Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] the theory of the Communists may be summed upinthe singl...
V2: Right, but he reiterated these very same ideas in the preface of Contribution to Critique of Political Economy in 1859. CB: Very same ? I'll have to read it again. Do you agree they are contradicted by the formulaions in the Communist Manifesto ? WL: Marx is fairly clear about his meaning in the Communist Manifesto and that is no contradiction between the theoretical concepts in the Manifesto and with his Preface. If there is then simply show it. Below is from the Communist Manifesto. (The sentences are numbered for clarity). 1). We see then: 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 means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. 3). They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. 4). 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. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm You of course could enlighten us - me, on the contradiction between Marx theory concept in his Preface and the theory concept of the Communist Manifest. Now, such a contradiction would mean how Marx is in conflict with himself, rather than bourgeois philosophy and bourgeois political economy, and the unity and strife within this theory concept, rather than his form of exposition would be the field of discussion. Marx form of exposition - according to him, is much different than his method of inquiry. Fettering is not so much a metaphor - for me, but a description of resistance one qualitative configuration of technology faces as it is added to an existing infrastructure tying together production. Anyone who has worked for several decades in an industrial facility intuitively understands that one cannot simply graft a computer onto an existing electromechanical process, without at the same time changing other physical aspects of the process itself. To burst asunder is a description of antagonistic development rather than development where each stage in the growth of the process expresses its partial resolution or non - antagonistic development. Everything in history is human beings but man does not make his history as he chooses. Or rather our choices are conditioned by factors - environment, that surround us and provides a context for the will of the individual as collective. There is also the environment within us as species and how we interactive with the environment outside us, but that is not the topic. What is burst asunder is the physical and material properties of objectified forms of labor or alienated labor, whose proprieties come into conflict in such a way that an existing form of labor requires partial destruction as the form of sublating. Then we are talking about this process impact upon not only how society is organized as a labor form but its property relations or ownership rights in the process of production. ** CB: The forces of production that are not human can't act as subjects. The non-human forces of production do not develop themselves. The instruments of production can't burst asunder the relations between people. It has to be people who invent new instrument of production doing the bursting asunder. You've got to pick a group of people to be the subjects of any bursting asunder. The groups of people who would be doing the bursting asunder would be who, as far as you are concerned ? WL: The dialectic is not that the instruments of production . . . burst asunder the relations between people. First of all Marx never talks about abstract people or abstract instruments or abstract relations. What Marx writes is clear: At a certain stage in the development of . . . means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which . . . society produced and exchanged, . . . became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. WIthout question our gray matter - people, are the revolutionary and insurrectionary ingredient in history, but this explains nothing. You seem to consistently confuse the insurrectionary movement of political groups (Lenin's Bolsheviks for instance) expressing social groups founded on and embodying class relations with the revolutionary changes in the means of production. There is also always correspondence between a given state of development of the productive forces and how people are organized or grouped together to use this given state of production.
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] the theory of the Communists may be summed upinthe singl...
