From: "Greg Schofield" <g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au>
Subject: Re: AUT: What could "proletarian socialism" possibly mean?Part 2
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 17:33:58 +0800


In Part 1 I attempted to deal with Labour Certificates in reply to Chris, there is some cross over but the next applies more to property forms.

Chis you say:

"Chris:
Then we are screwed.  Either, as Marx posits in the Critique that
"Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of
production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little
does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these
products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to
capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion
but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of
labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all
meaning."

Please ponder this carefully.  Wage labor does not exist in the first phase
of communism according to this.  Exchange does not exist, therefore,
exchange value does not exist.  Value does not exist since individual labor
no longer exists in an indirect fashion, i.e. all labor is directly social
labor, unlike alienated labor.  Clearly, obviously, blatantly, Marx does not
have in mind the continuation of 'labor' in the sense of 'wage labor'.  The
abscence of commodity production is self-evident in Marx's discussion,
hence, the captal-labor relation does not exist.

Now, you can disagree with Marx on this, but you cannot claim that you and
Marx agree.  Marx rather agrees with Harald on this.  Or vice versa."

Greg:
Chris, I concede your reading of this passage is a reasonable one - but I still question if it is  the correct reading. Others on the list who despise any discussion about quotes may hate this text based criticism but they would do well to remeber that it is not the text but the ideas which are important and are being argued about through the use of it.

First there is a lot involved in the collectivisation of the means of production. Indeed expropriating the private share holders and owners is eaily done, by decree if by nothing else. But what does this achieve in terms of actualising collective ownership? And to put it the opposite way round suppose all the means of production to become thoroughly collectivisied, would it still be property, and would not economic relations have also disappeared?

It must be noted that this opposition between future "collectivisied property" and present capitalist property is stated before any mention is made of the first phase of communism. Is Marx here talking about the second or first phase (more correctly the end of the first phase as property still exists in its collective form but already exchange has crumpled)? 

What Marx is actually saying is that the slogan of the Gotha Programme is meaningless and he demonstrates this by taking the two opposite conditions, capitalism as against communism. The context makes this clear, but the temptation when looking for clues is to attach too much wieght to a mode of expression and miss the flow of concepts being employed. 

What Marx has done is produce a simple philosophical syllogism to make his point, he has already demonstrated by deducting from labour all the social costs.

1. the part required to replace the means of production.
2. that needed for the expansion of production.

Added to this:

1.the costs of administration which do not belong to production.
2.that which is used for the common satisfaction - social services etc (which he notes grows as things progress).
3. the funds for those who cannot work.

There is no profit deduction that is the only major difference, we could make the same list and add in profit to describe capitalism. Hence his following paragraph which postulates the dissolution of all exchange and makes the slogan all the more ridiculous. Marx is not saying anything very much about future society here, these are general observations of a silly ambition announced in the Gotha Program - from here he continues the same arguement but purposely phrases it within the confines of the first stage of communism, now using Labour Certificates to demonstrate the same thing.

Chris what you have done is discarded the context and plucked some phrases in order to gain a clearer picture of socialism as conceived by Marx, but in doing so you discard what he is actually saying, the wieght you place on the end of exchange relations in the paragraph refers to a general outline of communism using expressions such as collective property that are immediately understood. 

There is a break in the critique between his discussion of the state under the dictatorship of the proletariat and the critique of the distribution ambitions, other then the re-introduction of the transitional problems latter on is there a specific reference to the first phase - my point is he really not outlining the period so much as using it to make other points, reading it as program, which it clearly is not, creates the illusion not what Marx in fact says.

Collective property to be truly collective, that is to reach is logical end, ceases to be any property as such, afterall the existence of any form of property only makes sense within a context of exchange (collective or otherwise). Marx is not being inconsistant here he is just trying to convey of logical contradiction in an understandable way. And of course Marx is not saying that wage labour of all things would persist, but nor is he necessarily talking about the first phase of communism either (that after all is not his topic).

When he does talk about it in the following paragraph, he makes something of the same point but now in a different context (that of Labour Certificates) to make a slightly different aspect, he now is not talking about the absurdity of "Undimished proceeds" but that of equal rights. Purposefully, unlike the first syllogism, the second is framed within the first phase of communism (the period of transition), he he makes the point about the bourgeois nature of right and the absurdity is that this maintains itself under this first phase and he calls this defect directly derived from capitalism itself.

In otherwords persistence is maintained of the very inequalities created by capitalism of which the proletariat will have to make of it the best it can, Labour Certificates notwithstanding. He ends both syllogisms in a round condemnation of starting with distribution at all, which cannot be ignored as it is the part that returns to the apropreiation of the means of production as the key to real program.

It is this last part that requires attention even though it is small. It is not good enough simply to eliminate profit and private ownership (or collective private ownership when talking of modern share companies) without looking at the problem of collectivising the means of production in a meaningful way.

