Dialogue with Stalin (3)

Third Day (Morning)

On day one we argued the fact, that any system of commodity production is a capitalist system, ever since through the labour of masses of humans enormous accumulations of commodities are produced. Capitalism and commodity production will together fade out of the spheres of influence that they gradually conquered in the modern world.

On the second day this got taken up again; and coming from the general process to today's Russian economy, we thought of the laws stated by Stalin regarding the structure of the Russian economy as appropriate. The diagnosis of pure capitalism, in the stage of "great state industrialism" was confirmed.

According to the notion of our dialogue partner, this sufficiently defined and concrete process can, applied to giant areas and populations, lead to the accumulation and concentration of a heavy industry, which doesn't rank behind others, and indeed solely on the basis of the since 1917 ensued elimination of big landowners, without inevitably repeating, as at that time in England, France etc., horrible expropriation of the lower population strata, who are caught in the subsistent, local economic circles and the fragmented labour technique.

Would one only say with this last point, that the extensive introduction of modern labour technique with the means of applied science plays out entirely differently because of the changed situation all over the world, then was the case centuries ago, then this could be subject of a separate investigation, namely with the treatment of the "agrarian question". Could be, that Stalin will show, attaining complete capitalism not by horse and cart, but by plane – but he should at least state the "direction". We, the rank and file, transmit to him from many ground stations a set of data – however even the radar can go haywire.

And now a third point: the international relations within the complex overall context of production, exchange and consumption; political and military balances of power.

The three points are only aspects of one and the same big question. The first could be called the historical, the second the economic and the third the political aspect. Direction and goal of the investigation must be set in one.

Products and exchange

In his theoretical corrections and the correspondingly harsh referrals against the objections of the "comrades", the Russian state and party leader apparently needs to change fronts every time, when he gets on from the circulation within the country borders to the transcending circulation. We already alluded, the reader will recall, that the western "border guards" at this point have perked up their ears. Far from again striking up the song of a millenarian autarky, the man in the Kremlin calmly has set the binoculars on the areas beyond the Iron Curtain; and old stories about the division of spheres of influence as an alternative to the sabre rattling and the abandonment of relations get a chance. At least one thing, that doesn't sound as spectacular and impertinent, as the litany about genocide and craze of aggression.

Stalin claims, the manner, how within Russia (and the sister countries) industry items are assigned to the rural population and agrarian products to the urbanites, is perfectly in accordance with socialism – while slaying everyone and everything with quotes of Marx and Engels, and, when necessary, correcting their words, sentences and wordings ex officio. The kolkhozes "freely" sell their products – there is no other way of getting hold of their makings; so after all through the market, but there are special rules: state administered prices (Novelty! Specialty of the house!) and even special "contracts" about commodity deliveries with "non-commodity character" [21], because the state business don't operate with money, but undertake offset agreements (Highly original! Role models are the huckster at the next corner, the American marine, which precisely knows about the equivalence of kissing and cigarettes, and the mundane "clearings" of the western countries!). However, the master doesn't find the expression "commodity delivery" appropriate, one should talk about product exchange. (Adding this only, so the mistake isn't searched for in the translation). In short, all more or less conventional equivalent systems, from the barter of the savages to money as universal equivalent for all products, the gazillion systems to issue performance and reward, which reach from the housekeeping book to the complicated banking business, where electronic brains add up endless queues of numbers, while daily the stifling flood of kicking their heels sellers of labour power swells – why did all this emerge, what is it good for, if not for the exchange of products, and solely for it?

But Stalin wants to crack the gnawing core of the problem, namely, that out of the "salaries" of exchange between equivalents a private accumulation emerges; and he says, there were guarantees against that.

Even for a generalissimo it is difficult to stay in the saddle with such a thesis and alternately fence in two directions – one blow against theoretical rigour, one blow against the revisionist concessions. Elasticity of the real Leninist Bolshevism? No, eclecticism, was our answer; back then that was the last straw for the Bolsheviks.

Now, no matter in what shape the domestic conditions might be (whose investigation is neither finished today, nor in the scope of this study), as soon as the talk is of the foreign relations, even Stalin raises concerns. The comrade Notkin had to get an earful, because he claimed that even the machines and tools produced in the state businesses are commodities. They have value, their price is determined and yet they aren't commodities? One can literally see Notkin being aghast. Value and price are, according to Stalin, "needed in order, in the interests of our foreign trade, to conduct sales of means of production to foreign countries. Here, in the sphere of foreign trade, but only in this sphere" (underlined in the original), "our means of production really are commodities, and really are sold (in the direct meaning of the term)". [Stalin, p. 53].

