Charles Brown Speak of thinking critically about Marx and Engels, WHY is history a history of class struggles ?
Like · · Share · Stop Notifications · 7 hours ago Carl Davidson Somewhere Mao points out that its also the struggle for production and scientific experiment--not that there's an iron wall between any of them. Think of those cave paintings, too, and the fact that those who painted them saw fit to leave their handprint as a kind of signature. 6 hours ago · Like Jimmy Lappe ....I'd say the short answer is that that class struggles are only part of picture. 5 hours ago via mobile · Like Ethan Young Societies are built around the relationships between exploiters and exploited, not God's will or deep thinking. 5 hours ago · Like Carl Davidson 'Deep thinkers' come in handy, though. I'm glad we have had the 'Old Mole' to enlighten us on a few topics. 5 hours ago · Like Ethan Young If we don't use 'em, the class enemy will. 5 hours ago · Like Jimmy Lappe Hope to say that nobody here is arguing that existing social structures are the result if any god's will! 5 hours ago via mobile · Like Ethan Young We commies don't. I'd wager most folks do, or at least a good percentage. 5 hours ago · Like Jimmy Lappe Oh I don't even think that most Christians do (now I may be privileging my experiences in a lefty Catholic Family--but most deeply religious folks I know, right as well as left, are fairly critical of existing social structures) 5 hours ago via mobile · Like Ethan Young My point: What makes a society? Great men? God working in mysterious ways? Marx & Engels's comment suggests they grow around the relationships between exploiter and exploited. Any other guess misses the macro and the micro IMO. 5 hours ago · Unlike · 1 Jimmy Lappe Sure, but I find that boiling all systems of oppression & exploitation down to class is also limiting and serves to obscure other aspects of reality & social relations. (Not that Marxism isn't extremely important!) 4 hours ago via mobile · Like Charles Brown I aim at answering the question why is history a history of class struggles here: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/.../2009.../023904.html [Marxism-Thaxis] Locus of material necessity in human society and history greenhouse.economics.utah.edu about an hour ago · Like · Remove Preview Charles Brown http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/.../2009.../023904.html [Marxism-Thaxis] Locus of material necessity in human society and history greenhouse.economics.utah.edu about an hour ago · Like · Remove Preview Charles Brown Materialism, Necessity and Freedom: Rehearsal of the Fundamentals of Marxism By the _Manifesto of the Communist Party_ every Marxist knows the A,B,C's of historical materialism or the materialist conception of history. The history of hitherto existing society, since the breaking up of the ancient communes, is a history of class struggles between oppressor and oppressed. Classes are groups that associate in a division of labor to produce their material means of existence. Why are class struggles fundamental in determining the whole of society's laws and rules, it's history and culture, the "super-structure" ? Because exploited classes are coerced into producing surpluses for exploiting classes by making supply of the physiological necessities of life to the exploited classes conditional upon their producing those surpluses. Not only do exploited classes produce the physiological and derivative material necessities of life for society , but they are denied the fruits of their labor unless they supply the bosses, the ruling classes with super fruits Ruling class coerce this exploitation by control of the state power or special repressive apparatus about an hour ago · Edited · Like Charles Brown In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels implied this elementary anthropological or "human natural" rationale for this conception of...See More about an hour ago · Like Charles Brown Think of those cave paintings, too, and the fact that those who painted them saw fit to leave their handprint as a kind of signature.//// However, _class_ struggle only determines history after exploiting and oppressing classes arise, that is after _The Origin of the (male supremacist) Family, Private Property and the State_. Before that there is no private property. about an hour ago · Like Charles Brown "The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles. " 2. That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)] 57 minutes ago · Like Charles Brown Engels put's this footnote in the first sentence of the Manifesto, as before there are classes, history is not determined by class struggle , of course. Writing originates at about the same time as male supremacist family, private property and the state, in Mesopotamia. 56 minutes ago · Like Charles Brown Writing numbers for the purpose of record keeping began long before the writing of language. See History of writing ancient numbers for how the writing of numbers began. It is generally agreed that true writing of language (not only numbers) was invented independently in at least two places: Mesopotamia (specifically, ancient Sumer) around 3200 BCE and Mesoamerica around 600 BCE. Several Mesoamerican scripts are known, the oldest being from the Olmec or Zapotec of Mexico. It is debated whether writing systems were developed completely independently in Egypt around 3200 BCE and in China around 1200 BCE, or whether the appearance of writing in either or both places was due to cultural diffusion (i.e. the concept of representing language using writing, if not the specifics of how such a system worked, was brought by traders from an already-literate civilization). Chinese characters are probably an independent invention, because there is no evidence of contact between China and the literate civilizations of the Near East,[3] and because of the distinct differences between the Mesopotamian and Chinese approaches to logography and phonetic representation.