/morped/ Socialism Betrayed - "the property relations within," its meaning

[Charles Brown <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

by Waistline2


 From the standpoint of the form of slave labor prior to Emancipation to
Emancipation - (which ended in counterrevolution that would eventually trap
five million blacks and six million whites in the sharecropping system), to
deployment of the mechanical cotton picker and the tractor . . . to the
growth of the huge industrial farms to the emergence of "frankenfoods" . . .
or the application of science - biogenetic, to farming . . . we are speak of
a huge revolution in the mode of production. 
 
The fact of the matter is that the instruments . . . tools . . . deployment
of human labor as the primary energy source of Southern agriculture did not
change between say 1865 and 1900. With all due respect to Mr. Aptheker . . .
I profoundly disagree that Lincoln's election constituted a revolution. I
also have disagreed with his economic description of slavery and the
aftermath of the Civil War for the past 30 years. 

^^^^^^
CB: The slavocratic ruling class recognized it as a revolution. That's why
they started the Civil War.

^^^^^

 
Such is life. 

^^^^^
CB: C'est la guerre.

^^^^^
 
What is being spoken of is a qualitatively different production process that
forever changes the form of the laboring process that arose and emerged with
the industrial system. The implications are staggering because this
qualitatively new production technique - regime, begins unraveling and
shattering the commodity form and value. This does not mean that "all of the
old mode of production (laboring process) disappears" . . . but rather the
old process is sublated. Farming still takes place in the Mississippi Delta
using a set of instruments and machinery half a century old. 

^^^^^
CB: Sure there are new qualities to the production process due to computers,
but there were new qualities added to the production process by use of
electricity, the internal combustion engine, the use of oil as fuel,
telephonic and radio commuication, etc., etc. all post 1867. The bourgeoisie
constantly _revolutionize_ ( a contradiction) the instruments of production.

^^^^^^^^^

 
The meaning of "the property relations within" is the property relations
within a given mode of production. In my opinion this is at the base of our
divergence and most Marxists have in the past defined modes of production on
the basis of the form of the labor process . . . like slavery, feudalism and
capitalism. I am aware that I divergence from this description, while
remaining consistent with the method Marx deploys in describing the advance
of industry in the Communist Manifesto and Engels description of the advance
of industry in Anti-Durhing. 
 
Here is what Marx states concerning "the property relations within:" 
 
"At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of
society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or â??
what is but a legal expression for the same thing â?? with the property
relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of
development of the productive forces these relations turn into their
fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution." 
 
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface
-abs.htm 
 
The "property relations within" are not simply within the legal expression
as abstraction . . . because what the "legal" expresses is relations of
production or how people are aggregated together to utilize a given state of
development of the mode of production. 


^^^^^^
CB: OK. The passage you quote equates "relations of production" and property
relations. 

"...the existing relations of production, or what is but a legal expression
for the same thing with the property relations..." 



The property relations within which the forces of production developed were
a combination of wage-labor and capital and slave-labor and capital.  When
slave labor-capital was overthrown, this was revolutionary because it change
the fundamental property relations within which the forces of production had
been at work hitherto. The slave-capital relationship couldn't contain the
full technological development potential of Modern Industry.

^^^^^

 
 
"From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn
into their fetters." The productive forces begin with human being and the
specific mode of human labor + tools, instruments and/or machinery + energy
source and how they are organized. How the people are organized are the
relations being referred to this relation becomes a fetter in the face of
the development of the productive forces - with the property relations
within. 

^^^^^^
CB: Well, "property relations within WHICH the productive forces work"

^^^^^^

 
The issue connected to "Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the
Soviet Union" by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny is the economic phenomena
inherit to an industrial mode of production . . . no matter what the
property relations within. 

^^^^^

CB: Yea, I haven't read that book, but you pose the issue as it recurs
between us... What economic phenomena are inherant to an industrial ( I
wouldn't call it a mode of production , but a technological regime)tech
regime , no matter what the property relations within which the techological
regime develops or works ? 

I would say there are economic phenomena that can be isolated without taking
into account the property relations, what I call the mode of production.

^^^^
 
The question is complex and I by no means claim to have "solved it." 
 
I know a little bit about the organization of industrial production on the
factory floor. In the context of a specific stage of development of the mode
of production - a quantitative juncture, in the industrial system, the
organization of say . . . auto production in the Soviet Union in 1960
resembled auto production in America in 1960. The organization of tank
production in the Soviet Union in 1950 was not qualitatively different from
tank production in America in 1950. 
 
In this regard changes the seating arrangements on a sinking ship does not
stop the ship from sinking and even the specific organization of a factory
floor is limited to and governed by the state of development of tool,
instruments, machinery and labor sitting on a definable energy grid. This is
a material limit no matter what the property relations within. 
 
The same or roughly same set of factors - combination of human labor +
machinery + energy source cannot produced a qualitative divergence in the
form of the laboring process simply because one has a different property
relations. 


^^^^^^^
CB: In my opinion, this is exactly what Marx and Engels propose: the
qualitative divergence in the laboring process (subtantive not formal) is
based on the change in property relations from wagelabor-capital to
socialist.

^^^^^^^


Soviet industrial socialism was more industrial than it was economic
communism because economic communism cannot be attained under industrial
conditions of production. 

^^^^^^
CB: Right. The SU could not go beyond socialism to communism without a
worldwide revolution.

^^^^^^^

 
An industrial system is still a system of value production and a distinct
mode of production - with the property relations within. .

^^^^^^
CB: You keep saying "with the property relations within". The clause is
"with the property relations within WHICH  the forces of production work".
The way you say it it sounds like the property relations are within the
industrial system, but in Marx's usage , the industrial system is within the
system of property relations.

