90 years have passed since the Great October Socialist Revolution and we are now forced to answer the question: how much has really changed in the global productive capability since the "electronics revolution"? Computers and robots are replacing humanity, no doubt, that is their purpose.... to render the working class redundant, to depreciate the value of labor power, to augment the exploitation of the working class, to maximize profit.
The fields were tilled with hand- hoes and then plowed by Ox in 1917 Russia, the same can be said today of rural Tanzania or the Philippines. Pig iron was oxidized against impurities and turned into steel by the Bessemer method during the later 1850's in England and rendered obsolete during the 1950's by another more efficient method; and more recently 3/4 of North American steel is recycled and an even more efficient electric arc furnace method is utilized. China is now the top producer of steel, followed by Japan and then Russia. Note well, that with the advancement of industrialization in the major capitalist countries, the colonized subordinate multitude remained backward despite some industrialization in the towns, being that most industries serve agriculture.... The development of underdevelopment - From Volume 18, 1966, Monthly Review; http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_n2_v41/ai_7659725/pg_1 .... as in Brazil, Chile, Tanzania, India, China. Paradoxically, latifundia and haciendas flourished as industry went underdeveloped. Tobacco and Tea merchants were able to accumulate wealth and invest in manufacturing. And even agriculture began to transform; the "scientific revolution" was catching on and farmers learned to rotate wheat and barley and clover and other crops and also breed sheep and livestock for food. Machines were already widespread in England during the 1700's and soon enough the steam engine would replace the waterwheel. The "flying shuttle" quicken the pace of weaving and the "water frame" was producing yarn. By the 1800's, the textile industry was mechanized! The working class grew and became specialized, peasants were pauperized. But there was no new proletarian class yet, outside of the already existing one, as its transformation remained quantitative in its relation to production . "By 1812 the cost of making cotton yarn had dropped nine-tenths, and by 1800 the number of workers needed to turn wool into yarn had been reduced by four-fifths. And by 1840 the labor cost of making the best woolen cloth had fallen by at least half." http://www.ecology.com/archived-links/industrial-revolution/index.html Since early on, capitalism sought to render the working class irrelevant; the intensification of exploitation always its aim. History does have a way of repeating itself but, at a higher level; especially if the system is still capitalism. What's a few hundred years in history?.... less than a drop in the bucket! Capitalism continued to expand and recruit human beings into the exploited class. The steam engine replaced the waterwheel and electrification replaced the steam engine. With electrification came the railroads, and after the invention of the internal combustion engine, came the automobile. World War I saw the beginnings of commercial aviation which soon enough eclipse railroads as a means of passenger transportation. More revolutions in production. Then came the revolution in communications: the invention of the telegraph and the telephone, radio and television. All in all, a new industrial working class was formed. But this working class was new not in its relations to production, since it still remained the exploited class, but only in its form and in its organization and numbers. And so, in short, the first industrial revolution. Did the world change much? Well it certainly changed in those places where the industrial revolutions took hold. And, as technology and science became magnified, so did the schism between the advance and the backward, the rich and the poor, electronic technological revolution and underdevelopment. It has been relatively recent that the technological revolution reached India and China where Imperialism finds cheaper labor to exploit, and where now [inclusive of all underdeveloped countries] the seemingly stale serf and peasant relations (compounded by nomadic tribal relations) become stirred and many join the seemingly newly abused working class, in its international sweat shop form. How much has the world changed, really? There are people living worst now than during the days of the Socialist Revolution. Truly a new dispossessed class has entered the picture. But not new qualitatively. Like the working proletariat, it is new only in its form as distinct from the old lumpen proletariat of the transforming days of feudalism to capitalism. The Great Proletarian champion Karl Marx NEVER bestowed upon the lumpen that purpose of ushering in communism. The working class has inescapably taken on that task. REALITY and world events demonstrate that distinctly. Babbling revisionists would attempt to misconstrue the "electronics revolution" to usher in a new class of the "dispossessed", splitting the working class, as its theorists avow, along quantitative wage lines first, and then along a contemptuous revisionist line proclaiming a symbiotic reciprocality between a whole contingent of the class and capitalism. It does not address the labor aristocracy, as THAT strata apart from the industrial proletariat, since the "new class" line would rather, hypocritically, affiliate with the bourgeois labor party of the England and Israeli type in its admittedly reformist conquest of communism. It becomes a fascist concept in its sectarianism, and hence, it is reactionary. So what of the "new" dispossessed class? I'd rather put it this way: what of the new "working" class? So the "new class" theorist would dare invent a schism between that great immigrant workers movement including the impoverished unorganized workers, against unionized workers of a certain wage limit prescribed by them. A rude tactic at the very least. Revisionist socialists of any persuasion contemptuous of the working class would acquiesce to the "new class" concept to varying degrees, that is, to those conceding the vanguard of the communist revolution to another class pathetic in maintaining it. We have witnessed that already in history. Communist workers can not forget the perniciousness of the revisionism of a hundred years ago, never mind that of a few days ago. And as the purpose of this Marxist Leninist List is to reaffirm the conviction of our revolutionary heritage against opportunist, wreckers, provocateurs, or police agents.... we must safe guard it. Revolutionary communists are under surveillance everywhere! But, no need to fret. Revolutionary communist must decide if it is time to re organize ourselves within the workplace and unions and not just simply "among all other classes" involved in spontaneous motion, "in the streets" or in the community. Would communist pretend that there exist a rift between theory and practice, or between organizing the class during these trying times of fascist offensives, and "bringing new ideas to the masses"? We best learn to play the piano well, or leave the orchestra. Alas, we must be untiring. Marxism Leninism, like Christianity, Islam, or any ideology that inflames the masses against the abomination, is our " immaculate religion", that unconquerable proletarian beacon which we must defend at all costs if we're not to succumb to bourgeois ideology. The Science itself is a PARADOX as it is a reflection of the nature of society in its class conflict. Marxism Leninism is the ideology of the proletariat against those "New Age Marxist" who would render it obsolete so as to topple Communists workers off the shoulders of such great mentors and surrender to peep squeak advocates of a "new class" concept. Away with all pests and hypocrites! Workers of the World, Unite! f580 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list
