From: "Greg Schofield" <g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au>
Subject: Re: AUT: highest form of capitalism
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 12:05:23 +0800




--- Message Received ---
From: cwright <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 21:22:04 -0600
Subject: Re: AUT: highest form of capitalism
Chris:
I never called you a Leninist or associated you with Trotsky.  How odd.  I
did say that Lenin had serious problems around this and your defense of
Lenin's idea of imperialism is problematical, but that's it.  The piece I
pasted in was from another post addressed to someone else, not to or at you.
Sorry if that was unclear.

Greg:
Sorry it is a case of reading more in the post than was there. I hope comrades disregard my outburst.

Greg:
> Well I will disagree with your assessment on Lenin and as for the weakness
in identifying causes I cannot understand what you mean, I thought the book
itself was an elaborate and detailed identification of such causes.

> If you mean that disregarding the very simple and straightforward
translation problem Carrol point out with the title that this still infers
some theory of decadence - well, I suppose it does, on this basis so does
much of Marx and something of the entire corpus of socialist writings.

Chris: no, it doesn't.  Marx's discussion did not imply that capital would
eventually become decrepit and fall apart of its own accord or that 'highest
stage' could be meaningful.  Lenin aped this from his training in the Second
International and their evolutionist theory.  You like to present people's
disagreements with you as based on their blatant inability to grasp the
obvious, btw, which is really obnoxious.  Lenin (and Hilferding, Grossman,
Pannekeok, Luxemburg, Engels, etc.) seriously differ from Marx on this.

Greg:
It is obnoxious and patronising and I regret this as this was not my real intention. There is a problem when something does appear to be obvious, usually derived from different traditions and readings, the first impulse is to assume that something has been purposefully missed or distorted for the sake of making a point - hence the off-hand and superior response seems called for.

So let me try and make good this way. It is clear that you are not just making cheap shots and playing merry hell with the classics, but rather your view is the result of a very different appreciation of Historical Materialism, it will take me some time to get a handle on this (a position which, personally, I am only too familiar with - ie being misread because I am not following the usual script).

Now where there is significant differences is in our views of the role of social evolution in Histrocial Materialism, whiuch naturally I do not see reduced to the shortcomings of the Second International or to the simplisticism of the Third. However this is a biog question with lost of implications. So probably it is best to leave it hanging for the moment (naturally I see Marx much closer to this).

Greg:
> These may be your strongly held opinions but I cannot see there is much
argument in them. On the other hand you distinguish a difference between
nationalising the means of production and socialising them, moreover that
private property can be "socialisilised" for a section of society and hence
retain its private nature as against full (conscious, I presume)
socialization.

> I will not split hairs over whether netionalising is the same as
socialising it seems pedantic, there are after all many ways to skin a cat,
there are I think many ways to socialise the means of production.

Chris:  That you cannot 'see it' is neither my fault nor my problem.  That
you do not distinguish between nationalization and socialization is more
interesting to me.  If we remove that terminological difficulty, then I
don't think we disagree, but I take socialization to mean something
different from nationalization.  Consciousness has nothing to do with it,
but the actual transformation of the social relations between people, the
elimination of wage labor, the capital-labor relation, exchange (in the
specific sense used in Capital), etc.

Greg:
Good points which should be pursued more closely. In terms of nationalisation. It is entirely possible to nationalise something without socialising it (assuming its previous existence as private property, or property witrh private characteristics) - this is when nationalisation is a charade (which is common enough when the state bails out the bourgeoisie). However, at another level, once property is transformed from classic private to some form of corproate or shared form, a significant aspect of socialisation has happened, the trouble is that this is so common now we forget how in the distant past the actual private nature of private property was much more of a social problem - it is largely a mute question today because most property has been socialisied to this degree.

Chris is this a suitable qualification? Note in this no political or even class attitude or consequence is presumed to flow from this simple transformation of the property form.

If I can use this rather abstract view as a jumping off point.

When private property was absolutely domionant in the means of production (in Marx's day) and when critical parts of capiatl were private (down to the middle of the 20th century - more or less). The proletariat had to gain levers over economic life - had to socialise (make available) those means of production which would otherwise frustrate their desires.

Hence the definition of proletarian socialism as the socialisation of the means of production under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Now by suggesting that all the leading aspects of the means of production have been socialisied (mediated by the state in a tame form of state-capitalism), we are left with the proletariat constructing its class dictatorship.

In a nutshell this is my position.

