Recently on Louis Proyect's list, there was an interesting exchange between Fred Feldman and Michael Lebowitz. Their exchange prompted me to dig out critical comments I typed a while ago, but didn't publish, on Michael's essay "Marxism for the 21st Century." I typed them and put them aside, because I felt I needed to edit them extensively. Problem is I make my texts too verbose, tedious, and even patronizing, because I repeat things that need no repetition. Well, I can't fix the text now. If it has any use, now is when.
Michael's essay is here: http://radicalnotes.com/content/view/54/39/ * * * I am in much sympathy with the spirit of Michael Lebowitz's essay "Marxism for the 21st Century." To the best of my ability, I've followed Michael's recent works, and been inspired by them. I disagree, however, strongly with his advice for us to treat Marx's 1959 "Preface" as a "book of proverbs." I think I understand Michael's frustration with those who "worship technology" per se, as if communism could flow from a high level of technological development with human agency passively trailing -- as it were -- the cry of technology. But I'm not sure that Michael does full justice to the argument. Plainly said, I don't think that frustration with a mechanical conception of historical change (technological determinism) justifies rejecting the view that a certain, definite degree of development of the productive forces is a *necessary pre-condition* for the self-emancipation of the direct producers. To be clear: the issue, in my opinion, is not whether our ability to build socialism is constrained (or enabled, depending on how one looks at it) by the concrete, existing level of the productive force of labor and by social structures of all kinds, some more rigid than others -- production relations, laws, political conditions, social morality, ideas that have "gripped the masses" and, thus, become "material forces," etc. That's a matter of course. Neither is the issue whether building socialism under specific social conditions -- from daily social production to the specific development of technology to dismantling existing social structures and introducing or reinforcing alternative ones -- requires human action, and that enlightened, coordinated, deliberate workers' mass action is the highest form of human agency in history. That's also a matter of course. In my view, the issue is, casuistic. In each particular case (e.g. China, Cuba, Venezuela), do the forms of human agency collectively undertaken -- e.g. the effective strategy and tactics of given political working-class formations -- have a reasonable probability of success, given the plasticity or rigidity of the immediate social conditions under which those forms of human agency are being tried? The answer to that question has to be concrete. We can say a few things in general, but -- again -- they are not direct answers to the question above. Generally speaking, I think that Michael bends the stick so much in his direction, that by implication he seems to subscribe to the view that the existing productive force of labor doesn't matter. As long as masses of people with the "right" intentions are in motion, Michael seems to imply, socialism can be built. Certainly, there is a lot that large masses of people with the "right" intentions can do. But they cannot do anything they intend. At least, that is not what a materialist interpretation of known history would lead us to conclude. (I say the right intentions and not the right ideas, because whether ideas are right or not begs the very question.) Michael writes that the view of communism as evolving in two discrete stages ("socialism" and "communism proper") wasn't Marx's perspective in the Critique of Gotha's program. "Rather than two separate stages, Marx understood that the new society necessarily develops through a process -- a process in which it transcends the economic, social, and intellectual defects it has inherited from capitalism." Here again the spirit of Michael's remark is fine: the new society is built through a process of concrete human agency. But processes don't exclude the progression through stages. This is not to say that the attributes that Marx listed as characteristic of "socialism" and "communism" in that document will be necessarily the effective stages through which a new society will be built in a particular setting (e.g. Venezuela, China, Cuba). It is clear, however, that processes can be understood as sequences of stages in which -- along some given dimensions -- the process goes from less to more, and in which stage x precedes and sets the necessary and sufficient conditions for stage x + 1. In this particular case, the dimension or criterion of interest is the development in the production (and distribution) relations. Michael writes that "the specific defect that [Marx] identified [in his critique of Gotha's program] was not that productive forces were too low but, rather, the nature of the human beings produced in the old society with the old ideas -- people who continue to be self-oriented and therefore consider themselves entitled to get back exactly what they contribute to society. Building upon defects -- rather than working consciously to eliminate them -- is a recipe for restoring capitalism (as experience has demonstrated)." The latter sentence is correct. But, first, people only set themselves to change reality, when the change appears to them as an immediate collective need. And, second, changing reality -- like producing anything -- is not the direct realization of the alternative people envision in their minds, but the result of such vision as it clashes with -- or is refracted through -- the existing conditions. Inevitably, the initial intentions end up adjusted. The outcome only partially embodies the initial intentions. The development of the productive forces precedes, coincides, and results from the process of development of the new society. It is an essential aspect of the development of a new society. It precedes it, because the perception of a problem and of its solution have both to do with people's abilities. Moreover, the effective solution, its implementation in practice, depends on people's abilities. And what is the development of the productive forces but, ultimately, the development of the productive force of *labor*? What is the development of the productive force of labor but the development of people as able to produce (and reproduce) their material (and social) life, in and through their association? Implicitly, Michael accepts uncontested an implicit premise of the technological determinists (i.e. that wealth is other than what contributes to the overall development of human beings as such) when he views the development of the productive forces as antithetical to the development of the new society. I'm