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>> To say that productive forces "begin their leap" based on a new technological form is to mistake the use-value of the means of production with their value as commodities. The technological form creates no leap in either the enhancement or destruction of value that exists separately, independently, or qualitatively distinct from all previous technological forms that were developed and deployed of, by, and in the social relation of production, the concrete organization of labor.<< Reply I understand your statement to mean: 1). It is a mistake to assert that revolution in the material power of productive forces begins with the quantitative addition of a new quality - new technology, into an existing system of production. . 2). This is a mistake because pinpointing the growth and clustering of qualitatively new technology as the genesis of the evolutionary leap, mistakes the use value (utility of the new technology sold as a commodity) for exchange value in the commodity form. 3). A new technology does not enhance or destroy value - (the socially necessary amount of labor in commodities that establishes their exchange property). This is so because value, as a category of political economy, exists separately, independently, or qualitatively distinct from the technological foundation of the material power of productive forces. The quantitative introduction of a new quality (new technology) into the process of production is the catalyst for the leap to a new quality or begins the transition from one mode of production to the next. This process is called social revolution. Here we are dealing with a distinct process and law system. The law system underlying the "process," is not the process. A process is the totality of stages of dialectical motion. The law system is the dialectical motion or the dialectic of development. In society, the dialectic of development says, "If nothing qualitatively changes, then nothing changes qualitatively." As a law system this means adding a qualitatively new something to the existing material power. The new qualitative ingredient cannot reside in the commodity form, precisely because it the commodity for is the form of something else. What is fundamental to the productive forces, without which there are no productive forces, is tools, instruments, machines, human labor and energy. Each stage in the development of the material power has its corresponding motive force. . Social relations in turn are defined as how people organized themselves to deploy a given state of productive forces with its corresponding form of property. The commodity form requires comment. Products become commodities when they are produce to be exchanged. The commodity form never changes qualitatively and cannot. Thus, use-value + exchange value or rather value, is the definition of a commodity. Capitalist production does not change the law system or the process, that is the conflict between means and relations of production. This law develops and evolves independent of and through the property form, and express the complex relationship between human being, means of production and impact on nature. Under bourgeois commodity production the new quality (cause of the leap or revolution in the material power of production) cannot be located in use-value, because use value isolated as a distinct quality means "a thing with a utility, created for exchange." That is its quality. This quality cannot be altered one way or another. If there is no utility "a thing" cannot become a commodity or enter the world of exchange. Use value means the utility of a commodity, rather than how it is used. If I buy a large ash tray and use it as a candy dish this hardly alters use-value. Utility does not mean use-value, because use value cannot exist without exchange value - value, and together they constitute the commodity form. Without the commodity form there is no use value, only utility. Nor can the cause of the leap or inspiration for revolution in the material power of production, have its genesis in value, because value means exchange value. Value, isolated and defined as a quality means the socially necessary amount of labor in that, which has been produced to be exchanged. That is value’s quality - something with a labor component produced for exchange. Nor can the genesis of the leap or catalyst for revolution in the material power of production, have its pivot in the tension between use value and value. The contradiction, which is tension between "use value and value" manifest private appropriation of socially produced commodities or the mode of distribution. The cause of social revolution has to reside outside the commodity form. I understand your meaning to be "when technological innovation takes place in the environment of bourgeois property, the cause of the leap in the material power of production is the conflict between use value and value. One must look at the reason capital deploys new technology or its use-value." The application of new methods and new technology to the material power of production occurs as the result of human beings spontaneous struggle for existence and need to reshape parts of nature for survival. New technology is applied because it is a more efficient form of energy than naked human labor. This dynamic - law, also exists under conditions of bourgeois production. Bourgeois property simple applies this law in the only way that it can, reproduction of value - on an expanding scale. Simply because the new technology applied acquires a commodity form does not alter the law of society advancement or the dialectic of the change process one iota. Here is your argument presented again: >> To say that productive forces "begin their leap" based on a new technological form is to mistake the use-value of the means of production with their value as commodities. The technological form creates no leap in either the enhancement or destruction of value that exists separately, independently, or qualitatively distinct from all previous technological forms that were developed and deployed of, by, and in the social relation of production, the concrete organization of labor.