.
The risk posed by major swings in certain prices
over the course of time or political requirements
prevent automatic compliance with the strictly
financial viewpoint.
Let us consider the question of nuclear power.
In opposition to economic arguments in its favour,
questions have been raised that focus on the
environmental, social and political costs of nuclear
power.
er. The debate is often carried on with a
degree of bad faith, about energy yields, problems
of transport and storage of wastes, of national
sovereignty, and the creation or elimination of jobs.
In communist society it is no longer necessary
to make all comparisons on a universal scale. It
suffices to be able to determine the possibilities that
really exist and to favour those that offer the most
rapid results, those that will be the safest, the least
dangerous....
What is essential is to determine a set of
pertinent criteria and in accordance with these
criteria to directly address the diverse solutions
that can be discerned . It is not so much a matter of
quantifying as it is of ordering the various criteria
and solutions. What predominates is the relative,
158 * A World Without Money: Communism

qualitative meaning.
We are not saying we will rely on computers to
arrange everything but they will be necessary and
useful .

"Conceived at first for accounting operations

and later used for management, as well as being
used for scientific calculations, they were long
considered ( for perhaps ten years...) as instruments
for generating quantitative results. This has changed.
Thanks to the methods of cybernetics, and especially
to those of simulation, the accumulation of numbers
led to a qualitative result: what is of interest is no
longer the exact numbers but their meaning relative
to which a choice is made. In this way, calculating
machines have become means for management
forecasting. "

Robert Faure, Jean- Paul Boss and Andre

Le Garff, ' La recherché operationnelle , Presses
universitaires de France, Paris (Vendôme, Impr. des
P.U.F. ), 1961

What must be simplified and universalized is

not so much the factors of decision that come into
play as the procedures of decision making, the
programs that allow one to address a mass of data.
 Money and the Estimation of Costs * 159
In a certain sense, the more important the criteria,
the more accurate the representation of reality.
We could imagine the general contours of a
future debate on the importance of various energy
sources. A vast amount of data will come into play.
A single criterion can only be used at the cost of
distorting reality. Comprehensive decisions will
have to be made in accordance with the different
resources and needs of each region.
Communism does not rule out purely
quantitative comparisons and decisions. They will
still be valid when a single criterion of selection is
sufficient, according to the nature of the products
under consideration. This would be the case when it
is a matter of increasing or decreasing the output of a
particular production process. It would also prevail
when the savings of expenditure corresponds to
a qualitative savings in the utilization of a raw
material devoted to the same use, as in the case
of canned food. But even in this case, the savings
must not be considered as a savings in labour time,
but simply in the quantity of raw materials. That
this decision could result in a reduction in the time
spent in productive activity is simply one possible
outcome.
Shouldn’t we fear this communist frenzy of
rationalization? Does it not run the risk of becoming
160 * A World Without Money: Communism

similar to the capitalist frenzy of exploitation?

Today, rationalization and exploitation are
conflated. Man tends to be considered as an object
from which you try to get as much as possible.
Inhuman methods have been developed that do
not derive from technical requirements: hellish work
rhythms, working two or three shifts. Capitalist
rationalization, whether brutal or subtle, is always
carried out to a greater or lesser degree to the
detriment of men. It is always irrational.
Communist rationalization does not have the
goal of imposing a rhythm of work. Its essential
tendency will be to increase the freedom and
pleasure of humans. Decision-making and the
implementation of decisions will not be carried out
without regard for the preferences and the customs
of those affected. There will still be technical
requirements and production necessities that will
influence the course and duration of human activity.
But this will have nothing to do with making human
capital profitable.

6. Beyond Politics
Communism is not a political movement. It is the
critique of the State and of politics.
The intention of the revolutionaries is not to
conquer and wield state power, even if it were for
 Beyond Politics * 161

the purpose of destroying it. The party of communism

does not take the form of a political party and has
no intention of competing with organizations of that
kind.
With the establishment of the communist
community all political activity as a distinct activity
oriented towards the acquisition of power for the
sake of power will disappear. There will no longer
be, on the one hand, the economic—the sphere of
necessity, and on the other hand, the political—the
sphere of freedom.

The End of the State

The cult of the state is fundamentally anti-
communist.
This cult is paradoxically spawned from
and reinforced by all the shortcomings, all
the weaknesses, and all the conflicts that are
engendered by capitalist society. It is the supreme
saviour; the last resort of widows and orphans.
Incidentally, and although it pretends to be above
all classes and presents itself as the guarantor of the
general interest against the excesses of individuals
and groups, it is devoted to the defence of property
and privilege.
There was a time when the rising bourgeoisie
162 * A World Without Money: Communism

exhibited anti -state sentiments . Today the most that

it exhibits with regard to the state is annoyance.
The era when bourgeois revolutionaries claimed
that the happiest peoples were peoples without a
state is far behind us. The increasing threat posed
by the proletariat, the rise of competing imperial
powers, and the scale of economic crises have
demonstrated the value of possessing a powerful
state machine that is primarily a good repressive
apparatus .
The political parties fight among themselves
to conquer, in the name of the people, this state
machine that is presented as a neutral instrument.
Consistent Leninists proclaim the class nature of the
state and the impossibility of controlling it through a
simple electoral victory. They conclude from this the
need to dismantle it, but only in order to replace it
with a " workers' state " .
It was to the honour of the anarchists to have
maintained a fundamental anti-statism .
However, even more than with respect to
money, the whole world believes in the duty of
heaping abuse on the state. Everyone complains
about the stupidity of its administration, the high
taxes, the arrogance of the police, the venality of the
politicians, the ignorance of the voters.... But what
apparently lies beyond the pale of their imagination
 Beyond Politics * 163

is the prospect of the State’s disappearance. And

this is what they get: power without imagination.
The state has intervened ever more openly
in social life over the last few decades. The rise
of Stalinism and fascism signified merely a few
more flagrant steps in this direction. Where some
have believed they could see the state becoming
a people’s state, it is necessary to see instead the
accentuation of the control of the state over its
population.
Of particular importance in this regard is the
usurpation or the integration into the state apparatus
of the organizations of workers’ defence and
solidarity. Through various channels such as social
welfare measures, the trade union apparatuses have
been subjected to the state. This has allowed them to
act more or less like political special interest groups.
We must not be deceived by their declarations of
independence and opposition, since they are just
performing their assigned roles.
This integration of the struggle and this
bureaucratization of social groups have obviously
been presented as great victories of the working
class. The workers’ struggles benefit a layer
of specialists in contestation and result in an
increasing institutionalization of the “workers’”
organizations. Often, these “victories” do not result
164 * A World Without Money: Communism

in even a redistribution of resources towards the

most disadvantaged layers but instead just end up
costing them more money. This is true regardless of
the hypocritical claims of the trade unions and state
officials.
Increasing state control must not be considered
solely as a factor weakening the proletariat. It
corresponds, to the contrary, to the need to control
the proletariat’s increasing power. This increasing
state control compensates for the fragility of modern
societies; but it is not itself exempt from this fragility.
The statist regimentation of the population is only
possible thanks to the complicity of the population.
The anti-political revolution will reveal the utterly
superficial nature of this regimentation.
Unlike politicians of every stripe, revolutionaries
are very careful not to appeal to the responsibility of
the state when a problem arises. They systematically
assert, first of all, the autonomy and the self-
organization of the proletarian class. Invoking
the weakness of the proletariat in order to justify
reliance on the state is to justify and confirm this
weakness as eternal.
Revolutionary society will have institutions
of coordination and centralization. It will in many
cases allow for a higher degree of worldwide
centralization than is currently allowed by
 Beyond Politics * 165

capital. But it will not need a state in which power

will be concentrated, that whole machinery of
repression, identification, control and education.
In revolutionary society the administration of things
will replace the government over men.
The problem lies in the need to avoid
recreating some kind of state in an insurrectionary
or transitional stage, while nonetheless ensuring
that administrative and repressive, and therefore
typically state, functions, are carried out. Those who
do not want to face this problem, like the anarchists,
will only succeed in being crushed by the statists
or will be obliged to become statists themselves.
The participation of anarchist ministers in the
Government Junta during the Spanish revolution
illustrates just what can happen to those who persist
in this attitude.
The solution to this problem, to this contradiction,
has been outlined by proletarian insurrections since
the Paris Commune. It is the workers’ council, the
councilist organization of social life.

The Workers’ Councils

The Paris Commune already provided an initial
glimpse of what a workers’ government would look
like.
166 * A World Without Money: Communism
In 1905, insurgent Russian workers elaborated
the form of the soviet. This institution formed by
factory delegates was at first devoted to the
coordination of the struggle. It was gradually
transformed into an administrative institution whose
purpose was to replace the official governing
bodies of the state. Even part of the police force
passed under the control of the Petrograd Soviet.
Its existence came to an end with the arrest of its
deputies by Czarist forces.
The same thing happened again in 1917, but this
time with more extensive participation on the part of
the military. The Bolshevik coup d’état in October
1917 was carried out in the name of transferring
all power to the soviets. Its basis of support was
the soviets, where the Bolsheviks controlled the
military committees and had obtained majorities
in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets. This victory
was the beginning of the end for the soviets. With
the reflux of the revolution, the onset of civil war,
and the reinforcement of the power of the Bolshevik
party and its administrative apparatus, the soviets
were gradually deprived of their original content.
The last show of resistance to this process, offered
by the Kronstadt naval base, was crushed in 1921
by the Red Army led by Trotsky, the former president
of the Petrograd soviet.
 Beyond Politics * 167

The proletarian revolutions of the 20th century

have repeatedly led to the re-emergence of the
soviet form. In the immediate aftermath of World
War One and the Russian Revolution, workers’
councils were formed in Hungary, Germany
and Italy. During the Spanish war, workers and
peasants committees arose throughout the country.
In Hungary, in 1956, factory delegates formed the
Workers’ Council of Greater Budapest. In Poland,
in 1971, the insurgent workers of the Baltic ports
once again utilized this form of organization.
The word “council” actually embraces quite
diverse organizational forms, even if we exclude
those institutions of co-management or workers’
management that have nothing revolutionary about
them. They range from the factory or neighbourhood
committee to the soviet that administers a big city or
even a region. It is incorrect to seek to distinguish
among these organizations in order to confer the
title of “workers’ council” only on some of them.
We do not advocate one or another variety
of council. We advocate the council organization
of society. This implies and requires different levels
of organization that complement and sustain one
another. What would be unfortunate, and this is
what has regularly taken place, would be if one of
these levels should be predominant.
168 * A World Without Money: Communism

For example, the factory committee could

be reduced to the exercise of a simple function
of workers’ control or strictly limited to managing
one productive unit. The absence of real soviets in
Spain and Catalonia, despite the flourishing base
committees, left the field open to the republican state
and the politicians; hence the anarchist dilemma.
The soviet, on the other hand, if it were to be
separated from its base, could become a kind of
regional state or workers’ parliament. In this case it
would cease to be an active anti-political institution
and would instead become a battleground for
competing political parties.
What gives the workers’ council its revolutionary
character and its anti-political content is principally
the fact that it arises directly from the masses in
action. It is composed of a pyramid of committees
that give rise to one another, but without the apex of
the pyramid ever being able to conceive of itself as
independent of the base of the pyramid.
The committees are not simple voting
assemblies that delegate power among themselves
from the bottom upward. Each level carries out
practical functions. Each committee is an active
community. It delegates to a higher-level committee
those problems which it cannot solve itself. It does
not thereby abdicate its sovereignty. All delegates
 Beyond Politics * 169
must explain their actions and are responsible to the
base and revocable at any time.
The workers’ council does not reproduce within
its structure the division between the legislative,
executive and judicial powers. It endeavours to unify
and concentrate these functions in its hands. Even if
it lays down rules it acts, above all, in accordance
with the situation, without hiding behind an arsenal
of formal laws.
The workers’ council constitutes itself as a
tribunal to adjudicate conflicts; to judge, to resolve,
and to punish. These actions are carried out with
reference to each concrete situation. What is
subject to judgment is not the seriousness of the
transgression, but the objective risks and dangers
for the revolution and for society.
The legitimacy of the council is not based upon
a few democratic elections that would make it a
consecrated vessel of the people’s will. It is not the
representative of the masses. It “is” the organized
masses. The individuals and groups that assume
responsibility for particular tasks are not necessarily
elected. But when they commit themselves to act on
behalf of the entire council they are responsible to
its general assemblies. The council does not claim to
be the general expression of all of society, or to be
located above all the conflicts that affect the latter.
170 * A World Without Money: Communism

It is an institution of the class and of the struggle.

This implies that there must be a certain amount
of agreement within its ranks. It cannot tolerate
divergences of opinion that would paralyze it.
The workers ' council can be viewed as an ultra-
dictatorial or as an ultra - democratic institution . It
is both and yet neither. It is ultra- dictatorial in the
sense that it is only answerable to itself and insofar
as it casts the principles of the division of powers
to the winds . It is ultra - democratic in the sense that
it allows for a degree of debate and participation
by the masses that was never achieved by the most
democratic state .
Above all, the workers' council is not a political
institution , since it no longer separates the citizen
from the social individual . In this respect it transcends
both dictatorship and democracy, which are the
two faces of politics, even if it makes use of forms or
procedures that are democratic or dictatorial .
The council is neither the instrument of a popular
democracy, nor the instrument of the dictatorship of
the proletariat. These expressions are not suitable
for describing the phase that comprehends the
break between capitalism and communism .
The workers' councils of the past, with the
exception of a few rare instances, never rose to the
level of the program that we are sketching here.
 Beyond Politics * 171

They were managerial, bureaucratic, indecisive,

dispute-ridden, and incapable of attaining a
perspective that was in accord with their own
nature. They were destroyed. This does not prove
that the council form does not work, but rather that it
was assayed on a terrain that was still unfavourable
for its development.
In 1956, the Workers’ Council of Greater
Budapest, which then administered an entire region
of Hungary, proclaimed its own suicide with its call
for the reestablishment of parliamentary democracy.
Previously, the workers’ councils at least had
the merit of having existed. They demonstrated
the workers ability to run their own affairs, and to
take factories and cities into their hands. They were
connected with formidable movements by means of
which the workers overthrew, at least temporarily,
bourgeoisie and bureaucrats. If these experiences
have been dissimulated and distorted this is
because the prospect of the proletariat picking up
where it left off in Catalonia, Poland and China
is undesirable to some people: to dispense with
masters and to proceed from there.
The counterrevolution, even in the Soviet Union,
has never been able to coexist with councils. The
fact that the councils have demonstrated their
moderation is one thing. It is another thing entirely
172 * A World Without Money: Communism

for the counterrevolution to show moderation in

regard to the councils.
The best expressions of the workers’ councils
were provided when they had to respond
quickly, unambiguously and with a strong hand
to their enemies. They were forged directly as an
organization of struggle. Their program may have
been limited but they were aware of this.
On other occasions they became entangled
in administrative details and procrastination. At
these times their only reason for existence seemed
to be the absence of bourgeois power. They
elaborated magnificent organizational plans. But
this was carried out in a vacuum, removed from the
imperatives of struggle. The apparent absence of
danger led to the worst illusions.
In such cases, the council appeared to be more
of a working class response to the vacuum left by the
bourgeoisie than an organizational form imposed
by the radical demands of the struggle itself.
We support workers’ councils but we are not
in favour of the councilist ideology. This ideology
does not perceive the councils as a moment of the
revolution, but as the goal of the revolution. For the
councilist ideology, socialism is the replacement of
the power of the bourgeoisie by the power of the
councils, and capitalist management by workers’
 Beyond Politics * 173
management; from this perspective the success or
failure of the revolution is an organizational question.
Where the Leninists make everything depend on the
party, the councilists make everything depend on
the council.
The workers’ councils will be what they make
of themselves. The only way they can be victorious
is to undertake and to embody the organization of
communization.
For communists, the revolution is not a question
of organization. What determines the possibility of
communism is a certain level of development of the
productive forces and the proletarian class. There
are problems of organization, but they cannot be
addressed independently of what it is that is being
organized, of the tasks that are faced. Are we
saying that the rules of organization are neutral, or
that they are purely technical questions? Of course
not. Such choices are of great importance. Some
organizational rules are adapted and conducive to
communist action. Others hinder it. But it is a serious
illusion to believe that the implementation of certain
rules, especially regarding the control of delegates,
is sufficient to avoid bureaucratization, deception
and schism. Bureaucrats are professionals of
organization as a separate organization. They
like to stress the preliminaries to action rather than
174 * A World Without Money: Communism

action itself. Detailed and unsuitable rules, even if

they are formally anti-bureaucratic, run the risk of
actually facilitating bureaucratization.
However slight the progress of the councils,
when they cannot be easily liquidated, the worst
enemies of the revolution will claim to be councilists
in order to more easily put an end to them. They
will try to transform them into the private preserve
of their manoeuvres, and to exclude the real
revolutionaries from the councils.
Can we conclude, on the basis of the fact
that the councils of the past often had little
that was communist about them, that their time
has passed, and that all institutionalization is
counterrevolutionary?
We do not see the workers’ council as just one
more institution. The revolution, whether we like it
or not, will encounter problems of administration,
the preservation of order, and the unification of
opposed tendencies. It will be necessary to govern,
if not men, then at least some men. One could very
well maintain that looting is a healthy reaction to the
provocation of commodity society and poverty. It
could play a beneficial role in the phase of rupture,
with the rout and downfall of the commodity. But
looting cannot be institutionalized; it cannot be the
normal mode of communist distribution of products.
 Beyond Politics * 175
It is impossible to allow all products to be subject
to free distribution. It will be necessary to organize,
allocate, and restrict. This is the task of the councils.
As the scarcity of goods is diminished and
the power of the counterrevolution declines, the
councils will lose their statist character. They will not
be abolished. They will have deep roots in the life
of society.
To reject the councils due to purism is, from
the moment when they arise to meet real needs, to
situate oneself outside the revolutionary process.
It would be better to participate in their creation,
their operation and their eventual dissolution in
accordance with the struggle and the correlation of
forces between revolution and counterrevolution.
Participation in the councils does not mean
that revolutionaries must renounce their own
autonomous action and organization. The councils
are mass organizations. Hence they will exhibit
a certain degree of hesitation, and a slower rate
of radicalization than certain fractions of the
population. The development of the councils will
to some degree be determined by what is done by
those organized outside them.
It will be necessary to fight and to boycott the
corporatist councils, the managerial organizations,
the neo-trade unionist or neo-political groups that
176 * A World Without Money: Communism

will seek to seize the organization of social life for

the benefit of a minority. Organizations that will
maintain commodity production, form police units,
or demand the return of the capitalists, cannot be
considered to be soviets ....
The council is necessary when a territory has to
be administered . It disappears when this necessity
temporarily ceases to exist as a result of a certain
relation of forces or permanently ceases to exist as
a result of the consolidation of communism . Certain

groups can, in accordance with a revolutionary

situation, intervene and communize stocks of
commodities without being capable of or wanting
to take the production or distribution of these
commodities in their hands on a more permanent
basis. It all depends on when the revolutionary forces
reckon they possess the means to advance from
specific wildcat actions to the direct administration
of a region . The advantage of taking such a step
would be an improved position with regard to
securing resources for feeding the population or
waging the revolutionary war. The disadvantage
would be that the liberated region would become
a target for attack. From the moment that this risk is
accepted the problem of the councilist organization
of the liberated region is posed: the problem of the
constitution of a revolutionary power.
 Beyond Politics * 177

This same power! Whilst it must attempt to

acquire the broadest support and participation of
the masses, should not accept formal democracy as
its basis, by organizing elections, for example.

Democracy

What on Earth could be more beautiful than

democracy, the power of the sovereign people?
As the word "capitalism" assumes more pejorative
connotations, "democracy ” gains adherents.
The whole world is for democracy, whether
constitutional monarchy or republic, bourgeois or
people's democracy. If there is one thing everyone
accuses their enemies of, it is that they are not
democratic enough .
Anyone who criticizes democracy can only
be, in the best case, a nostalgic apologist for the
old absolute monarchies. Generally the appalling
label of " fascist" is the preferred epithet reserved
for such people . The most fanatic mudslingers in
this regard are often the Marxists and Marxist-
Leninists who forget what the founding fathers said
about democracy, and who praise democracy so
much in order to conceal their own taste for power
and dictatorship... Ironically enough, it is certain
elements tainted with the brush of Stalinism that will
178 * A World Without Money: Communism

hypocritically accuse us of being Stalinists.

Democracy seems to be the antithesis of
capitalist despotism. Where everyone knows that
it is a minority that really rules, it is common for
people to set against this minority rule the power
derived from universal suffrage.
In reality, capitalism and democracy go hand
in hand. Democracy is the fig leaf of capital.
Democratic values, far from being subversive, are
the idealized expression of the really existing and
somewhat less than noble tendencies of capitalist
society. Communists are no more eager to realize
the trinity of “liberty, equality, fraternity” than that
of “work, family, fatherland”.
If democracy is the consort of capital, why do
dictatorship and capitalism so often coexist? Why
do most people live under authoritarian regimes?
Why is it that, even in democratic states, democratic
functions are constantly impeded?
Democratic aspirations and values result from
capitalism’s tendency to act as a solvent in society.
They correspond to the end of the era when the
individual had his place in a stable community
and network of relations. They also correspond
to the need to preserve the image of an idealized
community, to regulate conflicts, and to reduce
friction for the good of the whole community. The
 Beyond Politics * 179

minority yields to the will of the majority.

