Re: [Marxism] Eating is not over-consumption

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

Agreed . . . 100%
 
The same problem under different conditions of property relations, during  
different periods of history, at different boundaries of development of the  
productive forces, lend themselves to different institutional solutions. In 
all  instances activated human agency solves and resolves social problems 
to the  degree such problems are resolvable. 
 
Sometimes one has to just stop what one is doing to solve the problem.  
Bourgeois enterprise cannot and will not stop fishing on the basis of the  
bourgeois commercial relation, although we can push and deliver some blows  
towards this goal. Yes the lakes, ponds, oceans and all bodies of water need to 
 
be cleaned up. Yes, supplies of fish need to be replenished but not so that 
 commercial fishing can continue in a widening scale. 
 
Shane raises another theoretical and ideological question about the state  
and how to characterize Soviet society in its bureaucratic attributes as  
economic logic. 
 
Several years ago and most certainly a decade ago, I would have opposed a  
description of the Soviet Union and the Soviet bureaucracy as state 
capitalist.  Today, I do not oppose such a description, provided (a big 
provided) 
one define  the meaning of state capitalism from the standpoint of the value 
relation and a  strict concept of capital as a historically evolved social 
relations of  production. 
 
For instance 
 
a). when all the social force that is the power of capital is concentrated  
in the hands of the state; 
b). and society enacts laws that prevent the individual from converting  
wealth into ownership of the means of production and the right to hire and  
deploy labor; 
c). when the individual and institutions are blocked from owning and  
disposing of the social products; 
d). when the law that is the anarchy of production and its expression in  
the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and decouple labor from the  
production process; 
 
when all attributes of bourgeois production are suppressed, in everything  
fundamental to the society productivity infrastructure or in the production 
of  socially necessary means of life; the society is not being driven in its 
 economic impulses by the production of exchange values. Yet, one does not  
necessarily have economic communism; but socialism or a form of  capital 
held by the state. 
 
To the degree that the value relation still exist, primarily in  
agriculture, this relationship can described as state capitalism.  I  do not 
object. 
 
For the Soviet bureaucracy to act or behave as state capitalist can only  
mean in a way that indicates the state is the supreme property holder and the 
 law of value still asserts itself. The communist idea - not program, is  
abolition of property beginning with its last historical form as bourgeois  
property. 
 
What does it means in concrete terms for the state to be the property  
holder of all the primary means of production, water ways and natural resources 
 
of the country? What does this mean prior to the completion of the 
quantitative  phase of history we call the mechanization of agriculture? 
 
None of this is to say that horrific blunders were not committed. The  
source of blunders can be political expediency, bourgeois outlook and ideology, 
 
ignorance of science, indifference to the law of long term results (social  
consequence) of ones actions; theoretical frigidness or seeking political  
supremacy in disregard to others; bloated state apparatus, etc. . 
 
In America, because we are at the front of the curve of  
capital/value/industrial development and because we have inherited an  
increasingly large 
documented history of the Soviet Union; we are in a position  to make new 
mistakes, rather than repeating the old ones. 
 
The odds are such that I will never completely rid myself of  
anarcho-syndicalist ideology (left pole) and I can live with that. I remain  
anti-state 
in the sense that the state should not be the property holder, in  America. 
Nor should the state tell anyone what to do or be charged with the  
responsibility to record or monitor ones productive life.  That is to say,  who 
works 
and who does not work; how many hours one works; where one works,  etc., 
should not fall under any authority of the state.  Non  governmental bodies 
should regular the deployment and flow of labor. One can go  on their computer 
or to the public library and locate laboring opportunity. 
 
We are going to quickly discover we have a tremendous over supply of labor  
in a communist America. 
 
I believe the state as we have known it is going to collapse fairly rapidly 
 under the impact of the Third American Revolution: the American 
Proletarian  Revolution. The state should not own the productive forces, with 
maybe 
the  exception being water ways and physically taking over Coke and Pepsi  
infrastructure. Yea, I'm obsessed about water. Purifying water to make soda  
rather than clean drinking water for human beings just rub me the wrong way. I 
 want these guys in jail. Really. The beer producers can fall under local  
control. 
 
I do not believe we can abolish the intelligence agencies, even if we  
wanted to or the armed bodies of men and women, with extra legal authority  
domestically, but their task would to directed against issues like illegal  
commercial enterprise like the drug trade. Not the individuals hawing drugs on  
street corners, which fall under local jurisdiction but the huge capitalist  
commercial networks and their protectors in government and the state 
agencies  themself. 
 
And we are still going to have contradictions and huge fights over what to  
eat; where to fish, how to organize teaching and all issues of botany, 
biology  and the general sciences. We are going to fight like hell over how 
many 
cars and  trucks to produce and whether or not America need a new sandwich 
and "square  butts." 
 
Wl. 


In a message dated 4/25/2009 1:17:15 A.M. Eastern Daylight  Time, 
sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

That was no capitalist calculation based on accumulation.  The  Soviets did 
not grow the cotton in Uzbekistan for the purpose of  accumulating capital 
through the appropriation of exchange value.  That  would be the typically 
capitalist calculation-- i.e.  I can make a  profit from growing this 
cotton, 
reproduce the original investment on a  larger scale, aggrandize more 
suprlus 
labor and generate an even greater  propfit so that I can accumulate 
capital 
and reproduce the investment again  on a larger scale.............

The Soviet bureaurcracy was growing the  cotton to avoid expending hard 
currency on imported cotton, thus increasing  its dependence on the world 
market.  Doesn't mean the Soviet  bureaucracy handled the farming 
intelligently, or that it even properly  gauged the world markets and the 
costs of doing business one way vs. the  other-- but it, the decision, was 
not determined by the need to reproduce  capital vs. the need for  cotton.






________________________________________________
YOU  MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list  submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at:  
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/waistline2%40aol.com
 
**************Check all of your email inboxes from anywhere on the web.  
Try the new Email Toolbar now! 
(http://toolbar.aol.com/mail/download.html?ncid=txtlnkusdown00000027)

________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu