Venture Communism/morped/ Socialism Betrayed

[Charles Brown <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

by Waistline2



Comment

"Post industrial" is defined on the basis of that which distinguishes
manufacture from industrial.

^^^^^
CB: Looking at the elements that distinguish manufacture from industrial, I
wouldn't call it "post" because it makes it seem that he elements that
distinguish industry from manufacture have abated or something.  Rather the
elements that distinguished industry from  manufaucture have been augmented
by the revolutions in communication, transportation and cyberization.

Also, "post-industrial" has specific baggage from its use in bourgeois
literature.

^^^^^^^


 No one defines the industrial system as the manufacturing system or the
industrial bureaucracy as the bureaucracy of the manufacturing process
because of the specific combination of human labor + resources + energy grid
as a process.

The world technological regime that is evolving in no way resembles one big
industrial machine . . .

^^^^^
CB: One big industrial factory, not machine. Sure, the division of labor ,
the socialization of production continues to increase. This is a process
Marx and Engels noted that has not abated.

^^^^^^

or an extensively developed industrial machine embracing the world as a
system of electro- mechanical process. The period of history of extensive
development of increasingly large industrial factories, as the basis of
increased production as the primarily signature of industrial society -
electromechanical process, is over.

^^^^
CB: Right, the individual factories are not getting larger. The points of
production are more geographically scattered, however they are more
integrated with each other, such that their combination becomes like a big
factory spread over a giant geographical area. Cyberization-worldwideweb
communication and advanced transportation make this possible. This isn't a
return to manufacture. Rather the machine aspect of industry is so augmented
that the bringing workers together physically close in a factory like old
Ford Rouge is not necessary.

^^^^^


This does not mean there will be no more industrial machines on earth.

The word "post" in post industrial society means that the extensive and
intense development of the productive forces as driven by the electro
mechanical process is halted and a different process of radical intensive
development and expansion of the material power of production is under way.

^^^^^^
CB: Disagree. Cyberization is a continuation and qualitative leap in exactly
the electro mechanical process. The productive forces are still "driven" by
the new developments in the electro mechanical processs. CAD-CAM, just in
time delivery, containerization, more and more trucks, jets, international
cyberspace, steel mini-mills are all new aspects of the electro mechanical
process,not at all an indication of that process's end.

^^^^^



Manufacture is the predominance of man over machine and strictly speaking
means "hand" . . . human and animal power as energy grid. Manufacture refers
to a period of history before the emergence and domination of
machino-facture and steam power.

^^^^^

CB: Agree. Machino-facture and steam power, and as we discussed a number of
times, Co-operation as termed by Marx. Co-operation and Machinery are the
two main elements that Marx notes as constituting Modern Industry:


Part IV: Production of Relative Surplus Value

Ch. 12: The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value
Ch. 13: Co-operation
Ch. 14: Division of Labour and Manufacture
Ch. 15: Machinery and Modern Industry


Co-operation is being negated. Machinery , especially electro (post steam
energy grid) mechanical processes are being augmented, not negated.

^^^^^^6



Industrial production proper is an electromechanical process that supersede
or sublates machino-facture and steam power.

^^^^
CB: I'd use "Industrial production proper" as equivalent to how Marx defines
it the above sections of Capital I. as "Modern Industry". The shift to
electricity and oil from steam does not touch the essence of _industry_,
which is co-operation + machines, whether the machines are steam or oil and
electricity powered.

^^^^^^^

The post industrial society in front of us is not a further extensive
development of the electro- mechanical process but the evolution of the
electro-computerized era. It is this electro-computerized process that makes
a revolutionary intensive development and expansion of the material power of
productive forces possible.

^^^^
CB: I'd call it superindustrial, because the machines are augmented by the
computers, and the machines are the "absolute" in industry and the
cooperation is the "relative" term.  The scattering of the co-operation is
better termed more industrial rather than post industrial. "Industry" also
refers to the large number of products produced, mass production. This also
continues. "Post-industrial" sounds like there is no longer massproduction.
There is more mass production than ever.

^^^^^^



The industrial bureaucracy does not simply go away but is sublated and
reconfigured on the basis of the revolution in the technological regime that
eliminates layer after layer of organization based on the electromechanical
process.

^^^^^^
CB: Cyberization _is_ an electrical process,no ? It is also mechanical in
things like CAD-CAM. Computers don't make things less dependent on the
electromechanical.  The computers reduce the number of workers in the
managerial, engineering, "bureaucratic" layers,just as all increases in the
organic composition of capital do.  There is restructuring not elimination
of industry.


^^^^^^

Factory concentration and productivity today is based on the intensive
development of the material power of production which renders "industrial
giant enterprises" or "big" obsolete. A different form of intensive
development will drive extensive expansion of production. Actually "big" is
sublated or redefined in the same way that industrial relations redefined
machino-facture and systems driven by steam power.

^^^^^^
CB: The points of production are more geographically scattered, but the
scattered points are coordinated by computers in part such that a "Detroit"
point of production is so coordinated with points elsewhere that the
"factory" is , dare I say, global or regional. This is not less
electro-mechancial dependent/centric , but more so.

Again, this is even more of an infrastructural preparation for socialism, in
that socialism is a world system. Just as Lenin noted that imperialism lays
the groundwork for socialism even more than pre-imperialist capitalism did,
the latest superindustry lays the infrastructure for world socialist
revolution.

