Chapter II – The Metaphysics of Political Economy, Second Observation - Part 2 of 2

Having used a stone to throw, it is not a huge leap to find more efficient means of using it, as a projectile, using a sling or catapult, for example. Having used it to cut, its not a huge leap to notice that some cut better than others, and so, first to use these, and then, to create them, by shaping them. In each case, Man does develop an idea, and manufacture the world around him, but it is an idea that itself originates from things that already exist, including existing, previously developed ideas, and products, in the real world. Without stones there are no stones as tools or weapons, and so no evolution of those tools and weapons to more efficiently meet Man's own material needs.

At each stage of his social evolution, therefore, Man confronts an already existing material world whose ever changing nature he must continually categorise and analyse, in order to understand its own laws of motion. It is the existing material world he must contend with, and which determines his ideas, and constrains his ability to change that world. Just as without rocks there are no stone tools, so, too, without electricity there are no electronic computers. And, the development of these ever improving tools and technologies is not driven by ideas, but by The Law of Value, the requirement to continually meet Man's material needs, the production of use-values, using the least amount of labour/value.

But, as Marx demonstrated, this development of technology, driven by The Law of Value, also has consequences for Man's social development too, because the technology that Man uses, and is able to use at any stage of development, also determines how he goes about that production, which creates changing relations of production and distribution, which, in turn, creates new social relations.

“M. Proudhon the economist understands very well that men make cloth, linen, or silk materials in definite relations of production. But what he has not understood is that these definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc. Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.

The same men who establish their social relations in conformity with the material productivity, produce also principles, ideas, and categories, in conformity with their social relations.” (p 102)

The bourgeois-idealist sees a material world that has been consciously manufactured by Man, starting first with ideas, which are then transformed into reality, and concludes that it has always been thus, and always will be so. Indeed, the petty-bourgeois socialist sees things in a similar way, believing that it is only necessary to construct a set of ideas, based upon how a fair and egalitarian society would work, and to construct schemas for their realisation, in order to then proceed to their to their construction. Such, for example, was the method of the Narodniks, described by Lenin. But, as Marx explains,

“... these ideas, these categories, are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products.

There is a continual movement of growth in productive forces, of destruction in social relations, of formation in ideas; the only immutable thing is the abstraction of movement – mors immortalis.” (p 102)

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The Chinese Revolution and The Theses Of Comrade Stalin - Part 38 of 47

At this time, in 1927, Trotsky still characterised as “mistakes”, rather than “betrayals”, the actions of the Stalinists. In part, that is because he thought that, under the impact of such great events, in a revolutionary period, the possibility existed not only to correct them, but also to return the CP and Comintern to a revolutionary perspective. After all, to characterise such actions as “betrayals”, as with those of the Second International, in 1914, would imply a split, the need to build a new party and International, a conclusion that Trotsky did not arrive at, for several more years.

In fact, the appraisal of the underlying material conditions was itself wrong. The period of long wave uptrend that had led to rapid growth of the international labour movement, began around 1890. Its “boom” phase ran from around 1902-1914. From 1914 to around 1926, it entered the crisis phase, characterised by more intense class struggle, wars and revolutions, as described by Trotsky in Flood Tide and The Curve of Capitalist Development, associated with these conjunctures from one phase to another. But, the period from 1926 to 1939, was already a period of stagnation. That period of stagnation, seen previously between 1875-90, and later between 1986-99, is one in which the working-class is pushed on to the back foot, because capital responds to the crisis, resulting from a squeeze on profits from increased wages, due to relative labour shortages, by engaging in a new technological revolution to replace labour with fixed capital.

In 1875-90, it revolved around the introduction of electric power in place of steam, in 1926-39, it was the introduction of mass production assembly lines, using that same combination of electric power, as well as the introduction of internal combustion engines in place of steam-power, and horse-power for transport. In 1986-99 it is the introduction of the microchip and its associated technologies. All of these base technologies are developed in the preceding crisis phase, as a response to rising wages/labour shortages. The Innovation Cycle, for example, peaked in 1935 and 1985.

In the stagnation phase, capital accumulation is characterise by intensive accumulation. That is, rather than additional fixed capital and, consequently, labour being employed, to produce a larger gross output, existing fixed capital is replaced, as it wears out, by new, more efficient fixed capital, to produce more or less the same level of gross output. One new machine replaces two or more older machines, and so, now, only one worker is required to operate it, making 1,2 or more existing workers redundant, so increasing labour supply, and reducing wages.

