Part 8 My dispute is not over what the author calls the debate between Stalin and Trotsky, a debate Leon Trotsky lost, but his conception of communism and Marxist approach. Here is the very first paragraph in his summation.
>Till now, I believed that one of the major theoretical contributions of Mao was his analysis of the contradictions in a socialist society: that in a socialist society, the material basis for the birth of a capitalist class and bourgeois values remains for a very long, long time, even after the means of production have been nationalised. That is because the law of value continues to operate, the socialist law of distribution â to each according to his work â is basically a capitalist law, bourgeois rights still exist, commodity production continues. This continuously gives rise to a bourgeoisie, and hence class struggle continues in a socialist society, is in a way more vicious and acute than before the revolution.< (CHAPTER 7 TROTSKY'S ANALYSIS OF PROBLEMS OF SOCIALISM: A COMMENT) COMMENT Thus begins our "ML's" attempt at summation of Soviet industrial socialism. >From here an attempt is made to unravel the Marxists theoretical presentation of the state and its withering away, which is hopelessly confused with the question of the growth of the INDUSTRIAL BUREAUCRACY; the phenomena of bureaucratism as distinct from INDUSTRIAL BUREAUCRACY and the economic problems of socialism in the USSR is confused with the economic problems that are the transition from agricultural to industrial society. The question that faced the Communist delegates and workers in general, that was debated for years . . . YEARS!, can be formulated as: "Can we build an industrial society with a system of laws that prevent the result of ones labor or money possession, social position or hereditary rights, from being converted into individual ownership rights over means of production?" The issue is not an abstraction called "the means of production have been nationalized," but rather the property relations or the relationship of classes to property in the process of production. Our "ML" presents all the question incorrectly. We cannot behave as little boys playing marbles on the playground and disputing the best man. What is capitalism? Capitalism is a bourgeois property relations. Specifically, capitalism means commodity production at a certain stage in the growth of the productive forces; where the social power of capital (reproduction) is in the hands of private individuals. This ownership right or property relations creates a form (cycles) of reproduction based on competition between individual owners of capital and an unrestricted operating of the law of value that tears from the hands of ever larger sections of the proletariat, the means of subsistence. Capitalism is a bourgeois property relations. "(T)he material basis for the birth of a capitalist class and bourgeois values remains for a very long, long time, even after the means of production have been nationalised," . . . "That is because the law of value continues to operate, the socialist law of distribution â to each according to his work â is basically a capitalist law," . . . is a radical misunderstanding of political economy and the general law of industrial reproduction on the basis of public property relations. What the statement, "(T)o each according to his work â is basically a capitalist law," means is that payment of wages or consumption rights (to each) according to labor contribution (according to his work) is basically a law of the bourgeois property relations, and this is of course absurd. At worse "(T)o each according to his work" expresses a law of commodity production - not capitalist commodity production or more accurately, commodity production on the basis of the bourgeois property relations. The point is that the bourgeoisie as a class does not grow out of socialism or the public property relations. Inequality is going to be with us a long time and after the advent of communism ones concept of inequality is going to radically change. Inequality is not what gives rise to the bourgeoisie as a class and this is the point of contention. Socialism is not a mode of production. Socialism is a political form of property relations. In history the birth of the bourgeoisie as a class is connected to the process Marx calls the primitive accumulation of capital. Some folks incorrectly call the primitive accumulation of capital any period of new capital formation and then argue over the question of what constitutes "new." This is not my point of view. Primitive accumulation of capital means the formation of the capitalist class as a world historical force, that did not previously exists as such. Under Soviet socialism what would evolve was a caricature of the bourgeoisie, because it had no property rights. This means that a bourgeoisie does not and cannot grow out of the socialist property relations. A bourgeoisie cannot grow out of the industrial bureaucracy or the bureaucratic practices in the party, state, various cooperatives, Soviets or trade unions. This is very important as a theory proposition. Our "ML" stakes out a political position that says that a bourgeoisie grows out of socialist distribution, which is really a capitalist law and the law of value is the impetus for this "birth" - his word as in child birth, of a bourgeoisie as a class. Even after the break up of the Soviet State, it was necessary for the counter revolution to shatter the socialist property relations and overturn virtually all the laws of the legal system enforcing Soviet socialism's property rights. And then the counter revolution served a level of revenge on the Soviet working people that reduced their standard of living greater than anything recorded in so-called peace time. Even this was not enough for the emergence of a bourgeois class in the former Soviet Union. There had to take place a material link up with international capital and much of this was done on the basis of the theft of hundred of tons of gold from the Soviet