CB: Repeat: THE COMPUTER REV IS NOT BEING DEVELOPED IN A WAY THAT COMES INTO CONFLICT WITH THE EXISTING BOURGEOIS CONTROL IN RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION. IT IS BEING DEVELOPED IN A WAY THAT IS IN HARMONY WITH AND ENHANCES BOURGEOIS CONTROL IN RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION IN THE USA.
WL: In America - "THE USA," the revolution in the productive forces does not 'COME INTO CONFLICT" with the working class. This is so because the bourgeoisie is devloping the revolution in such a way that it increases its control in realtions of production . . . 'IN THE USA." Fine. Lets proceed from the Marxism of CB. Comrade CB defines relations of production as class relations and under capitalism the primary social classes are bourgeois proletarian and the petty bourgeoisie. These are the three great social class of which Marx speaks. These classes are the relations of production according to CB's conception of the relations of production. A revolution in the productive forces is taking place but somehow it does not come into conflict with the three great social classes in "THE USA." This is so because the revolution in the productive forces "ENHANCES BOURGEOIS CONTROL IN RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION IN THE USA." To prove this UN-provable thesis CB states: CB: The pertinence to the current thread is that the CAD/CAM-containerization-truck-plane-justintime,etc complex created in this particular development of the productive forces is helping to preserve, rather than otherthrow, the bourgeois control of production. It is preserving bourgeois property relations, not leading to their overthrow, up to this point. WL: "The pertinence to the current thread" of discussion of the revolution from electro mechanical production to electro computerized production processes is basically "just in time systems" pioneered by the Japanese. Everything is wrong in how CB presents the issue within a general Marxist framework or rather he approaches the issue of social revolution within a general American anarcho syndicalist framework. Revolution comes about as a result of the development of the means of production. An antagonism - not simply conflict, develops between the new emerging economic relations and the old, static political relations within the superstructure. The conflict between bourgeoisie and proletariat is inherent to the bourgeois mode of production and these two great social classes are born and evolve in unity and conflict with one another. Every step and stage in the development of the industrial system intensifies this conflict. This is an axiom of Marxism. Production cannot NOT, be developed in a way that does not intensify the conflict that is always present between the two great social classes. The dialectic of this conflict is what needs to be examined. Here is the political syndicalist could never understand and it is a basic proposition worthy of examination. No society has ever been overthrown by the social and economic formations within that society or what is the same, by the two great social classes that constitute the basis of the society. The struggle - conflict, between the two great social classes most intimately connected to production, drive a specific qualitative stage of history along quantitatively. This is the essence of the theory dispute, not simply with Comrade CB, but an entire segment of the old communist movement in all the imperial countries. Feudalism - the landed property relations, is a certain qualitative stage of history definable on the basis of the stage of development of the productive forces, the form of the laboring process (Classes), with the property relations within and the primary form of wealth in that society. The struggle between the serf and the nobility drove feudalism - as a quality, through its various quantitative stages, but the serf could not overthrown the nobility as a social class because the serf was a serf in relationship to the nobility. Something else must happen in history. That something else is the emergence of new classes connected to new means of production that evolve as/in antagonism with the existing forms of production, wealth, political rights and historically evolved ethics, culture and politics in/of the superstructure. That something else was the rise of the bourgeoisie and proletariat. This same form of social dialectic applies to our current society, although communist have fought for power for the past 150 years. The dialectic between exploited and exploiter as the social classes underlying a social system is that of the struggle to reform the system in one another favor. Some call this fight for reform - Wages and conditions of labor, the class struggle and it is not. This conflict is over shares of the social production and for expanded political liberties. Dammit, the feudal political order and the agrarian system it stood upon were overthrown by classes outside the primary social classes that made the system what it was - the bourgeoisie and the modern working class. These new classes, bourgeoisie and modern working class, were formed around the new means of production - industrial machinery, as it evolved from the manufacturing process and its various stages. History is littered by the corpse of hundreds of thousand of serfs in conflict with the system of landed property relations by this social system could not be overthrown by the serf. It was not possible. Today we speak of a new social class being created by another qualitatively new means of production. In one way or another, every qualitatively new means of production creates a new class or classes, but we are seeing something more profound. Both the new productive forces in the developmental trajectory and new class are pushed outside the existing economic and social order because their labor power is not needed in the production process. The density of dead labor is crossing and has crossed a threshold on the basis of the revolution in the material power. Here is why are strategic projection as communist cannot isolate the industrial working class as the agent of change and the ingredient that destabilizes the bourgeois mode of production, although all classes have a role to play in the social process. The antagonistic element is the new class of absolutely poverty stricken proletarians world wide and in America. All Comrade CB does - from my perspective, is carry American Exceptionalism to it next level. Comrade Stalin warned against this and his warning was never heed by a large sector of American communists. Advanced robotics are by definition an antagonistic element in the bourgeois mode of production because they do not conform to it as the labor process of value creation. Value is created by human beings not machines. The new qualitative ingredients in the productive forces replace the worker rather than assist him or her and create without the expanding sale of labor power. Our working class understand this is a fragment manner and it is the task of communist to shape their conception of the social process by winning the leaders within the working class to the revolutionary cause of communism. The New American proletarian class: created by the advance of industry are the so-called "throw away workers." This concept in our culture did not exist 30 years ago. There is today a huge sector of temporary workers, part time workers, the under minimum wage workers, the permanently unemployed and the permanently poor and even untenured professors, software workers whose price of labor power has crashed over the past ten years. These fragments of the working class are increasingly forced outsized the system of value production. Mutherfuckers have to work two damn jobs; pensions are threatened and a nigga can't get medical insurance up in this muthefucker - and I do not mean blacks, but an entire segment of society. Then there is the homeless, the destitute at the core of the new American proletariat. Now prior to the introduction of advanced robotics, the unemployed were known as the reserve army of the unemployed to be thrown into the battle for p roduction with the expansion of the market. I remember this moment of history as it played itself out in the 1960s, when a mutherfucker in America could get a decent factory job if they so desired - especially in Detroit. Unemployment today is permanent and the unemployed are ultimately cast outside society and the entire state structure is being redressed to suppress them. ************** CB: Repeat: THE COMPUTER REV IS NOT BEING DEVELOPED IN A WAY THAT COMES INTO CONFLICT WITH THE EXISTING BOURGEOIS CONTROL IN RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION. IT IS BEING DEVELOPED IN A WAY THAT IS IN HARMONY WITH AND ENHANCES BOURGEOIS CONTROL IN RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION IN THE USA. WL: Here is the legacy of anarcho syndicalism as a theory and body politics. Crying crocodile tears over the Delphi workers - who are certainly in trouble, and turning a blind eye to the millions of poverty stricken proletarians is the height of white and national chauvinism beneath the veneer of old fashion syndicalism. Here is the body politics of the CPUSA. And here is why we - who in fact were the highest paid workers, generations industrial proletariat and actual leaders in out trade unions rejected political syndicalism and carried our struggle into the most poverty stricken sector of the proletariat. By doing such we rewrote the legacy of American Marxism and altered its course. As this dialogue continues I will tell you what happened and what we did and how I came to my current understanding of materialist dialectics. This of course will not be without mistakes in formulation, deviations and plain old fashion errors. One thing is certain, it is not the conception of the CPUSA and the previous generation of Marxists but those generated on the basis of Watts 1965 and Detroit 1967. The reformulation was consolidated on the basis of Los Angeles 1992. More to come. _______________________________________________ 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
