Specificity and the politics of the New Period
What is politics? Webster's Dictionary describes politics as "the use of strategy or intrigue in attaining any condition of power or control." It has been said that politics is "the concentrated expression of economics." So, politics for us in the US today and indeed the world, can be said to be the use of strategy by classes with different economic interests to attain power or control over the social life of the country. There is a need to develop a different understanding of the struggle for class politics today and how it affects the ability of the class to develop its identity. We also need to understand the difference between other periods of our history and the situation we face today. > Marx said that politics must be died in communism. Because for Marx each society has its political form of economical expoloitation. IN feudal system �The direct producer, according to our assumption, is to be found here in possession of his own means of production, the necessary material labour conditions required for the realisation of his labour and the production of his means of subsistence. He conducts his agricultural activity and the rural home industries connected with it independently. This independence is not undermined by the circumstance that the small peasants may form among themselves a more or less natural production community, as they do in India, since it is here merely a question of independence from the nominal lord of the manor. Under such conditions the surplus-labour for the nominal owner of the land can only be extorted from them by other than economic pressure, whatever the form assumed may be.[44] This differs from slave or plantation economy in that the slave works under alien conditions of production and not independently. Thus, conditions of personal dependence are requisite, a lack of personal� (ca freedom�( capital3 chap. 47) in compared wirh this clear relation of owner and worker, in capitalist society �The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped out of direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and, in turn, reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the production relations themselves, thereby simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers -- a relation always naturally corresponding to a definite stage in the development of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity -- which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state. � ( Ibd. Chap 27) Thus capitalist society hides relation between rulers and ruled ANd it result �In the case of the simplest categories of the capitalist mode of production, and even of commodity-production, in the case of commodities and money, we have already pointed out the mystifying character that transforms the social relations, for which the material elements of wealth serve as bearers in production, into properties of these things themselves (commodities) and still more pronouncedly transforms the production relation itself into a thing (money). All forms of society, in so far as they reach the stage of commodity-production and money circulation, take part in this perversion. But under the capitalist mode of production and in the case of capital, which forms its dominant category, its determining production relation, this enchanted and perverted world develops still more. If one considers capital, to begin with, in the actual process of production as a means of extracting surplus-labour, then this relationship is still very simple, and the actual connection impresses itself upon the bearers of this process, the capitalists themselves, and remains in their consciousness. The violent struggle over the limits of the working-day demonstrates this strikingly. But even within this non-mediated sphere, the sphere of direct action between labour and capital, matters do not rest in this simplicity. With the development of relative surplus-value in the actual specifically capitalist mode of production, whereby the productive powers of social labour are developed, these productive powers and the social interrelations of labour in the direct labour-process seem transferred from labour to capital. Capital thus becomes a very mystic being since all of labour�s social productive forces appear to be due to capital, rather than labour as such, and seem to issue from the womb of capital itself. Then the process of circulation intervenes, with its changes of substance and form, on which all parts of capital, even agricultural capital, devolve to the same degree that the specifically capitalist mode of production develops. This is a sphere where the relations under which value is originally produced are pushed completely into the background. In the direct process of production the capitalist already acts simultaneously as producer of commodities and manager of commodity-production. Hence this process of production appears to him by no means simply as a process of producing surplus-value. But whatever may be the surplus-value extorted by capital in the actual production process and appearing in commodities, the value and surplus-value contained in the commodities must first be realised in the circulation process. And both the restitution of the values advanced in production and, particularly, the surplus-value contained in the commodities seem not merely to be realised in the circulation, but actually to arise from it; an appearance which is especially reinforced by two circumstances: first, the profit made in selling depends on cheating, deceit, inside knowledge, skill and a thousand favourable market opportunities; and then by the circumstance that added here to labour-time is a second determining element -- time of circulation. This acts, in fact, only as a negative barrier against the formation of value and surplus-value, but it has the appearance of being as definite a basis as labour itself and of introducing