The last parentheses originate in the officially released text. Presumably the improvident Notkin put the word "sold", which a Marxist and Bolshevik is quite fed up with, in quotes. He must have missed the latest training courses.

In a few years, we would be interested in the following information: The volume of the balance of trade please, so the ratio of commodity import and export. And another thing: should this balance turn out positively or negatively? From the so called law of the well-planned "proportional" development of the national economy we know that the social product should grow at a furious speed. We don't speak Russian, but assume that thereby it is to be understood: plans for the "uninterrupted growth of production", that is analogous to the law of population growth or compound interest. We therefore propose the following, correct denotation: planning of growth in geometric progression. The "curve" drawn right, we would write up the following law with the little brains we have: socialism starts where this curve breaks down.

For today we record Stalin's concession: the products destined for foreign trade, among them the means of production, are commodities, not only "formally", in accounting, but also in "character."

That is one thing. It is enough to discuss across a few thousand kilometers to finally come to understanding regarding anything.

Profit and surplus value

A little bit more patience, then we will talk of high politics and strategy, and then the frowning will end, because everyone understands the point: will Caesar attack? Pompeius flee? Do we meet at Philippi again? Will we cross the Rubicon? That is welcomed fodder for conversation that lifts the spirits.

We must point to another point of Marxist political economy. The power of things leads the marshal to the explosive problem of the world market. The USSR, he says, supports its sister countries through economic aid, which accelerates their industrialization. Does that also apply for Czechoslovakia as well as China, that is, for an already capitalist country, as well as for a country, in which the capitalist mode of production is still in the early stages and only constitutes a fraction of aggregate production? Let's see. "It may be confidently said that, with this pace of industrial development, it will soon come to pass that these countries will not only be in no need of imports from capitalist countries, but will themselves feel the necessity of finding an outside market for their surplus products". [Stalin, p.32]. Which again brings up the question: if production (and export) is done for the west, then those are commodities; and if it is done for Russia, what are they then?

The point about this return to the system of commodity production, consummated with flying colours, which is identical with the capitalist system in form and character (if one does not fall for the economic make-up), is that it is founded on the imperative: export to produce more! Effectively it is the same imperative which also pertains within the supposed "socialist country": the relations between town and country, between the famous "associated classes", are about an import-export business, because here also, as already mentioned, the law of geometric progression applies, which says: more production! More production!

What remains of Marxism? Barely anything! Since "the working class, [is] now in power", it is "necessary" to "abandon" the offensive formulas which distinguish between necessary labour and surplus labour, paid and unpaid labour [Stalin, p.18/19]. While the law of surplus value (which here according to Stalin's criteria is a theory and not a law), first somewhat was spared, from today the following applies: "It is said that the law of the average rate of profit is the basic economic law of modern capitalism. That is not true. Modern capitalism, monopoly capitalism" (there you go: what did you know, poor Marx?) "cannot content it-self with the average profit, which moreover has a tendency to decline, in view of the increasing organic composition of capital. It is not the average profit, but the maximum profit that modern monopoly capitalism demands". While the subordinate clause ("which it needs...") seems to bring the extinguished Marxian law into being for a moment, the new law is decreed after all: The demand for maximum profit "will be the basic economic law of modern capitalism" [Stalin, p.39].

If the flamethrower in the library isn't halted, not even his moustache is going to be spared.

Those twisted counter-theses, which try to secure themselves against any objection, are unbearable. First, it is stated that the economic laws of monopoly capitalism would entirely differ from the capitalism "of Marx". And then the same counter-theses assert that the economic laws of socialism could very well be the same as those of capitalism. Fresh air, quick!

Let's heroically return to the ABC. One here has to remind of the distinction between the mass of profit and the mass of surplus value, between rate of profit and rate of surplus value, and of the meaning of the Marxian law of the tendency of the average rate of profit to fall, which is stated in detail at the beginning of the third "Capital" volume. Reading – understanding! It is not the capitalist that tends to decrease profit. It is not profit (the mass of profit) that decreases, but the rate of profit! Not the rate of any profit, but the average rate of social profit. Not any week or in any issue of the "Financial Times", but historically, in the development predestined by Marx towards the "social monopoly of the means of production" in the grip of capital, whose definition, genesis, life and death are written.

