4). Antagonism as a society movement means the destruction - liquidation, of the primary social classes underlying a social system of production. Or better yet, the destruction of the specific form of the primary social class underlying a social system. What liquidates primary classes is not an act in the political superstructure, but the process of replacing their labor by more efficient forms of energy that renders their real life activity in production - a specific historical form of laboring expressed as a distinct class designation, superfluous to the production process itself.
Antagonism or society moving in class antagonism and social revolution does not mean that the subordinate side of the unity of the primary class in social production, within a given mode of production, becomes dominant and liquidate the formerly dominant side of the polarity as the logic of self movement, and on this basis a new contradiction emerge. The working class in its self movement is not an abstraction but a specific form of production relations or in our case industrial. The working class does not simply become "dominant" in social production because it is already that. The advance of industry - the development of a more efficient form of energy expressed as further development of the division of labor, had already cast the bourgeoisie outside the actual production process, in the main, and all their previous functions are now carried out by wage earners whose various dimensions of wealth speak of their stratification. In this sense the working class is already dominant as the force of production. In politics - the actual living fight within the superstructure, we speak of the working class becoming ruling class - the dominant political class, as battle cry and revolutionary propaganda; but is not our self proclaimed goal as the Marxist detachment within the communist movement the abolition of all ruling classes? The old Soviet doctrine and exposition of antagonism, made famous in "A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy" prepared by the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy under the direction of M. Shirokow (1937), seems historically inaccurate - in my personal understanding of antagonism, but constituted a huge step forward in presenting Marx dialectic to hundreds of millions of proletarians of the pre-WW II era. I consider "Textbook" a masterstroke in the dialectic of exposition. Here is the Soviet presentation: "Antagonistic contradictions are resolved by the kind of leap in which the internal opposites emerge as relatively independent opposites, external to one another, by a leap that leads to the abolition of the formerly dominant opposite and to the establishment of a new contradiction. In this contradiction the subordinated opposite of the previous contradiction now become dominate opposite, preserving a number of its peculiarities and determining by itself the form of the new contradiction, especially at the first stages of its development. But in contradictions that do not have an antagonistic character, the development of the contradiction signifies not only the growth of the forces making for its final resolution, but each new step in the development of the contradiction is at the same time also its partial resolution." Much of this description is lifted from Marx "Theory of Surplus Value Volume 3 in the section on "Overproduction," if memory has not failed me again. The above presentation is inadequate for today. Its inadequacy is historical, meaning the boundary of the industrial system was still half a century away from revealing itself in real life and on the basis of 1936 Soviet society (and in the world), no one could describe an actual process that had not happened. It is simply not true that in the movement of antagonism as society, the internal opposites (primary classes) underlying the social system, emerge as relatively independent opposites, external to one another, on the basis of a leap - transition, that leads to the abolition of the formerly dominant opposite, and to the establishment of a new unity - contradiction, with the previously subordinate opposite now on top, determining the form of the new contradiction. In the movement of antagonism as society, one must keep in mind the actual production relations that is the material - social glue, that holds primary classes together. Classes are not held together on the basis of the superstructure, or the laws defining ones relationship to property in the process of production or the force of the state, armed bodies of men. Primary classes underlying a social system are always united as the actual process of producing and this unity is expressed in the laws of the society defining ones rights, civic duties, relations between men and women, adherence to customs, etc. Externalization is an important aspect of the movement of antagonism but more important are the internal factors - law system, driving the "external emergence of polar opposites." The opposites do not "fall apart" and on the basis of this externalization, the subordinate opposite becomes dominant; but rather their externalization's is driven by the emergence of a new qualitative definition - change in the material power of production, that creates new classes that exist as/in correspondence to the new means of production, and the leap in society involves the ascendency of the new classes or "new class," in the context of the externalization of the primary classes of the social system. Lets look at the social revolution in feudal society. Feudal relations, which were contradictory to the manual labor of the serf, faced an antagonism in the process of large-scale mechanization possible with the steam engine. That is to say the antagonistic movement is not between the primary classes as such, and the serf could not liberate himself as serf by overthrowing the nobility. The antagonistic movement is NOT between the two basic primary classes of a social system and the new class connected to - existing as correspondence, to the new productive forces, or the further emergence of the bourgeoisie and proletariat. Every schoolbook states that the industrial revolution brought down feudalism. The