<< Reply "The use value of the means of production, must not be mistaken for their value," to paraphrase the above, means exactly what? To utter the word "use-value" is to speak of the commodity form. I do not never deny that new technology is sold as a commodity. The sell of new technology - as commodities or for their use value, to various capitalist producers, exacerbates a law peculiar to bourgeois production: the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. The point is the dialectic of the law of society transition, from one mode of production to the next and what is fundamental to this law. Injecting a new technology into an existing system of production begins its reconfiguring. Because the new technology means a more efficient use of human labor, it is applied on an expanding scale and this process brings to an end expansion of the productive forces on the basis before application of the new technology. The ending of expansion on the old basis and passing over to expansion on a new basis is called "the leap" or transition or the dialectic of the leap, because expansion of the new takes place quantitatively and not all at one time. Engels called this process "sublate" or sublation and some call it negation. That this new technology is sold as a commodity is immaterial to the law system underlying social revolution. Nor does the commodity form of new technology and technological clusters alter the process of revolutionary transition from one mode of production to another. The quantitative introduction of the new quality (technology e.g., the steam engine and all it implies) into the existing process of production was the catalyst for the leap - transition, to industrial production. The invention of qualitatively different machinery called forth the perfection and application of the steam engine or the need for a greater motive power for further quantitative expansion of the new quality of machinery. Machines have a history, from wood to steel; to simple levers and gears to more complex levers, gears, flywheels and transfer bars. Together, new machinery and a new motive power revolutionized not simply the economy but the social order. When this process unfolds in a society, it is called social revolution. The early development of computers and robotics called forth the semi-conductor and microchip as new internal sources of motive power. Together with superconductors, they are creating the electronic technological revolution. Social production with electronics evolves in antagonism, active hostility, with the existing organization of labor, which was predicated upon industrial - electro-mechanical, motion. In my point of view elevating the commodity form as the genesis of the transition from one mode of production to the next, jumbled together the complex aspects of change in such a way that one loses sight of the cause of social revolution. I believe the big picture always have to be kept in mind. Private property, ends, and is temporal. Productive forces and their development are not temporal. They are a condition for the existence of society. Property is not. Revolution in the material power of production will take place after bourgeois property has been overthrown and after the electro-mechanical motive force of industry has been displaced - sublated. After property is abolished, society ceases evolution based on political revolution or antagonism. This takes us full circle, to why the difference between contradiction and antagonism or class struggle and society moving in class antagonism is critical to Marxism. A new class of workers is always created with a new technology - productive forces. The new class of workers arising as the social consequence of the revolution in the material power still is burdened with the property form of servitude casting them as proletariat. We will return to this is the last section using a choice presentation from Marx, Wage Labor and Capital. ************** III. You state: "The reverse is the true history. The productive forces developed embedded in the property form-- in the organization of land and labor." The productive forces evolve embed in the property form, rather than as Karl Marx presents the equation. Here is how Marx presents the dialectic of productive forces and property relations, or as it is called, "means and relations." . "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." Property and productive forces are interactivity one mediating the other. One must account for the cause of revolution in the material power of production. This requires pinpointing that, which is fundamental. Here is how we present this equation in American English. When qualitative change take place in that, which is fundamental to a process, everything dependent upon that, which is fundamental must in turn change. No all at one time, but change, a leap from one qualitative formulation to another must take place. It is time to liberate Marx from philosophy. ******************** I wrote: "The question is poses as a certain stage of the development of the productive forces. Not a certain stage in the development of the property form embed in the productive forces." You replied: "But that is not the case, for the development of the productive forces is carried on within the framework, the restraints [don't think I ever indicated property forms were embedded in productive forces], the demands of the property form. It, the development of the productive forces, never exists apart from that property form that gives the development life. It, that development, never exists independently of a class driven to organize labor in the form that expresses in all its contradictions, or lack thereof, that actual organization of the means of production AND...what production means. In fact, the property form does not develop embedded in the productive forces. The reverse is the true history. The productive forces developed embedded in the property form-- in the organization of land and labor.<< My Response: : One environment is always the environment for something else. Determining what is fundamental in a process means determining that which other interactive phenomenon is attached to and revolve around. The organization of land and labor means exactly what? As they are organize to reproduce capital and the social relations of bourgeois production? This tells no one anything about the historically specific stage of development of the productive forces. The organization of labor is not dependent upon the property form as that, which is fundamental, but the state of development of the means of production and their material power. Capital as private property does not create the industrial working class. Capital reproduces the proletarian form of servitude of the industrial workers. Feudalism does not create the handicraft and manufacturing worker. Feudalism reproduces their form of servitude or makes the worker a serf. Feudalism does not make the toiler a toiler and neither does capital. Capital does not create a class of software workers. The class is software workers are dependent upon and the social consequence of a certain stage in the material power of production. The question is fundamentality and demystifying some simple concepts, that become simple as we leave industrial society. Allow me to present how Marx actually tackled this dynamic and presented fundamentality in an interlocking and interactive environment. "What is a Negro slave? A man of the black race. The one explanation is worthy of the other. A Negro is a Negro. Only under certain conditions does he become a slave. A cotton-spinning machine is a machine for spinning cotton. Only under certain conditions does it become capital. Torn