Waistline2 >>Also, to have a new working class would imply a new capitalist class.<< MP: This is true which is why financial industrial capital as a new form of class arose from industrial capital. Today's speculative capitalist as the dominator of the total world social capital or he who writes the agenda for capital, is most certainly new.
^^^^^ CB: Lenin wrote on the emergence of finance capital. So, it's not entirely new. ****** CB: And all through the different technical developments of capitalism there remains a capitalist class and a working class, in a capitalist/wagelabor relation. MP: The "technical development of capitalism" has no meaning for me in general. ^^^^^^ CB: We have discussed before, here and on the A-list, the specifics of technological development unders capitalism. ^^^^^ The technical development in the mode of production means the technical development of the industrial system as distinct from the mode of appropriation that is capitalist. Now, it is true that the revolution in technology alters the form but not the content of appropriation and sinks every larger sections of the working class into the most poverty stricken sector of the proletatiat world wide. CB: Is this you or Marx? MP: God gave us gray matter to think things out and I am not Marx. He died many years ago. Marx is not God either. It is the proletariat that is really revolutionary and not the general category called working class. ^^^^^ CB: What's the difference between the proletariat and the working class. On Marx, it is not an issue of his being God, but rather a widely respected human thinker, who developed that main categories in what you are saying - "proletariat" , etc. I just want to be clear where you are following Marx and where you are doing your own thinking. ***** CB: In the capitalist mode of production , Marx's position that the working class is the only potentially revolutionary class is still valid. That the working class is the only potentially revolutionary class does not mean at all that a working class at any given time or place is _actually_ revolutionary. Marx's position is not that the working class is automatically actually revolutionary, but that it is the "job" of Marxist partisans of the working class to bring working class and socialist and revolutionary conscious to actuate that revolutionary potential. Right now we partisans are not having much success in the U.S. MP: I have a different reading of Marx and presented the material. He writes that the proletariat is really revolutionary ratter than the working class. ^^^^^^ CB: Where is that ? ^^^^^^ Class consciousness means exactly what? ^^^^^^ CB; What people think about all these issues, and their place in them . ^^^^^^ "to bring working class and socialist and revolutionary conscious to actuate that revolutionary potential" means exactly what? ^^^ CB: If people don't think a certain way about these issues the revolutionary potential of the working class won't be actuated in practice. ^^^^^ The reason we are not having much success is because most communist believe that the working class is revolutionary and this is not true at all and thus they spend their energy on trying to achieve the impossible. The fight is to articulate the demands of various sectors of the working class from the standpoint of the most poverty stricken sector of the proletariat. It is the proletariat - not the working class, that is really revolutionary. Melvin P. ^^^^^^ CB: What is the differenct between the proletariat and the working class ? "to articulate the demands of various sectors of the working class from the standpoint of the most poverty stricken sector of the proletariat." What would be the interest of the most poverty stricken sector of the proletariat in the demands of the various sectors of the working class ? _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
