>>Do you agree or disagree with the following proposition: Production and economic classes are the starting point of Marxist analysis of human society, including in the Manifesto, because human life, like all plant and animal life must fulfill biological needs to exist as life at all. Marx and Engels are looking for _necessity_ put historical materialism on a scientific basis. In human biology there is necessity, things that must be done.<<
Reply Waistline: I disagree ^^^^ CB: Good. If you disagree , then what you are disagreeing with is probably true. Waistline is a fairly reliable inverse function for the truth of a matter. MP: You argue like a petty flogging attorney and hardly ever speak to the issue. Here is how Engels put matters: "the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged." _http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm_ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm) Here is what I wrote which of course you refuse to quote (because you would become the laughing stock of the Marxist movement for stating it is not Marx and Engels starting point) and what I wrote you state is wrong: >>>(1) Production of the means to support human life - not any production, and next to production, (2) the exchange and/or distribution of that, which has been produced, is the basis of all social structures and give meaning to economic classes. In every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders based on ritual, depends on what is produced to maintain life, how it is produced and how the products are exchanged. <<< You state the above is wrong. Fine. I further wrote: >>It is not enough to speak of biological need without exchange and distribution of the means to support life. In the first section of the Communist Manifesto words like trade, market, commerce, "increase in the means of exchange and in commodities in general" dominate the presentation. To leave out exchange and speak of society is an obvious incorrect formulation because society only emerges at a certain stage in the human drama. It is not enough to compare human beings to plants because plants do not exchange the products of labor as the fundametnality that makes the word society have meaning.<< CB; So this must be true too: "the starting point of Marxist analysis of human society _is_ production and economic classes," as we see in the first line of _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_. MP: You argue like a petty attorney. Melvin P. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
