>>History is the progressive accumulation of productive forces (Engels). What this means is that history is the accumulation of productive forces and what constitutes its progressiveness is its spontaneous qualitative development and expansion. This qualitative development has at its center the revolutionizing and expansion of however the existing technological regime is constituted
^^^^^ CB: Before capitalism, the technological regimes have relatively less development during the course of their epochs. The prior ruling classes were _not_ constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production. Because we are in the bourgeois epoch, we tend to project onto the past the bourgeois obsession with developing the means of production.<< 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: Anyway, history is class struggles, not technological regimes.<< History is not class struggles. The majority of human history is without classes. I presented the material from Engels directly quoting him. Nor do I write or advocate that history is "technological regimes," although the technological regime is always revolutionized or experiencing a qualitative change in its dimensions that begins revolutionizing as a prelude to the coming of social revolution. Many of the formulation from the past generation in our communist history are outdated and historically incorrect. Life itself has simply revealed more of itself. Twenty years ago I stated that history was the history of class struggle and society moving in antagonism and even this description is obsolete for my purposes. Lets examine the propositions we inherited. I began going over to Marxism around 1969, a short time before the formation of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. By 1976 - before our first "Vote Communist Campaign" and as a member of the Communist League, I had complied in my personal library, roughly 80% of all the old CPUSA Theory Journal "Political Affairs" and frequently came across references to the class struggle of the American workers. These articles generally refereed to the struggle for industrial unionism, wages and conditions of labor and this is not the meaning of class struggle. I cannot longer speak in terms I simply do not believe is accurate. History is not class struggle but the story of the progressive accumulation of productive forces and how society moves in class antagonism. The struggle for industrial unionism was not the meaning of class struggle but industrial unionism and the transition from craft unionism. The struggle for wages and over conditions of labor is a struggle to reform the system in favor of the workers or over an "equitable share of the social product" and for political liberties. This is not the meaning of class struggle because it is devoid of the movement of antagonism. History (the progressive accumulation of productive forces and society moving in class antagonism) shows that a class or group or subclass that is caught up in the social order is part of that system of production as productive forces and property relations. The only thing they are going to fight over is the division of the social products and for political liberties. The two basic classes of a social system cannot overthrow the relations of production they constitute. It is not possible. The feudal political order and the agrarian system it stood upon were overthrown by classes outside the system - the bourgeoisie and modern working class. These new classes were outside the system in the meaning that they were the creation and being formed around the new means of production industrial machinery. The struggle between serf and nobility drove the feudal system quantitatively or drove the qualitative stage of history called feudalism along quantitatively or through its various quantitative boundaries of expansion. Here is the key and secret to Marx and his concept of social revolution. Here is the dialectic of reform and revolution of which Lenin writes. Here is why our workers could not overthrow bourgeois property. Here is why the opening of a new era in human history is important. Revolution comes about as a result of the development of the means of production. It is not simply a conflict between the productive forces and the relations of production. The conflict between productive forces and relations of production drives society along quantitatively. For social revolution an antagonism much replace the conflict - contradiction, between productive forces and relations of production. What creates the antagonism is the new emerging productive forces and economic order - relations, and they pass from being in contradiction with the old static political relations within the superstructure to antagonism. The antagonism means the emergence of new classes and class fragments living outside the primary classes of what ever the old system of production was. The injection into the industrial process of new qualitative ingredients of production unleashes the communist revolution. Not industrial socialism but communism. History is not class struggle or the internal collision and collusion of the two basic classes of a social system. History is the progressive development of the productive forces; the qualitative reformulation of the productive forces and the emergence of new classes that constitute the movement of antagonism. What is taking place today is a collision between class fragments outside the system of value production as bourgeois property. A sector of capital - speculative capital, dominates the agenda of the world total social capital and it is in external collision with a mass of proletarians - perhaps 3 billion, outside the basic classes driving the industrial system of production. Here is the class struggle taking shape in front of us. Communist and bourgeois alike are scurrying to win the working class over to their cause in relationship to this huge communist proletariat existing outside the system of modern bourgeois production. We communist say feed them and provide for them and the imperialist bourgeoisie says, "Fuck them all, kill all of them and let God sort it all out." Here is the undercurrent revealed by the hurricane that has the Bush administration spinning on its heels. Waistline _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
