Date: 21 Jul 2000 16:01:09 +0200 From: "TAHIR WOOD" <twood-AT-uwc.ac.za> Subject: Why I'm not a Makhnoite (was Re: AUT: (en) A call for >>> "Peter van Heusden" <pvh-AT-egenetics.com> 07/21 11:46 AM >>> as "Workers against work" shows, there was resistance to the 'collective' management in the factories. Later movements - e.g. that which grew out of workers' confrontation with Keynesianism - went further than the Spanish revolutionaries of the 1930s did, in that the question of doing away with the factory (seeing the factory not as a neutral 'technical' organisation, but rather central to an alienated society) rather than taking over the factory got raised. This poses an interesting dilemma, because all forms of marxism have surely agreed that socialism is only possible on the basis of the forces of production that have been inherited from capitalism. However, this does not mean that one endorses the leninist prespective that revolution consists in bringing those forces under the umbrella of the state in unchanged form (socialism = electrification plus soviets). To adopt that perspective means something like adopting a 'state capitalist stage' as transition to socialism, an option that today does not seem a very desirable one with the lessons of history there to draw on. But neither is a reduction in, or even destruction of, these forces of production a very attractive option, not with the kind of population and poverty we are inheriting. It is OK to say that the technology is not neutral and that one would like a different technology and a different way of managing it (and a different level of population?), but any reduction in productive capacity, no matter how temporary, is a very scary prospect indeed. And how far would one go with this without turning luddite, a utopian option which may neverthless have its adherents on this list? Tahir --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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