----- Original Message ----- From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <j.bendien@wolmail.nl> Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2002 4:01 PM Subject: Marx on solving human problems Jerry, Thanks for your extensive comment. We are indeed "far apart", since I seek to defend what Marx refers to in his 1859 Preface as the "general conclusion" of his research in political economy which became "guiding principle of [his] studies", whereas you want to claim that it contains unsubstantiated assertion. I am arguing Marx did try to substantiate it, namely through (as he says himself) his research in political economy and ethnology which he carried out in previous years and continued intermittently until his death. Since that time a whole stream of Marxists have tried to substantiate it through empirical research. I could give you lots of references but lack the time for that, and anyway you must know this. Let us first of all return to what Marx actually says: "No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation." Leaving aside squabbles about exact translation, it seems very clear to me that Marx says that the material conditions for the existence of new and superior production relations must mature within the old society before the old social order CAN perish (notice Marx does not say it WILL INEVITABLY perish). Marx says further that this is the REASON why "Mankind thus inevitably only sets itself such problems as it can solve". He is actually very explicit, adding "SINCE closer examination will ALWAYS show that the problem itself only arises ONLY when the material conditions for its solution are ALREADY present or at least in the course of formation". If the objective material conditions did not exist in the first place, at least embryonically, humankind could not even "think" the problem nor genuinely grapple with it. So, anyway, in the broad sweep of history, you get the development of the material conditions, which, at a certain stage, cause a big conflict between the productive forces and production relations, and then you get the "ideological forms in which people become conscious of this conflict and fight it out". And this, as we know, takes the form of a struggle between different social classes which have different stakes in the conflict. Solving the conflict is possible, BECAUSE "the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation". It is a question of human consciousness adjusting itself to the new material circumstances which human labour itself has created. Marx does NOT say at all however, that human consciousness will INEVITABLY adjust to the new material circumstances. He only says that the material (objective) conditions for the solution of the problem already exist. BECAUSE those necessary material conditions exist, it is POSSIBLE to solve it, and in THIS sense humankind only sets itself only those problems which it can solve. The human species does not pose its problems in a vacuum, but in a definite material context which even shapes the way in which problems are posed in the human brain. The validity of this "guiding principle" is something which you can empirically and scientifically investigate. You can take up Marx's invitation and study social transformations, distinguishing carefully, as he recommends, between "the material transformation of the economic conditions of production" and the "ideological forms" in which this transformation is reflected in human consciousness. Now I regard this as the ABC of the materialist conception of history, and I do not see why you, as the propietor of a Marxist mailing list, should have such a problem with this and indeed call this idea an "unsubstantiated assertion". I will happily admit that we cannot know for certain whether "past trends will continue into the future". Nevertheless we must extrapolate, which is what Marx does. But Marx is not stupid - he is only putting forward a research HYPOTHESIS which became a "guiding principle for his studies". Scientific investigation of human societies must start somewhere, and Marx tells us how he thinks we should start. We can of course make his guiding comments for scientific inquiry into a full-fledged "philosphical theory of human history" like Gerald Cohen, but that is not what Marx had in mind. Marx did not say "go and make yourself a general philosophical theory of history". In fact when people tried to do this, Marx said that "I am not a Marxist". Marx was only saying, here you have an approach, a guide, now go and study the historical facts and demonstrate thereby the validity of the approach, see if it works. And I think many scholars have shown its validity, even although their findings should also lead us to modify and improve on Marx's approach and findings. For example, Marx's own concept of the Asiatic mode of production doesn't really seem to be very valid. Note however that Marx says "in broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society". In other words he is saying "this are roughly speaking what the progressive phases in economic development were", but this still needed to be investigated further. He makes no claim about inevitable stages of history, nor about linear historical progress. I do not believe in "scientism" or the idea that science can solve all our problems, and I never said I did. But I am not in