serf did not bring down feudalism and the slave does not bring down slavery through externalization of primary classes and the "historic slug fest." Likewise the workers - the modern working class of the industrial order, cannot, could not and did not bring down the bourgeois mode of production. The vision that the workers as such, could overthrow the very system of which they constitute - the bourgeois mode of production, is called political syndicalism. The world created by manual labor was overthrown by the new world created by mechanical labor. The newly liberated productive forces consolidated and a new social order was built to accommodate them. Our Soviet comrades were in historical error, combining the peculiarly of the Soviet Revolution with the general sweep of history and converting this into a general exposition. The world created by industrial productive forces is in transition already - we are at the beginning of the beginning. And every school child is taught that the semiconductor is to our industrial society what the steam engine was to the feudal order. The struggle between the primary classes does not constitute the antagonistic movement of society, but rather is always a struggle between polar opposites that drive the quantitative expansion of the system. The feudal order and the agrarian system it stood upon were overthrown by classes outside the system (bourgeois and proletariat) or the primary relations of production - with the property relations within, between Nobility and serf, that made the system what it was. Even in old Russia the fight was to win the toilers of the land over to the side of the new rising classes - the proletariat or bourgeoisie, as they simultaneously fought and collude in the effort to overthrow the czar. The externalization we face today, as the face of the movement of antagonism, is not between the workers and bourgeois property as production, even with the value of labor power being driven downward. This tendency of capital produces the fight to reform the system on behalf of the workers or creates the spontaneous economic movement for a more equitable share of the social product and for greater political liberties. Qualitative changes in the means of production creates from within the working class and capital, class fragments that exists in external collision with no basis whatsoever for collusion or agreement because they are not connected to production as active engagement. At one extreme are billions of poverty stricken proletariat demanding socially necessary products and living circumstances - even if they have no money, and its polar opposite is a form of decaying capital that has broken connections with production and can no longer expand on the basis of investment in the productive forces. We call the latter speculative capital. For us today, it is not a matter of the subordinate class becoming dominant as such, but winning the political contest, so as to expand the current new stage of productive forces to sustain a new class detached from production, as the universality of the productive forces. This "new class" of proletarians are not an industrial class or a product of the old industrial social order. Externalization is drive by a qualitative enhancement of the productive forces that shatters the basis of the old unity of the primary class of the old system of social production and all hell begins to break out. History and society are not class struggle because class cannot - not, fight and drive the system they are a part of through its various quantitative stages. History is the progressive accumulation of productive forces . . . first slow and then increasingly faster, and how society moves in class antagonism. 5). In America we observed this process logic directly with the destruction - liquidation, of the sharecroppers as a class and before that, the inability of the former slaves of the plantation system to be truly liberated. In the case of the slave he was genuinely emancipated as chattel, but his laboring activity - his actual relationship to his given set of productivity instruments (production relations), did not change. The slave before and after emancipation welded the same instruments of production. The Southern sharecropper welded more than less the same instruments of production as the emancipated slave and the revolution in agricultural production "picked up steam" . . . , or rather gasoline, in 1940 America. Our peculiar history in America needs to be looked at on its own basis and understood in the context of world history. The abolition of slavery was a social revolution without a corresponding economic revolution in the South. That is, the instruments of production of the agricultural south did not advance; but the North imposed a revolution in the form of social relations upon the South with the freeing of the slaves. This contradiction shaped American politics and society for the next stage of history. The Slave Oligarchy became the landlord planter class and the slave became sharecropper alongside white sharecroppers and "dirt farmers" and poverty stricken rural proletarians. Every social revolution must proceed from, stand upon and develop from an economic revolution or a revolution in the material power of production that change the actual relations of prodcution and not simply forms of property relations. It is not possible to truly liberate slaves or proletarians without replacing them - their historically specific form of laboring, with a more efficient energy. At the time of Emancipation, there was no such economic revolution in the means of production connected to Southern agriculture. The social revolution imposed on the South by the North - rightfully, had no objective base in a revolution of tools, that would allow the class of slaves to escape peonage. Soviet history is the history of the continuation of the Industrial Revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. A reassessment of this history demand a reconfiguration of language and concepts to more accurately describe what happened and then why. More Later Waistline _______________________________________________ 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
