I'm ignoring the first section as it's an introduction and I can't be bothered trying to translate into English anything that makes sense from the dense Italian. This is a response to Stalin's Economic Problems of the USSR. DIALOGUE WITH STALIN FIRST DAY Dialogue with Stalin Tomorrow and Yesterday The topics covered are all crucial points of Marxism, and almost all the old nails, on which we have insisted that you had to argue deeply, before representing themselves as shapers in the future. Of course what hit the bulk of the political "spectators" distributed in various fields was not the significant back tracking which Stalin has delivered and had to deliver, but it's expectations about an uncertain future. They threw themselves upon this because this is what the public does. Spectators, friends and enemies have not understood a damn thing and gave convoluted versions and overly complicated ideas. The perspective here is the obsession! But if the "observers" are just a bunch of donkeys it will do much better for the "playmaker" pulling the strings from the top of these prisons [ivory towers?], prisons that are high offices of the supreme power of government, [literally: running the crank [handle] from those high jails which are the offices of the supreme power of government] it is precisely this position that allows the us to at least see around us - and forsee. Also, while everyone is excited about suggestive forecasts, we prefer to collect it's conclusions and turning them back to Stalin. In the existentialist line, everyone obeys this foolish imperative: "we must entertain", and the political press has fun when it opens a window on the future and sees a great name deigning to prophesy. This time the prediction was unexpected: the world revolution no more, no more peace, but not the "holy" war between Russia and the rest of the world, but the inevitable war between capitalist states, where, for the first time, a war that initially will not include Russia. Interesting, but certainly not new to Marxism, even for us who do not have a very keen taste for political cinema because in cinema the spectator does not care whether what they see is "reality" (and shortly with Cinerama, they will be transported in to the action!). Once dispelled of the illusion of exotic scenery, luxury apartments, of intercourse with modern clean celluloid super vixens, the poor little employee or enslaved proletarian, goes back all happy to his hovel and rubs against his woman deformed by fatigue, or replaces her with a Venus of the sidewalk. Then you all are tossed on the point of arrival, rather than on the starting point. This is the fundamental instead; there is a whole array of semi fools who want to rush to probe the future. It would be a much easier task, but they do not even think. Everyone who did not understand the page in front of him can not resist the temptation to turn it to find guidance in the next, and that's how the beast becomes more beast than before. In Russia, the problem of defining the social state that on goes through, and the economic gears that are in motion, imposes itself, and comes to the dilemma: must we continue to say that ours is a socialist economy, the lowest stage of communism, or must we recognize that it is an economy governed by the law of value, it's capitalism, industrialism despite the state? Stalin seems to deal with this recognition, and restrains the too motivated economists and business leaders that go into the latter; in reality he prepares the not to distant (and also useful in the revolutionary sense) confession. The imbecility of the organized free world law has announced the passage to the full, highest stage of communism! To focus on that question, Stalin approachs on the classical method. It would be easy to play the card to abandon any obligation to the traditional school, with Marx and with Lenin's theories, but at this stage of the game the same bank may skip turn. And then we start again at the A.B.C.s instead. Well, that's what we want, that we do not have to make money from betting on the roulette of history, and first learned to babble that ours was the cause of the proletariat, and had nothing to lose. Stalin therefore says that "a text study of Marxist economics" is necessary (in 1952!) And not only for the Soviet youth, but also for the comrades of other countries so be careful, and immature people without memory! Inserting in such a book chapters on Lenin and on Stalin, as creators of the socialist political economy, would bring nothing new. Well, if it means that which is already well known, that is to say, they have not invented, but learned - and the first has always claimed. As here we enter the field of strict terminology and form "of school", it should be pointed out that we are in the presence of a summary that the same Stalinist newspapers derive not from an agency of the Russian press, and agree as soon as possible to compensate for the full text. COMMODITIES AND SOCIALISM The reference of Stalin to the first elements of the Marxist economic doctrine enables him to discuss the economic "system of commodity production under socialism." We have in various texts (which of course in their time were careful not to say anything new) argued that any system of commodity production is not socialist, and we are going to repeat it, but Stalin (Stalin, Stalin; in reality it is not to anyone, for a Committee replacing a dead or discredited Stalin might as well write the article in question: however, the symbolism with his notations, within the conventional limits of a practice of convenience, it also serves to us) might have written of a system of production of commodities after the proletarian conquest of power, and then we would not have to curse again. Apparently some 'comrades' in Russia have stated - referring to Engels - that the preservation, after the nationalization of the means of production, of the system of commodity production, ie the character of the goods produced, it means having preserved the capitalist economic system. In theory there is no Stalin who can prove that they're wrong. When and if they say that, being able to abolish production of the mercantile [mercantile could possibly mean "commercialized"] type, it is overlooked or forgotten do so, then they can go wrong [then it is certain that they are wrong]. But Stalin wants to prove that in a "socialist country" - a term of dubious merit - the production of commodities is possible, and this corresponds to the definitions of Marx and their clear synthesis - perhaps not absolutely impeccable - in a propaganda pamphlet of Lenin. On this theme, namely on the mercantile type of production on its rise and its rule, and its purely capitalistic and distinctive modern capitalism, we stopped on September 1, 1951 in a "Meeting of Naples' reported in Bulletin No. . 