Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] relations of production as fetter on production
CB: The high tech , chip and computer technological revolution has _not_ been fettered or prevented from developing by the bourgeois property relations. The success of the high tech rev within bourgeois property relations means that it is not likely to cause a change in those property relations. Social revolutions result from property relations and material productive forces in conflict. With the chip revolution, the productive forces and relations are not in conflict. WL: I have a different conception of Marx specific meaning of fetter as a concept concerning the general law of the development of society. Nor is it suggested that technology is not developed or the productive forces are not revolutionized by the bourgeoisie. 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. This does not mean production is not revolutionized. The most historical presentation of the question of the fetter on production is the market barrier created by bourgeois property, that limits consumption - due to the working classes limited wages, or the crisis of overproduction. The development of the productive forces and their continuous expansion is blocked - fettered, by the circuit of capital as reproduction and its need to sell and realize a profit. In addition to the overproduction crisis, their is our current crisis of overcapacity in various industries. The auto industry world wide is the most classical example in our country. The revolution in technology exacerbates the crisis of overproduction and overcapacity as ever larger segments of labor are rendered superfluous to production along side of a lowering of the value of labor power. Then again the actual development of the material property of the productive forces are fettered by the bourgeois property on the basis of how the extensive and intensive development of equipment takes place. For example, single function tools and machinery are considered more profitable for the bourgeoisie because they extract a higher degree of surplus value from the individual and pin the worker to the machine. This form of the laboring process is a fetter on the overall expansion of the productive forces. The most fundamental fetter of the bourgeois property relations resides in the actual self movement of production - reproduction, on the basis of bourgeois need. Marx speaks of this extensively in his Philosophic Manuscript of 1844. Capital as bourgeois property does not reproduce to satisfy authentic human needs but rather inherits these human needs and creates a different set of needs that becomes its condition and precondition for expansion and reproduction. Capital produces for profits. By definition the positive results of science are channeled into and realized on the basis of bourgeois need or the circuit of capital peculiar to bourgeois production and this is at all times a fetter on the overall expansion of the productive forces. There is simply no way around the statement that relations of production or production relations - in standard American English, are the laws defining property and the relationship of people to property in the process of production. Relations of production or social relations of production also embody the physical act of producing, based on a specific state of development of the technological regime and this old technological regime stands in contradiction with the new means of production that have spontaneously emerged within the old system - and not simply an abstract concept of property and ownership. The impact of the revolution in the technological regime in our society and world wide is qualitatively reconfiguring industrial society. One of the result in the realm of communist strategy has been that no one speaks of a policy of industrial concentration that characterized the communist movement of the previous generation. * CB: Serious candidates for the bourgeois property relations fettering the development of the forces of production in a way necessary to human survival at large, are with respect to global warming, oil depletion, and nuclear weaponry. In these cases, there have to be profound modifications of the use of productive forces that capitalist property relations will not make. WL: Without question the productive forces will be restructure and reconfigured to better conform to authentic human needs and brought into alignment with the metabolic process of the earth and wo/man. Such is the vision and goal of modern communism. The issue of global warming, oil depletion and nuclear are serious of course. The fetters of which Marx speaks within the mode of production in material life describes a spontaneous process internal to the self movement of capital and production and capital as production. It seems
[Marxism-Thaxis] relations of production as fetter on production
CB: The high tech , chip and computer technological revolution has _not_ been fettered or prevented from developing by the bourgeois property relations. The success of the high tech rev within bourgeois property relations means that it is not likely to cause a change in those property relations. Social revolutions result from property relations and material productive forces in conflict. With the chip revolution, the productive forces and relations are not in conflict. WL: I have a different conception of Marx specific meaning of fetter as a concept concerning the general law of the development of society. Nor is it suggested that technology is not developed or the productive forces are not revolutionized by the bourgeoisie. CB: What is suggested by Marx is that the bourgeois property relations will not be revolutionized and overthrown by the successful development of the productive forces, but by the failure to develop the productive forces. ^^ 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. By definition does in fact is contradictory. This does not mean production is not revolutionized. The most historical presentation of the question of the fetter on production is the market barrier created by bourgeois property, that limits consumption - due to the working classes limited wages, or the crisis of overproduction. The development of the productive forces and their continuous expansion is blocked - fettered, by the circuit of capital as reproduction and its need to sell and realize