In any event, whoever has not overcome the habit of uncritically accepting the ready-made ideological reflections of economic development, whoever has not reasoned out, in the footsteps of Marx, the essential nature of the commodity as the basic cell of the capitalist organism, will prove to be forever incapable of scientifically comprehending the most important and the most acute manifestations of our epoch.
In his Capital, Marx does not study economy in general, but capitalist economy, which has its own specific laws. Only in passing does he refer to the other economic systems, to elucidate the characteristics of capitalism.
Response: The other economic systems as part of a progression form an inseparable part of the current system. Not only in the sense that society has a ruling class and a slave class but, in that society, went from production of commodities for trade or sale rather than production for consumption directly. The unique features of capitalism do lend support in the writings of Marx to a chauvinism of the contemporary. As Trotsky himself points out, Marx was wrong in predicting a socialist revolution for Europe in his lifetime. Trotsky carried on Marx’s mistake with the same chauvinism. In fact, primitive communism, as the basis for many millennia for the further development of productive forces, in being the most basic form returns throughout history again and again, like the primitive organic molecules that make up the seasonal flu.
Previous generations have had communist and socialist revolutions and governments, (and utopian communities) even in ancient Greek city-states, in the Bible, and in slave revolutions like those of Spartacus, as well as intellectual support like the famous pre-capitalist writing of Thomas More. A society planned by mankind must include within it an understanding of the basic features of mankind. To eliminate primitive communism as the longest lasting economic system to date actually hurts the present movement for communism in that it leaves out the connection between communism and its biological and genetic-evolutionary roots in the human species. Also, perhaps not coincidentally, Marx, (whose brother-in-law was Prussia’s Interior Minister) Trotsky, (whose second wife was a rich merchant) and other leading Marxists had nobility and merchant money in their families. They had a clear class interest in proving that capitalism had, in a special way, prepared humanity for a return to communism, the longest lasting economic system to date. In fact, the progress made under capitalism did not come from capitalism itself but from the multi-generational working-class movement for reforms and revolution.
This perspective continues and actually receives an ugly emphasis from the “Late-Stage Capitalism” theory. The capitalists should still (even now!) hold on to the power a little longer to complete their final tasks for the benefit of society and humanity. Quite the contrary, in its final stages, capitalism will rebel against its own destruction by unleashing a far larger destruction on mankind as a whole. Capitalism is not an over-ripe fruit waiting to be picked in the Garden of Eden. It is the same snake that has always been at humanity’s feet: scarcity, poverty, and slavery. Eliminating this bourgeois bias from Marxism will actually hasten the revolution. The point is not to wait for capitalism and its most privileged beneficiaries to decide to end capitalism. Capitalism contains within itself the seed for its own destruction, but it is up to us to plant it through participation in the active struggles of the present-day working class.
This does not mean that capitalism and its unique features do not deserve thorough study. Marx could not help accepting some bias given his contemporaries and his financial dependence on Engels, a capitalist. However, the real features of capitalism do produce recurring events and law-governed processes. The production of the proletariat, the greatest “achievement” of capitalism, and the capitalist’s dependence on that laboring class, do lend support to the revolutionary perspective. Also, the centralization of the proletariat in cities and factories, in larger numbers than ever before, also on its surface appears to lead directly to revolution. So many poor people gathered in one place must inevitably come to the conclusion that the city and the factory belong to them. The increasing concentration of the workers, however, came along with technical advances in law-enforcement and media manipulation capable of keeping such a mass under the control of the ruling class. This is not a question of optimism versus pessimism. It is a question of class interest. A pessimistic worker could put the new technology into the service of the revolution and effectively change the balance of power. An optimist capitalist could argue that the new technology is itself the revolution and radically changes society without the primary need for a new government. As revolutionaries, we must side with the former in the interest of real and common rather than inherited and individual success.
The self-sufficient economy of the primitive peasant family has no need of a “political economy,” for it is dominated on the one hand by the forces of nature and on the other by the forces of tradition. The self-contained natural economy of the Greeks or the Romans, founded on slave labor, was ruled by the will of the slave-owner, whose “plan” in turn was directly determined by the laws of nature and routine… The new economic relations have linked cities and villages, provinces and nations. Division of labor has encompassed the planet. Having shattered tradition and routine, these bonds have not developed according to a definite plan, but rather apart from the consciousness and foresight of people, and it would seem as if behind their backs… [The new economic relations of contemporary society] destroyed the old self-contained connections and the inherited modes of labor.https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/11/time-n01.html
In contrast, division of labor according to Marx:
Political Economy, which as an independent science, first sprang into being during the period of manufacture, views the social division of labour only from the standpoint of manufacture, and sees in it only the means of producing more commodities with a given quantity of labour, and, consequently, of cheapening commodities and hurrying on the accumulation of capital. In most striking contrast with this accentuation of quantity and exchange-value, is the attitude of the writers of classical antiquity, who hold exclusively by quality and use-value. In consequence of the separation of the social branches of production, commodities are better made, the various bents and talents of men select a suitable field, and without some restraint no important results can be obtained anywhere. Hence both product and producer are improved by division of labour. If the growth of the quantity produced is occasionally mentioned, this is only done with reference to the greater abundance of use-values. There is not a word alluding to exchange-value or to the cheapening of commodities. This aspect, from the standpoint of use-value alone, is taken as well by Plato, who treats division of labour as the foundation on which the division of society into classes is based, as by Xenophon, who with characteristic bourgeois instinct, approaches more nearly to division of labour within the workshop. Plato’s Republic, in so far as division of labour is treated in it, as the formative principle of the State, is merely the Athenian idealisation of the Egyptian system of castes, Egypt having served as the model of an industrial country to many of his contemporaries also, amongst others to Isocrates, and it continued to have this importance to the Greeks of the Roman Empire.Marx, Karl. Capital. Ch. 14. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf
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