WL: The issue is your definition of "history as class struggle." I reply that history is not class struggle but rather the progressive accumulation of productive forces and society moving in class antagonism. The bourgeoisie role in revolutionizing production is irrelevant to the definition of history you state. Here is what you wrote, and what I directly quoted and the above was my reply. ^^^^ CB: All I said was what Marx and Engels's said about history. To be more precise , the written history of society is a history of class struggles. The discussion on this thread is about class society ,not preclass society. Capitalism is class society.
"The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles. 2. That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)] " http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm #a2 WL: History is the progressive accumulation of productive forces(Engels) CB:Better said, "to discover the various uses of things is the work of history." Marx: "Every useful thing, as iron, paper, &c., may be looked at from the two points of view of quality and quantity. It is an assemblage of many properties, and may therefore be of use in various ways. To discover the various uses of things is the work of history.[3] So also is the establishment of socially-recognized standards of measure for the quantities of these useful objects. The diversity of these measures has its origin partly in the diverse nature of the objects to be measured, partly in convention 3. "Things have an intrinsick vertue" (this is Barbon's special term for value in use) "which in all places have the same vertue; as the loadstone to attract iron" (l.c., p. 6). The property which the magnet possesses of attracting iron, became of use only after by means of that property the polarity of the magnet had been discovered. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#3 _______________________________________________ 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
