Part 10 Marx is a beautiful thing and absolutely clear concerning the difference between the law of value on the one hand and the law of value as it operates on the basis of the bourgeois property relations. THE LAW OF VALUE IS NOT A CAPITALISTIC LAW. The law of value is the most basic law of commodity production - not capitalism, and arise in history centuries before the advent of the "capitalist mode of production." Marx says that during the transition period of history between capitalism and communism: 1. " . . . the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. 2. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, 2a. and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. 3. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm Let us get into the heart of this to understand why Trotskyism was rejected and called hostile to Marxism. Mr. Trotsky is quoted as stating: >"the distribution of life's goods is carried out with a capitalistic measure of value and all the consequences ensuing therefrom.â< I ask again:
What is a "capitalistic measure of value," (that is) "bourgeois, insofar as the distribution of life's goods is carried out?" What Trotsky has written in utterly incoherent and makes no sense. The exchange of commodity equivalents in the Soviet Union did not take place on the basis of private ownership of means of production. The political revolution abolished the rule of capital and this is what changed "the form and content" of commodity production in the Soviet Union. >"the distribution of life's goods is carried out with a capitalistic measure of value and all the consequences ensuing therefrom.â< I could bite a brick in half at such an outrageous lie and repudiation of Marx under the banner of Marxism. There is no such thing as a "capitalistic measure of value" because the measure of value is labor content not the property relations or distribution. What on earth does this "capitalistic measure of value" mean? That we pluck the eye out of a capitalist and then put it in our eye socket and then look at value? Or a capitalist stands on one side of the street and a communist stands on the other side and both measure the labor content of commodities and come up with the same amount of hours - say ten, and the communist is accused of being bourgeois!!! The Trotskyites scream and say, "no this is not what I meant. Value or the exchange of labor equivalents is really measured by distribution and the guys over there working harder and longer hours can get more than me and I am not going to work a 80 hours week and that ain't socialism." We communist workers reply: "But brother, I have a wife and four children and I believe we are building a new world of socialism and I plan to work until I drop dead. The Soviet government, our government raised wages in the war industries and that sector of the economy that makes the machines that make the machines and since I am a machinists I am going to make some tanks because the bourgeoisie is coming for us sooner or later. I have just started reading Marx but I think this wage differential is designed to attract labor to this sector of the economy. " The Trotskyites screams, "but that shit ain't right because socialism means there should not be a wage differential." "Fine brother but where did Marx say there is no wage differential under socialism? Did Marx not explain that skilled labor is unskilled labor compounded and even if my skill gets me a higher wage that does not mean the peasant children and the children of the great unskilled proletarian masses are denied higher education or public transportation, vacations, pensions, access to cultural pursuits and all of "life's goods." My 80 hours of work piss off the wife but does it not add to the general pool of labor in society?" "You're a stupid worker hypnotized by Stalin and cannot understand that we are using a capitalistic measure of value . . ." "Wait a moment comrade. My 80 hours is measure against your 44 hours, which is your right to work and you saying that 80 = 44 and anyone who does not understand this is using a capitalistic measure of value?" "But you can buy more vegetable than me and I heard that you are going to Moscow in front of a lot of people on the list." "Well, yes. I am going to Moscow because the call was issued for all machinists to line up as one man on the labor front in the war industries and I cannot work if I do not have a place to sleep, although I volunteered to sleep in the plant. I hear that Hitler said we were not shit and he was going to crush us because we overthrew our bourgeoisie. I am getting living quarters in front of you because of my skill with machines and because the wife and kids refused to sleep in the plant with me and the wife is going to leave my ass if I do not stop trying to get one of those Hero of Labor Medals." "Goddamit that is capitalistic distribution of "life's goods" and privileges of a tiny segment of society and next you are going to join the party and kiss Stalin's ass and work 85 hours so that your family can live better than me." "Listen . . . please because we go back twenty-five years and played together as kids and you know my wife and kids and they love you. You have gone from being my brother to being a comrade and then you say things that do not make sense to me. Then you are trying to get people to support you at work and not work extra hours, even if they volunteer. Do you understand that you are organizing against the skilled guys going to the war front and advocating people withhold their labor and support your way?" So called theory and politics becomes orientation, behavior and approach to real life task. Value is the amount of socially necessary labor embodied in commodities and this does not change whether one is in a socialist society during the industrial epoch or a capitalist society. The question is most certainly distribution of "life's goods" and the distribution of "life's goods" in the Soviet Union was not on the basis of capitalism or a "capitalistic measure of value." The economic house of cards of our "ML" is built upon Trotsky's misconception of the law of value, how it operated in the Soviet Union, condemnation of the Stakhanovite Movement as a non-socialist movement of labor or a capitalist movement of labor, since we are not talking about feudalism and this condemnation is based on the existence of wage differentials. This wage differentials is the result of a misunderstanding of socialism and writing into the 1936 Soviet - Stalin, Constitution the he who does not work shall not eat. But wait a minute it gets "better" as our "ML" follows Trotsky far away from anything resembling Marxism. The real problem we are told is: "inequalities in the sphere of consumption continue, so long as âbourgeois law â continues to dominate, a bureaucracy is bound to rise in the workersâ state, and the state is bound to grow more and more despotic." (Quote from part 7) The bureaucracy arise from the inequality of distribution and this distribution is a capitalistic measure of value - not because bourgeois property has been abolished, but because the inequality is unequal. Our "ML" ends this section by stating - hold on to your stomach: "Trotsky thus brilliantly explains the material basis for