WL: The antagonism being lived out during the time of Marx was between the evolution and rise of the industrial system and its bourgeois mode of production versus the landed property relations and its political superstructure called feudalism.
^^^ CB: But this is not the way in which Marx and Engels use "antagonism" to describe the antagonism being lived out during the time of Marx and Engels. They use "antagonism" to refer to the irreconcilable conflict or contradiction between antagonistic classes, not, as you say, between "the evolution and rise of the industrial system and its bourgeois mode of production versus the landed property relations and its political superstructure called feudalism." *********************** WL: On the contrary . . . all I did is paraphrase Marx and Engels from the Communist Manifesto. Here is the section that was paraphrased. I number the sentences for simplicity. "We see then: 1). the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. 2). At a certain stage in the development of these a). means of production and of b). exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, 3). the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, 4). the feudal relations of property 5). became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; 6). they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. 7). Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class. 8). A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm CB: They use "antagonism" to refer to the irreconcilable conflict or contradiction between antagonistic classes, not, as you say, between "the evolution and rise of the industrial system and its bourgeois mode of production versus the landed property relations and its political superstructure called feudalism." WL: Perhaps, we have different copies and different versions of the Communist Manifesto. I would be delighted to read your version. WL: Marx and Engels state: "A similar movement is going on before our own eyes." What may I ask is the similar movement as we are experiencing it? In my exposition on antagonism I paraphrased the Communist Manifesto again and wrote: "The two basic classes of a social system are never free to overthrow the system of which they constitute. Something else must happen in history. The serf could not and did not overthrow the nobility. What brings economic and political feudalism to an end is the emergence of a new qualitative definition in society - new classes connected to new means of production. These new classes were the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The same applies to the bourgeois mode of production as a specific and final form of private property founded on a historical distinct stage of development of the material power of the productive forces." Here is the proposition you are rebelling against, which is all right. Marx and Engels use of antagonism is actually identical to mine because my use was basically lifted in whole from what they write. Lets further examine the Manifesto. Check this out brother. "In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm WL: Folks "who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital." What if these folks can no longer find work, due to a radical increase in the density of dead labor which renders their labor superfluous to the expansion of capital? Are these folks still proletatians? "These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity," . . . here's an interesting passage. Check this out brother man: "The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie." I gave a very brief description of this process as it was driven by development of the means of production in the exposition on antagonism. Suffice it to say the bourgeoisie and proletariat are born in conflict or contradiction. I paraphrasped the following: "But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm I wrote: "Each quantitative stage in the development of the social contradiction that is bourgeoisie and proletariat is in fact a development and evolution of the actual material factors of production - the productive forces, rather than an abstract development of the dominant form of bourgeois property." and "The relationship between the thesis and antithesis (the bourgeoisie and the proletariat) becomes more contradictory within each stage and forces the emergence of a new stage. Therefore, as each succeeding quantitative stage becomes more polarized it more sharply expresses its quality. The development of science and thus of the productive forces is spontaneous. Each quantitative development forces the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, and the market further and further apart. The bourgeoisie becomes more clearly bourgeois, the proletariat more clearly proletarian. The market becomes more clearly worldwide." This is no more than lifting entire passages from the Communist Manifesto and rewriting them in standard American English on the basis of this stage of development of the bourgeois mode of production and transition in the industrial system. Waistline _______________________________________________ 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