Union because gold remains a primary form of wealth. This was not "initial accumulation" or primitive accumulation but stealing and consolidating the wealth of the existing society into the hands of individuals. This is stated because the birth of the bourgeoisie is a historical process and restoration is an entirely different process. The rising bourgeoisie of more than three centuries ago more or less got his wealth "honest" . . . he worked and accumulated or acquired hereditary rights to trade routes. What our "ML" is saying is that: "(T)he law of value continues to operate, the socialist law of distribution (and) commodity production . . . continuously gives rise to a bourgeoisie." I disagree. The economic problem of socialism is not that the "law of value continues to operate" . . . a formulation that confuses the question. Socialism means nothing if not that the unrestricted law of value operating on the basis of the bourgeois property relations is done away with. The unrestricted law of value operating on the basis of the bourgeois property relations, means more than the value of all commodities, including labor power is driven in the direction of zero. The law of value is not what creates the bourgeoisie or the bourgeoisie property relations as a transition in the form of wealth and property, that is the transition from agricultural relations to industrial relations or what is called the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The law of value is the basic law of commodity production. There is no commodity production without exchange and no exchange which does not mean distribution of that being produced and exchanged. What is exchanged and distributed are products created by human beings. These products created by human beings are exchangeable for other products and the way the human mind knows what is "exchangeable for what" is based on the labor content. It follows that the law of value means "the amount of socially necessary labor embodied in a product" and the moment these products become exchangeable with other products produced for the purpose of the singular reason of exchange, we are talking about the rise and domination of the commodity form in society. What were products produced by human beings for consumption, or their use value, becomes commodities when they are offered on the market as a medium of exchange. The law of value in itself does not create exchange or the commodity form of the social product. The growing division of labor in society drives the conversion of use values into exchange values or commodities because you must have someone creating something different from you to be a basis of exchange. Value is the amount of socially necessary labor embodied in a product and as the division of labor in society deepens and expand quantitatively and qualitatively, the commodity form becomes the universal medium for exchange. Life presents reality as a mesh and jumble of everything operating together, which is why we study and think things out to get behind the laws of society. The bourgeois property relations - ownership rights of a class of private owners of the material infrastructure of production, creates cycles of reproduction based on competition and what is profitable to the individual owner. The material infrastructure means the factories, water rights, transportation system, stores and outlets, machines and instruments in all the spheres of distributions, and the rights to buy labor power. To remain profitable the capitalist must sell the products created by the workers, that they own and can distribute as they please (within the law system of what is profitable to them) for a price above what they pay the workers . . . or they go out of business. Because the capitalists or bourgeois property relations is based on private ownership of all of the above and he must pay the workers in wages less than what they create in order to make a profit - and contribute virtually nothing to the general social fund of society, the ability of the workers to consume the products of their labor is continually torn from their hands because their wages or the value of their labor power is driven lower and lower in order for the bourgeoisie to make profits in competition with his competitors in the market. The unrestricted law of value operating on the basis of the bourgeois property relations, means competition between capital governs the cycles of reproduction, what is produced and creates a unique set of needs that are geared to reproducing capital in the hands of private individuals. The law system of capitalist production or reproduction on the basis of the bourgeois property relations is not identical to the law of value as a law of commodity production. Under the first - bourgeois production, its cycles of reproduction - amking the same thing over and over again, continuously creates barriers in the market that limits consumption or create what three generations of Marxists have called the crisis of overproduction. This happens because the law of bourgeois production not only lessens the labor in commodities, and this happens not because of the bourgeoisie but the law of commodity production, but cheapen your wages and makes it impossible for you to send your kids to college. Under all industrial societies the law of value is driven toward zero in the sense of the revolutionizing of the means of production. The law of value is not a law of capitalism, but a law of commodity production. Value is the amount of socially necessary labor that goes into the production of commodities. Every technological advance, more or less, is going to cheapen - lessen, the amount of socially necessary labor in a commodity . . . or rather products that appears on the market as a commodity. Under captialism consumption rights is based on property (ownership) rights and the value of labor power at a given moment and this fact governs who is able to consume "what" and "how much." This was not the case under Soviet socialism because one must include transportation, medical