Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 23:26:35 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: M-TH: Stalin and industry


Jorn Andersen (responding to Justin) wrote:

> What is essence and what is
> form? Which are the relations between these points?
> Unless you take that as your point of departure, you will focus on a
> specific *form* of capitalism, which had almost outlived itself at the time
> when Marx and Engels died, i.e. the capitalist with the high hat employing
> a few hundred workers at most.

The point of departure in _Capital_ was the commodity. A commodity,
according to Marx, has use-value, value, *and exchange-value*.
Exchange-value is a *necessary form of appearance*. To believe that the
capital/labor relation is the essence whereas the surface phenomena
necessarily associated with generalized commodity production is mere form,
is a pre-Hegelian conception. For Hegel and Marx both essence *and
appearance* are real.

> 2. The other fundamental feature of capitalism is the drive to accumulate.
> The means by which this drive to accumulate is forced upon the capitalists
> is usually "the market". But the market should not be seen only as a
> marketplace for commodities, but also as the market for finance, for access
> to technology, raw materials etc.

First: "technology" and "raw materials" take the form of constant
*capital*. They are *commodities* which are produced in order to be sold
on the market. The market for finance is also a market (particularly when
there is commodity-money). In the case of finance, there is also the
question of the *redistribution* of surplus value among industrial
capital and bank capital.

Second: accumulation means accumulation of *capital*. The capital-form
presupposes the value-form, money, and the market.

> But to think of competition today as only coming through the market does
> not correspond to reality. There are a lot of other means which regulates
> and enforces competition. The most important of these are the increasing
> intervention by *states* into the sphere of economy in the age of imperialism.

The analysis of the state-form is a more concrete level of investigation
and presentation than the analysis of the capital-form.

> The problem with most views of the USSR is to start from
> seeing the USSR in isolation from the rest of the world. You wouldn't do
> that with the US, Japan or W. Germany? You would not be able to explain the
> high growth rates of esp. Japan and W. Germany, the long boom after WW2 or
> poverty in Africa without first looking at the world as a whole. So why the
> USSR?

The USSR during much of its history *was* [essentially] isolated from the
world capitalist economy. The best evidence of this (and its effect)
occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

> Capital,
> competition etc. - i.e. the economy as such - in essence is not a thing but
> a relation, a social relation. Under capitalism these relations are
> constantly developed.

Capitalist relations *and* the necessary forms of appearance associated
with capitalism can be  "developed", but they can not be negated unless
they are surpassed.

Jerry



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