>>Same question: what evidence is there of new class forces stepping on to the world stage ?<< Answer: the empirical evidence is the revolution in the forces of production and the changing in the form of the working class. Melvin P. CB; What is the evidence that new class forces and struggles are emerging ? New technologies and forces of production have been born many times in the last 150 years, why weren't there new class struggles and forces emerging then ?
************* MP: To say that "New technologies and (new?) forces of production have been born many times in the last 150 years," which is what you are in fact saying, is simply not true. New forces of production . . . not new technologies, have NOT been born many times in the last 150 years. What was born was the electo mechanical process as the industrial phase of production and it has a life of its own with stages of development and distinct quantitative boundaries. The new forces of production are called new in relationship to the qualitative configuration from which they emerged or in this instance manufacture/heavy manufacture production processes that began evolving under the landed property relations and its political system called feudalism. The industrial phase has not been born many times because it is a historical phase that can only be born once and then spread to reach maturity. This spread of a new phase in the development of the forces of production proceeds as the law of combined and uneven development that characterize all social systems in all period of time. The industrial phase has NOT been born many times . . . BECAUSE IT IS A HISTORICAL PHASE that can only be born once . . . AND then spread - sublate the previously existing social order and its infrastructure basis, and go on to reach maturity or to use up all the room for the development of the productive forces that correspond to that which makes industrial . . . well, industrial. The paragraph you quote speaks of something "born of the revolution in the forces of production" and not simply an abstract new technology without a content, context and environment. Qualitative change or qualitative enhancement in the forces of production is called "the revolution in the forces of production," and at all times such revolution creates new classes and/or new forms of the laboring class period. This is one of the ABC of Marx method. Is in fact a new class struggle emerging? Or is this the same class struggle of say the period of the rise of industrial unionism? If in fact what we are experiencing world wide is not the industrial insurgency, with the fight for industrial unionism as the cutting edge, then we have to describe the form of the struggle of the most poverty stricken sector of the world proletariat in its concreteness. The fight for water rights world wide is a new form of struggle that today stretches from South Africa to Detroit Michigan. It is a striving of the new class, rather than the form of struggle that was the industrial union movement. The evidence of the stirrings of this new class is the sum total of all the emerging struggles of this new era. Now it is a fact that the forms of the class struggle - that is the struggle between those most actively engaging the productive forces or the two basic classes underlying our social system, have changed since the time of Marx and this is the most simply way of explaining the birth of Leninism as a political doctrine. A new class struggle emerging means something different is emerging that represents a departure from the form of the struggle between those most actively engaging the productive forces - the wage struggle and the struggle over conditions of labor. In other words what is being said is that something different is and has emerged in the world theater that represents a departure from something previous. The something previous is the form and content of the struggle that has been between the industrial sector of the working class in its ascendency and fight for industrial unionism as the cutting edge of the working class movement during the first five decades of 20th century America. Then of course the next three decades were governed by the logic of the African American peoples movement as the focal point or center of gravity. The conspicuous absence of any real trace of these old movements is the most damning evidence of something "new" existing to those that care to look. It is of course true that this something new being spoken of is easier to understand on the basic of the dialectic of form and essence. The first great change in the form of the working class movement - its first great recorded transition from one boundary to another, was of course during the time of Marx and it was called the Paris Commune. Another great change in the form of the class struggle emerged before the death of Engels and it was crowned by the birth of the Second International and a material change in the doctrine of combat associated with the name Marx and Engels. Engels spoke of how he and Marx made mistakes laboring under the spell of previous periods of history and their form of the class struggle. More later Melvin P. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