Democracy is not merely a lie or a vulgar
illusion. It derives its content from a shattered social
reality, which it seems to reunite into a totality.
The democratic aspiration conceals a search for
community and respect for others. But the soil in
which it is rooted and attempts to grow prevents it
from successfully attaining these goals.
Even so, democracy frequently poses too great
a threat to capital or at least to certain powerful
interests. This is why it is always encountering
impediments to its existence. With few exceptions,
these constraints and even unadorned dictatorship
are presented as victories for democracy. What
tyrant does not pretend to rule, if not through the
people, at least for the people?
Democracy, which during calm periods can
appear to be a useful means to pacify workers’
struggles, is shamelessly abandoned when this is
required for the defence of capital. There are always
intellectuals and politicians who are very surprised
when they are so easily sacrificed on the altar of the
interests of the powerful.
Democracy and dictatorship are two
contrasting, but not totally unrelated, forms.
Democracy, since it implies the submission of the
minority to the majority, is a form of dictatorship.
180 * A World Without Money: Communism

A dictatorial junta may very well have recourse, in

order to make decisions, to democratic mechanisms.
It is often forgotten that fascism, Nazism and
Stalinism have shared a predilection to impose both
terroristic procedures and periodic elections. It is
characteristic of them to oppose the masses of the
population and their popular tribunes, on the one
hand, to a handful of “traitors” and “unpatriotic”
and “anti-party” individuals, on the other.
Communism is not the enemy of democracy
because it is the friend of dictatorship and fascism. It
is the enemy of democracy because it is the enemy of
politics. Nonetheless, communists are not indifferent
to the regime under which they live. They prefer to
quietly go to bed each night without having to ask
themselves if that will be the night when they will be
dragged out of bed and taken to prison.
Critique of the state must not replace the
critique of politics. Some attack the machinery
of the state only in order to save politics. Just as
some educational theorists criticize the school in
order to generalize the educational paradigm to
cover all forms of social relations, for the Leninists
everything is political. Behind every manifestation
of capital they see intention or design. Capital is
thus transformed into the instrument of a political
program that must be opposed by another political
 Beyond Politics * 181

program.
Politics is supposed to be the terrain of liberty,
of action and of movement, in contrast with the
fatalism of economics. The economy, the domain of
goods production, is ruled by necessity. Economic
development and its crises appear to be natural
phenomena that are beyond man’s control.
The left has the habit of emphasizing the
possibilities of politics, while the right focuses on
economic necessities: this is a false debate.
Politics is increasingly prone to become a
carbon copy of economic life. During a certain
period it was capable of playing a role in the
establishment of compromises and alliances
between social layers.
Today, the significance of politics as a factor
of economic intervention has grown. At the same
time, however, the political sphere has lost its
independence. There is nothing left of politics but
a single political program of capital, which both
the right and the left are forced to implement
regardless of the specific interests of their respective
constituencies.
While the state appears to be an institution
with more or less recognizable boundaries, politics
is constantly exuded from every pore of society.
Even if it is manifested in the action of a particular
182 * A World Without Money: Communism

milieu of militants or politicians, it relies upon and is

echoed by the behaviour of every individual. This is
what gives it its force and lays the foundation for the
widespread opinion that the solution of any social
problem can only be political.
Politics derives from the dissociation between
decision-making and action, and on the separations
which set individuals against one another. Politics
appears first of all as a permanent quest for power
that motivates men in capitalist society. Democracy
and despotism seem to be the only forms for
regulating problems that arise between people.
The introduction of democracy into romantic
relationships and families passes for a new stage in
human progress. It expresses, in the first place and
perhaps in the least unacceptable way, the loss of
the profound unity that could exist between human
beings.
Communism does not separate decision and
execution. There will no longer be a separation
between two groups or even between two distinct
and hierarchical moments. People will do what
needs to be done or what they have decided to
do without considering whether or not the majority
approves. Thoughts about majority vs. minority
presuppose the existence of a formal community.
The principle of unanimity rules in the sense
 Beyond Politics * 183

that those who do something have reached an

agreement in principle and this agreement has
provided them with the basis and the possibility
for common action. The group does not exist
independently of, or prior to, the action. It is not
split by a vote only to immediately be reunified by
virtue of the submission of one part to the other. It is
constituted in and through action, and by the ability
of each individual to identify with and to understand
the point of view of others.
It is not a matter of categorically rejecting all
voting and all majority rule. These are technical
forms which cannot be given an absolute value.
It could happen that the minority is right. It could
happen that the majority may yield to the minority
in view of the importance of the question for the
minority.
Is communism the advent of freedom? Yes, if by
freedom you understand that men will have more
possibilities for choice than they do now, and that
they will be able to live in accordance with their
inclinations.
What we reject is the philosophy that opposes
free will and determinism. This separation reflects
the opposition between man and the world, and
between the individual and society. Itis an expression
of the anomie of the individual and his inability
184 * A World Without Money: Communism

to understand his own needs in order to satisfy

them. He can choose between a thousand jobs, a
thousand kinds of leisure, and a thousand lovers,
and will be influenced in a thousand ways, because
nothing really concerns him. No certainty affects
him. He doubts everything, starting with himself.
As a result he is ready to put up with anything and
often believes that he has made a choice. Freedom
is presented as the philosophical garb of misery
and doubt as the expression of freedom of opinion
when it actually means wandering aimlessly, man’s
inability to find himself at home in the world.
During the course of the revolution man loses
his chains but, having become his own objective,
he is simultaneously chained to his desires and the
needs of the moment. He becomes passionate and
begins to know himself. The extraordinary climate
of joy and tension of the insurrections is linked
with the feeling that everything is possible and that
what is being done must absolutely be brought to a
conclusion as soon as possible. There is no longer
any reason for doubt and for staggering from
one meaningless task to another. Subjective and
objective forces merge.

The Electoral Circus

 Beyond Politics * 185
If you confuse elections with democracy, we
shall be told by subtle thinkers, this is because you
know that you will lose.
We have no illusions. It is certain that, as long
as the system is functioning normally, we would be
utterly defeated in a general vote. Our program
might not be considered to be entirely without its
good points by the majority of the voters, but it
would certainly be judged to be unattainable.
Only by refusing to act as voters will it be possible
for them to begin to perceive the possibility of its
attainment.
If politics is the art of the possible, as they say,
then we situate ourselves beyond the realm of that
possibility.
Good upstanding democratic trendsetters and
opinion leaders, are you willing to submit certain
questions to the population and to abide by its
wishes? Lackeys of capital, we ask you: are you
prepared to hold a referendum to discover whether
or not capitalism should be maintained? There is a
multitude of questions that you have managed to
prevent from ever being addressed. They are ruled
out from the start as not realistic. You are the ones
who determine what is and what is not possible.
But that is not enough for you. It is also necessary
for your realistic programs and predictions to have
186 * A World Without Money: Communism

never been implemented.

The state exists thanks to the taxes paid by
its citizens. Its rule is based on their votes. If each
one of its policies had to be directly examined
and approved on an item-by-item basis by the
taxpayers, it would risk losing many of its supporters.
When he pays, the citizen has the impression of
having been screwed. When he votes, even if he
knows better he knows that he cannot do anything
but keep his mouth shut, and feels flattered that his
opinion should be solicited.
There is a dissociation between the system’s real
management and the layers of officials who staff it
on the one hand, and on the other, the politics of the
parties, the spectacle-politics.
Electoral democracy serves to conceal the fact
that all important decisions are beyond the control
of the voters and even of the politicians.
The reality of electoral politics is becoming
increasingly permeated by the commodity.
Democracy appears as the direct reflection of the
economic world. The voter is no longer even a
citizen, but a consumer of programs and ideologies.
The spectacle of politics and its privileged moments,
known as elections, must be denounced for what
it really is: just another way of making the people
forget their nullity.
 Beyond Politics * 187
It often happens that the people take the hoax
seriously. In the aftermath of an election that was
annulled or after winning what seemed to them
to be an electoral victory, they begin a rebellion.
At this point they have gone beyond the reality of
electoral politics.
We do not advocate participation in elections,
let alone strict abstention. When the proletarians
vote, even if they are not right, at least they have
their reasons. This ritual will not seem to be really
illusory, ridiculous and unfortunate until living
conditions in their totality begin to really change.
In the meantime voting will have its place in the
armoury of the system.
Elections could very well be held in a communist
organization. They will be for the purpose of
designating delegates. But this election no longer
has the appearance of a privileged moment. The
designee does not have a blank check. He fulfils one
function among others, one that is no more sacred
than any other. Naming such a person or such a
team of people, or approving of their previous
activity, the rank and file is only establishing its
own safeguards to ensure the implementation of its
program. It is not the electoral procedure itself but
the action that is undertaken that matters.
The formation of workers’ councils is not
188 * A World Without Money: Communism

predicated on holding a referendum. Their task is

not to liberate a region in order to hold elections
there that would only be considered as valid by their
organizers, as usual. With reference to this question
we have the bad example of the Paris Commune.
Even if elections could be successfully
conducted under these conditions, this would only
succeed in dissociating decision-making and action
and bringing about the return of professionals of
politics. To have elections, voters must be registered
and records must be kept.
The establishment of an administrative
apparatus by means of elections presupposes the
existence of such an apparatus! Power and the
state were not born from elections, but the reverse.
The revolutionary organizations of the masses
will be formed and consolidated in accordance
with certain practical tasks. They will be born from
the actions of minorities. You will not see 51% of the
population suddenly take action, all at the same
time, for the same purpose. These active minorities
will be distinguished by the fact that they will not
organize the rest of the population, but will tend to
merge with the latter in attempts to resolve collective
problems. Its success will depend on its ability to
attract the participation of much more than just 51%
of the population.
 Beyond Politics * 189

Communism cannot be established by means

of a coup. Because it must confront the power of the
state and its repressive apparatus, communism can
only be victorious if it obtains the more or less active
participation of a large part of the population, in
which case its enemies would be an insignificant
minority.
The proletarian revolution, by breaking the
chains of the wage system, will make possible
and necessary a degree of mass participation
that cannot possibly be compared with that of the
bourgeois political revolutions, even in those cases
when the latter were popular revolutions. These
popular revolutions, which the democrats invoke in
their own favour, did not take place as a result of
democratic deliberations. If the French people were
given the choice in 1789, would they have voted for
revolution ? What actually took place was the result
of one fraction of the population revolting against
the superannuated privileges of the nobility. Driven
forward by its successes and the consequences of
its actions, the revolution swept away the worm-
eaten system .
The party of communism will not follow behind
the overwhelming majority of the population until
the latter perceives communism as the direct means
of resolving the problems of everyday life. The
190 * A World Without Money: Communism

revolution does not take place because enough

people have been converted to revolutionary
views. People become revolutionary because the
revolution causes a new way of life to appear, and
it seems to them possible and necessary to live that
way.
Today, when society’s vaults are still full, the
disappearance of money seems impossible. Those
who advocate it come off as naïve dreamers. When
the market mechanisms cease to function, however,
to continue to depend on money for one’s necessities
will take on the aspect of meaningless acrobatics.
People will come to support communism, not through
ideology or even because of their loathing for a
dying society, but due to a simple need to live. It will
then become necessary to defend communism from
the opportunists who are incapable of conceiving of
a long-term perspective, and who will seek to gain
immediate personal advantages from this situation.
If we say that the revolution must be based
upon the broadest participation possible, why don’t
we proclaim our allegiance to democracy? This
might pose a quandary for some of our opponents
and perhaps even to some of our friends. But we
are not, after all, politicians; superficial support is
more hindrance than help. We need to be clear in
order to unite and orient our supporters on a solid
 Beyond Politics * 191

foundation. As for our genuine enemies, we do

not want to make their jobs easier for them, but in
any event what we really say or want makes little
difference to them. Sometimes this is because they
do not understand us, or because they want to
slander us, except when they lift some ideas from
the revolutionaries to spice up their program.
Democracy is supposed to be the power of the
people, the power of all. The communist revolution
does not expect to change the form of the power
structure or to hand it over to the people. It wants to
remove it from the entire world.
Power always needs external legitimization:
God for the monarchy, the people for the
constitutional monarchy or the republic. Are the
people more real than God? No, God is a person,
a representation full of humanity, while the people
are nothing but a pure abstraction of humanity.
This people that is invoked to legitimize the state is
nothing but a reflection of the state. Between this
ideal people, this political people, and the real,
diverse, lively, stupid or intelligent people, the
people revealed in everyday life, an abyss yawns.
It is not politics that expresses and embodies
the ideas and the will of humans, but the latter
become the vehicles for political opinions. They
are themselves transformed into abstractions when,
192 * A World Without Money: Communism

whether voters or militants, they express their

opinions.
Why don’t the communists, who want to do
away with exploitation and war, renounce the use
of force and dictatorial methods?
Do you really believe that the ruling classes
will renounce the use of such means? Do you
think that in a period of social transformation
the most democratic states will not dictate their
beautiful principles at gunpoint? The capitalists,
the privileged, and the servants of the most liberal
political order might claim they are fighting for
democracy. They will not openly try to defend their
real interests before the public. But it is quite unlikely
that they will fight democratically.
It is within a context of a crisis situation that
we have to compare bourgeois methods with
revolutionary methods. It is hypocritical to contrast
the behaviour of the most democratic bourgeois
states during times of social peace with the
behaviour of revolutionaries during a period of
social conflict. In all likelihood the revolutionaries
will prove to be more human and more democratic
than the defenders of order during a time of
upheaval.

The Strike
 Beyond Politics * 193

Democracy is negated with the spread of strikes

and wildcat uprisings. The outbreak of action is not
conditional on a democratic poll of the rank and file
or their representatives.
A fraction of the workers, because they are
the most combative and least alienated elements
situated in the most advantageous conditions, revolt.
There is no gap between decision and execution,
between those who decide and those who act.
The fundamental problem is not necessarily
that of rallying the whole population behind the
revolution. From a key position in the production
process it is possible to make the capitalists yield.
Work stoppages could be a self-reinforcing
objective; all it takes is an unauthorized break or a
refusal to do a particular job.
It is possible that a breakthrough staged by a
handful of people could provoke a generalized
breakthrough. This is what we witnessed on the
scale of an entire nation in May 1968.
The strike movement spread. A majority of the
workers supported it. Their support was generated
in the heat of the struggle rather than having been
secured in advance by means of a poll of those
who were affected by the strikes.
If the workers had been required to
democratically decide beforehand whether or not
194 * A World Without Money: Communism

to commence hostilities, perhaps they would have

balked. A small number of people set the example
and showed them the way to cast aside their fear
of the authorities and the possible consequences
of their actions. They would be swept along by the
atmosphere of struggle and solidarity and would
be much more determined to overcome the feeling
of discouragement and resignation engendered by
the powerlessness of their everyday lives.
Let us imagine that the strike was decided on
by means of a mass consultation. In that case it
would most likely have taken a different course.
The workers’ offensive would have forfeited its
unexpected quality. The enemy would have been
informed of the nature, the form, the scale and
the objectives of the movement. Organizational
imperatives would have trumped action and would
have muffled the independent initiative of the
workers. The strikers would have remained more or
less passive and, outside of the ranks of a minority
of trade unionists or organizers, would have seen
their strike as someone else’s affair.
When workers begin to become radicalized,
the democratic demand acquires more and more of
the character of a demand for recuperation. A vote
is held to decide whether or not to return to work.
The bureaucrats, specialists in negotiation, seize the
 Beyond Politics * 195

initiative.
Democracy becomes the expression of
resignation. At this time it becomes visibly what it is
in its essence.
Reliance on a general assembly as the only
sovereign body is not enough to stem the tide of
bureaucratization. The assemblies can become the
privileged sites for manipulation, for mass meetings
of atomized and powerless individuals, fortresses of
confused and useless imposture.
General assemblies are necessary. It is
necessary for them to be able to know where they
stand, to assess their own forces, and to control
and hold accountable their delegates and special
committees. But the assembly must not take the
form of something upon which all else depends, for
whose benefit all the rest of reality loses all of its
specific importance.

The Party
As the crisis of capital becomes more profound
and the vanity of the capitalist solutions to the crisis
becomes more obvious, a communist party will
form within the population.
The formation of the party is not the cause that
determines the outbreak of the crisis. It is only the
196 * A World Without Money: Communism

prerequisite for the assault on capital. Its quantitative

and qualitative development is, on the other hand,
intimately linked to the emergence of this crisis. Its
purpose is to facilitate the resolution of this crisis.
The party is not an association formed in
accordance with a pre-established doctrine that will
expand and grow without changing its nature. The
party does not exist; it constitutes itself. It emerges
slowly and proceeds by acquiring a clearer content
and form. Its nature becomes more definite and
its membership increases as the possibilities for
breaking with the system become more apparent.
The constitution of the party is not, however, a
new and unprecedented phenomenon. The party,
as it is born at a particular historical moment, is
the resurgence of a movement that transcends the
limitations of this historical period. The modern
party picks up the thread of a party whose reality
and even memory have been erased by the
counterrevolution.
During non-revolutionary periods, when
communism can only be asserted timidly and
haltingly, the party in the strict sense is condemned
to remain an insignificant and forgotten fraction of
the population. Alongside the conscious communists
there are numerous unconscious communists
who reveal themselves by their revolutionary
 Beyond Politics * 197

actions. The party, in the fullest sense of those

who demonstrate their more or less conscious
commitment to communism in the increasingly
frequent social conflicts, is invisible. Its image is
not embodied within the reigning spectacle. Even
at the level of this spectacle, however, its power is
felt. Propagandists and politicians, in order to push
their commodities, broadcast a distorted echo of its
hopes. Bourgeoisie and bureaucrats tremble before
this still nameless and faceless threat.
It is contradictory to claim to be a communist
in a world that rejects communism by every means
at its disposal. Communists are not supermen who
already live in a different way than the rest of their
fellow men. They do not remain untouched by the
reigning misery. Their theoretical consciousness is of
little avail in their attempts to transform their own
lives.
It is essential, and perhaps inevitable, that
conscious communists should appear and that they
should endeavour to understand and to prepare for
the communist revolution. But it does not make sense
to oppose conscious communists to unconscious
communists. What is important is to see how and
why the conscious communist arises as a practical
necessity.
There are certainly people who call
198 * A World Without Money: Communism

themselves revolutionaries. The production of these

" revolutionaries" is not independent ofthe escalation
of the crisis . Most of them are not communists and
do not even know what they are and what they
want. The desire for revolution appears as the last
and the most vapid of all possible desires in this
society. It is an abstraction separated from concrete
needs and expectations. The "revolutionary” can
discourse about everything and passionately
engage in strategic disputes, but he is incapable
of defining what it is that he wants. IF he speaks
of immanent transformations, his perspective is
dominated by the question of power. The society he
wants to build rests upon a redistribution of power.
What he "wants" is people's power, workers'
power, students' power, the power of the councils
(+ electrification or automation ! ) , the power of the
people over their own lives, the power of...
When the revolution corresponds to concrete
needs and possibilities, however, the majority of
those who will be revolutionaries will not feel the
need to call themselves revolutionaries .
Only during a phase of open confrontation,
when there is a possibility of communizing the
social body, will the party be able to cease to be
merely an association based on shared opinions or
sporadic actions. It will finally be able to become a
 Beyond Politics * 199

community of action.
When the great majority of the proletariat
participates in the revolution, the party will not
mistake itself for the class, since it does not claim
to be the proletariat or to represent it. It is the most
resolute and lucid fraction of the class. It coexists,
collaborates with or confronts other fractions that
are more moderate or that have an interest in the
bourgeois apparatus or ideology.
Its action can be characterized in one sentence:
to create a situation that makes turning-back
impossible.
It is normal for there to be a lack of convergence
between the action of the communists and the
behaviour of the masses. This does not indicate a
fundamental conflict. The party does not have to
eliminate the mass organizations or movements. The
councils and other base committees do not have to
eliminate the party. If one of these things should
happen it would necessarily signify the end and
downfall of the revolution. This perception of such a
conflict is a legacy of the Russian revolution and the
councilist wave of the twenties. It has one defect:
it perceives certain organizations as communist
which were not communist.
The party will fight for the councils, since this
struggle cannot be dissociated from the struggle for
200 * A World Without Money: Communism

communism. This is true even if, with regard to this or

that point or mode of organization the communists
do not agree with the masses.
The party itself, which is not an organization,
or worse, an institution managed from the top-
down, will organize itself in the councilist manner.
It is the community of those who stand for, beyond
immediate tasks and interests, the defence of the
movement as a whole. It must indicate the fortress to
be stormed, it must concentrate its forces at strategic
points, and it must propose solutions.
There is presently no organization that can call
itself “the party”. The latter can never be identified
with a sect or any kind of mass organization. The
supporters of communism are revealed by what
they do rather than by membership in any particular
group. Organizational forms do not have to be
established or laid down in advance. They will be
discovered during the course of the movement.

7. Insurrection and
Communization
The communization of society will not be
gradual or peaceful, but abrupt and insurrectionary.
Nor will it take the form of a steady advance that
will progressively unite the necessary forces.
 Insurrection and Communization * 201

Insurrection and communization are intimately

linked. There will not be, first the insurrection, and
then - made possible by the insurrection -the
transformation of social reality. The insurrectionary
process draws its power from communization itself.
There will not be a mixed or an intermediate
mode of production between capitalism and
communism . The period of transition and, before
that, the period of rupture, are characterized by
the contradiction between absolutely communist
methods on the one side and, on the other, a reality
that is still completely imbued with mercantile ways.
It is in this phase that a society of abundance and
freedom must confront the problems of poverty
and power. It will have to liquidate the human and
material consequences of an era of slavery and
neutralize the forces that remain bound to that era .

