MIM x-post on "theory of productive forces

[repost mim on awip rcpers]

The revisionist theory of the productive forces

On this page we are going to compile an ongoing
list of quotes from the RCP=U$A and its fans that
amount to saying technology or capital is class
neutral. We will just update this page as we go
along. We are starting this list April 17, 2004.

[Something revisionists have done since Lenin's
day is to claim that technology (not to mention
capital) is class neutral. RCP=U$A increasingly
takes up that line to defend itself against MIM's
criticism. Stalin had to shoot down Bukharin on
this point, when Bukharin flip-flopped after Lenin
died. Then it was a big issue in the Cultural
Revolution, when Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping
glorified technology as class neutral.]

I. Over at awip.proboard23.com, one RCPer or RCP
fan said: "But look at a steel mill, where massive
amounts of steel are produced. Workers receive
wages. The capitalists accumulate massive amounts
of surplus value.

"those amounts are especially huge because of the
high "organic composition of capital" (I.e. the
ratio between variable capital and fixed capital -
- i.e. the amount spent on wages vs. the amount
spent on machinery). Because the U.S. is a highly
mechanized place, with huge developed industries -
- the organic composition is high. And so the
absolute amount of surplus value extracted (if
calculated per worker) is very high (compared to,
say, a labor intensive sweatship with only sewing
machines as constant capital).

"This does not mean that the workers in the highly
mechanized steel mill are more revolutionary -- it
just means that massive amounts of surplus value
can be extracted from them, because of the amounts
of investment put into machinery."

"If you want to analyse rev potential, you have to
look somewhere else, and move beyond this side
issue (this pink herring) spread by MIM's mickey-
mouse non-analysis."

Source:
awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?board=politi
x&thread=1080284384&action=display&start=15

mim3 for MIM replies:

The above states that increased use of capital in
production automatically increases surplus-value
extraction. This is a wrong view thoroughly
demolished during the Cultural Revolution. Class
struggle matters for starters.

Implementation of technology gives the bourgeoisie
a chance to increase surplus-value extraction, if
there is productive sector work going on. If the
bourgeoisie buys technology and the workers
effectively strike and do not or from lack of
training can not implement it, there is not gain
to the capitalists except importantly,
ideologically.

[repost mim on awip rcpers]

In point of fact, because of the DECADENCE of
imperialism, a company's purchase of technology is
usually connected with consumption, not surplus-
value extraction. When the company buys a gym for
the workers to use, technology goes into that.
Likewise, coffee & water machines and company cars
with all the gadgets. Yet it is the same
purchasing agents of the company and procedures
that go into buying cars with air conditioners and
CD changers as buys technology for a company.
Although economists in Japan are trained in what
surplus-value is, it is far from evident that
Japanese economists working for companies are
directing the company toward surplus-value
extraction for the country as a whole rather than
profits. We can be sure no such thing goes on in
the Anglo-Saxon world.

For the capitalists individually in exploiter-
majority countries each one is faced with the same
going rate of petty-bourgeois demands for gyms at
the workplace, company cars with air conditioners
etc. Some of that gets added to the capitalists'
investment or variable capital costs. When the
imperialist partners with his/her own petty-
bourgeoisie all that is inevitable, which is why
the trend to white-collar workers in India is more
interesting. Even in those cases where advanced
technology really is applied to the production
process in imperialist countries, the majority of
the technology expenses goes to pleasing the
petty-bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy using the
technology. Unfortunately for them, it is next-to-
impossible for the imperialists to determine
themselves directly what aspects of technology
application are really consumption going on in the
workplace and entertainment for the thrill of
technology itself--a kind of fetishism-- and what
is really necessary for surplus-value extraction
or realization. Only white-collar "workers" led by
the proletariat would have any possibility of the
intellectual ferment that would distinguish
fetishism from production need.

Being caught up in an ideology themselves,
imperialists are not apt to want a reduction of
"choice" in technological procedures possible in
the workplace, all other things being equal.
Hence, the imperialists are poorly equipped in
actuality to face the class struggle of the labor
aristocracy and traditional petty- bourgeoisie.
Once the capitalist becomes at all proficient in
managing high-technology workers, s/he ships those
jobs off to India as the only means to cut back on
consumption in the workplace in general. Even
there it won't necessarily be the case that
capitalists will be able to pinpoint what is going
on: they only improve their position of power for
class struggle by shipping the jobs to India.