Hopefully you may be able to see that such a position is rather hostile to phantoms (like resurecting the need to socialise the means of production, elimination of the free market - which capital has already done, or struggling for national liberation despite the end of imperialism). In a political sense I am saying look how much capital has achieved by itself, so to speak, take this on board and now struggle for the immediate changes which are capable of realising proletarian interests.

This is a position which does not dictate any tactics, but does start to outline a strategy, but I will leave it here. I suggest that once the differences in conceptualisation are taken into account, the different biases in terms of reading and understanding that what I am getting at might not be too far removed from your own concerns (that is as I am begining to understand them). Certianly I think I have a little more in common with some of your points then the anti-imperialist and the wait for revolution school.


Greg:
> On your second point that socialising the means of production amongst a
section of society still retains something of its private nature - well
comrade THAT WAS THE POINT I WAS TRYING TO MAKE!!!!!! it still
socialization - think about it for a minute and you will see that its
private appearance is but a shell, it is an expression of class dominance
when the relations of production have long broken past being predicated on a
private relationship of direct ownership - you still have the bourgeois,
capital and labour and all the rest, it is not a better system but a more
developed one.

Chris:  Then we use socialization in a completely different way.  For me
socialization involves the transformation of the relations of production,
not simply changing hands between individual capitalists and the nation
state.

Greg:
The transformation of the property form is in essence not very much, with this I agree, however it does change however subtly the relations of power over the means of production (ownership being the right to use, abuse or dispose of property). Not much in one way of thinking, but compared to classic capitalism a significant foot in the door which for the instance the Paris Commune and the Russian Revolution had to confront and was not without its contradictions (in the latter case too much was artificially "socialisied" and too much of the power of over production defacto landed in the lap of the state bureacracy - I believe NEP was an important but defeated response to this distorted outcome).

Now the relations of production cannot be changed by legislation, nor by some magical sponatenous and instaneous revolutionary usurge (things will change but the relations are incidious - as is the alientation of labour - their product and cause).

To erode and destroy the relations of production requires the long process of finding better ways to everyday stuff, it p[resumes the proletariat to be in political power and social dominance, but even so it is only in the ongoing struggle of everyday life that these realtions will be destroyed (noticed destroyed  not changed or bettered, in fact some aspects may not be bettered initially and much will be left in place no matter how revolutionary the political change has been).

Now you say "not simply changing hands between individual capitalists and the nation state." which I am inclined to agree with but with the proviso that this may be the absolutely necessary precondition to making the changes (ie I think you will agree that the left has traditionally reified the concept of disposing of capitalists and siezing the state as the solution in toto - to me it is just the begining, so I tend to be conservative in my expectation of what these two things are capable of bringing about - ie not much by themselves).

If you want to take this a step further and say the siezing of the nation state (siezing in the class rather than the party sense) and pushing aside of the actual bourgeoisie (dispossessing them, if not completely but at least in the critical parts of the economy and state), is somehow avoidable or not in the sights - then I will disagree most strongly - I am not suggesting this just speculating.

Greg:
> Now I wont be rude about the periphery/center approach (ahistorical
nonsense if you ask me) or the haphazard use of pre-capitalist relations and
something about US slavery (I will put this down to a slip of the pen).

Chris:  Greg, you have already been rude.  Why the nasty tone around this
stuff?  And now you may feel obliged to have read too much into something.
I am not using center-periphery in the way that the 'Center/periphery'
school would use it.  And you need not put my point about slavery down to
the slip of a pen.  Its a question which remains far less absolutely
resolved than your snip implies.

Greg:
Yes I have been. My sloopy style did not is mostly to blame here. You have opposed the center-perifery school and in this I am in agreement. On the slavery question, I believe I read it with so much hostility I could not make any sense of it (hence I thought I was being gentle by putting it down as  a slip of the pen - I had contemplated a nastier response) I have not returned to it to clarify what was actually meant, perhaps now things are returning to a more reasonable level, you might re-introduce your ideas on this.

Greg:
> Look can we begin again somehow, I mean really this comes down to having a
reasonable debate and I don't really see how I can say anything reasonable
faced with such a barrage.

Chris: I think that is up to you.  For my part, I disagree with your
understanding, but I liked your post about changes in the world.  Maybe we
should just start over from there.

Greg:
I hope we have already begun this, on reflection I don't quite know what got into me the other day, somehow I seemed to have got extremely over-sensative and not a little pugnacious - as I said before it is just such behaviour that I deplore and I believe this ultra-polemicism is a significant barrier to the left moving forward.

All I can say is please overlook the outburst, bad temper and needless rudeness.

____________


Greg Schofield
Perth Australia
g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au
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