The Self-Management Movement is a political movement that seeks to be a theoretical and political expression of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. It has no interests of its own, but aims only to be a form of expression of the class interests of the proletariat. In non-revolutionary historical periods, the revolutionary class of our time, the proletariat, does not manage to forge an authentic political and theoretical expression of high quantitative proportions; in revolutionary periods, the proletariat realizes its autonomization and frees itself from its false representatives and representations (parties, unions, ideologies, etc.), and starts to self-manage its struggle and begins to constitute social self-management. The Autogestionary Movement seeks, in a non-revolutionary period, to express the historical interests of the proletariat and collaborate with its autonomization and thus inaugurate a period of social revolution.
World and Brazilian capitalism are heading for a rapid deterioration, and while we should not underestimate its capacity to prolong its life and postpone its crises, the coming years hold the tendency for a rise of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. Capitalism realizes an accelerated development of the productive forces and this is at the same time its greatest necessity and its main contradiction. The development of the productive forces increases the organic composition of capital, that is, the expenditure on fixed capital (means of production) becomes larger and larger, due to the value embodied in them by labor power being larger and larger. This is why in the overdeveloped capitalist countries, with their high degree of technological development, there is an incessant search for increasing productivity, that is, for the production of relative surplus value. However, the increase in productivity alone does not overcome this contradiction, because the relative surplus value produced will also be incorporated into the means of production and will consequently reinforce the tendency for the average rate of profit to fall.
This is a permanent tendency of capitalism that it seeks to avoid by creating counter-tendencies. This process is marked by class struggle and by the advances and retreats of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. Financial crises, wars, general conflicts, end up contributing to the process of self-organization and self-training of the proletariat and open up perspectives for proletarian revolution, as in the late 1910s and late 1960s. However, the capitalist mode of production reorganizes itself in the face of historical processes and seeks to avoid its collapse. Capitalism thus constitutes capital’s responses to proletarian struggles and they take the form of regimes of accumulation that express a particular class struggle crystallized and stabilized with bourgeois supremacy according to the relations of forces of the time. Thus, capital must simultaneously combat the declining trend of the average rate of profit and the workers’ struggle, both of which are constant but amplify their strength and threat at certain historical moments and tend to reinforce each other.
In the history of capitalism, the solution that capital has found to combat the declining trend of the rate of profit and the proletarian struggles is to change the regime of accumulation and thus guarantee its reproduction. After the Second World War and the mass destruction of the productive forces caused by it, state interventionism increased and the process of displacement of investments to the means of consumption and services sector in detriment of means of production was encouraged, which means accelerated technological development and an increase in the organic composition of capital. The expansion of the production of consumer goods creates the need for expansion of the consumer market. It seeks, from this, to integrate the populations of subordinate capitalism in the consumption circuit and increase people’s consuming capacity, as in the strategy of decreasing the useful life time of products and in the production of disposable goods. This process was complemented by the increase of international exploitation through imperialism founded on the expansion of transnational oligopolistic capital. This allows a huge transfer of surplus value from subordinate capitalism to imperialist capitalism. This was reinforced by other forms of transfer of surplus value besides that carried out by transnational capital, such as foreign debt, international trade, etc.
This has generated a process of expansion of the production of means of consumption and services which in turn produces a growing bureaucratization and commodification of social relations and this interferes with the working class struggle. On the one hand, it creates a bureaucratization of the very organizations created to represent the working class and, on the other hand, it creates a commodification that favors the corruption of working class individuals and integrates them into capitalist society. Consequently, this expansion produces not only economic, but also political and ideological effects. Furthermore, there is a deterioration of the quality of life (seen not from the point of view of bourgeois ideology, that is, taking into account the rate of consumption or the level of income, but from the point of view of physical and mental well-being and a non-repressive sociability) caused by this and also by environmental destruction. If the workers’ movement assumes a more moderate position, the other social movements (women’s, black, ecological, student, etc.), in some occasions, outline a radicalization, expressing the population’s response to the new contradictions created by capitalist development. However, most of the time they assume a reformist or even conservative position, falling under the bourgeois hegemony.
However, this process did not prevent a new fall in the average rate of profit and rise of the revolutionary workers’ movement, as occurred in the late 1960s and which generated a new regime of accumulation. The goal of this new accumulation regime is to increase exploitation in general in order to counter the declining trend of the rate of profit and to weaken workers’ struggles. The regime of integral accumulation establishes a process of seeking to increase exploitation even in the imperialist capitalist countries, whose working class, due to the objective of seeking to integrate it into bourgeois society in order to avoid revolutionary threats, was able to maintain certain advantages in comparison with the proletariat of other countries, and now finds itself facing an advance in exploitation, since the declining trend of the rate of profit generates the need to increase the extraction of surplus value, which is carried out on a world level with the so-called “productive restructuring”. This is complemented by the transformation of the integrationist state with its structural social policies by the neoliberal state with its palliative policies and accountability of civil society. This is reinforced by the quest to increase international exploitation, in which imperialist capitalism seeks to further increase the transfer of surplus value.
