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******* >>“Do you mean a 'social' revolution in that it's "Socialist" or a revolution that simply overturns the current political state from feudalistic warlord and colonial dismemberment to a modern democratic one?” << Comment None of the above. The social revolution means revolution in the material power of productive forces, as this compels a qualitative reorganization of society. The industrial revolution was such, ushering in the transition from agrarian society - feudalism, to industrial society. The industrial revolution proceeded as a curve of development throughout the world. In 1920, the back of the curve of this social revolution, were all the countries on earth, existing in and or leaving feudalism. In this sense, Russia was at the back of the curve. Not the front as Comrade David feels. It is not simply a ratio of peasants to industrial workers, but the revolutionary transition from one mode of production to another. Two intersecting event drove the transition from agrarian society to industrial society: changes in the form of wealth from land to gold or what Engles calls movable property and revolution in the productive forces or bluntly, the steam engine. Countries leaving feudalism defines back of the curve of the industrial revolution. America, England, Germany and France for instance were at the front of the curve, not withstanding their differences and variations. Roughly what some call combined and uneven development, I suppose. At the front of the curve, the social revolution taking place was the passing from successive boundaries of industrial revolution, unhampered by feudal economic and social relations. America is the purest expression of this process. In 1920’s America the new boundary being passed through is generally called Fordism. In the struggle for industrial trade unionism dominated the political agenda of the workers. This quantitative boundary gave way to another boundary in the mid 1950’s, registered as a change in the ratio of white collar to blue-collar workers, and the peaking of the industrial trade union movement. The new juncture or boundary was registered as the Toyota production system. In the late 1970s, the increasing perfection and mass production of the semi-conductor inaugurated the beginning of a transition - qualitative leap in the material power of the productive forces. This signals social revolution. The application of a new technological regime to the existing production process halted further quantitative expansion - at the front of the curve, on the old electro-mechanical basis. Corresponding to the emergence of this new technological regime were changes in finance capital, registered as the emergence of a new non-banking financial architecture, more than less outside the production of surplus value, or what I understand to be change in the form of wealth. From land to gold or movable property to super symbolic. In addition changes in the form of the working class takes place expressed as so-called de industrialization or the emergence of a dispossessed proletariat. I understand the word proletariat to be a property designation. Change in the form of the proletariat - from industrial to post industrial, does not change the property tag that is called “proletariat.” The overthrow of capital is necessary to abolish the proletariat as proletariat. A change in the productive forces changes the form of the working class. In a period of social revolution, the political form of the state is fought out. The fight emerging in America today is not simply a form of class collusion and collision wherein the workers fight for a greater share of the social products as reform of the system. One cannot change a reform fight into a revolutionary struggle for power on the basis of slogans and correct program. II. We are fighting today to win the workers over to the goal of a political form of the state that reorganizes society based on a system of sovereign birth credits or economic communism. This was not the case in the past century. What was fought out was industrial unionism and Civil Rights. To do this we must first be located where the struggle is breaking out and recruit people. To recruit people we have to be involved. That is to say the historic problem of the communist movement has been the absence of a communist - dispossessed proletarian, class. I am two generation auto and we were hardly dispossessed. We were the great American middle class. We fought tooth and nail and the communists in Detroit were not run out of the plants in the dark days of the with hunts. In the Genral Motors plants in Flint - 20 minutes from Detroit, they ran the communists out of the plants and out of town. We stood our ground but the movement could not transcend a historical boundary. Wait until I tell the real story of Reuther at the overpass and why he got his ass kicked. There were 6,000 black workers in the Rouge steel division that would not lift a finger for Reuther because them mutherfuckers were not right. That is why Reuther got fucked up. Fuck Walther Reuther, anti-communist sonabitch. John L. Lewis had to come to Detroit and speak at the Olympia Theater and tell everyone present that anyone against the Negro workers could leave the meeting now and go to hell. I’m speeding but need to tell the story while there is still time. Social revolution is the result of changes in the means of production, qualitative changes. America was already on the industrial path. That is why we were locked into a boundary of reform of the industrial system. It still had space to grow. “Until all the space for its growth is used up” or whatever it was Marx said. The subjective movement for communism lacked the economic legs in the past. In America we are experiencing the real time emergence of a communist class, whose spontaneous motion is to strive to secure socially necessary means of life, without regard to whether or not its labor power is purchased and deployed in the process of production. What is taking place in Detroit is off the charts, along with the rest of the country, but the crisis hit Detroit at the front of technological advance. When applications for jobs are passed out 30,000 people show up. When the city announced a program to help the indigent - a month ago, 