Coordinators and "stage-ist" capitalist development

[Die Neue Zeit]

I stumbled upon (another) Learning thread about capitalism as being necessary before socialism. However, in regards to a refined version of Albert's and Hahnel's "coordinator" class (coordinators of labour like mid-level managers and not functioning capitalists like CEOs), it seems to me more and more that Marx *really* overvalued the role of the bourgeoisie in capitalist development.

I wrote a thread a long while back about the Classical concept of economic rent, and quoted one Michael Hudson where he mentions the common achievement of "Stalinist Russia" and "Maoist China" in purging private appropriations of this rent. In a radio interview, he said that the tragedy of "industrial" capitalism in the West is its inability to socialize this rent.

It seems to me that a coordinator's specific relationship to production (existing within wage labour like the proletariat, advancing society's labour power and capabilities like the proletariat, control over the MOP but not on a social scale as an individual, and no ownership role - hence no inheritance) would, in hindsight, have made him the perfect candidate to initiate a more efficient capitalist development, free of heightened obsessions with property rights.

Thoughts?



P.S. - Somehow I think that the post-war Stalin regime itself (not just the "Khrushchevites") was responsible for the "inadvertent" creation of functioning capitalists on a small scale, with opportunists having wat more opportunities to seep in than they did after the Russian civil war. Hence, I recall reading a number of Brezhnev-era legal quotes posted on RevLeft about how plant managers had actual property rights over their respective plants (http://www.revleft.com/vb/state-capitalist-socialist-t98108/index.html?p=1328440).

[Dave B]

I think the idea of the co-ordinating class originated from Burnham’s book, an ex Trot, ‘The Managerial Revolution’ which itself was probably stimulated by the debate that ensued in Trot circles following Bruno Rizzi’s La Bureaucratisation du Monde ("Bureaucratisation of the World"),

This was much later picked up by Milovan Đilas (or Djilas) a 'Marxist' who wrote a small and not particularly brilliant book called,The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System, 1957.

Hahnel admitted somewhere that this provided the inspiration for the Parecon co-ordinating class theory. But in a debate with a pareconista I had they appeared to be ignorant of this origin of this theory or at least denied it.

Michael Albert in a debate with a Trot Haas had the cheek to claim that ‘Marxists’ had never considered the co-ordinating class idea. Haas didn’t seem to know any better as he didn’t correct him.

Djilas never credited Burnham in his book ‘The New Class’, so that perhaps excuses Michael Albert and Hahnel.

Burnham had by that time become a neo conservative and thus a non-person in ‘Marxist’ circles.

Burnham’s book ‘The Managerial Revolution’ inspired Orwells 1984 and played no small part in the Soviet Russia has become ‘state capitalist’ debate as well.

The theoretical idea of a group of people acting as ‘functioning capitalist’ exploiting or extracting surplus value out or workers with other peoples capital was discussed by Karl in Volume III under ‘Profit of Enterprise’.

The idea then was that a functioning capitalist could work with capital eg a factory, that was only part owned by himself. The surplus value that was ‘due’ from the part of the capital owned by the functioning capitalist went to him.

However that part of the surplus value that was ‘due’ to the non functioning capitalist was divided up between the non functioning capitalist and the functioning capitalist.

What the non functioning capitalist would get could be described as interest, dividends or economic rent if you like.

What the functioning capitalist eg CEO’s, get in our times for being a ‘functioning capitalist’ would be share purchase options or bonuses etc.

What Karl did allude to was that there was a potential conflict of interests between the functioning capitalists eg CEO’s and interest bearing capitalists eg the shareholders or loaners of money eg corporate bond holders.

I think you could claim to see aspects of this in the Enron scandal and recent complaints about the bonus culture in the latest banking scandal.

Albert takes the co-ordinating class theory down to a lower level however including just well paid workers. Karl did leave open the idea that to some extent payment for ‘supervisory’ labour or middle management could come from in part surplus value however part of it could be value adding and therefore just waged and necessary labour.

Djilas talked somewhere about his ‘new class’ being the ‘personification of capital’ which looked like a direct lift from Volume III and almost as if he was familiar with it. Although Djilas did have a sidekick who seemed to be a bit more up to speed on Marx, so may be he got it from him.

