Why I'm not a Makhnoite (was Re: AUT: (en) A call for

["TAHIR WOOD" <twood@xxxxxxxxx>]

>>> "Peter van Heusden" <pvh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 07/21 11:46 AM
>>>
as "Workers against work" shows, there was resistance to
the 'collective' management in the factories. Later
movements - e.g. that
which grew out of workers' confrontation with Keynesianism -
went further
than the Spanish revolutionaries of the 1930s did, in that
the question of
doing away with the factory (seeing the factory not as a
neutral
'technical' organisation, but rather central to an alienated
society) rather than taking over the factory got raised.

This poses an interesting dilemma, because all forms of
marxism have surely agreed that socialism is only possible
on the basis of the forces of production that have been
inherited  from capitalism. However, this does not mean that
one endorses the leninist prespective that revolution
consists in bringing those forces under the umbrella of the
state in unchanged form (socialism = electrification plus
soviets). To adopt that perspective means something like
adopting a 'state capitalist stage' as transition to
socialism, an option that today does not seem a very
desirable one with the lessons of history there to draw on.

But neither is a reduction in, or even destruction of, these
forces of production a very attractive option, not with the
kind of population and poverty we are inheriting. It is OK
to say that the technology is not neutral and that one would
like a different technology and a different way of managing
it (and a different level of population?), but any reduction
in productive capacity, no matter how temporary, is a very
scary prospect indeed. And how far would one go with this
without turning luddite, a utopian option which may
neverthless have its adherents on this list?

Tahir




















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