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>> Lenin, who knew better, repeated over and over until his death that Russia was a capitalist society, and, because of overwhelming economic backwardness, was not any form of socialist society whatever, despite the politics of the working class government in power presiding over Russia, his own government. This is repeated incessantly by Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33; August 1921 To March 1923.<< Comment Interesting is the history of the theoretical underpinning that the first stage of communism was not possible outside of several advanced countries providing an international division of labor as the basis to defeat the commodity form; defeat the small producers in local (state) jurisdictions, and drag the economically backwards areas into the orbit of proletarian socialism. It is very accurate to say that Lenin and most Marxist considered socialism impossible outside of a series of revolutions in the advanced capitalist countries. Let’s attack the issue backwards. Section II. Marx and Engels introduced the world to a new way at looking at the life of society and the underlying motivation causing society to leap from one complex of productive forces and its corresponding social relationships of production to another. Thus, Marxists have through all our generations relied upon the writings of Marx and Engels in our theoretical unraveling of the society process.. Marx clearest writings on what constitutes the first stage of communism, popularized as “socialism” by Engels is perhaps his Critique of the Gotha Program. Marx describes the first stage of economic communism as a political form of the state, called the dictatorship of the proletariat, and a mode of distribution where the commodity form of the social product is systematically defeated by distributing a broad range of products outside the law of value. The mode of distribution is always a consequence of the mode of producing or its property features. Marx exposition can be challenging concerning what constitutes the first stage of communism, but we should try to unravel it. Quote “Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.” (End Quote) Why is it that producers do not exchange their products when common ownership of the means of production is the prevailing mode of property? If this is true, what does it mean to say “the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products?” Exchange in political economy means the “mutual transferring from one individual or between groups of individuals products that have acquired a commodity form.“ Product exchange means the commodity form or a mode of distribution based on the individual selling something in order to buy something and the reverse. This in turn implies that the instruments or means of production are owned privately or by someone or a class, whose domination of these means and conditions compels non-owners to enter into the act of selling and buying. This act of selling and buying is the singular economic meaning of exchange . . . . . Or of exchange of commodities. When the individual confronts owners of property for wages, or the right to partake in society production and consumption, their labor acquires a commodity form exchangeable with other products with a commodity form. Value means exchange value in political economy, or rather exchange value means value. Without the private property principle in operation, products do not appear as a collection of exchange values - value, but rather a collection of things with a utility. (1) After the confirmation and validation of the October Revolution; after 1928, it seems the thinking of many Soviet Communists was as follows: (2) 1. If the state is the holder of property and government is established to administer to plan and administer the two general categories of production (means of production and means of personal consumption), that which is fundamental to reproduction of means of production and consumption, will not longer occur on the basis of capitalist private property, with its laws of anarchy of production and competition between capital seeking buyers. (3) 2. If we enact specific laws that prevent anything other than means of consumption to enter into the realm of personal possessions (property) by society we will legally and practical defeat the law of capitalist production of commodities. 3. If we have outlawed private ownership of that which is fundamental in society reproduction, and the law of purchase and sale of labor power no longer drive society reproduction of the means of production, the producers are no longer exchanging their products. 4. Bitter experience has proven to us Soviet communists that the small agricultural producer cannot alienate (give) his products to the state without ample compensation, so a certain amount of commodity exchange must exits in our country. The reason why the small-scale commodity producer cannot alienate the products of his labor is because no man can work with prolonged intensity and receive nothing back in exchange for his labor. It is better to work for oneself and the immediate needs of ones family and loved ones without care to creating surplus products. Because the workers are involved in a social (labor) process where no one can claim the products as their own, their class nature prevents the attitude of petty bourgeois exchange from arising from the material factors of the production process. Therefore, the persistence of this attitude of commodity exchange arises from the nature of small-scale production. Such a system is called socialism or the Soviets first stage of communism because it is unlike any system of bourgeois production that had existed. Some individuals identify socialism with forms of political democracy. I do not. Socialism is a term that means ownership rights over the means of production. This is not to say political democracy is unimportant but not many American Marxists confuses political democracy in America with the stock market or capitalist production of automobiles - commodities. For instance, when one moved into an apartment and needed to acquire a chair, lamp, stove and bed, one went to a store (distribution outlet) to acquire such, but the factories producing beds and chairs did