MP Who is Hammerman? Does he or her write to this list? ^^^^^ CB: John Henry didn't die in that competition with the machine. He was just faking like he was dead. ****************** MP: Ask a lawyer a simple question and his character is revealed. That is why the American people hold them in contempt, Mr. Lawyer. The folk hero John Henry was it fact slain in competition with a higher development in machine tools. A steam driven hammer is more productive than a 25 pound hammer driven by human muscle . . . energy. John Henry was regulated to the museum alongside the spinning wheel. This class of hammer driving men - using human labor as the fundamental energy source of their hammering, became machine operators of steam driven hammers. Classes rise and fall on the basis of changes in the material power of production. One is not required to approach class in only its abstract setting or merely as a property relations. Class is also historically concrete with subjective factors. John Henry the folk hero wanted to save the jobs of his work crew and agreed to work harder and prove that the revolutionary tool in the form of the steam driven hammer was less productive than his crew. John Henry did in fact beat the steam driven hammer but his intensity of labor killed him. The subjective aspect of John Henry the folk hero is a form of consciousness that could not see why his laboring was being rendered superfluous to the production value. He sought to preserve a form of the laboring process overrun by the revolution in technology. Who is Hammerman? Does he or her write to this list? Hammer + man = Hammerman . . . sad indeed. Does not Molotov translate into Hammer and Stalin into man of steel? These industrial metaphors are things of the past. The issue of class is a complex issue approached in basically two ways: in its abstract setting and as a historically concrete moment involving an aggregate of people with historically specific subjective features. On the A-List I received a response by someone calling themselves John Henry and on this list I received a response by someone calling themselves Hammerman. These responses were by way of you Mr. Lawyer. Let me guess . . . you are protecting the identity of your clients.
For the record, this thread labeled "obviously incorrect" debated the following: You ask dmanding a yes or no answer: CB: >>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 MP: 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 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. Melvin P. PS: I do agree with the fact of necessity or a given set of needs that must be met for human beings to exist, reproduce themselves and advance as a species. The arena called necessity is a field of considerable debate and Marx speaks of authentic human needs versus bourgeois need. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
