Re: Socialism Now

["Greg Schofield" <g_schofield@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Fred you are right to be suspicious of my use of socialisation (see below) and as you have pointed out state capitalism has been written-off by the bourgeoisie in any meaningful sense.

The two things are not unrelated. I have used socialisation in the sense that Lenin used the term in his works on Imperialism - a totally bourgeois form of socialation, but socialisation nonetheless.  Insofar as monopolies and finance capital socialisied production leaving only the mode of acquistion in private hands, this too has now been socialisied through public companies (exceptions abound but the leading forms of capital have all taken this path).

The means of production are mediated by the state through directors. When I said that this was not unrelated to the apparent fall of state-capitalism, it is because the bourgeoisie are now so dependant on the state that they must reduce it to a shadow of its former self in order to have the freedom to act as if the means of production is indeed their private property.

>From this point of view the conversion of the state into a managerial enterprise and the gutting, as is so obviously the case, of political life is a necessity of bourgeois rule. I would also link this with the passing through of the stage of Imperialism itself (another question but again not unrelated to the other two).

The means by which the bourgeoisie have appropriated themselves and delivered socialisied ownership is not in a form we would have desired, the main reason why it has been missed by us - little surprise then that this aspect has been commented on by the likes of Galbraith and Harrington (though I do not know what has actually been said on this).


If looked at from the aspect of the potential to direct the economy through a proletarianised state the first thing is to compare this to the conditions of Lenin and Marx. In their day political socialisation was an inescapable first step, today effective initial direction requires very little change (legal) but an enormous increase in overseeing (practical direction). One of the keys to this is the legal standing of the directors of companies.

PS hand in hand with socialisation the market has become all but exitinct, though its form remains especially at the consumer end of things. The speculative market is perhaps the last hold out of market mechanisms, which of course is a parody of their former function (speculative exchanges are very much removed from the exchanges of actual value - the historical purpose of real markets).

Greg Schofield
Perth Australia



--- Message Received ---
From: Fred Guy <f_d_guy@xxxxxxxxx>
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 21:50:30 +0000
>Subject: [PEN-L:19687] Re: Re: Re: Socialism Now

I would find it helpful if you specified what you mean by 'socialism'
and 'socialisied'.

I am skeptical because some of the past uses of 'socialised' in this
context do not seem applicable today. There was an argument based on
certain isomorphisms of socialist and capitalist production and
administrative systems in the heyday of mass production. Hence the
convergence literature of the sixties, and some of the arguments
advanced by Harrington
and Galbraith in the seventies. Since then, the state socialist half of
this isomorphism has collapsed, and the capitalist half has moved on.

But maybe I'm just out of date. So please expand.

Fred Guy