Pardon, my misquoting your definition of an epoch.
An epoch in the Marxist standpoint is a historical period of time
distinguished in its geenral framework on the basis of the mode of production,
rather
than by more than one generation. In my estimate this more accurately pays
homage to the spirit of Marx.
Again, I apologize for my misquoting.
Social revolution means the kind of change in the productive forces - tools,
instruments, machines and underlying energy source of the production process,
that compels society to reorganize itself around the new changes. The social
revolution we are currently experiencing is called the transition to the post
industrial society.
Social revolution is two words - society and revolution. People organize
themselves around the production and distribution of the necessities of life.
We
call such social organization society. The type of societies they form and
develop ultimately reflect the level of the development of the productive
forces
or tools, instruments, machines and underlying energy source of the production
process, with the property relations within.
As the tools, instruments, machines and underlying energy source of the
production process are improved - revolutionized, and surpluses are created in
this
human social (society) different groups in society begin to relate
differently to these instruments of production. Changes in the instruments of
production
by definition alter - change, the relations of people in production. Some
owned tools and some did not. People relationship to tools are not limited to
just their ownership rights.
Relations of production or production relations are the laws defining
property and the relationship of people to property in the process of
production.
Relations of production or as it is popularly called by some Marxists, social
relations of production as material relations that are real can be industrial
or manufacturing or landed property relations. Property relations is
important but does not exhaust the meaning of relations of production.
This understanding is one of the decisive intellectual junctures that
separates an era in the development of American Marxism.
The issue I raised and defined in detail concerning levies was not simply
whether or not they were part of the productive forces. Everything is part of
the
productive forces that embodied alienated labor, in the widest sense,
although levies do not produce dry land. Levies produce nothing. Our species
produce
and here produce is treated in a Marxists sense as alienated labor. Nature
does not produce as such, but rather creates.
Levies are part of the infrastructure and the infrastructure is the
underlying framework on which the productive forces, as a distinct stage of
development
of the technological regime is constructed and made operational. For me, the
issue is more accurately describing the actual curve of the social revolution
that is taking place as the leap to post industrial society.
***
WL: The events in New Orleans or rather the hurricane devastating Florida,
Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana cannot begin the social revolution as an
epochal event because social revolution for Marx grows out of the conflict
between
the material productive forces and the existing relations of production,
with the property relations.
^^ CB: However, I am saying levies are productive forces, and, a conflict
between relations of production and productive forces is when a lot of people
get fucked over because the relations of production/property relations cause
the productive forces to be fettered , i.e. prevented from being used to
their full potential so as to prevent people from getting fucked over; and to
the
extent that people get fed up and change the relations of production as a
result of some crisis resulting from this conflict.
WL: Another aspect of fettering we are living and can authenticate is that
the productive forces come into contradiction with themselves - and then pass
over to antagonism and on this basis enter into antagonism with the property
relations rather than the description from the past era of American Marxism
that simply says, the productive forces are in contradiction with the form of
ownership rights of these productive forces.
Or there is no way to explain development of qualitative leaps in production
that set the stage for the dissolution of old property forms (or more actually
a distinct mode of accumulation as a property form) of the relations of
production.
Relations of production at all times mean the relations of people - (human
beings, as a lived, shared and collective experience, defining a technological
regime, as it produces material wealth and value) and how these people are
actually mobilized to use the instruments of production AND their relationship
to
this property in the process of production.
Relations