so with means of production not owned by any individual or driven by an impulse to create a profit. Rather, the incentive for production was to satisfy a need, beds and chairs. The chairs and beds had to be transported to places of distribution by trucks, trains and mules. The distribution system was not capitalist, owned by private individuals. The trains transporting all kinds of products were “state property.” The rails upon which the trains ran were not produced in factories owned by capitalist. The steel was not forged in capitalist factories. The Soviet could rightfully quote Marx as a source and validation of their system post 1930. Marx put matters this way: “Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.” (end quote) “(T)he same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities.” One must close their eyes and think out Marx propositions. What principle - in standard American English, is Marx referring to and what does this mean? The same principle Marx refers to is the exchange of labor in different forms. A chair, stove and lamp are but different forms of concrete labor. Without this concrete labor stoves, chairs and lamps are just products of labor. If you are working at a furniture factory and 40 hours of 1000 workers produces enough furniture for 1000 people, then the 1000 people getting the furniture should ideally produce enough for the 1000 furniture people to get their allotment of an equivalent amount of shoes, socks, briefs and panties . . . . NOT EXACTLY, Or rather, enough means of consumption and means of reproduction have to be produced to allow the system to expand and meet daily needs and new needs. .Marx reference to labor exchange means labor expressed in the different form of social products. Marx does not mean the reproduction of the “value relation” or as it is called by some “reproduction of the social relations of capital.” Marx is taking into account a low level of development of productive forces when the labor of everyone is need for the society advance and to satisfy society needs. There is a difference once bourgeois ownership of means of production is taken out of the equation. The difference is that an individual capitalist or capitalist institution does not appropriate the products of labor, and the surplus labor in it that comes from paying the workers a value below that they create. Nor does capitalists dispose of products on the market for whatever price it will bring. It is the capitalist system as a totality of production and distribution based on the purchase of labor power, that stamps and define capitalist commodity products or the “reproduction of the commodity form.” Thus, the Soviet communist called their system socialism. Not because it produced plenty or even high quality products but because the production of the means of production and an array of consumer products was not driven by the quest for private profits to any individual owners. I call their system Soviet industrial socialism at a certain stage of development. Marx further wrote in looking at such a system: “What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.” Section I What it the history and theoretical source of this vision and doctrine of socialism on an international scale, as the foundation for realizing socialism in one country? The modern, scientific communist movement began as manufacturing with its small, scattered workshops was replaced by industry with its concentration of thousands of workers in giant factories. This development was expressed by the founding of the Communist League and the 1st or Workingmen’s International. In 1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were called upon to write a manifesto for the League, which was called The Communist Manifesto. The Communist League then became “The Communist Party” The productive capacity of the industrial countries developed very rapidly. So long as national production was restricted, more than less, to the national market, the struggle - contradictions, between the capitalists and the workers intensified and hardened year by year. The communist movement grew with strikes and uprisings by the workers. The means of production rapidly went through several quantitative stages and the struggle between the classes subsided, ebbed and flowed, as the capitalists expanded their markets by conquering the economically backward areas of the world and “bribing” (bribery is in quotes so as not to collide with Marx and Engles writing on the British workers attitudes towards Ireland) a huge layer of the working class, and their leaders into political and military support. The vision of socialism being established as an international order embracing two or more advanced industrial countries expressed a material configuration of history. Virtually all facets of Marxist communists embraced this vision during the time of Lenin. It was a vision that made sense at that time. Subsequent Soviet history proved this vision obsolete and in need of alteration. WL. (1) The reason products appear as things with a utility rather than “use value” is precisely because the value relations has been defeated. Use value exists in symbiotic relations with exchange value in my use of the term. Articles produced for direct consumption do not possess a use value only a utility or use fullness. (2) 1928 is used as an index in Soviet history because of the implementation of the First 5 year plan and Stalin elaborating on industrializing the country without allowing individual ownership of the fundamental artifacts of the means of production. (3) The state as property holder does not mean the state actually owns the productive forces as a person or corporation - as a institution, owns means of production. Property defined the state is an organization of violence and this organization of violence expressed in the standing army, police force, penal institutions, intelligence agencies, court system and parliamentary superstructure does not own the means of production but rather act as guardian. Nor, does the bureaucratic system underlying and making the state real in everyday life own means of production. For instance the gulag as an institution did not own the means of production in the Soviet Union. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
