Antagonism: Antagonism means "the mutual resistance or active opposition of two opposing forces, physical or mental; active opposition to a force." Antagonism is a form of change resolution by annihilation and nullification, rather than harmonious stage by stage sublation. Antagonism as destruction, and nullification is a form of transition to a new mode of production when society is governed based on private property. In an environment of private property, qualitatively new productive forces creates new form of classes as property relations and these new classes come into external conflict with the old social organization of labor based and old classes based in old means of production. In class society, the collision between qualitatively new productive forces and old social relation of production - (the old classes connected to these relations), cannot be resolved based on the struggle of the old classes constituting the old relations of production. Resolution takes place outside - external, the old bond - contradiction, that is the two classes constituting the old system of production. The struggle between serf and nobility cannot be resolved by the serf overthrowing the nobility and establishing a new society of serfs. Resolution takes place by destruction of both serf and nobility as property categories at the hands of new classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat. Antagonism, resolution by nullification or destruction of a previously existing unity of classes, (in this case serf and nobility) requires the emergence and development of a new unity of classes external to the old unity that was serf and nobility. The new classes, (bourgeoisie and proletariat) connected to the new means of production, appear as the external agent of destruction and nullification. Resolution is negation by destruction of the two old classes and their property form. Antagonism is not contradiction or a form of contradiction, but rather a form of resolution. Contradiction -(the struggle of old classes against themselves) is replaced (superseded) by antagonism. "The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production – antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence – but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism (Marx).
_______________________________________________ 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