Violence

The use of violence to attain their goals : this is

what distinguishes revolutionaries from reformists.
The opposition between revolutionaries and
reformists is not so much a matter of strategy
and methods as it is a matter of the nature of the
transformation that is to be brought about. This is
what evidently causes a difference in their methods.
202 * A World Without Money: Communism

History distinguishes two types of reformists: the

soft and the hard.
The soft reformists, social democrats and
parliamentarists, think that their schemes can be
realized in a gentle way. They were often right, as
long as their illusions were proportional to the scale
of the reforms that could possibly be obtained.
Constantly, and from every corner of the world,
they prove that the ruling interests will not engage
in the repression of those who do not threaten them.
These soft reformists sometimes turn hard, but then
their hardness is for the most part directed against
the proletariat.
Along with the soft reformists who turn hard,
there are the real hard reformists, that is, the Stalinists
and their ilk. These reformists consider themselves to
be revolutionaries and their goal is to seize state
power and control the economy by replacing
its current managers. They have no interest in
underestimating the striking power of their enemies.
This is a matter of success and of saving their own
skins at the same time.
And the revolutionaries?
A communist revolution is an enormous social
upheaval. It entails confrontations and violence.
However, while the revolution is an act of force, its
essential problem is not the question of violence,
 Insurrection and Communization * 203

nor is the precondition for its success essentially a

question of military force.
This is because the revolution is not a question
of power. We shall not fight over the state or the
economy with the powerful on the playing field of
power. Thanks to the positions that it occupies in the
economy, communism will be able to undermine
the foundations of and disarm the military
counterrevolution. It will avoid, as far as possible,
direct confrontation.
The communist revolution does not make
violence the main problem, because it seeks to help
that which already exists to burst forth, rather than
to force reality to conform to a plan.
We are opposed to the fanatics and fetishists
of violence as well as to the pacifists. Just as non-
violent methods can and must be adopted, even
with relation to enemy military forces, we must also
reject the ideology of non-violence.
This ideology transmits and is based on
pedagogical illusions. It assumes that everyone can
be educated for non-violence and can be mobilized
from scratch. It wants mass actions but does not see
that the problems of information and coordination
that this type of action poses, and the possibility of
counterattack, cannot be resolved without possibly
giving rise to violence. Systematic non-violence
204 * A World Without Money: Communism
assumes that there is a consensus observed by
enemies to respect certain rules and, above all, that
there is a minimal freedom of information.
Non-violence is above all effective as a
defensive method. Its limitations become apparent
when it is a question of taking the initiative and of
neutralizing the enemy.
The more consolidated the revolution is in terms
of force and lucidity, the more capable it will be
of rallying the vacillating elements to its side and
neutralizing its opponents. By understanding the
limited yet essential role of violence it can avoid
mistakes that would entail bloody consequences.
The proletariat cannot renounce obtaining,
manufacturing and using weapons. While weapons
are not always scattered throughout a society, the
materials from which they are manufactured are
often available in large quantities. It is essential to
find out where they are and to prepare ourselves
for their eventual use, to arm ourselves and to
prepare ambushes that will make our enemies pay
a high price for their attacks. It would be ridiculous
and shameful to incite people to form self-defence
groups armed with revolvers and knives to defend
their factories or their neighbourhoods against
armoured vehicles and aircraft.
Future insurrections cannot be predicted or
 Insurrection and Communization * 205

stage-managed in advance but it is possible to

advocate a strategy prior to or during the course of
the movement. This strategy is based on knowledge
of the nature of the communist revolution and of the
forces at the disposal of each side.
The bourgeoisie and the bureaucrats have an
army. The power of the proletariat resides in its
economic position.
The army is vulnerable not so much from a
military point of view as by virtue of its dependence
on the economy. It is becoming increasingly more
reliant on the economy with regard to its need for
weapons, munitions, food and transport. It contains
workers and technicians within its ranks. In order for it
itto requires an uninterrupted
wage war—and supply
modern war is very
chain,
expensive—
and the

population of the country must continue to work.

The military counterrevolution must be attacked
in its economic rear-guard. It is of crucial importance
to prevent the national army from intervening in other
countries for repressive purposes by compelling it to
remain in its own country to maintain social peace.
The military commanders understand the risks
involved if they attempt to compensate for the
“shortcomings” of the workers in the domain of
production. The army cannot organize the economy
against the workers; it prefers to have a well-defined
206 * A World Without Money: Communism

adversary of the same nature as itself, instead of

performing tasks that are alien to it, and losing its
way and being dispersed.

The Army

The revolution is commonly imagined as a clash

between two armies: one following the orders of the
privileged and the exploiters; the other at the service
of the proletarians. According to this view, the
revolution is reduced to a war. Strategy is reduced
to the seizure of power and the control of territory.
This is a dangerously false view that is based on the
memory of the battles of the Russian and Spanish
civil wars as well as the wars for national liberation .
Although it may happen that at one time or
another, in this or that circumstance, revolutionary
action may take a military form: commando
attacks, aerial raids ... this will not change anything
of the profound nature or the global character of
the conflict .
To conceive of the revolution as a confrontation
between red and white armies is not communist,
but stupid, in view of the disproportionality of the
military forces involved . To engage in such a war
with capital would be to play the enemy's game.
The army and the police are the last defences
 Insurrection and Communization * 207
of capital. Their actions can be directly expressed
in the form of the destruction of men and things but
also by the creation and defence of a situation of
misery that is conducive to the spread of egoism,
fear and other primitive reflex reactions. This
turns the impoverished populations against the
revolutionaries (who are viewed as the cause of
these problems) and tends to instil new life into the
mechanisms of the mercantile society.
The army can be used to operate and control
certain strategic sectors of the economy.
Due to its hierarchical nature, which rules
out debate and dissent, which are replaced by
obedience and discipline, and due to its patriotic
purpose and ideology, the army tends to be a
conservative institution.
The military counterrevolution does have its
weaknesses, however.
The sense of self-confidence and the feeling
that they have the law on their side, which are
engendered among the military forces in their own
particular ghetto and as a result of their esprit de
corps, can neither be justified nor reinforced in
a confrontation with an enemy army on a well-
defined battlefield. The army must be prevented
from functioning as an army; it must be opposed
by the dissolving fluidity of communism. This
208 * A World Without Money: Communism

entails paralyzing, contaminating, dividing, and

disarticulating the military forces.
Our military attacksmustbe intimatelylinkedwith
our activity of social destruction and reconstruction.
The use of violence must not be transformed into an
independent, self-justifying activity. Its purpose is to
put a stop to or clear the way for situations directly
in the interest of communization, which provides its
justification as well as its power.
Before or during an insurrectionary phase, we
can never be too mistrustful of separate violence
and of terrorism. In terrorism, the revolutionaries are
caught in the gears of attack and of counterattack,
and communism is absent. When violence is
transformed into violence for communism, rather
than violence that accompanies communism, when it
is vacated of its immediate content, all provocations
are permitted. It is easy to commit murders and
bombings and then blame the revolutionaries.
By way of the immediate and radical
transformation of social organization we have to
pull the rug out from under the feet of the military
and deprive them of anything to defend. The army
is an instrument of violence; it cannot do everything
on its own because it is simply an organization
for violence. We can do anything with a bayonet
except sit on it.
 Insurrection and Communization * 209
It is a favourite preconception of the left to
favour the intellectuals and to look down upon the
military. Whenever a revolution takes place leftists
think, quite naturally, that the former will be in favour
of the revolution and the latter will be against it. On
the one side intelligence, on the other brute force.
History shows just how erroneous such
preconceptions are. Since the Paris Commune,
when Colonel Rossel joined the insurrection
and was shot for having done so, and when the
progressive authors George Sand and Emile Zola
violently condemned the insurrection, it has been
common for one part of the armed forces to join the
side of the revolution and for a no less significant
part of the intellectuals to turn against it.
Such is the revolution: sometimes it horrifies
those who support it, and fills those who dread it
with enthusiasm.
The army forms its own separate institution
whose values are, in part, alien to bourgeois or
commercial values. Unlike the class of feudal lords,
the bourgeois class is no longer capable of fighting
in its own defence: it entrusts this task to the army and
the police. Although one part of the army’s leaders
completely identifies its interests with those of the
ruling class, there must be a latent contradiction
between the interests and the customs of the military
210 * A World Without Money: Communism

personnel and those of the bourgeoisie.

We must not allow ourselves to believe that
the army, or any part of the army, will easily
or spontaneously come over to the side of the
revolution. This can only happen as the result of
the development of the revolution itself and of its
penetration of the army. The army will become
revolutionary to the extent that, under the pressure
of the soldiers and the policemen, the all-powerful
hierarchy will be questioned and blind obedience
condemned.
The revolutionaries must not make any
concessions to militarism. The revolutionaries must
make the soldiers understand that the latter are not
fighting for their own interests, and much less for
those of the Nation. They have to show them that
their ideals are subverted by capital. They must also
show them that the military personnel, as human
beings, and their qualities and abilities, have a
place in the communist movement.
Our goal is the destruction of the army. It
is necessary that this be achieved with as little
confrontation with the military as possible. The
recently formed or reconstituted armed groups will
gradually lose their military character through their
participation in productive tasks and in the workers’
councils.
 Insurrection and Communization * 211

The revolution must not ignore its dimension of

force nor must it miss any chances of integrating
into its forces, by transforming them, the institutions
of repression of the old society. A policeman might
be ready to serve a power that no longer seems to
be subversive to him but instead looks like a new
authority. Or it could be that some of them might not
want to continue to be lackeys.
In any event, the revolutionaries and the
proletarians must not allow others to possess a
monopoly on force. This question of the arming
of the proletariat will be a test that will allow us
to judge the effectiveness of the connection of the
military with the revolution.

Vengeance
The revolutionaries do not have a taste for
blood, nor a spirit of vengeance. The revolts of the
past show that blood was indeed spilled, but only a
very small share of that bloodletting was due to the
actions of the insurrectionaries. Hope extinguishes
hate.
It was the counterrevolution that massacred,
imprisoned and deported. Blood flowed during
battles but often also, after the fighting was over,
when military victory was assured. Murderous fury
212 * A World Without Money : Communism

was born from the terror of the owning classes . The

reaction had to crush the enemy forces . To them, the
revolution seemed to reside in the revolutionaries .
Therefore, the latter had to be destroyed .
The spirit of vengeance might play a role in
workers' revolts. But that is all it was, compared to
the repression carried out by the forces of Versailles,
by the Kuomintang in 1927, by Franco's forces....
The workers' uprisings have been much less
characterized by vengeance than were the anti-
feudal peasant rebellions. This is because the
revolution is not an act of desperation. Acts of
destruction of goods and reprisals against persons
are often the work of those who do not see any
way out of their misery and who are satisfied with
annihilating those who embody their oppression.
Vengeance is not just petty, but stupid. It
condemns our enemies in advance on the basis
of their past and reinforces their resolve to oppose
us, out of fear and determination to survive. And
it makes enemies among those who, rightly or
wrongly, feel that they, too, have done something
incriminating . And it encourages a situation in
which personal grudges can be settled .
We must offer our enemies the opportunity to
change sides. Communist principles do not in and
of themselves dictate a uniform mode of conduct.
 Insurrection and Communization * 213

To the contrary, they imply that it is possible to

express a diversity of characters, situations and past
histories of those who participate in the revolution.
More precisely, they imply that, just as our enemies
do not view us as anything but “red vermin”, we
must for our part continuously strive to recognize
even the worst of our enemies as human beings.
Without any illusions about human nature.
It would be stupid to attack doctors, engineers,
peasants, since many of these people would soon
join us without our having to make any concessions
to the myth of the specialist, to a hierarchy of
labor, or to property. This means that the councils
should sometimes protect the possessions of certain
people. This will contradict the principle of equality
but it will make it possible for some people to come
over to the side of the councils by offering to allow
them to keep something they value. The doctor
could be guaranteed the use of his residence and
of his professional equipment on the condition that
he does not emigrate and that he treats those who
need medical assistance. Certain second homes,
located in the countryside, could be returned to
their legal owners, or handed over to their parents
or their friends, without thereby allowing anyone to
possess two homes when others are living in broken
down shacks.
214 * A World Without Money: Communism
On the other hand, those who seek to preserve
their privileges or take advantage of the situation to
feather their own nests must know that they will not
be able to benefit from the mercy of their victims.
The more securely consolidated the
revolutionary councils are, the more capable
they are of decreeing clear rules and rapidly
transforming reality, the less necessary the use of
violence.

Reconversion
Communization does not mean expelling the
bosses from the factories so that we can take their
places, but rather begins with closing down many
of the currently existing enterprises.
The line between the counterrevolution and
the revolution will be drawn between those who, in
the name of the fatherland, of democracy, of self-
management, of the workers’ councils, of Christ
the King or chocolate pudding, incite the worker-
consumers to cling to their activities as beasts of
burden and to their drugs, and those others who
incite them to massively reduce and to radically
reconvert production. It is a matter of reducing
pollution and of breaking as much as possible with
the brutalization of labour and with the pseudo-
 Insurrection and Communization * 215

abundance of commodities .
To remain in the factory, even for the purpose
of self-managing it, is to freeze the situation to the
benefit of the counterrevolution . And this would
be the outcome whether this view is professed by
fanatics of labour, by naïve trade unionists or by
clever capitalists who are trying to gain time .
The revolutionaries will probably be accused
by all these holy apostles of seeking to disorganize
production and to reduce the standard of living of
the people .
This scaling back of production must not be
perceived as any kind of fascination with austerity.
Such a policy would require far fewer sacrifices
than any other solution; false solutions that would
merely prevent a decisive break with the past and
which would immobilize forces that are necessary
for the struggle; false solutions that would allow all
those who fear that the foundations of their power
are disappearing to regroup: recalcitrant trade
unionists, petty or big bosses, politicians, managers,
employers....
Merely by ceasing the production of a myriad
of useless, barely useful or harmful products, and
tearing down the walls between enterprises, we
could concentrate the forces required to produce
indispensable or necessary products in abundance.
216 * A World Without Money: Communism
It will be necessary to undertake new research and
begin a new kind of production. Communization
does not mean, therefore, only the demonetization,
but also the rapid transformation of production.
These two things are intimately linked.
Blue-collar workers, office employees and
teachers will be invited to take up jobs where they
will be really useful. These changes will be based,
first of all, on the spontaneous aversion of the masses
for work and on the revealing of their own abilities.
This will not take place under the aegis of a directive
centre but will arise from many different initiatives.
This does not mean that disorder will be given free
rein. Every revolution implies some oscillations, and
a certain amount of pandemonium and confusion.
But such disturbances must be reduced to a minimum.
And this is the task of the most radical elements. We
are neither against order, nor against discipline, nor
against organization, nor even against authority.
Those who conflate revolution with confusion
must be combated just as resolutely as the statists.
Indeed, the former play into the hands of the latter.
Reconversion must above all allow for the
satisfaction of the most basic needs. Then it must
favour, above the production of certain products,
the production of the tools and machines that are
needed for their production. These materials will be
 Insurrection and Communization * 217

distributed among the population and will permit

each person to engage in manufacture on his own
or else find others with whom he can manufacture
things.
These are only some ideas concerning the
possible modifications in the operation of major
economic sectors. None of these transformations
has any meaning in isolation. The peril of making
concrete proposals resides in the fact that they
could be turned against communism. But we
cannot forget that revolutionaries cannot be content
with articulating general principles but must, in
accordance with the particular situation, offer
concrete solutions.
Energy: there will be a significant reduction in
the production of energy. This reduction will, most
naturally, result from the shutting down of a part
of industry that consumes the greater part of this
energy. Perhaps these closures will be compulsory
due to difficulties in assuring the supplies of oil, gas
and coal.
The distribution of energy will be transformed.
Part of the share of energy that was once utilized
directly by industry can be transferred to domestic
consumption: for heating, illumination and to
provide power for small machines.
New sources of energy will gradually be
218 * A World Without Money: Communism

introduced. They must be developed in order to

reduce pollution and to conserve limited resources
such as fossil fuels. Perhaps a decentralized and
intermittent form of production will be favoured
for local use. This does not mean, however, that
communism is fundamentally opposed to nuclear
energy. It is simply a matter of establishing serious
guarantees for the conditions of production and
the needs for the use of energy. In the short term –
water, wind or sun would be preferable.
Transport: means of transportation waste
energy, constitute sources of pollution, crystallize
social inequalities … in this sector, too, there will
have to be a significant degree of scaling back and
rationalization that will enable a new use of space.
People will have to organize themselves in order to
avoid having to go on long journeys. There will be
fewer occasions for people to travel against their
will. The expansion of free time will make it possible
for them not to have to spend so much of their time
in their vehicles.
The production of automobiles can be halted.
The number of vehicles presently in circulation, if
they were to be used more rationally, would give
us the time we need to develop and manufacture
better machines. Some of these vehicles could be
used as taxis, with or without assigned drivers, or
 Insurrection and Communization * 219

they could be used for public purposes.

The great majority of vehicles will probably
continue to be used privately. This will allow for the
adaptation of traditional habits and give those who
still have cars an incentive to keep them in good
working order. The continued use of automobiles
may be limited by certain conditions placed on
their use in order to restrict or eliminate traffic in
some locations and allow the most effective and
advantageous possible use of those areas.
The trains and other modes of mass transport
should be favoured and developed. These methods
are safer, more energy efficient, and would involve
less traffic congestion than individual means of
travel. Our powerful and comfortable cars could be
complemented with slower vehicles that would be
more flexible and more suitable for individual use
and would be equipped with non-polluting motors.
In the meantime, we can continue to produce
trucks, bicycles, roller skates and good shoes.
To reduce the need for travel, mainly with
regard to high-speed, long-distance contacts,
we will have to develop a good telephonic or
videophonic network. This will allow, at a very low
cost, many more people to be in contact with each
other than is possible today [this has since taken
place—Note of the Portuguese Translator]. The
220 * A World Without Money: Communism

airplane is a noisy mode of transportation, which

produces a lot of pollution, for businessmen and
tourists on tight schedules. Its use is not easily made
generally available to everyone. We must therefore
either eliminate it or limit its use to particular cases.
For long-distance travellers, because they
cannot return to their fashionable vacation spots,
should we bring back the great sailing ships?
Their construction would lead to a healthy kind of
competition. In any event, there are other ways to
get from one continent to another: you do not need
supersonic jet aircraft.
Publishing: this is a sector whose revolutionary
importance is very easy to understand. Who will
control the press?
In insurrectionary periods it is often the
case that the workers’ control the content of the
newspapers that they print. This will once again
take place, no matter how much it may displease
the apostles of the freedom of the press who
often are nothing but defenders of the freedom of
money. This is not enough, however. The press must
undergo transformations and must cease to be the
contemplative reflection of reality.
The revolution will allow a freedom of
expression that is impossible for us today. A large
number of small printing machines, which belong to
 Insurrection and Communization * 221

businesses and administrators, will be placed at the

disposal of all.
Tomorrow, the whim of an editor will not
determine whether a book or a text will be published.
Its production, and then its printing, will be directly
the affair of those who are interested in it. Its success
will therefore depend on the determination of its
author and the practical support for his project that
he encounters.
Today, a considerable part of the cost of a
book is accounted for by the expenses involved in
its advertising and promotion. Here, the advantage
of communism is obvious. We can even allow, in
order to economize on wood pulp, that newspapers
or other texts should be passed on from one person
to another or else posted in public places.
Communism, in order to favour everyone’s
written, oral or audio-visual self-expression, must
make provisions for reducing the social costs of
paper and ink.
What will become of literature? It cannot be
doubted that it will be transformed and that the
production of romance and fantasy novels will
gradually become unnecessary. We will therefore
no longer have to continue to devote ourselves to
fiction, to a world of books opposed to the real
world. Perhaps some day, after the passage of a
222 * A World Without Money: Communism

certain amount of time, written communication will

lose its importance and will tend to disappear.
Construction: the construction industry will be
transformed. This does not mean that the masons
will be put out of work. Construction is one of the
rare activities that does not regress.
Nonetheless, measures will have to be taken
to limit, or more radically, to prohibit, construction
in overpopulated cities and suburban areas. The
people who move out of the urban centres, however,
must be housed. Houses and buildings of every
type will have to be built. It will also be necessary
to demolish existing buildings and organize the
recycling of their materials.
In this field, as in other activities, but perhaps
even more rapidly, professional exclusiveness will
be undermined. Anyone who wants to have a new
house will have to roll up his sleeves and get to
work. He will have the help of those who, due to
their training or the experience, know how to do the
work.
The homeless and ill-housed will immediately
be moved into apartments and houses that for one
reason or another are unoccupied. The suspension
of rent payments and the cancellation of debts will
naturally be one of the first acts of the revolution.
Clothing: We cannot transform everything all
 Insurrection and Communization * 223
at once. We will have to continue to produce what
we can given the existing materials and machinery.
There will, of course, be many changes with respect
to the quality and durability of products.
A certain number of types of clothing and shoes
can be produced in large quantities. In addition,
the production of fabrics and small machines will
be encouraged so that people can manufacture the
clothing that they need, or that will allow the mass
produced products to be adapted to the taste of the
people and will also make possible the distribution
of clothing in accordance with the effort expended
on its production.
Food: the industrialization of food products
has generally led to a decline in their quality.
Communism must increase, as rapidly as possible,
the quantity of food produced, change its mode
of distribution in such a way as to benefit the
undernourished populations of the third world, and
undertake measures to improve the quality of the
food that is produced.
Changes will be made with regard to the
ingredients of the food products. Everything that
is harmful or even useless and which only serves
the purpose of deceiving the consumer must be
excluded. Packaging will be simplified.
With regard to agriculture, the use of chemical
224 * A World Without Money: Communism

products must be limited and progressively

reduced. This is not a matter of taking a principled
position against everything chemical or artificial
but of opposing the deterioration and falsification
of agricultural products.
Monoculture must give way to poly-culture
and to the combination of agriculture and animal
husbandry, which will permit recycling and the use of
manure and wastes. This will allow for the reduction
of the volume of external inputs (chemical fertilizers,
etc.), which is of vital importance especially for the
underdeveloped countries.
It is preferable for the forces of society to be
directly invested in working the land, instead of
being devoted to factories producing chemical
fertilizers and other chemical products. If labour
is diverted from agriculture, it would be most
effectively used to manufacture agricultural tools
and machinery. This material must, for the most part,
be introduced into the agricultural operations of the
third world.
The research that is today devoted to improving
the quality of food and the effectiveness of
agricultural methods, research that is currently
severely underdeveloped, must be intensified. The
best varieties of plants, the best methods of tilling
the soil, and the best mix of types of agriculture in
 Insurrection and Communization * 225

accordance with the population’s need for food,

must be selected. There are plenty of things that
need to be done in agriculture: should we favour
the production of animal protein or plant protein?
Should we emphasize productivity or small scale,
traditional production methods?
Health: Health problems are largely caused
by living and working conditions. Communism, by
revolutionizing these conditions, will do a great
deal of good for the health of the population.
Priority must be granted to hygiene and
prevention. The production of drugs will be
reduced. Certain products that are useless or that
currently seem to be useful will be abolished. Just
like brands of detergents, there are many different
brands of the same pharmaceutical product. The
cost of packaging and of advertising is added to
the cost of the actual product. Obviously, all of this
will disappear.
Medicine will be deprived of its professional
exclusiveness as rapidly as possible, which means
that a lost medical and health knowledge will
be reintroduced among the population. This will
make possible the utilization of medicinal plants,
which would entail the training of a fraction of the
population so that its members may engage in
clinical practice within a very short time.
226 * A World Without Money: Communism