a profit. In addition to the overproduction crisis, their is our current crisis of overcapacity in various industries. The auto industry world wide is the most classical example in our country. The revolution in technology exacerbates the crisis of overproduction and overcapacity as ever larger segments of labor are rendered superfluous to production along side of a lowering of the value of labor power. ^ CB: So far, all this fettering has not caused the beginning of an epoch of social revolution , except in Russia and in various imperialist colonies. The bourgeoisie have selectively augmented the consumption of segments of the working class such that the working class has not burst asunder the bourgeois property relations. ^^^ Then again the actual development of the material property of the productive forces are fettered by the bourgeois property on the basis of how the extensive and intensive development of equipment takes place. For example, single function tools and machinery are considered more profitable for the bourgeoisie because they extract a higher degree of surplus value from the individual and pin the worker to the machine. This form of the laboring process is a fetter on the overall expansion of the productive forces. ^ CB: But this fettering hasn't arisen to such a conflict between forces and relations of production so as to initiate an epoch of social revolution. ^^ The most fundamental fetter of the bourgeois property relations resides in the actual self movement of production - reproduction, on the basis of bourgeois need. Marx speaks of this extensively in his Philosophic Manuscript of 1844. Capital as bourgeois property does not reproduce to satisfy authentic human needs but rather inherits these human needs and creates a different set of needs that becomes its condition and precondition for expansion and reproduction. Capital produces for profits. By definition the positive results of science are channeled into and realized on the basis of bourgeois need or the circuit of capital peculiar to bourgeois production and this is at all times a fetter on the overall expansion of the productive forces. There is simply no way around the statement that relations of production or production relations - in standard American English, are the laws defining property and the relationship of people to property in the process of production. ^ CB: yea. Relations of production and property relations are the same thing. ^ Relations of production or social relations of production also embody the physical act of producing, based on a specific state of development of the technological regime and this old technological regime stands in contradiction with the new means of production that have spontaneously emerged within the old system - and not simply an abstract concept of property and ownership. ^^^ CB: The physical act of producing is the productive forces, not the relations of production/property relations. This does not render the concepts of property and ownership abstract. Property relations refer to the concrete, not abstract, ownership relationships between people with
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] relations of production as fetter on production
CB: What is suggested by Marx is that the bourgeois property relations will not be revolutionized and overthrown by the successful development of the productive forces, but by the failure to develop the productive forces. WL: The issue under discussion is not the bourgeois property relations being revolutionized. Nor is it a question of the bourgeoisie as a class failing to develop the productive forces. The bourgeois property relation as a specific form of ownership rights - as you define it separate from the actual engagement of production, cannot be revolutionized as such, but in the last instance will be shattered. In the meaning that you give relations of production as ownership rights devoid of the material quality of daily producing within an infrastructure with definite relations of production, what can be revolutionized and what has been revolutionized - (on the basis of a qualitatively new set of ingredients injected into the productivity infrastructure), is the specific form of the mode of accumulation as tool and instrument usage. The form of the mode of accumulation of wealth as bourgeois property does not take place simply because the bourgeoisie is owner. The form of the mode is predicated upon a given technology. The form of the mode of accumulation enters the picture here. Not the mode of accumulation but its form expressed as tools and instruments usage, industrial banks, paper notes, gold storage, etc. Computers and their application and use constitutes a continuing revolution in the form of the mode of accumulation as compared with say, paper and fiat money during the time of Karl Marx. Today the form of wealth has a super symbolic character. Here the word super means an abstraction of an abstraction, or a representation of an intangible, rather than a quantitative increase in the supply of money or a simply quantitative expansion of ones money holding. Money itself is symbol - symbolic, and this symbolic money is long detached from species and in turn has its symbols stored in computers: hence, super symbolic or symbolic representation of the intangible. You seem to be stating the following: 1). the bourgeois property relations . . . a). will not be revolutionized and b). (will not) overthrown by . . . c). the successful development of the productive forces, 2). but by . . . d). the failure (of the bourgeoisie) to develop the productive forces. 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. 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. 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. 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. I understand you to be saying that bourgeois property in fact, does not fetter the revolutionizing of production because the bourgeoisie have developed production more than previous modes of production. Fetter means to confine or restrain rather than to halt or stop. It is the sum total of bourgeois need that is the fetter on the productive forces and this need comes to life on the basis of capital being put to work on the basis of profitability or rather maximum profits. This is the fetter that drives a certain extensive and intensive implementation of the technological advance. The issue here is not a comparison of the bourgeoisie as a class with the classes and property relations of the society from which it emerged (feudal society), or with the mode of production from which feudal society in turn emerged. By
