In a message dated 5/9/2010 4:24:51 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
That's true. The system was reformed. But I am talking about a revolution. Comment A system of production - any system, and its production relations, will reform itself as its self movement until the productive forces enter antagonism with the relations of production. During a period of reform of the system "taking about revolution" cannot convert the quality called reform into revolution. Not possible. A system is driven through all its quantitative boundaries of development as a law of its development and evolution. The serf could not overthrow the feudal system and revolted for a thousand years. The landed property relations entered antagonism with new classes arising on the basis of revolution in the means of production. These new classes were bourgeoisie and proletariat. Bourgeoisie and proletariat - as forces of history, overthrow the landed property relations called feudalism. Same with the capitalism system. Same with every mode of production encased in property, or what is the same, with the property relations within. Capitalism arises as a system and stands on its feet based on the industrial revolution. This system - capitalism, enters antagonism with the bourgeois relations or production - buying and selling of labor power, with development of qualitatively new productive forces. There is simply no way around this basic proposition. Before the appearance of qualitatively new productive forces the relations of production and productive forces gyrate in contradiction. This contradictory movement or motion, expressed as proletariat and capital, drives the system through all its quantitative boundaries as productive forces are rationalized. However, neither capitalist nor proletarians are free to overthrow the system they constitute. A class cannot overthrow itself because as such it constitutes the system. The dynamic of reform of the system is attributed to a subjective disposition and this is all wrong. Where Lenin and Rosa L. spoke of reform and reformism they did so in a very different context where their society's were still in transition from concrete and political feudalism. Once the industrial bourgeoisie establishes its economic and political the system becomes entrenched, re:social relations of production, and must as a law of necessity pass through all its quantitative boundaries of development. There might appear exceptional circumstances such as a profound war time collapse, but even here the system tends to be reformed until all the productive forces embodied in the production relations are "used up." Reform is a quantitative expansion of the system based on further development of a technology regime and expansion of its production relations. Lenin's Russia was no different and conformed to this law. What was different was that Russian society was leaping from agrarian relations to industrial relations. America had no feudal relations yet some still try to apply the logic and politics of Lenin to America and this simply will not work. It has never worked and will not work in the future. The crisis unfolding today takes place in a radically different context than that of the 1960's, 1970's or 1930's. The revolution in the productive forces, specifically the means of production, has passed from being incompatible with the old production relations of bourgeois society and entered antagonism. The system can no longer be reformed and the bourgeoisie understands this. It is one kind of fight that takes place between proletarians and capital when the system is still passing through all its quantitative boundaries of expansion. This form of class struggle expresses incomparability rather than antagonism. All hell is breaking loose today. Although we are still at the early stage of the new technology advance the current generation of auto factories going on line in the next 24 months is off the scale. ************** I will not spend much time on the Obama election and the current state of decomposition of the Democratic and Republican Party, in as much as we have fundamentally different views of what is taking place in real time. The reason the proletarian masses spontaneously drift to the right is because the natural striving of a class - any class, caught in crisis and destabilized is to immediately press forward to recreate the past economic and political relations that made it stable. This is so because that is its class/life experience and consciousness. The proletarian masses press forward to restore the old social contract. Here social contract means the unspoken buying and selling of labor power as the property signature of bourgeois relations. The unfolding revolution in the means of production has not only disrupted this unity of the social contract, but entered antagonism. The restored unity of capital and labor of the 1930s and then the post WW II expansion is impossible today. You know the drill, "all the Kings horses and all the Kings men." The working class is slowing entering into a survival fight mode. This was not the case in the past 50 years. This was the case in the 1920's and 1930's but the system still had room for expansion. We forget that WWII wiped political feudalism from the earth, more than less. The technology advance blocks the reentry of the proletarian masses into the system of production on the old basis. Capital has reached the end . . . of expansion. As Carroll say, if you don't hit it, it won't fall. WL.
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