[4] Egyptian script is dissimilar from Mesopotamian cuneiform, but similarities in concepts and in earliest attestation suggest that the idea of writing may have come to Egypt from Mesopotamia.[5] In 1999, Archaeology Magazine reported that the earliest Egyptian glyphs date back to 3400 BCE, which "...challenge the commonly held belief that early logographs, pictographic symbols representing a specific place, object, or quantity, first evolved into more complex phonetic symbols in Mesopotamia."[6] Similar debate surrounds the Indus script of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization in Ancient India (3200 BCE). In addition, the script is still undeciphered and there is debate over whether the script is true writing at all, or instead some kind of proto-writing or non-linguistic sign system. An additional possibility is the undeciphered Rongorongo script of Easter Island. It is debated whether this is true writing, and if it is, whether it is another case of cultural diffusion of writing. The oldest example is from 1851, 139 years after their first contact with Europeans. One explanation is that the script was inspired by Spain's written annexation proclamation in 1770.[7] Various other known cases of cultural diffusion of writing exist, where the general concept of writing was transmitted from one culture to another but the specifics of the system were independently developed. Recent examples are the Cherokee syllabary, invented by Sequoyah, and the Pahawh Hmong system for writing the Hmong language. 54 minutes ago · Like Charles Brown Cuneiform script Middle Babylonian legal tablet from Alalah in its envelope Main article: Cuneiform script The original Sumerian writing system derives from a system of clay tokens used to represent commodities. By the end of the 4th millennium BC, this had evolved into a method of keeping accounts, using a round-shaped stylus impressed into soft clay at different angles for recording numbers. This was gradually augmented with pictographic writing using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted. Round-stylus and sharp-stylus writing were gradually replaced around 2700-2500 BC by writing using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the term cuneiform), at first only for logograms, but developed to include phonetic elements by the 29th century BC. About 2600 BC cuneiform began to represent syllables of the Sumerian language. Finally, cuneiform writing became a general purpose writing system for logograms, syllables, and numbers. From the 26th century BC, this script was adapted to the Akkadian language, and from there to others such as Hurrian and Hittite. Scripts similar in appearance to this writing system include those for Ugaritic and Old Persian. 54 minutes ago · Like Charles Brown The original Sumerian writing system derives from a system of clay tokens used to represent commodities. //// Appropriately, writing originates in exchange of commodities. The base determines super-structure. 53 minutes ago · Like Charles Brown Also , Marx and Engels' ancient antagonism between predominantly mental labor ( writing) and predominantly physical labor originates then along with family, private property and the state. 50 minutes ago · Like Charles Brown Jimmy Lappe Sure, but I find that boiling all systems of oppression & exploitation down to class is also limiting and serves to obscure other aspects of reality & social relations. (Not that Marxism isn't extremely important!)///// Here is Marx's famous specific statement on how the material base determines the superstructure. I would say he says it is only at times of _change_ or revolution that material base is determining; and that is because we must live materially, physiologically in order to think, write, philosophize: " In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. >From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. " http://www.marxists.org/.../critique-pol-economy/preface.htm Economic Manuscripts: Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy www.marxists.org Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy 42 minutes ago · Like · Remove Preview Charles Brown "At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of wh...See More 38 minutes ago · Like Charles Brown However, the pomos and their old cousins, Frankfurt school, Gramsci, = exitentialists, et al. all the fancy marxists have taught us something: = being determines consciousness discontinuously, intermittmently, rarely. = Through most of the actual time of history, consciousness and being are = reciprocally determining. Only rarely, in revolutions, primarily and = ultimately does being utterly determine consciousness.=20 Today, that means that the direct naked appeal to the working class' = class self-interest is inadequate in itself-necessary but not sufficient = in the formal logical sense -to inspire revolution. That appeal cannot be = dropped - the vast majority are working class, wage laborers - but must be = complemented with appeals to other consciousness, other consciousness = determined by being (gender, for example) and consciousness that is = determined more by consciousness. 