On the other hand, the crisis of Russian state capitalism (aka “real socialism”) has promoted a deeper integration of the countries of the state capitalist bloc into the world market and weakened the reigning pseudo-Marxist ideologies (Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc.) in these countries and with great influence mainly on subordinate capitalism. Even their supposed opposition (such as Trotskyism, which was only fighting to replace Stalinist bureaucrats with Trotskyist bureaucrats) went into crisis. This on the one hand strengthened bourgeois and antisocialist ideologies, and on the other hand allowed for the search for new conceptions and revival of marginalized theories, such as council communism, situationism, as well as a resurgence of anarchism. This process, however, does not occur without contradictions, and the bourgeois hegemony and new ideologies of the bourgeoisie, such as post-structuralism, end up influencing the contesting political tendencies, limiting their revolutionary capacity.
This whole process is marked by various conflicts and the increase in exploitation tends to generate an increase in resistance and movements, protests, among other collective actions, that had practically disappeared in the imperialist countries end up resurfacing, as well as becoming more radical in other countries. The regime of integral accumulation was formed and expanded and had a moment of growth in capitalist accumulation, but soon lost steam, especially from the end of the 1990’s, which reinforces even more its tendency towards deterioration and the rise of social struggles in general and the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in particular.
In the Brazilian case, where we find ourselves and must carry out our struggle, the search for increased international exploitation is carried out with the process of increased internal exploitation and adoption of the regime of integral accumulation in its subordinate form. Brazil entered the path of capitalist development in a backward fashion and for this reason found itself at a disadvantage and backward in relation to the countries that entered this path previously. Brazilian backward capitalism is subordinated to imperialist capitalism, to the historical process and formation of imperialism, which went through several phases and was engendered through colonialism and the primitive accumulation of capital. Its entry into the world market occurred, since the time of the colonial slave production mode, in a subordinate way and in an unfavorable situation in the international division of labor. The entry of transnational capital and the subordination of the Brazilian bourgeoisie to the transnational oligopolist bourgeoisie expressed in the Brazilian capitalist state are the means responsible for the enormous transfer of surplus value from Brazil to abroad.
This transfer of surplus value abroad, in the various forms in which this occurs, puts the capitalist mode of production in Brazil in a situation of constant difficulties. In spite of this, the workers’ struggle in Brazil has not been able to achieve a revolutionary character, although it has come close to this at some moments in the history of Brazilian society, even if in a localized way. The terrible situation in which the exploited classes find themselves in Brazil were not enough to unleash a revolutionary struggle that would challenge the capitalist mode of production.
The capitalist state seeks to integrate the working classes using bourgeois democracy as its main support, which is presented as the stage where political struggle takes place and where social change could occur. The channeling of political struggle towards bourgeois democracy aims to divert the exploited classes from direct political struggle to electoral struggle carried out by their “representatives” – corrupted and integrated into capitalist society – and thus reinforces the bureaucratization and integration of dissident political tendencies into bourgeois society. The capitalist state, along with the other bourgeois institutions, use other resources to integrate, corrupt and bureaucratize political organizations and social movements. This is reinforced by the strength of bourgeois ideologies and the new policy of sectorial co-optation that seeks to reach sectors of society and social movements in order to adhere to a micro-reformism that generates allies to governments and, consequently, adherence to capitalism.
It is in this situation that we must direct our struggles. The traditional “leftists” are integrated into bourgeois society and are one more point of support for capitalist domination. Other dissident sectors end up falling into micro-reformism and isolating their struggles from others and from the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. What, in this situation, is the role of the Self-organization Movement? It is up to the Movaut to try to contribute to accelerate the revolutionary process and create favorable conditions for the victory of the working class when a revolutionary situation explodes. It must, therefore, radicalize and give a class character to the political struggles in society and, at the same time, create within capitalist society countervailing power centers that will inaugurate a new correlation of forces favorable to the proletariat, thus serving, in a revolutionary situation, as a support point for social revolution.
These counterpower centers must be established in all places where the class struggle is expressed (factories, schools, neighborhoods, etc.), the purpose of forming these counterpower centers is to strengthen the position of the working class in relation to the power of capital and the bourgeois state. Another task is to carry out a constant struggle against bourgeois ideologies and illusory representations in general. The cultural struggle in contemporary capitalist society becomes increasingly important, and consequently the creation of alternative means of production and reproduction of revolutionary theory and ideas becomes necessary.
