26/10/2018 Post-Capitalism Will Be Post-Industrial | The Disorder Of Things

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Post-Capitalism Will Be Post-

Industrial

OCTOBER 23, 2014OCTOBER 24, 2014 / N

[Text of a short talk presented at Socialism and Deindustrialisation
(h ps://www.facebook.com/events/643961235718619/669149739866435/?
notif_t=plan_mall_activity) event put on by Spring
(h ps://www.facebook.com/groups/354616924672393/). See Michael
Roberts’ write-up of his talk here
(h p://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/de-industrialisation-
and-socialism/).]

“In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is
determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the
very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material
production.”

-Karl Marx

I want to argue today that only deindustrialisation can lead us beyond

capitalism, or in other words, that post-capitalism will necessarily be
post-industrial. [1] This means that rather than bemoan the loss of
manufacturing jobs, or struggle to lure them back, deindustrialisation
should instead be applauded as an important and irreversible
achievement. Historically speaking, it is akin to the move away from
agriculture-based economies. Just as the mechanisation of agriculture
freed people from reliance on working the land, the deindustrialisation
process has the potential to free people from the drudgery of most
productive work. Yet an immediate consequence of claiming that
deindustrialisation is necessary for post-capitalism means we must
reimagine what the transition between economies might be like.

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The traditional story of moving beyond capitalism is fairly

straightforward. To be sure, this story has been complicated and
critiqued throughout the 20th century, yet its general framework still
underpins a number of assumptions about how to transcend capitalism.
In broad strokes, the story begins with a shift away from agriculture-
based economy which had been built around a large peasantry. In its
place emerges rapid industrialisation – exemplified by the textile, steel,
and eventually automobile industries in the 19th and 20th centuries. The
social effects of this industrialisation were particularly important for
understanding how post-capitalism was supposed to come about.
Industrialisation involved a move from rural populations to increasing
urban populations, along with a transformation of the peasantry into the
proletariat, involving primitive accumulation and the dispossession of
common land. The result of this was a new urban working class who had
only their labour power to sell. But this transition also led to the
development of a strong working class. Factories meant that workers
were increasingly centralised in the workplace – they worked together,
creating social connections and community. Moreover, the tendencies of
capitalism were supposed to increasingly homogenise the working class.
The result of all this was that the working class came to share the same
material interests – things like be er working conditions, higher wages,
and shorter working weeks. In other words, with industrialisation there
was the material basis for a strong working class identity. (It’s worth
noting here, that despite this material basis, the industrial working class
was always a minority of the working population. Even at the height of
manufacturing in the most industrialised countries, employment in
manufacturing only involved about 40% of the population.[2]) On the
basis of their political strength though, the working class was supposed
to become the vanguard of the population, leading us away from
capitalism and towards something be er. With the growing power of the
working class, and the socialisation of production, it was thought that
workers could simply take over the means of production and run them
democratically and for the greater good.

Of course, this didn’t happen, and the best example we have of this
proposal was the miserable Soviet experience. What occurred in that
experiment was a glorification of productivity at the expense of freedom.
Just as in capitalist societies, work was the ultimate imperative, and it
was no surprise to see Taylorism, Fordism, and other productivity-
enhancing techniques being forced upon the workers of the USSR. In the
capitalist countries, by contrast, the industrial sectors declined and the
basis for a strong working class has been systematically a acked. Yet if
we look at developing countries, the traditional story finds li le traction
as well. Even developing countries are increasingly deindustrialised.
This can be seen in two broad facts: first, newly industrialising
economies are not industrialising to the same degree as past economies
(measured in terms of manufacturing employment as percentage of
population). Rather than 30-40% employment, the numbers are closer to
15-20%. Secondly, these economies are also reaching the point of
deindustrialisation at a quicker pace. Measured in terms of per capita
income levels, these economies reach their peak industrialisation at a
much earlier point than previous countries did.[3] This is the so-called
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problem of “premature deindustrialisation”. The conclusion to draw

from the experience of the 20th century is that the promise of the
traditional narrative – the industrial working class leading a revolution
to democratic control over the means of production – has not been
fulfilled and seems to now be obsolete. We no longer live in an industrial
world, and classic images of the transition to socialism need to be
updated.

So what is the alternative? Can we still imagine a transition to something

beyond capitalism, or have the very conditions of socialism evaporated
into history? What does the transcendence of capitalism mean if not
simply working class control over the means of production? I want to
take my cue of what post-capitalism might entail from a quote of Marx’s:

“In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is
determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the
very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material
production.”

What is invoked here by Marx is that the realm of freedom is beyond

both material production and the centrality of work to society.
Deindustrialisation, insofar as it means the replacement of human labour
with increasingly mechanised and automated labour, is therefore a
necessary step to something beyond capitalism. Deindustrialisation is
the only way in which we escape the imposition of work, as it enables us
to outsource production to machines. Importantly, deindustrialisation
also appears to be the only way to achieve a society of abundance and
leisure time. Without it, one falls into two possible alternatives: either,
expanded free time but with generalised poverty (primitive
communism), or increasing abundance at the cost of authoritarian work
(Soviet communism). If we are to avoid these outcomes, the automation
of manufacturing and productive work in general is a necessary step to
building something beyond capitalism. Deindustrialisation is, in other
words, a necessary stage to move beyond capitalism. I want to conclude

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with the argument that if we change our understanding of how to get

beyond capitalism, we end up having to revise a few other assumptions
as well.

