On Sun, Mar 07, 2010 at 01:28:29PM -0500, waistli...@aol.com wrote: > > > In a message dated 3/7/2010 6:27:26 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, > _bro...@historicalmaterialism.info_ > (mailto:bro...@historicalmaterialism.info) : > > > The exploitation of labor has been further intensified. Commodity > > production and exchange is the principal hallmark of capitalism.... > > the proletariat is that commodity who can produce more than he's > > worth.... yet the surplus product should belong to the class and not > > to worthless exploiters of our labor power and hence of our being. > > ***************** > Brown > > Agreed on all this, but I don't see that it addresses my initial > question. Clearly, there is a broad working class, a part of which > works in factories and is an industrial working class. The latter is a > part of or a qualifier of the former. > > Comment > > I would write and present matters different. Commodity production > and exchange exist long become the bourgeois mode of production > arises as a social system. Commodity production and exchange reaches > its highest state of development on the basis of the bourgeois mode > of production or the bourgeois private property relations.
I don't disagree with this. A lot more could be said about it, such as what distinguises the commodity under capitalism and, say, the feudal mode of production other than just quantitative increase. > Here the conceptual issue is related to a proposition Brown raised > roughly formulated as the law of emergence. Commodity production and > exchange has a very long history and was alive and well under > feudalism. I hope I did not imply any "law" of emergence. Emergence is a descriptive term, and while there's no agreement on its explanation, no one (or at least not since perhaps Bergson or Spengler) has ever suggested it is an effect of a law. In logical terms, the definition of emergence contradicts lawfulness. I believe that what is burried in this little exchange is that the capitalist commodity, unlike in other modes of production, incorporates surplus value, and surplus value is characteristically capitalist. The value of a commodity under feudalism was its costs of production (feudalism's "labor theory of value"), plus a certain amount for the artisan's unique skills. Not sure, but it seems to me that under capitalism, skills are part of the costs of production. In other words, there is certainly a quantitative change in commodity production with the advant of capitalism, but more significantly, a qualitative change. > On another note, the class fluctuates from 6 to 15 people. The > youngest person is 15 and the oldest 25. Three of us conduct the > class. We have known each other for the better part of 40 years and > our presentations are seamless, with each other correcting the > other. Zero ego clashes. The appeal of the class is our real world > stories of our personal lives over a period of 50 years. All of us > worked at Chrysler and retired after 30 years. Thus when speaking of > class we speak of our family life and parents and their parents. One > of the comrades grand parents were sharecroppers. Their lives gives > an example of class, different from the industrial working class. Thanks for passing along the specifics. I imagine the age range presents its own challenges, for you combine youngsters with limited maturity and work experience with youth who to a significant extent have already tasted the bitter fruit of the working world. However, it seems an opportunity to draw upon the testimony of the older ones to enlighten the younger ones. A 15-year-old will listen more to someone 25 before they listen to you. It seems that the anchor of the class is real life experiences, and this may dovetail with my suggestion some time ago not to get too hung up on history, but draw inferences from our present situation that lead naturally to "What is to be done". The big jump here, I imagine, is that the younger ones don't think much of what can be done, and the older ones are not persuaded that anything can be done. I suspect that stories of struggles that have to some extent paid off would address both shortcomings. A possible handicap is that local economic struggle is today less moving given people's sensitivity to what is happening to the country as a whole. Haines _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list Marxist-Leninist-List@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list
