In a famous and profound passage, Marx writes that "At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing — with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution."

IN other words, at a certain point, the level of society comes into conflict with its current way of organization -- and one form of class relations is ruptured by revolution, and a new form of society emerges.

Mao said (provocatively and humorously) that "Tools talk through humans." Meaning that this conflict is manifested as the actions of living people, as revolution.

The "theory of productive forces" presents a mechanical and distorted view of this dynamic -- and presents the influence of the forces of production in an extremely onesided way.

First, the leaders of the Second International (including promiently Kautsky and also the Menshiviks in Russia) insisted that socialism was not possible until capitalism had wiped away feudal backwardness, replaced it with a thorioughly industrial society, and turned workers into the majority of the population. This was (obviously) an argument that in many countries the proletariat should support the bourgeoisie in power.

And so in Russia (which had both powerful feudal forces and a concentrated imperialist capitalist class) the Menshiviks argued that only capitalism could produce the productive forces for socialism, and so the job of the proletariat was to support their oppressors.

A slightly different version of this view was put forward by Trotsky only a few years after the revolution. He said that the proletariat could seize power in russia, but not build socialism. (And he based his argument on the view that there were insufficient productive forces, and the Russian working class needed the modern productive forces of Germany.)

By contrast, Lenin and Stalin said that the clash of productive forces and relations of production had overall produced great ruptures in the world capitalist system -- and that socialist revolution had erupted where the system was weakest. As for specifically how high a productive level was needed to produce a new society -- lenin correctly pointed out that no one knew exactly, and that it would only be known through practice (i.e. the real world attempts to build socialism in the real world.)

As flipmoxie pointed out, Stalin put forward a view of socialist construction that was (ironically) also influenced by "the theory of productive forces" (though not in the raw, defeatist and counterrevolutionary way that the Menshiviks or Trotsky.)

Stalin argued that if the ruling class had been overthrown, and if the proletariat had inherited a backward country -- then the key link for advancing the revolution was building up the productive forces. Creating big industry would (automatically and inherently) make socialism stronger. And so the revolutoinary process under socialism was portrayed (by Stalin and the Soviet leadership) as mainly a question of increasing production and expanding industrialisation. (Even Lenin was influenced by this view, in his early, famous and mistaken formula that "soviets + electification = communism"

In fact, we can now sum up that it is possible to build socialist industry in ways that strengthen the power of the few over the many, and that increase the basis for capitalist restoration.

The solution (as Mao pointed out) was to energetically pursue socialist industrializaiton, but to "take class struggle as the key link" -- i.e. to continue the revolution, deepen new socialist changes, undercut the ground of inequality. Mao called this "grasp revolution, promote production."

He also pointed out that the main "productive force" is the working people themselves -- and their socialist consciousness and organization is itself a powerful factor for the ongoing transformation of society.

These issues are important because (as anyone reading this thread can see) the argument of the "theory of productive forces" under capitalism is to deny the possibility of socialist revolution in much of the world.

And the argument of "theory of productive forces" under socialism is that the workers should put their nose to the grindstone -- and worry about production, not state power.

And both reduce the working people to beasts of burden, postpone revolution, and glorify the accumulation of dead labor (machines) over the revolutionary actions of the people.

In discussing this, Mao pointed out an important historic fact:

In the great capitalist revolutions (france 1789, or U.S. 1776 and 1865 etc.) the great industrial productive forces of modern capitalism were developed AFTER the seizure of power. In other words its not like the mode of production characteristic of capitalism came into being first, and then it shattered feudalism.

On the contrary, it is the unleashing of human productive potential BY REVOLUTION (by the elimination of serfdom, and the feudal fragmenting of national markets, of restricting the free movement of labor etc.) that allowe capitalism to create its great productive forces.

Mao asked why it is so hard to imagine that socialist revolution (even in backward, poor countries) and the great enthusiasm of liberated people would create the new productive forces on which socialism would rest.

And, in fact, some of the greatest expansion of productive forces in world history happened in China and Russia AFTER THEIR REVOLUTIONS.

In this thread a trotskyist argued "BUT SOCIALISM PRESUPPOSES A LEVEL OF PRODUCTIVITY HIGHER THAN THE MOST ADVANCED CAPITALISM."

And all i can answer is "who says?"

In fact, it has proven true that socialist relations was the preconditions for raising backward and oppressed countries rapidly -- to serve the people and enable them to stand against "the most advanced capitalism" for decades.

It is not just productive forces that give rise to a crisis in the relations of production. It is also historically, great changes in relations of productioin that give rise to great leaps in productive forces.

There is a dialectical interpenetration of opposites here.