a determining element that is independent of labour and resulting from the nature of capital. In Book II we naturally bad to present this sphere of circulation merely with reference to the form determinations which it created and to demonstrate the further development of the structure of capital taking place in this sphere. But in reality this sphere is the sphere of competition, which, considered in each individual case, is dominated by chance; where, then, the inner law, which prevails in these accidents and regulates them, is only visible when thesIn capital -- profit, or still better capital -- interest, land -- rent, labour -- wages, in this economic trinity represented as the connection between the component parts of value and wealth in general and its sources, we have the complete mystification of the capitalist mode of production, the conversion of social relations into things, the direct coalescence of the material production relations with their historical and social determination. It is an enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world, in which Monsieur le Capital and Madame la Terre do their ghost-walking as social characters and at the same time directly as mere things. It is the great merit of classical economy to have destroyed this false appearance and illusion, this mutual independence and ossification of the various social elements of wealth, this personification of things and conversion of production relations into entities, this religion of everyday life.e accidents are grouped together in large numbers, where it remains, therefore, invisible and unintelligible to the individual agents in production. But furthermore: the actual process of production, as a unity of the direct production process and the circulation process, gives rise to new formations, in which the vein of internal connections is increasingly lost, the production relations are rendered independent of one another, and the component values become ossified into forms independent of one another.� In Capital Marx tried to prove how capitalist society hides its inner real connection. Capital is writing to criticize other vulgar and classical trend which lead to psudo-socialism and demystify capitalist production process, >From the beginning, If relation between rulers and ruled is clear such as feudal system or slavery system , Marx need not analyse the capitalist society as �In capital -- profit, or still better capital -- interest, land -- rent, labour -- wages, in this economic trinity represented as the connection between the component parts of value and wealth in general and its sources, we have the complete mystification of the capitalist mode of production, the conversion of social relations into things, the direct coalescence of the material production relations with their historical and social determination. It is an enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world, in which Monsieur le Capital and Madame la Terre do their ghost-walking as social characters and at the same time directly as mere things. It is the great merit of classical economy to have destroyed this false appearance and illusion, this mutual independence and ossification of the various social elements of wealth, this personification of things and conversion of production relations into entities, this religion of everyday life�(ibd chapt 48) So Marx argue against mystifying capitalism. Lenin understood its mystifying charater, then he sharply critisize trade unionism in What to be done. First, class politics has incorrectly been used synonymously with "labor politics" or even more minimally "trade union politics." Webster's Dictionary defines a class as "a social strata sharing basic economic characteristics and having the same social position." The working class represents the vast majority of people in the US and indeed the world. This is "labor" in the broadest sense. > without political intervention and without connecting to left party, trade unions tend to be conservative role in Capitalist society. Where are there trade union with considering alternative economy? For example, Recent postal workers strike in UK defend union�s members economical interest, not attempt to achieve alternative society. A recent document called "Open Source Unionism" attempts to grapple with the politics of the New Period and in my opinion makes good sense in its approach to unionization under our current conditions. The document in part states: >"After World War II, however, unions effectively abandoned both "direct affiliation" and "minority unionism" as common practices. Over the past half-century, union membership has come to mean membership in an organization that has demonstrated majority support among workers at a particular worksite, recognized by an employer as the exclusive representative of workers for purposes of collective bargaining. Labor is not as open in its membership, in admitting different configurations of workers, as it was in the past. We believe this self-imposed limit on the meaning of membership today poses an unnecessary barrier to union influence and growth, and it should be reconsidered. There are tens of millions of nonunion workers many times the > IN recent movement nonunion workers grow certainly, but its cause from usual trade unionism going to conservative role and impossible to show alternative economy or representing worker�s fundamental needs which include self-expression self-reality, non-alienated work size of the existing labor movement who want better representation at work. or better representation of workers' interests politically, but who remain cut off from the benefits of union membership. Unions can and should seek to change this by reforming labor law or by increasing their organizing efforts. In addition, however, organized labor should open itself to a wider range of members. < I most certainly support the call for "Open Source Unionism," but