[Marxism-Thaxis] Class antagonism as class struggle: the dialectic (OK Ralph)
Class antagonism as class struggle: the dialectic : (exposition) The decay of feudalism and transition to capitalism shows two distinct form of change: class struggle as contradiction and class struggle as antagonism. I. Localized manual labor with the serf working the land for the nobility provided the economic based for feudalism. The primary form of wealth is landed property. The political and social structures were based on monarchy or the King and Queen as ruler with their courts of civil servants and in Europe the Church as a powerful land owner. II. The serf struggled in contradiction - not antagonism, with the landowner and nobility. The slow introduction of manufacturing meant the introduction of new tools and a new division of labor in society. These new productive forces created the growth of towns of people separating them from thousands of years living off the land, previously trapped in the ritual culture and custom of feudal society. Trade created and enlarged the towns. The struggle of the towns and towns people for cheap food from the countryside, against privately own trade routed cutting across land controlled by lords, for a market for their goods was a sharp clash of classes or the struggle of the towns and countryside. The rising bourgeoisie represented the town and the feudalist the countryside. This kind of class struggle expressed the antagonism between new classes and old classes. III. Feudal relations, contradictory to the manual labor of the serf striving to better his family life, faced a new danger - antagonism, in the towns and the process of large scale mechanization possible with the steam engine. Feudal society was founded on manual labor and was overthrown by new social forces - classes, created by mechanical labor. The way this overthrow took place was a sharp struggle involving all the classes of the old and new society with the new classes of modern worker and capitalist fighting for revolutionary change or a qualitatively different kind of society. In dialectics connections - interactivity, are a special kind of relations between and within things. Marxists search out and unravel these connections to describe and understand the self movement of what is being examined. Through the landed property relations the serf and his labor was connected with nobility as land owners. This interactive relationship as the point of production defines feudalism. Not so with the rising merchant capitalist and proletariat. The merchant capitalist and rising capitalists, as a class, shares no connection or interactive relations with the nobility or serf as the unity of capitalist commodity production. The proletariat as a class, shares no connection or interactive relations with the nobility or serf as the unity of commodity production. Rather, capitalists and proletarians constituted a new unity of production; a new production relation operating within feudal society but outside the property relations of feudalism There is a connection between all the old and new classes but not interactivity as the production process. This connection as the evolving market where things are brought and sold. The nobility purchases and consumes products created outside the landed property relations or that the serf does not create. Thus, these class exist and intermingle external to one another. The struggle of the new classes against the old was that of external collision within a dying social order. This form of class collision - struggle, express class antagonism. IV. Contradictions of the old society - the struggle between serf and nobility, were superseded by antagonism, or superseded by the external collision of new classes unable to fit into the old system, and the social revolution way underway. The struggle of the serf against the nobility did not disappear but found a new channel of support and assistance from the new classes in antagonism with the nobility and the landed property relations. Society moves in class antagonism. Marx sums up this entire historical process as : We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
[Marxism-Thaxis] Class antagonism as class struggle: the dialectic (OK Ralph)
Is the difference between antagonism and contradiction that antagonism is irreconcilable, but contradiction is reconcilable ? There were some other new classes in the new bourgeois system besides the bourgeoisie and the proletariat - slaves and colonial subjects. The new forces and relations of productionin in antagonism with the feudal order included colonialism and slavery as well as wage-labor/capital. Marx says that colonialism and slavery were the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. The different momenta of primitive accumulation ...These methods depend in part on brute force, e.g., the colonial system. But, they all employ the power of the State, the concentrated and organised force of society, to hasten, hot-house fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition. Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power. Of course, here, force is forces of destruction, military might. Capitalism's newly developed means and instruments of production had as a byproduct means and instruments of destruction and war that were superior to those of the feudal system. Karl Marx. Capital Volume One Chapter Thirty-One: Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist The genesis of the industrial [1] capitalist did not proceed in such a gradual way as that of the farmer. Doubtless many small guild-masters, and yet more independent small artisans, or even wage-labourers, transformed themselves into small capitalists, and (by gradually extending exploitation of wage-labour and corresponding accumulation) into full-blown capitalists. In the infancy of capitalist production, things often happened as in the infancy of medieval towns, where the question, which of the escaped serfs should be master and which servant, was in great part decided by the earlier or later date of their flight. The snail’s pace of this method corresponded in no wise with the commercial requirements of the new world-market that the great discoveries of the end of the 15th century created. But the middle ages had handed down two distinct forms of capital, which mature in the most different economic social formations, and which before the era of the capitalist mode of production, are considered as capital quand même — [all the same] usurer’s capital and merchant’s capital. “At present, all the wealth of society goes first into the possession of the capitalist ... he pays the landowner his rent, the labourer his wages, the tax and tithe gatherer their claims, and keeps a large, indeed the largest, and a continually augmenting share, of the annual produce of labour for himself. The capitalist may now be said to be the first owner of all the wealth of the community, though no law has conferred on him the right to this property... this change has been effected by the taking of interest on capital ... and it is not a little curious that all the law-givers of Europe endeavoured to prevent this by statutes, viz., statutes against usury The power of the capitalist over all the wealth of the country is a complete change in the right of property, and by what law, or series of laws, was it effected?” [2] The author should have remembered that revolutions are not made by laws. The money capital formed by means of usury and commerce was prevented from turning into industrial capital, in the country by the feudal constitution, in the towns by the guild organisation. [3] These fetters vanished with the dissolution of feudal society, with the expropriation and partial eviction of the country population. The new manufactures were established at Weapons, or at inland points beyond the control of the old municipalities and their guilds. Hence in England an embittered struggle of the corporate towns against these new industrial nurseries. The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions in England’s Anti-Jacobin War, and is still going on in the opium wars against China, c. The different momenta of primitive accumulation distribute themselves now, more or less in chronological order, particularly over Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and England. In England at the end of the 17th century, they arrive at a systematical combination, embracing
[Marxism-Thaxis] Class antagonism as class struggle: the dialectic (OK Ralph)
Thanks, but I am not sure what this means for a description of class antagonism and its emergence within the feudal system. ^ CB; You mentioned kings and queens in your analysis of class antagonism and its emergence within the feudal system. So, whatever your mention of them meant for a description of class antagonism , etc, would be impacted by this. Basically, I guess, the institution of the monarchy was more in between the bourgeois side and the feudal side of the antagonism More over for two groups of people who have zero understanding of the Marxist approach. ^ CB: Many people who have zero understanting of the Marxist approach do have some idea of kings and queens. So, this European historical institution might be a hook for them to get some understanding. ^ Will gladly send you the entire draft by the end of the month. Actually, the draft can be sent today, but the problem is that all the words and terms have not been completed. Further, work takes place on this project everyday with meetings three times a week, squeezed between classes. A draft sent today would be different from the draft being prepared for Monday. CB: OK. Thanks Then there is a total of four sections to the glossary. Section one is word and term definitions with narrative. In section one for instance there are four different indexes for the word class. Class, class strata, class as the shape of property and class as a concrete form of labor in different historical eras. Interestingly, the words Trotskyism and Stalinism are not in the text. Nor is there a critique or criticism of the CPUSA or any other group for that matter. More interesting is Section one beings with the American Revolutionary War. Yep. Section Two summarizes all the communist international organizations from the First to th Fourth. Section 3 is Expositions deploying many of the terms in section one Section 4 is literally Marxist catch phrases. Sutff like the philosophers have only interpreted the world in so many ways, the point if to change it. At this writing there is 40 individual pages 4 and 1/4 by 5 and 1/2 or an 6 by eleven sheet folded. We top out at 50. The problem is the rapid transitions in the writings and construction. WL. ^ CB: This is a suggestion that if you mention monarchy in the writings, you might want to say it's not a feudal institution, but a transitional institution between feudalism and capitalism. This might be enlightening (smile) for many , as many people think of kings and queens as a main part of feudalism, when they are transitional Also, you might want to mention that the nation arises with the bourgeoisie. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
