Stoller:
If even ONE worker is not at the required work station, all production halts. Such is the character of the assembly-line; such is the nature of industrialized labor.: Its an interesting point. You have been keen to say how socialism requires the activity of all those capitalists over a duration in order for the bedrock to be created. You need capitalism prior to taking over.
: Have you considered that it may be way too soon - that now, in the year 2000, the way people live is simply not compatible. Not until those 'evil capitalists' have prepared even greater technologies which do almost all the laboring in productive industry without man, leaving only the more flexible 'circulation' work, will there be even the dimmest chance of a successful socialist society without the compulsion the socialists on this board reject?
First, there are countries in which the objective conditions for socialist transformation have been ready for OVER A CENTURY:
Marx deduces the inevitability of the transformation of capitalist society into socialist society wholly and exclusively from the economic law of the development of contemporary society. The socialization of labor, which is advancing ever more rapidly in thousands of forms and has manifested itself very strikingly, during the half-century since the death of Marx, in the growth of large-scale production, capitalist cartels, syndicates and trusts, as well as in the gigantic increase the dimensions and power of finance capital, provides the principle material foundation for the inevitable advent of socialism.(Lenin)
None of this applied to China, Vietnam, Cuba, etc., etc. Did it apply to Russia (in 1917)? Not fully.
Does the above conditions apply to England, the U.S., Germany, France, Russia (today)? Yes, quite so.
Second, you anticipate that 'even greater technologies [will] do almost all the laboring in productive industry without man.' This contradicts ENTIRELY the LTV which posits that only humans can create value. Maybe a machine does such-and-such a job; but the machine is ultimately made by workers, not other machines. I don't want to hash over the LTV with you again, but I want you to know that I reject the idea of work independent of human labor.
Thirdly, the ' more flexible "circulation" work' you anticpate is PREDICATED upon the production process. Without commodities, there is nothing to circulate. And, as I explained before, circulation CANNOT expand indefinitely (to 'accomodate' more employees); it is a drain upon the use-values produced (only) in the production sphere.
The more labor in the production sphere is squeezed by rising circulation costs, the more the revolutionary potential of workers in countries that are predominatly characterized by production will INCREASE.
And lastly, your comment about the 'successful socialist society without the compulsion the socialists on this board reject' buys into the anarchist pie-in-the-sky pancea of RD's artisan utopianism. Which is fine---but it's NOT socialism. To deny class struggle is FUNDAMENTALLY utopian; so let's NOT call those anarchist quacks 'socialists' any longer---it only confuses the issues.