the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy." http://www.marxmail.org/chapter7.htm We traveled from Marx brilliant concept of "bourgeois right" and witnessed its conversion into something called "bourgeois law" to prove that distribution was based on a capitalistic measure of value and then went from "the bureaucracy" to the Stalinist bureaucracy and along the way we trashed the law of value - the socially necessary amount of labor in a commodity; called the transition to communism a transition from capitalism to socialism, condemned material incentives as being offensive to the flesh and socialism, called the proletarian state a bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie . . . wait a minute. What is the bourgeois state and bourgeois production without the bourgeoisie? What is the feudal state and feudal landed property relations and production without the feudal lords? A bunch of serf running around kicking each other asses? Wait a minute . . . if there are no feudal lords can a feudal serf still be a feudal serf? The economic and social - political, problem of Soviet socialism was that the working class was not the same working class that exists under capitalism, although the low level of development of the industrial system imparted to it features we incorrectly call capitalism, that are in fact industrial. This is a historical question and a historical error on the part of the entire world communist movement. Generally speaking communists have had at least 10 years to catch up with the new developments in the means of production and it might take another 10 years for a world reformulation. Dig . . . the working class cannot sell its labor power to itself as a class and Stalin wrote this in his "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR" fifty years ago. Yes, our "ML" is going to be insulted and not treated with kid gloves and then pressured to get with the new program and stop writing this Trotskyite nonsense. Communist workers at all times keep our feet buried in Marx. Marx said: "Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption." The content and form Marx is talking about is the process of production and exchange - distribution, after the abolition of the bourgeois property relations. We call such a system of industrial production, (drum roll please) . . . socialism or industrial socialism. And we are not scared to discuss its warts and weaknesses. It's about to get ugly again. My expressed intent is to bury our "ML" along with his new found friend Leon Trotsky. In the next section of part 7 called "The Answer to the Problem" he states, and the entire section is quoted: >>"Trotsky gives no answer to the problem posed by him â that since bourgeois law is inevitably operates in socialist society, what should be the program of the Communist Party to tackle this situation? He mentions that this problem was first posed by Marx; and Lenin âgave an extremely sharpened expression to the conception of Marx âalthough he did not himself succeed in carrying his analysis through to the end â either in his chief work dedicated to this question (State and Revolution), or in the program of the party.â[2] Trotsky adds: âExplaining the revival of bureaucratism by the unfamiliarity of the masses with administration and by the special difficulties resulting from the war, the program (of the Bolshevik Party) prescribes merely political measures for the overcoming of âbureaucratic distortionsâ: election and recall at any time of plenipotentiaries, abolition of material privileges, active control by the masses, etc. It was assumed that along this road the bureaucrat, from being a boss, would turn into a simple and moreover temporary technical agent, and the state would gradually and imperceptibly disappear from the scene.â[3] What does all of this mean? Allow me to condense the above. "since bourgeois law . . . inevitably operates in socialist society, . . . the revival of bureaucratism . . . resulting from the war, the program . . . prescribes . . . measures for the overcoming of âbureaucratic distortionsâ: . . . It was assumed that . . . the bureaucrat, . . . would turn into a . . . technical agent, and the state would gradually and imperceptibly disappear from the scene.â[3] 1. We are not dealing with a "bourgeois law" but a socialist law of reproduction and the operation of bourgeois right - according to Marx. Distribution of the social product - "life's goods" did not take place on the basis of the bourgeois property relations or a bourgeois law. Distribution of "life's goods" was not carried out on the based of a capitalistic measure of value. This is simply an outright lie. A fiction invented by the enemies of Soviet socialism. Look in the dictionary. A "law" is very different from a "right." Law for Marxists and communist workers means the controlling influence of a set of rules that enforce and repeat themselves as an iron logic. There is a law of capitalist production. "Bourgeois right" does not mean "bourgeois law." Rights mean . . . you know what it means and its subjective and class interpretations and why it is the actual field of class struggle and conflict between ideology. Rights is of course the field of politics that in the last instance operates within a law system of production. This is why you cannot have socialist production and capitalist distribution as an equation of Soviet socialism. It is impossible. What you have are rights inherited from a previous generation and mode of production. The bourgeoisie as a class cannot be birthed on the basis of "rights' but rather a law system. 2. Let us assume all of us were historical wrong. The bureaucrat could not and did not disappear and could not disappear because industrial production calls forth an industrial bureaucracy. The party bureaucrat was assigned to check up on - not the workers, but the industrial bureaucrat. Is this not the reason the struggle in the Soviet Union was particularly sharp with many jailed and shot. To this very day the Soviet's have the singular distinction of jailing and shooting the bureaucrats - factory managers and even Generals in the armed forces, who may or may not have been party members. And this process was conducted in a bureaucratic fashion with everyone trying to "cover their ass" and many writing false reports and blaming others - especially the hidden Trotskyites. But the bottom line is that the bureaucrat and bureaucracy does not grow out of a metaphysical capitalistic distribution of "life's goods." Who but a petty bourgeoisie conceives of political economy in such terms? The petty bourgeoisie intellectual merely reveals his lusting for what he considers his god govern pound of flesh and gold. "Distribution creates a bourgeoisie under socialism." This is what Trotsky wrote and our "ML" replayed. This is going to get real ugly because I would like to go back and swing through everything our "ML" wrote and deal with it on another level of communism. The problem in exposition is that we must define everything we talk about so there is no confusion over meaning and context. The workers must understand everything we write and say. Melvin P. _______________________________________________ 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
