Abstract
It is often believed among Marxians that Marx proved the logical inevitability of socialism. It is undeniable that Marx intended to show such an inevitability. The formula of historical materialism, which was presented prior to writing Capital as we saw in Chapter 3, Section 3.1 already contained a sort of consistent logic of the historical transformation of various societies which finally reach a classless socialist society driven by the growth of productive power. The dialectical conflict between the growth of productive power and the existing relations of production would inevitably cause a period of revolution, changing the existing social formation into another new form of society. This basic view of historical materialism is incorporated continuously in some parts of Capital. The problem is whether those parts are theoretically well founded and valid or central to the main theoretical contents of Capital.
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Notes
H.Grossmann, Das Akkumulations-und Zusammenbruchsgesetz des kapitalistishen Systems (Leipzig: Hirschfeld, 1929) pp. 121–2. cf. also note 7 for Chapter 9.
J. V. Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. (1952, Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1972) pp. 3–4, p. 22, pp. 38–9.
In 1953, three years earlier than de-Stalinisation in the Soviet Union and its influence in Japan, K. Uno, [‘The Law of Value and Socialism’], (in [Shiro] Oct 1953, also in his [’Capital’ and Socialism] (Tokyo: IwanamiShoten, 1958), criticised Stalin’s problematic notion of the law of value and of its useability under socialism.
A. Nove, The Economics of Feasible Socialism (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983) pp. 12–13.
In this respect I am not persuaded by the view which conceives of a single global economic crisis in our age resulting from the impact of the crisis in the advanced capitalist countries, as the centre of a unified world system including the second world. Certainly, I do not deny the importance of the negative influence of the capitalist world crisis on Soviet types of societies. The burden of cumulative international debt combined with the depressed export market is surely serious for many countries in the second world as well as in the third world. However, a problem with the view of a single global crisis, presented for instance in A. G. Frank, Reflections on the World Economic Crisis (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1981), and Crisis in the World Economy (New York: Holmes & Meier. 1981), is that the independendent cause(s) of the economic difficulties inside Soviet types of societies themselves cannot properly be underlined.
For example, L. von Mises, ‘Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth’, (1920, in A. Nove and D. M. Nuti, eds, Socialist Economics, Harmondsworth, Middx: Peguin Books, 1972), typically asserts that socialism without market pricing lacks a rational measurement of efficiency and therefore cannot be a rational economy. Von Mises points to the difficulty of reducing the products of skilled labour to units of simple labour as an important reason. Hence, we also see in this example how essential is our search for a sounder labour theory of value in oder to examine and clarify the basis of the argument for socialism.
P. Sraffa, Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960) ch. II.
I. Rubin, Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value (1982, translated by M. Samrdzija and F. Perlman, Detroit: Black & Red, 1972). See note 7 of Chapter 5 for the recent representative value theorists in the Rubin School. The theoretical similarity does not necessarily mean that all these recent theorists I call the Rubin School have studied and depended upon Rubin’s work to form their views. Since their position can be deducible rather directly from a part of Marx’s conception as well as from a certain type of attempt logically to formulate the relation between the form and substance of value.
F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1892, Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1975) p. 87.
V. I. Lenin, A Characterization of Economic Romanticism (1897, in his Collected Works, vol. 2 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1963) p. 167.
Among others, C. Bettelheim, Class Struggles in the USSR: Second Period, 1923–1930 (translated by B. Pearce, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978) extensively re-examines this process at that time.
See, e.g., R. A. Medvedev, [Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism] (1968) translated by S. Ishido, Tokyo: SanichiShobo, 2 vols, 1973–4), and J. Elleinstein, The Stalin Phenomenon, translated by P. Lantham (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1976).
This notion defines the hypertrophy of soviet state power as a result of the historical necessity of placing specialists in the position of bureaucratic agents of workers due to the lack of managerial and technological skills among the labourers in the initial phase of Soviet history after the revolution. L. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, translated by M. Eastman (London: Faber & Faber, 1937), initially and typically formulated this view and E. Mandel follows this lead for instance in his article. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, translated by M. Eastman (London: Faber & Faber, 1937), initially and typically formulated this view and E. Mandel follows this lead for instance in his article, ‘On the Nature of the Soviet State’, in New Left Review (Mar—Apr 1978).
This notion is presented in P. Sweezy, Post-Revolutionary Society (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1980) and also in S Amin et al., Dynamics of Global Crisis (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1982) p. 201.
Part IV Socialism — an Addendum
Cf. F. M. C. Fourier, Le Nouveau Monde Industriel et Sociétaire ou Invention du Procédé d’Industrie Attrayante et Naturelle Distribuée en Serie Passionnées (1822, in Oeuvres complètes de Ch. Fourier (Paris: La Librairie Societarie, 1845, t. 6).
In the preface to the second German edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1872), Marx and Engels confirm that ‘the general principles laid down in this Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever’, though they admit that ‘the practical application of the principles will depend… on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed as the need of Section II’ concerning the possible concrete reforms. Their major modification stated in that preface is on the role of the state after the experience of Paris Commune, saying: ‘One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz. that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes”’ (K. Marx, Selected Writings ed. D. McLellan, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 559). Marx’s most important statement on the possible future communist society after writing Capital was presented rather fragmentarily in the form of Critique of the Gotha Programme in 1875. In my view his presentation of the lower phase of communist society, being distinct from a higher phase, based upon ‘the right of the producers’ to claim income proportional to the labour they supply to the society, after deducting various commonly necessary portions of labour products, contains the theoretical insights obtained through his studies on the social functions and historical character of the substance of value and surplus-value in Capital. However, we also have to examine the limitations of Marx and his orthodox followers’ concept of the substance of value in the Chapter 10 below, in relation to the possible understanding of the nature of socialism.
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© 1988 Makoto Itoh
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Itoh, M. (1988). On Socialism. In: The Basic Theory of Capitalism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19107-9_10
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