Re: [Marxism] Bureaucracy and Revolutions (part a)

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 5/20/2009 12:09:41 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, 
_sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)  writes: 
 
>> Waistline may be correct here, but that, the "leap" to communism  is not 
the issue.  The issue is the transition, the organization of the  
transition, the agent and the agency of that transition. 
 
And the problem with comrade Waistline's formulation is that there is no  
way of making the transition, there is no agent or agency of transition.  
Things-- that is social relations, become "inevitable" based on certain level 
of  technology.  This infuses his analysis with a certain passivity, where  
inevitability replaces historical necessity, as necessity is no longer the  
product of the conflict between means and social relations. 
 
For Marx, it is not the development of the productive forces, this  
"passive" substrate that is ALONE the determinant.  It is the conflict in  that 
development with the existing social relations driving both the development  of 
the productive forces and the reproduction of the property relations.<< 
 

Comment 
 
Transition means from âsomethingâ to âsomething.â 
 
When Lenin wrote that electrification of Russia plus Soviet Power = (is)  
communism, he was wrong practically and theoretically. Such a transition to  
communism, on the basis of electrification of Russia revealed itself to be 
an  absurd notion, never again mentioned by Lenin. More accurately, what 
Lenin meant  was âcommunismâ as he and the Bolsheviks conceived communism. 
Today, we mean  communism as we conceive it based on our specific boundary of 
development of the  productive forces. 
 
Lenin and the Bolsheviks conception of communism - (as an economic  
relation), is bounded by a historical period before the mechanization of  
agriculture, and during a boundary of development of the industrial system we  
have 
yet to classify, other than Fordism or assembly line production. 
 
If transition to communism was impossible, what is the âsomethingâ to  â
somethingâ that constituted the transition under Soviet Power? The transition 
 
in the Soviet Union was in the form of property, as property imparts 
specific  laws to commodity exchange and from one boundary of development of 
the  
industrial system to the next. 
 
Boundaries are quantitative junctures within a definable quality - (system  
or mode of production), are real. During the initial boundary of 
development of  the factory system + private capital, waterpower is primary 
external 
energy  source. The factory system, as a system, was initially limited to 
waterways or  the path of waterways due to their dependence on this energy 
source. The steam  engine and then electricity and then the electrical grid was 
the material  wherewithal ushering in a new boundary in the development of 
the factory system,  allowing factories to move inland and expand the market 
or reproduce the wage  labor-capital bond on an expanding scale. Capital 
expanded in correspondence to  this quantitative expansion of the system. A new 
energy source made it possible  to further reconfigure industrial 
implements. The emergence of âFordismâ was the  basis for another 
quantitative 
expansion of the system. Expanding the material  power of production expanded 
the 
boundary of the factory system as it broke down  the component of 
compounded labor (skilled labor) into an enhanced system of  production.   
 
Specifically, skilled labor in its craft form arises on the basis of  
manufacturing processes and not the industrial system. The bourgeois power  
continuously revolutionize the productive forces even as these productive 
forces  
are simultaneously expanded and fettered due to their deployment as private 
 capital. The worker resists the breaking down of their skill pool because 
their  wages are dependent upon and tied to skill. 
 
Electrification of the industrial process cannot lead to economic communism 
 no matter what the property relations. The only result is expansion of the 
 boundary of the industrial system, with the property relations  within.   
 
The communists of China made the exact same theoretical error as Lenin  in 
the early 1960 when stating China could pass over to economic communism 
based  on it present/peasant economy, if not for the existence of imperialism 
or 
the  bourgeois command and dominance of/in the world market. 
 
To say âpeasant economyâ conjures a vision of âpeasant serfsâ with  
scattered means of production rather than a historically specific boundary in  
the development and evolution of the manufacturing configuration of production 
 proper. Peasant economy means simultaneously the property forms - land as 
a  primary form of wealth, the serf/peasant/nobility form of 
property/political  relations and more importantly, the infrastructure basis 
upon which sit 
the  âmanufactureâ process. Manufacture means primarily âman to shapeâ  
- 
hand  labor. Industrial means to create by machines, external energy source 
(external  to the body of man/women) + living labor. 
 
Thus, when the word communism is mentioned a concept of property and  
political relations are conjured rather than the physical building blocks of a  
new mode of production and its corresponding expression as political 
relations  or the superstructure. Yet, every system - mode of production, by 
definition  passes through quantitative boundaries of expansion that defines 
the 
system as a  mode of producing material wealth. The industrial system is no 
different. 
 
Electrification of Russia + Soviet Power could not = communism as long as  
Russia was industrial. 
 