Education: The period of insurrection and

reconversion will entail the need for education and
training. At that time a large part of the population
will be obliged to change its activity and everyone
will have to multiply the tasks that they must learn.
This training will be carried out largely on the
job. Each person will have to transmit his knowledge
to his comrades.
Television and radio will make it possible to
transmit, at low cost, the training that these people
need. It is easy to broadcast courses in mechanics,
agriculture and masonry in order to complement
practical on the job training.
And what about the teachers? There will be
no question of prohibiting them from teaching, but
anyone who is not a teacher will not be discouraged
from teaching, either, by any means. In any event,
a large part of culture will not be the object of
teaching in the strict sense of the word. With respect
to children, there will be no question of withdrawing
them from the care of those educators who are
really devoted to their profession. However, from
the moment when activities that are open to children
begin to multiply and when these activities no
longer require adults to be chained to professional
or domestic labor the rest of their lives, it will be
impossible to keep the children in school.
 Insurrection and Communization * 227

The members of the teaching profession, in

order to assure their own well-being, will have
every reason to devote themselves, like everyone
else, to practical tasks. If they do not, they are the
ones who will have to pay the price. There can
be no doubt that most teachers, who are being
increasingly transformed into teaching machines,
will appreciate a new way of life that does places
no obstacles in the way of their benefiting others
with their knowledge.
Religion: Some of those “of little faith” claim
that the communist revolution will make religion
disappear. Even the Lord’s ability to look after his
own affairs is begrudged to him. As for us, we will
let Him look after His own affairs.

Rupture
There will be no transitional stage between
capitalism and communism, but rather a stage
of rupture in which revolutionaries must seek to
implement irreversible measures.
There are those who complain about the
commodification and industrialization of all of
social life. They want things to change but seek to
be reasonable. They issue appeals for change to
the authorities or to the official opposition. Above
228 * A World Without Money: Communism

all, they want things to be changed in an orderly

fashion. For them, the eruption of the masses on
the stage of history merely implies an even more
inextricable level of disorder.
They want to carry out a gradual de-
commodification of the economy, developing
public services and free distribution of goods.
Wage labour will be reduced and, along with it,
less dehumanizing productive activities will be
furthered.
The more daring and bold among them plan,
in the short term, the disappearance of the market
and wages.
It is always the same hope to be able to use
and control capital. The same illusion is propagated
by those who want to preserve the wage system
and at the same time eliminate wage differentials
by transforming the wage into a fair remuneration
based on the arduousness of each particular job.
Capital is fundamentally expansionist and
imperialist. It therefore tends to seize all of social life.
A non-mercantile sector that functions alongside the
mercantile system will rapidly be re-mercantilized.
It will continue to be a luxury and a game that is as
completely dependent on capital as today’s do-it-
yourself trend, or else it will expand and, by virtue
of its own productive contribution to circulation, it
 Insurrection and Communization * 229

will then reinvent capitalism on its own. It will then

undergo internal decomposition as well as external
attack. The “free” producers, the weekend artisans
who continue to be prisoners of a bourgeois way
of life, will quite naturally seek an income from their
parallel production in order to improve their bottom
line at the end of the month.
Do we have to rely on political power to
support such a “revolution”? This would be to
forget the dependence of political power on the
economy. It would amount to opposing mercantile
totalitarianism with state totalitarianism.
Can we count on a spiritual transformation?
This would be to believe that commodity society is,
above all, a spiritual deviation. People’s minds are
what the situation allows them to be.
We cannot have one foot in the new world
whilst keeping hold of our wallet.
These reformist conceptions do not understand
anything about the need for a global rupture or
about the nature of revolutionary proletarian action.
They do not see that it is the situation and the activity
of the class of the dispossessed that is the real enemy
of the commodity system. They think that one can
take measures against capital because they view it
as a thing whose power has to be restricted, rather
than a social relation.
230 * A World Without Money: Communism

Capital can amuse itself by opening up avenues

of freedom to human activity and making it seem
that it has been de-commodified. It sells us a new
life at its vacation resorts, and you pay later for not
having to pay now. The new systems of payment
tend to avoid any direct and oppressive contact
with money. All of these developments show the
need and the possibility of communism, but also the
recuperative, vampire-like and deceitful nature of
capital.
The commodity system is a totality. It will be
overthrown as a totality. It cannot be communized
one sector at a time; all its sectors are intimately
connected. In any case, can we really believe that
anyone could limit the areas of intervention of an
insurrection?
It is precisely the “anti-mercantile” measures that
aim to temporarily restrict or to render the activities
of capital less visible, that merely have the goal of
dissuading or hindering an insurrection. Whether
this is a result of the good intentions or even the
lack of understanding of those who advocate such
policies, they can only serve the counterrevolution.
In an insurrectionary period the revolutionaries
must devote themselves to denouncing pseudo-
radical measures and precipitating the course of
events. Their actions will frequently be denounced,
 Insurrection and Communization * 231

not for their revolutionary nature, but rather as

excesses engaged in by those who disguise
themselves as revolutionaries in order to all the
more effectively combat the revolution.
The solution for the important problems posed by
the sudden break with the commodity economy will
be based above all on the councilist organization
of production and distribution of goods. Who gets
scarce products will no longer be determined by
who has money, but, even in the intermediate stage,
by the councils and committees of “consumers” who
will seek to allocate goods in accordance with their
best possible use. The danger lies in believing that
we can establish a mixed system in order to avoid
difficulties.
The councils will have to solve difficult problems
but they will constitute the only force capable of
solving them.
To make possible and to support councilist
organization it will be necessary for the active wing
of the revolution to concentrate its forces at certain
strategic points. It will either destroy or permit the
survival or the recovery of the old system.
The banking and financial system must be
destroyed at their material foundations. We have
to attack these institutions and burn their account
books, their records and their archives. Everything
232 * A World Without Money: Communism

that even looks like a means of payment will have

to be destroyed.
The state machinery will have to be paralyzed.
This is not to say that there will have to be a frontal
assault on the heart of the system, but rather that its
multiple tentacles must be destroyed. The state has
its fingers in every nook and cranny and this is both
its strength as well as its weakness
We have to attack everything that allows for
the control of people and, first of all, identification
documents of every kind. We will have to hunt
down state and private archives. Apart from some
documents of revolutionary or historical interest, all
administrative archives and papers of every kind
will have to be destroyed.
The seizure of the prisons and the freeing of the
prisoners, including the political prisoners, will be
the order of the day. This is sure to strike fear into
the hearts of all but the most courageous; all the
scum of the night will run through the streets. Are
the prisons not crowded with terrible thieves and
horrible murderers?
In fact, most prisoners are proletarians who
sought, by attacking commodities and property,
to escape from their condition. They are not, for
the most part, either minor saints or big-hearted
revolutionaries. Because of the nature of their
 Insurrection and Communization * 233

crimes, however, they will disappear with the

disappearance of the current system. They will
know, in their overwhelming majority, how to place
their talents at the service of the revolution.
And the underworld? Generally the real
pariahs are not behind bars. Sometimes they even
work with the complicity of the police. And what
about the murderers? They often have the law on
their side and are frequently found at the head of
governments.
The liberation of the prisoners will not
apply to the real scumbags and notorious
counterrevolutionaries. With the end of commodity
society, the organization of armed militias will allow
for the reduction of the number of malefactors.
These different measures cannot be applied in
just any context, nor in just any relation of forces.
They will, however, be an imperious necessity for
the revolutionaries and the anti-statists.
The committees responsible for the distribution
of goods will be able to concentrate the small
merchants and managers and use their shops. If
these social categories demonstrate their willingness
to participate in the reconversion, so much the
better. If they resist and seek to continue to be
owners of their stock and of their stores we have to
do without them. In the case of privately stockpiled
234 * A World Without Money: Communism

merchandise that is important and necessary, we

will have to seize it from its owners. In any event,
their power is limited because all we have to do is
cut off their supplies.
We will be able to reconvert advertising into
anti-advertising. This will consist of the dissemination
of information about the characteristics and the
manufacture of products, the state of reserves, and
encouraging moderation.

Internationalism
The revolution will be global.
It is not a moral imperative: all men are equal
and brothers and they have a right to this.
The revolution will be worldwide because
capital itself is a worldwide reality. It destroys human
communities, separates individuals, transforms
every person into a competitor with everyone else.
But it unites and unifies the human species through
its action, through its own movement. Today, for the
first time in history since Adam and Eve, there is a
convergence between the genetic unity and the
social unity of the species.
The birth of the national idea and of nation
states is the direct result of capitalist development,
of the destruction of traditional groups, of the
 Insurrection and Communization * 235

standardization of exchange, of constantly growing

inequality. But if capital protects itself behind its
borders it cannot allow itself to be imprisoned
within them. Its anonymous and imperialist
development always has a tendency to conquer
and unify markets. Different countries and regions
successively assumed the privileged position in the
accumulation of capital before entering into decline
and giving way to others.
The contemporary epoch is witnessing the
acceleration of this process. There is an ongoing
process of globalization of commodity relations
and an exacerbation of inequality. Colonization,
world wars, the development of new poles of
accumulation, the constitution of new nation states
that are more or less pawns, are the stages of this
process. The multiplication of nations and states will
not impede their unification, not even at the political
level. The small states will be subjugated by the
stronger states. They will be regrouped in military
alliances and economic zones. Global institutions
and military strike forces will be formed.
Even more extraordinary is the
of
internationalization exchange and the formation
of multinational corporations, which are overtaking
political unification and depriving the states of a
large part of their economic power. These gigantic
236 * A World Without Money: Communism

enterprises are wealthier than many nations. They

have a planetary view of things and seek to produce
and to sell wherever it is most profitable without any
concern for borders.
Trade is standardizing life all over the world
and we find the same kind of cereals, the same
kind of buildings, and the same kind of education
all over the world. Local colour, protected or
subsidized, is an aspect of advertising for the
consumption of tourists and traditionalists. Nothing
is more indicative of this idolatry of the national idea
than the typical clothing styles spread throughout
the world by similar aircraft. Here are some
Frenchmen, over there, some Japanese Geishas
… and sprinkled a little all over, there are airborne
Palestinian hijackers.
Faced with all of this, revolutionaries obviously
cannot appeal to the defence or restoration of
the fatherland, as is being done by a whole array
of idiots and demagogues. Nor can we defend
regionalist or neo-nationalist movements that
advocate the formation of new, more legitimate
fatherlands. Invoking the right to be different
and autonomous, they oppose nationalism with
nationalism, one state with another state. These
movements are at first quite often healthy reactions
against statism, standardization and the unequal
 Insurrection and Communization * 237
development of the contemporary world. The only
possible solution is to put an end to capital and to
all of its states.
Communism is not the enemy of nations, if by
love of country we understand man’s bond with his
region, his countryside, his customs, and his local
way of life. We do not want to resuscitate the spirit
of parochialism but we are against the levelling of
countries and their inhabitants.
The defenders of the fatherland are often not at
the same time defenders of the state. Their nostalgia
wants ignore that the latter seeks to destroy the
to
values that they defend.
Paradoxically, nationalism thrives to the extent
that the knowledge and the connection of man with
his environment deteriorates. Nationalism values
not a real community but the image of a community
embodied in the fetishism of the flag or of the
national hero. Our epoch is rendering all this bric-
a-brac more and more unfashionable. The feelings
that it embodies are increasingly more hypocritical
or disconnected from reality.
Most of the leaders who exalt the national idea
really do not give a damn about it. The ruling classes
and the privileged have often demonstrated the
scant importance that they grant to patriotism. The
national interest is only valid when it corresponds
238 * A World Without Money: Communism

with the interest of capital. As soon as a serious

proletarian threat arises, the ruling classes of
the different countries make haste to settle their
differences.
The revolution will be worldwide because the
problems that have to be resolved will be global
problems. The interpenetration of the different
economies prevents any of them from going it
alone. In any event, if the revolution breaks out in
one country it will have to confront the attacks of
foreign counterrevolution. This interdependence,
however, the highly developed means of
communication, and the simultaneity of economic
and political upheavals, will make the revolution
more contagious than ever. Every state that sends
police to our country must fear an uprising at home.
The more rapidly the insurrection is generalized, the
harder it will be to repress.
Hunger and pollution do not have local
causes, it is just that their effects are localized. The
revolution will have to establish universal rules for
the protection of nature. Agriculture will have to be
organized to respond to the needs of all the people
of the world.
This does not mean that the rich, industrialized
countries suck all the blood from the poor countries
or that the poor countries will be dependent on the
 Insurrection and Communization * 239

privileged zones.
Each region must, depending on its problems
and its resources, and the importance of its
proletariat, find organizational forms and its own
paths of development. Each region should also
solve as many of its problems as possible on the
basis of its own resources.
In the meantime it will be necessary, especially
at first, to organize transfers of materials and
technicians to help the most disadvantaged regions
to overcome their tragic poverty as quickly as
possible. If necessary, the consumption of food in
certain regions will have to be reduced or modified
in order to assist other regions. The communists will
always be in the vanguard of the struggle against
local egoism.
The underdeveloped countries can be
communized, despite their low levels of
development. The possibility of communism is
established on a world scale. What matters is
not so much the quantitative development of the
productive forces as their qualitative development.
A certain technical and scientific level will engender
quantitative abundance in the short term. The current
dominance of the developed countries will help
usher in the dawn of communism, in supporting local
proletarian forces to liquidate capital everywhere.
240 * A World Without Money: Communism
How can communist transformations be
promoted in countries that are predominantly
agrarian ? We cannot resort to primitive
accumulation. Unlike capitalism, communism will
not be established by overthrowing traditional
social structures. It will, to the contrary, be capable
ofestablishing its foundations on the basis of certain
structures by liberating them from their most negative
aspects, rediscovering under the parasitism and
feudalism of these structures the underlying peasant
communities.
This will not prevent the parallel development
of modern activities . At the heart of these
communities, technology can be introduced : small-
scale agricultural machinery, energy systems,
birth control , preventive medical care.... There
will not be any absolute incompatibility between
traditional communitarian equilibrium and the use
of simple technologies. Even now, there are cases
where primitive populations understand how to use
modern technologies. The real disadvantage is,
rather, the disintegration of these communities by
the action of capital.
It is virtually certain that the populations in
question and their social structures will continue
to develop. But this development will not mean
the destruction of men and the negation of
 Proletariat and Communism * 241

communitarian values.
Can we expect to base our hopes on the
foundation of worldwide solidarity with its base in
the working class? Is it not the case that the workers
are often racists?
Often workers act like racists. Racists against
foreigners and above all racists against migrant
workers or racial minorities. We see “working
class” governments prove that they are more racist,
especially when it comes to immigration, than
bourgeois governments. It is often the business class
that is in favour of immigration or of abolishing
racially discriminatory laws.
Working class racism corresponds, first of all, to
an attitude of an oppressed person who, not being
capable of escaping his condition, is content to feel
superior to his dog, to a cop, or to an immigrant. It is
the expression of a real class interest, of the working
class as a commodity. The intellectual can talk as
much as he wants about human brotherhood. The
worker, especially the unskilled worker, knows well
enough that the foreigner is first of all his competitor
in the labour market. Open or latent racism is born
from the inability to recognize that it is capital that
sets the wage workers against each other. This
lack of understanding is not merely the expression
of a simple intellectual deficiency. It corresponds
242 * A World Without Money: Communism

to impotence. Understanding and the ability to

change reality go hand in hand. To the extent that
the proletariat advances and becomes unified
racism falls by the wayside. It is not necessary to
wait for the revolution: in partial struggles, the
workers of different origins reject prejudices and
mutual mistrust.

8. Proletariat and
Communism
Communism is the negation of the proletarian
condition by the proletarians themselves. The
proletariat and communism are realities that are
intimately and contradictorily linked. If we separate
them we can understand neither the communist
movement nor the proletarian revolution.

Lenin
Lenin, following Kautsky, said that the
proletarians are not capable, on their own, of going
beyond a trade unionist consciousness. They can
merely dream of selling themselves for the highest
price, but not of the revolutionizing of society.
Lenin was wrong. Proletarians are incapable of
attaining a clear awareness of their economic
 Proletariat and Communism * 243

interests. Proletarians are commodities but they are

also unsuccessful merchants. In their struggle and
in their business deals the proletarians endlessly
demonstrate that they do not know what they want
and that they mix up and confuse economic and
human realities.
This is a drawback, because with respect to the
defence of their economic interests, the proletariat
is much less effective than the bourgeoisie. But
we cannot judge the proletariat according to a
bourgeois standard.
Lenin was right to emphasize the discontinuity
between trade union consciousness and
revolutionary consciousness. The latter is not
merely the most extreme version of the former. Both
go hand in hand. Revolutionary consciousness,
however, and for us this means communist
consciousness, does not have to be imported from
the outside, it is not a product of the intellectuals
as a social category. Lenin’s point of view is not
stupid, as certain defenders of the people think,
but merely takes account of what appeared to
indeed be taking place. This appearance would be
immediately contradicted by a period of revolution.
The proletariat shows every day that it is already
beyond the economy. Its ineffectiveness and its
naïve illusions are the negative and fleeting obverse
244 * A World Without Money: Communism

of its humanity. In the struggle, and independently

of the necessarily limited nature of its demands, the
proletariat demonstrates in many ways, and with
many lapses, its humanity and its aspiration towards
communism.
What is of interest here is not what the proletariat
is or seems to be when it is working, when it marches
on May Day, or when it responds to opinion polls.
Its fundamental situation will be require it, and
already requires it, to act in a communist way.
In normal times the proletariat, in order to
survive, must seek to compensate, in the thousands
ofways that are available to it, for this fundamental
privation . It finds interests, fatherlands, and drugs in
the spectacle. It seeks to live vicariously through the
power of its enterprise or of its trade union . Capital
cannot abolish generalized prostitution, but it can
entertain those who prostitute themselves. It consoles
them by allowing them to "realize" themselves and
deceive themselves in commodities and images.
The proletariat is not the positive embodiment of
communism within capitalism. Nor is it permanently
integrated for all of eternity within the system that
sucks its blood and immiserates its life. Its reality
is fundamentally contradictory. It seems to be
integrated, while at the same time it blindly lurches
towards communism . Suddenly it opens up a breach .
 Proletariat and Communism * 245
It rushes in and enlarges it. The consequences of its
actions push it forward. It discovers its power and
does things that it never would have dreamed that it
was capable of doing.

