[Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering the production of Tamiflu
If capitalist relations of production fetter the forces of production from producing Tamiflu ,and there is big epidemic, it could contribute to bursting those relations of production asunder. CB ^ [lbo-talk] Indian Company to Make Generic Version of Flu Drug Tamiflu joanna 123hop at comcast.net mailto:lbo-talk%40lbo-talk.org?Subject=%5Blbo-talk%5D%20Indian%20Company%20 to%20Make%20Generic%20Version%20of%20Flu%20Drug%0A%09TamifluIn-Reply-To= Fri Oct 14 08:29:03 PDT 2005 * Previous message: [lbo-talk] Indian Company to Make Generic Version of Flu Drug Tamiflu * Next message: [lbo-talk] Indian Company to Make Generic Version of Flu Drug Tamiflu * Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] * Search LBO-Talk Archives Limit search to: Subject Body Subject Author Sort by: Date Rank Author Subject Reverse Sort Like the bible says: and the last shall be the firstor something like that. Picture this, cranking out the generic antiviral, India staves off bird flu pandemic while the West manages to save the few millions they have drugs for, but lose a sizable proportion of the rest. I notice that the media IS reporting this little Capitalist blip: no generics...even if it means mass death...but not commenting much on it. Joanna Ira Glazer wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/14/health/14virus.html By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. Published: October 14, 2005 A major Indian drug company announced yesterday that it would start making a generic version of Tamiflu, the anti-influenza drug that is in critically short supply in the face of a possible epidemic of avian flu. * Previous message: [lbo-talk] Indian Company to Make Generic Version of Flu Drug Tamiflu * Next message: [lbo-talk] Indian Company to Make Generic Version of Flu Drug Tamiflu * Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] More information about the lbo-talk mailing list http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering - Restriction
My comments are below (labelled V2:) Victor - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Friday, September 30, 2005 13:09 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering - Restriction Comment Actually, I just returned home from a poker game and read your reply only once. And found it extremely thought provoking. I do believe the Marxists in the Western World have yet to make their maximum contribution to applied Marx method. In passing the so-called spontaneous development of the productive forces does in fact need to be made more concrete and a law system extracted from the moment we are living - even if it is historically inaccurate. Towards this end I have tried - perhaps inadequately, to describe the process the best I can on the basis of a certain restructuring of the infrastructure taking place. Much of this is simply outside my ability to totalize. More later Waistline ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering
WL:Marx is not speaking about plant closing or relocation of production facilities ^ CB: This conclusion is not supported by Marx's discussion as quoted on this thread. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] fettering
Moving plants overseas, industrial plant closings, and then measuring this against employment opportunity of American workers, and on this basis speaking of the fettering of productive forces - in the context of job opportunity for American workers, is risky business for communists. Our relative prosperity has been carved out of the back of the world proletariat. We forget we are imperial communists and imperial Marxists - the most imperialist on earth, and not simply bourgeois, and I will not speak about the fettering of productive forces in relationship to American workers. Fettering according to Marx is about a collision between the conditions of bourgeois property and the productive forces - not a segment of the world working class. ^ CB: Nowhere in his remarks, does Marx say that the fettering impacts all national segments of the working class at the same time. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering - Restriction
V: Marx most famous statement on the productive forces coming into conflict with the existing relations of production as Marx's great 'cop out' rather than his greatest contribution to the history of the development of the relation between the forces of production and of the relations of production. It represents Marx's almost desperate effort to find a way out of a serious contradiction in his theory of development; the problem of accounting for the impact of material forces on a system (of the relations of production ) that is in essence a closed, self-organizing, and self-developing organization in which the concepts that describe the organization are what facilitate its operation and growth, i.e. capital, profits, and all the rest of the nonsense of capitalist political economy. WL: Marx most famous statement on the productive forces coming into conflict with the existing relations of production is no cop out but the foundation for what is the science of society and is better understood in connection with his letter of December 28, 1846 to P.V. Annenkov. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1846/letters/46_12_28.htm Let's look at Marx most famous quote in its entirety. I have numbered the paragraphs for points of reference only. Marx writes: Karl Marx: 1). In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. 2). The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. 3). At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing — 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. 4). Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. 4). No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the tasks itself arises only when the material conditions of its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation. 5). In broad outlines Asiatic[A], ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production — antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonisms, but of one arising form the social conditions of life of the individuals; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This social formation brings, therefore, the prehistory of society to a close. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm WL: Marx accounts for the historical progression from one mode of production to another, by first redefining history on the basis of the progressive accumulation of productive forces, rather than God's will, and locating the change factor or change wave as a movement of antagonism arising from the development of the material productive forces of society. Marx
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering - Restriction
