[PEN-L:32932] about some quotes from CAPITAL

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

Title: about some quotes from CAPITAL

(sent by mistake before finished. Now finished.)

was: RE: [PEN-L:32916] Re: RE: Re: Re: United Airlines and market socialism

I wrote:
> > Marx actually suggested both (1) that huge capitalist firms represented
> > an abolition of capitalism within capitalism (see chapter 27 of volume
> > III of CAPITAL, p. 438 of the International Publishers' edition)

Louis P writes:
> But that is only a reference to capitalism as it functioned  in earlier
> stages of its development rather than any kind of progressive  movement
> toward socialism, as indicated in Bowman and Stone's paper. Marx says in
> fact that this development "reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a
> new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and
> simply nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by
> means of corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation.
> It is private production without the control of private property." That
> is not what we are shooting for.

Of course not. But Marx is saying that the capitalist-as-entrepreneur was being replaced by the capitalist-as-rentier, as the corporation becomes a miniature planned economy, undermining one official reason why capitalist are paid (the "wages of supervision").

me:
> > that workers' cooperatives were a precursor of socialism ("within the
> > old form the first sprouts of the new," especially by showing that the
> > capitalist was "redundant" (chs. 27 & 23, pp. 440 & 387).

Louis:
> But Marx never uses the word socialism when speaking about such
> cooperatives, only that they are another _expression_ of how credit is
> transforming capitalist production:

He didn't use the word socialism much (while calling himself a "communist"). But in this part of the book, he does talk about overcoming "the antithesis between capital and labor," which sounds a bit like a classless society in a microcosm. (I quoted him on the limits of this story already.) (The words "socialism" and "communism" were buzz-words with all sorts of extraneous connotations back when Marx wrote, just as with today.)

Louis quotes Marx:
> "The credit system is not only the principal basis for the gradual transformation of capitalist private enterprises. into capitalist stock companies, but equally offers the  means for the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises  on a more or less national scale.<

in practice, capitalists don't want to lend to cooperatives. That's one reason why cooperatives tend to die...

continuing the quote:
> The capitalist stock companies [i.e., corporations], as much as the co-operative factories, should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other."<

This quote fits with my point, since the "associated" mode of production is some sort of socialism. In volume I, ch. 1, section 4, he refers to the association of free producers, rather than using the word "socialism" or "communism." So this quote fits with what I said.

Louis:
> Just because something is "transitional", it does not mean that it is
> transitional to socialism.

right. There's always barbarism, as Luxemburg pointed out. Clearly the two ingredients (the huge corporation, the cooperative) can mix in the wrong way, as with United Airlines.

>Marx's formulations in this chapter are oblique, to say the least.

unfinished, unedited, and therefore oblique. (I don't think something is true just because Marx said it was, but it's useful to know what a genius of his caliber did say.) I interpret the "associated" mode of production as some sort of socialism, though as noted above, collectivism need not be pro-worker.

 
> > To my mind, this does not say that Marx emphasized planning
>> (the basic  rule of the huge firms' internal organization) over workers'
>> cooperatives, as the apologists for the old Soviet Union
>> said. Nor does  it say that he emphasized cooperatives over planning (as
>> some "market  socialists" do). Rather, it says that Marx wanted _both_
>> society-level planning _and_ workers' control (overcoming the antithesis between
>> capital and labor) as complementary parts of the same socialist package.

Louis:
> It says no such thing at all. You are just projecting your
> own idealism into Karl Marx.

It seems that every time someone disagrees with Louis, he characterizes their opinions using a word with negative connotations ("idealism").  (Note that I made it very clear that it was _my_ interpretation, not what Marx actually said.)

You are right that Marx didn't sketch utopias (which makes total sense given the plethora of utopian models of his era,  the top-down (Owenite) bias of the vast majority of utopians, and the tactical and strategic silliness of most utopians). But as a materialist, he did look to precursor forms in the real world of capitalism (corporations, cooperatives) as a sign of the possibilities for the future. My impression is that Marx liked the idea of cooperatives but was quite clear about their limitations (unlike most socialists of his day). Similarly, he was quite clear about the limitations of joint-stock corporations. Of course, we shouldn't restrict ourselves to what Marx said or did...

Given the patent failure of the main previous empirical "models" of socialism (the USSR, the Peoples' Republic of China), what are socialists supposed to say they're for? or are we supposed to be nattering nabobs of negativism, opposing capitalism without even thinking of what we're for?

I'd bet that if you were to study actual socialist mass movements (even in rich countries like the US), they had a lot of utopian notions. The moral/utopian dimension has always been an important part of actually-existing socialist movements.

>> Of course, this simply puts a major task on the agenda of
>> socialists:  how can we merge and reconcile central planning and decentralized
>> democratic cooperatives?

> The major task on the agenda of socialists is how to organize
> protests to block Bush's war drive, not write blueprints for future societies.

that's a very economistic perspective: all we should do is focus on the current struggle (limiting thought and discussion) rather than thinking about what may or may not be the way that people can replace capitalism. Now, it seems that only issues of tactics are okay. Even strategy should not be discussed.

Further, it was wrong for Louis to post the article about factory fish farming today, because it clearly is a distraction from organizing protests to block Bush's war drive.

Louis, if you want to limit the scope of the discussion on your own list, do it. But this is not your list. If Michael Perelman wants to limit discussion to things, that's fine.

In any event, I made it pretty clear that I didn't want pen-l to discuss the issue of socialist blueprints, since SCIENCE & SOCIETY had done such a good job.

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Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine