twc
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Sympo wrote:What does it mean that “political conditions” play a part but are not “decisive” in the making of history by humans?
“Political conditions” belong to the superstructure that societies build upon the foundation of their economic conditions of production.Thus Marx, “… it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.”¹ Political conditions are subservient to the economic conditions of production, which as Engels says, in his response to Bloch² are those of the production and reproduction of social life.Thus, for Marx and Engels, the foundations of social existence are non political, but in class societies they are maintained politically. This is because they are maintained in the interest of a ruling class [politics].[On this, see Engels’s Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, which is what Engels is referring to about Punaluan brother–sister ‘marriage’ in the full letter to Bloch, reproduced in its entirety here² .]Political actors and political movements come and go.The superstructure is their battleground of illusions, where their misconceptions over the economic conditions of production contend against each other.The political actors struggle for dominance over, but entirely trapped within, that very same palpable superstructure that, unbeknownst to them, is actually subservient to the non-palpable non-political conditions that are actually essential to their own social reproduction as a ruling class.The Idealist philosophical conception, that is itself subservient to the overwhelming social appearance that the social superstructure is self-sufficient and autonomous, prevailed in the time of Marx and Engels, and still prevails today.This Idealist misconception is the universally held view that political conditions determine the economic conditions of production — that the social superstructure, or world of appearance, determines everything.For Marx and Engels, as for Hegel, appearance was precisely what needs to be explained!Marx puts it this way in Capital “if essence and appearance coincided, there would be no need for science”.Essence–Appearance (or, scientifically, Foundation–Superstructure) is Marx’s scientific challenge to the Idealism of appearance. It is the basis of all human comprehension.
Sympo wrote:Can something really be important without being called decisive?Yes. Take the Labour parties. Take the Leninist parties. They were really, really, really important. Nobody could deny that.But they were not decisive. Not at all!The social foundation they claimed they could change by meddling with the superstructure (palpable appearance) defeated them lock, stock and barrel.These intellectual champions of the superstructure finished up repudiating everything they preached, ratting on every single superstructural tenet they held. They were defeated by the abhorred economic conditions of production they deluded themselves and their followers that they had risen superior to.These “important”, but self-discredited, organisations “decided” nothing beyond the tangible proof that they were impediments to the very socialism they boasted they knew better than we how to achieve.What was truly “decisive” about the Labour Party and the Leninist Parties was written by Engels in 1850, over half a century before those disreputable organisations rode to superstructural power on the backs of the working class.³
Sympo wrote:If so, I wouldn’t mind a concrete example of something that’s “not decisive” that plays a big role in the making of history.Well, for starters…The Labour Party.The Communist Party.The Royal Family. Footnotes⁽¹⁾ Karl Max, in the Preface to A Contribution towards a Critique of Political Economy.⁽²⁾ https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21a.htm.⁽³⁾ “The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply… What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost.”[He may be “important” but, in his case, the economic conditions of production are “decisive” — to his failure!]
DJP’s quote from Engels [post #2] expresses — in the vernacular — Marx’s scientific view on the relationship between freedom and necessity.[Of course, any ‘thinker’ can raise himself above the necessity of the world, and is perfectly “free” to defy the material world before succumbing to its necessity.The most notable modern politico to defy social necessity, through his idealist will, is, of course, Lenin, whose succumbing to the necessity of the world, Engels expressed — in the vernacular — 70 years earlier.]Unbeknownst to me, Alan has reproduced an earlier post of mine in defence of Engels’s much later “freedom is the recognition of necessity” at:http://socialist-courier.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/freedom-is-recognition-of-necessity.html?q=TwcPurely ‘philosophical’ pronouncements on this issue reduce science to nothing more than “thinking that is isolated from practice — a purely scholastic question” [from Thesis II].