Bourgeois and Proletarians

What is the proletariat? Where did it come from
and where is it heading? What is its size?
With regard to the numerical significance of
the working class, in the narrowest sense of the
term, some assessments can be made on the basis
of official statistics. It represents a small part of the
world population; we can estimate it to consist of
between 200 and 250 million individuals. This
number, of course, does not account for the total
number of proletarians insofar as it excludes the
families of the workers, and due to the fact that it
does not include a large number of proletarianized
salaried workers, even in industry. In any event, the
numerical significance of the working class, which
is already enormous if we compare it to that of the
bourgeoisie, does not tell the whole story regarding
its real importance.
We must also point out that this importance,
contrary to the theories that certain vanguard
sociologists are advocating, is growing.
246 * A World Without Money : Communism

Like the bourgeoisie, however, the proletariat

is not a thing that we can touch, define and count
with precision . This does not diminish its reality at
all, even if the sociologists cannot catch it in their
academic nets .
We cannot reduce the proletariat to a
standardized image: miserable starvelings, workers
who are little more than monkeys, waving a red
flag. It is only in certain situations that the workers '
outlines clearly emerge.
Just as the bourgeoisie is defined as a caste,
by its privileges and its special characteristics,
by how hard it is to join its ranks, instead of as a
class, so, too, is the proletariat reduced to a socio-
professional category or an aggregate of socio-
professional categories.
On the basis of such a definition it is easy to
show that it is difficult, if not impossible, to define
the proletariat. Does it really exist at all ? Is it not
the case that technological progress and social
welfare measures have caused it to disappear? The
class struggle, even if it is granted any importance,
is reduced to just another kind of conflict. Male
and female, young and old, town and country,
are all engaged in conflict with each other. So
why shouldn't the same be true of workers and
employers ?
 Proletariat and Communism * 247
Our sociologists accuse Marx of having
invented the class struggle and of not understanding
the concept of social class. He contradicted himself
because sometimes he spoke of the peasants as a
class and at other times he spoke of them as divided
into opposed classes.
The fact that the peasants can be considered
to be a single class because they have common
interests and illusions, because they want the
same things, and that these same peasants can be
divided into poor and rich peasants, into farmers
and landowners, transcends the understanding
of a sociologist. The sociologist is not capable of
understanding that a class cannot be defined, from
either the intellectual or the practical point of view,
independently of the activity that constitutes it as a
class. There are no classes independent of the class
struggle.
To reduce a class to a socio-professional
category is to give the illusion of science and rigor.
In fact, everything depends on two more or less
arbitrary criteria that are chosen to divide the social
body. Above all to reify reality.
Everything is reduced to the place that capital
attributes to humans. A particular division is frozen
in time: intellectuals, workers, residents of the
poor suburban concentrations, those who earn
248 * A World Without Money: Communism

minimum wage. In this way, neither the cause of

these situations nor how they can be overcome is
perceived.
Nor are those hypotheses any better which,
accepting the fact that “classes” will always be
classes, imagine that some classes will defeat others.
In this view, in the west the bourgeoisie rules while
in the countries of the east the proletariat establishes
its dictatorship.
For us, the proletariat cannot be defined
separately from its struggle against capital, that is,
separately from communism.
This does not mean that a class is constituted
by all the people who fight for the same cause. In
that case, the bourgeois who sympathizes with the
revolution is transformed into a proletarian and
a reactionary street sweeper would be a banker.
Anti-capitalism, that is, communism, can become a
cause for many people but by its very nature it is not
a cause. It is an activity linked to a particular social
situation.
The proletariat is that fraction of the population
that produces capital, and is separated from its
ownership and control. The nightmare of self-
management is making the proletarians perform
bourgeois functions. This chimera is being
implemented without having to abolish classes.
 Proletariat and Communism * 249

The bourgeoisie and the proletariat contradictorily

coexist as a single group. The same man who
tends to his machine will be his own enemy on the
management council.
It is sometimes the case that, from time to time,
children of the bourgeoisie ruin their health in the
factories and workers increase the number of their
possessions at the cost of some sacrifices. This has
nothing to do with the abolition of classes.
There is a solid line of demarcation between
the managers and the slaves of capital. It just so
happens that some people have one foot inside
that border and one foot outside of it. They have to
choose one or the other.
Will it be necessary to define the dividing line?
One could attempt to clarify it with reference to
one’s attitude towards money. It is of course true that
bourgeois and proletarians can be distinguished
by the quantity of money that passes through their
hands. This is not good enough, however. Basically,
the proletarian does not see money as just money.
For him it represents a certain number of goods.
For the bourgeois, money is money-capital. He
uses money to make more money. He invests it
and, lo and behold, it multiplies! It is this aspect
that, spanning the centuries, unites the bourgeois of
the middle ages with the modern manager. Today,
250 * A World Without Money: Communism

however, we have to add hypocrisy.

To define the bourgeois class we also have
to take into account its family relations and the
sociological factors that transform its children and
wives into bourgeoisie.
In economic life and in the environment of the
enterprises, the border is between those who have
access to financial knowledge and decisions—not
necessarily the technicians and accounting staff—
and the others. There are those who know that an
enterprise is money that is momentarily immobilized,
whose purpose is to produce more money. And
there are those who, comprising the great mass, see
a factory above all as an affair of use values.
Pigeonholing an individual in any given class
is sometimes difficult. Any given manager, any
engineer, or, why not, any worker, can, due to his
family background, his chances for promotion, his
position in the hierarchy, his wealth or his property,
be co-opted by the ruling class. On the other hand,
small businessmen are connected by a thousand
connections to the ruled class.
From the revolutionary point of view it is
important not to reject, from the start, and consign to
the bourgeois camp, the wealthy proletarians. The
engineer connected with the bourgeoisie and, for
even more powerful reasons, to his colleagues who
 Proletariat and Communism * 251
do not make as much money as he does, or who do
not exercise his leadership role, or who do not have
his connections, can feel the contradiction between
his professional and human interests and the limits
imposed by financial considerations. This could
cause such people to sympathize with communism,
and with a world in which technical planning is not
subject to the dictatorship of exchange value.
Their knowledge and abilities are necessary.
We must nonetheless be careful of those who
might mistakenly choose to join the revolutionary
side because they are aware of the fact that
their condition is being proletarianized and they
ingenuously expect to become new authorities.
In a normal period, and primarily outside of
the process of production, the situation might not
appear to be so well defined. Society seems to be
composed of particular individuals who wander
about in one direction or another. The worker and
the bourgeois seem to disappear in order to be
nothing but equal voters or consumers who have
more or less money. When a conflict breaks out,
when revolution makes its appearance, the particles
group together around antagonistic poles.
The proletariat is not an undifferentiated mass.
Certain social layers and individuals play a crucial
role by virtue of their place in production and due to
252 * A World Without Money: Communism

their own particular qualities. They more or less help

the class to constitute itself as a class.
Some social layers are more restless than
others or assert their discontent more openly.
Appearances, however, can be deceiving. A group
that is more turbulent than another could prove to
be hardly revolutionary. There are those who protest
for their own very personal reasons. They want to
rebel because their status has declined inside the
system. But they do not take aim at the foundations
of society. They might even be more afraid of the
prospect of a revolution than capital is.
Those who seem to be the most integrated,
the most tranquil because they are spoiled by the
system can, upon awakening, go right to the heart
of the matter. The power and the self-confidence
that their situation allows them could permit them
to go on the offensive without any concessions to
capital.
The development of individuals in social
classes cannot be considered independently of the
depth of the conflict and the situation as a whole.
Some social layers, such as students, intellectuals,
or executives cannot rise by their own efforts
beyond a corporative consciousness or, even
worse, a pseudo-revolutionary consciousness. If
communism develops, these layers, by virtue of
 Proletariat and Communism * 253

the lack of autonomy that characterizes them, will

be radicalized. If they do not have the power to
defend their real interests, they can only obtain that
power by joining with and supporting the workers.
Will the immense mass of peasants of the
third world be able to participate in the communist
revolution? Is it part of the proletariat? Yes, but not
due to the degree of its poverty. The more direct the
influence of capital is over its existence, the more
this mass of peasants is a part of the proletariat.
Even if the peasant is not a wage worker, he
tends to join the class of the workers due to the
increasing influence of the commodity economy on
the totality of men and resources. The offensive of
the wage earning proletarians will help him identify
his enemy and the solutions to his problems.
Wage labour is, in a way, the ideal relation for
the exploitation of capital. It is therefore not possible
to identify proletarians as wage earners in general.
We have already shown how the relations of
slavery were integrated into the capitalist universe
and were therefore transformed with regard to their
content. Countless small proprietors are directly
subjected to capitalist exploitation and are often
more oppressed than wage workers. The directors
of large enterprises are paid wages. Therefore,
they are not bourgeoisie. They lay claim to a wage
254 * A World Without Money: Communism

and this wage is only a small part of their real

contribution.
Certain professions develop more revolutionary
attitudes than others. It all depends, for the most
part, on the degree of identification that exists
between the worker and his function.
Some play the game. They do not distance
themselves from the work they perform. That is when
their work, as in the case of teachers, transforms
them into its own instruments. That is why their
professional role becomes, by their own efforts,
their own role. This is the case when the product of
their labour is not a product and contributes directly
to the functioning of their enterprise.
In these two cases, there is a tendency for
a justificatory ideology to develop from their
professional function and its contradictions. The most
alienated workers end up believing that, thanks to
their own abilities or to the general usefulness of
their work, they are revolutionizing society.
The most lucid workers are often those who
do not feel connected to their enterprise or to the
function that they exercise there. And this is true of
most of the workers.
By virtue of their place in production, and
the solidarity that is generated by their place in
production, and from their human qualities, the
 Proletariat and Communism * 255

workers are at the heart of the communist revolution.

The American or Soviet worker, while it is easier
for him to survive than it is for an Indian beggar,
even if he is more corrupted, also occupies a better
vantage point from which to recognize the nature
of the oppression that weighs upon him and how to
put an end to it.
It is customary to deny the working class its
central role in the revolution.
Emphasis is placed on his absence from the
struggles for national liberation that are in the
meantime being waged by the Marxist states.
The absence of revolutionary consciousness
among the masses of workers of the rich countries
and the advantages they derive from the system are
highlighted.
Other social categories are entrusted with the
role that the workers seem to be unable to fulfil. The
revolutions of the 19th century were the work of
artisans. In the 20th century, the Leninist intellectuals
had to take their place. In the countries of the third
world it is the peasants who now play that role.
If one carefully examines these matters one
will see that the workers were regularly at the
heart of attempts to radically transform reality.
They are accused of not having been involved
in revolutions that were, in the final analysis,
256 * A World Without Money: Communism

bourgeois . When they did intervene their activities

played a secondary role behind the actions of the
socialist groups that, from the beginning to the end,
showed that they were hardly communist at all .
This or that characteristic of the proletarians who
participated in the revolutions is highlighted and
exaggerated to show that they were workers of
dubious backgrounds or marginals, farmers, petty
bourgeoisie, soldiers, or rioters passing themselves
off as workers .

The modernists replace a bourgeoisified

proletariat with new categories . The revolution will
be the work of the young people because they are
not yet domesticated, the women because they
are closer to life, the hippies and other marginals
because they are outside the system, the blacks
because they enjoy music and have rhythm in
their blood ... while others do not see the need to
privilege any particular category. Capital is a non-
human power at the hands of which everyone is a
victim and it is therefore humanity as a species that
must revolt. There is no longer (or almost no longer)
either a bourgeoisie or a proletariat.
This highlighting of the role of this or that social
group or category of age or sex, is carried out on
the basis of the values of which these groups are
allegedly the bearers. There will not be so much
 Proletariat and Communism * 257
an alteration of the choice of revolutionary subject
as an implicit recognition of reality as it is. Young
people will be revolutionary as young people,
women as women, and as for the proletariat,
which includes young people and women, it is
revolutionary to the extent that it ceases to be a
proletariat. The proletariat is not a social group. It is
a movement. It is that which is transforming itself. It
exists by virtue of its possibilities for self-destruction.
It is not that young people, women, sick people
… do not have specific interests or that they are
incapable of transforming reality. It is just that,
except as proletarians, they can hardly defend their
interests as young people, women, sick people,
within any given reality. The proletarian revolution
provides them with the means, without denying their
ideas, to go beyond their specific demands and to
surpass them. It is the young people, the women,
and sick people, who act, but no longer for youth or
femininity, or, on the other hand, for state subsidies
and the respect of the citizens.
And the intellectuals?
In a way, the revolution demands that the
proletarians become intellectuals. They must
become capable of going beyond their immediate
situation. Everyone knows that, at the high point of
revolutions, debates are carried on in the streets
258 * A World Without Money: Communism

concerning questions that were previously the

preserve of the philosophers.
The revolution also means the end of the
intellectuals as a separate social category. If the
intellectuals participate in the revolution they can
do so only by negating their own condition, by
recognizing their partial, mutilated character.
Eventually, measures must be taken to prevent them
from even continuing to be intellectuals.
Intellectuals have often been attributed with a
privileged role as the bearers of consciousness. By
itself, consciousness is nothing and can do nothing.
The intellectuals, who often think that they can rise
so high as to achieve a general and objective
understanding of things, often line up behind the
established powers. They are subject to the worst
illusions and they defend—with a critical spirit, of
course—the worst outrages. They are ready to
justify everything in the name of Reason, of History,
of Progress.
The demands of the intellectuals serve more to
encourage the bourgeoisie than the workers. It is
much more noble to demand freedom of expression
than to demand bread. The intellectual appears to
be a defender of the general interest. The worker
seems to be an egoist who is only concerned with
worldly matters.
 Proletariat and Communism * 259

Proletarian demands, however, are more

profound than those of the intellectuals. The latter
specialize in demanding empty forms. When
the workers demand or even impose freedom of
expression, it is because they have something to say.
Otherwise, the question is of relatively little interest
to them. Their ability to refrain from dissociating form
and content, to not fight merely for hot air, is a sign
of communism. The problem with the intellectuals is
that they often make their money from wind.
Young people are often the most active in
revolutions. That this is perhaps due to biological
causes rather than to their social situation is
sufficient as an explanation. Even the ones who
come from the privileged classes are less connected
to the interests at stake. They have to wait for their
inheritance! Capitalist society fetishizes youth and
renewal but separates young people from positions
of responsibility and property. They are therefore
the most eager for revolution.
Besides the young, the marginal elements of
the population are sometimes emphasized. They do
not live like other people; are they not the future?
In this case, too, there is an inability to understand
that the revolution can and must arise from the heart
of the system itself. This view reflects an inability
to think dialectically regarding the proletariat and
260 * A World Without Money: Communism

illusion concerning the level of independence of the

marginals with respect to the system.
Will capital itself abolish the social classes, thus
bypassing revolution? It has long been claimed that
the bourgeois revolution would finally allow for all
human beings to be equal.
The division of society into classes is healthy.
Perhaps society has never enjoyed such good
health, just as it has never used so many means to
cause this fact to be forgotten.
Capital is, of course, an impersonal force.
Everyone, to one degree or another, feels its
effects. Even the poor bourgeois who works himself
to exhaustion, who fights with his children, who
breathes polluted air!
Some people have, more than others, the
possibility of remedying the effects of capital. Unlike
the general living conditions, these possibilities are
today quite manifold. The opportunities for product
diversification, the development of trade, are making
it possible for certain groups of the population to
have a level of consumption and a quality of life
that are very different from and higher than that
of their contemporaries. Maybe the bourgeoisie
are not the happiest people but at least they can
choose to cease to be bourgeois. An analogous
decision is not possible for the street sweeper. If the
 Proletariat and Communism * 261

bourgeoisie are not content with their own lifestyle,

this is all the more reason to abolish this class and
its society.
The bourgeoisie is not exhibitionist. It leaves
exhibitionism to the nouveaux riche. Nor does it
have any interest in showing off the life it leads in
its dachas (Russian vacation homes in the country)
and its private beaches. The proletarians have the
habit of overestimating the wealth of the social
classes with whom they associate in their everyday
lives and underestimating the wealth of the real
bourgeoisie.
Even if the bourgeoisie were to live a frugal
and austere lifestyle, this would not make it
disappear as a class. What counts is, above all
else, its economic and social function. Their wealth
is obviously connected with this function. A part
of their consumption, even in western countries, is
conflated with the expenses of doing business. They
travel, they eat and they have sex on behalf of and
at the expense of their companies.
Capital has a tendency, today more than ever,
to corrode the identity of social groups. This is as true
of the bourgeoisie as it is of the working class. The
voter or the consumer is beyond class. The pleasure
that he takes in his purchases is not linked to a status
but to impersonal money. This capitalist negation of
262 * A World Without Money: Communism

classes is helping to pave the way for a classless

society. But this trend is itself negated by economic
need, which tends to make wealth hierarchical and
to separate functions.
The struggle of communism is not waged on
behalf of any particular class but rather on behalf
of humanity. This struggle is, however, directed
against those who seek to negate all of humanity.
The revolution will not be universally accepted
and it would be dangerous to try to make people
believe that it will. Maybe some bourgeoisie will
join the movement but this will not alter in the least
the fact that the interests of the bourgeoisie and of
communism are mutually opposed. The proletarian
revolution will gain immediately as the bourgeoisie
are dispossessed. Communism is about the human
species; but while there will be people who can
identify their immediate interests with the species
during a period of rupture, there will be others who
cannot.

Waiting for Godot

What do revolutionaries propose to do whilst
we are waiting for the big night?
We have no silver bullet for hastening the
moment nor do we have an ideal line of conduct to
 Proletariat and Communism * 263

defend. The communists are stuck, like everyone else,

to the capitalist glue and are therefore incapable of
designing a pure and universal strategy that would
make the best use of individual interests, abilities
and conditions. In any event, we do not propose
that the “masses” should do anything we would
not do, and vice-versa. We can merely point out
differences in behaviour.
We are not at all purists and we accept reforms,
however limited, if they are real. It is easy to show
how strict one is when one is talking about the great
victory, when it is paid for with a lot of hot air.
We are not at all purists and we accept action
from the base with those who do not share our
views, as long as the perspective of the action are
clear.
It is advisable to be flexible on the practical level
in order to be able to take advantage of constantly
changing and unpredictable situations. We have to
know how to compromise and, above all, how to
recognize compromises for what they are. We do
not have recipes to offer and we criticize those who
need them. No robotic commandos!
Those whose action is accompanied by
an obsession about being recuperated will
be recuperated immediately, and radically.
Sectarianism is, above all, a way for someone to
264 * A World Without Money: Communism

protect himself against his own uncertainties. On the

other hand, when one has profound convictions, not
ideologies, one can innovate, improvise, and take
action without feeling that one’s purity is threatened.
And if we make mistakes? It is not by wrapping
oneself up, immobilized, in the truth, that the truth
is preserved.
This pragmatic flexibility must be accompanied
by a great deal of strictness and—we say this to
shock the “free spirits”—even doctrinal dogmatism.
Theoretical clarification and soundness are
essential. We have to know where we are going
and let other people know as well.
Our era is characterized by rigid behaviour
patterns and flabby thinking. We need to break with
this trend. Ideas only have interest if they provide
sufficiently solid points of reference.
A classic question: should we participate in trade
union activity? It all depends on the circumstances
and on the people involved. But the trade unions are
integrated into the system!? Maybe that would be a
reason for someone to participate in them. He might
want to take advantage of the benefits that trade
union organizations provide, or he might want to
demonstrate the limits of these benefits. Sometimes
one can take a position right in the middle of the
street and clearly show the contradiction between
 Proletariat and Communism * 265

the revolutionary content and the trade union form.

While participation in the trade unions is
acceptable, the conquest of the trade union
apparatus for the purpose of transforming it in a
revolutionary sense must be rejected.
In the struggle, provided that possibilities arise
for us to organize in a broader and less specialized
way, the trade unions must be rejected. The trade
union form can be used in a situation of retreat but
must not impede the further development or the
intensification of the struggle. Action on behalf of
the class must not be opposed to action on behalf
of an organization of specialists in the formulation
of demands or the conduct of negotiations. In any
event, it is certain that as long as the workers are
commodities whose price is subject to negotiation,
the trade union structures will have a reason to exist.
Limited struggles that prepare the way for the
final struggle must not be renounced. Nor should
wage struggles be scorned, which constitute
steps towards the abolition of wage labour. The
economic bottom line manifests the capacity for
resistance and can become dangerous for the
system by threatening its heart, which is its wallet.
They are poor revolutionaries who want to fix the
attention of the proletarians on distant questions
wreathed in ideological smoke. To renounce the
266 * A World Without Money: Communism

struggle because “it’s not worth the effort” is often

the expression of a more generalized passivity.
Are we to fall into the trap of efficacy for
efficacy’s sake, into economism? No, but we do
believe that class action tends to create its own
content. That is why powers of every kind seek to
suppress it.
Supporters of the most immediate and most
varied possible forms of pressure and reaction
on the part of the working class, we distrust many
of the reform-oriented goals that are dissociated
from immediate possibilities and relations of
force. Even, and above all, when this involves a
transitional program with a Trotskyist flavour. These
performances, which allegedly have the goal
of unifying and clarifying the proletariat, merely
obscure the picture.
If it is true that it is right to struggle, and to
struggle in the most generalized possible ways, in
order to reduce working time, it is also true that it is
hardly beneficial to set goals concerning the length
of the working week or on the retirement age. This
would merely be to accept them at face value and
to internalize capitalist limitations and separations.
The choice is between working time and free time,
the condition of a convict or that of an inmate in a
nursing home. The struggle is channelled and latent
 Proletariat and Communism * 267

communism is sterilized.
The only acceptable perspective is communism .
It is not a distant abstraction but the human solution
for all problems. It involves the making manifest
of the meaning of the proletarian movement, of
showing the power that it possesses.
It is often the case that wars are not declared :
absenteeism, interfering with the speed of the
assembly line, sabotage, theft are the most
effective . We do not turn them into fetishes. Capital
can tolerate them and turn them into pressure valves.
They cannot replace a more generalized struggle-
but they do sustain fighting morale, they develop
initiative and provide healthy and immediate
satisfactions .
We have to popularize the means of action that,
by putting immediate pressure on the exploiters,
announce the communist world . It is often possible,
in a hidden way but also massively and openly, to
freely distribute products and perform services for
free. The postal workers might deliver mail without
stamps, the railroad conductors might not collect
tickets . If the most militant workers are fired it will
be necessary to reintegrate them in the struggle, by
employing sabotage if necessary.
Our strategy can be expressed as: less useless
talk, less spectacle, but the working class will use the
268 * A World Without Money: Communism

countless means that it has at its disposal in order to

make itself respected and to prepare the future. A
little less of the spirit of serious reformism and a little
more provocative and joyful laughter.
On the historical scale, the communist
revolution is imminent. We are not writing for future
generations.
By saying this, we know full well that many
revolutionaries have already proclaimed the
imminence of the revolution and were deceived.
They regularly underestimated the system’s
capacities for adaptation. It seems that today,
however, the shoe is on the other foot. Is it not the
case that the capital’s most recent bogus public
image, that of its power and of its immortality, has
been implanted in everyone’s minds?
Machine technology having developed to the
point of automation, it tends to unify the planet; it is
at the peak of its power but it has also encountered
its historical limits. It has no more answers for the
destruction of the social fabric or for the degradation
of the natural environment that it engenders. It
cannot trim its own fat. It is its own power, its own
concentration, that is rendering it powerless.
The crisis of economic civilization has gradually
taken shape as an economic crisis. Poetic justice!
But the current phase cannot be reduced to a
 Becoming Human * 269

temporary period of economic difficulties.

