November 3, 2024

Some underdeveloped thoughts on the proletarian state

An unusually clear demonstration of the division of labor between the captains of industry and the officers of war under a capitalist regime.

Some thoughts on a connection between international relations theory and civil-military relations

In the field of civil-military relations, it seems to me that civilian control of the military does not arise primarily from trust, legal control, ideology, or anything like that, but rather comes down to logistics: the military depends on the economic health of the industrial or financial class which supplies it with materiel it needs in order to carry out operations successfully (especially so in a capital-intensive military like the US).

For example, a military dictatorship in this view therefore would represent a conflation in the division of labor between the captains of industry and the officers of war. Likewise it seems to me that the various explanatory theories of war (Just War, Democratic Peace Theory, Realism) reflect or correspond to different types of civil-military relations:

1. Democratic Peace Theory seems like it can easily be used to justify civilian control of the military (more specifically, bourgeois/capitalist control of the military)
2. Just War seems like a justification for a sort of clerical control of the military, or control by priests. Indeed, the theory of Just War historically coincided with an agrarian Europe where almost half of the land in Europe was presided over by prince-bishops. The logistical connection is evident: as they say, an army marches on its stomach.
3. Realism only seems to truly apply in a situation of autarky, where the logistics of a country's military does not depend on international trade, but only on the resources already in control of the country. Perhaps realism could be compatible with civilian or clerical control of the military, but realism seems like a justification for limiting capitalists' and priests' influence to within the borders of the country, ultimately subordinating their influence on foreign policy to the generals or isolationist politicians.

To clarify, I believe there is both a political and economic difference between Realist theories of war and the Just War theory, reflecting the difference between a fully (or nearly) autarchic economy presided over by a somewhat integrated and semi-monolithic politico-military apparatus, versus a more diffuse formation of agrarian economies presided over by a combination of lords and prince-bishops, forming a heterogenous or multicephalous military formation presided over by a comparatively more monolithic poitico-religious apparatus.

Proletarian control of the military

I'm thinking about this because I'm trying to understand the hypothetical basis for a state formalizing proletarian control of the military. In my opinion (perhaps divergent from some Bolshevik and Soviet theorists) this absolutely does not come down to a matter of ideological cohesion or revolutionary leadership. It comes down to the relations of production among the proletariat in a hypothetical socialist economy. Those relations will end up forcing the adoption of one foreign policy or another as long as the military remains logisticaly dependent on the economic decision-making of the proletariat (under this hypothetical socialist economy).

The thing about the USSR which sort of obscures this issue is that it was quite autarchic - the steppe basin of Eurasia presented such a diverse array of resources to the Soviets that the survival of the revolution there didn't depend on supporting foreign revolutionary movements. This could potentially explain the temporary success of the "Socialism in One Country" doctrine.

In Europe, the economic base for merchants and industrialists began to grow as early as 1300-1400: long-distance international trade managed to stave off famines in one part of Europe by shipping commodities from other parts. But the crucial point I want to make here is that the economic base of the market mechanism was built up and tested over the course of hundreds of years before the liberal revolutions overthrew feudalism. The alternative economic model which provided a base for capitalism and operated in contrast to feudalism wasn't built hastily after the revolutions.

In contrast, the socialist model of economic planning was largely implemented after the October revolution. While it's true that large businesses and institutional finance firms plan internally, and that these structures could be adapted and redirected to proletarian ends like Marx suggested (capitalism lays the groundwork for its own destruction), the planning that the USSR quickly put together slipshod after the revolution with the NEP and Gosplan did not emerge directly from preceding capitalist innovations over the last couple hundred years. Did the October revolution put the cart before the horse?

In the end, the USSR's political and military apparatus was insufficiently beholden to the will of the proletariat. Economic decision-making was directed by the CPSU's planning agencies. I believe that, because the military was not logistically beholden to the proletariat's autonomous decision-making, and rather to state apparatuses, that it was an unfortunately rational decision for the state to take the side of the military and police over the proletariat. In turn, the military's logistics depended on state decisions, and not, say, referenda. Ultimately the state apparatus became beholden to none besides itself.

It is interesting, however, how far Marxist ideology got them though, even in the absence of proletarian control. For 70 years, the USSR did manage to provide significantly higher standards of living for average citizens compared to the Tsardom - living standards which collapsed after the dissolution of the USSR. And indeed, people did prefer living under the USSR: the only referendum ever held there was on whether to keep the union together, which received support in the upper 90th percentile. Interestingly, the Russian plebiscite showed support in the mid 70th percentile, whereas people in the central Asian republics were overwhelmingly in support, sometimes over 98%. Perhaps these higher standards of living were not a result of a positively proletarian economy, but rather simply due to the absence of the profit motive. They were not exploited in the economic sense, but neither did they have control. And ultimately, it collapsed. Perhaps socialism cannot survive long in one country after all.

