>>Do you agree or disagree with the following propositions ? "For women's liberation: a comradely critique of the Manifesto " By Charles Brown (1997) By _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_ , every Marxist knows the A,B,C's of historical materialism or the materialist conception of history. The history of all human society, since the breaking up of the ancient communes, is a history of class struggles between oppressor and oppressed. Classes are groups that associate in a division of labor to produce their material means of existence. Reply MP: I read your 1997 piece several time and merely answered the question you posed. I further stated that perhaps you wrote the statement in haste due to the fast pace of internet exhcange. I have no comment on your 1997 article. Melvin P. >>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 I disagree because the above jumbles up the actual method or approach of Marx and Engels, which anyone other than the novice immediately recognize. "Production and economic classes are (NOT and have never been and will never be) "the starting point of Marxist analysis of human society." (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. 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 Mainsheet 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. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