V: Marx's most negative discourse on private property are found in his earlier works (most unpublished until recent times). The Manifesto itself is hardly an analysis but, rather, an emotional a call for action at the very heights of the Europe-wide rebellions of 1848. Finally, the fact that Plekhanov and Labriola as well as Lenin all regarded the forces of production as the prerequisites of social organization of production must be worth some consideration in your argument. ** WL: Revolution comes about as a result of the development of the means of production. An antagonism develops between the new emerging economic relations and the old, static political relations within the superstructure. This is the ABC of Marxism and the Holy Grail so to speak. How this takes place and play itself out in our daily lives is my approach to this current discussion. Yet, the general theory cannot be ignored. No society has been overthrown by the primary social or economic formation within the system, that makes a given social system what it is. This is because the unity of the primary class of a social system, cannot on the basis of their unity and strife, detach from one another, or magically break their connect as social production, and then appear in external collision to one another and then overthrow one of its antithetical components and stand along as the basis of a new social system. That is to say one side of the contradiction that is the basis classes of a social system doesn't become dominate and then is overthrown by the other side and then the other side begins a new path of development. The two primary class of a social system cannot overthrow the system of which they constitute. It simply cannot happen. The serf and Nobility did not, could not and did not desire to overthrow the feudal system and if some enlightened elements sought to do so, they could not. That is to say the serf did not desire to overthrow landed property or agricultural relations of which it constituted. The struggle for rights or political liberties and against the harshness of the Nobility could not magically leap to a struggle against the agrarian system on which the feudal system was founded. Something else has to develop within the womb of the society - new classes and new social forces expressing a new development in the means of production, to begin the decay of the existing system. Revolution comes about as a result of the development of the means of production. The struggle between those intimately connected to the means of production - in the feudal period this was between the serfs and the nobility - drove a qualitative stage of history (the feudal period) along its quantitative rails of development. The struggle between the serf and nobility did not end or for that matter begin the qualitative stage of history called feudalism. In other words, I think that Marx is absolutely correct that the struggle between the exploited and the exploiters has driven history through its various quantitative stages of development. Yet, during every historical period, in one way or another, a certain stage of development occurs, where changes in the means of production call forth new classes and new economic relations external to the life of the primary classes of the existing social system and a period of social revolution unfolds. The problem for Marxism in America is bound up with our own specific history and the formation of our industrial working class in the North. The general theory problem for world Marxism is rooted in the Russia Revolution and the formation of the Third International during the rising curve or ascendency of the industrial system. In America and much of the industrialized countries, what has generally passed for Marxism is a form of political syndicalism or what is nothing more than the ideology of workerism. The working class as a primary class at the basis of the industrial system and the bourgeois mode of production could not and did not overthrow the social system of which it constitutes because it could not even if it wanted to. The struggle between worker and capitalist drove this qualitative stage of history along quantitatively. That is to say the workers fight has been for expanded political liberties and more a larger share of the social products. Something else has to develop within the womb of the existing industrial society - new classes and new social forces expressing a new development in the means of production, to begin the decay of the existing system and make it possible to sublate - overthrow, its mode of production. Nevertheless communist and Marxist have stepped forward at every stage in the growth of the industrial system to engage the bourgeoisie in political contest as society passed from the agrarian system to the industrial system. Here is the dialectic we can no longer ignore. Here is the
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] the theory of the Communists proletarian and bourgeoisie
No society has been overthrown by the primary social or economic formation within the system, that makes a given social system what it is. This is because the unity of the primary class of a social system, cannot on the basis of their unity and strife, detach from one another, or magically break their connect as social production, and then appear in external collision to one another and then overthrow one of its antithetical components and stand along as the basis of a new social system. I wrote this well aware that this proposition is very different from the theory concept of revolution of the period of the Third International and the body of politics flowing through and around the various theories of the CPUSA in our history. It is a misconception to see in the Russian Revolution (October 1917) the overthrow of the system of feudalism by the serf and the bourgeoisie, as stated earlier by Comrade CB. It is true that over 100 million serfs, semi-serfs and slaves in what today we call the Moslem areas, were in rebellion but the rebellion has a material context and what happened was what ever textbook in the world calls the industrial revolution or the rise and ascendency of the bourgeois mode of production. The bourgeois mode of production is founded on the unity of bourgeoisie and proletariat. Hence it is inaccurate to state that the serf and bourgeoisie overthrow feudal Russian society. Further, the insurrection was carried out of Lenin and his Bolsheviks and they were communists. The fedual world order is overthrown on the basis of the advance of the productive forces and the two new classes created by the new productive forces - bourgeoisie and proletarians. The bourgeoisie is connected - interactive, with the proletariat, the proletariat interactive with the bourgeoisie as the unity at the base of the bourgeois mode of production, which since Marx has been called the capitalist system of production. The mutual connectedness (interactivity) and mutal conditioning of these two aspects of our system of production - bourgeoisie and proletatiat, arise on the basis of changes in the mode of production or the technological revolution that calls forth new instruments, means and energy source by which