(h ps://thedisorderofthings.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/deathofusmanufacturing.png)

In the first place, as I mentioned at the start – we should accept that

manufacturing is gone, and this is a good thing. If we look at efforts to
draw manufacturing back, they are typically achieved by decreasing
wages and generally a acking the conditions of workers. More recently,
there has been a return of some textile factories to America, but only
under the condition that they are highly automated (the phenomenon of
“reshoring”). The second conclusion is that we need a cultural shift
which displaces the priority given to work. Jobs and work cannot be
central to our society and to our identities. We can see the effects of this
belief everywhere: for example, the demonization of the unemployed
and poor, the consensus goal being jobs for everyone, and the
glorification of ‘hard-working families’. Everywhere, work is the
dominant motif of our societies. Ultimately, the aim here needs to be a
delinking of wages from work. Human societies are rapidly reaching the
point where there simply isn’t enough work to go around for everyone,
even if that were a morally virtuous goal. Everywhere there are
symptoms of a rising surplus population – the unemployed, the
underemployed, the precarious, and the absolute surplus indexed by
global slums and mass incarceration. Society will have to face up to the
problem of surplus populations and deindustrialisation sooner or later.
And the basic parameters of that debate are either to manage and control
the surplus populations (via mass incarceration, or spatial segregation in
slums, or outright expulsion from society), or to work towards
establishing a sustainable post-work society. The la er goal would mean
reducing the working week and mobilising around implementing a
universal basic income. Those goals, I believe, are the only way forward.
This will involve control over the means of production, but not in the
way the classical story tells it. It will not be a ma er of control over

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workers in the search for greater and greater economic growth, but
rather control over a largely automated system of production and
circulation with socialised aims.

Of course, all of this won’t come about easily – which is where we need
to reimagine the sources of political agency in a deindustrialised world.
A final consequence of the new transition narrative, therefore, is that
class agency is more complex than just rebuilding a workers’ movement.
The industrial working class cannot be the agent of change. Or to make
an even stronger claim – not only can the industrial working class not be
the agent of change today, it never could have been the revolutionary
subject, since its existence was premised upon material conditions that
had to be eliminated in the shift to post-capitalism. The necessary stage
of deindustrialisation means that the industrial class loses its unity in the
process – it fragments and falls apart, as we’ve seen in recent decades. In
its place, though, arise new class formations. Key amongst these is the
precariat – that class which relies on part-time jobs, contract work,
freelance work, informal work, temp work; which has an income that
barely sustains their livelihood, let alone that of their families; or which
is unemployed or underemployed. Today, this category describes an
increasingly large group of people. They are at the sharp edge of
capitalism dynamics – a world which demands people work for survival,
yet which is increasingly incapable of generating that work. Having
experienced the tensions of capitalism, it is groups such as the precariat
which may form the basis for a renewed class politics

So, in conclusion, deindustrialisation is necessary for post-capitalism – it

is something to be applauded and not nostalgically lamented. The future
must be oriented towards a post-work society, but ge ing there will
involve acknowledging class has changed, and that political power must
be rethought.

[1] Throughout this I prefer to use the generic term ‘post-capitalism’

rather than the more historically laden and specific terms ‘socialism’ and
‘communism’. This indexes the fact that the future society to come is
both different from previous experiments, and open-ended as to its exact
determinations.

[2] Dani Rodrik, “The Perils of Premature Deindustrialization,” Project

Syndicate, October 11, 2013, h ps://www.project-
syndicate.org/commentary/dani-rodrikdeveloping-economies–missing-
manufacturing (h ps://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/dani-
rodrikdeveloping-economies--missing-manufacturing).

[3] Ibid.

Beautiful Revolutionary Dreams, Capital-Labour

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12 thoughts on “Post-Capitalism Will

Be Post-Industrial”

1. Jeff Hermanson
OCTOBER 23, 2014 AT 6:16 PM
The “precariat” the author describes is precisely what Marx meant by
“proletariat” – people who have nothing to sell but their labor power.
Equating “proletariat” with “industrial proletariat” and even more
restrictive equation with “manufacturing workers” is a mistaken
interpretation that arose because of the origins of the communist
movement in the industrializing countries of Europe, and the
historical example of the 1917 Russian revolution, in which the
strongest base of the revolutionaries was in the steel mills and
manufacturing districts of St. Petersburg. This interpretation was then
strengthened by the experience in Germany, France and Italy, where
after 1917 the newly formed communist parties sought to duplicate
the approach of the Bolsheviks and base their revolutionary
movements in the manufacturing districts of major urban centers.