Those cited Buddhist ‘philosophers’ interpret Western science from their hostile Buddhist ‘philosophical’ standpoint, just as LBird interprets Western science from his hostile ‘philosophical’ standpoint.Both wilfully hijack Western science’s achievements to their own ‘philosphical’ ends, and twist it at the most superficial level.Both stand superior to the working scientists who laboured to build Western science, cumulatively over the centuries, shoulder upon shoulder, and brick by brick.Both are blind to the productive world that Western science created for them, and that they nonchalantly inherit.Both are oblivious of the substantiation of Western science’s achievements by society’s incorporation of Western scientific thought and technology into society’s daily practice.Both of them, despite themselves, repudiate Marx’s thesis that Man must prove the power of his thinking in practice! All is thought for them — the non-doing, or do-nothing, ‘philosophers’.Let these ‘philosophers’ show us the achievements of Buddhist ‘science’ in practice. Let them show us Buddhist ‘science’ in the service of Buddhist ‘philosophy’, as handed down over the ages from the sacred Buddhist texts of universal wisdom. Let them show us!Then we might have sufficient grounds for taking their ‘science’ more seriously than mere bluster.Maybe paucity of Buddhist ‘scientific’ demonstration, but profusion of ‘philosphical’ mysticism, may give pause to LBird’s and the Buddhist ‘philosophical’ effrontery of pontificating to Western scientists, who grapple daily with the production of Western science, about how such Western scientists should “thank them” (LBird’s words) for putting them on the right track, by telling Western scientists —who are “thick as dog s**t” (LBird’s indelicate description of those he aims to influence) — how they should really conduct the very thing they think most deeply about daily.Maybe LBird might also demonstrate how Western scientists aim to take over the world — under Socialism mind you — and perform vile experiments on us all (LBird’s confirmed words).Ah, the passive ‘thinker’, priding himself in the activity of his imagination. Ah, imagination is cheap. Let imagination prove itself in practice, sustain itself in society, before anyone bothers to take imagination as definitive in any but a tentatively useful social sense.To ‘philosopher’ LBird and the Buddhist ‘philosophers’, Western science has only crass utility. Western science’s intrinsic value falls short of their ‘philosophical’ expectations.Instead they ‘philophically’ deprecate Western science as a scrap heap for mercenary substantiation of their own ‘philosophical’ world views. They are the worst kind of scientific plagiarists.To Western science, ‘philosopher’ LBird and the Buddhist ‘philosophers’ are sunk by their own practice as soon as they seek ‘philosophical’ confirmation in the very scientific process they ‘philosophically’ scorn. Their arrogance prevents them from sensing the irony of their attempts to validate themselves through the achievements of detested Western science.Western science succeeds precisely by repudiating the ‘philosphical’ stance of LBird and the Buddhist ‘philosophers’.The most sickening aspect of LBird’s pontification on Western science is its dogmatic casuistry. For LBird, the distinguishing characteristic, or telltale signature, of ‘philosophically’ correct science — his so-called ‘proletarian science’ — is that correct “proletarian science’ always changes observation to suit its theory.No doubt good medieval Catholic ‘science’ tried the same ploy, and no doubt good Buddhist ‘science’, in subservience to its holy scriptures, has no choice but to adopt the self-same LBirdian casuistry that LBird trumpets as closed ‘scientific’ method (or scientific fraud) to counter open Western science.LBird, who by now has reduced himself to reading merely in order to seek comfort in the slightest hint of confirmation of his own views, takes the devoutly catholic cosmologist Carlo Rovelli as supporting LBird’s ‘philosphical’ relativism. Little does LBird appreciate how superficially he reads.Let us examine Carlo Rovelli on the cultural clash between Western science and oriental science.From “The First Scientist — Anaximander and his Legacy”, Carlo Rovelli, Chapter 9 — Between Cultural Relativism and Absolute Thought.In the third century BCE, Eratosthenes measured the Earth’s circumference, as shown.A contemporaneous Chinese astronomical text describes a comparable measurement based instead on an oriental flat Earth.