In our critics' statement above about steel
workers, there is also no statement on WHERE the
capital came from, but that is the relevant issue
here in the RCPers' thread titled "Where does the
U.S. get most of its profit?" where they feebly
try to attack the MIM line. Breaking it down to a
WHERE question is not always done in
<I>Capital,</I> because the initial question was
not how the various nations contribute and where
the working-class ends and the petty-bourgeoisie
begins. Again, because MIM heeded Lenin on the
"seal of parasitism" on whole countries, MIM had
no choice but to break the question down to WHERE
the capital and necessities of life come from.
Those following the Hardt & Negri line face no
such necessity. We at MIM will only point out that
it should be the Trotskyists who go for Hardt &
Negri first, the Maoists last. All class conscious
people should insist that their leaders break down
the question by nation.

[repost mim on awip rcpers]

Misplacing the origins of capital and technology
is even a step worse than confusing profit and
surplus-value. As Marx said, to introduce
"Theories of Surplus-Value": "All economists share
the error of examining surplus-value not as such,
in its pure form, but in the particular forms of
profit and rent." In addition, surplus-value
extraction can appear to increase in the
imperialist countries because the necessities of
life have been cheapened by extraction of surplus-
value ORIGINATING in the Third World, especially
at a super-exploitive level.

It's very, very important to understand what
various concepts in Marxism were for what. When
you are looking at how surplus-value crosses
borders internationally you have to look at
various things that might be hidden at first
glance. In the above case, and others, because
Marx did not handle certain cross-national flows,
but just workers as a whole in some examples in
<I>Capital</I>, "RCP" feels some justification in
acting as if technology were class neutral and
that necessities of life become cheaper as if by
accident. It comes from a dead reading of
<I>Capital</I> not thinking of reality as it
exists. Well, sorry, once again RCP=u$A: the
lettuce does not just appear automatically behind
the grocery store. If the necessities of life get
cheaper in the imperialist countries, that may
very well be because of surplus-value extracted
some where else. The cheapening of the necessities
of life and the implementation of technology are
never class neutral.

II. RosaRL for RCP at:
awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?action=displ
ay&board=politix&thread=1080284384&start=0

"However the most technologically intensive forms
of production tend to remain within the US (and
other imperialist nations) in close proximity to
the more technically trained workers (education is
actually an investment from the perspective of the
bourgeoisie). Thus, these jobs tend to be centered
around Urban areas where skill levels will be
higher."

mim3 for the Maoist Internationalist Movement:
This common vulgar bourgeois argument says that
the labor theory of value should be tossed,
because technology deserves a reward. Here
chauvinistically RosaRL argues that Western
imperialist workers are most advanced and thus
deserve the most reward, just as Trotskyists
always have.

Such an argument again amounts to seeing a reward
for technology and capital, not labor. There is
nothing in Marxism that says technology, capital
or even education is class neutral and not
produced with a supply of labor. There is nothing
in Marxism that says the workers in the Western
imperialist countries "deserve" a return from the
capital and technology that happen to exist within
the borders of their countries. There is nothing
in Marxism that says under socialism, we will
nationalize the capital in each country and
declare it to be the sole property of the workers
who happen to be there. Quite the contrary, after
World War II, Stalin saw to reparations from
Germany.

Again, this has to do with understanding that MIM
is making an argument about various nations'
workers that some examples we first read about in
<I>Capital</I> vol. 1 did not directly handle.
<I>Capital</I> is often talking about workers and
capitalists as whole classes where MIM is breaking
down surplus-value flows by nation and between
proletarians and the petty-bourgeoisie.

There are two ways out of the difficulty that most
of Capital Vol. 1 is about workers in general: 1)
is the MIM way to show the cross-border flows of
surplus-value, taking the extra trouble to handle
the national question and petty-bourgeoisie 2) the
other way is the Hardt & Negri <I>Empire</I> way
of saying there is one system and bunch of
"workers" again, in the whole world. Such an
argument prevents our making the labor aristocracy
point at the national level.

