What is primary?: Development of Productive Forces or Class Struggle?

[Rawthentic]

TC pointed out this topic amongst others in the "Historical Materialism" thread in this very forum, and I believe it is crucial to discuss this (what it has meant in the past and what it means today).

After the 1949 seizure of power, the Chinese revolution was overcoming an anti-feudal agrarian revolution that swept the entire chinese countryside.

This movement, being a part of bourgeois-democratic tasks (but done under communist leadership) objectively opened the path towards EITHER capitalism or socialism.

There were leading officials in the Party that wanted china to become a wealthy, powerful country, modeled after the West, while there were those that had a deeper understanding of marxism and the situation and had a different view of course.

Leading officials such as Liu-Shao-chi and Yang Hsien-chen upheld what was termed the "theory of productive forces", which held that:



“Our country’s production is undeveloped and backward. Today it is not that there are too many factories run by private capital, but too few. Now, not only must private capitalism be allowed to exist, but it needs to be developed, needs to be expanded"...“Socialism in China is a matter for two or three decades later"...“consolidating the peasants’ private property” and attacked agricultural co-operation as “a kind of wrong, dangerous and utopian agrarian socialism.”
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/communist-theory-criticizing-the-theory-of-synthesized-economic-base/

Well, what does this mean?

Under the pretext that capitalist was "not developed enough" these revisionist officials spouted the idea that socialism was not the main task on the agenda, but the development of private capitalism was!

These people believe that capitalism and socialism can coexist amongst each other, and that capitalism can actually lead INTO socialism once it has "developed enough". They went against the tide of socialist transformation that was sweeping china, arguing that it was "dangerous" and "wrong."

Yang Hsien-chen summed up their views:
“In the period of transition the economic base of the state power of the socialist type” was of a “synthesized nature,” “embracing both the socialist sector and the capitalist sector, and the sector of individual peasant economy as well”; they “can develop in a balanced and co-ordinated way”; the socialist superstructure should “serve the entire economic base,” including the capitalist economy, and “also serve the bourgeoisie.”

As long as the basis for capitalist development exists (and nurtured, even more), then there is a basis for a remergence of a bourgeois class within socialism, reflecting the conditions of old society and implementing policies that correspond to that.

Rather than gradually abolish capitalism as the process of socialist transformation and the DoP proceeds, these "marxists" called for capitalism and socialist to coexist, serve each other, and lead to communism.

Socialism either progresses or falls back towards capitalism.

This reactionary theory places production and technique (and administration) at the helm of socialist construction, rather than human beings and class struggle itself. When you implement production for the sake of production, then you take the capitalist road. Sure, there are times when the productive forces play the decisive role. Socialist revolution seeks to liberate these forces, but, if they go unchecked, are a hotbed of capitalist development which can lead to disastrous consequences.

Sure, there definitely is a dialectical relationship between the two, but all in all, human beings need to consciously uphold and take up communism as their goal under socialism (and continuosly lead transformations towards that).

A new society will not "naturally appear" when the productive forces are more developed. This view believes that people's self-less work would propel society forward, rather than continuing the class struggle under socialism (the basis of the GPCR). This view (the revisionist one) believes that modernization and technology are key, while class struggle gets in the way of that development and actually hurts it. Thus, people are viewed as objects, as simply "productive forces", rather than conscious makers of history.

These people put profit first, technique, specialist, and experts in control. Where do workers and peasants come in? How can we get to communism if we aren't working towards facilitating the transformations that allow the people to control society and lead it towards communism?

Lenin pointed out that particular leaders in the 2nd International kept saying:
“the development of the productive forces of Russia has not attained the level that makes socialism possible.”

Lenin responded with:
“You say that civilization is necessary for the building of socialism. Very good. But why could we not first create such prerequisites of civilization in our country as the expulsion of the landowners and the Russian capitalists, and then start moving towards socialism? Where, in what books, have you read that such variations of the customary historical sequence of events are impermissible or impossible?” (Collected Works, Vol. 33).

So, what is primary? (sorry for the jumbled post)

[davidasearles]

The development of the productive forces cannot help but heat up the day to day struggle of the workers to survive. On the one hand the development has the effect of lowering the exchange value embodied of each commodity unit therefore allowing workers to purchase the necessaries of life with less value in the form of wages - but on the other it has to ultimately drastically reduce the demand for labor thereby depressing the value that will be paid to individual workers in the form of wages for those workers lucky enough to be able to find work. The ultimate and irresistible downward spiral.