Rovelli wrote:In the seventeenth century, Jesuit Matteo Ricci brought to China the Greek and European astronomy. The two world visions finally came into direct contact. When Western astronomers came to know of the Chinese calculation, they responded, on the basis of their own belief system, with a smile. As soon as they learned of the Western calculation, Chinese astronomers immediately, ¹ and on the basis of their own belief system, changed their worldview, recognising the Western conception as superior.⁽¹⁾ This took place long before European colonialism in the Far East. Ricci died in 1610.Sure, this is by no means the last word on the fascinating subject of oriental science, but it merely demonstrates O’Bird’s delusion that Rovelli submerges absolute thought to ‘philosophical’ cultural relativism.It also demonstrates that Carlo Rovello went out of his way — he deliberately makes a point of saying so — to demonstrate the power of Western science relative to so-called ‘sciences’ that cow-tow to ‘philosphical’ or religious dogma.
We recognize one, and only one, definition of Socialism — our Object.A system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.
Twenty familiar phrases…Winston: “But how can you control matter?”¹O’Brien: “We control matter because we control the mind.² Reality is inside the skull. You must get rid of those nineteenth century ideas about the laws of nature.³ We make the laws of nature.”⁴Winston: “But man is tiny—helpless! How long has he been in existence? For millions of years the earth was uninhabited.”O’Brien: “Nonsense. The earth is no older than we are.⁵. Nothing exists except through human consciousness.”⁶Winston: “But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals, which lived here long before man was ever heard of.”O’Brien: “Nineteenth-century biologists invented them.⁷ Before man there was nothing.⁸ After man there will be nothing.⁹ Outside man there is nothing.”Winston: “But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars! Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of our reach forever.”O’Brien: “What are the stars? The earth is the center of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it.¹⁰ The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that?”¹¹ … “I told you, Winston, that metaphysics is not your strong point.”¹² … “For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four?¹³ Or that the force of gravity works?¹⁴ Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”¹⁵ … “You are a slow learner, Winston.”¹⁶Winston: “Two and two are four.”O’Brien: “Sometimes, Winston.¹⁷ Sometimes they are five.¹⁸ Sometimes they are three.¹⁹ Sometimes they are all of them at once.¹⁹ You must try harder.²⁰ It is not easy to become sane.”
The moral solution to amoral capitalism…Keen, lost deep inside his Minskian models of the capitalist economy — in abstraction from the amoral world of practical capitalist profiteering — demands that the banks make his models, which reveal the amorality, work morally in the interest of capitalism.He tells the banks to kickstart capitalism by gifting everyone money to pay off “debt” — the essential capitalist necessity — or suffer the stigma of “profligacy” — the essential capitalist virtue.Here we can view the folly of pursuing a purely phenomenological modelling of the capitalist economy, and passionately believing in the rules that make the model work in abstraction from the human necessity of reproducing society under capitalist social relations of ownership and control of society’s productive forces.And then, emerging from his phenomenological model into the world beyond it, and pontificating on human conditions such as the “morality” of debt repayment, and not its essential necessity for capitalism and his model of it.Keen forgets that it is precisely the amoral capitalist class that demands its debts be settled — under compulsion of capital to actuate itself — in order that the capitalist may remain the personification of his vital bloodsteam: capital.God, and the aggrieved investor, bless moral Keen…
Quote:As a transition from todays debt stagnation, Keen suggests that the central banks create a lump sum to put into everyone’s account. Debtors would be required to use their gift to pay down the debt. Non-debtors would keep the transfer payment – so as not to let demagogic political opponents accuse this plan of rewarding the profligate.If this solution is not taken, debtors will continue to lumber on under debt and tax conditions where only about a third of their nominal wages are available to spend on the goods and services that labor produces. The circular flow between producers and consumers will shrink – being siphoned off by debt service and government taxes to bail out bankers instead of their victims.This should be what today’s politics is all about. It should be the politics of the future. But that requires an Economics of the Future – that is, Reality Economics.Sorry, but he isn’t surreptitiously doing anything. He is openly identifying physical labour time (with inputs simultaneously evaluated with outputs, over the entire economy) as value.This