[repost mim on awip rcpers]

RosaRL's bit above is also a social-democratic
argument undercutting Marx's theory of crisis and
therefore the possibility of change. If technology
infinitely increases surplus-value, then there is
no possibility of a profit crisis. It amounts to
disguising the decadence of imperialism and
attributing infinite life to capitalism.

Not surprisingly, in tandem, open Menshevik
"Redstar2000" argued that all workers produce
surplus-value--an argument by social-democrats
undercutting Marx's theory of crisis and change,
an argument that says capitalism can go on
producing parasites forever. It gets Redstar2000
out of the problem of dealing with the reality of
white-collar work in the imperialist countries on
a basis any different than that of mine, industry,
farm and transport workers-- but it comes at the
price of losing Marx's theory of crisis and
change.

III. Here's another RCP fan quote:

"to quote from a bourgeois economics text:

"'Several factors influence wages, including the
supply of and demand for labor, the value of the
products workers produce, and worker productivity.
Workers who are productive and who produce highly-
valued products will tend to earn higher wages.
One of the most important factors in determining
wages is the worker’s level of education. The
higher the level of education, the more productive
the worker tends to be. For this reason, many
employers will invest in education and training of
their employees, thus raising output and
productivity for the firm, and increasing wages
and the standard of living for workers.'"

But what exactly is this 'productivity'? Once
again from bourgeois economics:

"Economic productivity is the value of output
obtained with one unit of input. For example, if a
worker produces in an hour an output of 2 units,
whose price is 10$ each, then his productivity is
20$. It is clear that both technological and
market elements (as output quantities and prices,
respectively) interacts to determine economic
productivity."

"So here you have in their own terms the fact that
worker in the US actually produces more value per
hour in general and does so because of the higher
level of technology that is employed. It is
actually BECAUSE the worker produces more value
per hour that he can be paid more per hour for his
labor time."

awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?action=displ
ay&board=politix&thread=1080284384&start=0

mim3 for the Maoist Internationalist Movement:

When you get your ideas from a bourgeois economics
textbook wholesale, it's time to dissolve the
RCP=U$A and focus on "Not In Our Name" and other
similar organizations. The "RCP=U$A" is composed
of those who know nothing of Marxism combined with
the cynics who lead them.

Marx said, "All economists share the error of
examining surplus-value not as such, in its pure
form, but in the particular forms of profit and
rent." Even if higher pay is a result of higher
technology, that does not prove that the Amerikan
workers should be receiving that higher pay. It
would not prove that technology is not the result
of surplus-value extracted from the Third World.
Capitalists also may receive higher profits from
implementing technology. That does not mean we
Marxists are going to endorse a profit for
capital.

[repost mim on awip rcpers]

On a more sophisticated level not even mentioned
above, you cannot take the bourgeoisie's notion of
revenue at face value and say that the marginal
input of labor is equal to the value taken from
the laborer as measured by the marginal increase
in revenue. We have long ago left an age when
necessities of life and variable capital come from
just one nationality's workers. There is no choice
but to make a crude Trotskyist global analysis of
simultaneous revolution or a MIM analysis that
takes account of the complexities of nation and
imperialism.

The labor productivity as measured by the
bourgeoisie CAN appear higher for imperialist
country workers--even given a same dollar value of
fixed capital used--because imperialist country
workers are the last stage before the product
reaches market. In point of fact, cross-national
studies of labor productivity do NOT show what the
RCP fan is saying. Quite the contrary, the labor
productivity studies show that Mexican workers for
instance are awarded a small share of their
marginal output relative to Amerikan workers. The
facts on that are in MIM's book on the class
structure in 1997.
www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/mt/imp97/index.h
tml

There is little exported to China by Amerikan
workers, because the market and excitement for
capitalists is the u.$. market and similar but
smaller majority-exploiter countries. Whatever
hidden surplus-value is in a product has a chance
of becoming apparent when it is sold in the u$a.
It does not mean the guard, stock-broker or even
the Amerikan floor manager contributed any value
to the product. Surplus-value is hidden even in
inputs used in Amerikan factories, because 1)
multinational corporations use internal "transfer
pricing" to avoid taxes, also known as "funny
money" to pay for inputs from their own Third
World subsidiaries. 2) many products bought from
the Third World do not come from a merely
exploitive but super-exploitive situations which
arise from a non-competitive business practice
that drives wages below the level of sustenance.
In such non-competitive, coercive situations, more
surplus-value is hidden than in a free-market
situation of exploitation.

