Re: Don't blame the doctor-- (also known as "Don't Shoot the Messenger."

I wrote: "Capitalism is a political economic system where the means of
production are controlled by a small minority who extract from the
majority social surplus by manipulating labor. Capitalism is a form of
class exploitative society." I can be more specific than this and note
several characteristics of capitalism. 

Capitalism is a system where (1) commodity production, i.e., producing
goods for exchange (exchange-value), specifically for profit to be amassed
privately, predominates and conditions the logic of other forms of
production (such as production-for-use); (2) labor-power is sold for
wages, the result of (property) restrictions on access to resources and
production means; (3) the means of production (objects + instruments of
labor) are owned by a private entity, the capitalist, who is a person or
group who pays wages to workers in exchange for labor-power, and through
the manipulation of labor-power extracts from workers surplus-labor; (4)
capitalists/managers control labor-power and sometimes legally own (such
as under chattel slavery) or effectively own (such as under conditions of
indenture) laborers; (5) money-mediated exchange is (more or less)
universalized; (6) capitalist/managers in the main control production and
financial decisions, they determine what is invested and where it is
invested, what will be produced, how what is produced will be distributed,
etc.; (7) there is competition between capitals, although competition is
on a continuum of more or less effective monopolization of a markets.

To which Pat Gunning wrote:

>This sounds like fascism, feudalism, and Soviet communism. Could you be
>more specific by differentiating these isms?

Pat asks me to define three "isms," I assume for the purpose of comparing
them with abstract capitalism. I will, briefly, sum up the general
character of the three, noting that all three are concrete social
formations (one is actually mislabeled). First fascism.

Historical fascism is a concrete form of capitalism. There is no question
about this. Pat's question assumes that fascism is something different
from capitalism since he is asking me to compare different production
modes to distinguish fascism from abstract capitalism. A propaganda point
is waiting in the wings. In the end, Pat has simply made an unsubtle
ideological attempt to represent fascism as something different from
capitalism. More accurately, fascism is to be distinguished from
liberalism and other political articulations of the capitalist mode of
production. Fascism meets every one of the seven criteria I have outlined
above and is, therefore, capitalism. 

Regarding state socialism in the Soviet Union (not "communism") we can
make a historical system comparison (I part company with world-system
theory and state capitalist theory in this regard). State socialism fails
to meet several of the criteria for capitalism. There was/is commodity
production, but its central imperative was/is not private profit, but the
needs of the people (how effectively it met/meets those needs is beside
the point). Labor-power was/is exchanged for wages, but these wages
were/are often nominal wages, although there were efforts to tie wages to
productivity. Labor power was/is not, however, exploited in the capitalist
sense, since accumulated "capital" became/becomes state property. The
means of production were/are not owned by a private entity, but by the
state, acting (ostensively) on behalf of the people. As a successful
totalitarian state, the Soviet Union generally acted with the material
benefit of the people in mind (that is one of the things that separates
dictatorships from totalitarian states). Managers and workers control
labor; there are no capitalists. Bureaucrats, politicians, and managers
control production and financial decisions, again (ostensively) for the
public; there are no capitalists. There is very little or no competition
among capitals (although the terminology is stretched here to convey
this), although state capitalists claim that competition existed between
the Soviet and other socialist states and capitals outside the Soviet
Bloc, such as in military competition. I don't deny that these states
competed militarily, but I don't see why this makes the Soviet Union
capitalist. Some argue that any part of the modern world system is
capitalist since the sociomaterial foundation for the present epoch is the
capitalist world-economy. While I agree with the dialectical notion that
the identity of the parts are determined by the logic of the whole, I do
not believe this procedure is validly used in claims about the capitalist
identity of the Soviet Union. Used in that way, the part-whole argument
constitutes a self-sealing fallacy. Moreover, empirically, and I believe
Shirley Cereseto demonstrated this convincingly in the early 1980s, the
Soviet Union was significantly different in character from capitalism, and
I agree with her conclusion that there was a state socialist world-system
that co-existed, but was subordinate to, the capitalist world-system. Of
course, this situation no longer exists.

