Page:Michael Velli - Manual For Revolutionary Leaders - 2nd Ed.djvu/33

 The social relations of capitalism become as dislodged from the productive forces as all earlier forms of personified social power. It is true that the magnitude of social Capital depends on the level of development of the productive forces, but this fact alone does not eliminate the family resemblance of capitalism with social orders like that of the Egyptian Pharaoh or the Chinese Emperor. The magnitude of the social power personified by the Pharaoh also depended on the level of development of productive forces. The main modern difference is that the Pharaoh did not know that the magnitude of the taxes which paid for the palace, the Pharaoh and the tax collectors depended on the level of development of Egyptian agriculture, whereas capitalism commemorates its connection with productive activity in museums which preserve souvenirs of the industrial revolution. What the museums commemorate is a Golden Age. The magnitude of social Capital, namely its dependence on the development of productive forces, began losing its central importance from the moment when Capital achieved absolute hegemony over all social activity. As capitalism grows old, its history becomes less the history of technological breakthroughs engineered by investors, and more the familiar history of princes and kings, pretenders and impostors. In an age when the State broadcasts its journey to the moon, society's productive forces have once again become instruments for the construction of pyramids.

Unfortunately for capitalism, the productive forces did not stand still when it reached middle age. The development of productive forces which ushered Capital into world history retained its dynamic. While the wielders of estranged productive power become increasingly disconnected from the productive forces, while they immerse themselves increasingly in "events" within the hierarchy of personified power, they fail to notice that they are being deceived. Their own central activity, the accumulation of Capital, leads to an unexpected and irreversible result: it exempts over half the population from productive activity, and the number keeps growing. The mass exemptions from productive activity are accompanied by a proliferation of offices that wield estranged social power. The exempted are absorbed by offices as quickly as possible. The result is a unique historical phenomenon. The personifications of estranged productive power outnumber the producers who estrange it. Another historically singular result of the continued development of the productive forces is that the relative social importance of producers and those exempted from production, once known as a Leisure Class, become reversed. Behind appearances that become increasingly difficult to maintain, the real power of a productive worker is significantly larger than the personified power of an average office. Furthermore, every increase in the power of the productive forces enlarges the power of the producer as well as the bottom rung of the hierarchy of offices, further decreasing the relative power of each office.