WL: By deleting the last sentence in Engels statement, where he speaks of antagonism, you changed its meaning and this denies that society moves in class antagonism rather than class struggle. Below is the sentence you deleted, which I included from the exact same quote prior to your reply above.
"With the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes." Engels note on the first page of the Communist Manifesto. Engels make clear the this matter of classes and history is the formation of antagonistic classes and this is fundamental to Marxism - one of its ABC's. ^^^^^^^ CB: Here's what you call "deleted" included. It doesn't differentiate between "class struggle" and "class antagonism", as you claim; or rather class struggle goes on because of class antagonism. Class antagonism means the interests of the antagonistic classes are irreconcilable. Class antagonim means that one class is exploiting the other. The history of all hitherto existing society [2] <http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html#c1r2> is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master [3] <http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html#c1r3> and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. (NB: here their wording shows the equivalence between class struggle and the underlying class antagonism -CB) Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
