> On Mar 4, 2026, at 06:41, Ben Seattle via groups.io > <[email protected]> wrote: > > I am on the internet on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
That's a healthy practice > I will reply by Wednesday to any requests for comment that I read on > Saturday, and vice versa. I read the previous version of this essay that was about two dozen pages in length. I won't get to read another two dozen pages for at least the next week. So I'll post what I have so far. The paper is well-written and easy to read. It could serve as a general primer on Marxism and Leninism, but it develops a specific point of view. In describing the Russian Revolution, you write that the "... working class never actually ruled the country (except in name). Instead, a new kind of state capitalist regime emerged (run by a new ruling class)." You don't define state capitalism or defend this characterization of the RSFSR or USSR; you don't even offer a reference to more developed analysis. Your state capitalism, moreover, is superior to other capitalisms: "The Bolshevik government did ten times more--ten times faster--to modernize and industrialize Russia--than the Provisional Government would or could have ever done." This statement is unprovable and specifying the factor of 10X makes it worse. But it's your treatment of "productive forces" that I want to better understand. Your essay gives productive forces independent agency: Productive forces such as "copper and tin ... want to be free... to create things that humans want or need." We know today that the well-being of humanity depends on the well-being of an ecosystem that depends on creatures other than humans. Our productive forces are causing mass extinctions and heating the planet beyond what its current inhabitants can tolerate. Today, any treatment of productive forces needs to address the destruction of our ecosystem by capitalist technologies and commodities. It's not so much that our fossil-fuel technologies want to create things we need, but the social relations must change in order to stop their further development and retire many of the most destructive productive forces. We need to change social relations in order to eliminate many capitalist productive forces rather than to unleash them. Regarding digital productive forces, I don't think that your Internet techno-optimism has been justifiable since the 1990s. We used to say that the "Internet routes around censorship like it's an equipment failure." That was before capital subsumption transformed the internet and its technologies to make big entertainment sites the most visited; user surveillance for business and the state is the dominant business model; conspiracy theories, racism, and user manipulation thrive on today's social media. I think that socialists need to oppose the expansion of leading digital technologies including artificial general intelligence. Today, we need to at least make the price of technology products reflect the destruction that they inflict on working people, our children, our economy, and our planet. Mark -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40945): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40945 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/118133214/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
