"In the following week (December 2006?), Marta Harnecker received a call from Chávez in relation to our papers. He said, 'Could Michael look at the paragraph from István Mészáros’s Beyond Capital where Mészáros described capitalism as an organic system of production, distribution and consumption, a system in which everything is connected? If everything is connected, how is it possible to change anything? So, ask Michael to indicate concrete proposals for change in this context.'” -- Michael Lebowitz
On the first anniversary of Hugo Chávez's death, Monthly Review published " Proposing a Path to Socialism: Two Papers for Hugo Chávez ( https://monthlyreview.org/articles/proposing-path-socialism-two-papers-hugo-chavez/#en5 ) " by Michael Lebowitz. The proposals in the papers are interesting for their own sake but the second paper is also interesting to me for what it occludes from Mészáros's analysis in Beyond Capital. One of Lebowitz's contributions to the Bolivarian Revolution was translating Mészáros’s academic prose into concrete proposals. One obstacle to reading, let alone translating, Beyond Capital is that it contains a massive reshuffled anthology of previously published writings. Those writings often reworked and amplified arguments from previous publications, so there is much repetition and variable quality in the final product. What Lebowitz missed in translating Mészáros was his almost obsessive focus on disposable time as a key concept for social transformation. That focus was straight out of Marx's Grundrisse. Not including section titles, disposable time occurs no fewer than 28 times in Beyond Capital. But those appearances are sporadic and concentrated in six or seven locations. To the casual reader, they may even seem to be digressions. There are, however, several definitive statements: > > page 534: What is at issue here, as far as the advocated socialist > productive practices are concerned, is nothing less than the complete > reversal of the prevailing — and in its one-sidedly quantitative terms > most effective, no matter how wasteful — approach to the question of > utility. The contrast is highlighted in Marx’s words when he asserts that: > "In a future society in which class antagonism will have ceased, in which > there will no longer be any classes, use will no longer be determined by > the minimum time of production; but the time of production devoted to an > article will be determined by the degree of its utility." Naturally, this > conception presupposes the ability of the associated producers to overcome > the constraints of scarcity and organize their life on the basis of a > truly rational allocation of not only the available and dynamically > utilized (i.e. in such essentially qualitative sense genuinely expandable) > material resources but, above all, in accordance with the liberating > potentialities of disposable time. > > pages 573-74: The only conceivable way out of such contradictions from the > standpoint of labour— namely, the general adoption and creative > utilization of disposable time as the orienting principle of societal > reproduction — is of course anathema to capital, since it cannot be fitted > into its framework of expanding self-reproduction and valorization. > > page 746: Marx, however, sees these matters in a radically different > light. Far from accepting the permanency of the measure of labour-time, he > underlines the role of disposable time as the measure of wealth under the > conditions of an advanced socialist society. > > page 764: As Marx rightly argues, no society can function without giving a > proper consideration to the ‘economy of time’. However, it makes a world > of difference whether such consideration is imposed upon the society in > question by a mechanism that asserts itself behind the backs of the > producers (like the objective imperatives of the capitalist exchange > relation), or whether the social individuals active in the communal system > of production and distribution determine for themselves how they allocate > the total disposable time of their society in fulfilment of their own > needs and aspirations. > > page 818: The measure of real wealth — the total disposable time (mot to > be confused with idle ‘leisure’) available to a given society in its > qualitative potentiality and richness — cannot fit into capital's > accountancy, whether the senselessly wasteful ‘economic rationality’ used > in its control processes is double-entry book-keeping or the computerized > mathematical sophistication of linear programming and simultaneous > equations. > > page 844: For the expropriation of no matter how large a quantity of > surplus labour and surplus value by capital, corresponding to ever greater > quantities and intensity of surplus labour time, would be a truly > miserable foundation for the requirements of a socialist labour process, > which aims at the production and satisfaction of ‘rich human need’. A > qualitatively different relationship to the life-activity of the > individuals is needed here, which is feasible only if their disposable > time is freely made available for the ends consciously chosen by the > associated producers themselves, instead of forcibly extracting from them > whatever can be extracted and utilized by an alienated mode of social > metabolic control, for its own self-expansionary ends, with ‘economic > efficiency’. But, of course, there can be no reason whatsoever why the > individuals should feel internally/positively motivated to put their > disposable time into the common pool of their productive and distributive > practices if they are not fully in control of their life-activity. > I was surprised and amused to see Mészáros's mention of putting "their disposable time into the common pool" because of my interest in labour power as a quasi -common-pool resource with disposable time being the distinctly common pool component of labour power. I'm sure Mészáros was not alluding to Elinor Ostrom's analysis here and have seen no evidence her work was on his theoretical horizon. Coincidentally, though, the evening after John Bellamy Foster's lecture that I mentioned earlier gathered in the local library meeting room for a more intimate and informal conversation with Foster. Michael Lebowitz informally chaired the gathering. It should be mentioned that Monthly Review Press has published some of Mészáros books and Foster has written introductions to the books and tributes on the MR website. In an extremely belated case of wit on the stairs, it now occurs to me that it would have been interesting to ask Michael and John about Mészáros, disposable time, and common-pool resources. Lost in the media-mediated fixation on the "attic fire in the Latin Quarter" (it's what they do) is the historically important but neglected detail that there was a genuine effort to build a socialism for the twenty-first century in Venezuela that had successes as well as defeats. Some of the latter were undoubtedly as a consequence of incessant imperialist attacks on Venezueal by the U.S. Others were the result of "internal contradictions" of the revolution. These, however, can best be understood in context of the real achievements of the Bolivarian Revolution. In my view, one of the most effective ways of resisting the U.S. invasion and tacit occupation of Venezuela is to study the lessons of the Bolivarian Revolution. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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