Re: Venture Communism/morped/ Socialism Betrayed

[Waistline2]

In a message dated 7/18/2004 10:41:09 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:   >CB: Yep, I feel you. However, unfortunately, I am skeptical about industrial society and its bureaucracy going away, going "post". I think one could argue that it is going "super" rather than going "post". The breaking up of the factory concentration based on the revolutions in communication and transportation, and cyberizing machines makes the world's technological regime approach one big industrial factory, which seems more superindustrial than postindustrial to me.<   Comment   "Post industrial" is defined on the basis of that which distinguishes manufacture from industrial. No one defines the industrial system as the manufacturing system or the industrial bureaucracy as the bureaucracy of the manufacturing process because of the specific combination of human labor + resources + energy grid as a process.   The world technological regime that is evolving in no way resembles one big industrial machine . . . or an extensively developed industrial machine embracing the world as a system of electro- mechanical process. The period of history of extensive development of increasingly large industrial factories, as the basis of increased production as the primarily signature of industrial society - electromechanical process, is over.   This does not mean there will be no more industrial machines on earth.   The word "post" in post industrial society means that the extensive and intense development of the productive forces as driven by the electro mechanical process is halted and a different process of radical intensive development and expansion of the material power of production is under way.   Manufacture is the predominance of man over machine and strictly speaking means "hand" . . . human and animal power as energy grid. Manufacture refers to a period of history before the emergence and domination of machino-facture and steam power.   Industrial production proper is an electromechanical process that supersede or sublates machino-facture and steam power.   The post industrial society in front of us is not a further extensive development of the electro- mechanical process but the evolution of the electro-computerized era. It is this electro-computerized process that makes a revolutionary intensive development and expansion of the material power of productive forces possible.   The industrial bureaucracy does not simply go away but is sublated and reconfigured on the basis of the revolution in the technological regime that eliminates layer after layer of organization based on the electromechanical process.   Factory concentration and productivity today is based on the intensive development of the material power of production which renders "industrial giant enterprises" or "big" obsolete. A different form of intensive development will drive extensive expansion of production. Actually "big" is sublated or redefined in the same way that industrial relations redefined machino-facture and systems driven by steam power.   Development from manufacture to machine production was not only a change of productive forces, but a qualitative development and spreading of new productive relations - with the property relations within. The unions of labor force of the workers and the means of production is simultaneously a connection of productive forces and a connection of people in the process of production which together makes up relations. The division of labor in manufacture is a relation in production and also emerges as a productive force. This applies to industrial society and the post industrial society evolving in front of us.   We do not even have a name for this new evolving society . . . yet. Marx dubbed the industrial system the capitalist mode of production and up until the emergence of Soviet industrial socialism the industrial system was called the capitalist mode of production. In the 1930s and 1940s one spoke of socialist industrialization . . . but everyone understood we were dealing with the industrial system as a specific unity of human labor + machines + energy source - with the property relations within.   Qualitative changes in the material power of production changes the form of how labor is aggregated and put to work and reconfigure the basis classes in a social system. Industrial machinery as the electromechanical process creates and necessitates industrial machinists . . . as opposed to soft ware programmers.   "Post" means the form of the labor process as the industrial process is undergoing change.   In the context of Soviet socialism if is my belief and understanding that one of the objective process they faced was the limit to the extensive development of industry as electro- mechanical process. This limit to extensive development based on electro-mechanical process is only resolvable on the basis of a revolution in production . . . a qualitatively different process that revolutionized and makes intensive expansion possible . . . and this intensive expansion of the power of production requires less labor than the electromechanical process.   One aspect of Soviet industrial socialism was hitting the barrier of extensive development as electro- mechanical process. Everyone in the Soviet Union understood on one level or another that the industrial bureaucracy was unruly. Yet, . . . the problem can only be resolved on the basis of revolutionizing production . . . or putting everyone in jail for one offense or another. A specific mode of production as a combination of human labor + machines (tools, instruments, etc.) + energy grid only becomes historically obsolete in relation to its future and not its past or itself.   Grafting increasingly developed computerized systems onto Soviet industrial socialism would and could have made incremental improvements in the system and ousted layers of the industrial form of its bureaucracy. This is taking place now under the worse possible conditions - triumph of the counterrevolution.   In America we have faced this same problem of counterrevolution . . . as the system of sharecropping replaced slavery. Sharecropping was not historically inevitable but rather the inevitable consequence of the alignment of class forces that was Northern - Wall Street finance capital, in unity with the shattered slave oligarchy.   The form of the laboring process could not be changed until you have in existence productive forces that makes such change possible. The plantation system faced a crisis in its extensive development because it had no way to intensively develop - revolutionize, the form of the labor process. Hand labor with primitive tools is hand labor with primitive tools be you a slave or freeman or sharecropper.   Other paths of evolution were open but they did not take place and the counterrevolution triumphed. The mechanization of agriculture was in fact "post" slavery/sharecropping form of the laboring process in agriculture.   We are passing through an authentic revolution in the material power of production that is going to change society forever in relationship to the industrial system. We are only at the beginning of the beginning of this process. The property relations stagnates the process also from the point of view that the technology available cannot be implemented without further destroying the basis of the buying and selling at the base of the value system.   Yet, . . . the bourgeoisie is trapped by history and is cast as the involuntary promoter of industry.   Post industrial society means after the period of the rising curve of industrial expansion as electromechanical process . . . reaching the top of the bell curve . . . and a new technological regime emerges that begins to reconfigure the relationship of people to the productive forces.   Melvin P