Maturity of Capitalist Production?
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Are the evolution of trade unions linked in any way to indicating capitalist production being ripe for its replacement by a socialist society? When does the party say capitalist production became outdated? Wasn’t it during Marx’s lifetime – after the Communist Manifesto?
jondwhite wrote:Are the evolution of trade unions linked in any way to indicating capitalist production being ripe for its replacement by a socialist society?No.
Quote:When does the party say capitalist production became outdated?If you want a precise date you’re probably better off asking the ICC! They may be able to give you a time as well I guess there may be some kind of consensus at around the end of the first world war. But in all probability it’s probably a question with no hard or fast answers.
Quote:Wasn’t it during Marx’s lifetime – after the Communist Manifesto?No.
I’d go for the last few decades of the 19th century on the grounds that it was by then that the effects of the so-called second industrial revolution – the application to production of the electric motor and the internal combustion engine – were beginning to be felt. Marx and Engels, remember, were judging the possibilities of socialism on the basis of the first industrial revolution (the application to production of the steam engine). Marx, who died in 1883, never saw either an electric motor or an internal combustion engine. But of course every advance in technology made (and still does make) the case for socialism even more relevant.By the turn of the 19th century, thanks to this second industrial revolution, capitalism had become the predominant world system. “Predominant” not in the sense that capitalism existed all over the world, but in the sense that all the people of the world, even if they lived under pre-capitalist conditions, were decisively affected by the workings of world capitalism. During this period capitalism became a world system – a fact which some Marxist writers have described as its becoming “imperialist”. 1914, with the outbreak of the first world war in the history of mankind, was a bloody confirmation of this.In 1847, Engels had written of the means of production not being available in sufficient quantity to permit the immediate, or even rapid, establishment of socialism. A quarter of a century later, in 1872, he was writing :
Quote:…it is precisely this industrial revolution which has raised the productive power of human labour to such a high level that – for the first time in the history of mankind – the possibility exists, given a rational division of labour among all, of producing not only enough for the plentiful consumption of all members of society and for an abundant reserve fund, but also of leaving each individual sufficient leisure so that what is really worth preserving in historically inherited culture – science, art, forms of intercourse – may not only be preserved but converted from a monopoly of the ruling class into the common property of the whole of society, and may be further developed. (The Housing Question)And six years after that, in 1876, in that part of Anti-Dühring later published as the immensely popular pamphlet Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (still the best introduction to “Marxism”), he wrote :
Quote:The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties – this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here. (Engels’ emphasis)Socialism probably could have been established in the 1870s but I’m not sure it would have been able to fully implement the principle of “from each acording to their ability, to each according to their needs”. Marx didn’t think so, but surely somebody could have thought of a better stop-gap measure than the “labour-time voucher” scheme he mentioned.
Incidentally, Hic Rhodas seemed to have raised a similar topic a few months ago but never got a reply.http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/decadence-cap%C3%ACtalism
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