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Karl Marx was specific concerning his contribution to economic
thought, social theory and why social and political revolution takes place in
the life of society. Marx and Engels spent an inordinate amount of time and
writing riveted to changes in the economic life of society or the material power
of the forces - tools, instruments, machines, energy source, human labor, used
for production.
Their basic proposition - which constituted a revolution in
how we think things out concerning society changes, is that social revolution
comes about as a result of the spontaneous development of the means of
production and distribution and communications is connected to production as a
part of economic life.
Changes in the economy brings about a spontaneous
movement for reform because the way we produce has been altered. For example, as
the industrial process called Fordism developed - assembly line production on a
mass scale, industries began to change how people were grouped together in
production and the scale in which people were brought under one roof.
Another side of this change was the development of a
spontaneous movement for labor unions. Labor unions had already existed but what
now was fought for was an industrial form of unions instead of the old
union of the highly skilled workers that grew out of a different system of
production technique.
Quantitative changes in the material power of production
causes reform movements or movements to reformulate relations in society to
conform to the new changes. When eleven million sharecroppers were tractor off
the land and agriculture underwent mechanization, this economic impulse created
a movement to reform the social structures of society to allow these
sharecroppers to pass into the industrial infrastructure and become industrial
workers.
Jim Crow prevented this and the age old battle of the black
against Jim Crow acquired economic legs to stand upon. A complex social struggle
took place involving all classes, social groups and political
organizations. Jim Crow was shattered and overcome as the result of the
striving of millions of people, with competing and overlapping economic -
class, interest.
The period of industrial unionism and its ascendency and then
the Civil Rights Movements were magnificent social movements for reform seeking
to realize the revolutionary vision of 1776 and 1865. Revolution is a
complicated process and its would seem that each revolution creates the
conditions for the next. The vision of 1776 was not realized and became
shipwrecked on the rock of slavery and genocide.
The cause of in the Revolutionary War was for national
independence from the Crown. The vision was stated in the Declaration of
Independence and continues to inspire broad segments of the diverse peoples of
America and indeed the world. The vision was noble but flawed because it
was based on the genocide of a people - the Indian, and the institution of
slavery was not abolished.
Since the vision was not fulfilled another revolution became
inevitable. The cause of one revolution lay the foundation for the next and the
human actors in the drama of society fight these things out based on a complex
of factors related to . . . "how complete" . . . or how much of the vision of
the revolution did we achieve?
The cause in the Civil War was preservation of the Union and
Southern slavery as a social and economic institution, stood in the
way. States left the Union in order to maintain a form of ancient
democracy founded on slavery and the cries of the slave maters for self
determination fell on deaf ears because their cause was not honorable.
Marxists look at economic relations as a framework of events.
Preservation of the Union implicitly meant under the leadership of the
representatives of the advancing industrial society . . . in the North. The
Civil War produced two visions about American society. Slavery versus
industrial democracy, with the vision of the slave holders being the oldest,
because America had evolved as a Southern country in its economic and social
structures. Old does not necessarily mean better.
Lincoln stated the vision as a nation - not a union, conceived
in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal and
slavery stood in the way of this vision with arms. They were defeated and their
economic system of slavery destroyed. This was the right thing to do. Men went
to their grave singing, "he died to make men Holy let us die to make them free"
and the cause of the slave oligarchy was lost forever.
The vision of 1776 was advanced another rung on the historical
ladder.
Lincoln's vision was most honorable , , , but would not
acquire its economic legs to stand upon for decades to come. Lincoln's vision
could not and did not achieve its victory as the result of the "bloody conflict"
for a complex of reasons of which mean and women influence and make
real. How this battle was fought out in the post Civil War era is extremely
interesting and the stuff of scholars and movie makers. It is a story worth
telling and knowing.
Nevertheless, in many instances the plight of the black became
worse than under slavery and a reign of terror was imposed on the South to pin
the agricultural workers to the owners of capital - big money, in land. Someone
had to grow the cotton: six million whites and five million blacks were
pinned to the land as sharecropper and in the infamous chain gang system. Of
course the black was on the bottom of the bottom or as it is said on the streets
. . . "looking up to see bottom."
The battle would have to be fought again. The vision of one
revolution becomes the cause of the next.
American on July 4, 2004, is going through another economic
revolution and this is going to call forth political revolution that full fills
the uncompleted vision of the previous revolutions and reform movements.
The social revolution is an economic revolution that changes
the specific combination of human labor + machinery + energy source. The steam
engine most certainly pushed forth the industrial revolution. Fordism
accelerated industrial development and expansion, as did Edison and electricity.
The telephone quickened communications and the mechanical and then electric
adding machine revolutionized accounting and distribution.
The Third edition of the American Revolution is well underway.
What is driving the "Third Edition" and giving it new economic legs is the
revolution in technology - computers, digitalized processes and advance
robotics. The advanced robotics of today are not the same as the
electromechanical industrial expansion of "Fordism" - which drove society
quantitatively along the quality or path called industrial production proper.
Fordism expanded an existing qualitative configuration of the quality identified
as the industrial system.
In society a quantitative expansion of a certain way society
is organized - the quality called industrialism, does not cause radical -
evolutionary, change. Freezing water does not cause it to change qualitatively
because ice is still H2O. Quality changes in the way we produce is the result of
injecting a new qualitative ingredient into the existing system of production
that brings its quantity expansion to an end - on the old basis, and compels
society to adopt the new production technique and expand on the new basis.
The slow development of the new technological regime has
thrown our society into crisis. Education on the old industrial model has to be
changed. The way millions of people communicate with one another has changed
forever . . . as well as the way businesses are organized. Our new technological
regime and mighty forces of production makes it possible to forever solve the
age old human struggle for survival and against sacristy in society.
Yet we have not achieved Lincoln's vision of a nation - not
Union, conceived in liberty and justice for all. What good is liberty without
justice? Is this not simple an industrial form of democracy founded on slavery
and human misery - wage slavery?
What is our vision on July 4, 2004?
My personal vision is as old as Christ himself and founded on
the common good - communism. It is not my intent to bring church into a Pen-L
forum but when I think about the communist future I get happy. The visions of
all the revolutions in the past of American history can be realized because we
have the economic legs to stand upon. What is required is the long battle for
moral decency and that which we know is the right thing to do.
The Marx prophecy is correct.
Happy July 4.
"At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or . . . with the property relations within . . . From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. . . . Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the tasks itself arises only when the material conditions of its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm Melvin P.
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