approach the question of this aspect of the working class movement from the standpoint of Marx's dialectic of development and self-movement. The US working class of today comes out of a period of time (the last period) where the practical struggle of working class people took place within the context of the all-class movements in the world against first colonialism, then neocolonialism. The economic engine for this period of history was the tremendous expansion of capital in the world. The US led in this expansion. The relative financial and social bribery of large sections of the US working class guaranteed political stability for this expansion. The period of the growth of industrial unionism occurs within the era of the completion of the quantitative expansion of the industrial infrastructure. This time frame of history witnesses the rise; ascendancy and industrial unionism superseding craft unionism. This industrial form of unionism did not simply mean workers in large factories but workers unionized on the basis of the industrial infrastructure including public sector workers. On a world scale the Soviet Power fought and established the limit of market expansion for capital by detaching sections of earth from the orbit of capital. > If so why did german revolution defeat? Luxenburg did not consider worker� s political training. Without this type of political training, their spontaneous energy wasted in armed struggle? Let prove it! Under this specific configuration of capital, the working people of this country - North, South and in the border regions saw politics as a "wheeling and dealing" process, where the more organized sections (and the most bribed -- those that had the most to "wheel and deal" with), fought for a "greater piece of the pie." It was fighting for a piece of the bribery derived from colonial plunder and in our collective history, privileges that date all the way back to the primitive accumulation of capital on this land mass and the genocide against the Native Bands of peoples. As a "social movement," our working class exhibited a sense of social awareness, such as in the fight for Trade Union Rights, Civil Rights, Women Rights, the right to express ones sexuality without economic or social reprisal - rather than class identity. Establishing a "territory of interest" and fighting for that territory - against other sections of the class both in the US and the rest of the world developed political strength for these sector movements. "Coalition politics" is an extension of this way of fighting. As temporary forms of all-class territorial politics, "coalition politics" is an extension of this way of fighting. It is fundamentally defensive, a kind of 'politics of begging,' rather than an expression of political independence. A coalition is defined as "...an alliance, especially a temporary one, between persons, factions, etc." So what is meant by coalition politics is a politics based on the conception of temporary unity of groups with different interests. The political slogan "black and white unite and fight" is a striving to unite groups with different interest because these groups are irreconcilably divided into classes. This conception of politics does not correspond to a moment when it is possible to unite diverse sections of society based on a commonality of class interests. The increasing polarization of wealth and the deepening financial and social dislocation of whole sections of the working class in the US are sounding the death knell to the all-class territorial politics in all its forms. This process of transition arises from the productive forces and not simply from the minds of "heavy thinkers." Building coalitions and organizing single-issue organizations were adequate for the days of the scattered social response. But the emerging class polarity and a social movement developing from a historically new and distinct phase of "time" - on a new foundation, calls for something different. Achieving the stage of social consciousness, in which a "critical mass" in the population identifies itself in class terms, is a decisive step along the line of march of the social revolution. A clear distinction should be made between on the one hand, critiquing the politics of the coalition conception and, on the other hand, participating in attempts at unity, which are bound to take the organizational form of coalitions. People will take up whatever forms are left over from past periods to try to fight out today's battles. Revolutionaries participate in these immediate struggles; in whatever organizational form they may take in order to develop the consciousness of the combatants and society as a whole. . > If so, why cannot various social movement integrate? I think as previous issue, Integration is not needed. In the contraly, each movement can achieve its target witout political revolution such as feminist movement. Although recently retired, I am called by trade unionist activist to take part in Local Union elections based on my propaganda and organizational skills expressed as "a certain" clarity in presenting issues to diverse peoples, which is the case today. In the past 30 days my old Local Union is conducted elections at three engine plants for Executive Board members, meaning the President, Vice President, Recording Secretary, Financial Secretary, Trustees and Sergeant at Arms. Virtually the entire leadership was thrown out of office. This striving for something "different" will continue to shake the trade union structures to their foundations. > I respect your long political career but I disagree with you about union�s positioning An old industrial center like Detroit offers a unique opportunity to examine the "social knot" or what is called the "national character" of the African American peoples national liberation movement because here, we are dealing with the industrial proletariat proper - in its strictest definition. In the actual