Feudalism differs from capitalism in several ways, but most obviously in
the mode of labor exploitation (corvee versus wage-labor). I don't think I
need to go into this matter here. Suffice it to say that feudalism was an
agrarian social formation ruled by feudal lords who extracted from peasant
tenants surplus production (and often production generated by socially
necessary labor) rationalized on a system based around the family and
variable and complex sociocultural rules. There have been periods where
feudalist/feudalistic-type production modes have been brought within the
sphere of capitalism and have become, similar to chattel slavery in the
Americas, historical extensions of capitalist production.

>Andrew, I find the rest of your post rather far-fetched. It seems to me
>that you conflate (1) a dispute over property and other rights with (2)
>some grand master plan of capitalist expansion that, in your view, leads
>to crisis and war.

First, my conflation of "a dispute over property and other rights" will
have to be clarified, since as expressed in Pat's post it is meaningless
to me (could just be me). Second, there is no "grand master plan of
capitalist expansion." Capitalism must expand (or contract) by nature.
Planning come in as those who benefit from the system's expansion struggle
to steer it this way or that, to avoid crisis and/or maximize profits.
Capitalism has always had a planned element to it, but its
world-historical (or global) development is beyond human agency. Pat could
not have gotten more wrong my position on this subject.

>Disputes over property and other rights, theft, and robbery are
>inevitable in a property system.

This has nothing to do with what we are discussing. Pat is, as he always
does (no offense), engaging in an exercise of obscurantism with the
ideological purpose of denying the ugliness of capitalism. He designs to
present instead his mythical abstract capitalism constructed from
bankrupt subjectivist economics.

>And, absent a world government with teeth, these actions are likely on
>occasion to be carried out by governments and to lead to war.

There have property systems for centuries. Different property systems have
sparked different sorts of wars. I thought we were talking about the
second world war and what were the factors that caused it. It does no good
at all in a historical discussion to rationalize reality with blatantly
naturalistic statements like, "Well, you know, as long as you have human
beings, you will have war." WWII was an actual war at a particular point
in space and time, in a particular historical system for specific reasons.
People were actually doing things to one another, and they were doing
these things for well-understood reasons. WWII and its causes are not much
of a mystery, as far as I am concerned. I told Pat why it happened. What
would be more helpful than glittering generalities like, "Well, as long as
you have property, there will be disputes over property," would be things
like, "Andrew is wrong about the causes of WWII because blah blah blah"
and/or "Here is what the real cause behind the war was: blah blah blah."

>But without a property system, there would also be starvation, poverty,
>and misery that is much more devastating than war. Both the Soviets and
>the Chinese discovered this years ago. North Korea is discovering this
>now.

This is an ideological statement. Has there been no starvation in regions
of the capitalist world-economy? Is there no poverty and misery under
capitalism? In fact, starvation, poverty, and misery are far more
characteristics of capitalism, even in this century, even right now today
(maybe especially today), than they were/are in state socialist society.
This is according to the World Bank's own data. Cereseto showed (using
World Bank data) that countries where people were starving, in poverty,
and miserable under capitalism that switched to state socialist
organization in every situation lifted themselves out of the bottom third
of nations -- the poorest of nations -- and became equal to or surpassed
middle-income nations. By the 1970s, every country among the poorest third
were capitalist countries; there were no poor state socialist countries.
The reality, which is directly opposite of the unreality of Pat's world,
is that the Soviet Union, China, and other state socialist countries,
largely avoided the massive poverty and misery capitalism systematically
and inevitably causes in the periphery, and socialist states accomplished
this by significantly disconnecting from the capitalist system. Since
state socialism has fallen in many of these countries, they have once
against been exposed to the impoverishing forces of capitalism -- one only
needs to look at Russia's situation today, or the current situation in the
Balkans, to see the difference between living under state socialism and
living in the periphery of the capitalist world-economy.

I am sure most people here understand Pat's role as an international
intellectual mercenary for bourgeoisie interests. But is Pat aware of how
empty his propaganda sounds to most of us? Or is his purpose here to
disrupt the list with ultra-capitalist cheerleading and apologetics?

Andy