[Marxism-Thaxis] relations of production as fetter on production
Pardon, my misquoting your definition of an epoch. ^ CB: This seems a disingenous pardon. ^ An epoch in the Marxist standpoint is a historical period of time distinguished in its geenral framework on the basis of the mode of production, rather than by more than one generation. In my estimate this more accurately pays homage to the spirit of Marx. CB: What do you mean by general framework ? ^ Again, I apologize for my misquoting. ^ CB: This seems a fake apology. Social revolution means the kind of change in the productive forces - tools, instruments, machines and underlying energy source of the production process, that compels society to reorganize itself around the new changes. CB: The Marx quote focused on here would seem to suggest that the social revolution begins when the property relations or relations of production prevent development of the productive forces, like levies, such that everybody gets pissed off and decides to change the property relations or relations of production so as to allow the levies and everything to fully develop and prevent disasters or prevent long term depressions. ___ 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] relations of production as fetter on production
CB: The Marx quote focused on here would seem to suggest that the social revolution begins when the property relations or relations of production prevent development of the productive forces, WL: I believe you explain the exact nature of our discussion in the above. Social Revolution begins as the result of 1). changes in the productive forces 2). and these changes evolve in such a way as 3). to come into collision with the relations of production or the property relations . . . AFTER and on the basis of colliding with the actual properties - organization, of a given state of development of production. Actually, social revolution comes about as the result of a qualitative addition in the material power of production that demands the restructuring of the productivity architecture. The restructuring of the productivity architecture, does at a certain stage of this restructuring passes from contradiction to antagonism, with the old forms of property or what is the same thing, the expression of property as a given superstructure. The social revolution begins as the spontaneous development of the means of production or what is the same, a qualitative addition to the technological regime upon which sits and arises the entire productivity architecture. The contradictions within the productive forces are abstracted from the complexity that is the mode of production - with the property relations within, and this standpoint is referred to as the spontaneous development of the productive forces. The spontaneous development of the productive forces, manifest a law system of development that overlaps with and interpenetrate the mode of accumulation or the form of property, but in the last instance is not self driven by the property relations. In real life the above sentence does not exist as such because the complexity of actuality does not operate on the basis of our abstraction of the actual process. Property and thinking determines - to a considerable degree, everything. And the subjective factor - wo/man themselves, are the most revolutionary ingredient of the productive forces. The productive forces of society does not simply collide - come into contradiction, with the property relations because each successive stage in the development of production contains its own unity and strife -- contradiction, as a given. Your description of the process properly belongs to a period of Marxism that is the rising curve of industrial development. During this historical per iod or era - not epoch, the Marxists and communist insurgents were bound by a certain quantitative stage in the development of the industrial system, where it was impossible to predict or conceive of a stage where the industrial system passes over to a higher and qualitatively new beginning of a new mode of production. Jumping a little bit . . . this is my criticism of Rosa Luxemberg's writing on the accumulation of Capital and her conceptual framework of the boundary of the industrial system, with the property relations within. She is historically inaccurate and life itself has revealed itself to us. Hell . . . I will never be her intellectual equal. Or Leon Trotsky's for that matter. Or Comrade Stalin or Bukarin or a Cornel West. Marx most famous statement and quote on the general law of development of society can be understood anew. I of course have added nothing and nothing new to the treasure house of Marx and frankly do not possess the intellectual ability as such. Nor do I possess a profound grasp of dialectics and there are many sharper comrades on this list than I. What I possess is an acute power of observation unobstructed by ideology that allows me to present complex ideas and concepts worked out by others in either a complex or elementary manner. I am a communist propagandist. I have lived the actual industrial process for a lifetime directly as part of the industrial process and there are details I can speak of with a profound authenticity. In other words I grasped the boundary we passed wherein the industrial system began its leap - transition, to post industrial society and this was not simply an intellectual process, but is bound up with embodying three generations of industrial workers. I grapsed the passing of this boundary, after I was told we passed a certain boundary by others. The industrial system has an architecture, or complex series of pathways by which its interactivity sustains its reality. Qualitative changes in the components that are the pathways begins the restructuring of the pathways. The productive forces come into contradiction with themselves as development. Much of this we have personally discussed for at last the past 4 years and most communists and Marxist on various lists do not even have a modern conception of the productive forces we face or the relations of production, except as ideological proclamations. Most are stuck in
