PEN-L message, Re: Picking up the thread....

I agree with David S. that the idea of the clash of the relations of production and the forces of production is central to Marx's theory, even if Marx didn't use that phraseology very often. In his preface to A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, he made it clear that he was presenting only the "guiding principle of my studies" (a heuristic) rather than a finished theory. A lot of the rest of his theory is a development of that idea.

It's pretty clear that Marx saw the "capitalist mode of production" as a system of "relations of production" having internal contradictions (even if he didn't develop this theory completely). Capitalism is a form of commodity production involving free wage labor (i.e., labor-power is treated as a commodity). As part of its "laws of motion," this generates objective ("material") conditions -- associated with the quality and quantity of the forces of production that capitalism generates -- that allow the working class to unify (concentration of production into factories and the like, urbanization, etc.) and developments that reveal the systemic nature of the problem (the centralization of production and crisis tendencies). Though Marx didn't develop a very good theory of the "subjective factor" (the self-organization of a class-conscious proletariat), it's pretty clear that he saw the system as developing conditions that could lead to "conflict with the relations of production" and even its downfall.

While this theory of internal contradiction is pretty clear (given the unfinished state of CAPITAL), it's also very abstract (incomplete). The real world involves capitalism's dynamic "articulation" with other modes of production, relations of patriarchy, ethnic and racial relations, and the like. Further, the simple story of CAPITAL is made more complex as capitalism expanded beyond Western European and North American bounds to dominate the rest of the world (imperialism).

Jim D.

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

-----Original Message-----
From: dmschanoes [mailto:dmschanoes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 9:12 AM
To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [PEN-L] Picking up the thread....

Several days ago Carrol Cox took exception to my references to "the conflict between the means and relations of production" as being essential to Marx's analysis of, and to, capital.

I answered him offlist to avoid overposting.

In the attempt to exercise my full ration of bandwidth, I'll reproduce my reply today. Let's just call it a placeholder...

I promise however not to re-enter the Greenspan discussion...

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Carrol,

Marx uses that exact phrase sparingly to be sure, but to say that is the extent of Marx's analysis thereof is to miss the point, and entirely, of everything he writes about capital being a contradiction reflected into itself, contradiction in motion, creating the terms, conditions, and actors in its own overthrow.

Everything Marx writes about exchange value is about the social organization of labor and the necessity of that organization to correspond with development, (growth and rational deployment) of the means of production. Everything he writes about the problems of capital in the areas of expanded reproduction, overproduction, declining rates of profit, is a reflection of the conflict between the relations of production-- capital, i.e. means of production as private property, and wage-labor, each existing in the organization of the other, and the means of production-- the absolute growth of the fixed asset base, the constant portion, the accummulated dead labor and the necessity of social revolution triggered by this conflict.

I don't know how it is possible to read Capital, Grundrisse, TSV, the notebooks, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and the Marx-Engels correspondence on the US Civil War, and not see how this central facet permeates every bit of analysis.l

Overproduction is this conflict compressed into one "body" so to speak. The falling rate of profit is another compressed manifestation of this.

I have written on this extensively and if you're interested I can send some of it to you.

I do not cite scriptures and in my analysis of oil I pointed out exactly how the oil price marked that ongoing conflict between the means and relations of production.

dms