----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx
andthe thinkers he inspired'" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 16:13
Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] the theory of the Communists may be summed upinthe
single sentence: Abolition of private property. thesingle sentence:
Abolition of private property
CB,
My comments are scattered about below (labelled V2).
. Victor
.
CB: response to "the theory of the Communists may be summed up inthe
single
sentence: Abolition of private property">
If Marx had thought changing the technological regime were the focus for
revolutionary activity , _Capital_ would have been a book of
engineering-physics, not political economy.
Victor:Actually Marx did regard changing forces of production, labour and
the means
of production, instruments and subjects of production, as the "motor" of
social change. (See the recent exchange of messages between V, V2 and WL.)
CB: Your discussion there is based on an 1846 letter to P.V. Annenkov,
which letter is superceded by subsequent works such as the Communist
Manifesto. In fact in your discussion with Waistline you reach a point in
discussing the Annenkov letter where you say:
V2: Right, but he reiterated these very same ideas in the preface of
Contribution to Critique of Political Economy in 1859.
"Victor: Indeed,
does Marx intend to account for the development of the forces of
production
by seeking their origins in political economy?
The answer to both questions for reasons stated above and for the reasons
you give below must be a resounding, NO! "
CB: Wrong answer, Victor. The answer is YES !
Here's the thing. For most of the actual time of history, society is not
in
a period of social revolution. In fact ,before capitalism, the _forces_ of
production do not develop very much , very rapidly. The instruments of
production and the division of labor stays pretty much the same for
millenia, and centuries. There isn't any great development of the forces
of
production throughout slavery, nor feudalism. So,in the quote on relations
of production fettering the relations of production, Marx is sort of
musing
especially about capitalism, not really all modes of production of all
times. ( Although there is a way to see that quote as more general)
V2: In fact, both premedieval and medieval/feudal society was much more
active than high school history books would have us believe. After all, the
so called middle ages witnessed repeated urban and peasant uprisings and
efforts to establish utopias e.g. the Hussites of Mt Tabor and the
Anabaptist regime of Munster and was a period of impressive advances in
manufacturing technology. Remember, that the flowering of the natural
sciences and technology of the 16 and 17th centuries preceded Capitalist
Industrial society by 300 to 200 years.
Notice, the Preface to the Introduction to the Contribution to the
Critique
of Political Economy or whatever in which the quote occurs WAS NEVER
PUBLISHED. Marx didn't put out there for everybody his daydreaming about
this. So, don't hold him to it so tightly. It's just a metaphor to sum up
what he was thinking. He didn't mean it to be the most important statement
he made at all, or else he would have published it. The formulations in
_Capital_ are much more important , because they represent Marx's final
decision on how to present his thinking to the wide public.
V2: Much of Marx's works were not published until long after his death,
including his key 1844 works on private property (published in the mid
1930s).
According to that formula the two last volumes of Capital, the Grundrisse
(all of it, including the Precapitalist Formations), Theories of Surplus
Value, and so on would have to considered casual flights of Karl's
imagination.
Marx's most negative discourse on private property are found in his earlier
works (most unpublished until recent times). The Manifesto itself is hardly
an analysis but, rather, an emotional a call for action at the very heights
of the Europe-wide rebellions of 1848.
Finally, the fact that Plekhanov and Labriola as well as Lenin all regarded
the forces of production as the prerequisites of social organization of
production must be worth some consideration in your argument.
V: The role of the material forces of production as the conditions of
social
practice are not direct causes of the relations of production, hence
Capital
could be written strictly on the relations of production. As in economics
in general, in Capital the presence grise of the forces of production is
in
the form of abstractions that concern only its role as the condition for
the
social interactions it engenders.
CB: I agree that the forces of production detemine the relations of
production by LIMITING them. In that sense , they are CONDITTIONS of the
relations of production as you say.
V2: No comment needed.
So, if the productive forces fall below a certain limit, as when they
don't
protect New Orleans from a flood, there is potential that there will be a
change in the relations of production,because the situation has fallen
below
the acceptable limit.
The logical form is modus ponens and tolens.
Relations of production ==> the forces of production.
If relations of producution , then forces of production.
Modus tolens: not forces of production, not relations of produciton.
But for the forces of production,no relations of production.
Force of production are a NECESSARY condition of the relations of
production.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
V2: Ergo sum: >So, when there is a great flood, it is necessary to invent
a new setup ( new
relations of production.
^^^^^^^
CB: The following demonstrates that followers of Marx and Engels would
focus on
changing property relations, ownership relations, not on impacting the
human productive forces who invent, inventors,scientists and engineers who
make the scientific and technolgoical revolutions. _Discovery_ of the use
of
things, technological invention is not the process that Marx claimed to
have mastered such that Marxists would lead technological innovation, and
somehow
shape technological disccovery and invention to cause a revolution in
property relations. "Discovery" , by definition is unforeseeable.
V: While it is true that Marx did not focus on the role of material
conditions for social practice, he also did not denigrate their
importance.
He did however, reason in a fashion similar to your argument that
invention
is a phenomenon not given to analysis and as such technological
development
should be regarded as a sort of un-analysable natural force that gathers
steam and then blows off decadent social systems that can no longer cope
with its accumulated changes.
CB: Maybe. I think it is more that when the productive forces _fail_, a
situation of necessity arises. With capitalism, the failures of the
productive forces are not in their scientific and actual capacity but in
the
crises of "over"production, wherein the capitalists destroy, underuse,
abuse, move, curb etc ,in a word FETTER the forces of production to
producing less than what those forces COULD obviously do FOR people.
^^^
V2: In a certain sense this is just a way of saying:
No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which
there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production
never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured
in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself
only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely,
it will always be found that the tasks itself arises only when the material
conditions of its solution already exist or are at least in the process of
formation. (Marx Contribution to Critique of Political Economy 1859).
Which, as I wrote to WL is not really very helpful in making concrete the
state in which the social organization is ripe for change.
Victor: As I wrote to WL this premise ignores the potential of Marxian
dialectics to
develop a rational theory of changes of the forces of production no less
precise than the theory of the relations of production. Such a theory
would
necessarily concern also the social relations of production that are the
conditions of technological development, but in sublated form, as
abstractions describing only the relevance of social organization of
production to the development of labour and of the means of production.
CB: Please explain in other words.
^^^^^
V2: fair question, since this is the issue that lies behind my critique of
Marx. It's somewhat involved so give me a day or two to describe it
clearly.
Victor: Any effort to develop theories of social change, cannot be based
on
half (assed?) theories. To understand the likely trajectories of evolving
classes and of changing class relations we must understand how the
material
conditions of production are impacted upon by social organization of
production as well as how the forces of production impact upon the
relations
of production. From both first-hand experience with socialist experiments
and from research I suggest that one of the critical failures of the
practical program of social change, of social revolution if you will,
arises
out of the failure of Marxist theory to consider the impact of social
change on productive practice.
"In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the
single sentence: Abolition of private property. "
V: The abolition of private property is largely a legal issue, i.e. that
element of the relations of production that are interpreted as rights in
the
system of governance characteristically conditioned by feudal and
capitalist
modes of production. In fact, the abolition of private property can only
occur when the material conditions and the modes of production are such
that
new kinds of rights and new forms of governance become viable alternatives
to the present one.
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