In State Capitalist Russia it would be likewise possible I think to conceive of a division of interests between these two sections of the state capitalist class. With the economic renters being the ‘political’ state bureaucracy and the factory mangers being the functioning capitalists and profiteers of enterprise.

But as in capitalism they are probably so mixed up together that totally separating them out is only a theoretical exercise.

However Karl and Fred did envisage that the part played by ‘functioning capitalist’ would increasing be taken over by waged labour and their role would be proletarianised. Meaning that all aspects of production would be carried out solely by the working class.

They saw this ‘helpful’ development evolving in the form of ‘joint stock companies’ and even state capitalism itself in which paid labour would run the whole show.

Providing the technical conditions for a seamless and problem free take over of the means of production. Where the capitalist class would make themselves palpably useless the more they reduced themselves to mere receivers of ‘economic rent’, ie dividends and interest payments on loans.

Anti-Dühring by Frederick Engels 1877, Part III: Socialism, Theoretical



"If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies and state property shows how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees.

The capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first the capitalist mode of production forces out the workers. Now it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.

But the transformation, either into joint-stock companies, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies this is obvious. And the modern state, again, is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists.
The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution."



http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm)

Related links;


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milovan_Djilas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milovan_Djilas)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burnham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burnham)

[GPDP]

Albert takes the co-ordinating class theory down to a lower level however including just well paid workers.

IIRC, Albert does not lump people into the coordinator class based on high income, but on their monopolization of empowering labor. That is, a doctor and a manager are coordinators not because they are well paid, but because the kind of labor they do gives them authority and power over other workers without empowering labor, such as nurses or factory workers.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I think the idea of the co-ordinating class originated from Burnham’s book, an ex Trot, ‘The Managerial Revolution’ which itself was probably stimulated by the debate that ensued in Trot circles following Bruno Rizzi’s La Bureaucratisation du Monde ("Bureaucratisation of the World"),

This was much later picked up by Milovan Đilas (or Djilas) a 'Marxist' who wrote a small and not particularly brilliant book called,The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System, 1957.

Hahnel admitted somewhere that this provided the inspiration for the Parecon co-ordinating class theory. But in a debate with a pareconista I had they appeared to be ignorant of this origin of this theory or at least denied it.

Although I'm not aware of Hahnel's admission, I am aware of the links between Burnham's quote (I mentioned Burnham in my CSR appendix on the transitional "multi-economy") and coordinators. I mentioned both coordinators and "functioning capitalists" in Chapter 2 of my CSR work.

In actual fact, the Soviet factory managers you mentioned I would qualify as being coordinators. The scale of an individual factory isn't big enough to make the factory manager a bourgeois, a class eliminated in the Soviet Union (even if we all agree on the "state-capitalist" part).

[Dave B]

I probably got the identification of Djilas' "new class" theory and Parecon co-ordinating class theory from below where I think a question was put thus;



……. claims that Albert and Hahnel have a "theory" of a "'coordinator' class" which "is essentially Djilas' "new class" theory warmed over with a healthy dose of good old Amerricun anti-gummint attitudes".


Hahnel responds;



"To make matters simple, I plead guilty."


http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/1998/1998-October/009608.html (http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/1998/1998-October/009608.html)

Burnham in an essay somewhere accused Djilas of brazen plagiarism.

I think, and I am not really sure about this, that at the time of Djilas' book there was quite a lot of interest from the sections of the libertarian left about what had or was happening in Yugoslavia regarding a ‘from below’ workers management of factories etc.


Djilas it would appear was also in the ‘Russia is State Capitalist debate’ if the following is anything to go by.

E. Germain, The Theory of "State Capitalism" (June 1951)


http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1951/06/statecap.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1951/06/statecap.htm)

And in the last footnote from Mandel;


"When Lenin and Trotsky were in power in Russia they never prevented, to our knowledge, the ultra-left communists from defending orally and in writing the theory of state capitalism."


How I laughed.

V. I. Lenin, SESSION OF THE ALL-RUSSIA C.E.C. APRIL 29, 1918



"But if you reflect even slightly on what it would mean if the foundations of such state capitalism were established in Russia, Soviet Russia, everyone who is not out of his senses and has not stuffed his head with fragments of book learning, would have to say that state capitalism would be our salvation."

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/SAR18.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/SAR18.html)