Re: [Marxism] Question: An epoch of social revolution/2 (What Marx wrote)

[DLVinvest@xxxxxx]

Melvin,

I see we are looking at some of the same sources for guidance in analyzing
this question, and my response to your reply cited some of thm. But it looks
like you sometimes confuse the legal framework/property form that expresses the
relations of production (e.g., bourgeois ownership and property) with the
relations themselves (especially capital vs labor) as a defining characteristic 
of
the mode of prodution; at other times you seem to argue that the forces of
production, of which the workingclass is more than simply an instrument for the
application of labor to land or machinery, are more important in shaping the
given conditions in which the class struggle takes place than that struggle
itself. This leads you to posit an "industrial system" as a mode of production
common to both capitalist and socialist forms of property. But those same 
sources
argue convincingly that the means of production are not the same as the
forces, and the relation that distinguishes capitalism from all previously 
existing
modes is precisely that of capital to labor in the process of which surplus
value is expropriated and which creates capital itself, along with its
representative forms of the state and property. But the distinguishing feature 
of
socialism, what makes it different from capitalism, supposedly is not the 
property
form in which the productive forces are developed per se but the
"dictatorship of the proletariat" -- that is, the extent to which the 
workingclass
controls the state, the state owns the means of production, and the state 
controls
production and distribution based on the guiding principle of "from each
according to their ability unto each according to their work." At least, that's 
the
common element in Marx. Lenin and Mao. Many bourgeois and some
social-democratic political theorists and economists posit this idea of an 
industrial system
that supposedly transcends or moots the relationship and struggle between
capital and labor.

In the tradition in which my political work and understanding developed, such
as it is, we were very distrustful (sometimes downright hostile) to anything
that smacked of an economic-determinist interpretation (or '"deviation") from
Marx's -- especially a variant called "the so-called 'theory of productive
forces'" that, or so we alleged, gave primacy to technical innovations (like
computerization, which gives us the automated production of machines that make
machines,  and biogenetic tehcnology) that affected the composition of capital
over the "relations of production" that, broadly speaking, emphasized the
class-conscious struggle of the workers themselves to improve their wages and
conditions, to reclaim some portion of the time they were obligated to sell to 
the
capitalists in order to survive, and their revolutionary activity to overthrow
capital.

This idea that the productive forces must be fully developed was deeply
ingrained, especially in the "revisonist" CPs.and earlier among social-democrats
who wanted to reform capitalism and ameliorate the "excesses" of industrial
production instead of self-emancipation of the proletariat.  The reformists and
revisionists claimed that socialists must fulfill the historic task of the
bourgeoisie in developing the productive forces in the (tehcnologically) 
"backward"
or "underdeveloped" colonial and neo-colonial areas in order to establish
socialism, and in the nominally socialist countries in order to achieve a
transition from socialism to communism only after all the forces of production 
had
been fully  developed. Some of us contended that this model of economic
development rested on continued exploitation and replicated the existing 
capitalist
relations of production, that extraction of surplus value through such relations
reproduced capitalism and provided a material basis for the emergence of a
capitalist class of a new type in the guise of the bureaucracy that, in spite of
the socialized form of property,  administered (and ultimately expropriated
value from) the productive forces and the relations of production they
engendered. We predicted this would eventually lead to the restoration of 
capitalist
property forms. And consequently, we were often accused of "voluntarism"  -- of
wishing the workers would take up the task of revolution before they were
ready, and "ultraleftism" -- favoring socialism everywhere except where it
actually existed.

So, I'm still working out this problem, and don't want to fall into the old
errors. I think we agree that the forces of production exhibit all the
"ripeness" necessary for a revolution, and that the allies of the proletariat 
in this
will be the vast unemployed masses of the "absolute surplus" population
created by capitalist development on a world scale. And that the conditions of 
their
existence make this not only desirable but necessary, sooner rather than
later -- if it's not already too late for many, if not most, of us.

I look forward to further dialogue on this, especially as it relates to a
program for action.

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