From: "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Leaders and Caudillos of the Left
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 14:00:56 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)


     I suspect that I am now over my daily limit, but maybe 
Lou Godena, et al, will indulge an about-to-be senile 
birthday boy on this.  Three points for Adolfo:
     1)  I fully agree on the central role of the problem 
of control.  That is why I support workers' management 
systems rather than those that Adolfo has supported in 
history.
     2)  I fully recognize the central role of the "social 
relations" aspect of capital, unlike most "non-Marxist" 
economists (although, for those who have been paying close 
attention, I have never claimed to be either a "Marxist" or 
a "non-Marxist" economist, except in humorous self labels.  
Consider that to be an unimportant game, unlike many on 
this list).  I just say that there is more to it than that. 
Saying "capital is a social relation," period, is an empty 
ritual catechism, even if it might be useful on occasion.
     3)  I would note that even Adolfo's olf fave, the 
Stalin regime in the USSR used to keep national income 
accounts in which there was something called the "capital 
stock."  Guess what?  It was the accumulated pile of 
produced means of production, machinery, factories, etc., 
and the accumulation of this "capital stock" was indeed a 
central goal of the command central planning of that system.
Barkley Rosser
On Fri, 10 Apr 1998 12:12:44 -0400 Hariette Spierings 
<hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk> wrote:

>      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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-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu




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