Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 12:12:44 -0400
From: hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk (Hariette Spierings)
Subject: Re: M-I: Leaders and Caudillos of the Left


     So, Adolfo, do you claim that in a world of the 
"separation of ownership and control" it is "the 
controller" rather than the "owner" who is the "true 
capitalist"?  I think you will have trouble defending that 
one from Marx.
Barkley Rosser, officially certified non-Marxist (pay no 
attention to his ravings)



 That is just not so either. It is not merely labour, but labour power which
 produces value.  Moereover, remember lenin's words: "Besides power
 everything is illusion"! And so ultimately is "ownership" of anything! 
 
 For Marxism. it is not merely a question of ownership, it is a question of
 the command of labour power that which is the kernel - the essence - of the
 social relations embodied in Capital.
 
 In synthesis:
 
 "Capital - i.e. the bourgeosie" - V.I. Lenin
 
 
 
 Adolfo
 
 
     So, Adolfo, do you claim that in a world of the 
"separation of ownership and control" it is "the 
controller" rather than the "owner" who is the "true 
capitalist"?  I think you will have trouble defending that 
one from Marx.
Barkley Rosser, officially certified non-Marxist (pay no 
attention to his ravings)


To this "officially certified raving" of Mr. Rosser we shall just have to
let Lenin himself respond:


"The important thing will not be even the confiscation of the capitalists'
property, but country-wide, all-embracing workers control over the
capitalists and their possible supporters.  Confiscation alone LEADS
NOWHERE, as it does not contain the element of organisation, of accounting
for proper distribution. Instead of confiscation, we could easily impose a
FAIR tax (even on the Shingarayov scale, for instance), taking care, of
course, to preclude the possibility of anyone evading assessment, concealing
the truth, evading the law. And this possibility can be ELIMINATED ONLY by
the workers' control of the WORKERS' state".  V.I. Lenin -  "Can the
Bolsheviks Retain State Power?" October 1, 1917, Collected Works, Vol 26,
pp. 87-136


Moreover, - and as if to prove once more the value and extent of the
theoretical victory achieved by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism over revisionism and
opportunism in the old LeninList - let us quote from what was written then
precisely to debunk those who pose as "defenders of Marxism" by waving the
concept that state ownership of the means of production is a sufficient
condition for socialism: 

"Both comrade Lenin and Stalin always speak of the (proletarian)dictatorship
EXERCISING CONTROL over means of production, distribuition and exchange as
the substantive question - since understood on those terms, such CONTROL is
but the direct consequence of the conquest of power for the proletariat and
the people".

"The question of "ownership" can be regarded as a gauge of the DEGREE OF
CONTROL exerted by the proletarait in so far as it reflect a particular
manifestation and an enshrining of proletarian power - but, as Lenin well
says, "CONFISCATION" (the assumption of property rights on the part of the
state) by itsef LEADS NOWHERE" and, as we have already seen - contrary to
Lenin and Stalin's views on the subject, it is precisely this "ownership"
which is most often cited by defenders of revisionism to claim "socialist"
status for countries in which the proletarian dictatorship has been
overthrown or where it never existed in the first place".

-----------------

Moreover, Mr. Rosser, Engels himself - in his essay "Socialism from Utopia
to Science" - deals precisely and most clearly with this "CAPITAL ERROR" of
the philistine bourgeois economists who parade themselves as socialists on
account of state ownership of means of production. 

As a non-Marxist, Mr. Rosser could do worse than looking this up himself in
his own extensive library. I do not intend to let him play the bourgeois
"controller" over my labour power to the extent of having to dig this out
with my own spade to humour his own "outsider" misconceptions regarding
Marxism. 

To synthesise this entire debate and see clearly who is who in the opposing
-  thus showing the hollowness of all efforts at "idea peddling" aimed at
wriggling themselves off this particular hook on the part of the
"economists", it is worth bearing in mind the following words:

"Where the bourgeois economists saw a relation between things (the exchange
of one commodity for another) Marx revealed a RELATION BETWEEN PEOPLE" - V.
I. Lenin, 'The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism'.


Adolfo



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