25 minutes ago · Like Charles Brown In this letter to Bloch, Engels makes clear that Marxism is not absolute economic determinism: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1890 Engels to J. Bloch In Königsberg Abstract Source: Historical Materialism (Marx, Engels, Lenin), p. 294 - 296; Publisher: Progress Publishers, 1972; First Published: by Der sozialistische Akademiker, Berlin, October 1, 1895; Translated: from German; Online Version: marxists.org 1999; Transcription/Markup: Brian Baggins; London, September 21, 1890 [....] According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (that is, of things and events whose inner interconnection is so remote or so impossible of proof that we can regard it as non-existent, as negligible), the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree. We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite assumptions and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive. But the political ones, etc., and indeed even the traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one. The Prussian state also arose and developed from historical, ultimately economic, causes. But it could scarcely be maintained without pedantry that among the many small states of North Germany, Brandenburg was specifically determined by economic necessity to become the great power embodying the economic, linguistic and, after the Reformation, also the religious difference between North and South, and not by other elements as well (above all by its entanglement with Poland, owing to the possession of Prussia, and hence with international political relations — which were indeed also decisive in the formation of the Austrian dynastic power). Without making oneself ridiculous it would be a difficult thing to explain in terms of economics the existence of every small state in Germany, past and present, or the origin of the High German consonant permutations, which widened the geographic partition wall formed by the mountains from the Sudetic range to the Taunus to form a regular fissure across all Germany. In the second place, however, history is made in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts between many individual wills, of which each in turn has been made what it is by a host of particular conditions of life. Thus there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant — the historical event. This may again itself be viewed as the product of a power which works as a whole unconsciously and without volition. For what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed. Thus history has proceeded hitherto in the manner of a natural process and is essentially subject to the same laws of motion. But from the fact that the wills of individuals — each of whom desires what he is impelled to by his physical constitution and external, in the last resort economic, circumstances (either his own personal circumstances or those of society in general) — do not attain what they want, but are merged into an aggregate mean, a common resultant, it must not be concluded that they are equal to zero. On the contrary, each contributes to the resultant and is to this extent included in it. I would furthermore ask you to study this theory from its original sources and not at second-hand; it is really much easier. Marx hardly wrote anything in which it did not play a part. But especially The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is a most excellent example of its application. There are also many allusions to it in Capital. Then may I also direct you to my writings: Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, in which I have given the most detailed account of historical materialism which, as far as I know, exists. [The German Ideology was not published in Marx or Engels lifetime] Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasise the main principle vis-à-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to give their due to the other elements involved in the interaction. But when it came to presenting a section of history, that is, to making a practical application, it was a different matter and there no error was permissible. Unfortunately, however, it happens only too often that people think they have fully understood a new theory and can apply it without more ado from the moment they have assimilated its main principles, and even those not always correctly. And I cannot exempt many of the more recent "Marxists" from this reproach, for the most amazing rubbish has been produced in this quarter, too.... https://www.marxists.org/.../works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1890 www.marxists.org Marx-Engels Correspondence 1890 Historical Materialism (Marx, Engels, Lenin), p....See More 14 minutes ago · Like · Remove Preview Charles Brown Here Engels speaks to Jimmy Lappe's point above. Engels: "According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (that is, of things and events whose inner interconnection is so remote or so impossible of proof that we can regard it as non-existent, as negligible), the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree." 6 minutes ago · Like Charles Brown So, to be more precise my answer above in my "Theses on Materialism" and "The Locus of Material Necessity in Human History" are to the question : Why are class struggles the ultimate determinant of written history ? _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
