> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > >>
> > We demand change in society along the direction of the
> productive forces,
>
> No. Not true. _Many_ Marxists but by no means all put central emphasis
> on the "productive forces." Others argue that this
> proposition about the
> necessary growth of productive forces applies not to all history (and
> certainly not to socialism or communism) but only to capitalism. It is
> this drive to unleash the productive forces that turns
> capitalism into a
> destructive force. See esp. the works of Ellen Meiksins Wood, Edward
> Thompson, Raymond Williams, and Robert Brenner.
>
> Carrol
How do we measure the "productive forces," anyway? It seems that capitalism
would measure their development differently from other modes of production.
(Capitalism might measure them in terms of labor productivity, which is
marketable output per worker, corrected for inflation. There are all sorts
of index-number problems with that measure, BTW.)
Jim Devine
My measure of the productive forces would be based on the application of advancing technology that complete the quantitative stages in the development of the infrastructure.
Such a measurement was not possible for me, as a specific quantitative measurement of the industrial infrastructure, with revolutionary significance, until a new qualitative development in technology occurred.
That is to say the advance of technology to electronic-digital from electro-mechanico gives definition to a measurement called "boundary." Manufacture (hand) was a specific boundary. The application of steam (steam engine) a boundary; the development of robotics another boundary to measure the quantitative development of the productive forces. I understood this constituted a quantitative and even qualitative growth - from hand to energy sustained infrastructure outside human energy, but things remained more fuzzy than my current fuzziness.
Most of my life I lack a concept of quantitative boundaries as antagonism and only development this concept over the last three years in a debate over the concept mode of production. Marx speaks of a "certain statge in the development of the forces of production" and I used to fill in the concept "certain stage" with the "crisis of overproduction" as the measurement of society moving in antagonism. Actually, I believe that many of the students of Marx used this incorrect concept of "a certain stage" because the boundary of transition to a new technology was not clear in perception.
Perhaps, in a few years the concept of boundary will turn out to be historically limited or simply incorrect. Something new in production is taking place and in the world of money and pushing the envelope will help to clarify what is new. Man of course is the most revolutionary agent "of" the productive forces.
Nothing ventured nothing gained.
Melvin P.