Only a boundary of development of the industrial system with a non-private  
property form of capital/value could be the result of electrification in 
Soviet  Russia. Such a political form of society is called socialism because 
Marxists  intuitively understood that a new system of production - 
qualitatively new  "social relations," presuppose the emergence of that which 
is 
fundamental  to a new mode of production; a qualitative reconfiguration of the 
productive  forces.  
 
Every time one tried to explain new - revolutionary, âsocial relations of  
productionâ in the Soviet Union, one ran into a theoretical brick wall 
because  the material relations of production remained industrial. Thus, in 
theory one  relied upon the property character as the defining meaning of 
social 
relations.  In my opinion this is a historical error of theory. It is 
historical because one  cannot see beyond their historical boundary and thus a 
definition of social  relations as property relations became unavoidable. (2) 
 
The point is that a transition to new social relations of production was  
impossible. Transition from âwhat to whatâ is at issue. If a transition to  
communism is impossible then what transition is possible and was this 
transition  completed? 
 
Why was transition to communism impossible? 
 
One passes over to a new mode of production based on a revolution in the  
productive forces period. The revolution in the productive forces create the  
physical and intellectual material for a social revolution. The social  
revolution calls forth and demand a political revolution to reconfigure society 
 in conformity with the new material power of production. Communism means a 
new  mode of production rather than sharing or public property. Communism 
means the  abolish of property not its reemergence in a new form. 
 
The idea that a transition to communism does not require a new mode of  
production, predicated on a revolution in the productive forces is a 
theoretical  error. The concept that the proletarian revolution can create the 
material basis  for the transition to communism, based on political will (!!!), 
direct organs of  administration, and socialized property is a theoretical 
error, which arises  during the rising curve of development of the industrial 
system. 
 
Therefore, is seems a broader approach would be how Soviet society was  
pushed through its quantitative boundaries, the role of the state, workers  
organizations, the party decisions nationally and internationally and the 
impact  of the bureaucracy. A transition that is the crossing of a quantitative 
boundary  is very different from a transition across a qualitative 
configuration of  history. 
 
The working class of America and the Soviet Union faced the same  
quantitative juncture, with movements, political currents advocating workers  
control 
in both countries. In a word advocacy for councils as the agency of  
transition. Why this did not take place in either country or rather, within  
either political system, is the point of discourse. (1) 
 
In a given boundary of development of the system, any system, what arises  
is a reform movement to reformulate the system quantitatively, rather than 
an  external collision of classes seeking to simultaneously preserve and 
overthrow  the system. A reform movement arises as preexisting clusters and 
pools of labor,  grouped together by a distinct configuration of the laboring 
process, are  shattered and regrouped based on enhanced new division of labor. 
This ânew  division of laborâ arises as an expression (quantitative 
enhancement) driving  the qualitative reorganization of the material power of 
production. 
 
That is to say, the new âqualitative thingâ being spoke of is the  
industrial system. The industrial system passes through periods of quantitative 
 
reconfiguration. Without question these periods of quantitative 
reconfiguration  are driven by the class struggle or the unity and strife that 
is wage 
labor and  capital. This applies even when all the capital is organized as the 
state power  or what is the same, when the state power is owners of the 
society productive  forces.  
 
part a
 
1. Note: 
 
(A side point arises and is worth mentioning; the meaning of reform as  
transition or reform means a quantitative reconfiguration. 
 
A section of Marxism was schooled in Rosa Luxembourgâs concept of reform  
and the âart of the possible.â I believe her writings are historically 
obsolete.  Not just because her celebrated writing on reform is more than 
one-hundred years  old, but more importantly because the system has run its 
course 
of quantitative  development and begun reconfiguration on the basis of new 
building blocks within  the productive forces. In turn we can describe and 
define what the word reform  means outside of ideological declarations "that 
the movement id everything and  the final goal nothing." 
 
Talk about ideological formulation. 
 
Reform contains its own dialectical components.  Reform and  reform 
movements are social movements that alter, change the relations within  and 
between 
classes without changing the property relations. Every system goes  through 
reformulation. Then at a certain stage  . . . ) 
 
2. I could not escape the trap inherent in the concept social relations of  
production as primarily property relations until approaching the issue 
different  in the form of "production relations." Production relations are the 
laws  defining property and the relationship of people to property in the 
process of  production. The relationship of people . . . in the process of 
production means  the actual configuration of the machinery in society and the 
form of cooperation  engendered by this cooperation. 
 
Yea, I know the footnotes are backwards. 
 
WL 
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