Leftcommunist contributions to post capitalist economic thinking
Usufructs, Vanishing Labor certificates and Stateless Classless Communist Commerce
Lost in the huge amount of air space consumed by Stalinist and Maoist social democratic visions of Bismarckian, Lasallean and Bonapartist state capitalism are all hopes of communist economic ideas about commerce not dependent on modernization and nationalism. The traditions of LeftCommunism or the left most wing of the communist movement and communist parties provide another alternative.
Amadeo Bordiga’s article “The Revolutionary Program of Communist Society Eliminates All Forms of Ownership of Land, the Instruments of Production and the Products of Labor” and the council communist GIC’s “Fundamental Principles of Communist production and distribution” offer two key concepts: the usufruct and the vanishing labor certificate. Each concept abolishes (which means getting rid of some parts and preserving others) the components of capitalist commerce which are property and currency. While council communist and Bordigist strands of the leftcommunist current do not get along, their debates and independent accomplishments provide more for a picture of stateless communist economics than anarchists, mostly because they adhere to Marxist principles and economic learning.
The GIC’s fundamental principles suggests the use of labour certificates which vanish as a way of computing and linking production with consumption. The certificates are not accumulated but vanish with the process of daily reproduction. The computation of certificates is a function of each worker council to help synchronize production and consumption but the council does not exchange them once they are used. This is just a possible plan for the computation of the numerical principles of an economy without exchange value but merely labour hours that assist in the decentralized planning of socialized production. As the GIC notes “We have already observed that the mass of labour certificates issued becomes continually smaller as the process of socialisation of distribution proceeds, finally to reach a figure of nil.”
Bordiga’s defense of the usufruct stems from his location of the difference in Marx’s work between living and dead labor. While property is a form of dead labor because it is amortized; its value is extracted by its singular owner and both use and abuse of it are permitted, the usufruct permits use but not abuse. As a shared use contract, the usufruct allows use but not abuse. Bordiga offers the Roman aqueduct as a relevant example! Each generation following Rome stewards the aqueduct and does not destroy it for spare parts. The difference between extractive use and stewardship is where the distinction occurs. Property relations allow destruction of owned things. Usufructuaries assure common goods remain.
These two concepts of vanishing labor certificates and of usufructs remain in the wings for moments when non-state capitalist movements toward communism succeed. While the leftcommunist elements have been suppressed by Stalinists from Gramsci to Ho Chi Minh, leftcommunist ideas refuse to die and continually imply themselves in proletarian circles that are weary of Stalinist revision and anarchist incoherences. When Marx’s predictions do take place and after feudalist tendencies have fully fallen away in order for the industrial proletariat to gain maturity globally, modernizing Bonapartists will cease to distract workers from communizing commerce!