1 of the party, and in another more recent meeting, also in Naples which consists of a paraphrase and comment on the Marx paragraph "fetish character of the commodity and its secret." [reference paragraph omitted] According to Giuseppe Stalin one can stay in a mercantile environment and dictate safety plans, without the terrible maelstrom drawing the unwary pilot to the center of the eddy and engulfs it in the capitalist abyss. But his article denunciation, to those who read from a Marxist position, that the revolutions shaking one and accelerates one - as the theory has established. A commodity, as noted by Lenin, is an object that has two characteristics: that of being useful to man - that can be exchanged against another object. But the lines that precede the passage quoted above so is simply this: "In the capitalist society dominates the production of commodities, and therefore the analysis made by Marx begins with the analysis of the commodity." And so the commodity has those two requirements, and only when the commodity becomes the second is it juxtaposed to the first. This, the use value, it is quite understandable even to a flat materialist as us, even to a child, it is established; we lick sugar once: and then we extend the hand to have another little piece. But there is a long way to go before this sugar coating an exchange value and sees an equivalence with grain-cotton which it did not expect! It is only then that may arise the delicate issue raised by Stalin. Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and us know very well what devilry happens when exchange value was born. So Say it Vladimir. Where the bourgeois economists saw the relationships between things, Marx discovered the relationship between men! And what is shown by the three volumes of Marx and Lenin's 77 short pages? An easy thing. Where the current economy sees the perfect equivalence of an exchange, we no longer see the two objects permuted, but we see men in engaged in the movement of social relations, and we no longer see the equivalence, but the catch [where it sees the prefect equivalence of these commodities, we discover the deception]. Karl Marx speaks of a little demon that gives the goods this miraculous and incomprehensible at first sight. Lenin, like any Marxist would have been horrified to hear that it is possible to produce and exchange goods while exorcising and expelling the demon that dwells within. Is that Stalin would imagine by chance? Or does it only tell us that the demon in question is stronger than him? Like the ghosts of medieval knights taking revenge on Cromwell's revolution of by infesting the English castles, bourgeois sold to landlords, so therefore the goblin-fetishism of commodities irrepressibly runs through the halls of the Kremlin and sneers from the speakers of the millions of words of the XIX Congress. Wanting to establish that it is not the absolute identification between mercantilism and capitalism, Stalin once again employs our method. It goes back through the centuries, and with Marx points out that "Under certain regimes (slave, feudal, etc..) The production of goods has existed without leading to capitalism." Indeed, this is what Marx said in a passage of his strong historical shortcut, but in a very different order and with much more development. The bourgeois economist says it will never be by any other mechanism than exchange for connecting production to consumption, it is well known, in fact, as long as the exchange is in force, Capital will master of the world. Marx replied: Now we're going to see which one is the historical trend of the future, but for now I force myself to see the undeniable data from the past: mercantilism has not always taken steps to bring the result of the work up to those who needed to consume it, and cites the primitive economies based on the collection and immediate consumption of food, the clan and the ancient family, the islands of the feudal system closed to direct internal consumption, unless the products were to take the form of commodities. With the development and complication of technology and the need to open up sectors which provide barter first and then real trade, but (by the same route that has served us on the subject of private property) there is evidence that the market system is not "natural," that is, as the bourgeois demands permanent and eternal. Now this late appearance of mercantilism (or system of production of commodities such as Stalin says) can co-exist in the margins of other systems, serves to show just how a universal system soon became rampant capitalism, will die along with it [However, this late onset of commercialism and its existence in conjunction with other systems become universal with the extension of the capitalist system of production, it will disappear along with it]. It would take too long to quote passages of Marx against Proudhon, Lassalle, Rodbertus and a hundred others, which are devoted exclusively to denounce the attempt to reconcile commercialism and socialist emancipation of the proletariat. For Lenin, this is the cornerstone of Marxism, with which it is difficult to fit the current Stalin's thesis saying: "There's no reason that, during a specified period, the production of commodities can not be placed at the service of a socialist society," and "it is only when the means of production are in the hands of private interests and that the worker does not have them, is forced to sell his labor power, the production of commodities is of a capitalist character. " [from the French] [alternative italian quote ("There is no reason why, in the course of a given period, the production of commodities could not also be used for a socialist society 'or' the production of commodities plays a capitalist character only when the means of production are in the hands of private interests, and the worker, who does not, is forced to sell his labor-power. ")] The assumption is obviously absurd, as in the Marxist analysis, whenever a mass of commodities appears, it is precisely because private proletarians of all reserves had to sell their labor power and when in the past there were those (limited) areas of commodity production, it was not because the work force was sold "spontaneously" as today, but because it was extorted by force of arms to slaves or servants prisoners linked by relations of personal dependency. Must we once again reprint the first two sentences of Capital? "The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production dominates manifests itself as an immense assemblage of commodities." tbc... I understand that some of this is garbled but I can't be bothered to fix it right now.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...5gDMDuMUk/edit I have taken the liberty of posting this on my drive account. Here is the link for all those interested. Thank you comrade Reb.
updated
updated but I need to find out to which Lenin works Bordiga is referring to
I've updated it again and I have finished the section commodities and socialism. I could probably fix the quotes by finding the exact ones in MIA but I'm too lazy
Much appreciated, comrade.
I'm taking a break right now. I'll get back to it around the end of this month.
I'm taking a break right now. I'll get back to it around the end of this month. Hi, any news about translation progress?