services, higher education, pension rights, housing and purchasing power across the board. Access to housing, transportation, education, pension rights, medical services, vacation time, etc., were sovereign property rights of the entire people based on the property relations and paid for or made possible by the general fund in society. The idea that "the socialist law of distribution â to each according to his work â is basically a capitalist law," is an insult to three generations of Marxists. What does Marx say about distribution? "Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labor power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?" http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm Now to normal people what this means is: "If the material conditions of production are the . . . Property of the workers . . . a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one." Socialist distribution is not basically a capitalist law or law of consumption based on the bourgeois property relations. Marx speaks of the property relations creating a different law system of distribution or distribution no longer based on the unrestricted law of value operating on the basis of bourgeois property. Our "ML" says . . . NO! I think that socialist distribution is basically the same as the bourgeois property relations, a capitalist law. His argument is with Marx not Stalin. Today in the real world we can measure the operation of the unrestricted law of value. What this means is the creation of a planet of slums; with roughly three billion people more than less pushed outside the active buying and selling of labor power. There labor is not needed at this stage in the development of the material power of production and they have no sovereign rights to consumption made possible by the socialist property relations. These three billion people are not feudal serfs but modern proletariat unable to penetrate the market as consumers because of the unrestricted law of value operating on the basis of the bourgeois property relations. The bourgeoisie as a class cannot and does not grow out of the property relations of socialism. Nor does a bourgeoisie grow out of the industrial bureaucracy. Our "ML" is proceeding from an intellectual conception of what he thinks is socialism or the transition from an industrial society operating on the basis of the bourgeois property relations to communism. Marx "Critique of the Gotha Program" needs to be read by all Marxists at least twice a year - at least in America, because we are at the cutting edge of profound social change. Every single theoretical proposition is stated incorrectly and run against what Marx has written on paper for anyone to read. Our "ML" has embraced political Trotskyism and states: "Trotsky writes: The proletarian dictatorship is just a bridge between the bourgeois and the socialist society. In its very essence, therefore, it bears a temporary character. An incidental but very essential task of the state which realizes the dictatorship consists in preparing for its own dissolution." The proletarian dictatorship is NOT AND CAN NEVER BE "just a bridge between the bourgeois and the socialist society." We need to understand what Trotsky is saying and why his writings and policy were rejected by the Leninists. "The proletarian dictatorship is just a bridge between the bourgeois and the socialist society . . . therefore, it bears a temporary character (and) An . . .essential task of . . . the dictatorship consists in preparing for its own dissolution." This is ridiculous. First the Trotskyites scream to the world that an industrial society without the bourgeois property relations cannot be sustained in a capitalist world and then they state the proletarian dictatorship should prepare for its disintegration. History has solved much of this question for us. What cannot be sustained is industrial society itself and it leaps forward on the basis of the revolution in technology or the mode of production. Here is the wall Soviet socialism hit. In terms of the withering away of the state, how is this preparation to take place in the real world except by strengthening the state as an organization of violence, military force against its mortal enemy, guardian of public property and mediator of societal development and evolution? "The proletarian dictatorship is just a bridge between the bourgeois and the socialist society," is a monstrous declaration and insult to the intelligencia that has striven for one hundred fifty years to inject Marxists thought into the bourgeois superstructure. Marx DOES NOT write about a transition to the property relations of socialism BECAUSE "real existing socialism," no matter what its historically specific political forms of compliance, is the TRANSITION. What Trotsky is saying is that the proletarian dictatorship is a transition - bridge, between a transition. Marx writes: "Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm Stated another way, the transition is from society based on property relations to a society with no property relations. Socialism means public property not the abolition of property, because it is a transitional form. The state or the dictatorship of the proletariat is charged with implementing a form of public property as the means to annihilate property in history. The transition is between an industrial society - an industrial mode of production, based on the bourgeois property relations to communist society . . . not a bridge between bourgeois society and socialism. All of Marx Capital is about the industrial system or industrial mode of production with the bourgeois property relations within. The transition is between not an abstract capitalism but industrial capitalism to communism. There are several sides to this question of the strengthening of the proletarian state as the only way to prepare for the withering away of the state; a process that will span perhaps two hundred years. Sovietism or the power of the Soviet form of organization of the workers and