He who understands this, can see that the effort, not of the single capitalist (a minor figure in Marx), but of the historical machine of capital (this "ensouled corpus" talented with "vis vitalis"), to escape the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is futile; and precisely this law let's us conclude the following, classical theses (to which Stalin, confusing the west, again confesses):

First: Inevitability of war between the capitalist countries.

Second: Inevitability of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, wheresoever.

It is a giant effort that the capitalist system deploys in fight against its own collapse, and which expresses itself in the slogan: evermore production! Not only no stagnation, but achieving the maximization of the maximization at any time. In mathematics: geometrical progression; in music: "crescendo á la Rossini". And for that purpose (once the entire motherland is mechanized): export. And to memorise the doctrine of the last five centuries well: "Trade follows the flag."

But that, Jughashvili, is their doctrine!

Engels and Marx

For our line of argument, we once again have to return to Marx and Engels. This time not to the self-contained and complete texts, as if made from one piece by one or the other, written with full power and the groundbreaking eagerness of those who know neither doubt, nor are flustered and who remove obstacles in the way, without caring about their resistance. It is about the Marx, of which his "executor of testament" gives account in the almost dramatic prefaces to the II. (5.5.1885) and to the III. (4.10.1894) volume of "Capital". First it is about explaining the state of the enormous mass of materials and manuscripts – they reach from chapters in elaborated form to loose pages, notices, summaries, illegible abbreviations, promises regarding later to be developed points, as well as uncertainly and cautiously composed pages provided with annotations – with the deteriorating health of Marx, with the inescapable ramifications of the progressing disease which forces interruptions upon him, which quail and attack the mighty brain more than rest lets him heal. The work accomplished by this human machine between the years 1863 and 1867, among it the flawlessly composed first volume of his main work, is immeasurable. Already in the years 1864 to 1865 the disease showed first signs of health disorders; the imperturbable sight of his great "colleague" Engels notices the traces of its devastating aftermaths in the unreleased notebooks. But after that the same bone-grinding work – deciphering, examining, dictating, reorganizing of texts, classification of material: all that with the will not to compose anything distinct – exceeds also the power of the extremely robust Engels. For too long he spent nights awake over the scriptures of his friend; a worrying eye weakness "for years [restricts] [his] writing time to a minimum", as he got disallowed from "taking the quill into the hand under artificial light". Neither defeated nor discouraged he apologizes sincerely and humbly to the task – more was not granted to him. Modestly he reminds of all the other areas, in which the brunt more and more fell to him "solely". One year later, he died.

This is neither incidental nor conceited. It should only make clear that the aspiration of editorial diligence which determined Engels' compilation work engendered that in the last two volumes of Capital the periodically returning sections of synthesis and summary almost fully are missing. Engels' quill we also owe such parentheses, and not few or of little use of them; but he doesn't want to manage something "which just wasn't in Marx' book", and so he confines himself to analysis. Had it been different, certain shady interpretations (today as half a century ago) would have been futile, for example the sad legend, according to which Marx in the third and last volume revoked – according to the personal taste of the author: in the philosophy, the economic science or the politics – something. In truth in the first volume there are as many explicit references to the early scriptures or the "Manifesto" as connections between the last two scriptures and the first volume – thousands of passage of correspondence reinforce this.

Here it is even less than in Engels' work about conducting "Capital research". Let's just remark that Marx in one of those short summaries says, why he is so thoroughly dealing with the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Engels hesitates to recite the fragment and puts it in parentheses, "because, though a rehash of the notes of the original manuscript, it goes in some points beyond the scope of the material found in the original."

"[The law of increased productivity of labour is not, therefore, absolutely valid for capital. So far as capital is concerned, productiveness does not increase through a saving in living labour in general, but only through a saving in the paid portion of living labour, as compared to labour expended in the past, as we have already indicated in passing in Book I (Ch. XI II, 2, 5. 409/398). Here the capitalist mode of production is beset with another contradiction. Its historical mission is unconstrained development in geometrical progression of the productivity of human labour. It goes back on its mission whenever, as here, it checks the development of productivity. It thus demonstrates again that it is becoming senile and that it is more and more outlived.]"