not saying that wealth, under particular circumstances, may not conspire against social progress. I'm saying that overall, in general, the growth of human wealth coincides with the material development of humans as humans. Wealth is the stock of useful effects that meet human material needs (material as opposed to specifically social, production-relations-laden needs, such as the needs of market exchange or the need of hierarchically controlling the producers). What humans regard as needs shifts. The perception of social needs is an arena of the class struggle. Implicitly, the assumption seems to be that the development of the new society is some sort of straight-line path of smooth, increasing unity, organization, and self-transformation of the producers. There's no basis for such an assumption. The process is inherently contradictory. Partial and general needs will clash, short and long-term goals will clash, etc. It'd be nice if, at each juncture, the actions that promote the unity of the class in the short and long run were obvious to everyone, were beautifully aligned, etc. But that's just a wish. The process of building a new society is inherently contradictory. Michael continues: "[R]ather than taking self-interest as a premise, associated producers work to develop new social norms based upon cooperation and solidarity among members of society." Well, in developing new social norms, the associated producers ponder the pre-existing conditions. At a given place and time, people are more or less productive, more or less capable of progress, etc. In that sense, not taking self-interest as a premise may be foolish, since self-interest is effectively a premise. What Michael means is perhaps that the people's self-interest should not be promoted but fought at each point. I agree that should be the overall thrust but that glosses over the question of whether self-interest should be attacked frontally or tactically circumvented under specific circumstances. That cannot be answered in the abstract. Michael seems to view his abstract answer is the practical rule, which is not. The question has to be answered concretely, in each historical juncture. The practical contradictions along the path of the workers developing themselves as a productive force and developing the norms of the new society, the clash between immediate and mediate goals, rather than mere errors in interpreting Capital, are the basis for the attempts to induce productivity in the long run at the expense of the unity of the workers in the short run. We know that the producers can only emancipate themselves collectively through their unity and cooperation, but that doesn't mean that the path to this unity and cooperation will be a straight line. For example, in the case of Cuba, it seems to me that Cubans want a higher level of consumption (where consumption is somewhat, though not entirely, patterned after "Western," capitalistic consumption norms), a higher level of political participation, and a higher level of "economic freedom." These collective demands are highly contradictory. How exactly will they grapple with these contradictions I don't know, but I have no doubt that there is a strongly felt, collectively perceived need for markets and private ownership, though not necessarily for more inequality. And I have no doubt that markets would, in the case of Cuba, induce a development of the productive force of labor in the sense indicated above -- i.e., not merely as a technical development irrespective of its application, but as the development of people qua conscious producers of wealth. I understand that our role is not to foster illusions about whether particular social structures (e.g. markets) lead per se, automatically, to building socialism. But it's not at all clear that the expansion of markets in Cuba's case is overall detrimental to building socialism in the long run. I'm in no position to emit a confident conclusion on the matter. Back to Michael's essay. He writes that the rightful concept of socialism of the 21st century "rejects the practice of ignoring the transformation of social relations and human beings in order to develop productive forces." It's clearly good to reject the practice of developing the productive forces as if those forces could *ultimately* be developed by disuniting the producers, pitting them against one another, worshiping markets or some bureaucratic structure as panaceas. But it's better to own to the fact that the process by which the producers may undertake this development is contradictory and may not be a straight line, because people start to build the new society from their concrete practical needs and with the resources and understanding they have. Michael writes that "grasping Capital's focus on how relations of production precede and shape the character of new productive forces would help to reduce the worship of technology and the development of productive forces." I agree that technology should not be worshiped. But, again, the development of the productive forces is coincident in general with (is an essential aspect of) the development of people as producers and reproducers of their material life in society. That is an aspect of the development of the new society, even if that process of development is inherently a contradictory one. Indeed, the relations of production "precede and shape the character of the new productive forces." But so does fashion, the particular sense of "style" (aesthetics) of particular demographic groups (with purchasing power), as can be seen in the concrete, recent path of evolution of computer and communications technology. Yet, we don't say that fashion and the sense of style of Steve-Jobs yuppies are the "real foundations" upon which the productive forces rest, the fundamental pre-requisite for the development of the productive forces. Why? Ultimately, the problem I see in Michael's remarks is political, practical. They lead to a certain voluntarism that doesn't serve us well. We cannot struggle without a high measure of audacity against adverse odds. But, as Michael knows, audacity unsupported by a judicious appraisal of the existing conditions is adventurism. I'll end up by quoting Marx's (1845-1846) "German Ideology": "And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the 'propertyless' mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones. Without this, (1) communism could only exist as a local event; (2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism. Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples "all at once" and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism." And his 1859 "Preface": "No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. "Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation." _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