So I would say that neither is primary, that they are obverse and reverse of the same miserable coin.

From "Looking Backward":

commiseration was frequently expressed
by those who rode for those who had to pull the coach,
especially when the vehicle came to a bad place in the road, as it
was constantly doing, or to a particularly steep hill. At such
times, the desperate straining of the team, their agonized leaping
and plunging under the pitiless lashing of hunger, the many who
fainted at the rope and were trampled in the mire, made a very
distressing spectacle, which often called forth highly creditable
displays of feeling on the top of the coach. At such times the
passengers would call down encouragingly to the toilers of the
rope, exhorting them to patience, and holding out hopes of
possible compensation in another world for the hardness of their
lot, while others contributed to buy salves and liniments for the
crippled and injured. It was agreed that it was a great pity that
the coach should be so hard to pull, and there was a sense of
general relief when the specially bad piece of road was gotten
over. This relief was not, indeed, wholly on account of the team,
for there was always some danger at these bad places of a general
overturn in which all would lose their seats.

It must in truth be admitted that the main effect of the
spectacle of the misery of the toilers at the rope was to enhance
the passengers' sense of the value of their seats upon the coach,
and to cause them to hold on to them more desperately than
before. If the passengers could only have felt assured that neither
they nor their friends would ever fall from the top, it is probable
that, beyond contributing to the funds for liniments and bandages,
they would have troubled themselves extremely little about
those who dragged the coach.

http://www.fullbooks.com/Looking-Backward-From-2000-to-18871.html

[KC]

Why is one "primary" and the other "secondary"? I don't think this is a valid question at all.

[Rawthentic]

KC:

Why isn't it valid.

Under socialism, BOTH of them are equally important, but I do think it is valid to say that the class struggle is primary for the reasons I outlined above.

We can't treat them the same, even though both are important. At certain junctures, one comes to the fore and it is important to understand why and where it can lead.

[casper]

there does need to be a certain amount of infrastructure.

[Rawthentic]

casper:

no one is arguing that (lol).

Please read (or re-read) the post.

[Rawthentic]

david:

I try to make sense of what you say but I just can't. It seems incoherent and I dont think responds to what this post tries to get at.

[davidasearles]

KC:
Under socialism, BOTH of them are equally important, but I do think it is valid to say that the class struggle is primary for the reasons I outlined above.

Oh sorry, I didn't realize that this was a hidden "what is socialism" discussion or I would not have posted. (Some think socialism has no classes therefore no class struggle.) My bad.

[KC]

Why isn't it valid.

Because it's meaningless without context. When we are studying broad historical movements, such as the development of class society from its birth to the present day, the mode of production is primary. When we are studying a specific historical event, class struggle is generally primary.

Hence why Marx focused on the former in The German Ideology and the latter in The 18th Brumaire, for example.

You can't ask this question without any context because it's meaningless.

[Rawthentic]

Ok.

Within the context of a young socialist state attempting to overcome capitalism and deepen socialism (in all areas). Keep in mind what the original post brought forward.

[Rawthentic]

btw, this post was explicitly about socialism.

We can discuss about it within what occurred in revolutionary china, or in a hypothetical revolutionary society.

[peaccenicked]

The class struggle is an intrinsic part of the development of the development of the productive forces. There is an anology, with individual human growth and that of society.
childhood - primitive communism
primary school -slavery
secondary school -feudalism
work life- capitalism
retirement- communism (higher stage)

According to this schemata we do not need class struggle in childhood or retirement:D

The class struggle is a central part (that has shifts of intensity) of the specific to the phases of development society that have classes.
The priorities shifts according to where we are in history, and how we estimate it.

In the middle of a general strike or efforts will be around that mostly politicising the dispute, wider developments in the productive forces might run contrary to that strike ie unemployment creating new technology. Supporting both processes raises questions of who controls what. Our task is to raise all struggles to the level of State.

The class struggle is a struggle for ownership of our own bodies, to free them from the presents forms of slavery, to unfetter the development of the productive forces.

[davidasearles]

There need be no class for there to be class struggle?

Example of nada, classic.

[Rawthentic]

what?

Please try to make more sense.

[davidasearles]

When workers are in collective control of the industrial means of production isn't that the end of class division?

Can there be class struggle beyond that point?

[Rawthentic]

david:

to make a long story short: no.

Class struggle continues and many times intensifies during socialism. This is where the need for cultural revolution arises; waves of political struggle waged by the masses are crucial in keeping a socialist state on the correct path.