If you've never heard of bribery or tax evasion,
you don't know why multinational corporations put
the value of certain inputs on the books
incorrectly. However, Mao said there was such a
thing as a "comprador." And MIM believes that
these puppet-lackey compradors dominate most of
the Third World on behalf of imperialism. In
contrast, RCPers and their fans tend to imply that
imperialism is still progressive--bringing
technological progress and increasing the labor
productivity of imperialist country workers. The
view that imperialism brings technological
progress, advance in the workers of imperialist
countries and ever-greater production of surplus-
value is an objective possibility to consider. All
thinking people should consider it. It's just that
we do not associate such views with Lenin and Mao,
but Trotsky, who said imperialism's workers are
most advanced and bring progress to the Third
World. Linking technology to an increase in
imperialist country surplus-value is particularly
deadly to Leninism and is more befitting of
business pulp authors some of which till 2001 said
we won't see another recession for generations.

************************************************

Karl Marx:

Commenting on Herr List justifying the German
bourgeoisie's push for tariffs: "is an infamous
hypocrisy and idealistic eye-wash (embellishment),
when in relation to other nations it looks down
contemptuously on the bad 'materialism' of
'exchange values,' and is itself ostensibly only
concerned with 'productive forces'? Furthermore,
if the conditions of capital, land rent, etc., can
be 'established' without taking the 'political
conditions' of the nations into account, what does
this prove but that the industrial capitalist and
the recipient of land rent are guided in their
actions in real life by profit, exchange values,
and not by considerations about 'political
conditions' and 'productive forces,' and that
their talk about civilisation and productive
forces is only an embellishment of narrow-minded
egoistic tendencies?"

[repost mim on awip rcpers]

. . .

"The Saint-Simon school has given us an
instructive example of what it leads to if the
productive force that industry creates
unconsciously and against its will is put to the
credit of present-day industry and the two are
confused: industry and the forces which industry
brings into being unconsciously and without its
will, but which will only become human forces,
man’s power, when industry is abolished. This is
as much an absurdity as if the bourgeois wanted to
take the credit for his industry creating the
proletariat, and in the shape of the proletariat
the power of a new world order. The forces of
nature and the social forces which industry brings
into being (conjures up), stand in the same
relation to it as the proletariat. Today they are
still the slaves of the bourgeois, and in them he
sees nothing but the instruments (the bearers) of
his dirty (selfish) lust for profit; tomorrow they
will break their chains and reveal themselves as
the bearers of human development which will blow
him sky-high together with his industry, which
assumes the dirty outer shell — which he regards
as its essence — only until the human kernel has
gained sufficient strength to burst this shell and
appear in its own shape. Tomorrow they will burst
the chains by which the bourgeois separates them
from man and so distorts (transforms) them from a
real social bond into fetters of society.

. . .

"If the 'School' made no 'scientific
elaboration'[110] of the theory of productive
forces alongside and separately from the theory of
exchange values, it acted in this way because such
a separation is an arbitrary abstraction, because
it is impossible and cannot go beyond general
phrases.

"5) 'The causes of wealth are something quite
different from wealth itself. The force capable of
creating wealth is infinitely more important than
wealth itself' [List, op. cit., p. 201].

"Productive force appears as an entity infinitely
superior to exchange value. This force claims the
position of inner essence, whereas exchange value
claims that of a transient phenomenon. The force
appears as infinite, exchange value as finite, the
former as non-material, the latter as material —
and we find all these antitheses in Herr List.
Hence the supernatural world of forces takes the
place of the material world of exchange values.
Whereas the baseness of a nation sacrificing
itself for exchange values, of people being
sacrificed for things, is quite obvious, forces,
on the other hand, appear to be independent
spiritual essences — phantoms — and pure
personifications, deities, and after all one may
very well demand of the German people that it
should sacrifice the bad exchange values for
phantoms! An exchange value, money, always seems
to be an external aim, but productive force seems
to be an aim which arises from my very nature, a
self-aim. Thus, what I sacrifice in the form of
exchange values is something external to me; what
I gain in the form of productive forces is my
self-acquisition. — That is how it seems if one is
satisfied with a word or, like an idealising
German, does not worry about the dirty reality
which lies behind this grandiloquent word.

