RE: Productive Forces, was Re: reply-part 2

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

> Waistline2@xxxxxxx wrote:
> >
> > >>
> > We demand change in society along the direction of the
> productive forces,
>
> No. Not true. _Many_ Marxists but by no means all put central emphasis
> on the "productive forces." Others argue that this
> proposition about the
> necessary growth of productive forces applies not to all history (and
> certainly not to socialism or communism) but only to capitalism. It is
> this drive to unleash the productive forces that turns
> capitalism into a
> destructive force. See esp. the works of Ellen Meiksins Wood, Edward
> Thompson, Raymond Williams, and Robert Brenner.
>
> Carrol

How do we measure the "productive forces," anyway? It seems that capitalism
would measure their development differently from other modes of production.
(Capitalism might measure them in terms of labor productivity, which is
marketable output per worker, corrected for inflation. There are all sorts
of index-number problems with that measure, BTW.)

Jim Devine