life of our country and diverse peoples there are no Great China Walls that separate the working class into hard and distinct compartments given the housing patterns, although color and nationality outlines geographic areas and speaks of the history of segregation. The industrial proletariat does not live separated from the teachers, professors, technicians, hospital workers, nurses or workers in the Coca Cola bottling facility. While acknowledging the bureaucratic character of trade unions, a bureaucracy that is historically evolved as an aspect of the development of the productive forces on the one hand and an expression of the bribery of the upper echelon of the workers - labor lieutenants, on the other; the industrial trade unions at the grass root/rot level remain very democratic and cannot but express the discontent and issues of the members. Intensification of the laboring process - speedup, takes place on the basis of the 24/7 movement of capital and has emerged as a solid issue for the entire working class. In this sense speed up loses its industrial character and is a class phenomenon characteristic of this specific phase in the decay of capital. Defining boundaries within distinct configurations of capital allows the communist to stay ahead of the social movement and keep it planted - rooted, to its spontaneous objectives. There is of course "spontaneity and spontaneity." What distinguishes "spontaneity and spontaneity" is the historic timeframe or configuration of capital, in which a social movement emerges and evolves. The timeframe of Comrade Lenin is spent and simply copying his polices and not his methodology leads to wrong conclusions. The spontaneous movements of the last period were of necessity reform movements not because of their demands but rather because of the configuration of history that the demands occurred in. Reformism therefore is the movement to reconfigure class relations short of the social movement to abolish class rule. The battle against speedup today is a spontaneous movement for control over the laboring process and the technology driving the process. This is a class movement to conform to the new qualitative features in the mode of production. It is not a reformist movement because this struggle to reform cannot take place o the basis of reconfiguring the relations between worker and capital as a way of expand! ing the boundaries of capital. There are no more reforms left in capital. > Lenin�s distinction of volontary and revolutional consciousness can�t go in current credit capitalism, At the beginning citizen, worker, child, women already recognize well collapse of capital�s culture. they understand sustainable development not comparative with capital�s culture. There are no more reforms left in capital because as a distinct mode of production all of its developmental space - room, has been exhausted. The mode of production is undergoing transition not mere quantitative expansion. The revolutionary struggle for reform is not reformism. The workers cut their class-conscious teeth in the battle for reforms that cannot be met without changes in class rule. In a similar vein the proposal for "Open Source unionism" arises as a demand to organized workers on a different basis than simply the old industrial configuration or "industrial trade unionism." The communist must take to all the various facets of the social movement class analysis and class logic. The means of production of which Marx and Engels spoke are in absolute rebellion against their social character as private property - undergoing the evolutionary leap. This is the antagonism between socialized production and private appropriation. Melvin P. Melvin P. Part 2 The dialectic of Antagonism The means of production of which Marx and Engels spoke are in absolute rebellion against their social character as private property. This antagonism between socialized production and private appropriation was more than less misarticulated in the last historical period. .>Means of production itself is not rebellion, rather capitalist use of means of production make them source of surplus value production. Society is formed on the basis of the unity of the productive forces and the production relations. Productive relations are the law system defining property and the relationship of people to property in the process of production. The constant, spontaneous development of the productive forces eventually disrupts that unity and an epoch of social revolution unfolds to reestablish the unity of society based on new social relations. Not only does every unity contain within itself its polar opposite but these internal opposites are mutually connected with each other; one aspect of a contradiction cannot exist without the other. In capitalist society the bourgeoisie is connected with the proletariat, the proletariat with the bourgeoisie; neither of these two classes can develop without the other, because the bourgeoisie cannot exist without exploiting the labor of others and the hired proletariat cannot exist without selling its labor power to a capitalist, because itself, does not possess the means of production. >As bourgeoisie develops with workers develop, for examle see the 3rd world poverty, collaption. But it does not mean worker�s consciousness raise And Your � contradiction� is not contradiction. Contradiction means that same thing include opposite characters Rather I propose explotation is source of resistence as � �As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the laborers are turned into proletarians, their means of labor into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialization of labor and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the laborer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many laborers. