Class-consciousness and the fundamentality of value Class-consciousness means awareness of how classes fight for their material survival in society. Classes are delineated in their general features on the basis of one relation to property and property is ownership of things by which the wealth of society is created and reproduced. Ones active or inactive relationship within a system of social production clarifies specific class identification and the dimensions of ownership.
Class-consciousness means awareness of how classes fight for their material survival in society. The quantitative and qualitative dimension of how people combine together to fight for material self-interest, serves as an indicators of depth of awareness. This articulation of class-consciousness was more than less impossible twenty years ago, because the specific material boundaries of the limit to value as a force mediating human relations had not been revealed or rather witnessed. When Marx and Engels spoke of the emancipation of the working class being an act of self-emancipation and self-consciousness (overcoming the alienated self), the students of Marx method could not - in the main, transcend the material limitations placed on their own consciousness and converted class concepts into materialist concepts of the abstract alienated self of man - as abstract labor. Every generation encounters ideological molds of thought held in place and reinforced by the sum total of conditions riveted to a specific development in commodity production and the existing quantitative boundary of capital. Under conditions of reform - under conditions where quantitative expansion of capital is occurs, labors act on behalf of the 'self' in demanding and securing a partial reformulation of its share of the social product. In as much as the most organized sector of labor can assert itself in a concerted effort - greater than labor without organization and a voice, "self interest" was perceived as selfishness by the unorganized mass, unable to secure the equitable "share" that its organized brothers received. Uuugggh - under conditions of quantitative expansion of capital, in the absence of a war time crisis or defeat the shatters social relations and destabilize sections of the population; when conditions exist for the expansion or alteration of the social contract that stabilize the operation of the productive forces, class consciousness is manifest as an external category of ideology expressed as love for ideological self - abstract labor and hatred for social capital as the expression of hegemonistic domination over things that dominate men. "Hegemonistic domination" superceded "the domination of men through the ownership of things." The impact of exhausting the quantitative stages in the evolution of capital as a historically evolved form of social production reaped havoc on and within the movement seeking to weld the Marx dialectic. Within the imperial countries, the revolutionaries were often confined to condemning the exploitation of the colonies, admitting that super profits were being beaten out of the backs of the colonial workers and sought refuge in sectarian movements, whose sectarianism was enforced by the material limitation of "class consciousness." To the degree that rent, price, interest and money appeared as externalized independently existing modes of capital, or rather surplus value, "class interest" and "class self" appeared externalized, alienated from the labor movement based on its various components. The articulated self-interest of human labor in the abstract - ideology, assumed what appeared to be a life of its own and ideology was defined on the basis of ideology - itself. Hence, love for ones class and hatred for the enemy. Argentina of course establishes the definitive end of an era of historically induced ideology. Class-consciousness is the act of fighting for ones material survival on the basis of securing the needs for one continuous reproduction and expansion. There is no ideology here. Material survival and expansion means food, clothing, housing, fresh water, library's, theater, transportation, medical care, freedom from political harassment and arbitrariness of authority, artistic and intellectual pursuits. Marx method is found throughout all of his and Engels writings Marx gives a scholarly presentation of the dialect of "form" and content, externalization and the emergence of independent modes of existence - of interest, rent, price, surplus value, etc in Theories of Surplus Value Part 3, pages 507 last paragraph through 513, Progress Publisher Moscow 1971. How classes fight for their material existence presupposes their existence or position in a system of production founded on distinct property relations. The emerging "communist class" is that sector of the labor movement with the most unmet needs and was actually defined by Marx in 1843, prior to his lifetime collaboration with Engels that led to the discovery of the essence of the law of value. The entire edifice of modern communism rests on the single proposition that the task - social revolution, is to liberate labor (power) from its status as a commodity. Under conditions where there are no more reforms left in capital and labor-power is rendered increasingly unsaleable in the market, due to being rendered increasingly superfluous to the production of commodities, what appeared as ideological categories twenty years ago, or rather 159 years ago, are revealed as material categories. Marx actually described the logic of this proletariat early in his intellectual life. a class with radical chains, a class in civil society that is not of civil society, the class that is the dissolution of all class, a sphere of society having a universal character because of its universal suffering and claiming no particular right because no particular wrong but unqualified wrong is perpetrated on it; a sphere that can invoke no traditional title but only a human title; a sphere, finally, that cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all the other spheres, thereby emancipating them; a sphere, in short, that is the complete loss of humanity and can only redeem itself through the total redemption of humanity. This dissolution of society as a particular class is the proletariat. Karl Marx "Introduction to a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," 1843. Here is the "communist class" or "new" class if you will, that further crystallize in front of eyes with every partial crisis and partial recovery, no matter what its duration. Here is a description of the most poverty stricken North American or rather Argentinean masses, whose Argentinean designation is purely geography. The plight of our brethren is not the result of bad luck, but due solely to property owners who will only run production and distribute needed items of life if they can personally make a profit. Profits have no rights that people must respect. Only human beings have rights to existence. Value remains the amount of socially necessary labor in the production of commodities. This is the fundamentality not to be confused with it independent modes of operations. A transition in or partial qualitative reformulation of value - under the impact of modern technology causes changes and pushes it further along the nodal line of dissolution - polarizes the various independent modes of values existence and finally collapse of the independent modes of existence takes place. (See page 513 last paragraph, Theories of Surplus Value Part 3) A new partial qualitative development does not cause an instant change in the independent modes of existence and operations of the "old" - independent modes of expression of value. Sections of the labor movement will continue to fight within the various forms of the old reform movement until we can clarify the nodal line on a planetary scale - trajectory, to a critical mass capable of impacting the whole. How much is "critical mass?" I cannot answer this definitively. However, if the last reform movement in our country (USNA) is used as an indicator, 10-12 percent of the population (20,000,000), driven by 10 percent (2,000,000) organized around the 10 percent that crystallize a "new class consciousness" (200,000) inspired by the vision of one - Marx/Engels. Not "real versus false consciousness" but class-consciousness freed from the ideological baggage of an era gone by. Freedom sits on the horizon, as does consciousness unfettered by the legacy of values independent modes of existence. Melvin "From out of his (Marx) hand jumps leaping Dan."