all the toilers entered history in 1905 and always had a certain military feature to it best expressed in what would become the Solider Soviets, although the workers and toilers themselves took up arms. After the Soviets became a Union of Soviet Socialists, with the communists controlling the commanding heights of state power they faced many tasks, including the redistribution of labor to build an industrial economy. The mass of labor was in the country side. When Lenin speaks of having everything necessary to build the foundations of socialism he means primarily an industrial economy. Yet, the redistribution of labor was not possible without weakening the country and the low economic development created a profound crisis. The unhindered operations of the State power, as one of the functions of social activity, assumed a special importance. On the one hand its task was to ensure that the scattered petty producers were gathered together or agricultural collectives consolidated. On the other hand the State power had to ensure the development of an industrial infrastructure or an industrial bureaucracy charged with administering industry and ensuring its unhindered growth. The industrial bureaucracy does not growth out of the state power, but is mediated by the state power. It is historically and practically impossible to build an industrial society without an industrial bureaucracy. This meant a cultural revolution or a fight to transform the country and strip from it, its feudal heritage and this involved an enormous literary movement, importing advanced machinery and forever leaving the culture of idyllic feudal social relations. In this context one can understand why the Stakhanovite Movement was a genuine socialist advance. The Stakhanovite Movement was an aspect of the cultural revolution involving workers building the industrial foundation and infrastructure without the bourgeois property relations. Our "ML" maintains that the Stakhanovite Movement was not a socialist advance became wage differentials existed and material incentives were offered and reduces the cultural revolution under socialism to a battle between ideas and correct polemics. To even speak of the dictatorship of the proletariat - which is not the state power, but the rule of public property, preparing for the withering away of the state under these conditions is cowardice and to become a left wing front man for the bourgeoisie. The bottom line is that Trotsky and our "ML" leaves what Marx clearly state in the "Gotha Program." Although we bounced around a little bit, we are only at the very first paragraph of our "ML" summation. He stated: "one of the major theoretical contributions of Mao was his analysis of the contradictions in a socialist society: that in a socialist society, the material basis for the birth of a capitalist class and bourgeois values remains for a very long . . ." Fine. What is the undefined material basis for the "birth of a capitalist class"? The "ML" answer: "the law of value . . . the socialist law of distribution â to each according to his work â (and) commodity production." You have got to be kidding! Comrade Mao ZeDong did not analyze a socialist society but rather China and how to develop its productive forces given its property relations, which were hostile to the individuals being able to convert money, social position or the results of ones labor into ownership of means of production. A class of bourgeoisie's cannot grow out of the socialist property relations or what is the same, the laws in society that defines ones relationship to property based on public property or being denied the ability to convert your private wealth into ownership of means of production. These socialist laws do not prevent or stop speculation, theft, greed or other antisocial tendencies historically rooted in scarcity. The bourgeoisie as a class did not create greed, theft and speculation. A bourgeoisie cannot grow out of the socialist property relations. Until we figure out the difference between a property relations and a mode of production - with the property relations within, we are going to be in trouble. Under socialism what continuously reproduces the striving for market exchange, commodity exchange and not an abstract capitalism is scarcity and the small producer in agriculture. Commodity exchange in and of itself is not capitalist commodity exchange or bourgeois production. As a class of small producers, with a narrow relationship to what is produced, this class contains a striving to alienate its products on the basis of what it can receive as exchange in the market for industrial products. "As a class of small producers, with a narrow relationship to what is produced" is not some abstraction but means you are an agricultural worker, that gets up in the morning and field the crops and livestock and have a material relationship to what you produce and the value of what you produce is determined in your mind based on history of exchange and what is available as exchange in the market place. That is "your crops" are "your products." The workers in large industry cannot claim or evolve a general ideology that says "this is my product" but rather this is the result of our collective labor. "I get up in the morning and start where the other guy left off in the cycle of production, even if the other guy happens to be me." This is why the program of communists have in history been to collectivize agriculture with the state as the owner of means of production - the land, tractors, agricultural implements and the system of transportation. The bourgeoisie cannot grow out of this property relations, although the habits of not just capitalism but commodity exchange - which is thousands of years older, retains a grip in small scale production in the agricultural sector. The deeper question is what is the basis of the counterrevolution as a historical force and when does a "bourgeois restoration" becomes historically and practically impossible? We can only answer this question as materialist