"In order to destroy the mystical radiance which
transfigures 'productive force,' one has only to
consult any book of statistics. There one reads
about water-power, steam-power, manpower, horse-
power. All these are 'productive forces.' Is it a
high appreciation of man for him to figure as a
'force' alongside horses, steam and water?"

Source:
www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/03/list.htm#03

The above quote from Marx is about Herr List's
particular version of the "theory of the
productive forces." His version says that tariffs
are necessary on behalf of the god of the theory
of the productive forces. According to the
RCP=U$A, adding capital to production also has
mystical power.

Not surprisingly, as the days of Marx and Herr
List, anyone not exalting the power of u.$.
imperialist productive forces today finds
him/herself immediately accused of paying
attention to exchange-value.

For Marx, the last note in the quote above says
that horses and oxen do not count as "labor" in
the labor theory of value. As far as the RCP=U$A
line goes, horses and oxen should count
along with the latest technological fetishes.

The polemic against List also has many other
elements applicable to the RCP=U$A. Among them is
Marx's condemnation of <a
href="subjectivismII.html">subjectivism.</a> He
explains that the "spirituality" (a.k.a. "myth" or
"desires" for the RCP=U$A) is really a cover for
something else. "It proves to us that his idealism
in practice is nothing but the unscrupulous,
unthinking disguise of a repulsive materialism."

With regard to the RCP=U$A's constant reference to subjective
states of mind such as "pessimism" of party members,
Marx said this about List:

"It can never occur to Herr List that the real
organisation of society is a soulless materialism,
an individual spiritualism, individualism. It can
never occur to him that the political economists
have only given this social state of affairs a
corresponding theoretical expression. Otherwise,
he would have to direct his criticism against the
present organisation of society instead of against
the political economists. He accuses them of not
having found any embellishing expression for a
cheerless reality. Hence he wants to leave this
reality everywhere just as it is and only change
the expression of it."

*****************************************

[full links]

above full doc at:

www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/wim/wyl/crypto/text.php?mimfile=rcpproductiveforces.txt

mim on crypto trotskyism and rcp:

www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/wim/wyl/crypto.html

[redstar2000]

mim wrote: In point of fact, because of the DECADENCE of imperialism, a company's purchase of technology is usually connected with consumption, not surplus-value extraction. When the company buys a gym for
the workers to use, technology goes into that. Likewise, coffee & water machines and company cars with all the gadgets. Yet it is the same purchasing agents of the company and procedures that go into buying cars with air conditioners and CD changers as buys technology for a company. Although economists in Japan are trained in what surplus-value is, it is far from evident that Japanese economists working for companies are
directing the company toward surplus-value
extraction for the country as a whole rather than profits. We can be sure no such thing goes on in the Anglo-Saxon world.

Decadence, eh?

A most curious concept to introduce into what purports to be an economic analysis.

It sounds as if MIM is accusing the bourgeoisie of a "moral failing" to properly maximize profit.

Perhaps the author of this document is writing from Silicon Valley...where it was once the case that many white-collar workers were not only very highly paid but did have "gyms" at work, "free beer Fridays", etc. Those perks disappeared with the dot.com bust, of course...but it must have been fun while it lasted.

Dot.com capitalists provided those perks because they thought -- rightly or wrongly -- that they "enhanced productivity"...increased the amount of surplus value that could be extracted from white-collar labor. (Note that the people, mostly women, who actually worked "on the line" building/assembling computers, received none of those "decadent" perks.)

mim wrote: Even in those cases where advanced technology really is applied to the production process in imperialist countries, the majority of the technology expenses goes to pleasing the petty-bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy using the technology.

