File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1996/96-10-29.043, message 116


Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 08:38:33 -0500 (EST)
From: Gerald Levy <glevy-AT-pratt.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Stalin and industry


jc mullen wrote:

> It's a little amusing to see two threads : one on Marx and capital, and
> another
> one on Stalin which seems to ignore everything Marx said about capital (well
> it's Monday morning and I feel mean). Stalin's state terrorism was the
> capitalist industrial revolution in Russia; Concentration of capital
> into large
> lumps, concentration of populationinto countryside, teaching peasants the
> discipline in their millions of being proletarians.

Well ... that is a rather strange interpretation of "everything Marx said
about capital."

To begin with, let's talk about some very basic categories, starting with
-- commodity production (including use-value, value, and the *value-form*.
Commodities also, by definition, require *markets* and *money*  Then
there's labour-power as a *commodity*, constant capital, variable
capital, surplus value, profit, accumulation of capital, etc., etc. Note
that these value- and capital-forms are *necessary* forms of appearance
associated with capitalism.

Then, there's the question of class relations between *wage-earners* and
*capitalists*. Doesn't the ownership (and non-ownership) and control (and
non-control) of the means of production shape that relation? Doesn't this,
moreover, require the periodic existence of an industrial reserve army
(and unemployment)?  Also, what about the whole subject of *competition*
(as distinct from capital-in-general)?

Jerry



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