Re: [Marxism] Question: An epoch of social revolution/1

[DLVinvest@xxxxxx]

In a message dated 5/7/04 5:49:31 AM Mountain Daylight Time,
Waistline2@xxxxxxx writes:
> What if we reformulated the
> question as: whether the material power of production is outstripping
> industrial (social) relations and threatening to burst asunder the bourgeois
> property
> relations?
>
> Here the question is posed on the basis of the development of contradiction
> based on its internal components as opposed to "external collision" or
> "whether
> capitalist production has filled up the world." In my opinion the latter
> formulation has much to do with Rosa Luxembourg's "Accumulation of Capital."
>
>
Thanks, Melvin, for your detailed response.

I don't want to get fixated on defending my own paraphrase about capital
'filling up the world" with its productive forces, the commodities they produce
and the relations that suffuse and sustain it as a mode of production.
Luxembourg's essay may have errored that way (it's been 25 years since I've 
read it),
but even Samir Amin's Accumulation on a World Scale is obsolete in the
particulars of the trend he described, and I don't know where that leaves 
Emanuel's
thesis of Unequal Exchange. In re-assessing all this, my inkling is that you may
be over-emphasizing the property form at the expense of the relations of
production. But the key is whether the extension of capital worldwide has 
finally
created both its own grave and gravediggerrs. In his Preface to a Contribution
to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx stated:

"No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which
there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production 
never
appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the
womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets [for] itself
only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it
will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material
conditions for its solution already exist or at least are in the process of 
formation
." [my emphasis]

The gist of the first sentence has been used to support an economic
determinist approach that minimizes and subordinates the self-conscious 
revolutionary
activity of workers as a motive force, in contradiction to the second
emphasized phrase that begs the question how far along that process must be to 
provide
humanity with means and opportunity as well as motive to solve that task. How
much development of the productive forces is "enough" -- that is, necessary
and sufficient for revolutionary transformation to take place?

Marx continuously revised his estimates of the revolutionary potential of
workers and potential allies in actual historical circumstances from the 1840s 
to
his death.
His overall optimism, based on judgig that the conditions for  the solution
to the problems of capitalism were "at least in the process of formation" was
tempered by his remark in the famous introduction to the 18th Brumaire to the
effect that men make their own history, but not under circumstances of their
choosing. This places on those who would make history the burden to accurately
assess those circumstances, to conduct a "concrete analysis of concrete
conditions" in order to formulate a program based on accurate description of 
reality
that appeals to workers in any given place and time to change that reality.
That is what makes a revolutionary program "realistic" in terms of its chances
of success.

In Capital, Marx deevloped this theme in a general theory of history, of
social change and of capitalism as a distinct phase in that history:

"The direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the
direct producers --  a relationship always directly corresponding to a
definite stage in the development of the methods of labor and thereby to its 
social
productivity --  reveals the inermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire
social structure, and with it... the corresponding form of the state. This does
not prevent the same economic basis -- the same from the standpoint of its
main conditions -- due to innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural
environment...external historical influences, etc. from showing infinite
variations and gradations in appearance, which can be ascertained only by 
analysis
of the empirically given circumstances."

The articulation of modes of production -- that is, the particular forms in
which capital took shape out of feudalism in Europe (and notably, although he
did not devote much time to is analysis, the "oriental" mode of production),
and through extension and penetration of the rest of the world (the pillage,
rape and enslavement of Africa and the Americas)  -- are the basis for 
geographic
and demographic variations in the class composition of the world's
population. The corresponding relations of production and the class struggles 
that ensue
have varied dramatically from place to place and time to time. The "putting
out" system of piecework by artisans that gave way to industrialized
manufacturing, and the share-cropper and courvee labor systems that filled the 
space
evacuated by plantation-owners with the destruction of slavery in the southern 
US
and Haiti, are examples of the articulation of modes of production in
particular circumstances, but the long-term trend or pattern  -- the big 
picture --
clearly shows the logic of capital in the "law of uneven and combined
development."
 More later...

 Douglas L. Vaughan, Jr.
Investigations
for Print, Film & Electronic Media
3140 W. 32nd Ave.
Denver CO 80211
303-455-9429
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