Afterall we can get rid of the "owners" and what would change in these big multinationals? The problem was complex enough in Marx's day the complexity today is of a much greater magnitude. The challenge for the working class is not just being the proxy owners of the means of production but in becoming capable of making it obey its will, to understand every aspect of it consciously and to know the consquences of its actions, no easy task. Then at that point when the class could be described as its actual oweners, not on paper but in effect, then wage-labour would cease to be a reality because the production would have become unalienated completely.

I will leave this part here and concentrate on the state aspect of your reply in the next part.

Greg


--- Message Received ---
From: cwright <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 12:12:27 -0600
Subject: Re: AUT: What could "proletarian socialism" possibly mean?

Greg said:
> My postulate is that the first phase of communism the capital labour
relation persists even if capital is collectively held by the working
class - that this is the historical contradiction which drives society
towards the communist mode of production (phase two).

Chris:
Then we are screwed.  Either, as Marx posits in the Critique that
"Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of
production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little
does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these
products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to
capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion
but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of
labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all
meaning."

Please ponder this carefully.  Wage labor does not exist in the first phase
of communism according to this.  Exchange does not exist, therefore,
exchange value does not exist.  Value does not exist since individual labor
no longer exists in an indirect fashion, i.e. all labor is directly social
labor, unlike alienated labor.  Clearly, obviously, blatantly, Marx does not
have in mind the continuation of 'labor' in the sense of 'wage labor'.  The
abscence of commodity production is self-evident in Marx's discussion,
hence, the captal-labor relation does not exist.

Now, you can disagree with Marx on this, but you cannot claim that you and
Marx agree.  Marx rather agrees with Harald on this.  Or vice versa.

> Now in the bit below I am wondering if we need to clear things up. I am
stateing that the first phase of communism is politically Proletarian
socialism, socially the Dictatorship of the proletariat, economically a form
of state capitalism. I don't stick the DoP in as another stage, rather these
are all aspects of the same thing - a period of historical transition.

Ok, here we go again.

Marx said:
The question then arises: What transformation will the state undergo in
communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain
in existence there that are analogous to present state functions?

Chris says:
Read his lips.  "What social functions will remain in existence that are
ANALOGOUS TO present state functions?"  ANALOGOUS.  Analogous:  Similar in
function but not in structure and evolutionary origin.  In other words, Marx
is not even talking about the state being analogous, but the social
functions which would have been carried out by the state.  This is very
clearly not about a state within communist society, although contra Harald,
Marx prolly did suspect that larger means of organization would exist for
coordinating certain social functions on a global and regional scale.

Marx said:
Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the
revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding
to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be
nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

Chris says:
Clearly, the dictatorship of the proletariat, which Hal Draper has clearly
shown Marx to understand as 'social dominance' not a specifically
'dictatorial' and not specifically a state, is limited to the transition
between capitalist and communist society.  In fact, this is only really a
state in so far as it involves the armed suppression of the capital's
minions and the abolition of the institutions of capitalist society, which
Marx does not put a time line on, but which hardly seems likely to be long
since it is the 'revolutionary' period, and Marx knew enough to know that
revolutions do not go on indefinitely.

Marx said:
That, in fact, by the word "state" is meant the government machine, or the
state insofar as it forms a special organism separated from society
through division of labor, is shown by the words "the German Workers' party
demands as the economic basis of the state: a single progressive income
tax", etc. Taxes are the economic basis of the government machinery and of
nothing else. In the state of the future, existing in Switzerland, this
demand has been pretty well fulfilled. Income tax presupposes various
sources of income of the various social classes, and hence capitalist
society.

Chris says:
This little quote is useful.  Marx considers the state to be a special
organism separated from society.  Since Marx earlier discussed communism as
involving the abolition of the division of labor (1844 Manuscripts, for
example), but not here, what has changed?

