Re: [Marxism] Do words matter? [was Re: Hedges: The American EmpireIs Bankrupt]

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

"Advanced" as in "advanced countries" embrace a concept of development  of 
productive forces as/and a mode of production, which can be measured with 
the  precision of a natural science. Advanced means "in front of" with the 
measure  being the accumulation, application and deployment of productive 
forces on a  widening scale. 
 
Whether or not these productive forces are deployed to produce bombs and  
drop them on people or houses is immaterial from the standpoint of the  
technological regime.  

Several things are implied in real  time use of "advanced country:" a 
country's historic location on the rising  curve of the industrial revolution, 
and the post industrial technological  regime, as it passed and passes from 
one quantitative boundary of  development  to another. "Advanced" is a concept 
that measures the  progressive accumulation of productive forces and the 
corresponding division of  labor. Here the word "progressive" means 
developmental progression rather than a  measure of the value of ones politics 
and 
moral disposition. 

The  productive forces evolve from simple tools and machines to harnessing 
mechanical  motion to electro mechanical motion to our current technological 
regime, which  displaces electromechanical motion as the pivot of machine 
process. This  displacement occurs in stages. At each boundary in this 
development countries  with the most concentrated organization, deployment and 
utilization of the most  modern means of production are called "advanced." 
 
This process is called "progressive accumulation of productive forces."  

Each boundary of productive force development has its  corresponding social 
relations of production. Social relations of  production express the 
relations of people to property (social relation of  capital), in the process 
of 
production and how people are organized -  cooperation, to deploy a given set 
of production implements, machines, energy  source, etc. For instance 
machine society of the first two decades of the past  century produces a class 
of 
machinists, whose applied working of the productive  forces is an advance 
over simple manufacture. Machine society of the last two  decades of the past 
century produces software programmers and reconfigures the  operations of 
our machinists of the first two decades of the last century. This  applied 
knowledge as production is an advance over the previously existing  
configuration of productive forces. 
 
In addition, at a certain stage in the development of the division of labor 
 and exchange, social relations of production are monetarized.  

The money economy is considered an advance over old economic  relations of 
barter and trade. In real life the injection of the money economy  into a 
natural economy of collective producers was a horribly bloody affair.  Marxist 
call this process "separating the producer from their means of  
production." 

Advanced countries is a concept of a country's  location in the world 
industrial system as producer/ consumer and today  implies one location and 
relations within the post industrial systems and the  modern financial markers. 

American is an advanced capitalist  country. Haiti is not, although she is 
part of the world financial system.  

China is advancing and basically exists amongst the block of  advanced 
countries and also is a historically a core country.  China went  from an 
advanced and core country on earth to colony of imperialism for a brief  moment 
and during the past 30 years has leaped from a backwards country to its  
current economic and political placement in the world system of states.   

Russia is an advanced capitalist/industrial country, and Zimbabwe  is not. 
Russia is not as uniformly advanced as America and more advanced than  China 
in much of its scientific research and technology, specifically military  
technology and pockets of its economy. 

In the context of this  thread, Mr. Medvedev apparently feels Russia is 
being treated as a non-core  country due to its victimization by dollar 
hegemony. Perhaps, China and Brazil  feel the same. 

Russia is in my opinion a core country presently  and historically. Russia 
is a core country in a historically evolved  geographical areas of earth. 
During the Soviet era it was the economic and  political core of a 
non-capitalist system of commodity exchange and  distribution. That is to say, 
a system 
of industrial production and distribution  not driven by financial 
architecture (markets) and monetary relations that arise  on the basis of and 
reproduce the capitalist property relations.  

Let's try to understand why terms like "advanced" and "core" are  used in 
Marxists terminology.  

The industrial revolution  began as a result of the Europeans landing in 
America. This did not create the  industrial revolution because what created 
it was a transition in the building  blocks of the productive forces or the 
technological regime underlying the  existing mode of production. That is to 
say applied science created the pathways  for an enhanced use and deployment 
of mechanical motion - the industrial  revolution. 

What really broke up feudalism or the landed property  relations or 
agrarian society was the transformation in the form of wealth -  property, from 
land to gold or movable wealth. Ship building, iron and steel  industries and 
the enormously profitable slave trade all developed as means to  exploit the 
riches of the Americas. The people who were going to be enriched the  most 
by the conquest of the Americas were the people closest to leading and  
inaugurating the entire process of new wealth creation. England, France,  
Portugal and the Netherlands were the core countries that led the breakup of  
feudalism and the development of the capitalist economy. During this boundary 
in  
the development of the industrial system as capitalist  
production/property/social relations these were the advanced or core countries. 
 

No one calls New World Conquest a progressive act by a morally  advanced 
society. Rather, the concept is that more technologically advanced  societies 
conquered less developed or economically backwards societies. The  language 
problem emerges again as "economically backwards." A mode of production  is 
backwards based on its use and harnessing of mechanical motion, because  
Marxists use a framework of measure that is the progressive accumulation of  
productive forces. 

During a different boundary in the development  of the industrial system, 
America would emerge as an advanced country. Today,  America is the core 
country at the center of the world everything.  

Thus "advanced countries" and "core" countries are living concepts  
articulating living social relations including those arising from the financial 
 
architecture, production relations and countries relative stationing within  
today's world wide exchange and trade relations. 

No one would  mistake Haiti for a "core" country. 

This is not to say that I  oppose a new common language to articulate the 
Marxist idea. After all, our  current use of Marxist terms and language was 
shaped in the hands of the  advanced countries and people and this relation 
expresses their domination. 
 
Bring on the new language. 


WL.  
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