File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9708, message 189


Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 23:28:11 +0100
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Nuclear Power and fetishism......


In message <01BCACB3.32D255A0-AT-p77-as1.dubadl.tinet.ie>, Karl Carlile
<expresspost-AT-tinet.ie> writes
>A KARL CALRILE POSTING:
>
>
>KARL: Hi James!
>
>JAMES: Surely, the whole point of Marx's critique of political economy is that 
>you can distinguish between the historically specific relations of production: 
>exchange value, wage, surplus value, profit, rent etc on the one hand, and those 
>general conditions of use-value production in human societies, use-value, 
>production, consumption-fund, surplus product. AS presented to us these are 
>aspect of one and the same process, but Marx's critique aims to separate them 
>off ideally, as a prelude to separating them of in fact, by organising social 
>production differently.
>
>KARL:  In my posting, addressed to you, I never denied this. This is still not 
>inconsistent with the fact that the specific form of the social relations of 
>production do determine the character of technology as use value. For instance 
>it would not have been possible for electronic information technology to have 
>established itself under feudalism or prehistoric society. Generally under 
>capitalism there obtains capitalist technology.
>
>JAMES: You seem to be saying that production per se is indistinguishable from 
>capitalist production - in which case Marx's critique is redundant.
>
>KARL: There is no such thing as production per se. Production per se is a 
>transhistorical abstraction. It does not exist anywhere. There is only specific 
>concrete forms of production. 

'The labour-process resolved as above into its simple elementary
factors, is human action with a view to the production of use-values,
appropriation of natural substances to human requirements; it is the
necessary condition for effecting exchange of matter between man and
Nature; it is the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human
existence, and therefore is independent of every social phase of that
existence, or rather common to every such phase.' Capital I, p179

You are of course quite right to say that 'production per se' always
takes place under determinate social relations. But technologies are not
necessarily specific to these (the substance of the question at issue).
In London you can see part of the original Roman wall that surrounded
the city. The bricks are tesellated in much the same way that
bricklayers lay them today. Of course, the Romans could not have
mobilised the resources to create the internet, or even electricity. But
on the other hand, once a technology is developed it can be used under
any social conditions, as long as it is appropriate. There is no need to
reinvent the wheel.

The dynamic tension of Marx's work lies in the fact that he
distinguishes in thought these two aspects of capitalist production: the
production of use-values and the production of exchange values; the
labour process as a process of production of useful things, and as a
process of producing value; technology as a potentially liberating force
for good and as an actually enslaving instrument that in abbreviating
necessary labour in favour of surplus labour, facilitates exploitation.
The point of this mental distinction between the oppressive relations of
production and the potentially liberating forces of production, is that,
having distinguished these in thought, social revolution goes on to
distinguish them in fact.

Now, as Rakesh alludes in an earlier posting, the erudite Marxist Istvan
Meszaros tends towards the view that technology has opressive social
conditions hard-wired into it. This is part of his explanation for the
persistence of elites in the Soviet Union (pursued more thoroughly in
Beyond Capital, than Power of Ideology), ie the bolsheviks seized
political power, and even transformed social relations, but class
domination was salted away in the very machines themselves only to
return with a vengeance (apologies for the caricature). I tend to think
that he is wrong and that the motivation is something of an excuse for
the soviet bureaucracy's failure to inaugurate a new form of society.

That is particularly frustrating because Meszaros is a shrewd critic of
those Marxists like Adorno and Marcuse, who, moving away from a working
class critique of capitalist society, increasingly adopted a romantic
rejection of modern industry. Marx himself noted an earlier incarnation
of this trend, describing it as 'Conservative Socialism' (Communist
Manifesto). In this century it was the far-right that incubated such
ideas. Martin Heidegger's 'Question Concerning Technology' and the
earlier 'Being and Time' deplored the subordination of 'authentic-being'
to the machine age - a flimsy cover for his inveterate hatred of the
masses. Heidegger's fascism made his ideas unnaceptable for many years,
but they were propagated by his students Hannah Arendt (also his lover),
Herbert Marcuse and Jean-Paul Sartre. They and their Frankfurt School
associate Theodor Adorno did most to promote the conservative rejection
of technology that is now widespread on the left. 
-- 
James Heartfield


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