[Marxism] Socialist/Revolutionary Consciousness as a Material Force.

["Craven, Jim" <JCraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

Socialist/Revolutionary Consciousness as a Material Force
by Jim Craven
 
At a recent "International Symposium on the Reform of Property Rights
and Enterprise Development in Transitional Countries" held September
1-2, 2004 at which I was one of the invited speakers, an interesting and
very revealing exchange took place during the question and answer period
following one session of presentations.
 
I posed the following question: If anyone here were sick, perhaps
gravely ill, which kind of physician would you prefer to have: Would you
prefer to have a capitalist minded/driven doctor or one like Pai Chu En?
The implication of the question--and compound metaphor--was clear: Would
you prefer to have a capitalist minded/driven doctor, who sees the
patient and his/her disease as a mere commodity and instrument of profit
and capital accumulation, who sees the patient in very narrow terms,
doing only what it takes to avoid malpractice litigation, just enough to
get the patient (customer) to "feel" satisfied enough to return when
another problem (and perhaps related and not caught in the original
examination as is common)  develops  (sales-->customers-->sales), doing
what it takes to minimize costs relative to expected revenues or
maximize revenues relative to expected costs, doing only what it takes
to get the "customer" (not whole and precious human being) in and out in
order to maximize the potential number of patients (customers or profit
instruments) in and out per day? Or, would you prefer a doctor like Pai
Chu En or Dr. Norman Bethune, not only highly skilled as a physician in
narrow technical terms, but one with the type of socialist and
revolutionary consciousness and values that leads him or her to view the
patient not simply as a patient or customer--certainly never as a mere
commodity--who does not view the particular disease-entity as a mere
commodity, who view each and every "patient" as a whole and precious
human being to be treated as one would want one's own loved ones--or
oneself--to be treated, who sees the mind and body not as a duality but
as conceptual or analytical parts of an integrated and inseparable
unity, who sees "efficiency" not in terms of the narrow (capitalist)
minimizing input (time and narrow costs) relative to "output" (relieving
symptoms or "cure" in the narrow sense) but who sees and defines
"efficiency" in broad, holistic and long-run terms (social not only
private costs and social not only private benefits) and who does what he
or she does not from motives of greed, selfishness, status needs or
capitalist profit/competitive imperatives, but out of a sense of
dedication to the transcendent cause and a genuine desire to "serve the
people heart and soul."? Which type of doctor (or system) would you
prefer to have and live under?
 
One of the speakers, an esteemed and rising professor from another
university, not Tsinghua, obviously very "bright" and "educated" in
narrow and formalistic terms, answered. With, what appeared to me to be
a rather self-congratulatory and kind of "gotcha" smile, answered:
"Well, if I were sick, and it would take me thirty years to find a
doctor like Pai Chu En, I would prefer a capitalist doctor." Because of
time and other constraints (there was never any censorship in any form
at that conference except that which inevitably occurred as a result of
time constraints, the number of people who were scheduled to speak and
the need to be sensitive to others who also wanted to speak) I could not
answer but my blood boiled--and is obviously still boiling--from his
flippant and superficial answer that was even more rhetorical than my
question. He was doing what the neoclassical/neo-liberal/capitalist
ideologues typically do: controlling the microphone and debate (they
typically only hire and promote their own kind and allow only their own
ideologically-driven curricula in academia, politics, media and in other
spheres) and summarily asserting (as axiomatic, self-evident and
"proved" beyond any doubt) the core predicate of their argument: that in
the competition (race) between capitalism and socialism, in terms of
which more rapidly "develops" (quality and quantity) the material forces
of production (and all the derivative "spread effects like jobs,
incomes, consumer products and choice etc) capitalism wins over
socialism every time. This is but one of the many tautologies and
predicates--asserted and even engineered--as axiomatic and "proved" that
which remains to be "proved" even in narrow neoclassical and capitalism
terms. Of course, tautologically, capitalism becomes accepted as  the
most "efficient" and
"progressive"system when contrived capitalist definitions of
"efficiency" and "progress" are asserted and accepted as the only
possible "operational" and rhetorical definitions. Yet, as Marx, and so
many others like Chairman Mao so aptly demonstrated, capitalism becomes
inefficient and regressive even using capitalist concepts of
"efficiency" (technological, economic, productive, consumer, exchange
and allocative) and "progress" (the greatest economic welfare for the
greatest number).
 