Therefore, revolutionary strategy in the present era presents as its fundamental objective the struggle for the acceleration of the revolutionary process and the creation of favorable conditions for the victory of the proletariat with the unleashing of this process. The means to accomplish this is an intense cultural struggle and the formation of countervailing power centers within capitalist society.
But it is also necessary to know how to articulate the global strategy of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat with specific strategies that must be elaborated for each social movement and place where the class struggle takes place. In the present stage of development of Brazilian society it is necessary to elaborate specific strategies for the social movements (ecological, black, youth, women’s, student, homeless, etc.), as well as for the exploited classes (peasantry, lumpemproletariat, etc.) and articulate them with the revolutionary movement of the proletariat and its global strategy.
These specific strategies and these social movements and exploited classes must articulate with the global strategy of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat and together with the revolutionary groups (groups, individuals who effectively assume a revolutionary position) form a revolutionary bloc. The revolutionary class of our epoch, the proletariat, together with the potentially exploited classes and class fractions, should form a revolutionary bloc.
The revolutionary class of our time, the proletariat, together with the potentially revolutionary classes and fractions of classes (peasantry, lumpenproletariat, etc.), the social movements (ecological, black, youth, women’s, student, etc.) with a proletarian perspective and the revolutionary groups, form the social composition of the revolutionary bloc that is complemented by the communist political project, social self-management. This revolutionary bloc should raise the level of class struggle through the confrontation with capital by putting forward an alternative project of society and radicalizing social struggles, besides carrying out a broad cultural struggle and forming centers of countervailing power inside capitalist society and thus strengthening the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.
However, it must be made clear what relationship the Self-organization Movement must have with bourgeois institutions. The capitalist state is the main bourgeois institution and it is the state which seeks to regulate and control (through laws, repression, bureaucratization, etc.) all the other institutions existing in capitalist society. The thesis of the struggle for the conquest of state power is counterrevolutionary, because the bourgeois state follows the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production, besides being a bureaucratic organization created for the purpose of sustaining bourgeois domination. The capitalist state is not a neutral instrument that can be used by any class to serve different interests. On the contrary, it is a bourgeois institution that was created to serve the interests of a specific class, the bourgeoisie, and therefore can only serve their interests. In this sense, the objective of Movaut is to abolish the capitalist state, and not only this state, but the state in general, which means to break with the pseudo-Marxist ideology according to which it is necessary to conquer the capitalist state or to create a new state that would be “workers'”, because every state form is bureaucratic and presupposes the reproduction of class domination, and for this reason the state machine, whatever it is and whoever is in charge of it, must be completely destroyed and replaced by the general self-organization of the population, that is, by social self-management.
As we recall the basic principle of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat: “the emancipation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves,” we recall at the same time that the liberation of the proletariat cannot be accomplished by a group of coup plotters who take over the power of the bourgeois state and give the emancipation to the workers. It is the workers who, in their direct and daily struggle, will constitute a new society, founded on social self-management. This means that the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat is not for the conquest of state power, but for its destruction and the establishment of social self-management.
The state seeks to control and regularize all other social institutions in order to give them a bourgeois character: associations, unions, political parties, schools, etc., and also seeks to legitimize capitalist society and itself through bourgeois democracy. Representative democracy aims not only to legitimize bourgeois domination, but also seeks to channel all political struggles and thus nullify the class and revolutionary character of the proletarian struggle. The workers’ contestation and struggle when it is institutionalized (through “representation”, although such “institutionalization” is limited) loses its class character, further legitimizing bourgeois domination.
Therefore, the struggle against the capitalist state is at the same time a struggle against bourgeois democracy. All political parties that elect bourgeois democracy as the stage for political struggle assume a bourgeois character, as historical examples make clear. The capitalist state seeks to integrate political parties into bourgeois society through the rules of representative democracy inscribed in bourgeois laws that regulate the parliamentary system, the electoral system, and the party system. Besides the legal conditions for participation in bourgeois democracy, there are the conditions determined by the capitalist relations of production that place the need for the use of financial power, generalized propaganda, etc. The conjugation of these processes places bourgeois democracy as the place of dispute of fractions of the dominant class and its auxiliary classes that only serves to legitimize bourgeois domination.
