On 3/30/07, Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Marx was big on the innovative power of capitalism - both its penchant for creating new technologies and new wants. It's not hard to relate that to a theory of job creation, even though many Marxists seem temperamentally inclined to emphasize destruction. Doug
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while you, doug, seem temperamentally inclined to emphasize capitalism's progressive tendencies, you make an excellent point about one-sided analysis, be it the side you generally seem to be on or the one that the 'many marxists' to which you are fond of referring are on... below is a little ditty that i put together some years ago as a summary of one side of marx, the side that you appear to sit on, there is, of course, *that other side*, a problem here is that a lot of folks just aren't good dialectical thinkers... michael hoover Capitalism's Progressive and Creative Qualities Those who suppose that Karl Marx emphasized only the negative features of capitalism such as alienation, crisis, and exploitation are mistaken. Indeed, throughout his intellectual career - in his philosophical, journalistic, historical, and economic writings - Marx consistently stressed the progressive and creative features of capitalism. Marx's social theory makes no sense unless this essential duality is retained. For Marx, capitalism is progressive and creative with respect to the past (pre-capitalist societies), the present (capitalism itself), and the future (post-capitalist society). First, capitalism has "revolutionizing properties" in transforming all past social, economic, and political relations, thus creating conditions for the consolidation and universal development of capitalism. Marx regarded this revolutionary abolition of the past, which he ascribed directly to the bourgeoisie, to be more a protracted, violent, and difficult process than would be the transformation of capitalism into socialism. Second, capitalism has "universalizing properties". That is, commodity production promotes the internal (intensive) and external (extensive) development of capitalist relations of production through space and time, drawing all people into a web of economically-based social contacts and dependencies. Universalization thus implies a constant revolutionizing of the present as capital strives to overcome all obstacles to its general development. Third, capitalism has "industrializing properties". The logic of accumulation initiates and sustains an industrial revolution that constantly develops the forces of production, thus radically enhancing the power of social labor. Finally, capitalism is said to have "liberating properties" in that the revolutionizing, universalizing, and industrializing tendencies establish the objective and subjective conditions for the transition to socialism. Development of the productive powers of the economy provides the material abundance that without which socialism for Marx would necessarily remain a "struggle for necessities". Moreover, the tendency of the system to maximize surplus labor time relative to necessary labor time holds out the promise of the appropriation of that surplus time time as leisure or free time for the producing classes, thus allowing for the universal extension of civilization, and the development of humanity as a rich individuality. Most importantly for Marx, capitalist development generated the proletariat as a universal class, universal in the sense that in pursuit of its particular class interests (abolition of oppression and poverty) it promotes the general interest (abolition of private property, hence, of capitalism). In addition, for Marx capitalist industry socially organizes this class in production, the basis for the realization of class consciousness as praxis (i.e., the revolutionary transformation of capitalism). Finally, in connection with its liberating potential, Marx held that capitalism demystified, rationalized, and secularized human culture and action, freeing the human mind from that "smallest compass" of superstition, idolatry, and religious and political illusions, and, through its development of science and materialism, extended human mastery over nature and developed arts, faculties, and achievements in a world-historic sense.
