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CB: I'm not sure what you mean by "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.< ^^^^ CB: I'd differentiate between the technological
organization of production, including machines and who stands where on the shop
floor, and property relations, who appropriates the products.
Comment/Reply
The beginning of a qualitatively new production process that
changes the form of the laboring process is always somewhat difficult to
describe because all the new features have not yet emerged . . . and cannot
emerged without political revolution that overthows the old relations of
production and property relations within, that block their
development.
Yet, one can follow the direction of this development and
apply certain lessons from our own history of development. Take for instance the
biogenetic revolution which in fact is an authentic revolution in the material
power of production that changes the form of the laboring process . . .
especially in relationship to agriculture.
From the standpoint of the form of slave labor prior to
Emancipation to Emancipation - (which ended in counterrevolution that would
eventually trap five million blacks and six million whites in the sharecropping
system), to deployment of the mechanical cotton picker and the tractor . . . to
the growth of the huge industrial farms to the emergence of "frankenfoods" . . .
or the application of science - biogenetic, to farming . . . we are speak of a
huge revolution in the mode of production.
The fact of the matter is that the instruments . . . tools . .
. deployment of human labor as the primary energy source of Southern agriculture
did not change between say 1865 and 1900. With all due respect to Mr. Aptheker .
. . I profoundly disagree that Lincoln's election constituted a revolution. I
also have disagreed with his economic description of slavery and the aftermath
of the Civil War for the past 30 years.
Such is life.
What is being spoken of is a qualitatively different
production process that forever changes the form of the laboring process that
arose and emerged with the industrial system. The implications are staggering
because this qualitatively new production technique - regime, begins unraveling
and shattering the commodity form and value. This does not mean that "all of the
old mode of production (laboring process) disappears" . . . but rather the old
process is sublated. Farming still takes place in the Mississippi Delta using a
set of instruments and machinery half a century old.
The meaning of "the property relations within" is the property
relations within a given mode of production. In my opinion this is at the base
of our divergence and most Marxists have in the past defined modes of production
on the basis of the form of the labor process . . . like slavery, feudalism and
capitalism. I am aware that I divergence from this description, while remaining
consistent with the method Marx deploys in describing the advance of industry in
the Communist Manifesto and Engels description of the advance of industry in
Anti-Durhing.
Here is what Marx states concerning "the property relations
within:"
"At a certain stage of their development, the material
productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of
production, or â what is but a legal _expression_ for the same thing â with the
property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of
development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.
Then begins an epoch of social revolution."
The "property relations within" are not simply within the
legal _expression_ as abstraction . . . because what the "legal" expresses is
relations of production or how people are aggregated together to utilize a given
state of development of the mode of production.
"From forms of development of the productive forces these
relations turn into their fetters." The productive forces begin with human being
and the specific mode of human labor + tools, instruments and/or machinery +
energy source and how they are organized. How the people are organized are the
relations being referred to this relation becomes a fetter in the face of the
development of the productive forces - with the property relations within.
The issue connected to "Socialism Betrayed: Behind the
Collapse of the Soviet Union" by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny is the economic
phenomena inherit to an industrial mode of production . . . no matter what the
property relations within.
The question is complex and I by no means claim to have
"solved it."
I know a little bit about the organization of industrial
production on the factory floor. In the context of a specific stage of
development of the mode of production - a quantitative juncture, in the
industrial system, the organization of say . . . auto production in the Soviet
Union in 1960 resembled auto production in America in 1960. The organization of
tank production in the Soviet Union in 1950 was not qualitatively different from
tank production in America in 1950.
In this regard changes the seating arrangements on a sinking
ship does not stop the ship from sinking and even the specific organization of a
factory floor is limited to and governed by the state of development of tool,
instruments, machinery and labor sitting on a definable energy grid. This is a
material limit no matter what the property relations within.
The same or roughly same set of factors - combination of human
labor + machinery + energy source cannot produced a qualitative divergence in
the form of the laboring process simply because one has a different property
relations. Soviet industrial socialism was more industrial than it was economic
communism because economic communism cannot be attained under industrial
conditions of production.
An industrial system is still a system of value production and
a distinct mode of production - with the property relations within. .
The question deepens on the basis of how it is presented. As
opposed to presenting the question as the dynamics of the second economy and
Gorbachev's revisionism - allowing the growth of the second economy, Gorbachev's
policy is placed within a political framework that says that the industrial
system itself is hostile to economic communism.
Yes, this is a very different approach and to a very large
degree based on the internal organization of the factory floor as industrial
production. How can a new property relations . . . socialism, have the same
economic basis as the old property relations it is replacing?
Soviet socialism and American capitalism hit the same barrier
that is the industrial mode of production because they existed on the same
economic basis.
I am convinced beyond any possible doubt we are at the
beginning of a profound revolution in the industrial mode of production and the
Soviets faced this revolution also. For the Soviets they were not facing a
revolution in the capitalist mode of production because their industrial mode of
production was not capitalist . . . or reproduction based on the bourgeois
property relations.
The distinction between a given stage of organization of the
productive forces as a specific configuration of the form of human labor +
machinery + energy source . . . and the property relations is always important
because this creates variations in the cycle of reproduction.
However what determines the form of the labor process is not
the property relations within . . . but how labor + machinery + energy source is
combined and set into motion.
The bottom line is whether or not computerization, digitalized
production process and advance robotics constitute the opening of a profound
revolution in the form of human labor and my answer is absolutely. The
qualitative addition of this new and revolutionary production technique shatters
the old boundary of the electro-mechaical process that defined the limit to the
intensive development of the labor process under the industrial system.
The labor process is being qualitatively reconfigured in a
manner that is radically different as manufacture is to industrial production .
. . if not more radical. Of course we are at the beginning of this process.
On another note: In one of Engels letters referring to the
contribution of Karl Marx . . . perhaps an article . . . he states that since
Marx the industrial system has been called . . dubbed . . . the capitalist mode
of production. If Engels had never stated this what we are dealing with and have
lived through is an industrial mode of production . . . in as much as the
Soviets did not call their industrial mode of production the capitalist mode of
production.
Two different property relations shared the same mode of
production and here is the problem. You cannot have the same economic basis -
combination of labor + machinery + energy source as your class enemy and survive
. . . or rather not be in immediate danger of counter revolution.
In respect to your trip to the Soviet Union . . . where you
acquired that wonderful book on Engles . . . did your guess describe the barrier
to the intensive development of the labor process? I would be very interested in
how some Soviets understood the barrier presented as the form of the labor
process corresponding to the industrial mode of production in the Soviet Union.
My hunch . . . along with Keeran and Kenny is that the
bourgeois like leaders in the Soviet Union thought they could solve a problem of
history - mode of production, with bourgeois market methods and thought in the
shallowness of their minds that decentralization could somehow revolutionize the
form of the labor process.
Was the collapse of the Soviet Union historically inevitable?
Not in my opinion and I think this poses the question incorrectly. The collapse
of the Soviet Union was the historical consequence of a complex of factors that
is the bourgeois world and having to fight on your enemies economic foundation.
This is my bottom line difference with Keeran and Kenny
concerning the economic basis of Soviet industrial socialism and the material
consequence of the law of value. My political difference are more subtle and
comes your emerging from a different political polarity in which I sided with
the polemics of the Communists of China during the theoretical debates
concerning the general line of the international communist movement.
Nevertheless, Socialism Betrayed was an interesting book to
read.
Melvin P.
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