by Ali Shariati
Another factor is the social advantages, such as insurance, social security, wages, etc. A portion of each of the above is given to them by capitalism. This is where capitalism is really making an investment. It is no more very unhealthy. He is investing. An uncertain future is one of the conditions which would cause the worker to revolt. He always feels, “I am getting old in this place and if tomorrow my hand is chopped off, I would be fired. Well if I became poor, old, and disabled, then my wife, my child and all of them will be left hungry. We have no kind of security. He has full dominance over our fate and can fire us at his will.”
Therefore, the capitalist, through giving him class security and assurances, abolishes this kind of instability, insecurity and wavering. So much rest for this period of work or this much to be paid as retirement benefits are some of the forms of the class security given by the capitalist to the exploited class. He says that I will deduct 5% for his social insurance while he deducts 10% and explains that the difference is to provide him with life insurance. “We will provide him with whatever he likes such as insurance and social security even for his wife and child. We will pay him $35 for every newborn child.” All these are the alms given to him. But the amount that the capitalist invests in him causes his anger to be abolished for good. This state of contradictions is replaced with a state of competition.
What has changed? The change is that in the capitalistic system of the 19th century, the proletariat had no hope and all the factors helped in belittling him. The church used to say, ‘’You are born so, God has made you just like this. Jesus Christ is kind. He has wished and made you so. You have to be like this. Religion would say, on behalf of God, that you have to remain in this state of deprivation. You are created and have to live in this way, just as the capitalist and the well-to-do feudals lords are created to live the way they are living. As a whole, God has separated you and the well-to-do class by a heavy, large and invincible wall.”
All these factors had made him hopeless. All philosophers, sociologists, writers and poets were at the service of the capitalist. Everybody obeyed him in order to remain in their present state in the name of being virtuous and ethical. If not they would be called sinners, spoiled people who ignore other people’s rights. They would obey him in the name of spirit, religion, ethics or anything else. They were helpless. Therefore, the more the aristocratic class showed itself to be superior, to have advantages, to be well-to-do, eager for money and the exploiter of this class, the less they would think of breaking this wall and sharing a little of their life and alms with the deprived class.
But in the present class cycle, when the proletariat obtains class awareness at any cost, they would realize that what all the capitalists had said on behalf of God, was what they had previously said about the gods. The proletariat would then abandon religion.
As you see in the struggles in the 19th century, he supports materialism because religion was totally at the service of and dedicated to the gods of gold and power. Generally, gold, power and fraud were all prefabricated. As we see, the biggest share of capitalism in the West belongs to the Roman Church. The biggest investments in the world belongs to them. Thus, it was not at the service of the people This is why he revolts against religion and this kind of class system. He knows that his only way is through revolution, through breaking and destroying everything. He has nothing to lose. Marx himself says that the proletariat has nothing to lose.
Now capitalism realizes that it should give something to the worker so that if there were a revolution, he would envy its loss. So, the feeling of possessing something he likes, has made his life more comfortable and holds him from taking any risks. Also, when a worker owns something, he becomes conservative. While he may keep his revolutionary ideas if he wishes to, he is allowed to do anything in his revolutionary thoughts. He is even free to kill, but he may not show his revolution.
This same proletariat and revolutionary class in 19th century France, who saw that that year they were working seven hours as compared to eight hours the year before, will start a guild struggle and later will go on strike. He is able to reduce his working hours half an hour and increase his wages. He is becoming better off. He obtains better social security, better and larger insurance, he becomes better off, and receives more possibilities and can go on more strikes. Capitalism offers him a syndicate as a break to go on a strike for a couple of hours when he becomes very angry. Finally they would compromise with their leaders and solve all the difficulties.
I would like to mention the logic and rationale which lies behind such reasoning. That is to say, the disappearance of ‘the difference in consumption for the purpose of safeguarding the differences in production, ownership and classes’. This is when ‘capitalism becomes rational.’ In other words, capitalism’s tactics is to donate a little to saturate the worker. Now that the worker owns something, he is no longer willing to run a risk of losing it whether in a revolution, rebellion or uprising. This might even kill his class awareness because he can see that he possesses whatever his boss owns. But as I said before, while he owns nothing, he is apt to break, destroy, blow up, revolt and abolish the capitalist society.
He is prone to destroy the system in order to own something. He sees that he is gradually being given things like wages, syndicates, insurance, beaches, refrigerators, etc. He feels that hope is replacing disappointment in him — disappointment because by protecting capitalism and the class system, he can have a human life while he was disappointed and would have ended up in a historical revolution. But this process of gradual donation to the worker or creating a false feeling of being well-to-do or granting him a syndicate instead of an ideology 5 will make a worker hopeful. During these seven or eight years that he has begun to become better off, he has also become hopeful that if he is able to preserve his present situation, by means of struggling through his syndicate, or through improving his situation, or through gaining more power, then he will acquire more and more advantages. That is how hope makes him feel relieved. The false feeling of being well-to-do makes him feel satisfied and reduces his showing off by differences between consumption, or contradictions in consumptions, or the disappearance of all the pride and the aristocratic tendencies of luxury during the bourgeoisie period, which would then reduce the contradictory crisis. And the syndicate will find a way to divert all social complexes.
