Re: [OPE] questions re transition

Hi Paul,

We communicate across a political gulf, of course. It's interesting that
the atmosphere clouds re the status of relations of production.

1. You write:

> But none of the above actually says anything about the productive
> forces, nor about the development of labour productivity. It is all, and
> rather vaguely at that, about social relations.

This was after I referred to the concept of intersectionality and its
significance. What in the world is vague about paying attention first to
those persons at the intersection of multiple oppressions? Couple this with
the example I gave on municipal budgeting that I suggested generalized --
democracy means not only people engaged but people trained so that their
interventions can be effective. So the most oppressed get mobilized
productively. To ignore that this concerns forces of production and the
development of labor productivity is to miss something important in Marx, I
think.

2. You write:

> Well I am all for democracy, and my advocacy of it is as radical any that
> Bettleheim essayed, but I suspect that there is in your text an element of
> wishful thinking. One must ask whether a democratic shaping of the
> productive forces, would, of itself, yield a configuration of productive
> forces and relations more or less amenable to capitalist restoration.

Now I haven't said anything about a democratic shaping of the productive
forces "of itself." Electrification matters. Beyond that forms of
democracy, anarchist, liberal, etc., can certainly lead to capitalist
restoration or perpetuation. But otherwise I don't understand the "whether"
here. Capitalism brings into existence the collective worker operating
forces of production that are socialized. The transition to socialism is
about turning those collective workers into associated workers. Because the
forces of production are socialized, this is entirely a question of
democracy. We don't need a whetherman to tell that, do we?

Related to this. You have repeated that nothing is said, and nothing is
said vaguely at that, about changes in the nature of the productive forces.
First, I think Bettelheim's book "Cultural Revolution and Industrial
Organization in China" is the place where he tries to look at some
significant examples of this. Neighborhood factories suggested a change.
Small industrial enterprises in the countryside were significant not only in
changing productive forces there, but also for beginning to break down the
millennia old contradiction between town and country. Etc. Joan Robinson
has an interesting little book on economic management that looks at such
stuff. Simply delinking from the global operation of the law of value,
Samir Amin has suggested, changes the nature of the development of the
productive forces. So the chalkboard is not blank. But let's imagine an
entrepreneur in the earliest centuries of capitalism imagining assembly line
production. The image he would have formed would have been, we could say,
vague. He could not have imagined the forces of production themselves
transformed by collective labor. I think we are similarly situated. We can
only dimly imagine how the forces of production will be transformed by
democratically associated labor.

3. You write:

> This reduces political economy to judgements about power politics and
> downgrades actual economic relations. He misjudges derivatives over states
> with actual states. Thus because according to the then fashionable Chinese
> line, Kruschov was allegedly moving towards capitalism at the political
> level, the mode of production is characterised as capitalist. . . .

> Why is there no real engagement in Bettleheim with the ideas put forward
> by different soviet writers of the 50s and 60s on the organisation of the
> socialist economy?

Is there a reason "Le problem des prix dans les pays socialistes d'Europe:
Quelques reflections a propos d'un debat recent" doesn't count? This
appeared in La Pensee in 1967 and was included in "La transition vers
l'economie socialiste" with a pretty extensive bibliography. I don't know
of an English translation, and if there is none, it's a shame. The article
sets up the effort of Calcul Economique in a way not necessarily picked up
by reading Calcul E. Anyway, B finds the debate from the 50s and 60s
unsatisfactory and sterile -- he includes an interesting discussion of the
concept of socially necessary labor time and the way it was used. His
argument is that the problematic is empiricist and to make headway must be
shifted to a different terrain. To argue that B reduces political economy
to power politics (in the ordinary sense of the term; ie not class struggle
as the politics meant), misses altogether his effort to fashion a different
problematic, one which draws carefully on the methodology of Marx's analysis
of value as a causal structure -- B gives an example of the center of
gravity of a system which does not manifest itself except through its
effects. The dominance of the political is required because the economic
form of real appropriation you start with is characterized by capitalist
relations. They must be transformed and this does not happen spontaneously;
it must be organized. How people in power move politically is certainly
relevant to what kinds of relations are being consolidated, class struggle
is relevant, but you can't reduce the transformation or reconsolidation of
an structure of social reproduction to the power politics of persons. This
seems like reading B's emphasis on the political empirically.

By the way, do you find that Kruschov's initiatives, or those that followed
in the USSR, reflected democratic transformations of underlying economic
structures? My impression is that one man management, enterprise autonomy
and control by the ruble were strengthened. Experiments with dismissing
workers were initiated and shortly after K workers lost employment
guarantees. Party membership changed dramatically; did this reflect a
greater control or monitoring by working people? Did the international
socialist division of labor promote democratic relations among nations of
the east?