The first reason my blood boiled when I heard this flippant and
rhetorical answer from this esteemed professor is that I come from a
people, Blackfoot, who like Indigenous Peoples everywhere, and indeed
poor people everywhere in the U.S. and elsewhere, are surrounded by
technically skilled--and no so skilled--physicians that exist, in the
sense of physically existing at a certain time and space, but, for the
poor, do not exist in any meaningful way. Since these doctors are driven
by capitalist imperatives and associated/requisite mentalities, these
doctors only exist for those with sufficient incomes to pay for their
services and/or who do not live on isolated Reserves/Reservations or
rural areas, with no transportation, and are unable to travel to see
these doctors. If I am ill, and the most highly-skilled physician in the
world is practicing down the street, what good is it to me that
capitalism, capitalist "values" and capitalist imperatives produced a
physician who will not see me and treat me because I am poor?  Better
that physician does not exist as his or her existence, in the physical
sense, will only piss me off and perhaps even exacerbate my illness due
to the mind-body unity. In the U.S., an estimated 44 million people have
no health insurance, another 37 million have only marginal health
insurance, and since the "right to life" itself (like the right to
justice etc) is itself a commodity, for sale only to those that can
afford it under capitalism, what good is the supposed rapid development
of material forces or production of capitalism that produce commodities
(and derivative spread effects) only for a relative few? Even in China,
we find that with the spread of markets and market-based "medicine",
those who formerly had access to at least basic health care are now
losing it.
 
Next, Dr. Bethune, a product of the capitalist system in terms of his
medical training, and by his own admission in terms of his early ideas
of reformism, developed his technical skills not primarily because of
capitalist-based education and medical practice, but in spite of them.
Even in his own case, when he was ill with Tuberculosis, the
conventional medical practice, highly risk-aversive to "guarantee
success" in narrow capitalist terms, refused him the emerging and
experimental technique of pneumo-thorax (collapsing the lung to rest the
infected lung) such that he had to self-administer the technique--on
himself while awake. Dr. Bethune's own inventions, of techniques and
instruments still being used in thoracic surgery today, all came from
his own humanitarianism and revolutionary consciousness without any
regard as to the potential "profitability" or income/status-enhancing
results of his inventions. It was the imperatives and "logic" of
capitalist-based medicine in the days of Dr. Bethune, as is the case
today in many areas, that caused the choking-off and even regression of
the development of the material forces and techniques of production in
medicine.
 
The second reason my blood boiled when I heard the answer to my question
from this esteemed professor is that capitalism only develops certain
productive forces more rapidly than socialism. Because capitalism is
about profits for power and power for profits (like the slogan of the
Medici family: "Money to Acquire Power; Power to Protect Money), and is
about "effective" demand (purchasing power or "dollar votes" to back up
tastes and preferences many of which are also created and conditioned
for profit and not natural from basic subsistence needs), capitalism
does a great job in developing forces of production in areas like
superficial and soul-destroying forms of "entertainment", dope,
pornography, rigging elections, allowing rich criminals to escape
justice, narcissistic sports events, mansions and toys for the rich,
placing clones in government, "quality education" for the few who can
afford it, "quality" medicine for the few that can afford it, weapons of
death and destruction, instruments of mind and soul control and
manipulation (advertising), specialty foods, "high-fashion" clothing for
the few, unevenly developed infrastructure, etc. In such areas as
affordable housing for the many, basic health care available to all,
universal access to education, basic medicines available to all,
balanced development of infrastructure, minimizing social costs of
private endeavors and maximizing social benefits of private endeavors,
etc socialism beats capitalism--when real socialism is allowed to
develop without aggression and subversion--outside and inside from
imperialist machinations and the old weeds of capitalism threatening the
full, free and fair development of socialism and competition of ideas
and systems--capitalism versus socialism.
 
The third reason my blood boiled when I heard this answer from this
esteemed professor is why does someone have to teach this "educated" and
"bright" Chinese professor basic Chinese--and world--history as well as
about some present-day realities and irrefutable facts? In the Communist
Manifesto, Marx and Engels, in reference to China, and of course other
places as well, noted that colonialism (and imperialism) is a force that
'batters down all Chinese walls', and is one that 'compels all nations,
on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it
compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst,
i.e. to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world
after its own image.' ( Marx and Engels, "Manifesto of the Communist
Party" (1848) in "Selected Works", Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing
House, 1950, pp. 36-37; quoted in "Mao's China and After 3rd Edition, by
Maurice Meisner, The Free Press, NY. 1999, p 5)
 
When has there ever been free, fair and open competition between
socialist versus capitalist systems or ideas? From the very beginning of
the People's Republic of China (actually long before), as was the case
of Cuba and so many other examples of socialism, socialist societies,
often inheriting horrible conditions and legacies of imperialism and
colonialism, have been subject to imperialist embargos, outright threats
of nuclear annihilation, social systems engineering and destabilization
campaigns, covert operations, exacerbations of historical ethnic and
religious rivalries, denials of critical technologies and resources,
military aggression, cultural subversion, arrogant missionaries, forced
importations of drugs and soul-destroying foreign "culture", denial of
access to international organizations and the global community of
nations, coup d'etats and overthrows of sovereign and freely-elected
governments, assassination campaigns, etc etc etc. All of this was
designed to destabilize, overthrow and never to allow to develop,
socialist systems, values and ideas. 
 