Unaffected by the pharisaic objection that after another 60 years of capitalism (however with a strong dash of decay) one should with the as always "careless" Marx triple the parentheses instead of cancel them out, we emphasize the programmatic theses which Marx so "gladly" inserted in the discerning and profound analyses. So capitalism will collapse. And post-capitalism? It is like that: As the productivity of every work unit increases, we do not increase the mass of products, but decrease the working time of the living. Why does the West not want to know something about that? Because there is only one single way to flee from the law of the fall in the rate of profit: overproduction. And the East? Ditto. But for the sake of fairness let's remark that capitalism there is still undergoing its adolescence.

Rate and Mass

It is time to again turn towards the deduction of the law: As long as we are not smitten with blindness, it is anyway not on the scrap heap. We will there circumvent both the language of numbers as well as algebraic symbolism and, as far as possible, preserve the brevity and the polish of the fable. "Could commodities themselves speak", Marx says in one of those wonderful passages of "Capital", "they would say: Our use value may be a thing that interests men. It is no part of us as objects. What, however, does belong to us as objects, is our value. Our natural intercourse as commodities proves it. In the eyes of each other we are nothing but exchange values."

So we attached a microphone on the marketplace on which the commodities hailing from Russia and America meet. The ones from the "higher levels" have allowed them to speak a common economic language. For both commodities, the sacrosanct principle applies that the targeted market price must lie above the cost of production (otherwise they would not have travelled the long way). In both homelands one is concerned with producing them at low cost and to sell at high price.

The commodity hailing from the land of capitalist theory has the word: "I am made of two parts and therefore only one weld is visible on me: the cost of production (a living and used up advance of my producer) and the profit, that together add up to the precise sum below I, don't delude yourselves, don't meet my principles. To encourage the buyer, I content myself with a modest profit: through a simple calculation – profit divided by cost of production – you can check the rate of this profit. Suppose my cost is 10 and you can own me for 11, do you want to be stingy and claim that the ten percent rate is excessively high? Step right up, ladies and gentlemen..."

We now hand the microphone to the other commodity. It talks like this: "For us Marxist economics is critical. You see two welds on me. I have no reason to hide that: Because I consist of three and not of two parts. The trick with the other commodity is that it isn't visible there. To produce me, there are two expenditures: raw materials, consumption of instruments of production and suchlike, which we call constant capital invested in me – and the compensation of human labour, which we call variable capital. The sum forms what the lady before me called cost of production. For me as well you have to add a yield, an earning or profit, which is my third and last part: called surplus value. For the advanced constant capital, we calculate nothing on top, as we know that it does not add value: only labour, meaning the variable part of the advance creates value. So, if you want to determine the percentage or the rate, not of profit but of surplus value, it is very easy as well: you just have to divide the surplus value by the second part of the capital advanced for me, that is, the wages."

Whereupon the ordinary buyer replies: "Explain that to your hairdresser! The only thing my wallet is interested in is the end cost, that is, your respective sale price."

There is spat between the two commodities, in which each claims to want to close the less profitable deal and to settle for the lowest profit rate. As neither of them can press it down to zero, the one that actually has the lowest cost of production wins, as Stalin also incessantly indicates. For the constant part, quantity and quality of raw materials are given. The competition in both export countries is staged on the variable part. And certainly, there is the solution to pay the workers less, to let them work longer, but predominantly labour productivity is backed, which is conditioned by technological progress, the use of more powerful machines and the ever more rational organization of firms. Already both sides are displaying glossy prints of their large-scale plants, where each prides itself in having reduced the number of employees at constant or larger scale of production. But one thing that the buyers care even less about is knowing on which side of the contested market the workers are being paid and treated better.

The reader will, so we think, without effort determine the difference between both methods of value analysis. The rate of surplus value is always much higher than the rate of profit, and all the more as the constant capital outweighs the variable.

Now, the Marxian law of the fall of the average rate of profit deals with profit as a whole, that is, the total return of all spheres of production, regardless of the later to deal with distribution (between the banker, the industrialist and the landowner). In the 13. chapter of the third volume of "Capital", Marx reminds: "We intentionally present this law before going on to the division of profit" ("Profit is for us, for the time being, only another name for or another category of surplus value") "into different independent categories". This "shows from the outset that this law is, in its entirety, independent of this division". And so it also applies if the state behaves as owner, banker and entrepreneur.