favour of banning science because some scientists did more harm than good. You claim that "The issue as conceived by individual capitalists is how to obtain the maximum rate of profit... Towards this end, they are generally indifferent to the particular use-value that a commodity fullfills". In my opinion, this is just FALSE. Admittedly, capitalists would not normally produce of product if they didn't think it was going to make a profit adequate to their requirements. But in the real world of business, capitalists are vitally concerned with the "use-value" of their commodity. Why is that ? Well, the main reason is that the commodity MUST SELL. If the consumer recognises no use-value in the commodity, the commodity does not sell and the capitalist doesn't realise his profit. Therefore, in the real world, capitalists pay R&D people to make the commodity as "useful" as possible, and to investigate what consumers want to buy. They also pay advertisers to persuade consumers to buy their wares, praising their use-value. They even research how consumers actually use the product, so that they can adjust their production and sales accordingly. This is a very, very simple fact of capitalist economic life, and how you can deny it baffles me. As regards the quote from Marx about "the forces of production turning into forces of destruction", my attention was drawn to it by an essay by Ernest Mandel, "Marxismus und OEcologie", in his book "Karl Marx: Die aktualitaet seines Werkes" (ISP Verlag, 1984). This essay was originally published in Dutch as a response to the report of the Club of Rome (more specifically the Mansholt Report) in 1972. Mandel actually made the point then - among other things - that implementing technologies which can have effects that we cannot oversee is irresponsible, and that we may be justified in rejecting them, until such time as it is better known what the effects of using it really are. You make a similar point, and I think that is perfectly valid. But you don't need to be a "Green" to make that point, and it is quite another thing to put the clamps on scientific experimentation because of "possible" or "imagined" dangers for which nobody can present a shred of good evidence. Should we abandon research into nuclear fusion which aims to find safer ways to produce a lot of energy that we can make electricity with ? I don't think so. I am against exploding nuclear bombs and against nuclear fission plants generating waste problems, but I don't think we should abandon research. Well perhaps my remark about "all we can do in huddle together a bit in communes and so on" was unfair to the Greens. I admit I was momentarily distracted from my argumentation. Notice however I talked about the irrationalism if not mysticism of SOME Greens, which doesn't mean ALL Greens. I actually visited and lived in communes as a youth, but what was striking was how the problems of capitalist society which the commune dwellers sought to escape from reasserted themselves within their communes anyhow. I was a member of what was, to my knowledge, the first Green party in the world, the New Zealand Values Party, in 1978. The leader at the time, Tony Kunowski, got disgruntled with the party and left to become a banker. I left too, but that was more because the "zero-growth" society which the party advocated had been achieved in New Zealand, generating unemployment and social problems to which the party did not really have an answer. It is a funny thing that you bring up the question of classes and class analysis, because the Greens actually do not score very well there at all. Many of them are quite happy these days to work together with bourgeois governments and fight wars in Afghanistan and Yugoslavia etc. Many of them are anti-working class, anti-socialist and pro-imperialist. If you want to work with them, believing what you believe, you ought to "pick your Greens" carefully, that's all I can tell you. I do not propose to discuss whether or not the Greens enjoy life, this is not relevant to my argument and in any case it is perfectly possible to be a cultural pessimist seeking to put clamps on human behaviour, and still enjoy life. Some people seem to enjoy being cultural pessimists... do you fall in that category ? You are quite right in the sense that applying new technology can sometimes lead to disasters for humankind which were not anticipated. But does that mean that we should stop experimenting and trying things out ? In some cases, maybe. The very fact that disasters happen is a powerful warning to us. But it is another thing to leap from there to visions of doom, despair and gloom and general pessimism about the power of human beings to solve their problems. We socialists know that the "Genie" is already "out of the bottle", and has been for a long time. We can soberly take stock of that, but it should not be cause for despondency. That's not productive. Did you know that many of the world's biggest cities are built on fault lines ? One big earthquake and millions die under the rubble. That is the way it is. But if you were to study how quickly those cities can often be rebuilt, you would be amazed. With modern monitoring techniques, we can in fact predict the quakes to a considerable extent, and thus save human lives as well ! Regards Jurriaan
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