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In a message dated 8/14/2004 8:18:31 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>CB: When you say "abolish property" instead of "abolish private property" are you putting forth a different concept than the one that Marx , Engels and Marxists use ? Or just shorthand for what Marxists refer to as the abolition of _private_ property ?<
Reply
Both . . . or rather Yes . . . because I am not a Marxist . . . just kidding. Although I am more communist - Red, than Marxist . . . from my understanding of the history of American Marxism as a political body as opposed to more than less academic discourse. Marxism is just one facet of communism anyway and never the largest sector at that.
Ain't a socialist either . . . although some of my best friends . . .
So the answer to the above is . . . Yes, or rather both. All of the above.:-)
In fact I have the only valid concept of property according to Marx than has ever existed in history. Everyone else is wrong and I am right because . . . just playing.
Private property is a form of property . . . Yes? What is to be abolished is not just the "private" or the form . . . but the property relations itself.
By property or the property relation is meant all the things in our society through which one individual dominates another as well as class domination - the actual interactive interrelatedness of everyone to each other . . .
Bourgeois property is only one form of property and what ever ones understanding of property is . . . that is what's meant by abolish property . . . not just the bourgeois kind. That is the direction of history as I understand all of what Marx and Engels have written.
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions. Thus, "property relations" is used to mean all forms of domination of the individual by another individual based in class rights and class antagnoism . . . until the bright red future of communism is achieved and property is wipe from the minds of men and women.
We have entered the beginning of a new historical era where the property relations itself can be abolished by abolishing the last form of private property relations . . . bourgeois property . . . WITHOUT THE STATE BEING THE PROPERTY HOLDER. This might take 100 years or a thousand years . . . I don't know.
In the former Soviet Union the state was the property holder by way of its specific system of the dictatorship of the proletariat. By way of the state power . . . money, certificates and "sovereign credit" was issued that allowed the working people to access the system of production and distribution. I call this a from of property relations.
The bourgeois property relations was abolished in the Soviets industrial infrastructure and more than less in agriculture. Perhaps less than more in agriculture . . . depends on ones point of view concerning exchange and the price form.
Properly speaking the industrial workers did not sell their labor power to themselves in exchange for means of consumption . . . but then again . . . yes they did . . . as a transition phase never completed . . . with the state mediating this PROPERTY RELATIONS and the exchange of commodities.
If commodities . . . including labor . . . was exchanged in the Soviet Union and this was not a bourgeois property relations or the private property relation . . . then how can anyone say that the working class was property holder and yet . . . there was no property relation at the same time?
Property is bigger than a historically specific form.
Abolition of property means advancing well beyond Soviet society and what makes this possible is subjective man in the context of a radically new emerging system of production. I do not advocate a Soviet America. Soviets were forms of organization of the workers as property owner.
Bourgeois private property is the final and most complete _expression_ of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms . . . yet, under industrial conditions society is not and was not at a technological stage where the mass of people are no compelled to work as the basis of individual consumption.
What made Soviet socialism . . . real existing socialism was the legal system and ownership rights - property rights, that prevented anything other than means of consumption passing into the hands of individuals. That is to say . . . means of production could not pass into the hands of individuals.
Those who dominate and or administer the things that dominate people and reproduce the compulsion for exchange based on labor are still within a property relation.
Socialism means a change in the form of property . . . from bourgeois private property to what? . . . Proletarian property. Here is the contradiction . . . not antagonism. Without question it was correct to exclude the bourgeoisie from owning property . . . and property is revealed to be more than owning a thing but also a social power . . . embodied and expressed . . . also as exchange itself. Property is also a social power because the commodity itself is a property relations and/is a social power.
"Abolish property" as a body politic for immediate action - doctrine, means in our specific context that there is no need for the state authority to be the property holder as our specific form of transition to economic communism . . . and also we can presently defeat and abolish old systems of domination of the individual by another individual.
"Abolish property" as a body politic for immediate action -- doctrine, means labor . . . starting tomorrow no longer has anything to do with one accessing means of consumption socially necessary for human reproduction.