>From 'Manifesto of Emancipation' by Paresh Chattopadhyay
The third point about labour in Marx's critique of the "Program" is how Marx
envisages labour in the new society after capital has disappeared from the
scene. At its initial phase the new society cannot yet completely get rid of
the legacy of the mode of labour of the old society - including the division
of labour, particularly the division between physical and mental labour.
Now, in one of his early texts Marx speaks of the "abolition of the division
of labour" as the task of the "communist revolution," even of "abolition of
labour" tout court (1973a: 70, 364). However, in the Gothakritik Marx's
stand does not appear to be quite the same on this question. Referring to "a
higher phase" of the Association which will have completely transgressed
"the narrow bourgeois horizon," Marx does not say that either labour or
division of labour would be "abolished." He stresses that labour in that
society would not simply be a means of life but would itself become life's
"first need." Similarly not all division of labour would be abolished, but
only the division of labour which puts the individuals under its "enslaving
subordination" (knechtende Unterordnung). Let us examine to which extent
there is a "break" ("coupure") between the early Marx and the late Marx in
this regard. In his Parisian excerpt notebooks of 1844 Marx distinguishes
between two types of labour. The first is labour in the absence of private
property in the means of production where "we produce as human beings." Here
labour is a "free manifestation of life and therefore enjoyment of life,"
where the "particularity of my life is affirmed." Here labour is "true,
active property." Contrariwise, the second type of labour, that is labour
exercised under private property, is the "alienation of life." Here "my
individuality is to such an extent alienated that this activity is hated by
me and is a torment. It is only an appearance of activity imposed only by an
external, contingent necessity, and not enjoined by an inner necessary need"
(1932: 546, 547). One year later, in another manuscript, Marx observes that
the labourer's activity is not "a free manifestation of his human life," it
is rather a "bartering away (Verschachern), an alienation of his powers to
capital." Marx calls this activity "labour" and writes that "`labour' by
nature (Wesen) is unfree, inhuman, unsocial activity conditioned by and
creating private property," and then adds that "the abolition of private
property only becomes a reality if it is conceived as the abolition of
`labour'" (1972a: 435-36; emphasis in text).
                        Now, labour as a pure process of material exchange
between human beings and nature is a "simple and abstract" category and as
such does not take account of the social conditions in which it operates.
However, all production, considered as "appropriation of nature from the
side of the individual," takes place "within and is mediated by definite
social forms" (Marx 1958: 241, 280). When labour's social dimension is
brought in, labour takes on a new meaning. The question becomes relevant as
to whether the labour process operates "under the brutal lash of the slave
supervision or the anxious eye of the capitalist" (1962a: 198-99). In fact
these two broad forms of labour epitomize, by and large, at least the
dominant type of labour that has operated in all class-societies.
Traditionally, labour has been a non-free activity of the labouring
individual - either as directly forced labour under "personal dependence" as
in pre-capitalism or as alienated labour under "material dependence" or
"servitude of the object" (Knechtshaft des Gegenstandes) in
commodity-capitalist society (Marx 1953: 75; 1966a: 76). Such labour has
reduced the labourer into a "labouring animal" (Marx 1962b: 256).
Consequently, the division of labour practised so far has been absolutely
involuntary where the "human being's own activity dominates the human being
as an alien, opposite power" (Marx 1973a: 33). It goes without saying that
such labour is totally incompatible with the human being's "free
individuality" under the Association. This labour in the sense of the
"traditional mode of activity" (bisherige Art der Ttigkeit) ceases to exist
in the Association, it is "abolished" (Marx 1973a: 70). Referring to Adam
Smith's idea of labour being "sacrifice of freedom," Marx notes that labour,
as it has appeared "in its historical forms of slavery, serfdom and wage
labour," always appears "repulsive, forced from outside;" labour has not yet
created the "subjective and objective conditions in which labour would be
attractive and self-realising for the individual." However, labour could
also be seen as an "activity of freedom," as self-realizing and indeed as
"real freedom" when labour is exercised toward removing the obstacles for
reaching an end (not imposed from outside) (1953: 505). Thus when Marx
speaks of "abolition" of division of labour and labour itself in his
writings anterior to the Gothakritik, it is precisely with reference to the
different forms of hitherto existing modes of labour which far from being a
self-realizing activity of the individual, unimposed from the exterior, a
free manifestation of human life, has been their negation. This is the
labour which has to be abolished along with the associated division of
labour. Thereby labour, transformed into a "self (affirming) activity"
(Selbsttigkeit), becomes, as the Gothakritik says not only a means of life
but also life's "prime need" in a higher phase of the Association.[i] Again,
it is about this hitherto existing type of labour that Marx observes in the
Gothakritik that the "law of the whole hitherto existing history "has been
that "in proportion as labour is socially developed and thereby becomes a
source of wealth and culture, there develops poverty and demoralization on
the side of the labourers, wealth and culture on the side of the
non-labourers."

[i].          Quite in the spirit of the Gothakritik Marx writes in an
earlier text: "As if the division of labor would not be just as much
possible if the conditions of labor belonged to the associated laborers and
they act in relation to them as these are in nature, their own products and
the material elements of their own activity" (1962b: 271).

Therefore, the idea that the first phase of communism involves 'state
capitalism' in any form is absurd.  Marx rejects this completely.  I think
that Harald also does a good job of finishing off this conception.

The issue of 'two stages' is again not dealt with clearly except by Harald,
who rejects it.  I happen to think that it makes a certain degree of sense
once we get away from the nonsense that the first stage is the dictatorship
of the proletariat, rather than actual communism dealing with a world
suffering from 'the muck of ages'.  Even the destruction of the
capital-labor relation will not have ended all of the problems which might
give rise to distribution along the lines of bourgeois right.  but this can
be gotten into further later, maybe.

___________________________




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