>Marx's idea of social forces may be grounded more in common sense than in >some >deep theory. One other factors that I see in his understanding of the >transition to socialism runs as follows: people will see the tremendous >social >forces (capabilities or potential) of capitalist production alongside the >actual >performance, leading to great dissatisfaction and a readiness to make a >change.
This raises some deep questions about how to understand Marx's theory of transition to socialism on the "productive forces" interpretion of historical materialism. Unsurprisingly the best discussion of it is in GA Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense. Sober Wright & Levine have some useful discussion in Reconstructing Marxism as well. The problem with Charles's view is that psychologically, it depends on people contrasting what they have with a guess about what they might have, rather than what they have with what they had. It's a well-established fact in psychology that people care a lot more about keeping what they have than getting something they don't. Example from everyday life: if you buy something, say a CD player, and you lose it or it breaks, you are typically willing to replace it for what you paid, even thought you would not have bought it for twice the price. Translating this into the transition problem, people are less willing to "buy" (pay the price for) a risky transition to socialism to get things they might like but have never had than they are to fight to keep what they have already won--and we see they are not as willing to do that as we might hope. Cohen's theory, btw, is that that what people might get throug the transition is more free time. Personally, I do not think the fettering of productive forces view is a plausible psychological basis for the transition. It may be a necessary condition for a stable socialist revolution. We do have to note, however, that the 20th century revolutions mainly occured in poorer countries where capitalism certainly had not exhausted its potential to develop the PF, nor was it obviously fettering them. However, with the big exception of China, to the extent that we wantto say China is still socialist in some sense (debatable), those revolutions did not prove stable. However those revolutions were brought about by outrage at injustice in war-weakened states with strong communist movements, not by any perceptions that the PF were being fettered. In other words, the class struggle theory of HM is a more plausible account of revolutions. Milton Fisk's The State and Justice is the best story about this. > >I remain very skeptical of any attempt to give precise numerical >calculations >for any part of Marx's theory. Marx does use rough, back of the envelope, >calculations from time to time. They seem appropriate. This is too vague to be useful. Marx was, as Leonteiff and others have noted, a great mathematical economist despite his limited math skills. But as with moth math econ, the numerical examples are just examples of how the algebra in the models works. You haveto plug in, to the extenr feasible, real world numbers derived from empirical research to determine, e.g., whether the rate of profit is really falling and if so by how much. > >Recasting Marx in algebraic, mathematical, or precise numerical form, seems >a >bit foreign to his overall project, which his understanding the nature of >capitalist society and the weaknesses that will lead to the creation of a >socialist state. Why are these incompatible? Understanding can be mathematical as well as verbal. Some people find math easier to follow. Marx himself had a penchant for Hegelizing verbal explanations, which are far from clear. He also did attempt very seriously to get the math right as far he could, which was not very given his training. jks >¯ > > _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.;