definition was accepted by virtually all the post-war marxian economists. They turned this definition left-side, right-side, upside-down, and couldn’t fault the definition. This was identical to Marx's, but mathematically improved.And it was evaluated over the entire economy, and so it was clearly socially necessary in the Marxian sense.Everyone also agreed that this definition, in terms of socially necessary physical labour time (with inputs and outputs evaluated simultaneously) revealed that Marxian value was utterly in error. The error was clearly demonstrated to be Marx’s own definition.Please don’t underestimate the seriousness of the resulting charges that Marxian value was an incoherent, unnecessary or redundant, concept.This alone drove most serious academic Marxian economists out of the field. The academic standing of Marx and Marxian economics sank to the level of a misguided standing joke. Only a few dogged diehards remained, and none of them could find the flaws in the argument. There is nothing surreptitious at all. Keen is merely following the rest. You see machines producing surplus-value comes straight out of the definition of value based on identifying it with physical labour time (with inputs evaluated with outputs simultaneously over the entire economy) as value.That’s precisely why I chose to expose Keen above by exposing the problems with evaluation in physical labour time.Clearly that didn't strike home.Please re-read what I wrote, with the above explanation in mind. You may then understand why I tried to demolish physical labour time and stress Marxian socially necessary labour time. My omission was to skip over the simultaneity. But I mistakenly thought that concept would even confuse matters more.Eventually read Kliman.
Yes, yms refers to relative surplus-value. Relative surplus-value doesn’t arise out of the machine, as such. It arises out of the relative advantage a more productive machine confers upon its owner over its less-productive competitors, who temporarily set the socially necessary benchmark.That this is not absolute surplus-value is demonstrated when the more-productive machine owner loses his relative, or competitive, advantage when his competition catches up.On the other hand, we are considering absolute surplus-value arising out of a machine, which is the miraculous generation of surplus-labour by employing dead labour. Terrific if it worked, as dead labour isn’t unionised, doesn’t go on strike, needs no meal and bathroom breaks, and operates 24/7. You’d really think its supporters, like Keen, would advocate employing dead labour as a universal capitalist panacea.
Sorry, Robbo, I must to leave it there, Otherl things, as I said yesterday, temporarily claim my attention.The full answer lies in Kliman, who unfortunately is at times mathematical, and so is not always an easy read.I tried to précis him earlier, and replicate his insights above.There are web sites that put his argument that are worth googling.
Well, if you can’t see how the market treats dead labour and living labour differently, there’s no hope for you ever seeing they aren’t the same. Dead labour has already been sold and turned into money. It has already escaped from the market—which is what we are considering—prior to production.By dead labour we mean the past living labour that is embodied in machinery, raw materials and, it seems, donkeys.It is no longer embodied in a commodity when it enters production. As means of production, it has been purchased as means of consumption, fit for producing surplus value.Marx’s Capital rests squarely on the fundamental distinction between means of production and living labour-power. These guys know that, and that’s why they attack this distinction.The answer to your grave doubts therefore lies squarely on the efficacy of Capital to explain market phenomena—something these guys flatly deny. You flounder because you studiously demand I/we avoid Marx’s Capital, just like these guys.***One might reasonably assume that the efficacy of dead labour was a thing of the past, defunct, ancient history.But, having studiously sidestepped Marx, you leave us to entertain the mystical animism of the dead—the revivification of dead labour on each and every successive sale of it as paid-up means of production. We are asked to confer upon dead labour a phantom ‘labour-power’, which it spookily exercises on its successive incarnations, double dipping, treble dipping, …, through multiple production lives ad infinitum.This scenario is none other, in a different guise, than the dreaded banker scenario. It mirrors 19th century capital by roundabout means—the benefit of deferring immediate enjoyment. The upshot is—dear capitalist, sell your means of production, your dead labour, through n successive stages of production, and you will increase its contribution to your revenue n-fold.By avoiding Capital you have no hope of discovering the difference between the living and the dead. They are all one — a perpetual enigma of the capitalist universe… which is where defeatist minds prefer to keep it—a mystery.A detailed answer can be found in Andrew Kliman.