To escape from its crisis it is necessary to
increase the rate of surplus value, and to restore the
depressed profitability of capital. Many technical,
ecological and human obstacles stand in the
way of this goal. They can only be overcome by
enormous struggles and changes. The proletariat is
now showing, in a thousand ways, that it will not let
history pass it by without its involvement. It is also
showing that it will not settle for a reformist solution.
A solution that would merely consist in assuring the
proletariat’s complicity in its own defeat and burial
that would be worse than the defeat inflicted upon
it by Stalinism and fascism.

9. Becoming Human
Communism is not a prisoner of the future. It
arises from within capitalism. The actions carried out
by the proletarians, when they spontaneously and
usually unconsciously negate their own condition,
is communist.
Communism presents itself in the first place, both
as theory as well as practice, as an anticipation.
From its origin, it looks like a solution for the evils
of the old world, a solution that is more or less
immediately feasible. Utopia is not just trash to be
thrown away. It is, to the contrary, the characteristic
270 * A World Without Money: Communism

sign of communism. We are more confident of the

science of the future than in the present. But the
future gnaws at the present.
Communism is certainly a stage of human
history, a new world. But it is, above all, not just
another social form but a privileged movement of
the humanization of the species.

History
On the theoretical plane, communism appears
with the renewal of ideas of the renaissance. In
1516, the Englishman Thomas More published
his Utopia in Leuven. In 1602 the Dominican
Campanella wrote his City of the Sun. He was in
prison for having participated in an anti-Spanish
conspiracy in Calabria. His book depicts a world
in which money, property and class divisions do not
exist, a world that he presents as an alternative to the
present world. More, Campanella and others, who
inclined towards communism, were not proletarians
or even rebels. They were, rather, brilliant spiritual
pioneers who flirted with the powers that be or who
were persecuted due to their independence or their
non-conformism.
During the same period, the times of the
peasant war and Thomas Müntzer, communism
 Becoming Human * 271

began to take shape. It terrorized the princes, the

bourgeoisie and the religious reformers, like Luther,
who exclaimed : “ Unfortunate madmen ! It is the
voice of flesh and blood that got into your heads ".

"They confuse faith with hope : is it not unnatural

to believe, when nothing is possible? " " But what is
serious is that the blessed hope that inspires them
is not expected to be realized in another world,
after death, but even on this earth, and as soon as
possible. "

A Revolução dos Santos [The Revolution of

the Saints 1520-1536 ], G. D'Aubarède, 1946

"But with regard to the Anabaptists of that

era, we are hardly talking of religion at all . Their
doctrine undermines the foundations of all social
order, property, laws, magistrates.... "

As for individual homes, each person

accommodates himself as he pleases. Someone
who previously slept out in the fields, sleeps in a
hotel . The servants of the nobles and the clergy take
over, without second thoughts, what had belonged
to their lords .
272 * A World Without Money: Communism

“They burned the bishop’s palace, the archives,

the title deeds, the royal grants, all the documents.
What possible use could such trivialities have for
the New Zion, whose foundations were religious
freedom and fraternal equality?”

– Jean Bockelson, M. Baston 1824

“Many people are unaware of the fact that

communism had already become a practical fact in
the domain of history, that it has provided its proofs,
that it triumphed for several years and that it was
violently affirmed in some provinces, no more than
three hundred years ago.

“There were the same pretexts as today,

more or less the same tendencies, the application
of the same methods of action, but with powerful
assistance, an avalanche of an immense force: the
religious and mystical form that was assumed by the
revolutionary powers of that epoch”

– Études historiques sur le communisme et les

insurrections au XVIe siècle[/i] [Historical Studies
on Communism and Insurrections in the 16th
Century], Albert Arnoul, 1850
 Becoming Human * 273

There are traces of the tendency to communism

further back in time, even before the development
of capitalism. It is the old aspiration to rediscover
abundance and lost community.
The first practical attempts of modern
communism were based on the remnants of primitive
communism that had survived the development of
class society.
Modern communism draws its inspiration from
the old supporters of the community of goods:
Plato, who advocated an aristocratic form of the
community of goods for the members of the ruling
class; and the early Christians, who shared their
goods in common in accordance with the spirit of
the Gospels.
Nonetheless, just as it is inspired by and
connected to the past, modern communism also
innovates.
Communism affirms itself as the enemy of
the prevailing society, and attempts to replace it.
Thomas More devoted the first part of his book to
denouncing the evils of the present and discovering
their causes. He demonstrated the harm caused by
the development of capital.
Communism is no longer a state of mind nor a
way of sharing resources in a life in common. It is
a global and social solution, a way of organizing
274 * A World Without Money: Communism

production .
D
Thomas More introduced navigator,
Hythloday, who visited the imaginary island of
Utopia. Hythloday addressed the question of our
society:

"Though to speak plainly my real sentiments, "[/i ]

he said, "I must freely own that as long as there is
any property, and while money is the standard of
all other things, I cannot think that a nation can be
governed either justly or happily.... When, I say, I
balance all these things in my thoughts, I grow more
favourable to Plato, and do not wonder that he
resolved not to make any laws for such as would
not submit to a community of all things: for so wise
a man could not but foresee that the setting all
upon a level was the only way to make a nation
happy, which cannot be obtained so long as there
is property.... I am persuaded, that till property
is taken away there can be no equitable or just
distribution of things, nor can the world be happily
governed.... "

More denounced the harm caused by the

development of landed property and of agrarian
capitalism which expelled the peasants from their
land in order to replace them with sheep: [i] " ...
your sheep, which are naturally mild, and easily
 Becoming Human * 275

kept in order, may be said now to devour men.... "

He denounced the impotence of politics and the
distance that necessarily separates good precepts
from their practical application .
In Utopia things are different:

" Every city is divided into four equal parts, and

in the middle of each there is a marketplace ... and
thither every father goes and takes whatsoever he
or his family stand in need of, without either paying
for it or leaving anything in exchange . There is no
reason for giving a denial to any person, since there
is such plenty of everything among them; and there
is no danger of a man's asking for more than he
needs; they have no inducements to do this, since
they are sure that they shall always be supplied . It is
the fear of want that makes any of the whole race of
animals either greedy or ravenous...."

" In all other places," he writes, "it is visible that

while people talk of a commonwealth, every man
only seeks his own wealth; but there, where no man
has any property, all men zealously pursue the
good of the public.... "

" In Utopia, where every man has a right to

276 * A World Without Money : Communism

everything, they all know that if care is taken to

keep the public stores full, no private man can want
anything ... there is no unequal distribution, so that
no man is poor, none in necessity; and though no
man has anything, yet they are all rich....

" Is not that government both unjust and

ungrateful , that is so prodigal of its favors to those
that are called gentlemen, or goldsmiths, or such
others who are idle, or live either by flattery, or by
contriving the arts of vain pleasure; and on the other
hand, takes no care of those of a meaner sort, such
as ploughmen, colliers, and smiths, without whom
it could not subsist? But after the public has reaped
all the advantage of their service, and they come to
be oppressed with age, sickness, and want, all their
labors and the good they have done is forgotten;
and all the recompense given them is that they are
left to die in great misery " .

More concludes his book as follows: "... there

are many things in the Commonwealth of Utopia
that I rather wish, than hope, to see followed in our
governments. " And the word, Utopia, means, in our
everyday language, an unrealizable dream . And
nonetheless ....
And nonetheless, little more than a century later
 Becoming Human * 277

an extraordinary experience unfolded that was

similar to More's dream . It is very rare for a social
project to be realized so faithfully.

Communism among the Guarani

In the year that Utopia was published, the

Spaniards invaded and began their conquest of
Paraguay: the country of the Guarani Indians. The
name Paraguay designated, in the beginning, the
homeland of the Guarani, a larger territory than
the current Paraguay, so that the events that we
shall discuss below also affected areas beyond the
borders of the modern Paraguay.
Under the aegis of the Jesuits, hundreds of
thousands of Indians would live, cultivate the
soil, mine and forge metals, build shipyards, and
practice the arts, without the use of money, wage
labour, or the modern concept of property. The
Republic of the Guaranis would endure for a
century and a half, and would decline with the
expulsion of the Jesuits and with the attacks of the
Spaniards and the Portuguese. This zone was the
most industrially advanced zone in Latin America
in its time. Its contemporaries would investigate
and debate about the nature and the importance
of this experience that would be an inspiration for
278 * A World Without Money: Communism

European socialism . Some saw it as a pioneer effort,

others minimized it or reduced it to a suspicious
action of the Jesuits. With the passage of time the
experience was considered to be too Jesuitical or
too communist to merit attention .

The documents cited by the Papist Stalinophile,

Clovis Lugon, allow us to form a more correct
opinion (La République des Guaranis, Éditions
Ouvrières, 1970).

" Nothing seems more beautiful to me than the

order and the mode of providing for the needs of
all the inhabitants of the colony. Those who reap
the harvest are obliged to transport all their grain
to public warehouses; there, people designated to
guard these warehouses maintain a register of all
that is received. At the beginning of every month,
the people responsible for the administration of
the granaries deliver to the regional supervisor the
amount of grain that is needed by all the families
of their zone, giving more or less to each family
depending on how many mouths it has to feed "

R. P. Florentin, Voyage aux Indes orientales

Most of the work is done in common and the

Indians do not seem to be tempted by private
 Becoming Human * 279

property. They never possess more than a horse or

a few chickens. In order to create private property
individual lots were distributed, but on the day
that the Indians were supposed to occupy these
parcels they stayed home, “stretched out in their
hammocks...” (P. Sepp).
“Father Cardiel, who deplored, so they said, the
persistence of the communist system, did everything
possible on his part to lead the Guaranis to private
property and, above all, to a sense of individual
interest and wealth, encouraging them to cultivate
on their parcels of land products that have value with
a view to selling the surplus. He frankly confessed
his failure and declared that he had not found,
at most, more than three examples of individuals
who provided, from their parcels, a little sugar or
cotton to sell. And one of the three was a converted
mulatto!” (Lugon). And Father Cardiel added: “In
the twenty-eight years that I lived among them as
priest or comrade, I never found a single example
among so many hundreds of Indians.”
All the Indians were obliged to engage in
manual labour and only spent a limited time
engaged in such work: one third or one-half of the
day.
“Everywhere, there are workshops of tinsmiths,
painters, sculptors, goldsmiths, watchmakers, metal
280 * A World Without Money: Communism

workers, carpenters, cabinet makers, weavers,

smelters-in a word, of all the arts and trades that
people find useful" (Charlevoix). "Only in a great
city in Europe would we find so many master
artisans and artists" ( Garech) . "They make clocks,
draft architectural plans, engrave geographical
maps" (Sepp). According to Charlevois, the
Guaranis "are instinctively gifted in all the arts to
which they apply themselves.... They make the most
complex organs after having seen one only once,
and do the same with astronomical globes, Turkish-
style carpets and everything that is most difficult to
manufacture. " And "as soon as the children reach
the age when they can begin to work, they are led to
the workshops and established in the one that seems
to be most suited to their inclinations, because they
are persuaded that art must be guided by nature. ”
The Indians also manufacture bells, firearms,
cannons and munitions. Printing presses allow them
to print books in many languages, mostly Guarani.
The Indians were organized in military units; "they
can immediately mobilize more than thirty thousand
Indians, all on horseback" and are capable "of
handling both muskets as well as sabres... offighting
in offensive as well as defensive formation, just like
the Europeans. " ( Sepp) . Father d'Aguilar, the Jesuit
Superior General of the Republic, wrote: "We can
 Becoming Human * 281

raise twenty thousand Indians who can hold their

own againstthe best Spanish and Portuguese troops,
against whom even the Mamelukes would not dare
to fight, and who twice drove the Portuguese from
the colony of Santo Sacramento, and who after so
many years are respected by all the infidel nations
that surround them. " ( Quoted by Charlevoix) .
Charlevoix continues: “They only use gold and
money to decorate their altars. " The population
obtains goods without money and without any kind
of coinage. " Those idols of greed, Muratori says,
are completely unknown to them .... The value of
commodities is expressed in "pesos" and "reals" in
a purely fictitious way. It was a way of establishing
the relative value of everyday goods .... Alongside
barter and fictitious money denominated in pesos,
there is a " real " kind of coinage constituted by
certain commodities in general use that were
handled by every person as payment, even without
having any need or immediate use for them ... (tea,
tobacco, honey, corn) ....

"The price of goods normally corresponded

to the real value of the goods or to the sum of
labour required for their production, without
added surcharges for the benefit of non-existent
intermediaries. The relative price of a particular
commodity was naturally influenced by its rarity or
282 * A World Without Money: Communism

its abundance. " ( Lugon).

Trade between "reductions " depended on the

communities. " The statistics regularly indicated the
volume of reserves and the needs of each reduction
and it was therefore easy to plan trade. The Father
met with the magistrate and with the steward in
order to determine the kind and the amount of
commodities to import and to export. " (Lugon) .
Was this real communism ?
Guarani communism was not pure communism.
It was instilled with pious spirit of the Jesuits, it paid
taxes to the King of Spain and provided military
forces from the Guarani troops, it still had exchange
relations, etc. But we are not looking for purity.
Nor were the Jesuits, who led the communism
of the Guaranis, communists. They found themselves
in the land of the Guaranis and they had to
accommodate themselves to it. Some people
rejoiced, finding the communism of the Guaranis
be in conformance with the spirit of the Gospels,
while others, due to their own inclinations or due to
outside pressure, sought to undermine it. The Jesuits
allowed the introduction of western technologies
and knowledge into an ineradicable primitive
communism . They allowed the Guarani groups to
unite into an impressive whole.
This communism was sufficiently communist to
 Becoming Human * 283

provoke mistrust and attacks. The Jesuits played

a rather nefarious role, since they were subject
to an authority that was external to the Guarani
community, sowing confusion and disunity as soon
as the Spaniards and the Portuguese attacked the
eastern “reductions” in 1754-1756. “The Fathers
of the reductions had received from the Superior
General of the Company, Ignacio Visconti, ‘strict
orders to submit to the inevitable and lead the
Indians to obedience’.” (Lugon). The Indians who
were directly threatened fought back, but were
finally crushed. In 1768 the Jesuits were expelled.
The anti-Guarani expeditions continued and
destroyed the communist project. The weakness of
Guarani communism was the fact that, from the very
beginning, it was not a revolutionary communism
and it was not constituted in a confrontation.
In 1852, Martin de Moussy wrote: “the best
proof that this strange regime, this communism
that was so severely criticized perhaps with a
semblance of reason, was suited to the Indians,
is that the successors of the Jesuits were forced to
allow it to continue to exist right up until recently
and that its destruction, not prepared with intelligent
and paternalistic measures, had no other result
than that of plunging the Indians into poverty …
today, their heirs bitterly regret the absence of that
284 * A World Without Money: Communism

regime, undoubtedly an imperfect one, but one that

was very well adapted to their instincts and their
customs."
Lugon, who sought to impute to the Jesuits the
role of importers of communism, also wrote:

" Soon after the destruction of Entre - Rios, the

survivors reorganized under the direction of three
chiefs assisted by a council, precisely following the
traditions bequeathed by the Jesuits . The population
of this colony was estimated at 10,000 people
between 1820 and 1827. The community of goods
was therefore integrally restored .

"In the reductions attributed to modern

Paraguay, the communist regime was officially
abolished in 1848 by the dictator Lopez. The
Guaranis who continued to live in this region were,
at that time, legally dispossessed of their homes
and their possessions. They were left to vegetate
in reservations organized in the North American
style. "

The Republic of the Guaranis is not the

only example of an encounter between Indian
communism and the west. There have been some
others of lesser importance: the Chiquito Republic in
 Becoming Human * 285

southwestern Bolivia, the Republic of the Moxos in

northern Bolivia, the group of the Pampas ....
The communists of Munzer or of Paraguay
lasted longer than the Communards (of Paris) and
other proletarians of modern times and created
an intermediate social form between primitive
communism and higher communism . Would they
have regressed with the passage of time ? It was
the power of capital and the degradation that this
power causes to the social meaning of individuals
that stood against communism. It would not have
regressed but rather undergone a cycle that returns
to its origins and that would only see communism
reborn but this time in the heart of the capitalist
world.
This is perhaps incomprehensible for those who
see history as a linear and continuous process.
Where there is no regression, there is no anticipation,
but rather a perpetual progress from the lower to
the higher. Why, then, did modern industry emerge
from European feudal backwardness rather than
from the great cloth manufacturing centres of the
Incas, or from Chinese art and technology? Why
was that industry only capable of being introduced
after a period of decline?
Familiar with and in the wake of this communism
with a religious disguise, although it was iconoclastic
286 * A World Without Money: Communism

in the case of the German insurrectionaries or

Campanella who wanted to put an end to the
family, a naturalist and anti-religious communism
developed in the wake of the bourgeois revolutions.

The Levellers
In England, after the revolution of 1648, a pro-
communist current developed within the party of
the “Levellers”. Many communist works appeared
during this period. These texts advocated the
obligation for all to work and the free distribution
of goods.
Contacts with non-western societies nourished
Gueudeville
philosophicalpublished
reflections. In 1704,
the Conference or Dialogue
Nicolas

between the Author [the Baron de Lahontan] and

Adario, a Noted Man among the Savages. The
Indian is superior to the European because he
does not know the distinction between “mine” and
“thine”.
In 1755, Morelly published his Code of Nature.
In this book he affirmed that man was neither bad
nor vicious. He has to break with “the desire for
possessions” and with property.

“If you were to take away property, the

 Becoming Human * 287

blind and pitiless self-interest that accompanies it,

you would cause all the prejudices in errors that
they sustain to collapse. There would be no more
resistance, either offensive or defensive, among
men; there would be no more furious passions,
ferocious actions, notions or ideas of moral evil.”

Despite his faith in human nature, Morelly

proceeded, contradictorily, to define the laws that
should rule the life of people to its smallest details.
Clothing, houses, divorce, the education of children,
thoughts and even dreams are strictly regulated.
Morelly’s communism would particularly
influence the revolutionary Gracchus Babeuf who
would be executed in 1797 after the failure of the
Conspiracy of the Equals.
It was basically correct to consider that
communism corresponds to human nature, that it
is the natural condition of the species. This is not
because man is spontaneously good or moral, nor
is it because societies succeed one another without
modifying an unalterable human nature. It is simply
because classes, property, exchange, and the
state are imposed as social, and therefore human,
necessities, but do not pass from being momentary
necessities that correspond to the passage from
one communist social form to another. Communism
is not imposed. It constantly arises even if it can
288 * A World Without Money: Communism

only develop at certain moments. We see that a

spontaneous and typically human manifestation
like speech is communist, at least at a formal level.
With respect to its own understanding, communism
is much simpler, much more transparent than
capitalism: the dominant social form. This is because
it is, even today, a more immediate reality. When
we ridicule the rich bourgeoisie because of his
express monopoly on money and when we seem to
be naïve, this is because we can directly rely upon
a communist conception of wealth that exists in a
latent state.
We are accused of being simple minded
or naïve. Up to a certain point, these are virtues
that we cultivate. Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; and not
just that. Communism is not accused of being
incomprehensible and unacceptable but rather of
being naïve, for not taking account of the reality
that it seeks to overthrow. But communism is fought
because it is known that it is not so naïve and that
the means for its success exist.
Theory is necessary. It is necessary in a world in
which human reality escapes the control of humans.
But if theory only serves to complicate matters,
to reinforce the veil that separates men from their
humanity, then it would be better to abstain from
 Becoming Human * 289

it. Revolutionary theory is not like the theory of

relativity. It addresses a reality within which we are
immersed . The complexity and the separation that
it seeks to reduce, in the movement that, for that
very reason, is properly communist, is not linked to
physical reasons but to human reasons that can be
changed by humans.
It is tempting to either remain addicted to
theory and thus to reject life or to reject theory and
to drug ourselves with life . In the absence of life,
the separation of the mechanisms that organize
the life of man does not lead to an active will to
forcibly understand but is actually an unbridled
quest for images, for possibilities of identification .
What matters is not to understand and thus to enter
into the possibility of transforming reality but finding
responsible elements, culprits, warmongers and
thieves of labour. It is merely due to this quest for
the concrete and for images that the system and
its managers have succeeded in concentrating the
people's hatred against this or that social group.
Against this perverted need for life we must oppose
explanation but above all life itself. Drug addicts
cannot be cured with words.
Morelly says: "It is unfortunately all too true that
to form a republic of this sort would be just about
impossible at the present time. " The utopians did not
290 * A World Without Money: Communism

grasp the movement that could lead to communism.

