> MARX ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES
>
> There has been so much written on environmentalism vs 'Brown Marxism'
> that I would like to stick to just one issue, for clarity's sake, and
> that is Marx's view of the development of the productive forces.
Unfortunately this assumes what has to be proved, namely that Marx's
understanding of the words 'production' and 'productive forces' was yours, which it clearly wasn't. The crises which capital overcomes are crises of the overproduction *of capital* and the retiring of obsolete, inefficient, unprofitable capital is the mechanism by which progress of material production happens (if capitalists did things the way you evidently want them to, the landscape would be chocabloc not just with 16k Atari computers but with 1840s steam engines chuffing merrily away).
> I don't
> say that this ought in any way be decisive for our attitude today, but
> it does seem to me undeniable that Marx favoured the extension of the
> productive forces, and that his critique of Capital is precisely that it
> fails to develop them beyond a certain point.
Nonsense.
> This is of course a theme in Marx's writing since he wrote the Communist
> Manifesto at age 28. There he argues that, like feudalism before it,
> capitalism has become a fetter on the further development of the
> productive forces: 'The productive forces at the disposal of society no
> longer tend to the further development of the conditions of bourgeois
> property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these
> conditions, by which they are fettered' (p40, Peking ed). 'And how does
> the bourgeoisie get over these crises? ... by the enforced destruction
> of a mass of productive forces' (ibid).
>
> It has often been argued that this early counterposition of forces and
> relations of production is naive on Marx's part, that he recognised and
> dispensed with it. But in fact this theme is consistent throughout Marx'
> work.
>
James, Marx's intellectual development was not arrested at age 28.
> The development of the productive forces is the means by which the realm
> of human freedom is enlarged, as the realm of necessity, of human labour
> is reduced to a minimum.
So you keep repeating each time your fingers hit the keys. However this was not Marx's view. Maybe you're right, but whatever, it still wasn't Marx's view.
> In the rough draft for Capital, the Gurndrisse,
> Marx wrote:
>
> 'Real economy - saving - consists of the saving of labour time (minimum
> (and minimisation) of production costs; but this saving identical with
> development of productive force. Hence in no way _abstinence from
> consumption_, but rather the development of the power, of capabilities
> of production, and hence of the capabilities as well as the means of
> consumption.' 711
What is this supposed to prove? That the problem with capital is that it hasn't covered the earth with steam engines, because it perversely insists on cost-saving?
> In Capital Volume one, Marx is scathing about the barriers to
> mechanisation that arise from Capital's undervaluation of labour power.
> He points out that as long as labour is paid less than the value it
> creates that will make the introduction of technology less attractive
> than the use of cheap labour. 'Hence nowhere do we find a more shameful
> squandering of human labour-power for the most despicable purposes that
> in England, the land of machinery' (p372)
This of course is in context of comparing with the US where labour rates where high and therefore machinery, often machinery designed and built in England but never used there, was deployed. Therefore your conclusion is that Marx was scathing about English capitalism because he favoured US capitalism, is it?
> And in the penultimate chapter Marx reprises the 'naive' formulations
> of the Manifesto: 'The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the
> mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with and
> under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of
> labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their
> capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder' (p715)
It is heartening that you reaffirm your own revolutionary ideals, which have slipped a bit in between organising cyber cafes and campaigning for the right of the English landed interest to go fox- hunting. I look forward to hearing about your next practical steps in helping the integument to burst. However (and you are right, this was indeed meant to be the last chapter, the quote is on p929 of the Penguin edition) do not forget what are almost Marx's next words: 'capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a natural process, its own negation'. What exactly do you suppose that Marx meant by that: that the negation of capitalist production of 3m VW cars is the production of 5, 10, 50m VW cars, once those fetters are off?
> Marx continues in this vein in volume three, published by Engels after
> Marx' death. In a discussion of Ricardo and the tendency of the rate of profit to
> fall, he makes this telling point:
>
> 'Development of the productive forces of social labour is the historic
> task and justification of capital. This is just the way that it
> unconsciously creates the material requirements of a higher mode of
> production.'
Surely Marx must have meant 'higher RATE of production', no?
> Marx continues that the falling rate of profit is only an indicator that
> capitalist social relations are historically redundant because they have
> become a barrier to the further development of social productivity.
>
> 'It comes to the surface here in a purely economic way - ie from the
> bourgeois point of view ... - that it has its barrier, that it [Capital]
> is relative, that it is not an absolute, but only a historical mode of
> production corresponding to a definite limited epoch in the development
> of the material requirements of production.' P259
>
Oh, come off it, James. Your Talmudic interpretations would drive anyone to bury their scriptures in the sand. If Marx thought he'd be mangled like this he'd have got a real job by his 29th birthday.
> >Yes, I mean increased output by the techniques of modern capitalist agriculture
> >are UNQUESTIONABLY A BAD THING.
> I am taken aback. Is it acceptable that 381 million industrial workers
> must continue to exhaust their lives in unremitting toil? Or do we
> anticipate that a socialist society could, by developing productivity,
> release them from the greater part of their burden. Is it acceptable
> that sub-Saharan Africa should persist in a state of food scarcity. Or
> should we apply the grains and fertilisers that have made the US the
> world's largest agricultural producer to Africa? Do we leave the third
> world in conditions of chronic pollution, or do we apply the new
> technologies that have been improving air conditions in the first world
> for the last forty years?
James, I agree with Carrol. I am not going to argue agribiz with you again. Your paeans of praise for Monsanto, biotech, intensive farming, feedlots etc become more exaggerated the more you are confronmted with the facts. There is no arguing with such determined, relentless ignorance as this.
> People are what makes life worth
> living. People are the creative force in the world, they are not the
> problem.
Yes, people are great. What a pity unborn generations are being sacrificed and the life-chances and welfare premeptively destroyed by the kinds of politics you support.
Mark