^^^^^^^



Development from manufacture to machine production was not only a change of
productive forces, but a qualitative development and spreading of new
productive relations - with the property relations within.

^^^^^^
CB: I'm not sure what you mean by "with the property relations within"

^^^^^


The unions of labor force of the workers and the means of production is
simultaneously a connection of productive forces and a connection of people
in the process of production which together makes up relations. The division
of labor in manufacture is a relation in production and also emerges as a
productive force. This applies to industrial society and the post industrial
society evolving in front of us.

^^^^
CB: I'd differentiate between the technological organization of production ,
including machines and who stands where on the shop floor, and property
relations,who appropriates the products.

^^^^^^^^


We do not even have a name for this new evolving society . . . yet. Marx
dubbed the industrial system the capitalist mode of production

^^^^^
CB: Where does he do this ?

^^^^^^^


and up until the emergence of Soviet industrial socialism the industrial
system was called the capitalist mode of production. In the 1930s and 1940s
one spoke of socialist industrialization . . . but everyone understood we
were dealing with the industrial system as a specific unity of human labor +
machines + energy source - with the property relations within.

Qualitative changes in the material power of production changes the form of
how labor is aggregated and put to work and reconfigure the basis classes in
a social system.

^^^^^
CB: I'd differentiate between the technical division of labor and the
property relations/classes.  In the transition from steam to oil, the
technical division of labor changed drastically, but the property relations
remained the same.  Transformation of the technical division of labor in
this case does not change the class relations.

^^^^^^


Industrial machinery as the electromechanical process creates and
necessitates industrial machinists . . . as opposed to soft ware
programmers.

"Post" means the form of the labor process as the industrial process is
undergoing change.

^^^^^^
CB: However, those software programmers are better termed "industrial
software programmers". Their work augments the power of machines and mass
production, so the term "industrial" is best retained.

^^^^^^^^


In the context of Soviet socialism if is my belief and understanding that
one of the objective process they faced was the limit to the extensive
development of industry as electro- mechanical process. This limit to
extensive development based on electro-mechanical process is only resolvable
on the basis of a revolution in production . . . a qualitatively different
process that revolutionized and makes intensive expansion possible . . . and
this intensive expansion of the power of production requires less labor than
the electromechanical process.

^^^^^
CB: Yes, intensive vs extensive development of industry are the terms in
which they discussed it with me back in 1985 when I was there. This was part
of perestroika.  However, intensive development of _industry_ is still
industry. It is a development _of_ industry, not a development out of or
away from industry.

Yes, intensive expansion means more efficient in the sense of fewer person
hours per unit use-value, less labor. Under socialism this is supposed to
translate into shorter and shorter hours of toil, unlike what it does here,
increase poverty and unemployment under the absolute general law of
capitalist accumulation.

^^^^^^


One aspect of Soviet industrial socialism was hitting the barrier of
extensive development as electro- mechanical process. Everyone in the Soviet
Union understood on one level or another that the industrial bureaucracy was
unruly. Yet, . . . the problem can only be resolved on the basis of
revolutionizing production . . . or putting everyone in jail for one offense
or another. A specific mode of production as a combination of human labor +
machines (tools, instruments, etc.) + energy grid only becomes historically
obsolete in relation to its future and not its past or itself.

Grafting increasingly developed computerized systems onto Soviet industrial
socialism would and could have made incremental improvements in the system
and ousted layers of the industrial form of its bureaucracy. This is taking
place now under the worse possible conditions - triumph of the
counterrevolution.

In America we have faced this same problem of counterrevolution . . . as the
system of sharecropping replaced slavery. Sharecropping was not historically
inevitable but rather the inevitable consequence of the alignment of class
forces that was Northern - Wall Street finance capital, in unity with the
shattered slave oligarchy.

The form of the laboring process could not be changed until you have in
existence productive forces that makes such change possible. The plantation
system faced a crisis in its extensive development because it had no way to
intensively develop - revolutionize, the form of the labor process. Hand
labor with primitive tools is hand labor with primitive tools be you a slave
or freeman or sharecropper.

^^^^^^^
CB: Yes, the South started the Civil War (a counter-revolutionary coup
d'etat see Aptheker) because the slave system could only survive by
constantly expanding geographically ,i.e. by geographical extension, or
extensive development. Marx discusses this in his essays on the Civil War
and U.S. economy at that time.

Electro-mechanical development is not limited in the way you are indicating.
Cyberization _is_electro-mechanical intensification.

^^^^^


^^^^^


Other paths of evolution were open but they did not take place and the
counterrevolution triumphed. The mechanization of agriculture was in fact
"post" slavery/sharecropping form of the laboring process in agriculture.

We are passing through an authentic revolution in the material power of
production that is going to change society forever in relationship to the
industrial system. We are only at the beginning of the beginning of this
process. The property relations stagnates the process also from the point of
view that the technology available cannot be implemented without further
destroying the basis of the buying and selling at the base of the value
system.

Yet, . . . the bourgeoisie is trapped by history and is cast as the
involuntary promoter of industry.

Post industrial society means after the period of the rising curve of
industrial expansion as electromechanical process . . . reaching the top of
the bell curve . . . and a new technological regime emerges that begins to
reconfigure the relationship of people to the productive forces.

^^^^^^^

CB: This is the issue in dispute.  I take my baseline from Marx's definition
of Modern Industry above. How in Marx's terms there is there a revolution in
the material power of production, beyond the dissolution of "Co-operation" ,
as I have described it several times ?


Melvin P