(source: shubelmorgan.wordpress.com) Before publishing the video “On the Theory of the Productive Forces” we recommended some pertinent readings for optimal viewing pleasure. For this series of articles we’re adding to that list a work by Prairie Fire recently posted at MSH. The list: Some notes on lines within the Chinese Communist Party in the Maoist period The Lin Biao Centennial, hooray! Peking Review: “The Essence of “Theory of Productive Forces” Is to Oppose Proletarian Revolution” (1969 September 19) Lin Biao excerpt on the theory of the productive forces Peking Review: “U.S. Imperialism Steps Up Ruthless Plunder and Exploitation of Latin American People” (1969 September 3) Now, the video says: Maoism is the science of remembering class struggle, because Maoism is the ideology of the oppressed and exploited. And only by class struggle will the oppressed and exploited win. That’s why the oppressors and exploiters want the oppressed and exploited to forget class struggle. So the enemy tries to peddle this shit to the world’s oppressed and exploited majority. This is the theory of the productive forces, an enemy lie. Readers who’ve accomplished the assigned readings will recognize at a glance that the graphic sums up the essentials of the theory of the productive forces. Fundamentally, this enemy lie hawks elevating the forces of production over the relations of production, economics over politics, advancing technology over advancing class struggle.That’s the theory of the productive forces generally. But readers who’ve been both diligent and astute in their homework will recognize that the graphic also depicts clearly the TOPF in its most urgent international particularity: an enemy lie powered exclusively and in its entirety by the existence of the first world labor aristocracy. We’ll be talking about this particular form of the TOPF. We’ll be talking to those who are already diligent and astute in their revolutionary studies, and we’ll be talking to those endeavoring to become more diligent and more astute in those studies. We won’t be talking to these folks: “…people calling themselves Maoist who can’t say anything about what ‘theory of the productive forces’ refers to and who Liu Shaoqi was because they don’t remember their leader talking about them …” (1) Or these: “…many who can mouth some words against Liu Shaoqi and the theory of the productive forces as it was manifested in the past, but don’t actually uphold the lessons of the struggle against the new bourgeoisie in China and the world-wide struggle against revisionism.”(2) Bottom line, we won’t be talking about the international form of the TOPF as powered by the first world labor aristocracy to those who haven’t even been diligent and astute enough to know that the first world populations are enemy to the world majority. You know, pearls before swine and all that. So then, for our remaining readers, let’s consider how the existence of the parasite populations of the first world fuels the perniciousness of the theory of the productive forces. First, what’s the point of a labor aristocracy anyway? Well, of course one function is just that of providing more bodies committed to brute defense of imperialism – like more of those parasite cuties above to peddle deadly lies to the proletariat. But the more important labor aristocracy function is to provide a showcase population. A showcase class position that can be paraded before the desperate eyes of the oppressed and exploited. A seemingly attainable showcase class position to which the proletariat can by all appearances aspire. As actually unattainable as the carrot dangled right up close in front of the workhorse, and serving precisely the same function. For the proletariat, getting tricked means death. That’s where, and we’ll come back to this more than once, the international TOPF gets its power, from the living and breathing, decadent, globally in your face labor aristocracy “proof” of the efficacy of the TOPF. Without the first world labor aristocracy there is no international form of the TOPF, only “local” or “domestic” forms. With the showcase population of the first world parasite populations you get an epidemic of mutating international forms of the TOPF that can augment, rival, or even put to shame the “local” and “domestic” forms of this enemy lie. You get international variants of the TOPF like these, as parsed by MIWS: - Lack of clarity on whether First World wealth is due to domestic productive forces or exploitation of foreign workers leads to implementing the theory of the productive forces, because of the objective divorce between practice, on the one hand, and knowledge of the relations of production, on the other, and because of the tendency to, by habit, continue engaging in production without transforming the production relations. - Assuming that First World worker so-called productivity is due to different levels of development of productive forces is an expression of the theory of the productive forces, because of the conception of the productive forces in isolation from international economic relations; there is inevitably a resulting underestimation of how decadent imperialism is. - Comparing First World living standards and Third World living standards without adequately addressing the role of parasitism in the difference is an expression of the theory of the productive forces, because the aspiration to reach the level of the First World living standards is not connected to correct knowledge of the role of productive forces — in relations to production relations — to those living standards. - Treating First World workers as if they were more productive than Third World workers, because of technology and training in the First World, is an expression of the theory, because of the assumption that Third World workers could generate the same amount of wealth with the same technology and skills, and because of the frequently held notion that technology produces value or enables workers to create more value. - Treating First World parasitism as insignificant while welcoming foreign investment to improve backward productive forces in the Third World is the theory of the productive forces in action, because the overall pattern is one of allowing world imperialism to continue plundering the oppressed nations under the pretext of developing the productive forces to imperialist-country levels.(3) Yes, the pathogen of the TOPF seeks to metastasize amongst the proletariat in a variety of configurations and articulations. Here we’ll simplify. Underlying and propping up all these forms of the lie of the theory of the productive forces is yet another lie: that the whole world can live at first world standards. More specifically, that the whole world can live like amerikkkans. That’s a lie of such gigantic proportions as to deserve its own series of articles. Right now we’ll devote just one, next. (1) Peking Review: “The Essence of “Theory of Productive Forces” Is to Oppose Proletarian Revolution” (1969 September 19) (2) Ibid. (3) Ibid.
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