Pleasing? This sounds more like courtship than it does capitalism.

mim wrote: Unfortunately for them, it is next-to-impossible for the imperialists to determine themselves directly what aspects of technology application are really consumption going on in the workplace and entertainment for the thrill of technology itself--a kind of fetishism-- and what is really necessary for surplus-value extraction or realization.

Entertainment? Thrill?

This gets "curiouser and curiouser".

True, I've been retired from the workplace for some years now...but it sounds like things are "a lot different" than they were when I was a wage-slave.

At least as seen through the strange prism of MIM.

mim wrote: Hence, the imperialists are poorly equipped in actuality to face the class struggle of the labor aristocracy and traditional petty-bourgeoisie.

Wow! Who would have ever thought that the rather stolid "labor aristocracy" and the vacillating and poorly organized petty-bourgeoisie would have the imperialists "on the defensive"?

Here is a certainly "unique" appreciation of "class struggle" hitherto unsuspected. Will the "labor aristocracy"/petty bourgeoisie alliance someday become the new ruling class?

Does this stuff "ring a bell" with anyone? I'm thinking that perhaps it's a distant descendant of James Burnham's "managerial revolution" (c.1940).

mim wrote: Again, because MIM heeded Lenin on the "seal of parasitism" on whole countries, MIM had no choice but to break the question down to WHERE the capital and necessities of life come from.

Following Lenin certainly leads one to some "interesting" destinations, doesn't it?

mim wrote: In addition, surplus-value
extraction can appear to increase in the
imperialist countries because the necessities of life have been cheapened by extraction of surplus-value ORIGINATING in the Third World, especially at a super-exploitive level.

Well, I guess we're back to economics again. This strikes me as a reasonably plausible hypothesis...what's the evidence for it?

How would you go about proving that it was true?

As I pointed out in an earlier post this evening, the bourgeoisie do not generate statistics for our purposes but rather for their own. If we try to use them for our purposes anyway, problems arise.

In particular, how do we overcome the built-in assumptions that rest beneath their numbers? Do we even know what those assumptions are?

In any particular number, what are they including that we would exclude, and vice versa?

Of course it would be a marvelous thing if we could really derive empirical proof of our hypotheses from bourgeois statistics...and, on occasion, this may be possible in a limited way.

But caution is advised, in my opinion. They don't always tell the truth...even to each other.

mim wrote: There is nothing in Marxism that says technology, capital or even education is class neutral and not
produced with a supply of labor...There is nothing in Marxism that says under socialism, we will nationalize the capital in each country and declare it to be the sole property of the workers who happen to be there.

I don't think that Marx and Engels ever specifically asserted that technology (for example) was "class neutral"...but if they thought it was not, one wonders why they didn't say that.

Certain kinds of modern technology, some have argued, are very definitely not "class neutral" -- their conscious purpose was to reduce the skills and limit the autonomy of workers.

Other kinds of technology may be, in effect, pro-worker (though not necessarily pro-working class). Replacing heavy manual labor by machine labor makes the job "easier" but reduces the number of workers needed.

As to how matters are to be handled after a proletarian revolution, that's a matter to be decided by the working class in each particular country.

Certainly no one is going to hand over that job to you!

mim wrote: Quite the contrary, after
World War II, Stalin saw to reparations from
Germany.

Yes, an extraordinarily stupid blunder, wasn't it? Not only did it lead to the workers' uprisings of 1953 but permanently wrecked the image of socialism in East Germany...nor did the USSR actually benefit to any significant degree from those reparations.

The fact that you appear to admire this act of gross stupidity suggests that you are totally unqualified to oversee the distribution of resources following proletarian revolution.

mim wrote: If technology infinitely increases surplus-value, then there is no possibility of a profit crisis.

We don't know if it's "infinite".

mim wrote: ...open Menshevik
"Redstar2000" argued that all workers produce
surplus-value...

I argued no such thing, of course.

And labeling me a "Menshevik" is just a gratuitous attempt to discredit me in the eyes of Bolshevik-wannabes.

In their eyes I am "already discredited".

[Deleted]

I think RedStar2000 deserves some credit for even being able to understand that MIM babble enough to actually respond to it. ;D