Finally! I was waiting for a response to that provocation. I'm writing so it'll take a bit before I respond in full. And thanks, Victor - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Friday, September 30, 2005 13:09 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering - Restriction V: Marx most famous statement on the productive forces coming into conflict with the existing relations of production as Marx's great 'cop out' rather than his greatest contribution to the history of the development of the relation between the forces of production and of the relations of production. It represents Marx's almost desperate effort to find a way out of a serious contradiction in his theory of development; the problem of accounting for the impact of material forces on a system (of the relations of production ) that is in essence a closed, self-organizing, and self-developing organization in which the concepts that describe the organization are what facilitate its operation and growth, i.e. capital, profits, and all the rest of the nonsense of capitalist political economy. WL: Marx most famous statement on the productive forces coming into conflict with the existing relations of production is no cop out but the foundation for what is the science of society and is better understood in connection with his letter of December 28, 1846 to P.V. Annenkov. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1846/letters/46_12_28.htm Let's look at Marx most famous quote in its entirety. I have numbered the paragraphs for points of reference only. Marx writes: Karl Marx: 1). In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. 2). The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. 3). At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing — 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. 4). Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. 4). No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the tasks itself arises only when the material conditions of its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation. 5). In broad outlines Asiatic[A], ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production — antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonisms, but of one arising form the social conditions of life of the individuals; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This social formation brings, therefore, the prehistory of society to a close. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm WL: Marx accounts for the historical progression from one mode
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering - Restriction
WL: It gets deeper. The actual workers engaging production are capital during the epoch of the bourgeoisie . . not just capital, but capital in the hands of . . or rather capital operating on the law system that corresponds to individuals privately owning production. V: First, the worker is not capital, the labour power he gives to the capitalist in return for his wage which is, ideally the amount necessary to preserve the labourer's work capacity and to produce the next generation of workers. Adam Smith, Ure (the 19th century ideologue of industrialization) as well as Marx all made the point that the outcome of mechanization was to depress all the creative, intellectual (and even martial!) qualities of the worker. The creativity, intelligence and martial virtues are not necessary characteristics for a machine tender and are usually regarded as spoiling the quality of a properly docile, obedient worker. This is not fettering, but an essential necessity for the effective operation of creative, intelligent and very very martial capitalism. *** WL: I cannot justify why I wrote workers engaging production are capital other than muddleness and being full of myself. Workers are not capital. :-( My statement is a horrible and incorrect way of approaching the identity of interest and unity of labor and capital as bourgeois production. I stand corrected. WL: I understand Marx critique to be of the evolution of the industrial system as a specific organization of human labor + tools, instruments, energy source, organization, etc., as relations of production, as it grew out of agrarian relations, with concrete industrial relations emerging on the basis of bourgeois production. Hence, the bourgeois mode of production. WL: 1) It seems you are saying or imply that the concept of bourgeois need as and versus human requirements . . . 2). is inadequate in detailing how the circuit of reproduction of things, on the basis of bourgeois property, contains the meaning of fetter, 3). because a). this is a self contained argument without measure, using concepts that express that that is peculiar to bourgeois production to critique bourgeois production and the concept arose on the basis of the bourgeois system it is critiquing; and 4). b). fettering has to be proven on the basis of real existing systems of production (modes of production) in comparison and competition. This is my understanding of your meaning. (V: . . . just look at how you write on this inner logic of the dialectics of the development of productive process: The rebellion against themselves as productive forces is the inner meaning of the spontaneous development of production or what drives sublating one historically evolved state of development. What reification! The very critique of Marx against the fetishism of capitalist political economy finds a home in his explanation of how the forces of production force the development of new forms of relation of production. ...the productive forces also rebel against themselves as productive forces at a given state of development and as productive forces organized as capital - bourgeois property. More reification and a most imprecise description of the conditions in which this rebellion of the tools occurs at a given state of development. Indeed, changes in the forces of production do determine the relations of production, but the process is a complex evolutionary one in which new modes of production emerge alongside dominant forms, as a product of material conditions produced by the latter. Some of these new modes represent more effective systems for handling productive processes in the expanding material states generated by the dominant system than the dominant system itself.) *** WL: I avoid the use of concepts like reification and only very recently began using mediate as a concept of complexity and interaction, precisely because abstractions were treated as concrete things and the abstract concept that arose during a historically specific moment were used to describe and define the very thing from which it arose. It is perhaps true that a certain reification has taken place, takes place and continues to take place concerning Marx most famous statement on the conflict between the productive forces and the relations of production. I attribute this to our past inability to make concrete the meaning of at a certain stage of their development as our moment of history, although Marx and Engels describe their meaning in concrete terms. Marx could not define a certain state forward, - in my estimate, but only generalized its meaning in retrospect. Is this not all of our historical limitation? I am saying that today we can further define a certain stage different from Marx and more fully than Lenin. Perhaps, ...the productive forces also rebel against themselves as
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering- Was the Industrial Revolution 2
CB: The computer revolution might become a fettering of productive forces that generates social revolution, if the runaway plants made possible by computers fetters the development of productive on the U.S. territory to the point that the U.S. labor aristocracy bolts its collaboration with the bourgeoisie , and leads the working class in sublating or revolutionizing the bourgeois property relations in the U.S. That would be labor ex-aristocrats, like airline mechanics, PATCO workers, steelworkers getting radicalized and moving with Seven League Boots, like Americans are want to do. WL: It seems you are stating that the computer revolution just might make possible the fettering of the material power of production (not its deployment) but the material power and IF . . . if the runaway plants . . . made possible by computers . . . fetters (act as a fetter? On) the development of productive on the US territory . . . the former labor aristocracy might lead the workers into revolution. Building new factories outside the multinational state structure of America is not the Marxist standpoint of the concept of the fetter on the development of the material power of the productive forces . . . in America. The computer revolution - (what I