As for the other bourgeois institutions, they should also be fought against and some (schools and universities, for example) should be considered as a stage for the struggle for the formation of countervailing powers, but without losing sight of the fact that they will remain bourgeois, that is, the formation of countervailing powers does not change the class character, but only inaugurates a new correlation of forces within it that destroys its efficiency and serves as a support to the workers’ struggle in bourgeois society. This means that we disagree with the reformist thesis that states that it is possible to have a “duality of powers” in non-revolutionary periods. Political duality (coexistence between proletarian struggle and forms of self-organization such as workers’ councils, associations and grassroots organizations and bourgeois struggle through the state and bureaucratic organizations such as parties and others) only arises in revolutionary periods and the counter-powers formed may accelerate the revolutionary process and with the development of such process forms of self-organization of the exploited and oppressed will emerge and then a political duality is established. The dynamics of capitalist relations of production and the action of the bourgeois state preclude the existence of a political duality in non-revolutionary periods, and to adhere to such a thesis is to succumb to reformism.
The overall strategy of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat has as its fundamental point the class struggle in production. It is in the place of production that the exploitation of the workers and the valorization of capital takes place. It is in the place of production that the source of the domination of capital and its negation is found. The various forms of resistance of the workers in the production units against the exploitation and oppression of the capitalist forms of organization of labor must be strengthened until they reach their maximum point of radicality: the general strike. The unleashing of the general strike must receive the support of the revolutionary groups and all the social movements under proletarian hegemony. The general strike should be generalized throughout the country and become radicalized into an active occupation strike and thus implement self-management in the factories, that is, dual politics. At this moment, the hidden civil war is transformed into an open civil war and the formation of social self-management collectives, factory councils, neighborhood councils, etc., is expanded, and with the unleashing of this revolutionary process new social relations are put into practice that are the expression of a new society. The end of open civil war occurs when self-management becomes widespread and the bourgeois power expressed in the capitalist state is destroyed. The active occupation strike, which establishes self-management in factories and enterprises, inaugurates new relations of production and the destruction of the capitalist state, which means the overcoming of the main apparatus for the reproduction of capitalist relations of production and counterrevolution, marks the victory of the proletarian revolution, the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of social self-management.
Therefore, the overall strategy of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat is to sharpen the struggles in factories and enterprises, while the other social movements seek to strengthen their positions in other sites of social struggles, until they unleash the general strike, generalized self-management and the formation of revolutionary councils.
The tasks of the Autogestionary Movement and all revolutionary groups, are, in the revolutionary period, the following:
• Defend the autonomization of the proletariat and combat bureaucratization under any circumstances;
• Encourage self-management and the formation of revolutionary councils, forms of self-organization of the people and combat the capitalist state and all bureaucratic organizations (including “leftist” or supposedly “revolutionary” parties) that want to run them;
• Fight for collectivization and self-management of the means of production, including in the countryside, combating any “distributivist” or bureaucratic proposal;
• Unleash an intense struggle for a cultural revolution aimed at collaborating with a cultural production that is coherent with the new social relations, thus combating the dominant values, bureaucratism, racism, sexism, etc;
• To offer support to the unleashing and victory of the proletariat revolutionary movement in all countries of the world;
With the end of the revolutionary process and the establishment of social self-management, the Autogestionary Movement will be self-extinguished and the participation of its militants will take place in the social self-management collectives.
Finally, Movaut is a movement that seeks to be self-managed whose goal is social self-management. Thus, it is simultaneously self-managed (or attempts to be so within the limits imposed by capitalist society), that is, it is based on the self-organization of revolutionaries who agree with this manifesto and participate in their struggles through internal self-management, and self-management, that is, it struggles for generalized self-management in society as a whole.
What is self-managed means that it has already achieved self-management, and what is self-managed is what aims at social self-management. As a self-managed and self-managing collective, Movaut accepts within itself all individuals who agree with this manifesto, the fundamental principles outlined herein, and who accept the conditions for joining the Self-Management Movement (document attached), and seeks more and more people to reinforce this struggle and the ultimate goal of Movaut, social self-management. However, this does not mean that the growth in the number of Movaut militants is its goal, as this is the case with parties and bureaucratic organizations, the fundamental goal of the Movaut is to carry out the struggle for social self-management and to realize this final objective and its existence is only a means to achieve this end and, therefore, it cannot deviate from it and create its own objectives or subordinate itself to other objectives of other institutions, individuals, etc. The growth in the number of militants in Movaut is beneficial to its struggles and to the pursuit of the final objective, but it is a means and, therefore, secondary in its strategy and daily struggle.
Finally, Movaut seeks to express the revolutionary movement of the proletariat under political and theoretical form and, in this way, contribute to the realization of its and our ultimate goal, social self-management.
SELF-MANAGEMENT MOVEMENT
Goiânia, March 16, 2013.
Translated from Portuguese (Br.) by F.C. with help of Deepl.com
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