Kitching is wrong.ExampleAssume that we are productive capitalists, and that the going social labour rate, i.e. the socially necessary labour rate (or money equivalent of labour time) is 1 hour of labour time = £1As productive capitalists, we are “productive” because our production process produces surplus value, ostensibly for ourselves but, under competitive capitalist conditions, we are producing it socially for competitive carve up by the entire capitalist class.Purchase of Socially Necessary MachineryTo be competitive—i.e. to be socially necessary—we, as productive capitalists, need to buy machinery, which we look for on the open, competitive, machinery capitalist market.We find a machine that appears perfect for our needs.The maker is selling it for £1000 money, for him potentially valued at 1000 hours of physical labour time.But an unsold commodity is an unloved thing, and asks “Do I really embody 1000 hours of socially necessary labour time? Am I really worth £1000?”Meanwhile, its equally anxious seller, poor fellow, has no inkling of what unforeseen surprises, game changers, and market disruptions may await him, between the manufacture and eventual sale of his product.Fortunately for him, we as part of a competitive community of purchasers, consider his machine is well priced at £1000 for our needs, and we buy it from him for £1000.Our mutual transaction has now collapsed the machine’s physical value into its money price. We, and our fellow purchasers, on the machinery market, have just validated that his machine really does embody 1000 hours of socially necessary labour time.[Note. This market transaction is not a mechanical operation. It is the working out of a socially necessary competitive process, that continually reproduces and refines itself. It is systemic development. It is, in form, though not in content, a continuous Hegelian development operating before our eyes.]End of transaction.Physical v Socially Necessary Labour Time Our machine has now dropped out of the circuit of production. It is no longer a commodity. Its destiny is no longer the market. It has been sold.Its physically embodied labour time is ancient history. Its socially necessary labour time has been settled, socially, by the market at £1000 or 1000 hours of socially necessary labour.But social evaluation is a dynamic process. Tomorrow, a competing capitalist unveils a cheaper machine that drops the socially necessary purchase price of all machines similar to ours down to £500.Lo and behold, 1000 hours of socially agreed embodied labour has been devalued, in a flash, from 1000 to only 500 hours of embodied socially necessary labour time.The actual time to produce remains the same, but capital pays scant respect to dead labour, even less so than it does to the living variety, which begs gentler handling because it alone is productive. And we, purchasers of the higher priced machine, reluctantly have to wear its social devaluation in order to remain competitive, i.e. to remain alive as a competitive productive capitalist enterprise.Relative to our new competitors, we have to spread our surcharge over twice as many products as they, in order to cover the cost of our over-valued purchase. Paying off the cost of a machine, by the way, is a purely bookkeeping transaction.[Note. To dramatise the difference between impotent dead labour embodied in a machine and virile living labour-power embodied a worker—which is the crucial distinction here under discussion—Ruthless one-off devaluation of constant capital, such as plant and machinery, is periodically enforced by economic collapse to the delight of circling vultures who pick it up “for a song”.Such fire-sale stocks are cleared at a fraction of their original embodied physical labour hours, something that’s not feasible for precious living labour-power, which hovers about a socially necessary norm.]False Accounting in Physical ValueA machine is a socially necessary purchase but not a productive one, in and of itself. Only living labour—labour engaged in the production process—is productive, i.e. preservative of embodied dead labour time and productive of new surplus labour time.Now, most critics of marxian economics think of labour time in terms of fixed physical valuation in one form or another.The supreme example is Sraffa, who chased his tail in recursing through past labour time, reducing embodied labour time to dated labour time, ad infinitum, to utter frustration.It never occurred to Sraffa that market transaction, like our socially necessary purchase of machinery (or raw materials, etc.) is the socially necessary mechanism that short circuits all such labour reduction, once and for all, by collapsing embodied dead labour into socially necessary labour time.Physical labour time, like the category of ‘use-value’, is subservient to socially necessary labour time. And money, as in everything else in the capitalist market, is the ultimate arbiter of labour time.That’s precisely why the capitalist market cannot be understood in pure utility or physical terms.