labor is put to work. The process of production reveals and is the connection between bourgeoisie and proletariat as first owner/worker (Bourgeoisie) and nonowner/worker (proletariat). Within this contradictory unity is the extreme that is pure bourgeoisie and pure worker but also all kinds of variations with partial owners, partial workers, non workers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. The process of production in bourgeois society is simultaneously an aggregation of bourgeois production/property relations (for example the relations between bourgeoisie as owners and workers as nonowners) AND an aggregation of productive forces (The labor of the workers as species human connected to and in correspondence to a given state of development of the means of production and its use). Development from manufacture - meaning hand in the strict sense, to machine production is not only a change of productive forces, a qualitative change in tools and motive power or energy source, but a development and spread of new production relations, because the way that people are connected with one another in the process of production undergoes change. The union of the labor of the workers and/with the means of production is simultaneously a connection - interactivity, of productive forces and a connection of people in the process of production, which together make up the meaning of the word relations. Relations also means the relations between the workers in the process of production and not simply their relationship with property as owners and non owners or as it has always been called, the haves and have nots. The division of labor in manufacture - which Marx and Engels talk about in detail, is a relation in/as/of production and emerges as a productive force because we are always talking about human beings and the artifacts they build outside their bodies. That is things, or objectified labor or alienated labor, Production relations, as described above, are the laws defining property and the relationship of people to property in the process of production. What is described above is the appearance form of the mutual penetrations of opposites as bourgeoisie and proletariat at the basis of a social system of production. On the basis of this mutual penetration of opposites, that is bourgeoisie and proletariat in/as the process of production, the process of ever intensifying contradictions between bourgeoisie and proletariat develops. This has been the most general and standard Marxist description of the bourgeois system of production. What this general description lacks is a concrete analysis of this movement as antagonism. Stated another way,
[Marxism-Thaxis] HISTORICAL TENDENCY OF CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: HISTORICAL TENDENCY OF CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION What does the primitive accumulation of capital, i.e., its historical genesis, resolve itself into? In so far as it is not immediate transformation of slaves and serfs into wage-laborers, and therefore a mere change of form, it only means the expropriation of the immediate producers, i.e., the dissolution of private property based on the labor of its owner. Private property, as the antithesis to social, collective property, exists only where the means of labor and the external conditions of labor belong to private individuals. But according as these private individuals are laborers or not laborers, private property has a different character. The numberless shades, that it at first sight presents, correspond to the intermediate stages lying between these two extremes. The private property of the laborer in his means of production is the foundation of petty industry, whether agricultural, manufacturing, or both; petty industry, again, is an essential condition for the development of social production and of the free individuality of the laborer himself. Of course, this petty mode of production exists also under slavery, serfdom, and other states of dependence. But it flourishes, it lets loose its whole energy, it attains its adequate classical form, only where the laborer is the private owner of his own means of labor set in action by himself: the peasant of the land which he cultivates, the artisan of the tool which he handles as a virtuoso. This mode of production pre-supposes parcelling of the soil and scattering of the other means of production. As it excludes the concentration of these means of production, so also it excludes co-operation, division of labor within each separate process of production, the control over, and the productive application of the forces of Nature by society, and the free development of the social productive powers. It is compatible only with a system of production, and a society, moving within narrow and more or less primitive bounds. To perpetuate it would be, as Pecqueur rightly says, to decree universal mediocrity. At a certain stage of development, it brings forth the material agencies for its own dissolution. From that moment new forces and new passions spring up in the bosom of society; but the old social organization fetters them and keeps them down. It must be annihilated; it is annihilated. Its annihilation, the transformation of the individualized and scattered means of production into socially concentrated ones, of the pigmy property of the many into the huge property of the few, the expropriation of the great mass of the people from the soil, from the means of subsistence, and from the means of labor, this fearful and painful expropriation of the mass of the people forms the prelude to the history of capital. It comprises a series of forcible methods, of which we have passed in review only those that have been epoch-making as methods of the primitive accumulation of capital. The expropriation of the immediate producers was accomplished with merciless Vandalism, and under the stimulus of passions the most infamous, the most sordid, the pettiest, the most meanly odious. Self-earned private property, that is based, so to say, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent laboring-individual with the conditions of his labor, is supplanted by capitalistic private property, which rests on exploitation of the nominally free labor of others, i.e., on wage-labor. [1] http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm#n1 As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the laborers are turned into proletarians, their means of labor into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialization of labor and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the laborer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many laborers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labor-process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labor into instruments of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world-market, and
[Marxism-Thaxis] The expropriators are expropriated
Here's the fettering and burst asunder metaphor in its public , publication form. CB ^ The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it.Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. ___ 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
