Capitalism, communism and revolution

I first sketch a formal model, more fully presented elsewhere, of the transition to communism. It assumes that the following time trajectories can be defined. First, we need to know the level of the productive forces under capitalism as a function of time. This function, /(f), must be defined both for the actual capitalist past and for a - possibly hypothetical -capitalist future. If the communist revolution occurs because capitalism has become suboptimal for the development of the productive forces, we must be able to say something about how they would have developed under a continued capitalist regime. Next, assuming that a communist revolution occurs at time 5, /,(f) denotes the level of productivity that would then obtain at time t. The notions of correspondence and contradiction between the forces and relations of production can now be made more precise by considering various possible relations between such time profiles. 

To say that the revolution will occur when and because capitalist relations become suboptimal, is to say that it will occur at the earliest time s satisfying the last-mention condition. Let us call this time T,. It is not obvious that transition at time T, is very attractive as an ideal, independently of the capacity of the suboptimality to motivate the workers to action. If this transition time is advocated, it must be because the growth of the productive forces is seen as the only superiority of communism over capitalism. This, however, is contrary to Marx s view. He stressed the free and full development of the individual as the main reason for preferring communism (2.2.7). 1 quite conceivable that the time at which communism would be superior to capitalism in this respect is earlier than the time at which it becomes technically superior. Hence it would seem reasonable to allow the revolution to occur earlier than T, - if one were certain that the development of the productive forces would ultimately overtake that which would have occurred under capitalism. Formally, we ask whether there is a time < T, and a time s > s such that for all / > s, /,(/) >/(/), even if by assumption /,(s) transition time will postpone the time at which communism becomes superior. Hence there is a trade-off to be considered. Should the material conditions for communism be developed by capitalism, which is the more rapid way, or should one prefer the slower development whereby communism itself creates the conditions for its own future blossoming ... 

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