If international recognition by the imperialist powers and the
international organizations they control is some kind of test of the
reality, existence and legitimacy of any nation or nation state, then
the People's Republic of China (portions of which still remain occupied
by foreign powers--e.g. Taiwan) did not "exist" for almost thirty years
after its existence in reality (and under international law). The same
apples to Cuba, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and other
nation states summarily and arrogantly not "recognized" by some
imperialist powers. This has caused large-scale diversions of precious
resources from socialist growth and development into necessary defense
against imperialist machinations.  Indeed this was the object of
imperial social systems engineering and aggression all along:
engineering, to make "axiomatic" and self-evident, the basic
tautologies, predicates and syllogisms of imperialism. IF, A=B; and IF,
B=C; THEN/THEREFORE, A=C. IF, Country A (say China or Cuba for example)
= System B (Socialism or Communism); IF, System B (Socialism or
Communism) = C (Backwardness, Inefficiency, Repression, Terrorism,
Dictatorship...), THEN, A=C..... The answer? For China or Cuba or other
socialist systems to become "Developing", "Efficient", "non-Repressive",
"non-Terrorist" etc the only answer is to become like the U.S. or some
other imperialist power asserted to be the opposites in the
above-mentioned syllogism of imperialist repression and legitimation.
Just imagine, for but one example, even before World War II was over,
the Class-A War Criminals of the infamous Japanese fascist Unit 731 were
all shielded from prosecution by the U.S. and its allies (in return for
using the fruits of their barbaric "research") and one of them even
became a Prime Minister of Japan, and the same was done with shielding
German Nazi war criminals before the end of World War II, while the
nominal allies of the U.S. who had saved many U.S. lives (Communists in
China and Soviets in Europe) were being attacked by the U.S. and its
allies using wanted war criminals from the formal enemies of the U.S.
and its allies.
 
Finally, we have the reality, demonstrable and provable, that
capitalism, even in capitalist terms of "efficiency" (technological,
economic, productive, consumer, exchange and allocative) and "progress"
(greatest economic welfare for the greatest number) is
self-contradictory and self-negating. For example, the imperative to
minimize total costs relative to expected revenues (economic efficiency)
or the imperative to minimize input relative to expected output
(technological) can lead, and does lead--along with the basic "values"
of Homo Oeconomicus--to inefficiency in terms of so-called "exchange
efficiency" (P=MSC=MSB). As firms pollute the environment, or
free-riding increases, less and less are true costs (marginal private
costs plus marginal costs of negative externalities) assessed and paid
by those who receive the benefits and revenues received and less and
less are true benefits (marginal private benefits plus marginal benefits
of positive externalities) received by those who pay the true costs.
This is but one example of the "logic" of capitalism resulting in
self-negation of "efficiency" and "progress" even in narrow and
contrived capitalist terms.
 
Then there is the issue of how, by whom, on what basis and in whose
interest such terms and concepts of "efficiency" and "progress" are
defined and implemented. For example, according to the neoclassicals,
the consumer--or producer--is sovereign, rational, competitive,
egoistic, calculating, competitive, atomistic etc with GIVEN incomes,
tastes, time, information and expectations on the demand side or GIVEN
technology, resources, time, information, expectations and
profit/competitive imperatives on the supply side. The consumer, assumed
to be rational, has tastes and preferences, that, if not illegal (and no
inquiry is made by the neoclassicals as to who, on what basis and in
whose interests defines what is illegal), may be assumed as GIVEN and
not subject to inquiry. So, if pornography is not illegal, according to
the neoclassicals, "efficiency" is simply defined as producing more porn
with given inputs or per dollar of total cost, or producing a given
amount of porn with least inputs or at lowest possible total cost. What
is being produced is not a subject for inquiry and not part of the
concept and definition of "efficiency" in neoclassical terms.          
The socialist, on the other hand, looks not only at levels and
productive functions of costs or inputs, or utility functions of
consumers consuming what is being produced or consumed, but also, looks
at the real costs (private plus social, on the individual as well as on
society, political, social, cultural, ideological, spiritual, long-run
as well as short run) of WHAT it is that is being produced and what is
being used to produce it. 
 
These are but some of the reasons my blood boiled when I heard that
answer from the esteemed professor, not from Tsinghua University, to my
question when I attended the symposium at Tsinghua University. When I
return, this debate, no doubt, will continue, in another venue and
forum. And this response will be passed on to that professor with an
invitation to debate in a forum and venue when we both have ample access
and time for the microphone.
 
Jim Craven
(Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi) 
 
 
James M. Craven
Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi
Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair
Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd.
Vancouver, WA. USA 98663
Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5
Employer has no association with private/protected opinion
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present
controls the past." (George Orwell)
"...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems
disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse")
FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
 
 
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