Date: Sun, 30 Mar 1997 22:46:42 -0500 (EST)
From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
Subject: M-G: Re: M-I: LOV and state capitalism



Marx did allow for a worker's state with bourgeois forms, if you are
prepared to accept the early writings of Marx. In the initial stage of
communism, "primitive communism," later characterized as the socialist
stage, Marx sees a world where "the category of laborer is not done away
with, but extended to all men," and "the relationship of private property
persists as the relationship of the community to the world of things." "In
negating the *personality* of man in every sphere," Marx writes, "this
type of communism is really nothing but the logical expression of private
property, which is this negation. General *envy* constituting itself as a
power is the disguise in which *avarice* re-establishes itself and
satisfies itself, only in *another* way. The thoughts of every piece of
private property--inherent in each piece as such--are *at least* turned
against all *wealthier* private property in the form of envy and the urge
to reduce to a common level, so that this envy and urge even constitute
the essence of competition." He goes on to discuss the labor structure
writing that, "The community is only a community of *labor*, and an
equality of *wages* paid out by the communal capital--the *community* as
the universal capitalist. Both sides of the relationship are raised to an
*imagined* universality--*labor* as a state in which every person is put,
and *capital* as the acknowledged universality and power of the community."
[All emphasis Marx]

Andrew Austin




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