Is this what you are talking about ? CB
^^^^^^^^ : [Marxism] Marx Theory and the Workers ________________________________ * To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * Subject: Re: [Marxism] Marx Theory and the Workers * From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 12:00:48 EDT ________________________________ To limit Marx method, approach and conceptual framework to his exposition is a mistake. Exposition by definition is static or schematic, unless of course someone has discovered a method that allows the individual or class to instantly assimilate the totality of a subject (process). We assimilate Marx conclusions and conceptual framework in a dogmatic manner with creativity evolving much later. Then we are challenged to present the conceptual framework on the basis of our existing state of development of the material power of the productive forces, with an eye to how people actually think these out. Marx spent a lifetime changing and improving his exposition so that the workers would understand the "science of society." No society has ever been overthrown by the social and economic formations within the system. Society has always been overthrown by something external to the existing economy or economic formation. The basic reason workers in the American Union did not overthrow bourgeois property is because they couldn't. The reason is not the totality of all our subjective errors in history but rather because we are confronting law systems that cannot be changed and altered simply because we think things are "bad." The struggle between those most intimately connected to the means of production - in the feudal period of history, are the serf and nobility as class formations. The struggle between the serf and nobility drove a qualitative stage of history along quantitatively. But it did not and could not put an end to that qualitative stage of history . . . nor did the serf and nobility create that stage of history. The quality being spoken of is the landed property relation as the primary form of wealth. Marx was absolutely correct in stating that the struggle between the exploited and the exploiters has driven history through its quantitative stages of development. During the unfolding of history a historical period emerges, where by "hook" or "crook" an external force comes into play to begin the destruction of the existing society. Sometimes this force is an enemy army that is remotely created and developed by new means of production and sometimes it is something that is created within the existing society. The struggle between the workers and capitalist during the past century in America drove our society through its quantitative expansion of the quality called the industrial system. This struggle was by definition for a more equitable share of the social product and for the extension of political liberties. This is the meaning of reform. This is not the inner meaning of class struggle or more accurately society moving in class antagonism. The struggle between the owning class and the exploited class, for any historical period, has driven forward and accelerated the development of the means of production. When our workers won higher wages this meant they consumed more. Greater consumption broadens the market. Broadening the market meant fiercer competition for the market and greater rationalization of labor and means of production. This created the conditions to restrict the market as less workers begin to create a great mass of commodities than what was required yesterday. More and more modern means of production are created that are "labor saving" or as Engels called it "labor wasting" machinery. Engels noted very earlier that labor saving devices created unemployment and then permanent unemployment. What brought the last period of history to an end was not the existence of massive unemployment but the injection into the production process of computers, digitalized production process and advanced robotics. These ingredients bring to an end the quantitative expansion of the quality called industrial society in the same way that the steam engine brought to an end the system of manufacture. These qualitatively new productive forces and the new classes they are creating are outside the existing economic and social system. The existing economic and social system is not an "ism" or capitalism or more accurately the bourgeois property relations, but the industrial system in its economic and social relations. The old society is being destroyed by an objective law and nothing can stop this destruction. Our diverse peoples are going to have to decide what kind of society will replace the old. The destruction of the old society means the destruction of the existing economy, which is the thing that society is built upon. The economy and our society is built upon an industrial economy with certain laws Marx outline in Capital. The invasion of the computer and advanced robotics is destroying those laws in the same way that the steam engine began the destruction of the laws peculiar to manufacture. Marx gives the most breath taking and detailed account of this process. Marx description of the process makes it clear that industry did not come from the industrialists, but rather arose from the manufacturing class. The industrialist did not fly to earth from out of space. Industry grew step by step and stage by stage within the manufacturing process. Then a certain leap began (at a certain stage in the development of the material power of production it comes into conflict with the existing society). The leap is a period of transition and not a magically qualitative jump from one state of being to another. During the leap from manufacture to industry the invention of the steam engine took place and suddenly industry had a stable energy source. As a result industry rapidly replaced manufacture. A certain group of manufacturers created industry, just as a certain group of industrialist set the stage for the emergence of the financial bourgeoisie. The revolution we face today is more complex than simply the overthrow of one class. We are talking about the reorganization of society itself to conform to advanced robotics and computers. Virtually everyone in American society understands - on one level or another, that computers and advanced robotics change all the rules. In this regard the thinking of the people of America is outstripping that of the Marxists. Society is straining to reorganize itself on the basis of computers and advanced robotics but it cannot do so because the property relations block its full implementation. The private property relations prevents the development of and implementation of advanced robotics to its fullest extent. That is to say the private ownership of socially necessary means of production drives the cycle of reproduction based on profitability to the capitalist. Marx called the bourgeoisie the involuntary promoter of industrial development and technological implementation because he is driven in his cycles of reproduction by profit. Consequently, a spontaneous reaction by various sectors of society, from various view points, is destroying the society created during the industrial era and this most certainly includes the destruction of the education system or the industrial form of education. The old class of unemployed and permanently unemployed are recast by the qualitative changes in the technological regime and cannot be looked at as they existed within the boundary of the framework of the industrial system. Rather they have to be measured as they exist in relationship to this stage of development of the material power of production. Hence the "new class" or "communist class." The financial capitalist of yesteryear cannot be looked at as it existed within the boundary of the industrial system. Hence, the rise to domination of the world total social capital . . . speculative capital. The new proletariat in all its features is not the only class attacking the society. Different sectors of capital are attacking the society from different vantage points and in different directs but for the same reason. For the past twenty years voices from every section of our working class have attacked the speculator who makes absurd amounts of money totally divorces from producing any real material wealth. The speculator is securely outside the production process. When we communist workers talk about the destruction of American society and the dialectic of change, we are saying that this destruction is coming about as a result of spontaneous changes in the industrial mode of production which in turn drives the spontaneous activity of practically every social grouping and every class. The various social groupings and classes may not be fully aware of what is taking place but everyone is saying, "We have to change this because everything is being changed due to technology." When fundamental things change, everything dependent upon them must in turn change. Such is the law of life. Change does not take place all at one time and the results of change are not always direct and immediate. Change is by our new definitions interactive, but we have to make sense of this interactivity and not "get lost in the sauce." Scientific thinking demand that we find and isolate the motivation for such change, place this change in a proper context and make an estimation of the impact and consequence of fundamental change in the mode of production or the material power of the productive forces. The struggle in our society today is different from the era of industrial upsurge of the workers to reform the system and even that of the African American peoples noble struggle to reform the system in their flavor/favor. Today we are facing Marx meaning of the class struggle. This class struggle or society moving in class antagonism emerges as a result of changes in the mode of production. Melvin P. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