^^^^^^^^ 
 
The question deepens on the basis of how it is presented. As opposed to
presenting the question as the dynamics of the second economy and
Gorbachev's revisionism - allowing the growth of the second economy,
Gorbachev's policy is placed within a political framework that says that the
industrial system itself is hostile to economic communism. 
 
Yes, this is a very different approach and to a very large degree based on
the internal organization of the factory floor as industrial production. How
can a new property relations . . . socialism, have the same economic basis
as the old property relations it is replacing? 

^^^^^^^
CB: It is well and often said by Marx, Engels and Lenin, I think. Industrial
production is a sufficient technological base for socialist relations of
production/property relations. Capitalism prepares the technological base
for socialism. The whatever of the new society grows within the womb of the
old , or whatever that saying is. Capitalism prepares the infrastructure for
socialism. See Lenin's discussion in _Imperialism_ as well.

^^^^^^^
 
Soviet socialism and American capitalism hit the same barrier that is the
industrial mode of production because they existed on the same economic
basis. 

^^^^^
CB: American capitalism hit the same barrier as Soviet socialism ?

^^^^^^^
 
I am convinced beyond any possible doubt we are at the beginning of a
profound revolution in the industrial mode of production and the Soviets
faced this revolution also. For the Soviets they were not facing a
revolution in the capitalist mode of production because their industrial
mode of production was not capitalist . . . or reproduction based on the
bourgeois property relations. 
 
The distinction between a given stage of organization of the productive
forces as a specific configuration of the form of human labor + machinery +
energy source . . . and the property relations is always important because
this creates variations in the cycle of reproduction. 
 
However what determines the form of the labor process is not the property
relations within . . . but how labor + machinery + energy source is combined
and set into motion. 

^^^^^^
CB: Right the form of the labor process. The substance of the labor process
is determined by the property relations.

^^^^^^^
 
The bottom line is whether or not computerization, digitalized production
process and advance robotics constitute the opening of a profound revolution
in the form of human labor and my answer is absolutely. The qualitative
addition of this new and revolutionary production technique shatters the old
boundary of the electro-mechaical process that defined the limit to the
intensive development of the labor process under the industrial system.

^^^^^
CB: Yes, but this is the issue in dispute between us. To just reassert your
position in the dispute is to beg the question.

^^^^^^^^ 
 
The labor process is being qualitatively reconfigured in a manner that is
radically different as manufacture is to industrial production . . . if not
more radical. Of course we are at the beginning of this process. 

^^^^
CB: As far as I can see, you have not said what that qualitative change is,
or why it is more profound than the other qualitative reconfigurations in
the history of bourgeois scientific and technolgical revolutions over the
last 140 years since _Capital_.

^^^^^^^^
 
 
 
On another note: In one of Engels letters referring to the contribution of
Karl Marx . . . perhaps an article . . . he states that since Marx the
industrial system has been called . . dubbed . . . the capitalist mode of
production. If Engels had never stated this what we are dealing with and
have lived through is an industrial mode of production . . . in as much as
the Soviets did not call their industrial mode of production the capitalist
mode of production. 
 
Two different property relations shared the same mode of production and here
is the problem. You cannot have the same economic basis - combination of
labor + machinery + energy source as your class enemy and survive . . . or
rather not be in immediate danger of counter revolution. 

^^^^
CB: Maybe if you had an industrial system as developed as your enemies, say
a revolution in Germany and France, then the socialist nations could have
survived the competition with the capitalist ones.

^^^^^^^
 
In respect to your trip to the Soviet Union . . . where you acquired that
wonderful book on Engles . . . did your guess describe the barrier to the
intensive development of the labor process? I would be very interested in
how some Soviets understood the barrier presented as the form of the labor
process corresponding to the industrial mode of production in the Soviet
Union. 

^^^^
CB: Yes, one of the teachers discussed this issue, although it was only one
class, and somewhat token. It was in the literature of the time, the lit of
perestroika.

^^^^^^^
 
My hunch . . . along with Keeran and Kenny is that the bourgeois like
leaders in the Soviet Union thought they could solve a problem of history -
mode of production, with bourgeois market methods and thought in the
shallowness of their minds that decentralization could somehow revolutionize
the form of the labor process. 
 
Was the collapse of the Soviet Union historically inevitable? Not in my
opinion and I think this poses the question incorrectly. The collapse of the
Soviet Union was the historical consequence of a complex of factors that is
the bourgeois world and having to fight on your enemies economic foundation.


^^^^^
CB: I'm thinking it was more the problem of fighting an enemy who had a more
developed industrial economic base AND that stronger industrial base mean
more powerful military might.  The stronger military might of the
capitalists allowed them to force the Soviets to militarize the whole of
Soviet society, to deny full proletarian democracy WITHIN. Democracy is
necessary to full socialist relations of production or property relations.
Socialist democracy is the form of socialist property relations, the way in
which the proletariat exercises ownership of the basic means of production.
But for self-defense against imperialist invasion, war, and threat of
nuclear attack, the SU had to postpone that level of democracy. But in the
postponing the socialist bird was itself strangled. 

The lesson is that an economically more powerful capitalism (in the advanced
countries)  thwarted socialist rev "within" the SU.

^^^^^^^^
 
This is my bottom line difference with Keeran and Kenny concerning the
economic basis of Soviet industrial socialism and the material consequence
of the law of value. My political difference are more subtle and comes your
emerging from a different political polarity in which I sided with the
polemics of the Communists of China during the theoretical debates
concerning the general line of the international communist movement. 
 
Nevertheless, Socialism Betrayed was an interesting book to read. 
 
Melvin P.