away from these conditions, it is as little capital as gold is itself money, or sugar is the price of sugar. In the process of production, human beings work not only upon nature, but also upon one another. They produce only by working together in a specified manner and reciprocally exchanging their activities. In order to produce, they enter into definite connections and relations to one another, and only within these social connections and relations does their influence upon nature operate – i.e., does production take place. These social relations between the producers, and the conditions under which they exchange their activities and share in the total act of production, will naturally vary according to the character of the means of production. With the discover of a new instrument of warfare, the firearm, the whole internal organization of the army was necessarily altered, the relations within which individuals compose an army and can work as an army were transformed, and the relation of different armies to another was likewise changed. We thus see that the social relations within which individuals produce, the social relations of production, are altered, transformed, with the change and development of the material means of production, of the forces of production. The relations of production in their totality constitute what is called the social relations, society, and, moreover, a society at a definite stage of historical development, a society with peculiar, distinctive characteristics. Ancient society, feudal society, bourgeois (or capitalist) society, are such totalities of relations of production, each of which denotes a particular stage of development in the history of mankind" _http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ch05.htm_ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ch05.htm) The issue is fundamentality. You insist: "The productive forces developed embedded in the property form-- in the organization of land and labor." Further, "And to prove that... I suggest we go back and actually look at the semi-conductor industry, its impact on value production, its years of high-growth and extra-ordinarily high rates of returns, and compare that to the recent history of segmentation of the markets into commodity foundry production, and value-added production of microprocessors and chips; of overproduction, reduced growth rates, and declining returns, and of cyclical nature of subsequent periods within the overall structural change in growth rates and profitability." OK. Apparently one can prove that the material power of production is embed in the property relations by looking at a factory producing new technology under capitalism and securing the data indicating rate of return on investment. Actually, you do the heavy lifting of shifting through data better than I and really would prefer leaving you the honor. Our quest is for fundamentality in an interlocking interactive environment, where one environment is the environment of another set of phenomena. Finally, you write: "Certainly we can say capital reaches a zenith. But to claim capital is only vulnerable, permeable to revolutionary overthrow after, or during, or because of the peak is ignore the real dynamic, the real dialectic between means and relations of production, where the conflict and the potential for revolutionary overthrow by a class acting independently to make its own history is, and is always, materially immanent-- existing not in thought, not in consciousness, but existing, pervasive in the actual processes of reproduction." We will know for sure, when capital has reached its zenith, when we overthrow it at the front of the curve. In the mean time capital increasingly operates as a notional value. Your explanation for the inability of the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeois power at the front of the curve - in all countries on earth, is that "we collectively ain’t shit." If we had a bunch of smart people that could somehow defeat the social democrats, the Stalinist and whoever one chooses to pinpoint for an orgy of back flogging, all would be peaches and communism. I say the workers were not interested in overthrowing the bourgeois power and had a decent damn life during the past 70 years. The workers pushed to reform the system and perceived that such reform was possible. The majority of white workers moved up the social ladder in the post WWII years. Segregation was struck down and the blacks entered the system; the GI Bill, social security, Fair Housing, Roe vs. Wade and a host of reforms of the system stabilized the system. Some folks will go to their grave believing "we" or the American workers could overthrow the union bureaucracy with heavy doses of testosterone and furious "manning the fuck up." The system could not be overthrown and was not for some of the real above, which was reflected in the consciousness of millions. Things have changed considerably during the past 30 years. Things have worsened in the last 30 months. A garden variety crisis of overproduction - defined at as one wish, is intersecting with, a revolution in the material power laying waste to millions of laborers. Let start at the beginning and find fundamentality. Instruments, tools, simple devices (traps) and human energy are the precondition for the rise of means of production. Private property arises thousands of years after and on the basis of emergence of means of production and division of labor. Generally speaking, with the advance to cattle breeding and agriculture - purported to be a gift of the Gods, there arose a social division of labor under which at first different communities, and then individual members of communities began to engage in differing forms of productive activity. This first really big social division of labor led to a rise in the productivity of labor and spurs the need for innovation in instruments, tools, simple devices and the material organization of labor. Here is your fundamentality before property makes its appearance and change the form of human history. The content of human history never changes. The content of history is we are born, grow up, fall in love, marry and have kids or just have kids and labor and try and make things better for ourselves and loved ones. Changes - qualitative changes in the material power of production set the stage - are the catalyst, for the creation and changes in social relations. This is so because the material power of production is not embed in property. "is not embed in property" is a concept of what ifs fundamental. To change and the society progression. When a qualitative change in means of production is underway, as one boundary of qualitative change passing into another, the material power of production runs into, or comes into 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." There is simply no way around what Marx actually wrote. WL. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
