The degree of technological advancement in the middle ages is also
underestimated. These are the people who built those cathedrals, invented
three-field
crop rotation, and a good many technological advances. Years ago I read a
book by Lynn White on medieval technology. True, technological development took
off sharply with the Industrial revolution, but that's at least 200 years after
capitalism was firmly rooted in British soil (among other places). As Brenner
has argued, the dividing line between feudalism and capitalism is property
relations -- the productive relations -- not technology and the productive
forces.
CB: Yes, not only the cathedrals, but the castles, maybe? I wonder about
the masonic secret societies under the bourgeoisie as the descendents of some
type of really functional stone masonic worker organizations from that
period.
Are there rational kernels or crumbs in alchemy ?
*
WL: I beg to differ with the entire formulation. To say the dividing line
between feudalism and capitalism is property relations is self evident and
circular in as much as feudalism means one form of property and capitalism
means
another form of property.
Capitalism as such is a political term that according to Engels is short
speak for commodity production on the basis of the bourgeois mode of
production.
From the standpoint of the development of commodity production and its gaining
universality in human history as the value producing system, what divides the
landed property relations from bourgeois property is not reducible to what
distinguishes the landed property relations from bourgeois property relations.
Political Feudalism is not the predominance of the value producing system or
rather economic feudalism is a system of landed property relations with
production contained within a pre-industrial form of productive relations and
pre-industrial productive forces. Feudalism is an agrarian society. The
transition
from agrarian society to industrial society is often stated in short speak as
from feudalism to capitalism, but this is inaccurate for my purposes, which
includes explaining or discussing Soviet industrial society.
In my opinion several things broke up the system of landed property and its
political superstructure called feudalism or the political system of fief's.
What divides feudalism from capitalism is bound up with the degree of
development of commodity production or what is the same the role of exchange or
the
domination of exchange value as the relations of production. What facilitated
the emergence and growth of exchange was the transition in the form of wealth
from land as primary to gold or what Engels call movable property.
The industrial revolution basically began as a result of Europeans landing in
the Americas in search of El Dorado - gold. Basically means its beginnings
in the transition of the manufacturing process on the basis of ship building
That's what really broke up feudalism and lead to heavy manufacture, as opposed
to a vision of capitalism emerging from the English countryside (I do not
accuse you of this but merely stating a long held observation).
Ship building, iron and steel industries, navigation sciences and the
enormously profitable slave trade all developed as means to exploit the riches
of the
Americas. During was during the final eras of political feudalism and the
landed property relations. For a moment lets totally forget about the black
slaves as such and visualize the incredible human effort necessary to build
enough
ships to transport say a million people from Africa to the Americas. Someone
had to make the nails and say a hundred thousand ankle and neck chains. The
canvas used on ships and water barrels and so on.
The people doing this very critical laboring were incrementally torn out of
the old social relations of production of agrarian society on the basis of
first the town folks and the front of this process embraces what Marx calls the
primitive (initial) accumulation of capital as a world transforming force.
I am aware that an honorable section of Marxists define property relations
apart from the actual facts and factors of production that serves as the basis
of the daily life activity of people. I do view classes as being formed not on
the basis of the form of property but changes in the material factors of
production as primarily and fundamental at all times.
As far as Masonic societies and their history goes you might seek out the
book The Hiram Key. Hiram was the Master builder of King Solomon's Temple
and
his foul murder has been ritualized as a rite of passage into modern Masonry.
If you have friends who belong to the Masons they could perhaps give you an
insight into their rituals. There are very many industrial workers that are
Masons in Detroit and their recruitment is still more secret than that of the
communists. Prince