The law is based on the general historical process – denied by no one, apologized for by everyone – of the incessant development of productivity due to the application of ever more complicated instruments, tools, machines, ever more diverse technical processes and of scientific achievements on manual labour. For a given mass of products, fewer and fewer workers are needed. The capital advanced that needed to be invested to get hands on this mass of products continuously changes what Marx calls the organic composition: ever more substance-based capital, ever less wage capital. Few workers suffice to bestow an enormous "increase in value" on the to be processed material, because they can process a lot more of it in comparison to the past. In this too one agrees. And further? Even assumed that capital exacerbates exploitation and increases the rate of surplus value by paying the workers less (even though this often happens, it only has the character of a law from the point of view of lounge revolutionaries), the squeezed out surplus value, respectively profit, will indeed increase, in face of the much stronger increase of the mass of purchased raw materials, with equal number of labour powers, the profit rate will continue to fall: Precisely because the rate expresses the relation of the slightly bigger profit (profit mass) to the enormously increased total advance in wages and material.

Capital demands the "maximum profit"? For sure, it demands it and it finds it as well, but it cannot prevent that meanwhile the profit rate falls. The mass of profit increases, because the population and still more the proletariat grows, the processed material becomes ever more impressive and the mass of products increases. In infancy: small capitals, divided between many and invested at a good rate; in old age: giant capitals, divided on few (consequence of concentration which develops in parallel to accumulation), admittedly invested at a low rate, however with the result of the exorbitant, vertigo-inducing increase of social capital, of social profit, of average business capital and profit.

There is no contradiction with the Marxian law of the fall in the rate of profit, which could only be detained by the reduction of labour productivity, by "degeneration" of the organic composition of capital; an issue against which Stalin at the moment hauls out the big guns, a terrain on which he desperately tries to subdue his enemies.

19th and 20th century

In no. 2 (1952) of "Il programma comunista" we published some plain numbers from capitalist sources about the American economy. They prove the law determined by Marx and negated by Stalin. According to statistics 1848, that is, at the appearance of industrial capitalism in the USA, of 1000 value units which were added to the processed material in the process of production, 510 units went as wages to the workers and 490 as profit to the entrepreneurs. If one disregards depreciation of machines, general expenses etc., those numbers on the one hand represent variable capital, on the other hand represent surplus value. Their ratio, or the rate of surplus value, is 96%.

How did the bourgeois calculate the rate of profit? To answer this, we have to know the value of the processed raw materials. We can only guess it, by assuming the hypothesis that in the crawling phase of industry every worker produces the quadruple of his wage on average. If the wages amount to 510, the constitute 2.040 units. The costs of production amount to 2.550 in total. High rate of profit: 19,2%. We notice anyway that it always lies beneath the rate of surplus value.

In the year 1929, after a long cycle of insane growth, the workers only received 362 of 1.000 newly added value units, the capitalists however 638. Don't start to get confused now: Until "black Friday" the wages increased, and the living standard of the workers increased strongly – that doesn't change a thing. As one sees, the rate of surplus value, respectively exploitation increased drastically: from 96% to 176%. If now, after one has written one's fingers to the bone, there is still someone who doesn't understand that one can be exploited even more despite higher wages and better food, then he should go home! He has not understood the consequences of the increased productivity of labour power, consisting of sweat and blood of hard workers and ending up in the pockets of the bourgeois.