historians. When did a feudal economic restoration become historically and practically impossible? Restoration of a previously existing mode of production becomes impossible after society has leapt to the new mode of production and it begins to operate on the basis of its unique law system. Today, there is not world historical feudal economic relations to go back to. Restoration is impossible, without a fundamental destruction of society itself. Socialism as a property relations, does not create a basis for capitalism or a bourgeoisie. The industrial system itself is hostile to communism, but ripe for socialism. Now that we are leaving the industrial epoch and face a gigantic leap in the development of the material power of production - computerization, digitalized production process and advance robotics, that radically alters forever the organic composition of capital, this is fairly obvious. Although China today has the largest socialist economy on earth, it has long ago opened the door to the bourgeois property relations and has a more than less newly formed bourgeoisie and passed a series of laws protecting the rights of private property. The danger to China and Cuba is not simply the pressure of imperialism but within the industrial mode of production itself. If the law of value cannot be liquated under the industrial system, then under what conditions does it lose its force? Stated another way, "under what conditions does the commodity form disintegrate?" The commodity form and the law of value becomes inoperable not as the result of political fiat or correct policy at any given moment of history, but on the basis of a change in the productive forces, that makes it increasingly impossible to circulate the mass of commodities onn the basis of buying and selling of labor power. Advanced robotics destroys the value in commodities and radically oust labor from the production process. What we face on a world scale today is not the reserved industrial army of labor that can be more or less deployed during rising curves of industrial production, but a property less proletarian mass, who labor is not needed, while the value of labor power is falling at a frightening pace everywhere. The basis of the counterrevolution was never within the socialist property relations, the technical state of development and organization of the industrial system itself and its agricultural sector. The issue is not the contradictions in a socialist society or a society in transition to communism but rather the removal of the antagonistic form of development. I humbly beg to different with Comrade Mao . . . my Chairman, on how the conception of antagonism is presented in his "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People" and its conflict with the English language. This particular theoretical dispute goes back to Lenin and Bukharin. In one of the many letters of Lenin and his debate within the party he writes about Bukharin misunderstanding contradictions. Contradictions do not become antagonistic on the basis of policy. The problem is that in English the word antagonism means violence and this is not the philosophic meaning of antagonism. For instance if I have a dispute with "you" and you punch me in the nose . . . those not really familiar with Marx says, "Melvin had a contradiction with Steve and it became antagonistic, and he hit him in the nose." What Lenin wrote was that "Antagonism and contradiction are by no means the same. Under socialism the first will vanish, the second will remain." The contradictions of socialism do not disappear, only the antagonism which means that the development of the productive forces and classes do not assume the antagonistic form. Violent struggles take place. This needs to be discussed and made clear. In American society the various contradictions amongst all the class proceed as antagonism because of the bourgeois property relations. The resolution of the class demands and aspirations of the small producers - all the way down to the sharecropper, was his destruction and liquidation as a class of producers, not simply property holders. In his place arose huge agricultural combines with the historic country side lingering in backwardness. The only way a class can be truly liberated or emancipated is by replacing its energy with a more efficient form of energy, or radically ousting it from the production process. The sharecropper was liberated - liquidated as a property relations and people organized on the basis of small scale and petty production by the revolution in the means of production. The serf was emancipated by a political act and became a petty bourgeois producer which is not real emancipation. The slave of the American South were emancipated by a political act and became sharecroppers. This is not the meaning of emancipation or the emancipation of labor. In the Soviet country side the assault was against the large property holder - Kulak, as a property holder with a policy of collectivization and modernization of the country side. Destroying or liquidating the Kulak as a class meant the liquidation of a property relations . . . not a relations based on the mode of production as a certain stage in the development of the means of production. Here is the real barrier to the advance of the social revolution and Soviet socialism, not matter what its mistakes. The barrier was the advance of industry itself and industrial society is hostile to communism. Contradictions between the productive forces and relations of production remain because contradictions between a new state of development of technology and an old state remain and is the driven of history, as we understand it. What passes from history is the antagonism or the antagonistic form of resolution, where society ifs forever compelled to leap forward on the basis of political revolution. The point is that our "ML" poses the questions of economic problems of socialism on the basis of ideology and Trotsky's pronouncements. _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list
