Re: (rise of US capitalism--part 6) - 2 end

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

>Revolutionary wars of conquest are different than social revolutions. In a
social revolution, the oppressed class or classes of society overthrow the
rule of oppressor classes, and the state apparatus of the oppressor classes, and
establish new social relations of production, and a new state apparatus.

In my view modern history has given us three major examples of this sort of
revolutionary war: the Napoleanic wars, the US Civil War, and the Soviet
offensive phase of the Second World War. <

Comment

Revolutionary wars can and have been fought to over throw imperial authority
or break free of the direct colonial relationship. The first edition of the
American Revolution broke - shattered, the direct colonial relationship, without
changing the property relations or the form of social relations, however one
defines social relations. The American revolution was against tariffs and
restrictions on manufacture - against colonial bondage.

"New social relations of production" as a concept is the source of endless
debate.

Nevertheless it is not possible for human being to overthrow social relations
of production as such. What actually changes is "form." The serf represents a
certain form of agricultural laborer, but he is without question an
agricultural laborer. His liberation from feudal economic and social relations 
does not
liberate the agricultural worker in history. This liberation of the
agricultural workers as agricultural workers requires another historical 
process.

What happens is that something new is injected or emerges within a mode of
production that begins to unravel the old methods - forms, of production and
wealth creation.  In feudal society this "something" appeared in the transition
of the form of wealth from landed property to gold and other movable forms of
wealth, alongside the growth of handicraft and then the manufacturing process.
Handicraft and the manufacturing process are forms of the laboring process.

What is overthrown is not the social relations - in the historical sense, but
the form of social relations and the laws of the political superstructure
that act as a fetter upon the new factors of production. The new forms of social
relations are already evolving on the basis of the growth of the material
power of production. They are "new social relations" because one form is
overthrown and shattered in favor of a new form that correspond to the new 
stage of
development of production.
The fight in the political superstructure sets the stage for the universal
emergence of a new mode of production and new forms of social relations.

This question has been debated for decades and deserves resolution.
_____________________________________

>In the first example the French
army overthrew the decaying feudal social relations and state apparatus in
parts of Europe (especially the Rhineland and Northern Italy). In the second
example the Army of the Republic (USA) destroyed the
slaveowner/slave social relations and the state apparatus of the
Confederate States of America. In the third example the Red Army destroyed
capitalist social relations, and the capitalist state apparatus, in Eastern
Europe.

In each of these cases the oppressed classes of the newly liberated regions
to one extent or another aided in their own liberation, but never played more
than a secondary role in the revolutionary changes which occurred.<

Comment

The oppressed classes are not and where not liberated from oppression or
exploitation. Rather, the form of their oppression and exploitation changed. 
This
is why the communist social revolution is the most radical in human history:
not just a change in the form of exploitation but the abolition of property and
all exploitation.

Capitalism is a property relation - a bourgeois property relation. Capitalism
is not a machine, oil, method of production or industrial logic. Capitalism
is not a form of the laboring process - rather, industrialism is the new form
of the laboring process. Capitalism is the shape - mediates, given to these
aforementioned items as the result of competition between individual owners of
capital. Manufacturing is not a property relations but a specific form of the
organization of production or the form that a certain relationship of people in
the process of production takes.

Without question the relationship of people in the process of production and
the property relations impact one another or if you wish, mediates one
another. What is fundamental is the material factors of production. The Red 
Army did
not and could not destroy "capitalist social relations" as such. Capitalism
cannot be defined as a social relation of production, although it appeared as
such to previous generations of communists.  This perception is a historical
error.

Capitalism is a property relation - a bourgeois property relation. The Red
Army could at best destroy the bourgeois property relations because the social
relations are riveted to tools, instruments, machinery and energy source. The
change in the social relations was from agricultural society to industrial
society. Then the Red Army runs into the law of value, which is not a social
relations but a law peculiar to commodity production, not capitalism.