The truth is, as the author indicates, that the transition to post-
capitalism can most successfully take place in a society that has
developed to the point that abundance can be produced with a
minimum of socially necessary labor, i.e. in a technologically
advanced society that could be described as “post-industrial.” It is
also true that the transition to post-capitalism is most urgently
needed in such a society, to provide decent life opportunities to the
otherwise “surplus population” that is the de-industrialized
proletariat, and to end the madness of ever-increasing wasteful
production of arms, the destruction of the environment, etc.

However, we must not forget that there are many places on this Earth
that are not technologically advanced, not post-industrial, and in
some cases only now entering on the path of industrialization. In
these places, it may well be the “industrial proletariat” or
“manufacturing workers” that form the core of revolutionary
movements, while in the technologically advanced or post-industrial
societies it will be the proletariat more broadly defined. Even in the
technologically advanced or post-industrial societies, the remnants of
the industrial proletariat and manufacturing workers have a
leadership role to play, as one of the best-organized and class-
conscious segments of the entire working class.

It seems to me, writing from 21st century North America, that the
most likely scenario for the transition to post-capitalist society will be
achieved by an alliance of the de-industrialized proletariat of the
post-industrial societies and the (more industrial) proletariat of the
less advanced countries. Linking the struggles of the garment
workers of Bangladesh and Cambodia, the auto and electronics
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workers of China, Vietnam and Mexico, to the “Fight for Fifteeen” of

the low-wage workers of the US and Canada, and linking those fights
to the struggle against environmental destruction, seems to me the
most fruitful work we can now undertake to advance a vision of post-
capitalist society.

REPLY
Nick Srnicek
OCTOBER 23, 2014 AT 8:41 PM
Agreed with this, which is why I tried to carefully refer to the
‘industrial working class’ rather than the proletariat. The
proletariat is a broad structural category though, and it’s worth
having more fine-tuned analysis as well, in my opinion.

REPLY
2. =:-]
OCTOBER 23, 2014 AT 6:24 PM
And 3D printing will be part of it:
h p://p2pfoundation.net/Additive_Manufacturing_as_Global_Reman
ufacturing_of_Politics

REPLY
3. dmfant
OCTOBER 23, 2014 AT 7:35 PM
Reblogged this on synthetic_zero and commented:
Nick Srnicek @ Socialism & Deindustrialization

REPLY
4. rsbakker
OCTOBER 23, 2014 AT 8:37 PM
Brilliant stuff, Nick. The question is whether ‘leisure time,’ though
doubtlessly a genuine collective imperative, is actually the political
good you imagine it to be. What you’re describing amounts to a pure
consumerism, does it not, where the intrinsic rewards of ‘freely
chosen’ real-world pursuits will have to compete with the intrinsic
rewards of ‘freely chosen’ simulated/augmented-world pursuits. I
can’t see there being much a contest, and as a result, short of some
oppressive, collective regimentation of ‘individual values,’ this would
likely result in the brain-in-a-vatification of the world. Short of some
consensus commanding objective criterion capable of distinguishing
actualization from degeneracy, aren’t you doomed to simply play out
the liberal democratic ‘nightmare’ to the end?

REPLY
Nick Srnicek
OCTOBER 23, 2014 AT 8:44 PM
Cheers Sco . I think the answer is to have a proper understanding
of freedom in order to avoid regressing into pure manipulated
consumption. It’s something I’m working on at the moment
(broadly following much of Pete’s work)…

REPLY
rsbakker
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OCTOBER 23, 2014 AT 10:21 PM

Keep me in the loop. It would be nice to be pried out of my
Adornian pessimism. It’s the ‘consensus commanding’ part
that’s difficult – philosophy begets more philosophy. It has to
be ‘Messianic.’

Building God might be the only solution – but this could be

just another way of saying we’re fucked. One could imagine a
world where the angels of our be er nature (a vast, distributed
AGI) continually whisper ‘reasons’ in our ear, turning
everyone alive into a portable Skinner box. Coercive
redesigning of humanity is another possibility, the horror of
transhumanism.

The alternative is to take the post-intentional leap, admit that

terms like ‘autonomy’ or ‘freedom’ are simply too heuristic to
be anything but atavistic anachronisms in the tumult to come.
Perhaps the real problem lies in the barbarous granularity of
our moral floorplan.

5. jacob
OCTOBER 23, 2014 AT 10:29 PM
I am sure you are probably familiar with the work of Gibson-Graham
in communities that have been deindustrialised due to
manufacturing moving offshore, but I think they speak to this piece
quite well. Some points that I would like to highlight from their work
include the melancholia and nostalgia for industry that can
accompany a deindustrialised economy, such that ex-workers and
their families may be inclined to invite industry back under worse
conditions or flee to areas where it continues. For example, in
Australia the loss of manufacturing to Asia has seen the workforce
move to the coal mines…
The work that Gibson-Graham did then was support communities
that had lost industrialism by helping them identify and/or build
non-industrial economic relationships. A messier, more experimental
politics was required that built on the contingencies of place and the
skills or upskilling of its inhabitants.

REPLY
6. paulkaramkass
OCTOBER 27, 2014 AT 11:51 PM
Reblogged this on Paul Karam Kassab.

REPLY
7. edmundberger
MARCH 22, 2015 AT 10:15 PM
Reblogged this on Deterritorial Investigations Unit.

REPLY
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