Finally on your interesting propositions regarding statistical mechanics --
the Method of Political Economy is relevant here. The mathematics will be
as good as the concepts you use to pick out the objects modeled.
'Population', Marx argued, was at first "an empty word." You had to start
with the "simplest determination", a Kerngestalt, of a social formation. In
order that societies is not an empty word, you need to know boundaries, for
example. National? Maybe. Anyway, the theoretical work transition
studies requires has to be done before you crank it up.

Wishfully yours,

howard

howard engelskirchen
he31@verizon.net

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Cockshott" <wpc@dcs.gla.ac.uk>
To: "Outline on Political Economy mailing list" <ope@lists.csuchico.edu>
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 5:33 AM
Subject: Re: [OPE] questions re transition

> howard engelskirchen wrote:
>> This is a theoretical point Bettelheim insisted on: the development of
>> the forces of production is shaped by the relations of production. That
>> is the significance of the domination of the relations of production over
>> the forces of production -- we would want some evidence not just of
>> material development of the forces of production but of transformed
>> social relations shaping material development. So at least that question
>> has been well asked -- to take Bettelheim seriously we have to explore in
>> what way socialist relations would alter the nature of the productive
>> forces.
>>
> Verily, but the posing is not the answer thereof.
>> Most fundamentally, we'd want evidence that the development of the forces
>> of production reflected a dynamic not of the accumulation of dead labor
>> but instead of the enhancement of living labor. And on that point one
>> decisive kind of reshaping that has to occur is to work out ways
>> associated labor can develop the productive forces democratically.
> Well I am all for democracy, and my advocacy of it is as radical any that
> Bettleheim essayed, but I suspect that there is in your text an element of
> wishful thinking. One must ask whether a democratic shaping of the
> productive forces, would, of itself, yield a configuration of productive
> forces and relations more or less amenable to capitalist restoration.
>> There's no precedent for this. That is, the most important productive
>> force is living labor itself, and I'd want to look to advances in forms
>> of organization as well as to the material transformation of things.
>> We'd expect the discovery and transformation of forms of organization to
>> lead to the transformation of material things. But forms of collective
>> managment of production, forms that draw on and develop from each
>> according to ability, are significant in their own right. Kimberle
>> Crenshaw's attention to intersectionality argues listen first to those at
>> the intersection of multiple oppressions. As we find forms of
>> organization to do so we will have developed the forces of production of
>> living labor. That would be a measure.
>>
> But none of the above actually says anything about the productive forces,
> nor about the development of labour productivity. It is all, and rather
> vaguely at that, about social relations.
>> I'm uncomfortable, though, with your treatment of the transition as a mix
>> of ensembles. I would want to speak of an articulated mix of structures
>> or relations: you suggest a mix of societies. Probably I misunderstand,
>> but what on earth could that mean?
> The difference is that I am using the language of statistical mechanics.
> One has to think of all of the countries in the world with a statistical
> distribution of socialism and capitalism over them and a set of transition
> probabilities -- how likely on a per annum basis are revolutions and
> counter revolutions.
> Further, one has to view this in terms of a distribution over a state
> space, analogous to the phase space of Boltzman, but with axes given by
> the political structure, the relations of production and forces of
> production in each social formation. These axes for each social formation
> correspond to Boltzman's x, x', y, y', z, z' for each atom. I have
> identified 3 axes for each social formation but one could go to greater
> detail. Thus when talking about transitions between socialism and
> capitalism one is talking not about microstates defined on the 3 axes, but
> between two macro states defined by some sort of plane or hyperplane. Each
> of these macrostates that we call socialism or capitalism is compatible
> with a large number, or ensemble, of microstates: different configurations
> of the political superstructure, different degrees of industrialisation,
> different mixes of state and collective or private property. Any actual
> transition between socialism and capitalism or vice versa is actually a
> transition between two of these microstates : eg Czechoslovakia in 1948
> with a particular degree of industrialisation, particular degree of prior
> seizure of the estates of emigrants and rebels etc, to Czechoslovakia in
> 1950 with state ownership, dictatorship of the proletariat led by the CP
> etc. There is no general transition process. Thus any statistical
> probabilities we have for transitions between social systems is
> a sum over the ensemble of transitions between microstates.
>
>
>> Perhaps you're saying the same thing, but wouldn't it be clearer to say,
>> as Bettelheim does, that immediately after the revolution there is
>> socialist political authority, but that the structure of real
>> appropriation remains capitalist? Thus socialist political and juridical
>> powers must be used to transform capitalist relations of appropriation.
>> Where socialist political power loses its connect with the working
>> population and a minority makes decisions that reproduce the separation
>> of productive entities from one another and the separation of laboring
>> producers from the conditions of production, then, even though private
>> property in a juridical sense no longer exists, nonetheless social
>> reproduction is dominantly capitalist.
>
>> Formally socialist but really capitalist. This will lead to interests