In that epoch, the proletariat still seemed to be
too weak as an autonomous social force. But
the utopian descriptions already manifested the
historical necessity of communism and transformed
it into an immediate demand in conformity with its
profound nature.
The future is not a point that is outside the reality
in which we live. It is this reality, it is its supersession.
Communism is, here and elsewhere, today and
tomorrow, my subjectivity and the objective
development of the forces of production. We cannot,
without deceiving ourselves, oppose communism as
utopia to communism as historical movement. One
of the great merits of the utopians was the fact that
they did not nourish any illusions concerning the
historical possibilities of their proposals.
It was only later that we see communist
reformers like Cabet and Owen who tried to cause
their ideas to become reality by way of the creation
of small communities or “communist” or communist-
inspired institutions.
The strength of utopianism is that it did not
waste time constructing a representation of the
developmental process leading to utopia, to deduce
what will be from what is. It directly anticipates
utopia. It works radically, that is, at the human level,
 Becoming Human * 291

with the problems that capital poses and directly

imposes. Problems that humanity will be forced to
solve some day.
As utopia, communism affirms itself in its
discontinuity with the present. It is conceived as a
new global equilibrium.
This concept of communism is opposed by a
vulgar determinism that reduces development to
a continuous process in which each phase is the
extension or the copied product of the preceding
phase. The utopian is reduced to a dreamer or
a mystical rationalist. It is not perceived that his
attitude is not his starting point but a part of the
movement in question.
Communism is the expression of the unfolding,
historically permitted and ordered, of the capacities
of the human species. It is the natural condition of
the species. But this nature is historically produced.
History is merely limited to ordering and masticating
over and over again the same materials without,
however, coming to a halt or describing a closed
circle.
The intermediate phase of class societies, which
tends to negate man by transforming him into an
instrument, does not make communism possible
and necessary except due to the characteristics
that are inherent to and genetically inscribed
292 * A World Without Money: Communism

within the species. It was the human capacity for

adaptation and also for submission, to use but also
to be used as an instrument, that was turned against
humanity. This phase, by engendering capitalism
and machinery, signed its own death sentence.

Scientific Socialism
In the 19th century, the antagonism between
the bourgeoisie and the proletariat became the
predominant antagonism. Communism began to
be less of a demand of reason or of philosophy in
general. It sought to inscribe itself in and to become
the practice of reality. The first tendency that arose
was the one that sought to begin to create islands
of communism and to propagate communism by
example, gradually and with the agreement of the
powerful. The second tendency that arose was that
of revolutionary and insurrectionary communism. In
France, this tendency is mainly associated with the
name of Blanqui:

“Communism, which is revolution itself, must

distrust the allure of utopia and must never separate
from politics. Up until recently it was on the outside.
Today, it is in our hearts. It is only our servant. It
should not be overworked, however, if we want to
 Becoming Human * 293

retain its services. It cannot be imposed suddenly,

either immediately or the day after the victory. You
might as well try to reach the sun . Before we got
very high, we would end up on the ground with
broken limbs a nice trip to the hospital . "

Blanqui already saw communism in action-

still, in our opinion, in a somewhat exaggerated
way- in the capitalist world :

"Taxes, and government itself, are communism,

certainly of the worst kind, but nonetheless absolutely
necessary.... Association, in the service of capital, is
becoming a curse that will not be endured for much
longer. It is the privilege of this glorious principle
that it can only work for the good. "

' Le Communisme, avenir de la société'

[Communism, the Future of Society] , 1869

Communism, by being openly linked with the

struggle of the proletariat, took a decisive step
forward but was also perverted. It allowed itself
to gradually cease to be an immediate demand .
It became a project, a mission, a historical stage
separate from the present. Emptied of its content
by the " levellers" and the "compartmentalizers " it
294 * A World Without Money: Communism
would be transformed, in the twentieth century into
a disguise for capital.
“Scientific socialism” was one way to rationalize
the historical postponement of communism. In the
19th century, the working class was still capable
of autonomous action but communism was not
possible. By proposing political methods and
transitional stages, Bray, Marx and Blanqui opened
the door to all kinds of recuperations.
It is precisely communism that is lacking in the
celebrated Communist Manifesto. In that work we
find an apology for the bourgeoisie, an analysis
of class struggles, and transitional measures. Of
communism, it says little and what it does say is bad.
The Manifesto was drafted for the “League of
the Just”, which became the “Communist League”.
Before Marx and Engels joined this group, the
doctrine of this association of immigrant German
artisans and workers was somewhat confused.
Weitling, its founder and theoretician, was a mystical
type. Marx and Engels succeeded in bringing
indisputable progress but also provoked regression
with respect to an ingenuous but more positive and
even more correct affirmation of communism.
In June of 1847 the Congress of the League of
the Just proclaimed its objectives in Article 1 of its
Statutes: “The League has the goal of suppressing
 Becoming Human * 295

the slavery of men by the dissemination of the

theory of the community of goods and its practical
application as soon as possible. "
In November 1846/February 1847, the
Central Committee had written to the Sections:
"You know that communism is a system according
to which the Earth must be the common property of
all men, according to which all persons must work,
'produce ', according to their abilities and enjoy,
'consume', according to their efforts.... "
Article I of the new Statutes, written by
Marx and Engels, emphasized the problems of
power and domination and defined communism
negatively: " The aim of the league is the overthrow
of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the
abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests
on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of
a new society without classes and without private
property. "
In Der Hilferuf der deutschen Jugend [The Cry
for Help of German Youth] ( 1841 ), Weitling defined
his Christian communism as follows:

"The problem that he [ Christ] posed was the

founding of a kingdom on the whole earth, freedom
for all nations, the community of goods and labor
for all who profess the kingdom of God . And it is
precisely this that the communists of today once
296 * A World Without Money : Communism

again adopt .... "

"There are communists who are communists

without knowing it: the hard working farmer who
shares his piece of black bread with the hungry
worker is a communist, the hard working artisan
who does not exploit his workers and who pays
them in proportion to the product of their common
labor is a communist, the rich man who spends his
extra money for the good of suffering humanity is a
communist .... "

Communism and charity are practically

confounded. Marx correctly and vigorously
reacted against this confusion . But in the Communist
Manifesto the communists are not any more well
defined by their communism . They are simply the
most resolute of the proletarians and the ones who
have the advantage of a clear awareness of the
line of advance of the proletarian movement: the
possessors of theory.
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th
century, and this despite the anger Marx displayed
against the Social Democracy, primarily against the
Gotha Congress of 1875, communism was emptied
of its real content. It only retained its profound
meaning among a small handful of anarchists.
 Becoming Human * 297

In 1891 , Paul Reclus, to justify "individual

expropriation ", that is, theft, offered the following
brief and good definition of communism in La
Revolte:

“Activity, in life as we imagine it might be, is so

unlike the one we lead now that what we call work,
we shall call theft: to take something without asking
and this is not theft; to offer something from our own
abilities and activity and this will not be work."

With the revolutionary wave that followed the

First World War and in the outbreak of the Russian
Revolution, Marxist and communist tendencies
re - emerged . There are vestiges of the memory of
communism in the Bolsheviks. These vestiges would
quickly be perverted and would disappear with the
defeat of the world revolution and in the swamp of
Russian problems.
It was right to denounce the extremely
precocious counterrevolutionary role of the
Bolsheviks, as it was also correct to demonstrate
the bourgeois character of Lenin's theoretical and
practical work. But it is stupid to want to hold the
Bolsheviks responsible for the failure of the workers'
revolution in Russia. The Bolsheviks were, above
all, a specific case of an example of a handful of
men who managed to change the course of history
298 * A World Without Money: Communism
as far as revolutionary possibilities would allow.
Their adversaries, even those to their left, generally
only used humanist and democratic perspective to
oppose them.
The contrast between the importance of the
revolutionary wave and the failure of the communist
affirmation is impressive.
In Germany and Holland it was mainly “the
left” that denounced the Russian regime as state
capitalism. Against Russian state capitalism,
they opposed a communism based on workers’
management. We must grant that they highlighted
the autonomous action of the masses and of the
workers’ councils. With the defeat of the revolution,
this current, represented above all by the KAPD,
fragmented into tiny sects, after having organized
hundreds of thousands of workers.
This ideology of workers’ self-management
would also be used by the anarchists and by the
anarcho-syndicalists. Communism is reduced to the
self-organization of the producers.
It was in Italy that the left fraction of Bordiga,
who was a dominant figure in the founding of
the PCI, made the most effective contribution to
the restoration of communist doctrine. He took
a position against participation in elections, he
repudiated united fronts with social democracy, he
 Becoming Human * 299

criticized the democratic illusion. He emphasized

the abolition of wage labour and of the commodity
economy. Bordiga, mostly after the Second World
War, developed his analysis of the capitalist
counterrevolution in Russia and his conception of
communism. Communism is not built; commodity
society is destroyed.
Despite its profound contributions, Bordigism
did not succeed in freeing itself from its Leninist
ambiance. Its radicalism and its perspicacity
became mired in the worst dead ends.
After the Second World War, theoretical
communism was only very gradually reborn. The
prosperity and good health of capital did not help
it. After having been ground to a pulp, with only
a few remnants remaining, it had to overcome its
past. It developed as the social crisis—and then the
economic crisis—of capital once again became
visible.
After having rediscovered the critique of the
Eastern Bloc and the bureaucracy, the Situationists
elaborated a theory of modern society based
on the commodity and the “spectacle”. They
denounced modern misery. However pertinent their
analyses often might have appeared to be, they still
remained on the surface of things. They were still
prisoners, with regard to both their style and their
300 * A World Without Money: Communism

content, of the spectacle effect that they denounced

and reflected.
The Situationists produced a brilliant and
corrosive social critique, but not a theory of capital,
of the machinery that upholds the spectacle, or of
the revolution. They did not address the question
of communization by praising the immediate
negation of the commodity (looting and arson) or
by immersing themselves in councilism (the absolute
power of the workers’ councils upon which
everything depends). They were fierce enemies of
Bolshevism, but like the Bolsheviks they made the
revolution a question of organization.
The communist doctrine must focus on the
description of the future and above all on the
process of communization. It is in this respect that it
must be discussed, that unites or separates. It is not
a matter of fleeing the present but of living and of
judging in the light of the future. Communism is here
and now and its perspectives can be immediately
opposed to the capitalist view.
Struggles, if they do not lead to positive
perspectives, thus showing their lack of depth,
become just another means of wallowing in misery
on the pretext of denunciation. Like clowns and
comedians, ideologists end up feeding on the
decomposition of the system. If we can forgive
 Becoming Human * 301
everyone who makes us laugh, these people can
never be forgiven. The ultimate form of concealing
the gigantic and unexplored possibilities that are
open to humanity: the ultimate form of extinguishing
hope in the hearts of the oppressed!
With the passage of time, the communist idea
and struggle re-emerge constantly. Nonetheless,
they are only transformed to the extent that, as they
are recuperated, capitalism is forced to overcome
them. Today, since capitalism generalizes public
property and concentrated labour, communism
goes beyond the opposition between individual
and collective appropriation. It is no longer based
on the question of property. Communism no longer
oscillates between an asocial naturalism and a
moralism or an exasperated regulationism.
The Marxist stage must not be spared, either.
Communism was considered to be a mode of
production that would succeed capitalism. It is at the
same time more than that and something beyond
a social form. It is the movement, in the heart of
capitalism, which rejects it, by which human activity
breaks its chains and finally flourishes!

Communist Activity
Communism is, first, activity. First, because it
302 * A World Without Money: Communism

arises from within capitalism before it can overthrow

capitalism. First, because in the communist world
human activity and its vital functions are not the
prisoners of previously produced social forms.
The organization of tasks does not have to be
crystallized in institutions.
Communism erupts positively from within
capitalism. But it affirms itself as the other side of
negation. Communism as activity is at the same
time negation and anticipation: there will not be
two successive moments. The more activity is turned
against capital the more it will tend to present an
outline of communism and vice-versa.
It is therefore not a matter, by any means, of
building islands of communism within capitalism. If
activity tends towards construction it will destroy the
communist point of view.
There will not be communist needs that will
demand their satisfaction beyond the system. Just as
there will be needs in communism, when they arise
they cannot be dissociated from their possibilities
of realization, even imaginary, in the system. The
inability of capitalism to satisfy desires leads to its
abolition and to the abolition of the desires that it
permits.
We do not see communism as Weitling did
in the moral sense or as Blanqui did in the rise
 Becoming Human * 303
of the glorious principle of association. If that is
communism, it is negative communism, and not to
be confused with bad communism. It is the ascent of
the movement of capitalist robbery.
Dispossessed of the instruments of production,
deprived of the power over their labour, separated
from each other but confronting and operating an
enormous productive power, gathered together
in great masses, the proletarians see communism
inscribed negatively in their situation. They do not
have, any more than they possess their own means
of production, particular interests to defend. Their
dispossession confronts the power and the social
wealth that they create. And it is this that makes the
proletariat the class of communism. The proletarians
cannot re-appropriate, a little at a time, the means
of production. They have to take them in common.
But what is fundamental is not so much—just as
things are indissociably connected—the movement
of re-appropriation and possessing goods in
common, but the new activity that unfolds, the re-
appropriation of life, the birth of new relations, the
destruction of the relation of domination between
men and objects.
It is true that communism, the human
community, is a stage of historical development.
The antagonisms that oppose human groups and
304 * A World Without Money: Communism

interests will disappear.

But one cannot understand communism if it is
established as a goal or as a completed movement,
separate from the activity that produces it. By
subordinating activity to the goal, the means to
the ends, one only projects into history the rule of
capital-commodity over human activity, which it
imprisons in the labour form. The end, the result,
communist social forms, must be considered a
necessity of activity that seeks to assure and to
reproduce its conditions of existence.
Community is in the future society, in the
unification of the planet, in the end of the division of
the economy into enterprises, a global and social
solution. But those who do not see the spontaneous
activity of the proletarians in action, who do not see
the immediate and individual negation of racism
and lies, understand nothing.
The relation between immediate activity
and the future world is crucial. The universality of
communism is contained in the particularity of
situations.
If this universality can erupt from the particular it
is through that particular being, itself the product of
the universal, unifying and private logic of capital.
Those who do not perceive the connection are
obliged to appeal to a false universal: the party
 Becoming Human * 305

(proletarian!), the state (proletarian!) or even the

proletariat as an abstraction or representation. This
false universal is itself considered as containing the
active principle as against an inert social mass. The
instrument and its object. The spirit transforming or
riding matter.
Communist consciousness is only generalized
when society is shaken to its foundations. But in
resurgent life all of this is already there, including
the consciousness that ceases to be the passive
reflection of congealed representations and
situations. Ideological consciousness is transformed
into practical consciousness. This is already
communist.
The more intense the struggle becomes, the
more do those who participate in it discover that
they are liberated from the prejudices and pettiness
to which they had become accustomed. Their
consciousness is shaken to its roots and they look at
reality and the existence that they had led in a new
and shocking way.
This presence of communism is not the
monopoly of the struggle in the strict sense of the
word: an open and declared battle between labour
and capital. It is manifested throughout all of social
life and often abandons those ritualized, fossilized
and tedious struggles which are no longer really
306 * A World Without Money: Communism

struggles.
The true human community always implies a
contradiction with capital. It tends to become an
open struggle or is destroyed and recuperated
to become an image used to disguise reality. The
growing influence of capital over life increasingly
expels and renders impossible all real humanity, all
love, all creation and exploration. Men are being
turned into empty carcases that walk without life
to the rhythms of capital. Revolt and reaction must
therefore obtain a more and more human character.
This humanity that contradicts capital, the necessary
stage of the becoming of the species, is what we
call communism. This label is still necessary insofar
as this human future cannot claim to represent or
encompass all human manifestations because it
remains antagonistic to capital.
Communism is possible because capital cannot
transform men into robots. Even if it robotizes their
existence it cannot do without their humanity. The
most integrated and most servile activity feeds
on participation, creation, communication and
initiative despite the fact that these qualities cannot
possibly develop fully and freely. Necessity and
earning a salary are not enough to make the
worker functional. This requires other motivations,
it requires his contribution. The labour-form cannot
 Becoming Human * 307

function without the generic, human character of the

worker's activity.
We saw (in Chapter IV) that the separate
spheres of life are only perpetuated and maintained
in their unity: it is impossible to completely dissociate
production, education and experimentation . Even
the least intelligent production or labour demands
a certain adaptation of the worker and the ability
to confront unexpected situations. In the same way,
the most abstract education must be concretized
by way of certain "products", which are not made
by copying an exam . The needs of control from the
outside fall upon production ....
The system of production would collapse if
the workers were to cease to experiment, to help
each other and to hold discussions. The hierarchical
organization of labour can only survive if its rules are
permanently ignored . It imposes an unenforceable
framework on the infractions and the spontaneous
activity of the workers in order to prevent them
from undergoing further development and from
becoming really dangerous and subversive.
When a breach opens up or a conflict breaks out
this activity tends to become autonomous and to
develop according to its own logic.
By fighting, the proletariat immediately denies
itself as wage labour, as slave, as robot. However
308 * A World Without Money: Communism

limited the reappearance of life and of action,

capitalist oppression is there if it challenges its
foundations.
The proletarian who was nothing but a cog
in the machinery starts to learn again, to strive, to
take risks. He rediscovers control over his deeds.
His eyes open, his intelligence stirs. The oppressive
spirit of seriousness, the tedium that shackles men in
the galleys of Wage Labour and the policed and
commodified world, are overthrown. Everything
becomes possible.
The revolt as a search for pleasure and efficacy
finds itself beyond labour. His wage is found directly
in the happiness that he awakens and its results.
The wildcat activity of the proletariat is
repressed when it goes beyond a certain limit.
More currently, it is recuperated and directed into
a stillborn state. Thus, it is not just communism, it
is the product of capitalism as capitalism is the
product of communism. If we insist upon this latent
or inchoate communism it is not in order to idolize it.
It can only be itself by going beyond and exiting the
capitalist orbit. To recognize its importance is not
same as bowing down before a spontaneity that
refuses to organize itself, discipline itself and take
the offensive.
Capital recuperates in conformity with its
 Becoming Human * 309

profound nature. It is essentially a vampire. It is

therefore necessary for us not to allow ourselves to
be dazzled by this or that spectacular aspect of it.
The workers’ struggles, despite the opposition
that they trigger, help the system to change and
realize its potential, while it always remains itself.
Wage and political struggles, or wage and political
solutions, shake the system up and allow it to
modernize itself.
The incipient struggle is sterilized at the root.
The strike, the demonstration, the occupation of the
factory tend to conform to a well-worn channel. They
do not seek to harm capital but to treat its illness,
to express discontent. In increasing alienation the
strike does not appear as a means of pressure but
as a sacrifice for those who engage in it. This is
demonstrated by the importance of sacrifice to the
gravity of the protest. The social war is replaced by
the parade.

Activity and Program

The point of view of activity is that of communism.
It is not a matter of denying the need for activity to
materialize, but of objectivizing it and of supporting
whatever it engenders and transforms.
Capital, to the contrary, only considers activity
310 * A World Without Money: Communism

from the point of view of the thing produced. It

is by that means that it assimilates, as a foreign
force, labour and specifically human activity.
Activity is only seriously carried out with a view
to its immediate and positive contribution. Positive
according to capital.
This will to only consider the immediate impact
conceals the character of anticipation of the
workers’ struggle:

“Instead of looking at what the workers do,

the bourgeois ideologues try to imagine what the
workers want to obtain. They do not see proletarian
activity except as a factor of disturbance or
modernization of the system, never as the outline of
its abolition”.

