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Antagonism: Antagonism means "the mutual resistance or active opposition of two opposing forces, physical or mental; active opposition to a force." Antagonism is a form of change resolution by annihilation and nullification. Antagonism as destruction, and nullification is a form of society transition to a new mode of production. It is a form of resolution of relations of production relations that have entered collision with qualitatively changing productive forces. (see productive forces). Qualitatively new productive forces nullify and annihilate a previously existing development of means of production as a basis for the growth and expansion of the new productive forces. ^^^^^^^ CB: Integrating "change" in is a good idea. How about all real change ( as opposed to "circular" change) is based in antagonism ? How about it is the antagonism between the increasingly privatized (to the point of monopoly) mode of _appropriation_ , that is form of ownership or property, and the socialized mode of production ( the organization of production , not new technologies or machines) that generates the change to socialism from capitalism ? ( See penultimate chapter of _Capital_ you quoted earlier). Here is part of it: "Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. " ^^^^ CB: It is the _centralization_ or monopoly ownership of means of production and the increasing socialization of the organization of labor that is the key antagonism. The question might be asked how more specifically is centralized ownership in antagonism with socialized labor. Part is the answer is :come to Detroit and see (smile) ^^^^^ In class society, the collision between qualitatively new productive forces and old relations of production - (the old classes connected to these relations), cannot be resolved based on the struggle of the two classes constituting the old relations of production. ^^^^^^^ CB: The new _quality_ in the productive forces is their greater and greater socialization of the laborers. Notice Marx refers toThe shifts from steam to oil as a main fuel, or the shift to electricity, or the shift to computers and new forms of communication and transportation all allow greater numbers of workers working in cooperation, over larger areas. ^^^^^ Resolution takes place outside - external, the contradiction that is the two classes constituting the system. The struggle between serf and nobility cannot be resolved by the serf overthrowing the nobility and establishing a new society of serfs. Resolution takes place by destruction of both serf and nobility at the hands of new classes; bourgeoisie and proletariat. ^^^^^ CB: I'd say Marx's theory is that the proletariat defeats the bourgeoisie , _and then_ all classes are abolished. In The Manifesto, Marx and Engels assert that capitalism is different than feudalism and slavery in that the number of classes is rapidly reduced to two. They don't discuss any new classes arising to do away with capitalism as with feudalism. The passage in _Capital_ above is in chapter with this footnote quoting The Manifesto: "The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.... Of all the classes that stand face-to-face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes perish and disappear in the face of Modern Industry, the proletariat is its special and essential product.... The lower middle-classes, the small manufacturers, the shopkeepers, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle-class... they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei,” London, 1848, pp. 9, 11." Antagonism, resolution by nullification or destruction of a previously existing unity of classes, (in this case serf and nobility) requires the emergence and development of a new unity of classes external to the old unity that was serf and nobility. The new classes, (bourgeoisie and proletariat) connected to the new means of production, appear as the external agent of destruction and nullification. Resolution is negation by destruction of the two old classes and their property form. Antagonism is not contradiction or a form of contradiction, but rather a form of resolution. Contradiction -(the struggle of old classes against themselves) is replaced (superseded) by antagonism. ^^^^^^^ CB: However, resolution of contradiction is by one aspect of the contradiction negating the other aspect. So, antagonism as resolution is by negation of the bourgoisie by the proletariat. We might say that the antagonistic contradiction in feudalism was between the lords/clergy and the bourgeoisie, not the lords/clergy and the serfs. ^^^^^ "The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production – antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence – but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism.(Marx). (see Dialectics: quantity, quality, the antagonistic element.) ^^^^^^^ CB: Here "antagonism" is not used as you use it. "Solution of this antagonism" does not imply that "antagonism" _is_ resolution. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
