> Carrol Cox:
>
> One source of my thought here was
> a statement quite a few years ago by
> Paul Sweezy that there could be no
> "Science of Socialism"
> because
> socialism was the realm of freedom.
>
> ^^^
> CB: Bingo ! This is correct. Before communism,
> human society is still in the "realm of necessity",
> class divided society, wherein there are still
> laws of development derived directly
> from the requirements of obtaining food,
> shelter, etc. ( See Engels statement at Marx's
> graveside).
> Marx's laws of history apply to society
> in the
> realm of necessity. Here
> "history" is the history
> of class struggles referred to
> in the first sentence
> of _The Manifesto of the
> Communist Party_.
> Engels put in a footnote
> later saying this refers
> to human society since the
> breaking up of the
> ancient communes of non-class
> divided society.
>
> With communism, , when it to each
> according to need ( i.e. "necessities"),
> there are no longer the laws of
> "history" or class divided society,
> wherein people
> are forced to work in order to
> obtain their needs
> or necessities. They are no
> longer in the realm of
> "needs". They are in the realm
> of freedom, communism.
>
> Another point. In communism,
> the economy is "planned".
> This centralized or holistic planning
> frees people from
> the anarchy of production ,
> which in capitalism is an
> objective condition imposing
> its laws ( such as the
> absolute general law of a
> capitalist accumulation,
> with mass immiseration and
> elite minority wealth; and the
> business cycle laws)
>
>
>
This is stimulating but wrong--stimulatingly wrong--I think. Marx
speculates that all epochs have their own law of population, for
example. He was only ('only'!) studying capitalism and what went
before. There are surely laws of history in communism but we don't know
what they are yet. Communism is a realm of more freedom, and certainly
freedom from the laws of capitalism you mention, but there is still
necessity to recognize and work with, the underlying necessity of
interacting with nature, our existence as biological beings. (And
there's a feminist dispute with Engels footnote you mention--Marx
doesn't make an exception, that word 'all' again, "The history of all
hitherto existing society..." There is still struggle, a history of
struggle probably going back before we were human, due to the
reproductive division of labor.) The goal would be to get down to the
necessary necessities, if you will, and not be controlled by the
unnecessary necessities, the necessities imposed by the laws of
capitalism--maybe that's what you're getting at here. I think Lenin
says something about humanity's asymptotic historical relationship with
freedom--getting closer but never quite there.
I'm just back from Venezuela where they're trying to build socialism--through participatory democracy--in the middle of a capitalist stew. Whew! It's a daily confrontation between democracy and capitalism. Chavez says, "Yes, it is important to end poverty, to end misery, but the most important thing is to offer power to the poor so that they can fight for themselves."
Jenny Brown