“Socially necessary” means, of course, necessary for the production of surplus value.That is the supreme social necessity, to which all else is subservient, in our social system.
I appreciate the greatness of the reply to WB of Upton Park. But I also acknowledge that this reply is just the first word on a fraught matter. It is by no means the last. Many more words are needed to carefully flesh out its implications.A capitalist parliament is a Socialist minefieldBear in mindAll parliamentary measures will be capitalist political measures.Capitalist political measures, as now, will be tainted by being framed to work under capitalism.Capitalist political measures, as now, “must succeed” under capitalist conditions.Capital seeks freedom. It outsmarts all capitalist political measures aimed at controlling it.Capitalist political measures, to block capital functioning somewhere nasty, simply drive capital to function somewhere else, possibly even nastier.Capitalist political measures demand due diligence—for us possibly more so than the cursory glance they regularly receive from parliamentarians and their staffers today.Capitalist political measures make serious demands on Socialist Party delegate and staffer time, effort and resources, diverting them indirectly from our direct Object.Capitalist political measures that sabotage the system will, under capitalism, always operate at the expense of the working class or, at least, sections of it.A Socialist in a capitalist dominated parliament perpetually faces the dilemma—the contradiction of opposites—whether to undermine capitalism and harm the working class or to support capitalism and “benefit the working class”. A savvy capitalist opponent susses out the Socialist Party’s reformist Achilles heel, and pursues a deliberate counter strategy of perpetually bogging it down in tantalising contentious legislation after legislation after legislation…These fraught considerations, which seem almost fatal to me, can be annulled if the Socialist Party never swerves from its direct Object. The Risk of Never SwervingFrom countless apocalyptic scenarios and sob stories told by others above, the alternative strategy of “never swerving” is seen as taking an unacceptable political risk.But political risk “comes with the territory” from the moment a Socialist enters a capitalist parliament.A Socialist delegate must learn to harness risk. Risk brings out the unexpected, unlocks the unforeseen and, in the overcoming, stuns the naysayer.For me, the calculated risk of “never swerving” is the only Socialist path to glorious victory.
Robbo, it’s not a matter of what I think about reducing the rate of exploitation, i.e. profits.It’s what the ruling class of capitalists think, i.e. those whose representatives dominate the parliament in which Socialists are a minority.But deeper still, it’s what the dynamic capitalist system will allow. We don't have as much of a free hand in it as you imagine.Anyone can “support” a reduction in profits as much as he likes, but an adaptive capitalist class simply retaliates by seeking profit elsewhere, e.g., as Marx showed, reinvesting in technology rather than labour.The consequential “benefit to the working class” is that unemployment in affected sectors skyrockets.Capital moves faster than parliamentary legislation, which is a disappointing laggard.In response to any legislative act against capital, and so a legislative act gainst exploitation, capital never fails to find a way out. It always squeezes you, and so the harder you squeeze it, you give it no choice but to squeeze you harder back.Futility of supporting capitalist reforms…Society daily reproduces itself entirely through working class exploitation—the sole motive of daily renewal being capital expansion.Reformists of all stripes vainly try to deny, ignore, or mitigate this process which “operates with the inexorability of a law of nature”. Capital outsmarts them every time. It survives and thrives long after its antagonists are gone and forgotten.Final thoughtsMy considered thoughts are given in the previous post.This issue is dangerous and hypothetical and requires more thought. For these, and for independent external reasons, I hereby close my keyboard on it.