Strikes

I'm insisting on this point of logistical dependence here also because I see a connection between proletarian control and strike actions: a properly coordinated strike action can in fact have military consequences, and can force the military to take the strike into account in their decision-making. This is a very nascent form of "proletarian control of the military", despite not being formalized in any state's legal apparatus (except, perhaps, to suppress that control.)

Historically, strikes have demonstrated their potential to impose a form of “logistical veto,” showing that the economic power of the working class, when strategically exercised, can directly impact state actions, including military responses.

I see the way that the bourgeoisie exercises logistical control over the military as being sort of analogous, actually: the state (and a highly industrialized military) is dependent on capital investment and R&D projects. This is most clearly seen in public-private partnerships where government agencies such as DARPA will auction defense contractors to do R&D for them. The US government doesn't run all of the arms factories, giving wide latitude to private interests. It can even been seen in the privatization of the intelligence community.

There is a key difference between bourgeois control of the state and proletarian control of the state, however (besides the trivial difference that one is bourgeois and one is proletarian). This is the fact that, while the proletariat is currently only really able to rescind support or "logistically veto" certain military operations, the bourgeoisie in contrast are not only able to rescind capital, but also to apply it. i.e. the bourgeoisie has both positive and negative control, whereas nowadays the labor movement can really only hope to exert negative control.

In order for the working class to move towards exerting positive control, they have to do strikes differently, in some sort of way that does not only negatively withhold labor, but at the same time positively reapplies it to some other productive tasks. Analogous to the way that any capital withheld by the bourgeoisie is also reapplied at some other place. Ideally the reapplication of labor during a strike would bear some theoretical continuity with a future, post-capitalist method of resource allocation and distribution that is controlled by the workers and can compete with capitalism for meeting people's needs.

Strike support

The positive reapplication of labor can be seen in a very nascent form in the practice of strike support. While strike funds still assume that workers will be buying food from private companies and paying rent to landlords, other forms of strike support organized solely by the union such as childcare or food prep represent the germ of a future economy that is dependent on and beholden to the workers only. However, strike support is only the very smallest instantiation of the future economy, and it currently doesn't operate at the scale or with the sustainability of something capable of completely replacing capitalism. This scaling problem I think might be related to the fact that the theoretical continuity between the following 3 things is not obvious: 1. witholding of labor in a strike, 2. reapplying that labor to strike support, and 3. that strike support could be scaled up to a self-sustaining economy.

The theoretical continuity is along the axis of my logistical interpretation of civil-military relations, but also along the axis of purely economic theory: planned withholding of labor (a strike) and planned application of labor (strike support) are both, in principle, instances of a planned economy. It is of course not a self-sustaining planned economy (or in the terminology of Linear Programming, "feasible"), but it is still a one-off planned "economy" in principle. So there are two lines of theoretical continuity here, but they need to be fleshed out or concretized. (The notion that a strike resembles an economic plan is an observation that I owe to the Mad Red Alchemist in their definition of "adversarial planning": link)

The concrete questions here are: what does scaling up strike-support actually look like in practice and what does it take? How do we concretize the theoretical continuity between strikes and strike support, force them to reciprocally depend on one another in practice, and force them into an upwards spiral? Can we protect this upwards spiral from state suppression by exerting logistical vetos (and perhaps even redirecting logistics) as soon as possible to seize some minimal de facto proletarian control of military decision-making?

It is important that the strike support infrastructure directly - if not exclusively - depends on the success of strikes, AND the strikes would need to directly (and eventually exclusively) depend on the success of the as-yet-nonexistent strike support network. This forces their incentives into aligment with one another and locks them into each others' orbit, immediately sharing both successes and failures, and spiraling upward or downward together.

Crucially, plans to strike would bear directly on the demand faced by strike support. This is natural, and the way things run right now with strike support: currently, support runs very little outside a strike. Perhaps the slow-paced, background, ongoing work that takes place in a labor union could be considered the only "strike support" which keeps running even when strikes aren't happening. However, in order to ramp up production in strike support quickly, in preparation for a strike, production plans and strike plans have to be coordinated together: how much labor will be withheld, how much is necessary to support the striking workers? Is there enough labor being withheld to reallocate into support jobs to meet demand of the striking workers? I assume this coordinated planning is currently being done informally, in an unprincipled manner which does not make obvious the theoretical continuity between strikes, support, and the future economic system itself based on economic planning. (ideally, democratic economic planning)

If this coordinated planning is in fact currently being done informally by union reps, then this situation presents an opportunity for people who are interested in applying economic planning algorithms in the real world, such as those based on linear programming. If the process is informal, it is also likely very labor-intensive, and could stand to benefit from automation, computerization, and systematization. If it were done to reallocate withheld labor into strike support without using money, it could serve as a proof-of-concept demonstration of the possibility of a reliable post-capitalist economy, making the theoretical continuity completely obvious. I think what's most important though is that a pilot system like this would allow one to actually test economic planning algorithms and mathematics in real situations. Potentially even in high-stakes situations. This would be the kind of invaluable experience necessary to acquire well before a revolutionary situation suddenly demands a post-capitalist economy.

