----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx
andthe thinkers he inspired'" <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2005 17:03
Subject: Spam: [Marxism-Thaxis] the theory of the Communists may be summed
up inthe single sentence: Abolition of private property. the single
sentence: Abolition of private property.
V: response to "the theory of the Communists may be summed up inthe single
sentence: Abolition of private property">
If Marx had thought changing the technological regime were the focus for
revolutionary activity , _Capital_ would have been a book of
engineering-physics, not political economy.
Actually Marx did regard changing forces of production, labour and the means
of production, instruments and subjects of production, as the "motor" of
social change. (See the recent exchange of messages between V, V2 and WL.)
V: The role of the material forces of production as the conditions of social
practice are not direct causes of the relations of production, hence Capital
could be written strictly on the relations of production. As in economics
in general, in Capital the presence grise of the forces of production is in
the form of abstractions that concern only its role as the condition for the
social interactions it engenders.
The following demonstrates that followers of Marx and Engels would focus
on
changing property relations, ownership relations, not on impacting the
human
productive forces who invent, inventors,scientists and engineers who make
the scientific and technolgoical revolutions. _Discovery_ of the use of
things, technological invention is not the process that Marx claimed to
have
mastered such that Marxists would lead technological innovation, and
somehow
shape technological disccovery and invention to cause a revolution in
property relations. "Discovery" , by definition is unforeseeable.
V: While it is true that Marx did not focus on the role of material
conditions for social practice, he also did not denigrate their importance.
He did however, reason in a fashion similar to your argument that invention
is a phenomenon not given to analysis and as such technological development
should be regarded as a sort of un-analysable natural force that gathers
steam and then blows off decadent social systems that can no longer cope
with its accumulated changes.
As I wrote to WL this premise ignores the potential of Marxian dialectics to
develop a rational theory of changes of the forces of production no less
precise than the theory of the relations of production. Such a theory would
necessarily concern also the social relations of production that are the
conditions of technological development, but in sublated form, as
abstractions describing only the relevance of social organization of
production to the development of labour and of the means of production.
Any effort to develop theories of social change, cannot be based on half
(assed?) theories. To understand the likely trajectories of evolving
classes and of changing class relations we must understand how the material
conditions of production are impacted upon by social organization of
production as well as how the forces of production impact upon the relations
of production. From both first-hand experience with socialist experiments
and from research I suggest that one of the critical failures of the
practical program of social change, of social revolution if you will, arises
out of the failure of Marxist theory to consider the impact of social change
on productive practice.
"In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the
single
sentence: Abolition of private property. "
V: The abolition of private property is largely a legal issue, i.e. that
element of the relations of production that are interpreted as rights in the
system of governance characteristically conditioned by feudal and capitalist
modes of production. In fact, the abolition of private property can only
occur when the material conditions and the modes of production are such that
new kinds of rights and new forms of governance become viable alternatives
to the present one.
Charles
The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas
or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that
would-be universal reformer.
They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an
existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our
very
eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a
distinctive feature of communism.
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to
historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of
bourgeois property.
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property
generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois
private property is the final and most complete expression of the system
of
producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms,
on
the exploitation of the many by the few.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single
sentence: Abolition of private property.
We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right
of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's own labour, which
property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity
and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of
petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded
the
bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of
industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still
destroying
it daily.
Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?
But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It
creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour,
and
which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of
wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is
based
on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of
this antagonism.
To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social
status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the
united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united
action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.
Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.
When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the
property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby
transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the
property that is changed. It loses its class character.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
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