The Potentials and Limits of Computing Technologies for Socialist Planning

The notion of productive forces is usually grasped from a narrow perspective which reduces its content to technology and productivity. The distinction between force (Kraft) and its expression (Äußerung) plays a key role in Marx's dialectical analysis. Insofar as force is the outcome of a relation in dialectics, productive forces comprise an active element, namely labor. It is through the mediation of this active element that relations of production intervene in the process of expression of productive forces, which indicates the agency, that is the subversive subject, its empowerment and possibilities. Under capitalism, all aspects of individual and social life are reduced parameters to serve the overriding principle of profit maximization. Only the empowerment of working people can avoid such parameterization of society, which requires the abolition of the law of value as well as private property in the means of production, but is not granted by this abolition. The empowerment of workers is not an outcome of the advancement of productive forces, but is rather a significant element of the latter.