>> and irationalities (output measured in tons? make heavier chandeliers)
>> that may favor and eventually lead to overwhelming pressure (by the
>> minority) and sufficient acquiescence to restore traditional ownership
>> forms. But in the end the ownership form is secondary (though changes in
>> forms of capitalist ownership also can have significant and destructive
>> effects, as we witness) -- the main thing is that a minority in power,
>> economically and politically, functions in structures of real
>> appropriation that reproduce capital as a social relation.
>>
> I definitely disagree here. This reduces political economy to judgements
> about power politics and downgrades actual economic relations. He
> misjudges derivatives over states with actual states. Thus because
> according to the then fashionable Chinese line, Kruschov was allegedly
> moving towards capitalism at the political level, the mode of production
> is characterised as capitalist. This form of argument mistakes a
> prevailing wind for a completed sea voyage.
> It makes the huge transformation that occured in 88->92 incomprehensible,
> as the Soviet economy was, according to B, already a capitalist one.
>> The key then is to know what capital is and what its transformation would
>> look like. Marx refers to capital's "Kerngestalt" -- structural
>> kernal -- and Bettelheim identifes this as the double separation. I
>> understand this as a causal structure -- real and relational, but
>> underlying and not empirical.
> Yes, but how do you overcome it?
> Why is there no real engagement in Bettleheim with the ideas put forward
> by different soviet writers of the 50s and 60s on the organisation of the
> socialist economy?
>> So like a chemist manipulating elements to reshape a molecule we look
>> for its transformation and that is the way we measure the success or not
>> of societies in transition. That brings us to the questions you raised
>> in your earlier post. I'll take those up in another email.
>>
>> howard
>>
>>
>>
>> howard engelskirchen
>> he31@verizon.net
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Paul" <wpc@dcs.gla.ac.uk>
>> To: "Outline on Political Economy mailing list" <ope@lists.csuchico.edu>
>> Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2009 6:27 PM
>> Subject: Re: [OPE] question re published letters Engels
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>> But, the question that you ask is a good one. Both Khruschev and Lenin
>>>> (but not so much Mao - at least from the Great Leap Forward and after)
>>>> shared the belief that socialist relations of production would arise as
>>>> a
>>>> consequence of increasing forces of production, but there is obviously
>>>> no
>>>> necessary reason why this must be the case.
>>>>
>>>> The Bolsheviks, especially in the early period, tended to somewhat
>>>> uncritically glorify
>>>> the empowering possibilities of advances in technology and
>>>> industrialization.
>>>> This romanticisation of industrialization could also be seen in the
>>>> constructivist
>>>> art of the period.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Yes but if we take Bettleheim seriously we have to ask in what way
>>> would socialist relations of production alter the nature of the
>>> productive forces.
>>>
>>> If we model the transition between modes of production as a Markov
>>> process then in any given year there is a certain transition
>>> probablility P(c->s) for a society going from capitalism to socialism,
>>> there is also a transition probability for a society going from
>>> socialism back to capitalism P(s->c).
>>>
>>> If each probability is non zero we will end up with a population of
>>> societies that is a stochastic mix or capitalist and socialist states.
>>> Such a transition system has an equilibrium mix and does not show
>>> secular evolution.
>>>
>>>
>>> If we just characterise societies as socialist or capitalist in terms of
>>> social relations then the above argument is actually an argument about
>>> transtions between ensembles not individual states. One ensemble we
>>> characterise as capitalism and
>>> the other socialism. Within each ensemble or macrostate, there is a
>>> plethora of microstates characterised by different combinations of
>>> forces of production with the broadly socialist or broadly capitalist
>>> relations of production, and also by a plethora of variations of
>>> property and authority relations within the broadly capitalist or
>>> broadly socialist categories.
>>>
>>> To show a secular evolution of modes of production such that mode of
>>> production A is superior to B ( say A= capitalism
>>> B= feudalism ) then we have to have the property that the reverse
>>> transtion P(a->b) falls over time. In the capitalist case this was
>>> because capitalist agriculture and capitalist industry developed new
>>> forces of production whose operation under the old feudal relations of
>>> production was improbable. Thus the longer capitalism existed, the less
>>> likely a feudal restoration became.
>>>
>>> The question one has to ask is whether we can say the same thing about
>>> socialism. Is it the case that the longer a socialist society exits, the
>>> more it develops new modes of material production that would be hard to
>>> operate under capitalist relations of production?
>>>
>>> And if that is the case, does the existence of these new modes and
>>> techniques of material production reduce the probability of capitalist
>>> restorations?
>>>
>>> It seems to me that these are quite open questions. On the one hand the
>>> USSR clearly developed organisations and structures of production that
>>> were crucially dependent on the all union planned economy. When that was
>>> removed after the Yeltsin coup there was a wholesale collapse of
>>> production and a huge increase in mortality rates.
>>> So the USSR developed forces of production whose continued operation was
>>> not compatible with capitalism, but the mere existence of these forces
>>> of production does not itself seem to have been sufficient to reduce the
>>> transition flux P(s->c)
>>> towards zero.
>>>
>>>
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Received on Wed Jun 3 16:01:38 2009