- 24 Feb 2012 00:30
#13903642
There are probably loads of similar passages out there, but I found this paragraph most relatable in Bukharin's The ABC of Communism.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukhari ... abc/01.htm
This description of the relations of production makes more sense than Marx's. Marx materializes everything. That's boring, and it shows little camaraderie. In contrast, Bukharin shows a subjective, informative, narrative concern between people in the community which dissolves in the marketplace. There is no story behind commodification. No process. There is just the moment of exchange, and the moment of consumption.
Stalin claimed that Bukharin didn't quite seem to grasp dialectics, and I suppose this is why. He would later pay the price with his life, but that was because in context of the prisoner's dilemma, Bukharin didn't see value in defection. He wasn't paranoid. He wasn't charismatically ambitious. He looked at people as conscious in themselves, not as material forces from which consciousness emerges.
If more socialists were like Bukharin, I suppose I could see their point.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukhari ... abc/01.htm
What are the mutual relationships between the individuals engaged in production and distribution? When we say 'commodity production' or 'production for the market', what does the phrase mean? It means that individuals work for one another, but that each produces for the market in his own enterprise, not knowing beforehand who will buy his wares. Let us suppose that there are an artisan named John and a peasant named George. John the artisan, a bootmaker, takes boots to the market and sells them to George, and with the money which George pays for them he buys bread from George. When John went to the market he did not know that he would meet George there, nor did George know that he would meet John; both men simply went to the market. When John bought the bread and George bought the boots, the result was that George had been working for John and John had been working for George, although the fact was not immediately obvious. The turmoil of the market place conceals from people that in actual fact they work for one another and cannot live without one another. In a commodity economy, people work for one another, but they do so in an unorganized manner and independently of each other, not knowing how necessary they are to one another. Consequently, in commodity production, individuals stand in definite relationships one to another, and what we are here concerned with is these mutual relationships.
This description of the relations of production makes more sense than Marx's. Marx materializes everything. That's boring, and it shows little camaraderie. In contrast, Bukharin shows a subjective, informative, narrative concern between people in the community which dissolves in the marketplace. There is no story behind commodification. No process. There is just the moment of exchange, and the moment of consumption.
Stalin claimed that Bukharin didn't quite seem to grasp dialectics, and I suppose this is why. He would later pay the price with his life, but that was because in context of the prisoner's dilemma, Bukharin didn't see value in defection. He wasn't paranoid. He wasn't charismatically ambitious. He looked at people as conscious in themselves, not as material forces from which consciousness emerges.
If more socialists were like Bukharin, I suppose I could see their point.
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Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream.
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