Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 17:10:01 -0500
Subject: MT: Re: Post-Marxism and Paleo-Marxism


I have been thinking about how to respond to this posting by Justin a
couple of weeks ago.  The problem is that I have written a long essay on
this topic in which I argue that Marx was a market socialist, and want
everyone to read it.  The essay will be published soon in a book entitled
Market Socialism:  The Debate Among Socialists, by Routledge.  The book
will be out in a month or so.  I am looking for people who would be able to
review it for some publication they might have access to.  They would get a
free copy.  Any takers?  Otherwise it's about $17.

In the book there is a debate between me and Bertell Ollman, on the one
hand, and between David Schweickart and Hillel Ticktin, on the other.  In
each pair of debates, "opponents" present their essays, then there is a
response, and finally a response to the response.  So it is like a list
discussion, only with longer postings, and a limit of two replies.  

People probably know that there is a very interesting book by Stanley
Moore, Marx Versus Markets (latest version 1993), in which Moore argues
that in the Communist Manifesto advocates market socialism.  Moore is
correct here, in my argument, but wrong when he says that Marx changed his
mind about this in the Critique of the Gotha Program.  Marx didn't change
his mind, because the Manifesto and the Critique are about two different
things.

(I am still looking for people to participate in a panel on the Manifesto
at the American Philosophical Association meeting in Chicago next May.) 

In my paper I describe six phases of the development of the communist mode
of production, two that take place within capitalism, two during the
transition between capitalism and communism, and the famous two phases of
the communist mode of production per se.  There is good evidence in Marx
for five of these stages, and a logical possibility of another.

It is only in the final stage of fully developed Communism, when production
becomes primarily motivated by the intrinsic interest of labor (kingdom of
freedom) rather than by the need to work to make money to satisfy basic
needs (kingdom of necessity) that the money economy, in the attenuated but
still serious form in which it exists in the first phase of communism,
ceases to be the dominant mode of organizing labor and is generally, along
with the "state-form", withering away.

I wasn't the one who introduced the term "transparency".  That was Leo.  I
don't know what sort of connotations this has for him.  What do we mean by
control over social processes?  Let's say that we mean that there will no
longer be economic crises that throw people out of work and cause all sorts
of hardship to people and waste of resources.  Shouldn't it be possible to
have enough "transparancy" in our economic relations with one another that
this sort of thing doesn't happen?  I think that is the sort of contol Marx
had in mind.  

The analogy should be with the labor process.  What do we mean when we say
that thanks to scientific understanding people come to be in control of
natural processes?  The electricity in the air is channeled in ways useful
to human beings and the negative effects are minimized.  But electricity
still has its own laws that have to be respected.  There is still an
objective process occurring that must be respected if we are to accomplish
the limited aims that are possible in connection with it.

Marx always maintained the idea that the "planning" of communism would not
be centralized, top-down planning (however much democratic input), but an
outcome of the "free association of each" in horizontal interactions.  The
state, in any case, is no longer around under communism.  Moreover, the
main motive of labor is free interest in work.  The organization of the
labor process needed to get people to do boring or painful work through
various stick-and-carrot methods (including the need to get money in the
form of labor tickets) is carried out under state supervision in the first
phase of communism.  But when most work is done because it is interesting
to the individual, then the horizontal form of interaction and coordination
of work will supercede the primacy of the top-down method required to get
people up in the morning during mankind's prehistory.  

All the best,

Jim Lawler

>I think James is wrong to follow Marx on the notion of communism as a sort
>of immanent force within capitalism rather than ideal. James and Marx
>think that because part of what's wrong with capitalism is that our social
>relations operate behind our backs to rule us and that because this
>produces resistance that it follows somehow that this resistance will
>produce a "transparent" society in which we are in complete control. This
>doesn't follow, of course. I think that there are very serious questions
>as to whether the sort of transparency Jim and Marx want is possible. 
>
>One set of doubts derives from the concern that replacing markets with
>planning is inconsistent with the material prosperity necessary for
>socialism. I suspect that Hayek was largely right about the limits of
>planning. If that's so, even were a planned society "transparent," it
>would not be stable and rich enough to sustain socialism.
>
>Another set of doubts concerns whether a planned society of the sort that
>Jim and Marx envision would be as transparent as they think. The
>imperatives of planning, if Hayek is right, the impossible demand that the
>planners know everything, will prevent this transparency because the plans
>will not work to realize our collective will; we will be subject to the
>limits of the plan operating behind our backs. Further there are deep
>questions, most profoundly formulated by Kenneth Arrow, about the
>possibility of formulating a coherent collective will. The Arrow paradoxes
>suggest that the constraints on democratic decisionmaking will operate
>behind our backs to constrain and limit our behavior.
>
>These sorts of considerations lead to me think that the ideal of
>socialism ought to be formulated modestly, as a better alternative rather
>than as the riddle of history solved. We can get rid of class rule and
>exploitation. We have a society without a ruling class and one in which
>impulses to various sorts of oppression (sexism, racism, etc.) are sharply
>constrained. That's worth fighting for even if communism is unattainable.
>And I think the working class organized is an absolutely essential
>component of that struggle. So I'm still a Marxist, or as Marxist as it's
>still sensible to be.
>
>--Justin  
>
>Jim said:
>> 
>> The main idea of paleo-Marxist politics is to see "Communism" not as an
>> ideal for the future in the sense of utopian approaches or ideal societies,
>> but as a movement developing within the present society.  Das Kapital was a
>> sort of theoretical ultra sound for discerning the outlines of a new
>> society developing within the existing one.  The long-term projection on
>> this basis is for a society in which private ownership of the social means
>> of production will eventually disappear.  
>> 
>> re 4:  The "transparency" involved here is that instead of seeing the
>> economy as a seemingly natural process operating independently of the
>> activities of individuals, and to which individuals have to adapt
>> ourselves, people will increasingly tend to see it as what it in fact is,
>> an expression of they way they relate to one another in their productive
>> activities.  This is a matter not only of theoretical insight but of
>> practical actions embodying such recognition.  But this is a future ideal
>> only in the sense of a development already taking place in the present.
>> There is a "logic" here in the sense that this present incipient
>> transparency, in which people can begin to see how apparently autonomous
>> economic processes in fact stem from their interrelated activities, will
>> have to develop further (under pain of great suffering if this is not
done).  
>> 
>> Marx argued that the Ten Hours Bill and related legislation, in which
>> conditions of work were regulated consciously by society in the interests
>> of workers, was the first great step toward "transparency" in 19th century
>> capitalist societies.  Worker coops were the second big step involving
>> greater "transparency", although still with opacities because of its local
>> character.  We might try to add to this list for the 20th century:
>> anti-trust legislation, trade union rights, social welfare legislation,
>> world agreements regarding production of ozone-depleting chemicals??
>> 
>
>
>
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