Re: Against existing " socialist contry"

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

MIYACHI TATSUO, your quote is too long to reproduce.




The only booklet I keep at reaching distance from the period of the
"Sino-Soviet" debate is "On Khrushchev's Phony Communism and its historical
lessons for the World," Comment on the open letter of the Central Committee
of the CPSU, Foreign Languages Press Peking 1964. The price on the inside
page is .25 cent - this was "a long time ago."

I believe you state the heart of the factional fight in China, in the context
of the spilt in the "socialist community" as follows:


> "If the reviewer states that distribution according to labor has been
>realized in China and deducts " materialistic interest" from this
>distribution principle, it is the same as Khrushchev's revisionism. In
>present China, it is necessary to organize "materialistic interest" and to
>maintain certain wage differences. But this necessity does not come from
>distribution according to labor. It is necessary to realize, in the
>transitional period, that modernization of industry and agriculture is
>needed for the development toward a socialist society. The necessity to
>organize "materialistic interest" is determined by economic need for
>modernization and for the increase of labor productivity. It depend on the
>CCP's policy whether this modernization and the increase of labor
>productivity will be utilized for the development of socialistic elements.
If
>it deduces this economic need from the principle of distribution according
>to labor and claims it to be a socialistic element, the CCP like the
>CPSU cannot develop socialistic elements through modernization and
>>increase of labor activity."

As I understand the totality of the presentation, the conclusion is:

>"In order to reform this ownership in the direction of common ownership of
>policies of the party.

>   After the downfall of the "Gang of the Four," the economic development
>stage of China made it necessary for the CCP to adopt "material interest"
>In order to realize the "Four Modernization."  But it is revisionism to
>derive this "material interest" from the socialist principle of
>distribution according to labor and to define it as a socialist element.
>This revisionism must be severely criticized.

>Whether the "Four Modernization" leads to the development of socialistic
>element or to the resurrection of capitalist element the CCP, to take the
>first step must criticize Stalin's doctrine of socialism, recover that of
>Marxism and conquer the Stalinist limitation of Maoism."


Further, it is my understanding that the criticism of Soviet socialism is

> "Nationalization and collective ownership does not mean the completion of
>socialistic reform of ownership. Socialistic ownership is nothing else than
>common ownership of producers, and state and collective ownership is what
>must be further reformed toward this."

>From this I read that the criticism of Stalin's theory is misunderstanding
the law of value.

>Stalin looked on nationalization of production means in industry and
>the formation of collective ownership in agriculture as completion of
>socialist reformation in ownership, and prescribed that the USSR had reached
>the first stage of communism. Due to this definition, he was forced to come
>up with a new theory that allowed commodity production and value law in a
>socialist society, and thus he revised the Marx's view of communist society.


By Stalin creating a "new theory of value" I understand this as a critique of
sections 1 -  7 of "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR."  I believe
that Stalin's description of the law of value as a law of commodity
production (distinct from simply being a law of capitalist commodity
production) is correct. This statement is conditioned on using existing
conditions and concepts at the time they were made. After the communist won
the political and military contest and began implementing public property
relations in industry, the task was building the material basis of/for
socialism. I understand the words "material basis of/for socialism" to mean
the development of the industrial infrastructure, specifically what has been
called "heavy industry" as the fundamentality for the creation of a "light
industry" or what is called in America the consumer industry and economy or
personal items of consumption.

Half a century after the descriptions in "Economic Problems of Socialism in
the USSR" were made, the further progressive accumulation of the productive
forces allows further assessment and creates new possibilities.

The theoretical problem as I understand your presentation, rivets on the use
of money as a mediator and expression of congealed labor in the exchange, and
for circulation and individual possession of products.

"Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its
cultural development conditioned thereby"  (Section 1 Critique) and in the
next paragraph Marx point out the higher phase (as opposed to my use of the
word "stage" they are not the same) he speaks of human development

"after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round
development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow
more abundantly - only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be
crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each
according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

I agree with the conception of the "transition world" having "two sides:" 1.
A political transition wherein revolutionary come to power and implement
policy to curb and change property relations, and 2. More fundamental, a
transition to a new mode of production. The problem with the words "mode of
production" is that within the communist movement it is often defined as
"capitalist versus socialist"  or just property relations without
fundamentality being given to "the material powers of production"  -
specifically the technological development of the sum total of the properties
of the infrastructure of production.


In other words, stated in the historic political terms of the Marxist
intellectual movement, when one speaks of "crisis theory" (in quotes) one is
referring to the political crisis generated on the basis of market crisis or
interruption, which more or less allows for political changes as distinct
from the specific transition in the technical basis of the material power of
production. You put "crisis theory" in quotes and others do not and reveal -
in my estimate, confusion on mode of production. Mode of production is
indissolubly fused with and embraces a technological development with clearly
defined boundaries, which have revealed themselves.

In early writings you state "socialism a possibility not a necessity" which
does not translate well into English without definition.  As I interpret
"socialism a possibility not a necessity" combined with the material quoted
from Marx, what is meant is the "possibility" for socialism arises under
conditions where revolutionaries come to power with a policy of public
property in the infrastructure, but lack the material development to avoid
the use of money as a "holder" of labor for purposes of exchange. However,
the necessity for a society of associated producers with the abolition of all
property relations is a historic consequence of the development of the mode
of production.

The rub is that society emerging from the battle with lingering feudal
economic and social survivals has also been called "socialism," because of
the assault on private property relations and prohibition of ownership of the
fundamental properties of the infrastructure of reproduction.  Further in
section 1 of the "Critique" Marx speaks of the individual producer in a
communist society that "emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in
every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with
the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges."

Marx speaks of the principle governing the exchange of commodities.

