>The absolute limit to the capitalist development
>of the productive forces of society lies
>in this negation of the complete domination of
>the very powers of social labor. Therefore, the
>ultimate capitalist barrier to the development
>of productive forces lies in the mutilation
>imposed on free consciousness by its
>determination as the form of existence of alienated
>consciousness. The overcoming of this barrier
>necessarily entails the annihilation of private
>labor as the way of organizing social labor,
>thus giving birth to the general conscious
>organization of the latter.
>This step forward in the development of
>productive forces thus takes a specific
>material concrete form. Namely, it takes the
>form of a social revolution in which the material
>subject of this development, i.e., the working
>class, does not limit itself to the annihilation of
>the bourgeoisie by transforming capital into an
>immediately social property. It annihilates
>capitalism itself, and, by doing so, annihilates
>the general political representative of capital,
>i.e., the state. Upon which the working class
>reaches its own end. The new general social
>relation takes shape in the consciousness and
>will by means of which the laborer directly
>determines him/herself as an individual organ of
>social labor. Freedom is no longer about not
>being subject to the personal domination by
>another at the expense of submitting to
>domination by the social powers that belong to
>the product of ones own labor. Now, freedom
>consists in not submitting to the personal
>domination of another, because one holds complete
>sway over the social powers of ones own labor.
>It has developed as the complete objective
>consciousness concerning ones own individuality
>as the bearer of productive social powers.
>Therefore, it is about the general conscious
>organization of the process of producing social
>life. Free consciousness, i.e., free
>individuality, has become the general social relation.14
The logic is clear as a purely logical schema,
but its relation to any empirical reality now or
in the projectible future is chimerical.
>The historically specific revolutionary powers
>of the working class to overcome the
>capitalist mode of production do not arise from
>the realization of right, justice, or
>equality as opposed to capitalist unnatural
>injustice and exploitation;15 nor from the
>realization of the dialectics of ethicity;16 nor . . .
This was stated in the other paper. However,
without the subjective will to what the working
class calls right, justice, and equality,
socialism/communism will never come about.
>Each of these reasons presupposes that
>working-class consciousness imposes itself -on
>its own account- upon the actual determination
>of the social being of the working class as an
>attribute of capital. Therefore, they are all
>idealistic inversions to which the materialistic point
>of view must be opposed. The capitalist mode of
>production is nothing but the form in which
>society develops its material productive forces
>by means of the accelerated socialization of
>free labor i.e., by means of the generation and
>advance of the conscious organization of
>social labor performed by the direct producers
>themselves- by aiming for the multiplication of
>that socialization as the immediate object of
>social production and consumption. Therefore,
>this form of the organization of social
>production takes action directly aimed at reproducing
>the same mode of organization in a qualitatively
>and quantitatively expanded scale. Hence, its
>specific need to revolutionize the very
>materiality of the labor process, transforming it in the
>exercise of human faculties to submit natural
>forces to their conscious control exerted as a
>direct social power. Yet, for that reason too,
>the direct producers are presented with the
>product of their own social labor as an alien
>power that dominates them; i.e., as the very
>denial of their conscious organization of social
>labor, which is to say, as capital. Therefore,
>the capitalist mode of production constantly
>revolutionizes the materiality of the labor process
>in a way that entails the necessary overcoming
>of its own reproduction. Only because it is
>completely determined as an attribute of its own
>alienated material product, and as it cognizes
>itself completely in this determination as the
>necessary form of the advance in the conscious
>socialization of labor, the revolutionary action
>of the working class is today the complete
>expression of liberating action.26
Right, but the revolutionary action of the
working class today does not exist, nor will the
correct consciousness of the workers' condition ever come about.
>The need inherent within the capitalist mode of
>production to develop itself towards its
>own overcoming into the general conscious
>organization of social production immediately
>presents us with the process of the development
>of consciousness. A consciousness able to
>organize the totality of the process of social
>production must have attained the power inherent
>in the fullness of objective knowledge, that is,
>it needs to be a completely free consciousness.
>Nevertheless, it can not reach this condition as
>an offspring of the previous overcoming of the
>capitalist mode of production. On the contrary,
>this overcoming is the offspring of the
>complete development of free consciousness.
>Therefore, complete free consciousness must
>necessarily be the most genuine product of the
>capitalist mode of production itself. More
>concretely yet, it must needs be the product of
>the social subject that the capitalist mode of
>production objectively determines as the bearer
>of its own overcoming, resulting from the
>same process in which the subject undertakes
>this overcoming. In a nutshell, the
>consciousness in question can only be developed
>as the product of the political action of the
>working class in the process of overcoming the
>capitalist mode of production. This action
>takes, as its necessary concrete form, the
>advance in the socialization of private labor by
>means of the centralization of capital as an
>alienated social property, which is to say, as
>property of the state. The consciousness of the
>working class able to overcome the capitalist
>mode of production can only be developed as a concrete necessary moment of the
>aforementioned process of capital centralization.
This consciousness does not exist anywhere, nor
do there seem to be prospects for it to come into being.