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. �The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labor of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on co-operation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production. The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labor, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialized production, into socialized property. In the former case, we had the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in the latter, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people. [2]� Marx and Engels called the capitalist mode of production the last antagonistic form of societal development. In our country the word antagonistic or antagonism simply means violent and this is not the meaning of Marx. Antagonism is a specific kind of evolution and development in which a unity is not simply polarized but under goes a process of movement. We are experiencing the first stage of this process today. Those contradictions (carefully distinguished by Marx and Engels in their analysis of the complex forms of development of class society) are antagonistic, in which the struggle of indissolubly connected opposites proceed in the form of their external collisions, which are directed on the part of the dominant opposite so as to preserve the subordination of its opposite - to the destruction of the dominant opposite and of the contradiction itself as well. The contradiction of any process is resolved, not by some external force but by the development of the contradiction itself. This is true also in regard to antagonistic contradictions. But in the course of development of an antagonistic contradiction at its different stages, only the premise for its resolution is prepared and ripens. The contradiction itself at every new stage becomes ever more intensified. An antagonistic contradiction does not pass beyond the stages of its partial resolution. Thus the periodic crises of capitalism are a violent form in which the contradictions of a given cycle of capitalist reproduction find their resolution; but in relations to the contradiction of the capitalist means of production as a whole, these crises emerge only as landmarks of the further intensification of these contradictions and of the ripening of the forces making for the violent overthrow of capitalism. Antagonistic contradictions are resolved by the kind of leap, - that is a nodal line is reached, in which the internal opposites emerge as relatively independent opposites, external to each other, by a leap that leads to the abolition of the formerly dominant opposite and to the establishment of a new contradiction. In this contradiction the subordinate opposite of the previous contradiction now becomes the dominate opposite, preserving a number of its peculiarities and determining by itself the form of the new contradiction, especially at the first stages of its development. But in contradictions that do not have an antagonistic character, the development of the contradiction signifies not only the growth of the forces making for its final resolution, but each new step in the development of the contradiction is at the same time also its partial resolution. Not all contradictions are antagonistic. Thus the relationships of the proletariat and the peasantry are not of an antagonistic character - in both classes we find a number of common interests. In a class society the contradictions of the basic classes are antagonistic and are resolved in the antagonistic form. In developed socialist society there will be no class struggle, no class antagonism. "It is only in an order of things," says Marx, "in which there will be no more classes and class antagonism, that social evolutions will cease to be political revolution." (The Poverty of Philosophy). Society is undergoing a leap in the development of the productive forces as the result of the injection of a new quality into the productive forces - electro-computerized production technique. When that which is fundamental to a process undergo change, all that is within its environment and the environment itself must eventually change in conformity with the changes in that, which is fundamental. A leap is not like "jumping rope" where each jump constitutes the completion of a cycle and one gets ready for the next jump. A leap contains its own dialectic and is usually a more than less lengthy period of time. The societal leap from feudal economic and social relations to capitalist property relations took several hundred years of emergence and development. > Social contradiction happens vairous areas For exmple, farmers and workers or consumers. Fishery and industry,etc. Antagonistic contradictions are resolved by the kind of leap, - that is a nodal line is reached, in which the internal opposites emerge as relatively independent opposites, external to each other, and this is today witnessed in the emergence of the "new class" and what Comrade Miyachi identifies as "the alternate" economy - as it is emerging in the wreckage of Argentina. Our proletariat - the Anglo-American proletariat, is ready of communism today or rather a society of associate producers, and this demand and conception can take root amongst those sectors of the class living at and below the margin. Our class was not formed in the transition from feudalism to capitalism but rather evolved on the basis of the transition from manufacture to industry and the importation of the immigrant. We can talk class politics in a nonsectarian manner that is straight forth and to the point. A strong sense of personal worth, personal possessions and individual being must be fused with crisp concepts of public property relations. The day of the so-called leader of non-class formations is numbered. Now is the time to begin preparations for the thousand-year war. The leap is in progress. Melvin P. MIYACHI TATSUO Psychiatric Department Komaki municipal hosipital 1-20.JOHBUHSHI KOMAKI CITY AICHI PREF. 486-0044 TEL:0568-76-4131 FAX 0568-76-4145 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
