In a message dated 3/19/2010 1:00:03 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, cb31...@gmail.com writes: 5). At a certain stage of their development, > 6). the material productive forces of society > 7). come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – > (this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms ) with the property > relations within the framework of which they have operated up until then. > 8). From forms of development of the productive forces > 9). these relations turn into their fetters. > 10). Then begins an epoch of social revolution.. > > (1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) > _http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm_ > > (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm)
^^^^^^^ CB: I don't see the word "antagonism" in what you quote. > Reply Nor is the word contradiction present in the above. At its root the presentation in the glossary under construction, pivots on a different articulation of quaintly, quality and the emergence of a new quality. I did send you rough draft 6.0. I most certainly expect and accept the huge ass kicking I am going to get from taking the lead on this project. It is better to present something that is 30% right and 70% wrong than to surrender the emerging leaders to the bourgeoisie and do nothing. Another comrade is working on "Marx and Engles on The Trade Unions" with all the essential quotes already complied. The need grew out of the work, with retired workers being set into motion and embarking on a path of struggle that confronts the government as the employer. To the point. The question of antagonism required detective work and tracking down the clues. I do absolutely agree antagonism is bound up with irreconcilable. Not so with contradiction, whose resolution is understood as a synthesis . Irreconcilable demotes destruction rather than synthesis. Lenin left a huge clue in his critique of Bukharin, that puzzled me for 20 years. Here is what Lenin wrote concerning B's presentation of resolution of contractions and somehow their dying out under socialism. "Quite wrong. Antagonism and contradiction are by no means the same. Under socialism the first will vanish, the second will remain." In exactly what does the antagonism consist and why does it disappear? . Marx provides another clue in the CM. “The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few." The antagonism is bound up with private property or the property form of class. I am aware a section of Marxism defines class as property. I do not. Class is most certainly a conduit of a property relations but I am clearly not a craft workers of the period of manufacture, before capitalism formed itself as a society mode of production. The material productive forces come into conflict with the existing relations of production. The antagonism is expressed as the new classes created by the qualitative development of the productive forces under the impact of property. Bourgeoisie and proletariat are birthed in irresistibility - antagonism with the system of feudalism and its underlying means of production. With the advance of socialism antagonism disappears in the meaning of hostile classes being generated by qualitative changes in the means of production. The material productive forces will still develop in contradiction with the more than less static relations of production. I forget the exact quote but Marx said it is only in the logic of things that society would seize to develop as political revolution. For me the issue became understanding why it was impossible for the serf to overthrow feudalism. A mode of production cannot be overthrow by the classes that constitute it. Cannot happen. Something else must happen - change in society. In the case of feudalism it was the emergence of new classes existing and evolving as the development of the means of production. The serf existed in contradiction with the nobility. Not antagonism. The bourgeois as a new class existed in antagonism with the nobility. The problem is that anyone can make anything a contradiction, which is some of Rosa L. criticism, but she has lived in her own head to much and not consulted and studied with enough comrades. This of course is a contested issue but no one can prove to me the bourgeois and proletariat existed in contradiction with the nobility and serf. To present the picture as such is to take a mesh of classes with no connection as the actual process of production and make them a unity. At any rate such is the new direction. I believe this piece on the Trade Union is going to be fresh. WL. _______________________________________________ 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