>Yet, the consciousness of the working class is
>determined as an attribute of capital
>and, therefore, as a form of alienated
>consciousness. Above all, the free consciousness of the
>working class is the necessary concrete form of
>its alienated consciousness. Hence, it is the
>negation of free consciousness under the
>appearance of being a free consciousness. Therefore,
>the consciousness that bears the overcoming of
>the capitalist mode of production cannot be
>developed as the abstract affirmation of the
>free consciousness of the working class. It can
>only be developed as the free consciousness of
>the working class that determines itself as an
>alienated consciousness advancing in the denial
>of its own alienation. That is, as a
>consciousness whose freedom resides in
>determining itself as the negation of the negation of
>free consciousness.
OK, and this consciousness does not now exist nor
will it ever before intelligent life on this
planet is extinguished. Maybe people in some
other solar system will have better luck.
>The production of the scientific consciousness
>of the working class concerning its own
>historical potential is not an abstract
>scientific matter. It is a specific moment necessary to the
>political action of the working class in the class struggle.
This political action is not happening.
>As long as it remains the prisoner of
>the self-same scientific method that operates as
>the objective consciousness capable of
>producing relative surplus value while seeing
>itself in a non-objective light, namely, of logical
>representation, the scientific consciousness of
>the working class is unable to discover that, in
>the capitalist mode of production, freedom is
>but the concrete form of alienation.
It's a rather moot point, as the working class
has no interest in scientific method,
representation, logic, or the conceptual
reproduction of the concrete beyond
appearance. And the intelligentsia is little better, sometimes worse.
>Therefore, it
>weakens itself within its own historical powers,
>for it sees itself as an abstractly-free
>consciousness. Nevertheless, as the very process
>of capital accumulation imposes the
>development of direct control over the social
>character of labor, it follows that the conscious
>action of the working class needs to move
>towards overcoming this appearance. It needs to
>leave behind the exteriority of logical
>representation in order to rule itself by means of the
>reproduction of the concrete in thought, i.e.,
>by means of dialectical cognition.
This is not going to happen.
>The national fragmentation of working class
>productive subjectivity as a hindrance to
>the development of the productive forces of society
This fragmentation will not be overcome, and thus
human life on earth will be extinguished.
This section heading introduces an analysis of
the contradictions embedded in the national organization of world capitalism.
Aside from the peculiarities about logic and
representation, this paper is much
clearer. However, aside from combatting the
illusions of other Marxist intellectuals, I see
here basically the same schematism I see in the
authors criticized. Insofar as these two papers
are comprehensible, they seem to be convoluted
ways of making basic generalizations. When one
matches them to the state of the world as we know
it and as it can reasonably be projected to be,
the impossibility of communism becomes
manifest. Neither the consciousness nor the
action corresponding to the class consciousness
mandated here is anywhere present. It's not
present in the masses worldwide; it's not present
in the intelligentsia, nor in the specifically
Marxist intelligentsia, nor among
"activists". There are no prospects whatsoever
for overcoming fragmentation in spite of the
necessity of doing so. Meranwhile, the polar
caps are melting and the polar bears are having a shit fit.
At 01:40 AM 9/29/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>I would like to present to the List my papers for the Congress:
>
>A) The historical determination of the capitalist mode of production
>and of the working class as the revolutionary subject, vis à vis the
>current fragmentation of the workers productive subjectivity
>
>Abstract:
>Capitalism is the development of human subjectivity attained by
>transforming the powers of free individual labor into those of social
>labor consciously organized by the collective laborer who privately
>performs it. The working class faces its own product, the ability to
>organize production scientifically, as an alienated power. With its
>free consciousness embodying alienation, the working class takes
>the contradiction inherent in the socialization of private labor
>beyond its limits, until revolutionarily organizing labor as a direct
>social power. Any fragmentation within the universality of the
>working class reasserts the private character of labor, thus
>procrastinating the supersession of capitalism.
>
>Link:
>http://www.cicpint.org/cicp/congreso%20marx%20int/Juan%20Inigo
>_Presentation%20english.pdf
>
>
>B) Scientific method: logical representation vis à vis dialectical
>reproduction (i.e., the consciousness dominated by alienation for
>believing itself an abstractly free one vis à vis the consciousness
>that advances in its freedom by being aware of its alienation)
>
>Abstract:
>Even Marxists conceive logical representation as the natural form
>of scientific method. According to it, the interpretation of reality
>constitutes the absolute limit of objective knowledge. Freedom thus
>seems to consist in free interpretation. Nevertheless freedom is not
>a natural determination but a social relation inherent in the
>capitalist mode of production. Within this determination, free
>consciousness is the form taken by the consciousness alienated
>in capital. Opposed to logical representation, from Marx on,
>dialectical cognition becomes the form of consciousness of the
>working class able to incarnate the revolutionary powers with which
>capital determines the latter. It does so for being the form of
>alienated consciousness that is aware of its own alienation and
>rules it towards its supersession.
>
>Link:
>http://www.cicpint.org/cicp/congreso%20marx%20int/Juan%20Inigo
>_Presentation%20english_etudes%20marxistes.pdf
>
>Saludos
>
>Juan Inigo
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
>
>
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