>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 11/21/00 05:51PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
>
>
> CB: Do you understand "inevitable" in the same sense that Engels and Marx use it in
>The Manifesto when they say ? :
>
> "The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class
>is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage
>labor. Wage labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance
>of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of
>the laborers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to
>association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet
>the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What
>the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall
>and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. "
They say the fall of capitalism (after the development of modern industrialism) was
inevitable. I agree. They say the victory of the proletariat is inevitable -- they were
obviously wrong.
((((((((((((((
CB: Why do you agree with the first , but not the second ? Capitalism has not fallen.
Why are they obviously wrong about the second ? The proletariat still exists.
You are too impatient with the time it takes to reach the victory of the proletariat.
It is an epochal process in length.
((((((((
But neither point has anything to do with the bizarre claim that
the rise of capitalism was inevitable. Haven't you just finished reading a book by
Foster the central point of which was that Marx & Engels learned from Epicurus
the immense role of contingency in history.
(((((((((((
CB: But I don't agree with Foster's seeming substitution of absolute chance or
contingency for teleology. I am glad he has recognized that Engels is equally
important with Marx in understanding Marxist materialism . But Foster does not seem to
quite get all the way to Engels dialectic of chance AND determinism, as I mentioned in
the book cyber seminar. It is not true that all is contingent and there is no
determination in history.
Marx's constant mention of "laws" of historical development wouldn't make sense if he
didn't think there was any determination in history.
In other words, Engels and Marx's approach does not rule out that there could be laws
of development operating such that once class exploitative society came to be that it
was inevitable that it would culminate in the capitalist form of exploitation. In
other words, class exploitative society has a tendency to eventually develop into the
specifically capitalist form of exploitation. This is not teleology , because the
claim is not the this was destined from some beginning of the universe or whatever.
In other words, it is not teleology to claim that there are determinations within
given epochs of history.
This specific tendency ( of class exploitative society in general to evolve to the
specific capitalist form of exploitation) is not entirely proven , but its possiblity
is not forbidden by Marx and Engels understanding of the dialectic of chance and
necessity, or contingency and determination.
(((((((((((((
That *no* specific event was
inevitable. Capitalism's internal contradictions establish its necessary
self-destructiveness. But *nothing* can establish the inevitability of any specific
positive result in history.
(((((((((((((
CB: I agree with Engels and Marx, not Foster on this issue. If the human race
survives, communism is inevitable.
As far as natural history, the positive event of the formation of the sun was just as
inevitable as its destruction is ( self-destruction).
(((((((((((((
The CM was partly rhetoric. Back in the '60s the Vietnamese proclaimed (and
we proclaimed after them): "Because our cause is just victory is certain." But
they (and we if we weren't stupid) knew that was not literally truee. The people
in El Salvador proclaimed, People united will never be defeated. Defeated they
were.
It is a denial of history (and thus of marxism) to proclaim any social system as
inevitable.
(((((((((((((
CB: The inevitability of the victory depended upon affirmative action by the
Vietnamese people. Thus , the rhetoric was a necessary part of making the victory. I
would differentiate between the two slogans, taking the Vietnamese slogan to mean
"final" victory. There can be defeats along the way, such as the present temporary
defeat of the proletariat in general which you take to mean that Marx and Engels claim
in the Manifesto is wrong ultimately, so it is not true that the people united can
never be defeated temporarily along the way.
Obviously, it is not a denial of Marxism to proclaim any social system as inevitable,
since Marx and Engels did it. It is a form of objectivism or positivism to expect the
revolution to occur automatically and without rhetorical proclamations of
inevitability that inspire people to make the victory, such as those proclamations
made by Engels and Marx and the Viet Namese Communists. Such proclamations are part of
practical-critical activiity as opposed to the contemplative materialism of all
previous materialisms, including Epicurus's materialism.
