https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1950-1953/ic-issplit/02.htmPerspectives resolution of the International Committee fourth conference, 1972https://t.co/QNvAKZb5E8
— ICFI (1953) (@1953Icfi) May 31, 2023
"Just as the revisionists' picture of the relation between their 'theory' and the petty-bourgeoisie is an inverted one, so their explanation of capitalism's 'development of the productive forces' is the opposite of the objective situation. It represents the bourgeoisie's own interests in relation to the productive forces: viz, that all developments in technique, science, in being used for the augmentation of profit, must be turned against the principal productive force, the working class, against the capacity of mankind to control its destiny through the co-ordination of all productive capacity in the battle with nature. Monopoly capitalism undergoes many different phases of development: sometimes, on the basis of wars and counter-revolution, a period of expanded reproduction takes place; at others, a period of contracted production, overall destruction of means of production and the wiping out of many capitalists, is necessary. Within world imperialism there is uneven development, with different national capitalisms advancing to the detriment of others. In the competition between monopolies, in the conflict between nation-states, particularly in war, and in the reaction of the imperialists to the revolutionary gains made by the proletariat (the October Revolution, the third Chinese Revolution), there is a stimulus to technological and scientific innovation. But these developments are, in their origin, their life and their destiny, destructive of the productive forces, even though they express in contradictory form the potential satisfaction of human need under socialism. It is for the destruction of the working class, as the repository of human labour power, and for war, that these developments take place and which they serve."
This is not quite the same argument as Marx's in Capital. The "stimulus to technological and scientific innovation" actually comes from the political movement of the working class to defend itself from the worst extremes of exploitation. Laws limiting the workday to 12 hours or 10 hours had the effect of preventing capitalists from using 16 or 18 hour workdays, meaning they needed to intensify exploitation within the given maximum hours. This was accomplished through the speeding up of machines that control the pace of work. This required innovation that improved the function of the steam engine. So did imperialism provide the stimulus? No. The working class movement to limit the number of hours in a workday led to scientific innovation. In a similar way, movements for universal healthcare, for instance, paved the way for medical advancements. Movements for publicly funded higher education led to improvements in the science of psychology and education.
ReplyDeleteThe less-developed and smaller economic power, Germany, used horses as late as WWII. Horses provided 80% of military transport for the German army in World War II. Germany, though it had few colonial possessions, initiated the war in the same way that Russia and China will initiate a war against the more powerful NATO alliance as a result of internal pressure from their own capitalist corporations and their own oligarchy. They send inferior means to war against a technologically superior Western alliance, knowing Western powers will spare the oligarchs and simply buy shares of their corporations when their rate of profit justifies the risk. The ICFI seeks to cover this up in order to foster opportunist alliances with Russian and Chinese Stalinists and Pabloites as well as Bonapartist elements in these Eastern Imperialist militaries.
We cannot give even the faintest support for capitalism and still call ourselves Marxists. Marx never supported capitalism in any way, nor called any capitalist regime progressive. He only sought to show how divisions among the capitalists would expose the insoluble contradictions of a system based on slavery for the majority and a dark-hearted, monster-like, and inhumane oligarchy sitting idly at the top, neglecting the basic needs of humanity or actively destroying any positive trend produced by the working class through acts of rebellion. Their ideas of democracy, Marx and Engels believed, were hypocritical to the core and had nothing to do with empowering the people.