The communist social revolution abolishes all property and social relations
of production, which are really production relations. The question has been
posed incorrectly in history. Society is formed on the basis of the unity of
productive forces and productive relations - not social relations. Productive
relations are the laws defining property and the relationship of people to
property in the process of production.  The constant, spontaneous development 
of the
productive forces eventually disrupts the unity that is called society and
demands a change in the form of society.

In this sense a view of "international" versus "national" poses the question
the wrong way. What is needed is a view of the curve of history development or
in this case industrial development and the value form. Machine society is
going to create a certain configuration of the infrastructure by definition, no
matter what the property relations. In other words America is not a "classical
capitalist country" because it was colonized by the "classical capitalist
countries."

I have encountered very few Marxist in life who look at America as simply a
"national' peculiarity divorced from international commerce. Our struggle has
always been to define our specific history because one can only fight on real
soil somewhere, no matter how much one profess "internationalism."

The issues of the Civil War remain. The process logic is worth examining.

Upon close examination one discovers that the Civil War did not destroy the
property relations in the South or produce a fundamental change in the laboring
process. What was destroyed was the form of social relations but not the
social relations of producers - mobilizes of the produce of the land. What would
later produce a fundamental change in the laboring process is the mechanization
of agriculture. Here is why the concept "social relations of production" must
be defined when used.
The results of the Civil War merit attention.

The abolition of slavery was a social revolution without a preceding or
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 profound contradiction shaped our history for the next stage.

Here is the rub: if one defines social relations as classes, then the Civil
War was in fact a revolutionary war and social revolution because the slave
class as slave ceased to exist and the slave oligarchy ceased to exist but
appeared the next day in another form and as the same people.

Now, the next stage of the revolution should have been to break up the large
plantations and parcel them out to the freedmen and the landless poor whites.
This would have finished the planters off as a class, and such wide spread
ownership of productive property would have democratized the South. This was not
in the interest of the Northern oligarchy and did not happen. That is the
contradiction in our history that appears in the theory arena as the inability 
to
make the concept social relations concrete and specific. No matter what
direction the social process took, only the form of social relations could have 
been
changed.

Apparently the law of life is that one absurdity produces another. Capitalist
slavery is an absurdity and as an abstraction impossible, but it happened.
>From this absurdity appeared another absurdity - a change in the form of social
relations without changing the content of social relations. The same people
picking the cotton under slavery picked cotton after slavery. This is how the
matter appeared to generations of communist but a deeper theory question was
involved.

If the social relations of the South were changed then the Civil War was a
social revolution. Here is the living - real contradiction, that has plagued the
Marxist movement in America. The social relations were not changed. Rather,
the form of the social relations were changed. Exploitation remained or classes
and property.

The Civil War was not a revolution in property relations but then it was,
because it destroyed an antiques form of property as the slave. The slave was
property like a machine and that is the contradiction. The form of social
relations was changed and not the social relations that is the mark of 
property. The
form of property was changed and this is obvious.

The way out of this contradiction was solved by living history. The form of
social relations change and the question can be posed very different from the
standpoint of the previous generation of Marxists. New social relations can
only appear with a transition in the mode of production that destroyed the
economic bases of classes. In America the agricultural workers in the form of
sharecroppers as a class have been destroyed. The huge mechanization of 
agriculture
and the biogenetic revolution is destroying the agricultural worker as a
category of history in America.

Today we have no excuse to be wedded to historically obsolete concepts of our
reality.
_____________________________

>This fact - this key difference between a social revolution and a
revolutionary war - accounts for a lot of the political history after each of
these revolutionary wars. For one thing, reactionary political forces were
able to take on the mantle of 'nationalism' in many countries invaded by
Napoleon. The same occurred in Eastern Europe in countries occupied by the Red 
Army.
A similar process happened in the US South with southern regionalism, states
rights, etc. This also accounts - in part - for the relative passivity of the
beneficiaries of the new social relations in the face of counterrevolution  and
reaction.

Comment

In my opinion the question is posed incorrectly. In my opinion something
occurred in the wake of the Second imperial world war and the Civil War. The
former attempted to shatter bourgeois property and the latter only changed its
form. What unites both processes is the small producer and the Northern armies 
of
liberation were not Red Armies.

Melvin P.


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