Re: Zizek extols Mao (I believe...)

[Ted Winslow <egwinslow@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael wrote:

> > This misinterprets Marx.  Forces and relations of production are
> > "subjective."  They express the degree of development of human
> > "subjectivity," the degree of "development of the human mind."
> >
> > "accumulation is nothing but the amassing of the productive powers of
> > social labour, so that the accumulation of the skill and knowledge
> > (scientific power) of the workers themselves is the chief form of
> > accumulation, and infinitely more important than the accumulation -
> > which goes hand in hand with it and merely represents it - of the
> > existing objective conditions of this accumulated activity.  These
> > objective conditions are only nominally accumulated and must be
> > constantly produced anew and consumed anew."
> > <http://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-
> > surplus-value/ch21.htm>
>
> While I'm sympathetic to your basic point, don't you think you should
> mention that the statement you cite is  preceded by 'According to
> Hodgskin, ....'?

Yes, if the purpose is to indicate the the ideas don't originate with  
Marx.  Immediately after this, he also identifies them with Galiani,  
i.e. as "simply further elaborations of Galiani’s thesis: '… The real  
wealth … is man' (Della Moneta, Custodi.  Parte Moderna, t. III, p.  
229).'"

No, if the suggestion is that Marx doesn't endorse them.  The passage  
from the Grundrisse makes the same claims.  So do many others, e.g.:

“things have now come to such a pass that the individuals must  
appropriate the existing totality of productive forces, not only to  
achieve self-activity, but, also, merely to safeguard their very  
existence. This appropriation is first determined by the object to be  
appropriated, the productive forces, which have been developed to a  
totality and which only exist within a universal intercourse. From  
this aspect alone, therefore, this appropriation must have a  
universal character corresponding to the productive forces and the  
intercourse.
       "The appropriation of these forces is itself nothing more  
than the development of the individual capacities corresponding to  
the material instruments of production. The appropriation of a  
totality of instruments of production is, for this very reason, the  
development of a totality of capacities in the individuals themselves."
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ 
ch01d.htm>

"when the limited bourgeois form is stripped away, what is wealth  
other than the universality of individual needs, capacities,  
pleasures, productive forces etc., created through universal  
exchange? The full development of human mastery over the forces of  
nature, those of so-called nature as well as of humanity's own  
nature? The absolute working-out of his creative potentialities, with  
no presupposition other than the previous historic development, which  
makes this totality of development, i.e. the development of all human  
powers as such the end in itself, not as measured on a predetermined  
yardstick? Where he does not reproduce himself in one specificity,  
but produces his totality? Strives not to remain something he has  
become, but is in the absolute movement of becoming? In bourgeois  
economics -- and in the epoch of production to which it corresponds  
-- this complete working-out of the human content appears as a  
complete emptying-out, this universal objectification as total  
alienation, and the tearing-down of all limited, one-sided aims as  
sacrifice of the human end-in-itself to an entirely external end."
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ 
ch01d.htm>

Ted