So, yes there are classes. That is why the dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary: to maintain the class rule of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie. There are prisons, courts, armies, etc. that all serve class interests.

[davidasearles]

When workers are in collective control of the industrial means of production isn't that the end of class division?


to make a long story short: no.


Class struggle continues and many times intensifies during socialism.

Please notice that I didn't say "socialism". It means nothing because 25 people will give you 50 different answers as to just what it is.

I do not buy the lower stage / higher stage stuff. We can have but a vague inkling as to what comes after the stage characterized by collective control of the means of production by the workers.

Under capitalism there is a classification between those who for the most part must survive on their ability sell their labor power to those who own the means of production. That's class division to me. I have no idea what you could be referring to if you don't mean that.

[PRC-UTE]

in this period class struggle is primary. the bourgeoisie will not perform anymore progressive tasks in the development of productive forces; if anything it will be the opposite. we will see more instances of workers fighting to keep production open as the bosses scale back.

[Led Zeppelin]

Lenin pointed out that particular leaders in the 2nd International kept saying:


“the development of the productive forces of Russia has not attained the level that makes socialism possible.”

Lenin responded with:


“You say that civilization is necessary for the building of socialism. Very good. But why could we not first create such prerequisites of civilization in our country as the expulsion of the landowners and the Russian capitalists, and then start moving towards socialism? Where, in what books, have you read that such variations of the customary historical sequence of events are impermissible or impossible?” (Collected Works, Vol. 33).

For the sake of clarity, Lenin also said:


We have emphasized in many of our works; in all our speeches, and in our entire press that the situation in Russia is not the same as in the advanced capitalist countries, that we have in Russia a minority of industrial workers and an overwhelming majority of small agrarians. The social revolution in such a country can be finally successful only on two conditions: first, on the condition that it is given timely support by the social revolution in one or more advanced countries ... second, that there be an agreement between the proletariat which establishes the dictatorship or holds state power in its hands and the majority of the peasant population ...

We know that only an agreement with the peasantry can save the socialist revolution in Russia so long as the revolution in other countries has not arrived. (Works, Vol.XVIII, part 1, pp.137f.)

[Rawthentic]

thanks for that Led.

And yes, I agree with Lenin (and he does with me).

[iraqnevercalledmenigger]

david:

to make a long story short: no.

Class struggle continues and many times intensifies during socialism. This is where the need for cultural revolution arises; waves of political struggle waged by the masses are crucial in keeping a socialist state on the correct path.

So, yes there are classes. That is why the dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary: to maintain the class rule of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie. There are prisons, courts, armies, etc. that all serve class interests.

This is a misrepresentation. Socialism indicates overcoming classes and the struggles to shed the vestiges of class society. The socialism you speak of is the workers' state or dictatorship of the proletariat.

[Rawthentic]

So, socialism is a classless society?

Wrong. No matter how close it is to removing them, socialism is STILL society that will be marked with capitalist characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, and thinking of course. Where the basis for capitalist restoration exists, a return to capitalism is possible.

[Vanguard1917]

Ok.

Within the context of a young socialist state attempting to overcome capitalism and deepen socialism (in all areas). Keep in mind what the original post brought forward.

The immediate task of a young workers' state is to secure the rule of working class. Because socialism can't built upon backward economic conditions, and requires advances in the productivity of labour in order to create a more advanced society than capitalism, the development of the productive forces is inseparable from struggle to form a socialist society, as others have rightly pointed out.

What's original about Marxism, contrary to popular belief, is not the recognition of the class struggle. Like Marx himself pointed out, 'no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic economy of the classes.' The originality of Marxism lies in its discovery of the dialectical relationship between the development of social organisation and the development of the productive forces: 'What I did that was new was to prove...that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production'.

Of course, none of this means for a single moment defending the policies of the Stalinist bureaucrats you describe. The emancipation of workers is the act of workers themselves. Socialism can't be built from above, as Marx also said.

[Rawthentic]

Good post, VG.

Mao challenged the official verdict with the Comintern that the development of the productive forces was primary and trumped that of class struggle, since many revisionist officials claimed that class struggle had been ended under socialism.

He broke with Stalin's administrative method, where production was central, rather than people.

Overall, I think Mao made many important breakthroughs in communist theory (this being the main one) that future revolutions will need to take up as well.

[MarxSchmarx]

Socialism indicates overcoming classes and the struggles to shed the vestiges of class society.

That's essentially correct. Socialism is still part of the struggle. Hence, by definition, it hasn't done away with class society yet.