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13th July 2010, 06:51
I have been reading a lot of Bordiga in recent months, and read through "Marxism of the Stammerers" earlier tonight. Thought this part was very good/succinct:
Originally Posted by Amadeo Bordiga
Never more than today has it been so obvious that Soviet Socialism is the Socialism of captains of industry. But in Russia have these not been suppressed? Well, now they're importing them!
In magnitude, 6300 billion lire is double the size of imports into Great-Britain, six times those into Italy, and equal to those of America. It is equivalent to the annual labour of 26 million workers; of probably all or almost all the Russian workers already drawn into production other than that of the exclusive little islands, but certainly of the work of the whole population of a developed country with half the population of the present day U.S.S.R. If half of the labour effort of this people - excluding that expended in pre-mercantile asiatic type consumption - has an equivalent price on the global market to that produced by the capitalist countries, other figures are not really needed in order for us to define the Russian economy as capitalist. Moreover, why doubt that it is immersed in fully fledged mercantilism when the ideological projection consists of the complete domination of the popular religiosity which is encouraged and utilised by the public power?
With the dialogue of exchange between the Russian commodity and the dollar which pays for it, and between the American commodity and the rouble which pays for it, we scarcely need to unravel its "fetishistic character". Objects can't talk, commodities can't talk, but where any type of commodity is produced, the relation is, in reality, the relation of the exploitation of wage-earners.
There is nothing to indicate that at the moment exchange isn't an open palpable reality. Exchange functioned during the war between 1941 to 1945 under various forms, such as arms and ammunition from the west for industrial and "military" effort and work from the east. Today the respective industries step up the accumulation of capital which is a social fact even in the bourgeois regime, either with the aim of arming for an imperialist war (with Truman invoking reasons of national defence for the requisition of enterprises and the militarisation of strikers) or with the aim of the mercantile satisfaction derived from international exchange.
If one wishes to say anything new about Russia, it is more than useless to know that caviar was served at Stalin's table and a millet paté to the workers. This could be compatible with a lower stage of communism. At the higher stage we will give caviar to everyone... and the millet to recalcitrant pupils who have an incurable itch to play at being teacher.
For our part, we are interested to ask ourselves if by having roubles in our pockets we can have caviar or millet, and whether, once the exchange rate is worked out, we can do the same with dollars or lire.discuss
Originally Posted by Amadeo Bordiga
Never more than today has it been so obvious that Soviet Socialism is the Socialism of captains of industry. But in Russia have these not been suppressed? Well, now they're importing them!
In magnitude, 6300 billion lire is double the size of imports into Great-Britain, six times those into Italy, and equal to those of America. It is equivalent to the annual labour of 26 million workers; of probably all or almost all the Russian workers already drawn into production other than that of the exclusive little islands, but certainly of the work of the whole population of a developed country with half the population of the present day U.S.S.R. If half of the labour effort of this people - excluding that expended in pre-mercantile asiatic type consumption - has an equivalent price on the global market to that produced by the capitalist countries, other figures are not really needed in order for us to define the Russian economy as capitalist. Moreover, why doubt that it is immersed in fully fledged mercantilism when the ideological projection consists of the complete domination of the popular religiosity which is encouraged and utilised by the public power?
With the dialogue of exchange between the Russian commodity and the dollar which pays for it, and between the American commodity and the rouble which pays for it, we scarcely need to unravel its "fetishistic character". Objects can't talk, commodities can't talk, but where any type of commodity is produced, the relation is, in reality, the relation of the exploitation of wage-earners.
There is nothing to indicate that at the moment exchange isn't an open palpable reality. Exchange functioned during the war between 1941 to 1945 under various forms, such as arms and ammunition from the west for industrial and "military" effort and work from the east. Today the respective industries step up the accumulation of capital which is a social fact even in the bourgeois regime, either with the aim of arming for an imperialist war (with Truman invoking reasons of national defence for the requisition of enterprises and the militarisation of strikers) or with the aim of the mercantile satisfaction derived from international exchange.
If one wishes to say anything new about Russia, it is more than useless to know that caviar was served at Stalin's table and a millet paté to the workers. This could be compatible with a lower stage of communism. At the higher stage we will give caviar to everyone... and the millet to recalcitrant pupils who have an incurable itch to play at being teacher.
For our part, we are interested to ask ourselves if by having roubles in our pockets we can have caviar or millet, and whether, once the exchange rate is worked out, we can do the same with dollars or lire.discuss