On Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 04:43 PM, Charlie wrote:

Here is an analysis of Vijay Prashad's political misuse of a rate-of-exploitation calculation. Prashad tries to shift the exploitation of workers in China from the local capitalists onto Apple: "Apple’s Profits and Foxconn Workers’ Wages" at

http://www.hollowcolossus.com/item_Apple_Tricontl.htm

I found the article interesting as a critique of the way Prashad calculated the rate of exploitation of Apple workers by including the exploitation of workers under contract in China like Foxconn in the calculation. However, in that article,Charlie also wrote the following (page 6): 

Prashad overlooks the contrast with another rapid but socialist industrialization: the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953. The Soviet people foughtand built their way out of feudal agrarianism – without giving birth to outrageously rich moguls; with the security of planned migration from farm tofactory; and without handing over millions of workers to Foxconn discipline.

Such a view is debatable. Paresch Chattopadhyay, in his book The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience: Essay in the Critique of Political Economy, argues that, despite the juridical ownership of the means of production by the Soviet state, the real situation was capitalist. Thus, he argues that the accumulation of capital was largely extensive and not intensive (compared to the more developed capitalist countries), and labour power was a commodity (page 135):

"Labor power as a commodity exists — hence the labor market exists - whenever labor power is sold by the laborer to an individual employer of labor power irrespective of the particular way its price is determined, administratively or spontaneously. We have already argued in Chapter 3, the commodity character of labor power in the USSR. Labor power as a commodity in the Soviet economy, in spite of its absurd denial by the Soviet spokespersons (almost until the end) as well as by some outside Marxists (like Mandel), had been clear to the external observers of the Soviet economy for a long time. According to them, even under the Stalinist conditions in the 1930s, "the labor market was free (with the exception of forced labor), and managers raided each other for bidding up wages. True, wages were set by the state; but these scales presented no obstacles to wage inflation because of the widespread upgrading and other devices" (Holzman 1962: 176). ... As we saw earlier, an indicator of the freedom of the Soviet laborers to sell labor power was the fairly high rate of job changes by laborers. As A. Aganbegyan wrote, "Every worker in the USSR can leave his job at two weeks' notice. He then has the unrestricted right to compete for other jobs." (1989: 46; italics added).


It should also be noted that this change of jobs was effected mostly through what the Soviet economists called "hiring by the (individual) enterprises themselves" [priem samimi predpriyatiami]; the rate of this hiring in relation to the total job placement was nearly 80 percent in 1980. Secondly, such change of jobs was not at all favored by the authorities who considered it as a weakening of labor discipline, and emphasized the "necessity of decisive struggle for reducing personnel turnover" (Kotliar 1984: 53,54; italics added). Thus the reality of the Soviet economy not only showed the commodity character of labor power but also conformed to the Marxian concept of total social capital being a set of employers of labor power, rather than to the image of the Soviet state being the single employer of the Soviet labor — even though total social capital had a single juridical owner."

Fred

Paresh was an admirable scholar but did not do a concrete analysis of the USSR; to talk about capitalism without demonstrating a driving  impulse of valorisation seems contrary to any hint of Marx. For an alternative interpretation, see my 'The Conductor and the Conducted: Contradictions of "Real Socialism"' [Monthly Review Press].
          michael

Webpage: http://michaelalebowitz.com/

Latest Book: Between Capitalism and Community
[https://monthlyreview.org/product/between_capitalism_and_community/]

Pleased you found the article on Prashad's phony Marxist political economy helpful.

Regarding the Soviet Union, the article pointed out three specific facts, namely, that it industrialized "without giving birth to outrageously rich moguls; with the security of planned migration from farm to factory; and without handing over millions of workers to Foxconn discipline." Does anyone hold otherwise? The debate over whether the SU was a deformed this or a deformed that is another topic.

And to be clear, this is about the Soviet Union prior to Khrushchev. What went on in the Brezhnev years, such as the 1980 statistic on turnover, is not at issue here.

michael a. lebowitz

12:13am   #22528   

Paresh was an admirable scholar but did not do a concrete analysis of the USSR; to talk about capitalism without demonstrating a driving  impulse of valorisation seems contrary to any hint of Marx. For an alternative interpretation, see my 'The Conductor and the Conducted: Contradictions of "Real Socialism"' [Monthly Review Press].
          michael

Perhaps Michael can elaborate on how Chattopadhyay "did not do a concrete analysis of the USSR." There are two book reviews of his work (Haynes and Burkett). Although both indicate some limitations to the book (such as discounting the international situation and its impact, the 1917 revolution and class struggle), they do consider the book to provide many positive analyses of the former USSR. Burkett concludes: Chattopadhyay has produced an excellent educational resource for the left." Perhaps a book review, criticizing him, would be in order. I am open to such criticism. 