Indeed this is the ‘awakening of capitalism,’ that is to say that through their tactics, capitalism tries to invest even from its own pocket. During the bourgeoisie period, it desires to obtain the absolute maximum profit. But capitalism, in order to destroy the revolution, spends a little and gives away some of its profit. For example, on a 20% profit he is willing to give away about 5% of it in favor of the workers or for the sake of the society in order to destroy the revolution. He foresaw that if the extent of exploitation was to be continued as it did during the 19th century, there would have been a revolution ten years from then, so he has to reduce the prevailing extent of exploitation in order to postpone the revolution. He gives away a little in favor of his enemy in order to delay the revolution to 20 years, 30 years, 1000 years or even to completely destroy it. We can also see that he has also been successful to a certain extent.
But what is the main reason for such a success? Unfortunately, even Marx, who is at the peak of his reputation and thinking in the second half of the 19th century, has not referred to this problem. It is astonishing and unbelievable that he who is so sensitive and observant about the exploitative relationship between the proletariat and his employer in the capitalistic system does not refer to that problem. It would be acceptable from such and such a French, Dutch, or English capitalist in the 19th century but not from Marx, who is so considerate about the problems of brotherhood, class system, exploitation, the rights of the deprived class and the proletariat. He who has depicted the most profound problems on the basis of economic exploitation, he who more than anybody else has worked towards the creation of self awareness of t
he proletariat and the deprived class which is the main factor of awareness and consciousness as far as the exploitation and class system is concerned. I wonder why. 6
During the periods 1850, 1860 and 1870, the most dreadful forms of murder and animal-like exploitation of Latin America, Africa and Asia existed. That is to say that the animal-like imperialism, similar to a wolf attacking people of the third world —today’s term—bit and killed them. They destroyed everything, such as culture, morale, ethics and normal life.7 They would formally mass murder, plunder our best cultural and artistic works as well as all of our raw materials. Often they would take a group of local workers with themselves.
All African tribes were captured as slaves in the worst animal-like forms. Then while taking them to the U.S.A., they would put these slaves in a special way in their huge vessels.8 How is it that under such conditions where a group of African laborers working on coffee fields had a minimum to eat in order to survive, had no clothes, and under such conditions where all of the East, Africa, and Latin America was plundered in order for the West’s capitalism to be created, those most progressive of all groups, in the West during this period, who struggle more than others for human rights, against exploitation and class differences and who show more sensitivity and who even fight for it, never talk or say a word about the contradictions, the horrible imperialistic differences, just like the relationship between a wolf and a sparrow? It even astonishes me that in the West’s analysis of capitalism there is no such problem as plundering of the East’s raw materials. Why don’t they even mention this? Why do they not discuss the problem of where all the capital compiled now in England, Germany, and France with which they exploit the European worker, came from? Then Marx says that this capital should be put at the service of the proletariat class, or at the service of the whole society and at the service of the people’s government. What belongs to the people, to the governments of Europe and must be nationalized? As a whole, to whom should it belong?
I undoubtedly believe in the objection existing between the employer and the proletariat relationship. I believe in it globally as well as scientifically. Especially since it is the word of the day in Europe and a ground for struggle and revolution that the proletariat class is invited to revolt. There is no misunderstanding between the relationship of the proletariat and the capitalist. But the real problem is that whom does this capital belong to? Where has it come from? Despite the fact that I believe infinitely in Mr. Schwartz whom you have seen me mentioning often and although I believe in his scientific thought and social path—he is also the founder of the three party system, that is to say the united Socialist parties 9—very astonishingly he says that capitalism has become rationalized and gives away a portion of his capital and profit to the proletariat class, and creates a bourgeois-looking life for him. The reason why Marx’s prediction was not realized and the revolution in Europe was delayed and the proletariat does not possess that revolutionary state of being is firstly due to the awakening of the capitalist class and secondly the proletariat becoming bourgeois-like. He looks and lives like a bourgeois.
I ask the question, why do you not contribute this to the awakening of capitalism, as a result of which it has been able to provide ample possibilities and help which would secure a bourgeois-looking life for the proletariat class? Some of the possibilities are the following : salary, social advantages, social security, insurance, purchasing power, and price reduction etc. Where has the capitalist acquired all this money from? Is it due to its awakening? Or is it because all of the third world is sinking into continuous poverty and increasing misery and becoming more backward in order for your proletariat class to be changed to the bourgeoise? Which one is the reason?
