File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9711, message 225


Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 06:44:17 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Surplus value, Marx and science



Hugh writes a longish message, mainly consisting in quotes from the
Manifesto which (a) all of us here have damn near memorized and (b) anyway
ready to hand. He mainpoint is that I am an antiscientific victim of
Stalinism because I deny that Marx basded hi whole theory on the
contradiction between the forces and relations of production.

I am quite aware that there is a strain in Marx's thought that emphasizes
that line of argument. But there are other strains with which the
forces/relations or fettering line sits quite unhappily, most notably the
proposition that the history of all hitherto existing societies is the
history of class struggle. For reasons that I explained in some detail,
between these views I prefer to resolve the contractions in favor of
the second. Doing so means of course saying that Marx was wrong about some
things he said. Unlike Hugh, I am happy to do this, as you all know.

I suggested that I saw no sign of fettering in capitalism. Hugh
thinks that's absurd. He suggests by way of counterexample, if I
understand the point of his quote from the Manifesto correctly, that
crises are manifestations of fettering. I think this is a misunderstanding
of what fettering must mean. We can all agree, Hugh and I and each of our
Marxes, that capitalism does not use the forces it creates in a rational
manner, at least from the perspective of the working class. 

But the idea of the relations fettering the forces has to mean, if it has
a more definite content than just the proposition that capitalism is
irrational, something like this: at some point in the history of a mode of
production, the relations cease to become optimal for the development of
the forces, in the sense that greater forces could be creatred under a
different set of relations. "Greater" here must mean something like more
productive or efficient, in the sense of producing more output per unit
labor (or other, but for Marx certainly labor) input. 

I submit that we are not in any such situation in contemporary or
historical capitalism. We might be, if crises grew so severe or
irremediable that new investment dried up and innovation trickled off. It
might have looked that way in 1932, after 50 or 60 years of increasingly
severe panics and crises. But from our vantage point 60 years on, it
doesn't look like that atl all, even taking into account the earlier
periood of crises. On the whole,innovation has proceeded at an
unimaginbaly rapid pace.

Moreover, the notion of fettering is comparative. The forces are fettering
by one set of relations only if they are promoted by a feasibale
alternative optimal set. Again in 1932 it might have seemed that that was
the case. The capitalist west was in the basement and the Soviet Union
seemed to many to be a real alternative that was economically superior.
That turned out to be wrong. So if we are to make out a claim that
capitalist realtions fetter the forces, we now need detailed, precise and
specific argument that socialist relations would be better. At the very
least we need a reply to Moore's arguments.

I am actually in a better position to maintain the fettering thesis than
Hugh is, because I have a reasonably specific alternative model
(Schweickart's market socialism) that avoids the problems that Moore
correctly advances against Marx's planning model. But I think that
fettering is the wrong way to go anyway because I think that the
hypothetical promise of doing better cannot cause or motivate
revolutionary change unless people think they are doing badly enough. 

In the area of the developmentof the productive forces, I cannot see that
anyone has complaints about capitalism jus now. Of course workers and
farmers might wish the forces were being developed _differently_, in ways
that promote their interests rather than those of the bosses. See here
David Noble's work on numerically controlled machine technology, for
example. But as far as sheer development and increased effiency goes,
capitalism is good enough even if we could, as I think, do better.

Which means we need an alternative motor for revolutionary change. Unlike
Hugh's idealism, on which workers revolt because of the unspecified
promise that an undescribed nonmarket system will promote greater
productivity, I propose the materialist theory that worker's concrete
experience of increased exploitation will provoke resistance and that this
may, in proper circumstances, lead to revplutionary organization to get
rid of exploitation. 

I agree with Hugh, I think, that Marx does hold, or anyway use, the labor
content rather than the "monetary" version of the LTV. I disagree that
formal rigor is some sort of bourgeois illusion. This is an absurd line
advocated by those Marxists who are too lazy to learn math and think they
can handle quantitative analysis without it. C'mon, guys, it's work, but
it's not so hard. Well, it is hard work, but if you can understand Hegel
you can learn enough calculus to follow modern economic theory. 

--Justin 





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