As wages fall, profits rise, due to an increase in the rate of surplus value. The new fixed capital is relatively cheaper, and also brings about a moral depreciation of existing fixed capital. So, both the mass and rate of profit rises, net output rises, relative to gross output, and creates the conditions for the new upswing. So, around 1926, as this stagnation period proceeds, workers were already put on the back foot by capital. Material conditions had moved against them, and in favour of capital, just as had happened in 1875-90, and 1985-99. Its why, in both periods, workers go down to serial defeats, as compared to the relative victories in the previous period.

Consequently, Trotsky's hope that this was still a revolutionary period was mistaken and forlorn, and the strategy should have taken that into consideration. The “mistakes” and “betrayals” of the Stalinist, bureaucratic-centrists and other opportunists, were an ideological reflection of this change in material conditions, and the defeats of workers were not solely a consequence of those mistakes and betrayals, but also of the change in material conditions, which weakened them, relative to capital, in the productive process, and the social relations based upon it. In these conditions, both the petty-bourgeoisie and the backward layers of the proletariat are strengthened, and, given the “chvostism”, or tailism, of the opportunists and centrists, this presses down on them. Trotsky notes this effect in Russia itself.

In this context, the errors of the Stalinists, centrists and opportunists, in relation to the Popular Front with the bourgeoisie/petty-bourgeoisie, also, cannot be divorced from its “stages theory”, and Socialism In One Country, in opposition to the Marxist theory of permanent revolution.

“The chvostist theory of “stages” or “steps” repeatedly proclaimed by Stalin in recent times, has served as the motivation in principle for the opportunist tactic. If the complete organizational and political independence of the Chinese Communist Party is demanded, it means that steps are being skipped over.” (p 62)

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Northern Soul Classics - Standing On Solid Ground - Sidney Barnes

 

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Chapter II – The Metaphysics of Political Economy, Second Observation - Part 1 of 2

Second Observation

Idealist philosophers start from the mind, and the development of ideas within it, via thought, and proceed to a view of the world constructed from these ideas. Materialist philosophers start from the existence of the material world, outside the human mind, a world that existed before mind, and, given the possibility that our own existence is transitory, continues to exist after it. The materialist says that the tree still falls in the forest, even if there is no one there to see it. Our understanding of quantum physics, and the uncertainty principle, gives nuance to this, at the quantum level, and has implications for our understanding of time, and also the possibility of infinite realities, in a multiverse, but, in any given reality, it does not change the materialist conception.

Proudhon adopts the Idealist philosophy.

“Economic categories are only the theoretical expressions, the abstractions of the social relations of production, M. Proudhon, holding this upside down like a true philosopher, sees in actual relations nothing but the incarnation of the principles, of these categories, which were slumbering – so M. Proudhon the philosopher tells us – in the bosom of the “impersonal reason of humanity.”” (p 101-2)

Why this idealist view is adopted by bourgeois thinkers, not only in relation to Economics, is not hard to fathom. They see the bourgeois world around them as a world that has been constructed, by Man. Manufacture is the most obvious manifestation of this conscious construction of the material world. If we take something like a computer, no such thing existed, or would exist, in the material world, unless someone had gone through a thought process, and developed all of the ideas about what it was they wanted to construct, why they wanted to construct it, and how they would construct it, and its components.

Of course, its not possible to build an electronic computer without electricity or electrical components, and so the idea of an electronic computer requires a whole history of previous, similar thought processes that led to the creation, in the material world, of all these other components. Babbage, of course, developed a purely mechanical computer, and the Jacquard loom used punch cards that perform the same function as punch cards in the early electronic computers. There were earlier water-powered computers, and the Chinese abacus is a form of manually operated computer. It would be impossible to come up with the idea of an electronic computer, without all of these previous things actually existing in the material world.

If we take an aeroplane, it can't be developed until there is the means to power it, which left Leonardo with all the drawings for one, but no means of creating it. For the bourgeois Idealist, therefore, the material world is manufactured by Man, who may or may not be the instrument of God, as the first manufacturer, and who proceeds from The Idea, to its realisation. But, the material world existed before Man and Mind, which is why the Idealist can only explain it by reference to God or The Idea, as some external force, itself operating independently of Man and Mind. The existence of fundamental laws, or the concept of a mathematical universe, does not change this, as indeed quantum theory, the uncertainty principle and chaos theory indicate.

