Waistline2 Reply MP: To state that: "Class in capitalism is a by-product of an unequal and exploitative economic system; the division of society into economic classes is something that socialists wish to abolish" is obviously wrong and immediately spotted by anyone except the novice to Marx method.
Class within the bourgeois mode of production is the product of changes in the means of production that began development under the landed property relations or its political expression as feudalism. ^^^^^ CB: So was feudalism the expression of landed _property_ or was it the expression of feudal means of production and technology ? ^^^^^^ Classes at all times rise and fall and develop - emerge, on the basis of changes in the material power of production and how this material power is organized as a combination of human labor + tools, instruments, machines + energy source. ^^^^ CB: So why do you refer to landed _property_ as the basis of feudalism ? ^^^^^^^ Classes are formed by the introduction of new productive equipment. That is, by the reorganization of the means of life. Almost always, the new class and new classes are tied to and work with the new means of production. ^^^^^ CB; So when capitalism introduced electricity and oilbased productive equipment to replace steam and steam engines from the first phase of the industrial revolution, what were the new classes that replaced the bourgeoisie and proletariat that Marx and Engels discuss in _The Manifesto_ ? ^^^^^^ Today's new class is shoved away from the means of production and this is very different in human society. Even if one disagrees with the previous sentence . . . no one within Marxism can disagree with the fact that classes are formed by the introduction of new productive equipment and rise and fall on the basis of changes in the means of production. Such is the ABC of Marxism. ^^^^^^ CB: This is the ABC of Waistline, whose sometimes a "Marxist" and sometimes a Tofflerite. For Marxists classes are formed by the introduction of new forms of property, as when wage-labor/capital replaced feudallords/feudalserfs/etc. The new classes were the bourgeois and proletarians. The classes that Marx and Engels refer to in the first sentence of _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_ are defined by their ownership or lack of ownership of the means of production, and their rights of appropriation of the products of the means of production. ^^^^^^ In other words capitalism does not create the modern working class or the industrial proletariat. The revolution in the means of production creates the industrial proletariat as it evolves from heavy manufacture within the framework of political feudalism. Marx and Engels chart the emergence of the modern proletariat of their time in the Communist Manifesto and in Engels "Anti Durhing" and Socialism: Utopia and Scientific. ^^^^^^ CB: What is it you think the classes struggle over in the class struggle that Marx and Engels refer to ? ^^^^^^ Class can only be abolished in connection with the evolution and destruction of the value relations. Melvin P ^^^^ CB: "Value" relations are property relations. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