call the transition from electromechanical production process to electro-computerized production process and advance robotics), does not fetter the development of the material power of production but enhances it. The fetter on the productive forces, that is characteristic of the bourgeois mode of production refers to the property form that dictates how the technological advance is implemented and deployed . . . not plant location in the world system of bourgeois production. Lets examine the theory construct underlying your statement and its meaning. CB: 1). The computer revolution might become a fettering of productive forces that generates social revolution, if 2). the runaway plants made possible by computers fetters the development of productive on the U.S. territory 3). to the point that the U.S. labor aristocracy bolts its collaboration with the bourgeoisie, 4). and leads the working class in sublating or revolutionizing the bourgeois property relations in the U.S. That would be labor ex-aristocrats, like airline mechanics, PATCO workers, steelworkers getting radicalized and moving with Seven League Boots, like Americans are want to do. WL: MIGHT! Something Might happen. Comeon brother! The politics of this statement is nothing more than anarcho-syndicalism and smacks of national chauvinism. What is stated above is that job availability - (the runaway plants) - employment opportunity, might fetters productive in America and this might result in former members of the labor aristocracy leading the American workers in revolution. How many members of this former labor aristocracy are we talking about . . . that . . . might . . . lead the revolution? Ten . . . twenty . . . ten thousand? Perhaps, this was written in haste, although I am familiar with the national chauvinism and prejudice we inherited as the most bourgeois of all bourgeois working classes. The workers themselves are of course simultaneously productive forces and embody real relations of production and ownership rights in our system of production. They are fettered by definition, but this is stretching the framework of discussion, which centers on Marx description of the general law of society in his Preface. if the runaway plants made possible by computers fetters the development of productive on the U.S. territory . . . is little more than trade union talk that expresses the imperialist feeling of a section of American society. Runaway has a material meaning in our culture . . . as in the movie Runaway Bride and the case of some women that made national headlines a couple of months ago, as a missing person because she decided against marriage and ran way. It gets deeper. The formulation if the runaway plants made possible by computers fetters the development of productive on the U.S. territory means that we are not taking about the entire historical tendency of bourgeois commodity production as it transforms the world on the basis of the industrial system deployed as privately owned capital, but a new qualitative dimension that arises from the computer. That might fetter productive. The general outlook on this process within Marxism is two basic categories that deal with the export of commodities outlined by Marx in the Communist Manifesto and the export of capital outline by Lenin in imperialism. Marx and Lenin speak of imperial domination as the logic of exporting a higher production relations at different stages of the industrial process. The export of capital, no matter what its form is not the meaning of fettering of which Marx outlines in his Preface. Shattering bourgeois property as a material act - sublating,
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering in U.S. national territory; a little chauvanism
CB: In other words, the bourgeoisie doesn't fetter the development of the material productive forces outside of the U.S.national territory where it runs the plants away to. It buildsup the productive forces in Mexico, Korea, and other places to which industrial production has been moved. It has not fettered their development in those countries. But it has fettered them in the U.S. national territory. This by the way, is a bit of a material basis for social revolution in the U.S. national territory. The transnational financial-corporate bourgeoisie are fettering the development of the productive forces in the U.S. national territory to the extent that there should be ripeness in even privileged sectors of the American proletariat like the airplane mechanics for some shaking up of the relations of production. WL: Really. And I thought the bourgeois property relations inherently fetters the development of the productive forces, even as it revolutionizes production by only deploying the material power of production on the basis of maximum profits. Pardon my variance from Marx. You State: It (the American bourgeoisie) buildsup the productive forces in Mexico, Korea, and other places to which industrial production has been moved. It has not fettered their development in those countries. May I suggest that you tell this to the Mexican communists. ** CB: The plants are run away overseas more to run them away from the working class in the U.S.I said the plants are moved away from the owners as a byproduct as in indirect result, of running them away from the U.S. workers. WL: I call this national chauvinism. I will not seriously engage this kind of thinking. You should be ashamed. ** CB: Note they run them over to some other workers in other countries. Thus, things are not post-industrial. We are still very industrial. The U.S. national territory has been deindustrialized relative to its level of industrialization in the recent past. WL: Of course we are very industrial. The technological advance is in its opening era, that inaugurated a new epoch or new mode of production. The course of development has been studied and written about for the past twenty-five years. We are most certainly not in transition from industrial society to industrial society but to post industrial society. You compare the wrong things. The comparison is against the technical state of development of the productivity regime and underlying infrastructure of today with that of say 1970. The evolution of the productivity regime as deployment of the positive advances of science, is restricted by the bourgeois property relations and whether or not plants are moved from the country or not is irrelevant to the implementation of the scientific revolution and its deployment. Implementation and deployment is on the basis of the dimensions of the market as consumers, consuming on a labor exchange basis that is the essence of bourgeois property. Waistline ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering - Restriction
