Part 2 Dialectics of the new class or communist class
I am proud to be part of the communist movement and none of our errors, mistakes and lapses in judgment comes close on the scale of history to the murderous actions of the bourgeoisie and my very own imperial bourgeoisie. The politics of world communism as viewed from my own history as American and the most bourgeois of all bourgeois working classes is interesting. A brief summary is in order. Historically there was an objective communist movement as human history, because of the low means of development of the material power of production or as a social form of organization in correspondence to a primitive state of development of the material power of production. The greatest part of human experiences was carried on within/as some communist form of social organization. Mona Lisa was not a man and communism ain't Marxism, although it is a science current within the struggle for communism in the epoch of capitalism or the epoch of the bourgeoisie. Since the down fall and breakup of primitive communism, the communist movement has been the sum total of people who joined and became part of the social assertion believing in some form of communism. Since such a movement rests on thoughts, feelings, visions, dreams or conviction, the communist movement as groups of people organized for this goal has been subjective or ideological; a material striving of individuals and sectarian groups with a vision. The communist movement as a vision expressed the past as a lived experience of humanity, projected into the future. There however was no class aggregate consciously or unconsciously fighting for communism or driven to spontaneous demand the stated economic and political goals of communism, nor had society advance to a state of infrastructure evolution to transcend commodity exchange and value in the minds of men (men as the initial class aggregate owners of instruments of production). The bourgeoisie is a man born without convictions, casting off the existing convictions he is asked to inherit and then he creates the modern and his convictions as correspondence to what created him as "it" evolves. The "it" is the complexity we call society but "its" primacy or fundamentality is viewed as the material power of production and its various forms of ownership rights. The epoch of the bourgeoisie means he is "it" as the flesh and primary owner. The bourgeoisie and proletariat as a unity emerged welding instruments of production that created new social organization, new forms of wealth, real products as the force of exchange and battle cries of freedom for this new way of life to be what "it" could be. This concrete economic relationship evolved within the framework of feudalism not simply as potential of the new productive forces but as the actual emergence, working and reorganization of people around a new technology regime and system of product exchange. The schematic presentation of the bourgeoisie as a scattered producer, then a middle class in feudal society; as guild owners and sturdy men of means and fortitude that advance lockstep with the development of the material power of production is an excellent explanation . . . after the fact and formation of the bourgeoisie as the social power of privately owned capital. The actual formation of the capitalist class and workers in unity as the new technological regime was more varied and complex but the abstraction as explanation holds true. There will not be, nor can there be, any concrete forms of communist economic and social organization as society within the framework of bourgeois social organization. We are not going to be able to grow a small communism in America and watch it get big and over take bourgeois production. Thus, the communist of my hue never scream bloody murder against reformism because the primary classes of a social system are locked in a life and death battle to reform the system in each others favor/flava. Rather, we speak of the revolutionary struggle for reform because our power as a force of history lies in our continuous and enlarging combination of communist visionaries. "Revolutionary combination due to association." The bourgeoisie and proletariat as a unity went to work everyday as bourgeoisie and proletariat within the crumbling environment of feudal society. There was an objective bourgeois historical movement within the environment of the destruction of feudal society as concrete material relations of (re)production, exchange, and distribution. There were also always people who believed in communism because there were always people who believed in communism because that is where we come from. Communism lives in our hearts and had to be trained out of us. Since there has been no "objective" economic movement of the mass of people, as rising class aggregates, for communism during the rising and ascending epoch of the bourgeoisie, we faced a very real contradiction between our convictions or vision and dream states, and the developing industrial logic of society blocking a spontaneous path to communism. The serf and Nobility does not and cannot aspire to abolish themselves from history, not can the bourgeoisie and proletariat - as they are connected to or exists in correspondence to a given state of development of the material power of production. The proletariat as an industrial class must and did strive to improve its conditions of labor, not abolish the labor condition because society had not advance to a point when such a vision can grip the mass of humanity. The ascendancy of the industrial system itself blocked us, so we invented solutions to the problems at hand that would lead us down the shortest root to a society with the material basis - productive power, of our dream society. And we could not solve this contradiction on the basis of a correct program of action or ideological purity of thought because it is an evolutionary issue that has to be worked through. I am saying that it is not possible to leap - make the transition, to communism on the basis of the industrial infrastructure and life itself solved for us this problem that could not be solved by practical politics. It is not a question of "the leap to communism" not occurring as a sort of proof of its impossibility. Nor is it a question of the workers in the imperial centers not achieving state power and therefore it could not happen. As an abstraction, "anything" could have happened. However, my personal and intimate location in the "class struggle" colors my vision and understanding. There never existed in my lifetime a nationwide revolutionary crisis of significant proportions that could allow the struggle of a sector of the working class to spill over and outside the bounds of bourgeoisie legality; paralyzing and polarizing the state in such a manner that a group of insurrectionaries from the left and communist sector could have taken power. Yet, we had to try and solve complicated question like the role of money as a fiat technology instrument and in relationship to bourgeois society as a store of value, in our trading with world capital. The fate and faith of the agricultural producer kicked us in the pants, because he could not and would not alienate his products except on the basis of exchange for industrial goods. Then it got worse as the population within our sphere of state authority were able to measure their daily lives - not on the basis of the less developed countries, but the more advance bourgeois states. "Hey, brother I love our socialism and Fidel but what about those new jeans and shoes I want to get for my girlfriend to be?" "Young Comrade, she does not want that kind of stuff because of her commitment to socialism. She'll become your girl friend anyway." "Yea . . . I know, but watch her put on those pants." There is no such thing as bourgeois pants or bourgeois denim. The world is not ours for the thinking. The communist movement for the past 150 has been a movement that declared itself for communism, and has led the militant struggle for reform, even when we communists managed to take political authority in various countries. What was being reformed was the industrial system as two currents of communism. Within socialism the property form was changed - not abolished but reformed. Within bourgeois society the death battle was waged/raged to expand political liberties and the workers share of the social products. There has been objective revolutionary movements and objective reform movements, but there has never, in modern times, been an objective communist movement - until now! The people who want communism - bless their/my hearts, is not the meaning of "movement" or social movement. The Mormons are not a social movement or movement in the meaning of the context of Marx method. Social movement means spontaneous re/grouping (assertion) of people - movement, on the basis of changes in the means of production and as correspondence to a given and new state of development o the technological regime. The point is that the spontaneous mass movement of the working class and peasants has not and could not move along any concrete economic or social rail of communism. The bourgeoisie and workers moved along a concrete economic and social rail of bourgeois production relations within the womb of feudalism. The destruction of primitive communism was not possible until new means of production made private property possible. Just because we want something to happen does not mean it can and when we invent ideological rationales to explain how something can happen that can't, we run into walls of reality and billions of individual wills as the historical moment. In somewhat the same way - with important differences, the destruction of capitalist private property as the value and commodity form last final form is not possible without new means of production that makes capitalist property impossible to maintain. This means that the value and commodity form themselves has to be rendered increasingly inoperable by a radical change in the composition of capital, that destroys the industrial form of the labor process or push value increasing in the direction of zero. Not simply a quantitative expansion of industrial cooperation but the destruction of industrial cooperation in favor of a qualitatively different and higher interactive process of production. Peace Waistline _______________________________________________ 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
