Re: Dependency theory (Charles)

["Julio Huato" <juliohuato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles Brown:

>CB: Yes they DO.   Socio-economic formation and mode of production are the
>same thing. There is no theoretical or practical reason to distinguish
>between social formation and mode of production as you do.
>
>The subtitle of _Capital_ is  " a critique of POLITICAL economy ".
>Capitalism is a POLITICAL economic formation.

If a social formation and the mode of production are the same thing, then we
don't solve the problem.  We need a term to refer to the social form of
production and another one to refer to historical societies that combine
them and are much more than mere envelopes of mere production.  IMO, your
usage of the terms is really NOT consistent with Marx's usage.

And as I said before, if you think that the adjective 'political' in
'political economy' implies that Marx was directly dealing in Capital with
politics and state power, then you're wrong.  The fact is that Marx took the
terms thinkers in his time used.  The term 'political economy' predates
Marx.  William Petty, for instance, referred to this subject as 'POLITICAL
arithmetic'.  Ricardo titled his book, Principles of Political Economy and
Taxation.  The practical political concern of their economic theorization
was taxation and trade policy.  Not the class character of the state.

IMO, it doesn't help to deny the need for separating the set of productive
forces and production relations as they constitute a contradictory unity
(mode of production) from the entire social formation, the historical
society with different modes of production combined and a super-structure.
I know Althusser and others tried to question the validity of Marx's
abstractions in this respect, but I don't think they succeeded.  I find them
useful.

>CB: It was not because the dominance of state power by the capitalists is
>not a necessary condition for all he discussed in _Capital_.   No state
>power held by the capitalists, no capitalism following its laws of motion
>as explained in _Capital_.
>
>The wage-labor/capital relationship was newer and more mystified than the
>nature of the state, and needed more demystification.
>

The necessary condition for a plant to live is that there's water, soil, and
sun feeding it.  But what constitutes the biological identity of the plant
(its 'essence') is NOT water and sun, soil, or water.  Imagine a biologist
who is supposed to focus on explaining the life of a vegetable writing a
book on the chemistry of water or the physics of sunlight.

That state power is a condition for the reproduction of the capitalist
social relations is not in question.  What is in question is whether state
power wielded to assert the interests of capitalist constitutes the
self-identity of capitalist production.  The answer is unequivocally NO.
Therefore, logically, state power is not a necessary condition for
capitalist production.

>Not Poulantzas, but Engels analyzed the nature of the state in _The
>Origin_; and Lenin.  In a short form, Lenin said, politics is concentrated
>economics.
>

Exactly.  That's the term I was trying to fetch in my memory.  Politics is
concentrated economics.  Preobrazhensky's response: Let's address WHAT
concentrates in politics first.  Else, politics is unintelligible, or only
intelligible by means of conspiracy theories.

>CB: Preobrazhensky's statement does not contradict the proposition that the
>dominance of state power is a necessary condition for the capitalists to
>continue acting as capitalists. The fact that for historical materialism,
>politics as superstructure is determined  by the relations of production ,
>as infrastructure, and that therefore _analysis_ of productive relations
>may be prior to analysis of political relations does not mean that in
>_synthesis_ or in concrete understanding , addressing the whole, that
>capitalists holding state power is not necessary condition for the
>existence of capitalism. In other words, even though the specific form of
>the state is determined by the productive relations ,  the perpetuation of
>the specific form (mode) of productive relations is dependent upon the
>ruling class of that formation holding state power.  You are confusing
>analytical priority with necessary conditions of the whole.
>

IMO, both logically and HISTORICALLY, capitalist production predates
capitalist state power.  Under commodity production and capitalist
production, laws and their enforcement flow from economic need and repeated
social practice.  This is also explained by Preobrazhensky in his book.

In Capital, vol. 1, s. 1, ch. 2, first or second paragraph of this chapter,
Marx says: "The legal relation between private producers engaged in
commodity exchange, whose form is the legal contract, is a relation between
two wills that reflects the economic relation.  The content of this legal
relation is itself DETERMINED by the economic relation."  (The actual
citation may be a bit different, but just a bit.)

Now, capitalist production is generalized commodity production.  Therefore,
Marx's words apply by extension to the essential economic relation under
capitalism, which has the form of a commodity transaction, i.e. the economic
relation between waged-labor and capital.  In other words, the content of
the legal contract and its enforcement between workers and capitalists
(which is the MAIN political and legal function of a bourgeois state) is a
'reflection' of the economic relation, it is DETERMINED by the economic
relation.  If I remember correctly, Marx alludes both in the Contribution
and in Capital to historical evidence, and such evidence shows that
HISTORICALLY the legal and political enforcement of these basic economic
relations is further, not prior, to the customary repetition of the economic
relation.  Now, of course that'd be the rule.  It is conceivable to assist
capitalist production somewhere by setting in place capitalist political
institutions first and then letting the economic need follow suit, something
like a legal greenhouse to foster capitalism.  But that's not to refute
Marx's main point, because it'd only beg the question where the power to
build such legal greenhouse comes from.

>More specifically, if Preobrazhensky thought that the Soviet economy could
>go through socialist laws of motion without state power dominated by the
>working class, then he was wrong.
>

Preobrazhensky never said such a thing.  That'd be your straw man.
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