In the realm of theory "Abolition of property" also means abolition of the "price form" by abolishing the law of value or regulating it to history along side the spinning wheel. The "price form" is proof of the existence of a property relation.
Soviet socialism could not abolish the law of value because it is only at a certain stage in the evolution of society - not subjective man . . . but the technological regime . . . that allows the subjective man as species to understand that socially necessary labor has increasing lost its meaning as a regulating force or impulse governing exchange.
We are approaching this historical juncture in real time . . . although I personally believe we have crossed the threshold - the event horizon.
Exchange itself loses its force in the future.
One cannot legislate exchange, the price form and value out of existence because they are _expression_ of a historically evolved property relation - division of labor . . . of which bourgeois property is the final form based on class antagonism.
In theory . . . . not doctrine of combat . . . "Abolition of property" also implies and means the abolition of the commodity form of products. The commodity by definition is (mediates . . . god I hate that word) a property relationship because exchange is taking place on the basis of something . . . and the bottom line of this something is the magnitude of living labor in products or a social relationship.
This exchange or rather exchange value has a real history as society . . . is/as a social relations of production with the property relations within.
In the last instance subjective man expresses herself on the basis of a given state of development of the material power of production. One cannot abolish the price form or rather property as/is the commodity form until a development in the means of production radically oust living labor from production.
This stage of development is achieved in relationship to the transformation of agricultural or the rural population into consumers/producers and is measured on the basis of how much of the population is still in agricultural production . . . providing foodstuff for all of society.
Yep . . . This is how history unfolded the issue.
This development in the material power of production has a real history as a curve of development from agricultural society to industrial society. Computerization and advance robotics during the next twenty years ... maybe 50 . . . a very brief period in human history . . . is going to prove to everyone on earth that the law of value had been unraveled on the basis of the revolution in the means of production and the ousting of living labor from the production of commodities.
The commodity itself is . . . embodies (mediates . . . I shall go to hell for using this word twice in one article) the property relations . . . not just bourgeois property. Property relations existed before the bourgeoisie and most certainly after the bourgeoisie is hurled from the imperial heights of power. . . and is abolished by history . . . not political fiat. The political act is the coup de grace and acknowledging that history has served up property for proper burial.
For the past 2000 years communists have fought on hostile economic terrain and today history itself is moving into the social arena in a radical way . . . that is in our favor.
The technological capability exits and is coming on line where a different kind of production and self regulation of society production and consumption can take place.
By property or the property relation is also meant all the things in society through which one individual dominates another and the rsidue of these things in the minds of men. (Sorry . . . this is the theory part and not the doctrine of combat for today.)
If I have to go to you . . . as you exist in an institutional relationship . . . in order to secure food or obtain the means . . . money or a certificate . . . rather than go on line to see what is available in my immediate area . . . and then access these things unfettered by your institutional relations . . . then you dominate an important aspect of my species being no matter how democratic and friendly you are. This domination is also the meaning of "property" or the force of property.
I am not seeking a good slave master.
Specifically, society does not really consists of individuals, but express the sum total of interactions and interrelations . . . the relations within which these individuals stand.
Sure there will always be "Pepsi versus Coke" struggles and engagements over what "needs" are reproduced. The point is that these engagements will no longer be based in class antagonism and or scarcity or property and its residue . . . but rather science or our evolving understanding of "need" as bringing our metabolic process in close harmony with that of the earth.
Soviet history proves that the property relations exists after abolishing bourgeois property.
From my point of view the real question is not the meaning of property but rather the meaning of . . . "property based in class antagnoism" . . . because bourgeois propery is the final form of this.
Abolish property?
Heck yea.
Pardon . . . what do you mean by property or rather how do you understand Marx, Engels and the American Marxists ... and world Marxists meaning of property if not something intimately fused with the commodity form? The price form is important because that is how the commodity form is abolished in history . . . in theory.
Have to go to Wal-Mart and get a jar of honey for baked beans, muster, lemons and distilled water.
More later.
Melvin P.
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