Think of a snooker game. All of the same rules apply, but no two games are the same. There are more possibilities in a game of chess than atoms in the universe. Run a computer simulation of the evolution of the Universe, several times, and each time will be different. And, the computer analogy is useful. Suppose we are all living in The Matrix. Our own evolution is part of this simulation, whose rules are pre-set. It would not change our perception of this reality from what it is, and has been, from the point we entered it. This sim world would have been there, before us, and we would have to take it as we find it, explore it, analyse it, categorise it, and so on, before we could understand it, and its laws of motion, before we could consciously change it.

Indeed, this is the way that machine learning, as part of Artificial Intelligence, operates.  Whether its a robot dog learning to walk, and resist being pushed over, or a simulation of that, the process is the same.

So, whether it is a sim world or a material world, Man came into it with all of its rocks, rivers, trees and animals and so on. Man develops, via language, labels, “words”, for these pre-existing phenomena, which is the basis of categorisation. Man did not develop the idea "rock", and a rock appears or is created. Man sees rocks around him, and gives them a name “rock”, or its various equivalents in other languages. Man sees the potential to use the rock, in the same way that other animals had done, For example, birds use rocks to drop on shelled animals, or drop snails on to rocks to break the shell. Man uses sticks in the way other animals had done, and so these already existing things that Man finds, provided free by Nature, and to which he gives names, then obtain another name, resulting not from an idea in Men's heads, but from his actual activity in the material world, i.e. they obtain the name tools or weapons.

And, as Marx and Engels describe, in Anti-Duhring, this activity, in the real world, to take these pre-existing sticks and stones, to use as tools and weapons, does not spring from the world of ideas either. It derives from the need of Man to eat, and so to utilise what he finds around him, to satisfy that basic material need, by the most efficient available means, which is also the basis of The Law of Value, as a Natural Law, and drives his subsequent social development.

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The Chinese Revolution and The Theses of Comrade Stalin - Part 37 of 47

Similarly, the rotten bloc of the USC with Zelensky and NATO, means that not only are they unable to effectively criticise Zelensky or NATO, but they end up actively apologising for them. Paul Mason posits NATO, ridiculously, as something that radical socialists could utilise as a means of spreading progress and “anti-fascism” across the globe. One supporter of the USC even described NATO as “the most progressive force on the planet”! The AWL's, Jim Denham, proclaims that the capitalist state and NATO are defenders of the working-class!! And, whereas the liberal media, prior to the war, ran stories about the corrupt, illiberal nature of Zelensky's regime, the prevalence of anti-Semitism and the fascist nature of the Azov Battalion and Right Sector, after the start of the war, not only did such stories end, but even the supposed revolutionaries in the USC, painted the regime in bright pastel shades.

“By referring to its collaboration with the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions in the “struggle for peace”, the General Council is able to soothe and lull the consciousness of the British proletariat, stirred by the danger of war. The All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions now appears before the British working class and the working class of the whole world as a sort of guarantor for the international policy of the traitors of the General Council. The criticism directed by the revolutionary elements in Britain against the General Council thereby becomes weakened and blunted.” (p 60-61)

And, the role of the USC, particularly those organisations affiliated to it that claim some heritage from Trotskyism, perform the same role, today. What is more, as NATO imperialism, spearheaded by US imperialism, is engaged in a global economic war against Russian and Chinese imperialism, growing over, every day, into an all out military conflagration, much as happened from the late 1920's, up to WWII, the role of social-imperialism is the same, of sleepwalking the global working-class into such a war that threatens the existence of humanity itself.

“Thanks to Purcell, Hicks and Company, the MacDonalds and Thomases get the possibility of keeping the working masses in a stupor up to the threshold of war itself, in order to call upon them then for the defence of the democratic fatherland.” (p 61)

Logically, the members of the USC that claim that their position is based on the right to self-determination, and national independence/sovereignty should have supported Brexit, on the same sovereigntist basis, set out by the Lexiters. Given that, in the referendum, a majority accepted those sovereigntist arguments – now proclaimed on steroids by Starmer's Blue Labour – by the Brexiters and Lexiters, they should, at least, have agreed with the position of Corbyn, and his Stalinist advisors that the decision had to be “respected”! The opportunist, tailist argument always leads to national chauvinism.