Let's now determine the value of total production. Let's assume that between 1848 and 1929 thanks to improved machines and with same number of workers ten times more raw materials than before could be processed. We can quietly assume those low numbers: with the certainity of one, who is somewhat familiar with scientific syntheses and therefore without problems starts with preconditions which are inconvenient for the own thesis and which benefit the enemy, those hair-splitters, which take delight in checking everything fifteen times. Because the workers now receive 362 as opposed to the 510 before, one could think that the share in raw materials decreased from 2.040 to 1.448; the opposite is the case: the share rises to 14.480. With a total expense of 14.842 in investments and a profit of 638, one has a rate of profit of about 4,5%. The fall of the rate of profit: here we have it. It is enough to pull off one's head before Marx; it is not necessary to hand a tissue to "Uncle Sam" to dry his crocodile tears! You have understood, we searched for the rate and not the mass of profit. To get an image of the total extent of production – even if not in real values, then still in form of a comparison between both epochs – one has to consider that a national product of 3040 in the year 1848 is faced with 15.480 in 1929: with non-noteworthy increase of worker hands. In reality however, the worker population has multiplied by ten in the course of the 80 years. One can thus estimate the total product at 154.800, about the fiftyfold of the year 1848. While the average rate of profit of the factory owners fell from 19,2% to 4,3%, the mass of profit increased from 490 to 6.390, meaning it is fourteen times as high. Surely our numbers are still far too modest. Important was only to prove, that American capitalism in the race to the maximum profit adheres to the law of the fall in the rate of profit. Stalin cannot educe any new laws from it. Additionally, we didn't account for the concentration; if we apply a factor of 10 here, the average profit (in mass) of the American enterprises amounts to the 140-fold. There it is: the course for crisis, and the confirmation of Marxism.

We will allow ourselves an even bolder calculation now. Let's assume the American working class assumes power in a situation as in that of 1929; let's repeat the numbers: 14.480 raw materials, 362 labour powers, 638 profit, meaning 15.480 total product.

And then the workers read Marx and use "the increased productive power of capital for the saving of living labour as such". A decree of the revolutionary committee pushes down production to 10.000 (where it is pushed down we will see; remind yourselves that there won't be any presidential elections or similar events anymore). The workers will first settle for not adding the entire profit (which is burdened with dues and general expenses) to their wage of 362, but much less, so they arrive at, let's say 500. For the functioning of public facilities and state-run administrative bodies we deduce even more than the 638 of the now removed capitalists, let's say 700. According to our calculation there are only 8.800 of to be processed raw materials instead of 14.480; if the number of workers stays constant, the working day of each is reduced by 40%: from 8 to less than 5 hours. As a first step, that's neat. If we now calculate the hourly wage, we would see that it increased by about 132 percent: from a bit, more of 44 to about 103.

This would not be socialism. But while Stalin assumes to have discovered a new law of socialism, which is in truth a law of capitalism (with the increase of labour productivity production grows), we confront him with the opposite law: the increase of productivity leads to the decrease of human labour effort, where the extent of production either stays constant or later, after the poison dripping and blood sucking branches of the capitalist trunk has been removed, begins to increase in a smooth curve and in a way adequate for humanity.

As long as the call resounds to increase production by mobilization of all powers, that just means to desperately resist against the Marxian law of the fall of the rate of profit. Because the rate of profit decreases, even though the mass of surplus value and profit do not decrease, progress rhetoric and hurries will shout at a scampered humanity ever more loudly: work more, produce more! And when the local workers faced with their frugal compensation cannot buy the surplus product, one needs to find means to conquer markets in foreign countries to ensure consumption. That is the vicious cycle of imperialism, which inevitably has found its solution in war – and a temporary escape from the final crisis in the reconstruction of the destroyed works of humanity, created in centuries.

Reconstruction of the destroyed, then construction of capitalist production facilities in vast areas, and today the race for markets: Those are all rails which Stalin is following; and this train, undertaken by whoever, knows only two changing points: low costs of production or war.

We will finish the depiction of this fundamental law with another wording about capitalism, which Marx adds in the fifteenth chapter of the third volume. As always, it simultaneously stands for the programme of communist society.

"Three cardinal facts of capitalist production:

1) Concentration of means of production in few hands, whereby they cease to appear as the property of the immediate labourers and turn into social production capacities. Even if initially they are the private property of capitalists. These are the trustees of bourgeois society, but they pocket all the proceeds of this trusteeship.

2) Organisation of labour itself into social labour: through co-operation, division of labour, and the uniting of labour with the natural sciences.

In these two senses, the capitalist mode of production abolishes private property and private labour, even though in contradictory forms.

3) Creation of the world-market."

As usual the "thread" lead us where it needed to lead us. And the reader should know that the "day" still has not drawn to a close, but that it is only noon. The "morning" might have been as hard and complicated as a symphony by Wagner.

Will the concluding "afternoon" play a lighter music on the steep way? Maybe. "L'après-midi d'une faune" [22]? However, our faun appears in the coarse figure and with the threatening gesture of the blood red mars.

Historical Archive 1952 - 1970
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