– “Lordstown 72 ou Les déboires de la

General Motors”, Les amis de 4 millions de jeunes
travailleurs, 1977

This activity is not seriously carried out because

it is not productive. It would be purely destructive or
negative. How could one think that it could inspire
a new world? In reality, the negative character of
communist activity is determined by the immediate
 Becoming Human * 311
de 4 millions de jeunes travailleurs, 1977). Just as
this destructive character eventually disappears
when the worker produces on his own account at
the cost of his enterprise.
By making proletarian activity the pivot of
our doctrine we can perceive the identity and the
discontinuity between revolt against capital and
the future world. We see a contradictory unity of
labour and communist activity. We can affirm that
communism is, first of all, a radical transformation
of human activity rather than a modification of
the social forms. This allows us to re-evaluate the
traditional ideas about the calculation of costs in the
communist world.
In his youthful writings, Marx conceived
communism not only as a movement but also
as activity. Unfortunately, as he elaborated his
conception of historical development, this point of
view faded away as a unitary point of view. Marx
became a communist theoretician of capitalism in
both senses of the expression. On the one hand,
he analysed capitalism from the point of view of
its negation. On the other, he is the prisoner of
capitalism.
Obviously, Marx took human activity into
consideration as revolutionary activity and as
productive activity, but separately. With regard to
312 * A World Without Money: Communism

the Revolution of 1848, he shows that proletarian

activity was nourished by its class situation and
developed according to its own logic. In his
economic works he made labour the basis of the
measure of value. But by deducing productive
activity from the product he fell back upon the
assimilation between human productive activity
and labour. He did not see the activity of the
revolutionary proletariat as something “beyond
labour”.
If everything rests on the immediate activity of
the proletariat, why do we have to occupy ourselves
merely with theory, with organization? Why should
we formulate a program?
Not everything is in the immediate activity
of the proletariat, it is just that everything must be
connected to it, that everything must be put into
perspective and in resonance. Immediate activity
is only communist by virtue of its capacity to go
beyond itself.
The communist program is a necessity, even if it
is momentarily separated from the proletariat as a
whole. It is not outside of its movement but without
an anticipation, a guide. Its truth resides in its ability
to be dissolved, that is, realized by the class. It is
merely the program of proletarian activity.
 Index
A arson

299
art
abolish 14, 23 , 34, 73,
91 , 103, 104, 113, 117, 244, 60, 92 , 185, 280, 285
authoritarianism
248 , 259, 260
abolition 14, 25
automation
29, 34, 35, 55, 69, 248 ,
265, 295, 298 , 302 54, 59, 63-66, 68 , 142,
abstract 198, 268
56, 81 , 93 , 99, 155, 306 autonomy
acceleration 164, 252
235
accumulation B
8, 17, 22, 43, 95, 134,
139, 158 , 234, 235, 239 bankruptcy
action 9, 10, 61
7, 9, 14, 16 , 64, 70–72, barbarism
14
99, 168 , 173 , 175, 180–82 ,
187, 188 , 192, 194, 198, 199, Blanqui
203 , 206 , 229, 234, 240, 292, 293, 302
263-65, 267, 272, 277, 292, book
293, 298, 304, 307 118 , 220, 221 , 270, 273 ,
agriculture 276, 286
27, 42, 45-47, 223, 224, Bordiga
226, 238 6, 117, 298
altruism Bordigism
73 298
anarchist boredom
165, 167 28 , 47, 74, 82, 140
anarchists bourgeois
25, 162, 165, 296, 298 10, 23 , 26 , 31 , 36 , 37,
anarcho-syndicalists 39, 48, 90, 117, 129, 134 , 161 ,
298 172 , 177, 189, 192, 198 , 209,
anticommunist 228, 241 , 242, 244, 248–51 ,
161 255, 259, 260, 285, 295, 297
anti-communist bourgeoisie
25 8-11 , 19-21 , 43 , 66, 119,
Anti - Dühring 161 , 171 , 172 , 196, 204, 209,
31, 126 242, 245, 247–50, 253, 255,
anti-political 256 , 258, 260–62, 270 , 287,
164, 168 291 , 293, 295
anti-state businesses
161 23 , 57, 58 , 220
314 * A World Without Money: Communism
C 295
circulation
capital 19, 80, 102, 103, 106 ,
2, 3 , 7-9, 12-14, 16–22, 107, 112 , 218 , 228
24, 26, 31 , 38-40, 43, 48, 52, civilization

54, 59, 62, 67, 87, 99, 107, 14, 27, 50, 81 , 268
class
111-13 , 117, 120, 121 , 124,
126 , 128 , 130 , 136 , 139, 140, 6, 8-10, 18 , 24, 25, 29,
155, 160 , 164, 177–81 , 185, 43 , 65-67, 124 , 162–64, 169,
195, 206 , 210, 228-30, 234, 172, 173, 198 , 209, 229, 240,
236 , 237, 239-41 , 244, 247, 241 , 244-51 , 253 , 254, 260,
248 , 252, 253, 256, 259–61 , 261 , 265, 267, 270, 272 , 273,
266 , 268 , 273 , 284, 290, 291 , 293, 303 , 310
classes
292 , 293, 299, 301 , 304–6 ,
308, 309 13 , 27, 67, 68 , 80, 81 ,
capitalism 94, 122, 124, 161 , 191 , 211,
1 , 4, 5, 8 , 9, 11 , 12, 15, 237, 246-48 , 252, 259–61 ,
16 , 18 , 20-23 , 27, 29, 32 , 33 , 287, 295
collectivism
38 , 42, 43, 48 , 54, 57, 61 , 65,
36
68 , 70, 73 , 81 , 92, 102 , 111 ,
114, 120, 126, 128 , 137, 140, collectivization
142 , 143 , 154, 170, 176–78 , 43, 44
Colonization
185, 200 , 227, 228, 239, 244,
235
269 , 272, 274 , 287, 291 , 297,
commodities
300-302, 308 , 309
capitalist 2, 8 , 18, 44, 50, 52, 53 ,
1 , 3 , 5, 7-13 , 15, 19, 22, 104-6 , 108 , 110 , 111, 176 ,
24-26 , 29, 39, 42, 47, 53, 59, 196 , 214, 232, 242, 244, 265,
281
61 , 69, 76, 77, 86, 90, 98, 99,
communism
101 , 108 , 114, 122, 126–29,
131 , 140, 142, 159, 161 , 172 , 1,3-8, 11 , 13 , 16, 18,
177, 178 , 181 , 195, 234, 253, 24-31 , 33-35, 42, 43 , 48,
259, 261 , 262 , 266 , 285, 292, 52, 53, 55, 60 , 61 , 68 , 69,
298 , 300, 302, 307, 308 72-74 , 81 , 85, 87, 91 , 92, 96,
centralization 101 , 105, 112, 114 , 116 , 122 ,
64, 164 123 , 126 , 128 , 130, 137, 139,
children 140, 149, 151 , 154, 158 , 160 ,
47, 59, 86-88, 96, 106, 170, 173 , 175, 179, 182, 183,
226, 248 , 249, 260, 280, 286 188-90, 196 , 197, 199, 200,
choice 202, 207, 208 , 216, 217, 221 ,
10, 21 , 36 , 52, 53, 87, 223, 224, 227, 229, 236, 239,
103, 109, 116, 144-46, 148, 241-44, 248 , 250, 252, 258,
150, 156 , 158 , 183 , 189, 256 , 261 , 262, 266 , 269–73, 276,
266 281-306, 308, 309
Christian communization
 Index * 315

172 , 200, 207, 214, 215, 170 , 171 , 176-82, 184,

299, 300 186, 190, 192, 194, 214, 296,
consciousness 298
30, 34, 66, 79, 90, 91 , democrats
101 , 197, 242, 243 , 252, 255, 189, 201
257, 258 , 304, 305 dictatorship
consumer 10, 92 , 170 , 177–80 ,
45, 47, 50, 92 , 93 , 109, 247, 250
114, 186, 223 , 261 dream
consumption 108 , 155, 242 , 276
49, 58 , 69, 85, 86 , 89– drugs
92, 115, 119, 122, 126, 129, 214, 225, 244
141 , 217, 235 , 239, 260, 261
control E
8, 12, 22, 38 , 54, 62,
64-66 , 71 , 99, 103 , 107, 108 , earth
125, 132, 142, 162-65, 167, 27, 176 , 270, 294, 295
173 , 180, 186, 195, 202, 206, economic
207, 220 , 228, 231 , 240, 248 , 9, 13 , 14, 22 , 23 , 31 , 33 ,
288 , 306 , 307 38, 43 , 44, 60, 65, 66, 68 ,
councilism 86 , 88, 99, 103 , 106, 111 , 127,
299 130 , 143, 145, 155, 156, 160,
counterrevolution 161 , 180, 181 , 186, 204, 205,
40 , 171 , 174, 175, 196, 216 , 235, 238 , 242, 249, 261 ,
202, 205, 207, 211 , 214, 230, 265 , 268 , 299, 310
238, 298 economy
countries 9, 13 , 19, 21 , 32, 39,
5, 7, 8, 12, 18-20, 22, 44, 45, 52, 61 , 77, 82 , 94,
25, 30, 40, 49, 205, 224, 234, 101, 103, 105, 117, 133, 134,
236-39, 247, 255, 261 141-43 , 145 , 148 , 180, 202 ,
creation 205 , 207, 227, 229, 230, 243,
62, 90, 92, 103 , 132 , 253, 298 , 304
157, 175 , 206, 290, 305, 306 education
crisis 32, 59, 73 , 74, 94-96,
1 , 192 , 195, 197, 268 , 99, 114, 164, 225, 235, 286,
299 306
critique egoism
3 , 29, 31 , 122 , 123 , 129, 70 , 73, 206, 239
131 , 160, 180, 299 egoist
74, 258
D egoists
74
decolonization elections
96 169, 176 , 179, 184,
democracy 186-88 , 298
316 * A World Without Money: Communism
employment 269, 272, 285, 291, 297,
151 303
environment Hoxha
16, 28, 64, 84, 88, 91, 26
115, 137, 237, 249, 268 humanists
existence 14
5, 32, 37, 55, 67, 74, humanity
102, 103, 136, 165, 172, 179, 1, 2, 18, 27, 48, 49, 61,
182, 188, 252, 303, 305, 306 65, 70, 91, 99, 103, 142, 191,
243, 256, 261, 288, 290, 291,
F 295, 300, 305, 306

factory I
28, 31, 39, 72, 77, 78,
90, 134, 138, 165–67, 214, ideology
250, 308 3, 7, 25, 62, 172, 190,
faith 198, 203, 207, 254, 298
69, 157, 227, 270, 286 illusion
family 14, 76, 77, 104, 114, 173,
12, 42, 86, 88, 129, 178, 178, 228, 247, 259, 298
249, 250, 274, 278, 285 imagination
fatalism 62, 76, 162
15, 70, 180 independence
freedom 38, 46, 163, 181, 259,
45, 54, 62, 98, 131, 160, 270
161, 183, 201, 203, 220, 229, individualism
258, 271, 295 36,78
industrialization
G 15, 49, 223, 227
industry
God 12, 22, 42, 45, 57, 60,
191, 295 62, 69, 217, 221, 245, 285
government insurrection
164, 165, 275, 292 71, 200, 208, 209, 225,
230, 238
H insurrections
40, 165, 184, 204, 272
heroes intellectuals
6 24, 179, 208, 209, 243,
hierarchy 247, 252, 255, 257, 258
53, 56, 148, 210, 213, Internationalism
250 234
history
6, 29, 65, 102, 117, 134, J
201, 208, 227, 234, 258, 268,
 Index * 317

Jesus 7, 23 , 24, 192

104 liberation
job 30, 62, 206 , 233, 254
32, 76, 80, 99, 118 , 140,
149, 193, 225, 226 , 228 M
jobs
63, 76 , 79, 82-84, 93, machine
116 , 137-40 , 157, 183, 190, 2, 3, 54, 58, 64, 66-69,
215 100, 141 , 161 , 162, 248 , 268
management
K 12, 78, 85, 157, 158, 167,
172, 186 , 248 , 297
Kautsky Mao
242 26, 33
knowledge Maoism
28, 41, 62, 94, 95, 97, 73

99, 204, 225, 226 , 237, 249, minority

250, 282 53 , 175, 177-79, 182 ,
183, 188 , 194
L monarchy
19, 20 , 177, 191
labour money
1 , 9, 10, 14-17, 20, 26, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18 , 29–31 ,
29, 34, 39, 41 , 44, 45, 48, 43 , 44, 46 , 50, 51 , 66 , 71 , 76,
54-56, 58 , 59, 65–67, 69, 88 , 92 , 93, 100-108 , 112-14,
70, 73-75 , 83 , 84, 86 , 93, 98, 121 , 122, 133 , 134, 154, 162 ,
100 , 103 , 104, 107, 109–13 , 163 , 189, 190, 220 , 229, 230,
117-26 , 129-31 , 133-42 , 151 , 249-51 , 258 , 261 , 270 , 273 ,
154, 155, 159, 214, 224, 227, 277, 280, 281 , 287, 295
241 , 253, 254, 265, 277, 279, monopoly
281 , 289, 298, 300, 302, 303, 211 , 287, 305
305-10 movement

land 1, 5, 6, 15, 16 , 24, 160,

10, 13 , 35, 37-42, 46, 180, 193 , 194, 196, 199, 200,
86 , 113 , 224, 274, 278, 282 204, 210, 234, 242, 256,
law 262, 266 , 269, 288–91 , 296,
108 , 110-13 , 122, 124, 301-3 , 309, 310
125, 207, 232 mutilated
laziness 68, 257
72, 73, 75, 76, 138
left N
180, 181 , 208 , 298
Lenin nationalism
5, 242, 243 236, 237
liberal nations
318 * A World Without Money : Communism
81 , 235, 236 , 280, 295 160, 166 , 172, 189, 195,
natural 196 , 198-200, 285, 304
40, 55, 64, 69, 89–91 , peasant
101 , 111 , 115 , 136 , 143, 152, 37, 39-44, 56, 86, 133 ,
180 , 268 , 287, 291 212, 239, 252, 270
naturalism peasants
301 11 , 16, 34, 41-46, 105,
nature 166 , 213, 246 , 252, 255, 274
2, 8 , 11 , 15-17, 19, 21 , philosophy
25, 28, 30, 34, 38, 40 , 48, 51 , 119, 120 , 124, 183 , 291
52, 56, 57, 67, 68 , 70, 72 , 84, Plato
89, 91 , 95, 101 , 106 , 113 , 121 , 273, 274
122 , 129, 132 , 133, 138, 146, play
148 , 150, 151 , 159, 162, 164, 14 , 22, 28 , 53, 58, 63,
170 , 194-96 , 201 , 204–7, 75, 86, 88 , 106, 135, 145,
212 , 229, 230, 232, 238 , 243, 156 , 158, 174, 206, 211 , 216,
248 , 254, 277, 280, 286 , 287, 251 , 253, 255
289, 291, 308 poetry
Nazism 92
14, 179 police
32, 40, 58, 81 , 162, 165,
175 , 206 , 209, 232, 238
politicians
objectivity 33, 162, 164, 167, 179,
132 181 , 186, 190, 196, 215
obscurantism politics
15 3, 26 , 160, 170, 180,
optimism 181 , 185-87, 191 , 274, 292
65 power
organization 8-12 , 15, 19-23, 38 , 39,
3, 16, 50, 80, 100, 107, 45, 48, 52, 65, 66, 71 , 75, 83 ,
138 , 165 , 167, 171–73, 175 , 87, 91 , 93, 112, 130, 139, 156,
176, 187, 199, 200, 208, 216, 157, 160 , 162-64, 166, 168 ,
230, 231 , 233, 265, 300, 301 , 172 , 174, 176 , 177, 181 , 188 ,
307, 310 190, 191 , 196 , 198, 200–202 ,
ownership 204 , 206, 207, 210, 215, 217,
7, 11 , 12 , 19, 22, 35, 37, 228, 229, 233, 235, 244, 252,
41, 87, 248 256 , 266, 268 , 284, 294,
299, 302, 303
P pre - capitalist
20
pacifists primitive
203 17, 18, 27, 28 , 90, 102 ,
party 134-36 , 206 , 239, 240, 272,
23, 26, 41 , 52, 114, 282, 284
 Index * 319

prison 119
44, 138, 180, 270 recuperation
privilege 24, 194
53 , 161 , 256 , 293 reformism
267
privileged
50, 132, 186 , 187, 192, religion
194, 205, 234, 237, 238, 257, 6, 227, 271
259, 269 revolt
procommunist 71 , 192, 256 , 305, 307,
285 309

productivity revolutionaries
17, 43, 48, 49, 55, 110, 6, 14, 25, 26, 29, 120,
134, 151, 224 160 , 161 , 164, 173 , 175, 190,
profit 192, 197, 198 , 201, 202, 206,
8, 12-14, 26, 65, 76, 84, 208 , 210, 211 , 214, 217, 227,
109-11 , 113, 119 230 , 232, 233 , 236, 262 ,
proletariat 265, 267
6, 11 , 21 , 26 , 48, 58, revolutions
65-68 , 73, 94, 161 , 163 , 164 , 166 , 189, 255, 257, 259,
170, 171 , 198 , 202, 204, 211 , 285
238 , 241-48, 251 , 252, 256,
259, 266 , 268, 289, 291 , 293 , S
295, 303, 304, 307, 308, 310
property school
8, 11 , 33-40, 42, 48, 88 , 95, 96 , 99, 180 , 226
58, 87, 112, 117, 125 , 129, 161 , science
213 , 232, 250, 259, 270, 271 , 1, 2, 4, 15, 59, 61-65,
273-75, 277, 278 , 286 , 287, 69, 76, 78 , 247, 269
294, 295, 300, 301 Sectarianism
Proudhon 263
34 Situationists
299
R socialists
29, 104
racism society
241, 304 1-4, 6, 14, 19, 21 , 22,
radicalism 24, 27-29, 31 , 34-36, 41, 44,
298 45 , 48 , 50 , 51 , 56 , 57, 59, 65,
radicalization 67, 70, 75-81, 83, 86 , 87, 90,
175 93, 96, 101 , 102 , 112, 114-16,
rationalism 120-27, 129, 131 , 140, 150,
6 157, 161 , 164, 167, 169, 174,
reactionaries 178 , 181 , 183 , 190, 197, 198,
3,86 200, 201 , 204, 206 , 210,
reciprocity 224, 229, 233, 242, 251 , 254,
320 * A World Without Money: Communism
259-61 , 272, 273, 293, 240 , 268 , 285
295, 298 , 299, 303, 304 theory
spectacle 6, 7, 122 , 125, 269, 288,
4, 186, 196, 244, 267, 294, 296 , 299, 310
299 traditional
spirit 21 , 48 , 218 , 224 , 234,
62, 73, 76, 78 , 211 , 236 , 239, 240, 309
258 , 267, 273, 281, 282, 288 ,
304, 307 U
Stalin
25, 27, 32, 33 union
Stalinism 32 , 43 , 163 , 171 , 243 ,
25, 162, 177, 179, 269 244, 264, 265
state unity
5, 11 , 18-23 , 28-33 , 35, 23 , 86 , 182, 234, 306,
42, 50, 58, 60-62, 77, 105, 309

129, 160-65, 167, 170, 180, uprisings

181 , 185, 188 , 191 , 202, 229, 192, 211
231-33 , 236-38 , 257, 273, utopia
287, 297, 304, 308 269, 270, 273–76, 290,
struggle 292
23 , 107, 134, 163 , 165,
169, 171 , 172 , 175, 193, 199, V
215, 239, 242, 243, 246 , 247,
261 , 264-67, 293, 300, 305, value
308 17, 18, 52, 66 , 92, 102,
subjectivity 106-14, 116 , 117, 119, 121 ,
132, 142, 289 122 , 124-26, 135–40 , 151 ,
system 155, 161 , 183 , 213, 250 , 266 ,
8-10, 13-16 , 24, 25, 268, 278 , 280, 281 , 310
30, 32 , 42, 50, 55, 65, 68 , violence
70, 71 , 74, 86 , 87, 94, 95, 34, 201-4, 207, 208 ,
98-100 , 105-8 , 110-12, 213
114, 127, 132, 133, 135, 184, vote

187-89, 196 , 228-32, 244, 3, 182, 184, 186, 194

251 , 252, 255, 256, 259, 264,
265, 278 , 289, 294, 300, 302, W
307, 308
wage
T 1 , 2 , 9, 14-16 , 29, 32,
41, 44, 49, 51 , 53, 54, 56, 62,
taxes 69, 74, 86 , 98 , 99, 112 , 113 ,
162, 185 , 282, 292 126 , 140, 188 , 205, 227, 228,
technology 241 , 247, 252 , 253, 265 , 277,
61-64, 68 , 111 , 141 , 298 , 307, 308
 Index * 321

war

2, 52, 57, 60 , 68 , 166,

176 , 191 , 205, 206 , 270, 296 ,
298
wealth
19, 21 , 28 , 33 , 37, 39,
50, 101 , 103 , 108 , 113 , 130 ,
250 , 260, 261 , 275, 278, 287,
303
work
28 , 42, 44, 45, 54-56,
58 , 62, 69–71 , 73, 75, 79, 80 ,
84-86 , 100 , 159, 160 , 178 ,
193 , 296 , 297
workers
2, 14, 24, 40, 41 , 51 ,
58, 66, 67, 83, 98-100, 105,
110 , 112 , 120, 122, 138 , 149,
162 , 163 , 165–72, 174, 179,
187, 192-94, 198, 205, 210,
211 , 214, 215, 220, 240, 241 ,
245-48 , 252-55, 258 , 265,
267, 279, 294, 295, 297–99,
307, 308

youth
257, 259, 295

zones

72, 235, 238

 BATLLENON

un monde sans argent :

le communisme
Ainsi
l'URSS. n'est
pas communiste
mais les EtatsUnis
Amrique l'etaient
il ya encore
quelques siecles"
(p.12 )

1 LES AMIS DE 4 MILLIONS

DE JEUNES TRAVAILLEURS
B.P. 8806
75261 PARIS CEDEX 04
 un monde sans argent :
le communisme
Coleul
Cosperatam

grife

Communiste

( 28)

2 LES ANDSDE &MILLIONS

DEJEUNES TRAVALEURS
BP8800
15061PARIS CEDEXD
 un monde sans argent :
le communisme
du communisme passé au
communisme à venir ...
Un vieux drude nous déclare:
Pas plus que
er
s,Weitl
Engelel'ar ing
s e
tisand
Marx
et les
Va ue iers
liqouvr ne sont mee
isigin
l'or
àun
du comm .
Cette origine se
perd dans la nuit
s
de te mp s . On
peut trouver des
traces de com-
munisme dans
des révoltes
ou des œurmes
pré-ca pitalistes.
C'est laonvieille
aspirati r pour
retrouve l'abem
dance et te
la
mmunau
co
perdue .

LES AMISDE 4 MILLIONS

DE JEUNES TRAVAILLEURS
B.P. 8806
75261 PARIS CEDEX 06

3
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A WORLD
WITHOUT
MONEY:
COMMUNISM

BY The Friends of
4 Million Young
Workers