The Zionists of the AWL, have argued, since their Damascene conversion to that ideology, the right of the Zionist, capitalist state to defend itself, i.e. to "defend the fatherland", which meant they could hardly argue against such social patriotism, and defence of the fatherland when it came to other capitalist state, especially given on their superficial insistence that the Zionist state should be treated as any other capitalist state!  Hence their position on the front line of defenders of the Zionist genocide being conducted against Palestinians, on presenting the case in those terms of its "right to defend itself"!

The consequence of the Stalinist bloc with the TUC leaders was the defeat of the General Strike, and victory of Baldwin's Tory government. That was the same Tory government that presided over the role of British colonialism in China, and whose gunboats sat in Chinese waters to enforce it, as they had done during The Opium Wars. In fact, the TUC leaders acquiesced in that role too. Yet, the Stalinists could not, and did not criticise those TUC leaders, because of being in a bloc with them. Trotsky refers to an interview given by Tomsky.

“These “allies” are not mentioned by name in the interview as though they do not even exist. Then why a bloc with them? But they do exist. Without them Thomas does not exist politically. Without Thomas there exists no Baldwin, that is, the capitalist régime in England. Contrary to our best intentions, our support of the bloc with Purcell is actually support of the whole British régime and the facilitation of its work in China. After all that has happened, this is clear to every revolutionist who has gone through the school of Lenin. In a like manner, our collaboration with Chiang Kai-shek blunted the class vigilance of the Chinese proletariat, and thereby facilitated the April coup d’état.” (p 61)

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Chapter II – The Metaphysics of Political Economy, First Observation - Part 3 of 3

When we come to examine everything in the material world, we find that they exist only as a consequence of movement. Constant flux is the nature of matter. Everything exists in space-time, even a black hole. Natural laws govern this movement, as with the laws of gravity, laws of thermodynamics, and so on. Biological species are also the product of movement from the chemical processes that led to the creation of organic molecules, and development of cells, through the evolution of species via The Law of Natural Selection.

As Marx describes, in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and in his Preface to Capital I, the evolution of social organisms, modes of production, can be analysed by a similar scientific and materialist method that requires no divine intervention for its explanation. The natural law that drives the evolution of social organisms is The Law of Value, as every society seeks to maximise the production of use-values, using the labour it has available, i.e. reducing the unit value of each item. It is driven to raise social productivity, which means revolutionising the forces of production, which, in turn, creates new productive relations, and new social relations built upon them.

“Thus, the movement of history produces social relations; industrial movement gives us industrial products, etc.” (p 99)

If material things are reduced to abstractions, and the nature of material things is movement, then, these movements, or laws of motion, can be reduced to abstractions too.

“If one finds in logical categories the substance of all things, one imagines one has found in the logical formula of movement the absolute method, which not only explains all things, but also implies the movement of things.

It is of this absolute method that Hegel speaks in these terms:

“Method is the absolute, unique, supreme, infinite force, which no object can resist; it is the tendency of reason to find itself again, to recognize itself in every object.” [Logic iii]” (p 99)

Marx sets out the Hegelian method of the dialectic by which an idea (thesis) splits into two opposing ideas.

“The struggle between these two antagonistic elements comprised in the antithesis constitutes the dialectical movement. The yes becoming no, the no becoming yes, the yes becoming both yes and no, the no becoming both no and yes, the contraries balance, neutralise, paralyse each other. The fusion of these two contradictory thoughts constitutes a new thought, which is the synthesis of them. This thought splits up once again into two contradictory thoughts, which in turn fuse into a new synthesis. Of this travail is born a group of thoughts. This group of thoughts follows the same dialectic movement as the simple category, and has a contradictory group as antithesis. Of these two groups of thoughts is born a new group of thoughts, which is the antithesis of them.” (p 100)

But, as soon as this new thought arises, it posits itself as thesis, and the process begins again. Similarly arises a group of thoughts, and the same dialectic process occurs with this group as applied to the simple category. Out of this process of the group arises the series, and from the series the system.

“Apply this method to the categories of political economy and you have the logic and metaphysics of political economy, or, in other words, you have the economic categories that everybody knows, translated into a little-known language which makes them look as if they had never blossomed forth in an intellect of pure reason; so much do these categories seem to engender one another, to be linked up and intertwined with one another by the very working of the dialectic movement.” (p 101)

This is the absolute method that Proudhon sought to apply, but Marx says, in fact, he had never managed to scale the heights of this ideological scaffolding, only reaching “the first two rungs of simple thesis and antithesis; and even these he has mounted only twice, and on one of these two occasions he fell over backwards.” (p 101)

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