Mr. Yves Lacoste is the author of a book entitled “The Geography of Hunger” which has recently been translated. He compares the prices of all the raw materials exported from backward countries to Europe during 20 to 30 years in exchange for already cooked and made commodities.10 The result of this comparison is incredibly strange.
If his research and method were not written as a world renown economist we could not even think that all the consumer goods exported from Europe to our countries during the last 20 or 30 years often had a 300%, 400% to 600% price increase. On the other hand, the raw material which they receive from us, Africa, Asia, and many Latin American countries, contrary to the demand and supply rules which state price increases in every 30 or 40 years, some of these raw material curves had small slopes and some none.
The price of most of the exported raw materials from the backward countries to Europe had declined compared to 30 years ago. It has often been halved.
Contrary to the last analysis of the most highly ranked, intellectual, progressive, and revolutionary socialists,11 which says that it is the capitalism rationality which has destroyed the revolution and has made the proletariat class become a bourgeois, I believe that the only thing we can pay them with in order to guarantee their exports, is our poverty.
Endnotes
1. As this is neither a theoretical problem nor a scientific theory or ideology, but rather a real and contemporary problem which deals especially with the fate of the third world in which we live, it must then be discussed thoroughly and independently.
2. Mr. Schwartz uses the term “Le Capitalism se Rationalize”; meaning Self-Rationalization of Capitalism. In other words capitalism is becoming wise. Why? “Because”, explains a writer, “as much as Marxism has helped the awareness and self-consciousness of the proletariat it has indirectly helped the awareness and self-consciousness of capitalism.”
3. Even though the external factor of the problem of self awareness is objective — the problem of being exploited and deprived—nevertheless, the problem of self-awareness is a subjective matter.
4. A friend of mine used to narrate that someone was complaining about poverty, hardships in life, debts, and deprivation. He believed that his life was worsening everyday. Then, he would reflect a moment and say, “We still have to thank God that in this summer heat I am not ill because if I were ill then the doctor would tell me to go and sleep close to the heater then what would I have done! Thank God that I am not ill and I am leading a good life.”
5. And to destroy an ideology, he creates syndicalism to protect the worker’s profits within his guild rather than in his society or his class and solve the problem in relation to the capitalist, or to enforce it upon the capitalist. But it will not endanger the capitalistic system. It will rather put so and so capitalist or factory owner under pressure and divert the direction of the flow.
6. The reason I say “no” —in relation to the same ground on which the problem is posed—is because my judgement would then differ, because problems are always to be tackled from all its aspects in order to get the right result, not on the same grounds on which the problem is posed, because then the judgment would be different.
7. The capitalist, in order to make his factory run, would even destroy all or half of the agriculture, the normal life of its people, forests and even the natural resources, water and the animals of that state or country in order to employ cheap work force for his factory.
8. In order to place 1200 slaves in a vessel with a capacity of 300 men, in order to deliver to the U.S.A. about 650 to 700 living slaves, it would still be advantageous for example to place them in a way that even if 300 out of 1000 of them die, there would still be 700 to deliver alive to the U.S.A.
9. He and his group divorced from the French Communist Party due to the latter’s choice of very inhumane and reactionary directions regarding the problem of Algeria and Hungary. The French Communist Party had also compromised with the capitalists and they had all become one. Djimole used to be in a Socialist Party. Maurice Tours was the head of the Communist Party. Djimole was the person who compromised with Israel and hence attacked Egypt. He had compromised with England too. Yet he was a socialist. Also, Maurice Tours owned a Villa and a castle near to Brigitte Bardot’s villa. They (Mr
Schwartz and his group) left the Communist Party and became Free Socialists and Intellectuals who had no obligation towards the big powers and foreign governments. They formed a very clean and clear-cut intellectual group which had no engagement towards the big powers, but which felt obligated towards the proletariat class. They were aware scientists and intellectuals to the extent that they published theories regarding the dialectic school of thought. They even believed in revising it. (They own a very small but intellectual book entitled “Revision of Marxism’s Thought.” This was a conference.)
10. Very well, I give wool and he makes it into clothes. Thank God, he makes us wear new clothes! He is making us civilized!
That they say : the revolution in Europe is destroyed, postponed or deferred due to the fact that capitalism has become a sociologist, aware, wise, and has understood that it has to share a portion of his profits with the proletariat. It has to create a consuming-oriented life and make him consume and thus change him to bourgeoisie as a result of which he would become conservative and attack and oppose any revolutionary risk and class self awareness.
Appendices:
A. Guide to the Volume Titles of Shariati’s Collected Works
1. Volume Titles
Volume 1: To Familiar Listeners
Volume 2: Revolutionary Self-development