.Waistline2
WL: Yes they are. Of course they are not talking about the fettering of the productive forces in this passage from the Communist Manifesto. They of course describes in detail how the bourgeoisie as a property relations fetter the development of the productive forces very clearly in the same Communist Manifesto. The issue of fettering does not mean that development of the material power of production no longer takes place. What is meant is what Marx states in the Communist Manifesto five paragraphs after the material you quote. Here is what he states: KARL MARX: The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm WL: "The productive forces . . . no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; . . . they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property." Marx concept of the fettering of the productive forces is not to be understood as the material power is no longer revolutionized or that bourgeois society reaches a point where science and scientific development halts or there is no basis for social revolution in human society. What would one call the "enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces;" of which Marx speaks and why is it a part of his statement on the fettering of production under the sway of the bourgeois mode of production? Waistline ^^^^^^^ CB: So, according to the above , everything I have said about the levees in New Orleans , industrial plant closings in the U.S.and moving the plants overseas from the U.S. as examples of bourgeois property relations fettering the development of the material forces of production in relation to U.S. workers fits in with what Marx said. So, why did you not agree with what I said on all this ? The "spontaneous" development of the material productive forces is the activity of human beings - engineers, technicians, industrial workers, physicists - the activity of discovery, experimentation, invention, theorizing, sciencing, practice . The material forces do not develop themselves. So, to give a prime role to the development of the material forces of production is to make these categories of human actors a sort of vanguard revolutionary role. Communists would be focussed primarily in these areas of activity, natural science and engineering. Marx, Engels and Lenin would have been directing people into these science and technology fields so as to develop the forces of production. Instead, Marx , Engels and Lenin focus communists on a _class_ group, a property relations social category of people, the working class, and the activity is for the working class to change the property relations directly. The reason the working class is likely to be willing to change the property relations is that the bourgeoisie use the developing productive powers in a way that is not beneficial or is outright harmful to the working class. The fettering of the development of the forces of production is in relation to the beneficial use of the working masses, whose property relation to those forces of production is that of wage-laborer. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