To the point of democratic economic planning, strikes are already voted for or against by the rank-and-file. The only difference under a formal plan for reallocating withheld labor into strike support would be that the rank-and-file would be voting for some plan for labor reallocation in tandem with the plan for labor withholding.

Expropriation, or: technical coefficients under the Leontief model

Now of course I would be remiss in failing to mention the fundamental conflict here: the control of capital, i.e. the means of production, i.e. productive commodities, i.e. the fact that the ultimate task of transitioning to a new mode of production requires new relations of production, which implies expropriating the current ruling class.

In an economic theory sense, technical coefficients in the Leontief model capture the number of labor-hours required to turn certain inputs into certain outputs, under certain technical circumstances. These circumstances can be interpreted as the laborer's access to productive equipment which speeds up his work thereby leading to fewer hours required to produce an output made using that piece of equipment. In a nascent strike-support network without access to any means of production, these technical coefficients will be very small, and it may become obvious to the planners that they need to set a goal of increasing the technical coefficients. This translates strategically to taking control of equipment, land, raw materials, etc. This can be done in a number of ways:

1. It can be purchased off the market from private firms. However, purchasing productive commodities from private firms risks compromising the demonstration that the new economic model need not be dependent on the old one, even if this perfectly-legal approach presents no risk of state suppression. Besides, if the new economic model becomes a threat to the old businessowners, they may simply refuse to sell to the unions.
2. Given a little bit of productive commodities to start, unions could focus on trying to produce more of them, and more high-tech equipment as well. However, this unfortunately cannot give them access to land.
3. It can be expropriated by force, as in historical revolutions such as Russia, Vietnam, China, Cuba... But unfortunately this approach depends on the revolution already arriving. This is a chicken and egg problem; at the very least it is not predictable, and doesn't give anyone experience on how to run a planned economy before taking over (running into the same issue I mentioned about Gosplan and the NEP above).
4. It could be "extorted" from employers in the course of union negotiations: "gifts" comprising land, buildings, equipment, and raw material could be demanded by union reps from CEOs. This directly links the threat and success of strikes to the expanding productive capacity of the support network, but it may very well be extremely illegal. (albeit no more illegal than a revolution)

Municipalities

Another incremental -- and legal, though underhanded -- method of expansion could be if the unions were to monopolize the economy in small municipalities, making small city councils effectively beholden to the will of the union(s).

By lobbying the city councilors in the context of a stranglehold on the local tax base, union reps could ensure laws grossly favorable to the union and essentially wield city or county governments as an implement with which to perform municipalization of local private capital. This has the benefit of allowing the labor movement to gain experience leveraging their "logistical veto" in small scale politics with small municipal police forces before moving on to attempt leveraging or threatening logistical vetos on state or national militaries. Despite these unique strengths, there are a number of big issues:

1. The most glaring problem with the this approach is that it assumes that the unions already have a degree of power with which they can overwhelmingly influence municipalities (however small).
2. Another potential issue is that of capital flight: a city beholden to the unions may find all its Walmarts and Ford plants pulling out of the city, like what happened in Detroit in the late 60's.
3. Lastly, there's no guarantee that provincial or national governments will not attempt to step in to forcibly break the influence of the unions.

All in all, no clear answers here, but hopefully I've illustrated a somewhat coherent theoretical through-line connecting each of these things (and hopefully a marginally convincing one as well).

Concluding speculation

I think a natural concluding topic here is bringing this back from civil-military relations and logistical vetos to a theory of international relations or foreign policy. What would a proletarian foreign policy look like? If the working class could not only stymie its military but also redirect it, what would it redirect it towards? Substantive theories of international relations have corresponding theories of peace, or how to prevent wars: Realism has the "Balance of Power", Liberalism has the "Democratic Peace theory", and there is no Just Cause for Just War without an unjust peace (I suspect this was left doctrinally flexible to remain open to interpretation by priests).

What then would be a labor theory of peace? What international order would a proletarian military be mobilized to establish or protect? Lenin's theory of imperialism explains war waged by capitalist countries as being caused by large industrial-finance firms competing over preferential territorial access to markets. Maybe a "labor theory of peace" would recommend intervening in that dynamic? And yet that is still only a negative reaction to capitalism, not a proactive foreign policy in the interest of the workers.

This is highly speculative, but depending on the persistence of the goal to increase technical coefficients in the Leontief model, the "proletarian military" might be redirected towards liberating as much private property across the globe as possible, into the sphere of public (non-)ownership for freely available use in future economic plans. The details of such a foreign policy are an even more distant matter of speculation.