"Within the cooperative society based on common ownership of the means of
production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does
the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these
products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to
capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion
but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of
labor," objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all
meaning.

"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has
developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges
from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically,
morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old
society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer
receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly
what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of
labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the
individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual
producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share
in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished
such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common
funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of
consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of
labor, which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in
another.
Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the
exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content
and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give
anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass
to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But
as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is
concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity
equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal
amount of labor in another form."

Further,

"Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence
of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter
distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The
capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the
material conditions of production are in the hands of non-workers in the form
of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the
personal condition of production, of labor power. If the elements of
production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means
of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of
production are the cooperative property of the workers themselves, then there
likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from
the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the
democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and
treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence
the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After
the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?"

The matter becomes complex. In the Critique Marx states. "Between capitalist
and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of
the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition
in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the
proletariat."


However, "nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual
means of consumption" appears to be a defining element of socialism. Money
and its ownership or rather accumulation in Stalin's Soviet Union could not
empower the individual with the ability to own instruments of production in
the industrial infrastructure. It is understood that agriculture was
different and the hiring of labor by individuals existed.  Soviet socialism
was not "complete." The period of revolutionary transformation combined with
"nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of
consumption" would equal "socialism" or more accurately transition to
socialism.

This is my understanding of the politics and economic of the transition
period outlined in the Critique of the Gotha Program.

I understood your meaning "socialism is not necessity" to mean at "the
current state in the development of the material power of production money is
not needed in the distribution of the social products."

Material incentives are political and necessary, especially under conditions
where meeting any set of personal consumption needs spontaneously generate
new needs and there does not exist a productivity infrastructure capable of
consistently reproducing the "first need." Further the pressure of not simply
imperialism as domination, but advanced material powers of production and
communications creates "needs" impossible to meet in the less developed
countries. From the standpoint of defining the mode of production not simply
on the basis of the property relations - which are very important, but the
fundamentality of technology development, the transition period today appears
as a new stage in the development of the material powers of production and
the last phase of the decay of capital - roughly 10 - 20 years ago.

Is this the meaning of?

>"After the downfall of the " Gang of the Four," the economic development
>stage of China made it necessary for the CCP to adopt "material interest"
>in order to realize the "Four Modernization."  But it is revisionism to
>derive this "material interest" from the socialist principle of
>distribution according to labor and to define it as a socialist element.
>This revisionism must be severely criticized."


On this basis I understand the following to be inaccurate (I do not say
"wrong").

>If the reviewer admits that in Marx's assumption that commodity
>production and classes are extinct in a socialist society and that Chinese
>society has not reached that development stage yet, it is a contradiction to
>claim that distribution according to labor is practiced in present Chinese
>society which Marx applied to the production relationship in the first
>stage of communism.

Marx left himself considerable room in defining the socialism as it emerges
from capitalism. The working class is no longer the same class as individuals
facing an "individual employer" with the power of capital. It is in
transition, but its specific development is determined by the fundamentality
of the technical basis of production, along with culture, intellectual
currents, and political forms of proletarian democracy. Yes, there was a
working class in the Soviet Union but not the same as its counterpart in
America.

It is understood that Soviet Socialism arose from lingering feudal economic
and social relations.

A society of associate producers, as articulated by Marx and given general
outline in the Critique of the Gotha Program is impossible - in my opinion,
when ones task is to overcome lingering feudal social and economic
structures. Abolition of the antithesis between town and country is
inconceivable under such conditions and is only now beginning to appear on
the horizon. Under such conditions material concepts about the abolition of
classes as "sociological categories" defined on the basis of property
relations is premature.

The process is not pure. In America there existed a form of production of
cotton, where this product entered the world of capitalist commodity exchange
and its conversion into capital. This cotton was produced by slave labor. The
slave owner resembled a distorted merchant capitalist on the one hand and an
outright capitalist on the other, in as much as he owned and sold the surplus
product. No laboratory purity.

Soviet society was and remains in transition but was socialism as it
appeared, no matter what the distortions, in my opinion. The Soviet Union was
a socialist country developed on the basis of a formerly existing boundary of
technical development of the material power of production. Its socialism
consisted in the nonexistence of private owners of the fundamental properties
driving the industrial infrastructure.

The general law of value - that is the fact and recognition in the mind of
humanity that commodities embody a certain "magnitude of congealed human
labor" cannot be vanquished by the will of man. Meaning a certain technical
development in the "material power of production" must exist that renders
increasing portions of human labor superfluous to the production of
commodities; creates a more than less large segment of society unable to sell
its labor power for enough "equivalents" to sustain family reproduction, and
this process is slowly grasped in the mind of humanity as the fundamental
feature of production and daily life. Further, all production is social in
all the advanced countries, including agriculture. There will not be a fight
to socialize production as was the case in the Soviet Union, unless an
immense amount of productive forces are destroyed.

I believe this is the fundamental content of the "transition world." Hence,
we are at the first stage in the transition to a new mode of production. We
can go to the first phase of communism, "associate society."  There is no
need for money or labor certificates. Only protection from massive theft of
products.


Question: Is Economic Problems in the USSR incorrect and was there no
difference between the policy of Stalin and Khrushchev? Was Stalin "wrong" or
historically limited in his policy of industrialization? Is it incorrect to
define boundary or quantitative expansion of mode of production on the basis
of technological development and emergence of a new technology? Or is this
looking at question from "wrong side" of prism?  What are credit capitalist
countries? (Domination of speculators?)


Melvin P.


PS. I did remember that the article you reproduced was 24 years old. At that
time I did not grasp the fight around material incentives was a political
struggle concerning distribution, etc. I am ashamed now, but at the time I
thought it was a struggle against "western culture."  Sorry.