V: Restriction itself is either a function of recognized need (self-restriction: what Hegel and Marx regard as the real nature of freedom) or of coercion by others to realize their needs in contradistinction from one's own. Of course the subject of restriction is here is that of human interaction and not of a reified abstraction such as, 'the forces of production. To discuss the abstract forces of production as the subject of restrictions of a specific system of relations of production is meaningless insofar as the abstract forces of production refers only to a component of a theory of productive systems without form or function relative to some specified relations of production. You can, say, compare the forces of production of capitalism with those of feudalism or of some other concrete productive system to determine the differential properties of each system and thereby the limits on the development of the forces of production imposed by the relations of production of one system relative to the other. So, pray tell, to what are you comparing the forces of production of capitalism? WL: I agree that there is an abstract character to restriction or the fettering of productive forces that is the material expression of human interaction - objectified labor. I first attempted a systematic explanation of this on Marxmail several years ago. The last exposition on this inherent restriction as human interaction was an imaginative article written as a post card from the year 2050 I believe. for the Socialism list. Here is my vision of the process in our imaginative communist economy. 1). The restriction I refer to is the inherent nature of the infrastructure and production. Discovery can outrun the time frame in which it takes to get an idea from the individual or group into the manufacturing process, prototypes, and full implementation to product in consumer or associated producers hands. For instance, from planning to construction and production for a new computer chip making facility might take 36 months, during which time aspects of the process have been further revolutionized but cannot be grafted unto the pathways of the facility under construction, because the properties of the new design may outrun the capacity of the new pathways. 2). At each stage of the process there is the human interaction of individuals colliding with one another as an expression of what makes us social. Freedom here, is recognizing this condition of being. In our imaginative communist economy organization is horizontal and runs around the globe on the basis of the world wide web that allows access to all production information and details of all schematics. Various jocks - engineers, builders, associated producers, etc., access this information and present designs, but they are located within the radius of the actual facility and their production team. This is an inherent restriction on the potential because these new designs have to travel through a system of implementation. Although abstract, but conforming to the outline of the new emerging infrastructure, 1 and 2 are different sides of the production process and its inherent restrictions. This abstract process operates in modern society within a property shell. This process was even worse in the auto industry as it is configured as bourgeois need and . . . AND . . . operating on the basis of the circuit and cycles of bourgeois reproduction. Vehicles of course are the positive result of the technological advance. They are neither bourgeois or communist except as metaphor. (What is a socialist automobile? A vehicle produced by the working class and driven by its leadership). Yet, the sum total of our present day commodities express the value relations and bourgeois need. Communist economy does not remove this contradiction that is human interaction with alienated . . . pardon, objectified labor. What is removed is how this inherent contradiction, born of the emergence of the mode of production as society configuration, moved in antagonism, within bourgeois society. In auto what I experienced or imagined myself to have observed over a life time is the timing and conditions under which the technological advance is implemented that discloses the actual living fetters bourgeois production place on the development of its productive forces. The technological advance is not simply grafted upon the existing productive forces without thought, or a logic but implemented at the bottom of the crisis of profitability. That is expansion in a booming market is driven by working three shifts or building more than less replicas of an existing facility because capital must have existing equipment immediately. The marked tendency is to build a new factory with an improved technological bias at the bottom of the curve to overcome the crisis of profitability, which increases the density of constant
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering
WL, I've written my comments under the appropriate paragraphs below. Peace and the strength to preserve it, Victor - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Friday, September 16, 2005 1:44 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering 1. No capitalist can afford to fetter the development of the forces of production without going down. Marx made the point that in order just to maintain a stable rate of profit capitalist enterprises must at very least conform to the general state of development of the means of production and to the wage rates general to the system as a whole. Given that the capitalist mode of production is necessarily out of control other than through the self-regulation of universal competition, even attempts of monopoly capital to control development of productive process are relatively short-lived. The fettering of capitalist production will not emanate with capitalist enterprise. Comment I believe I made my point and that the bourgeois property relations is by definition a fetter, restrain and/or restriction on the development of the material power of the productive forces or the productive forces. The issue seems to me to not be what the capitalist can afford but the law system of bourgeois profits. It is only at a certain stage that the productive forces come into conflict with the relations of production and its superstructure relations, with the property relations within, that this contradiction passes over or it replaced by antagonism. You are certainly correct in saying that the relations of production and the legal system they engender direct, focus, and even restrict some avenues of development of the forces of production. This is what we call the reciprocal effect of consequent systems on the conditions that produce them, e.g. of the relations of production on the forces of production and the legal system of property rights on the relations of production. But, in this sense all systems of production are restricted, after all, it is these restrictions that make them distinct modes of production. The issue here, is not the bourgeoisie fettering capitalist production. (The fettering of capitalist production will not emanate with capitalist enterprise.) The fettering of the productive forces or their restriction to growth based on the dynamic of capitalist profits. Restriction itself is either a function of recognized need (self-restriction: what Hegel and Marx regard as the real nature of freedom) or of coercion by others to realize their needs in contradistinction from one's own. Of course the subject of restriction is here is that of human interaction and not of a reified abstraction such as, 'the forces of production. To discuss the abstract forces of production as the subject of restrictions of a specific system of relations of production is meaningless insofar as the abstract forces of production refers only to a component of a theory of productive systems without form or function relative to some specified relations of production. You can, say, compare the forces of production of capitalism with those of feudalism or of some other concrete productive system to determine the differential properties of each system and thereby the limits on the development of the forces of production imposed by the relations of production of one system relative to the other. So, pray tell, to what are you comparing the forces of production of capitalism? Pardon, but the initial discussion riveted around a definition of the relations of production or productive relations. I maintain, contrary to Comrade CB, that these productive relations are the laws defining property (and never just property relations) and the relationship of people to property in the process of production. Though the laws of property are not the same as the relations of production, they are engendered by the organization of production, basically to protect and preserve the relationship of people to property in the process of production. The difference between the relations of production and the laws of production is that while the former denotes what we generally call economic relations, the latter denotes the participation of state power (legal systems and law enforcement) in the preservation of those relations. I further maintain that this above formulation in no way is at variance with Marx or Marxism. Marx certainly recognized that the reciprocal relation between condition and consequence (where conditions become the consequences of the systems they produce), however, he distinguished between the system of relations of production, i.e. the organization of production, and the system of preservation of those relations through the mobilization of state power in the formation and protection of the rights of property. The argument regarding fettering needs to be made more specific
[Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering
Waistline2 CB: How you gonna say with a straight face that the Industrial Revolution was the Industrial Social Revolution, or that Marx treated it as a social revolution ? :) WL:Comment Obviously you are joking. The industrial revolution is a social revolution and the industrial social revolution means the same as industrial revolution. The world social means society CB: The Industrial Revolution does not begin the epoch of the social revolution of capitalism. It is an apex of it. In terms of the quote from Marx in focus, instead of Then begins an epoch of social revolution, Then,at the Industrial Revolution, climaxes an epoch of social revolution. The epoch of bourgeois social revolution _begins_ 3-4 hundred years earlier, with merchantilism and manufacture. Also, the Industrial Revolution is not a time when the bourgeois property relations are fettering the material forces of basic production. The bourgeoisie are not yet cooking with gas. But they are steamrolling like a motherfucker. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering -correction
V: You are assuming of course that we know how or what kinds of productive forces WILL prevail in communist society. If you take your model of the communist mode of production from the late and mostly unlamented People's Democratic Republics and Soviets as well as from the various more successful consensual collectives, you will find that while they more or less satisfy basic needs, the uncontrolled struggle for scarce resources by public sectors and individuals within the collective as well as the efforts to control those struggles through bureaucracy by the collective eat up funds for research and development (systems for planning, for preserving socially justified distribution of resources and so on). The result is a mode of production that is, paradoxically, far less able to meet peoples needs, to protect natural resources, and to enable equable distribution of resources than is capitalism. It also produces a bureaucracy which by virtue of its de facto control of the means of production becomes an employer of the proletariat with economic and political interests of it own which are often in contradiction with that of the producers. * WL: I am assuming an economic communism that grows out of this stage of development of the productive forces and its evolving material power rather than an industrial socialism, as in the former People's Democracy's and the Soviet Union. This difference is critical in my opinion. For America to mimic the Soviet Union and the growth of its industrial bureaucracy, it would have had to go over to proletarian revolution between roughly 1865 and 1900. Over the past fifteen years, I have altered my approach to the concept of the mode of production and no longer speak of socialism as a mode of production, although this is the concept I inherited as I passed over to Marxism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Today, I speak of the industrial mode of production or the bourgeois mode of production and industrial socialism. Further, my concept of needs or meeting peoples needs has shifted drastically and I tend to speak of authentic human needs versus bourgeois needs in relationship to resources. For instance, perhaps as much as 90% of what American society eats as food serve no authentic human need and drives obesity as one of our cardinal signs of over consumption and wrong consumption of the earth. The deployment of the material power of production for soda production and the configuration of part of the infrastructure to produce Coca Cola and Pepsi - massive world wide structures and bureaucracies, serve no authentic human need but exist as a bourgeois need expressing an enormous waste of resources and human labor. No to mention unnecessary water consumption and destruction to the earth. The American automotive industry and the world wide industry is today recognized as an expression of bourgeois need - a condition and precondition for reproduction on the basis of bourgeois property. Nothing justifies or drives the expansion of the automotive market from 12 million new units in the 1970s to 17 million new units today in the American market other than bourgeois need. This bourgeois need means that the steel, glass, rubber, fabric, plastic and paper industry evolved and took shape to service automotive production rather than authentic human needs and consequently the historically specific form of our productive forces are bourgeois. Our housing pattern expresses bourgeois need. Our publishing industry expresses bourgeois need. (Will finish this . . . have to go to work for a couple hours) Waistline ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering in the U.S. national territory; developing in other national territories
In other words, the bourgeoisie doesn't fetter the development of the material productive forces outside of the U.S.national territory where it runs the plants away to. It buildsup the productive forces in Mexico, Korea, and other places to which industrial production has been moved. It has not fettered their development in those countries. But it has fettered them in the U.S. national territory. This by the way, is a bit of a material basis for social revolution in the U.S. national territory. The transnational financial-corporate bourgeoisie are fettering the development of the productive forces in the U.S. national territory to the extent that there should be ripeness in even privileged sectors of the American proletariat like the airplane mechanics for some shaking up of the relations of production. CBThe trend in U.S. property relations is to move the factories further and further from the locus of the owners, as a byproduct of running the plants away from the U.S. workers. Effectively, this is fettering the development of the material productive forces _in_ the U.S. national territory. WL:I understand - perhaps incorrectly, you to say that moving factories away from the owners in America is restrain the development of the material power of production or the productive forces in America. CB: The plants are run away overseas more to run them away from the working class in the U.S. I said the plants are moved away from the owners as a byproduct as in indirect result, of running them away from the U.S. workers. Note they run them over to some other workers in other countries. Thus, things are not post-industrial. We are still very industrial. The U.S. national territory has been deindustrialized relative to its level of industrialization in the recent past. I said: Effectively, this is fettering the development of the material productive forces _in_ the U.S. national territory. The development of the productive forces _in the U.S. national territory._ the material productive forces = material power of the productive forces. How does moving factories halt the technological advance or the qualitative development of the productive forces? ^ CB: fetters the development within the U.S. national territory. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering
CB: How you gonna say with a straight face that the Industrial Revolution was the Industrial Social Revolution, or that Marx treated it as a social revolution ? Comment I am saying with a stright face that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels treated the Industrial Revolution as a Social Revolution . . .period. The Industrial Revolution and the Industrial Social Revolution means the same thing. If not then please explain the difference in meaning as you understand it. Question: Explain the difference. ^ CB: Marx and Engels treat the Industrial Revolution as a revolution in the material productive forces, not in the relations of production/property relations. Social revolutions are revolutions in the relations of production/property relations, not in the material productive forces. There are many revolutions in the productive forces throughout the bourgeois epoch, because the bourgeoisie are constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production. But these are not social revolutions because bourgeois relations of production/property relations rule throughout all of these revolutions in the instruments of production, including the Industrial Revolution in the instruments of production. The Industrial Revolution is a scientific and technological revolution, a big one in the history of the bourgeoisie's constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production. The Industrial Revolution is the leap from manufacture to Modern Industry, as discussed by Marx in Capital I in relation to the Relative Surplus Value. The bourgeoisie constantly revolutionize the instruments of production in pursuit of relative surplus value, which is to say, not absolute surplus value, or lengthening the work day, but relative surplus value, increasing productivity. Marx analyzes the machine there. The machine is at the heart of the Industrial Revolution. The factory system also arises in that revolution. The change in the technical organization of the material productive forces, the change in the shop floor setup that accompanies the rise of machine dominance is termed the factory system. The computer revolution in the productive forces is another in the long line of scientific and technological revolutions but still within bourgeois property relations. It is not a social revolution either,- at least not _yet_ - as the Industrial Revolution was not a social revolution ( especially at the beginning of the Industrial Rev. in the early 1800's) The computer revolution might become a fettering of productive forces that generates social revolution, if the runaway plants made possible by computers fetters the development of productive on the U.S. territory to the point that the U.S. labor aristocracy bolts its collaboration with the bourgeoisie , and leads the working class in sublating or revolutionizing the bourgeois property relations in the U.S. That would be labor ex-aristocrats, like airline mechanics, PATCO workers, steelworkers getting radicalized and moving with Seven League Boots, like Americans are want to do. We aren't there yet. But the U.S. capitalists may sell the Chinese Communists and others the rope for which the U.S. workers hang the U.S. capitalists. Anyway, history is class struggles, not technological regimes. Relations of production or property relations are class relations. The organization of material productive forces, including the organization of people on the shop floor, the technical division of labor, is not class relations. The capitalist owner is not even there overseeing the shopfloor anymore. The owning is done out in Grosse Pointe and on Wall Street. That's the class relation. There is a separation of the technical overseer position (part of the division of labor) and the class capitalist ownership position ( part of the relations of production or what is an expression for the same thing, the property relations). There are also, like a shadow of death of the material forces of production, the material forces of destruction ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering
within them conflicts that represent future social cleavages as well as ancient ones. To add to the confusion some of the most effective revolutions are finally resolved by non-military application of force, e.g. the final victory of British industrial capitalism over landed interests in the passing of the reform bill in Parliament in 1824. Others, such as the English Civil war and the French revolution, are only partially realized in the development of new relations of production, since the truly capitalist elements are still too underdeveloped to become the universal mode of production. Though every political revolution is preceded by years of social conflict (often for centuries), decision is attained only when the old system is so decrepit that all that is needed is a small push to cast out once and for all the now irrelevant remnants of the old and to let the already dominant if not universal new system to fully realize it political and economic power. So: 3. The revolution occurs only after the emergent alternative system, ruling and ruled classes together, has become the effectively dominant relation of production, the old system having lost all but its ceremonies and pensions. Regards, Victor - Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx andthe thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2005 19:59 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering WL: You seem to be stating the following: 1). the bourgeois property relations . . . a). will not be revolutionized and b). (will not) BE overthrown . . . c).AS A RESULT OF the successful development of the productive forces BY THE BOURGEOISIE. 2). but by . . . d). the failure (of the bourgeoisie) to develop the productive forces, IN OTHER WORDS, BY THE BOURGEOISIE FETTERING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES. ^ CB: Yea, that's what I am saying with the words added in capitals above. I'm saying that that's what Marx says when he says: At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or -what is but a legal expression for the same thing - 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 WL: That is to say, I understand this to mean - not imply, that social revolution today will result as the failure of the bourgeois to develop the productive forces. You state that this is what Marx implies. The bourgeoisie is the involuntary promoter of industry and its development. Social revolution comes about as the result of the development of the productive forces. The productive forces do not stop developing or stop undergoing revolutionizing. CB: Well,again, that's the opposite of what I am saying. To the extent that bourgeois property relations do not fetter the development of the productive forces, the bourgeois property relations are not likely to be overthrown, at least not because of what is happening with the productive forces. ^ WL:At a certain stage in their development the material power of the productive forces cannot be contained - (continue its extensive and intensive expansion and operate on the basis of the universality of the law system unique to the new qualitative addition to production) by the old relations of production - with the property relations within, and then an epoch of social revolution begins. CB: Of course, inside/outside is a metaphor ( neither one is physically within the other actually), but in using the metaphor Marx is saying that the material productive forces are in the property relations (not that the property relations are in the productive forces). He is saying that when the productive forces can no longer grow within the specific property relations, the property relations will be burst asunder by the oppressed class shattering them. ^ Production and revolutionizing continues to take place but within the bounds of bourgeois property or on the basis of the needs - bourgeois needs, created as the condition for its reproduction. The concept is not the failure of the bourgeoisie to develop the productive forces, but their fettering and/or distortion by the needs of bourgeois property. CB: Maybe , but in this particular formulation, Marx is using fettering to mean hindering the development. ^ WL:I believe at this point the focus of the discussion has been lost because you state the exact opposite to what you state above in the following statement. WL: Bourgeois property by definition does in fact act as a fetter on the material factors of production, at all stages of the evolution of the technological regime. CB: In fact
[Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering
An epoch of social revolution was in fact indisputably completing itself world wide and no one disputes that this was the Industrial Social Revolution of which Marx wrote and called for the communists and proletarians to place themselves at the head of the process. CB: How you gonna say with a straight face that the Industrial Revolution was the Industrial Social Revolution, or that Marx treated it as a social revolution ? :) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering
WL: I reiterate: 1. No capitalist can afford to fetter the development of the forces of production without going down. Marx made the point that in order just to maintain a stable rate of profit capitalist enterprises must at very least conform to the general state of development of the means of production and to the wage rates general to the system as a whole. Given that the capitalist mode of production is necessarily out of control other than through the self-regulation of universal competition, even attempts of monopoly capital to control development of productive process are relatively short-lived. The fettering of capitalist production will not emanate with capitalist enterprise. 2. The revolution will probably occur when a new constellation of economic relations emerges out of the impact of the capitalist mode of production on the development of both the forces of production AND of the relations of production. The probability is that the new organization will supersede in toto the current arrangements of production, i.e. both the proletariat and capitalist alike. Despite Marx's socialist activism, he was very indefinite as to what form this new organization would take. I might add, that this was a wise decision on his part. When Marx published Capital in 1867, the establishment of a fully capitalist regime in England was only about 43 years old (the aforementioned reform of 1824), the victory of US industrial capital over the plantation economy of the Southern states was only 2 years old and capitalism everywhere else (including France) was too weak to achieve full domination of productive process. He was hardly in the position to predict the likely development of a fully capitalist, fully industrial system of production. What Marx could see was the conflict between the proletariat and the capitalist ruling class. But in its essence this conflict is or rather was no more revolutionary than the earlier conflicts between peasant and feudal lord. Indeed, a younger more fiery Marx, still lit up by the events of '48 and more moved by politics than by productive process could see the proletariat as the forces of freedom. The long aftermath of capitalist development accompanied by the inevitable conflict between the proletariat and the capitalist ruling class over HOW THE PROFITS SHOULD BE DIVIDED TO PROPERLY REFLECT THE BALANCE OF POWER BETWEEN THEM sobered him up and directed his focus to process rather than to a mystical faith in the libertarian goals of the proletariat. It is only now almost a century and a half after the first two successful capitalist revolutions and in the middle of massive capitalist developments in the two most populous countries in the world, that we might tentatively suggest what kind of system will follow the capitalist one. TENTATIVELY. 3. The revolution will occur only after the system replacing capitalism will be in place in a state of full development, if not dominance. It will have developed sufficient force as a productive system and as a political-economic organization to render capitalism irrelevant, a vestige of itself. Even if some features of this new system may now be discerned if only vaguely, it should be clear that capitalism is nowhere near the stage where it can be dismissed by a powerful alternative, nor does that alternative exist at the present time. Victor - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2005 19:44 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering Dialectics! V: The principle of self-regulation of production that is basic to the capitalist mode of production militates against the fettering of the development of productive forces. The limitations of the expanding absolute surplus value (lengthening the work day and reducing wages) compels capital to adopt mechanical means of increasing the productivity of labour (relative surplus value). It is this that motivates the tremendous push for technological innovation that characterises the capitalist system (this and the search for new commodities of course). The problem is that as the means of production become ever more mechanised, both the cost of mechanization (research and development, repairs, and so on) and of labour (education, work conditions etc.) relative to profits. The reason for this is that the surplus produced by mechanised means of production is constant and cannot be increased except by introducing new machinery. Higher productivity of mechanized means of production has a second no less important effect of forcing down the amount of human labour in production (essentially to prevent over production with its well-known consequences). The result in the decline of human labour in production is a decline in variable surplus and in the ultimate profitability of the concern. Comment WL: It is most certainly true
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering
In a message dated 9/15/2005 1:57:04 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: CB: How you gonna say with a straight face that the Industrial Revolution was the Industrial Social Revolution, or that Marx treated it as a social revolution ? :) Comment Obviously you are joking. The industrial revolution is a social revolution and the industrial social revolution means the same as industrial revolution. The world social means society! ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering
1. No capitalist can afford to fetter the development of the forces of production without going down. Marx made the point that in order just to maintain a stable rate of profit capitalist enterprises must at very least conform to the general state of development of the means of production and to the wage rates general to the system as a whole. Given that the capitalist mode of production is necessarily out of control other than through the self-regulation of universal competition, even attempts of monopoly capital to control development of productive process are relatively short-lived. The fettering of capitalist production will not emanate with capitalist enterprise. Comment I believe I made my point and that the bourgeois property relations is by definition a fetter, restrain and restriction on the material power of the productive forces or the productive forces. The issue seems to me to not be what the capitalist can afford but the law system of bourgeois profits. The issue here, is not the bourgeoisie fettering capitalist production. (The fettering of capitalist production will not emanate with capitalist enterprise.) The fettering of the productive forces or their restriction to growth based on the dynamic of capitalist profits. Pardon but the initial discussion riveted around a definition of the relations of production or productive relations. I maintain, contrary to Comrade CB, that these productive relations are the laws defining property (and never just property relations) and the relationship of people to property in the process of production. I further maintain that this above formulation in no way is at variance with Marx or Marxism. Peace Waistline ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering -correction
You are assuming of course that we know how or what kinds of productive forces WILL prevail in communist society. If you take your model of the communist mode of production from the late and mostly unlamented People's Democratic Republics and Soviets as well as from the various more successful consensual collectives, you will find that while they more or less satisfy basic needs, the uncontrolled struggle for scarce resources by public sectors and individuals within the collective as well as the efforts to control those struggles through bureaucracy by the collective eat up funds for research and development (systems for planning, for preserving socially justified distribution of resources and so on). The result is a mode of production that is, paradoxically, far less able to meet peoples needs, to protect natural resources, and to enable equable distribution of resources than is capitalism. It also produces a bureaucracy which by virtue of its de facto control of the means of production becomes an employer of the proletariat with economic and political interests of it own which are often in contradiction with that of the producers. The fact is that egalitarianism and collective decision making on all issues, the traditional Marxist, but not strictly Marxian theory of communism, is neither a very satisfactory way of loosing the socially induced fetters of capitalist production nor does it have a very good record for self-preservation (it gives rise to a ruling class that dominates production as a bureaucracy the results of which are to engender widespread dissatisfaction with the productive system and to encourage the appetite of the more influential members of the bureaucracy to free themselves from the restraints of egalitarianism and to resuscitate the capitalist mode of production and to provide them with the means for doing so). So: The traditional Marxist model of communism, which has its roots as much in medieval concepts of social justice (many of them if not most being based on theological thoughts on how people should behave rather than on how they do behave) , as it does in Marxist theory is not an effective competitor with capitalism. Raising the question: On what basis do you evaluate the fettering of production of capitalism? On an early model of communism that has proved itself too delicate to survive the exigencies of normal human interaction? Victor - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Friday, September 16, 2005 1:54 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering -correction Without question the drive to realize a profit forces the revolutionizing of production and mitigate against the overall development of the productive forces, in relationship to the previous mode of production, rather than say, communist society. Correction Without question the drive to realize a profit forces the revolutionizing of production and Does Not fetter the overall development of the productive forces in relationship to the previous mode of production. Rather the fetteing or restrain is reviewed in the bourgeois property form and in relationship to communist society. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering
WL: You seem to be stating the following: 1). the bourgeois property relations . . . a). will not be revolutionized and b). (will not) BE overthrown . . . c).AS A RESULT OF the successful development of the productive forces BY THE BOURGEOISIE. 2). but by . . . d). the failure (of the bourgeoisie) to develop the productive forces, IN OTHER WORDS, BY THE BOURGEOISIE FETTERING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES. ^ CB: Yea, that's what I am saying with the words added in capitals above. I'm saying that that's what Marx says when he says: At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or -what is but a legal expression for the same thing - 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 WL: That is to say, I understand this to mean - not imply, that social revolution today will result as the failure of the bourgeois to develop the productive forces. You state that this is what Marx implies. The bourgeoisie is the involuntary promoter of industry and its development. Social revolution comes about as the result of the development of the productive forces. The productive forces do not stop developing or stop undergoing revolutionizing. CB: Well,again, that's the opposite of what I am saying. To the extent that bourgeois property relations do not fetter the development of the productive forces, the bourgeois property relations are not likely to be overthrown, at least not because of what is happening with the productive forces. ^ WL:At a certain stage in their development the material power of the productive forces cannot be contained - (continue its extensive and intensive expansion and operate on the basis of the universality of the law system unique to the new qualitative addition to production) by the old relations of production - with the property relations within, and then an epoch of social revolution begins. CB: Of course, inside/outside is a metaphor ( neither one is physically within the other actually), but in using the metaphor Marx is saying that the material productive forces are in the property relations (not that the property relations are in the productive forces). He is saying that when the productive forces can no longer grow within the specific property relations, the property relations will be burst asunder by the oppressed class shattering them. ^ Production and revolutionizing continues to take place but within the bounds of bourgeois property or on the basis of the needs - bourgeois needs, created as the condition for its reproduction. The concept is not the failure of the bourgeoisie to develop the productive forces, but their fettering and/or distortion by the needs of bourgeois property. CB: Maybe , but in this particular formulation, Marx is using fettering to mean hindering the development. ^ WL:I believe at this point the focus of the discussion has been lost because you state the exact opposite to what you state above in the following statement. WL: Bourgeois property by definition does in fact act as a fetter on the material factors of production, at all stages of the evolution of the technological regime. CB: In fact, they don't. Under bourgeois property relations the productive forces have been developed more than under any previous mode of production. ^^ CB: The point hasn't been lost. It is being stated repeatedly. The bourgeoisie have not been fettering the development of the productive forces at all stages of the evolution of the technological regime, otherwise we would expect that an epoch of social revolution would have started in the U.S. and other capitalist countries. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