What is meant by "to talk about capitalism without demonstrating a driving impulse of valorisation?" In terms of absolute surplus value and not just relative surplus value? 

I and my wife (who was born in Guatemala) stayed recently in a village in San Antonio Palopo, along the shores of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala for a few days. A couple of the villagers we talked to, seasonally, worked on the coast for agricultural capitalists, probably doing physical labour (cuttng and harvesting sugar cane) or harvesting coffee beans for agricultural capitalists. 

When I first went to Guatemala in 1980, similarly, I was told by my Spanish teachers that many campesinos (peasants) in the Guatemalan highlands seasonally travelled to the coasts to work for employers--and eeked out a living when they returned to the highlands on an inadequate supply of not very fertile land. In 2003, if I am not mistaken, the census showed that the number of landless workers has increased. Is Guatemala capitalist? Non-capitalist? Other? Has it changed from a non-capitalist to a capitalist country? 

On the other hand, when I visited Guatemala with my daughter in 2013, we visited a brewery in Guatemala City. The machinery seemed to be similar to the machinery that we used at a brewery where I had worked in Calgary for around four years in the early 1980s. In addition, my brother-in-law, who lives in Guatemala City, works with computers (for an agricultrual capitalist)  and travels to the coast during harvest time to program and maintain the computers of the sugar-cane capitalists. There is a mixture of the older and the new. 

Another man from San Antonio Palopo, as well as a man living in another town, told us that they had worked in Quebec in agriculture under the temporary foreign worker program. (One commented that it was very hard work.) 

My wife, furthemore, moved to the department of San Marcos after the earthquake of 1976; she lived there for three years on a capitalist farm. She remembers  campesinos (including indigenous ones) living in squalid quarters, housed in barracks under cramped quarters. Was Guatemala capitalist? It is not always clear cut whehter a country is capitalist or not. 

Another issue is whether Marx relied exclusively on same abstract model (as outlined in Capital) for defiing the potentialities of a society for change to a socialist system. Matthias Bohlender, Anna-Sophie Schönfelder and Matthias Spekker, in Truth and Revolutiox’s Critique of Society, deny this. Marx often viewed capitalist society from the point of view of the possibility of its negation and viewed historical facts in those terms. 

In any case, for me it is a moot point--except for those who uncritically accept the Soviet Union as the incarnation of a socialist society. Given my own experiences of exploitaiton and oppression in Canada--and the denial of such oppression and exploitation by many among the so-called left here--I am suspicious uncritical acceptance of iuncritical positive characterizations of the Soviet Union.

Fred

Charlie wrote: 

Regarding the Soviet Union, the article pointed out three specific facts, namely, that it industrialized "without giving birth to outrageously rich moguls;

I do not know, one way or another. I hardly think that "giving birth to outrageously rich moguls" characterizes capitalism (it may well be a by-product of many forms of capitalistm, of course). The impersonal (structural) form of exploitaiton and oppression is much more characteristic of capitalism. 

with the security of planned migration from farm to factory

Security? In what sense? Did peasants voluntarily move into the factory? There was no forced collectivization? Even on the assumption of such security--how was working in a factory purely positive? I worked in a capitalist factory for four years--hardly a positive experience. Was there a division of labour in Soviet factories, such that those who executed the plans were also the ones who drew them up? 

 without handing over millions of workers to Foxconn discipline

What were the working conditions in the factories? Please describe such conditions. 

Fred

Firstly, let me note that my analysis of the Soviet Union examines the period from the 50s through the 80's, thus the period when it was described as 'real socialism' rather than 'theoretical' socialism. Thus, it specifically  excludes the period Charlie has in mind. As for Fred's points, describing Soviet workers as wage labourers is not a sufficient condition to describe the system as capitalism; surely you need to show how M-C-M' dominated the system as opposed to a drive to maximize the production of use-values. Further, even if you describe the situation of workers as wage-labourers, you need to recognise that it was very difficult to fire workers because of the obstacle of unions, of joint union-management committees and judges. Finally, it's been many many years since I looked at Paresh's book but as I recall its argument, it is very similar to the many discussions and panels I was on with him. As I recall, he sets out Marx's categories and then plugs into them phenomena he identified  in USSR. That's quite different from a concrete study.

michael

Webpage: http://michaelalebowitz.com/

Latest Book: Between Capitalism and Community
[https://monthlyreview.org/product/between_capitalism_and_community/]