60,000 people showed up downtown. The amount of vacant houses in Detroit is the size of the city of Boston! The city is bracing for the collapse of Chrysler. The UAW is in collapse. Demonstrations for a single payer health care system has swelled in the last 60 days. In August of this year such demonstrations brought out 25 people. A handful of unionists and hard core communist. Today these demonstrations are approaching 300 and up. This is not a repeat of the 1930’s when the system was passing through successive boundaries of development of the productive forces. Nor is this akin to the late 1960s and early 1970’s when the blacks workers demanded an end to Jim Crow and speed up. III. Allow me to digress. At my last union meeting of the retirees 125 people were present. The composition of the meeting was 65% black and 35% white. Our local union hall is located in the “bad - eastside, of Detroit. For Comrade David, I mean off Mack and Conners, a couple of blocks from the Jefferson plant. It’s a new local union hall. Yea we built probably the last new autoworkers union hall in America. At this particular meeting the outrage of the white workers were thundering. All over the issue of health care. No tea baggers in this meeting my friend. This is the undiscovered country my brother. Shakespeare shit. The retired workers outside of engagement with production are becoming a force. This shits outside of the old shape of the social conflict and we were prepared with our odd ball theories about new forms of classes and revolution in the productivity regime. Eight months ago, we damn near had to fight at Local 7 to pass out literature on a single payer health care system. Ten months ago in Lansing Michigan - the state Capitol or rather Capital, the Conyers, Jesse Jackson Sr., trade union bureaucrat alignment tried to muscle our ass for screaming “single payer.” Now the shit is going to hit the fan in 45 days when VEBA is implemented. VEBA is “Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association” or a health plan that the company dumped on the union. Actually, VEBA was not dumped on the union. Gettlefinger - President of the UAW accepted this crap over the protestations of the uppermost shelf of the union bureaucracy fighting to save its own life. This fight was also in the interest of the union members. Gettlefinger was elected President because the previous president, hated the intellectuals in the UAW. This meant Steven Yockich hated Bob King. Bob is an intellectual in the organizing department of the union and positioned to become the new President next year. Bob King is from the Ford division. The Ford division rejected the new contract in October - last month, and ran Bob out of numerous local union meetings. The Ford guys and dolls are not on the government dole. You know the story: Ford has a better idea, blah, blah, blah. Chrysler workers looking at pension collapse after health care coverage collapse and General Motors workers are still trying to figure out what happened. Here is the theory grid as I see it. Previous generations of Marxist held that at a certain point in the evolution of the proletarian insurgency, the struggle of the workers leaps outside the bound/bond of employee- employer relations and the movement assumes political dimensions leading to a fight against the state. Lenin wrote about this in “What Is To Be Done” under the rubric of economist and trying to render the economic struggle political. Marx spoke of the fight for the eight hour day rather than simply over condition of labor. This is not our case. The revolution of the revolution in productive forces shoves a growing section of the proletariat outside of active engagement with productive forces and places it in external collision with the entire system of bourgeois production. The previous revolution in productive forces brought the masses into social production. This new revolution pushes them out. Three years ago I did not think the retired workers would be hit this hard. I do not know what I thought before things manifested themselves in the real. Yea I have followed pension funds but thought I was good to at least 2015. These retired workers are beginning to occupy the same or similar space and time as the dispossessed proletariat. The retired workers have a little money but they are dispossessed or lack an organic connection with production. I’m like . . . What the fuck. I worked thirty and . . . Oh hell no. But here I am. Lets try and spell this out in unmistakable terms. These retired workers of the UAW number 540,000, which is a heck of a lot more than the total employed workforce of the former Big 3. Total employed of the old Big 3 is less than 150,000. The Chrysler workers can demand nothing of the company, which is in hock to the government and about to collapse. This motion is called external collision or a direct battle with the government. When the state steps in the struggle is again transformed into a struggle against the state. It is the social consequence of the revolution in productive forces - not the circuit of capital, which brings the proletariat at the front of the curve to revolution. Stated another way: it is not just the crisis of overproduction that is bringing the proletariat at the front of the curve to social revolution. It is a new revolution in the productive forces - the systematic implementation of a new technological regime that leads to social revolution. This is Marx is pure form. No one could know this before the emergence of a new technological regime. The problem is deeper because the human eye cannot see emergence. When we register the new social consequence this means we are at the second phase of the process because of the problem of emergence. New social consequence means new form of proletarian insurgence. I know this sound stupid but it is true. This is not about socialism versus bourgeois democracy. This about communism verus fascism on the left and right. FDR was a potential fascist on the left. He actually favored left fascism. Then there is Obama. He is the best thing to happen in America in 30 years. Obama as President means class comes to the fore. Sorry about the bad writing but I do this in streams of thought, while struggling hard not to read any books. WL. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
