Re: [Marxism] Planet of Slums

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 3/26/2004 3:44:30 AM Central Standard Time,
e.c.apling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

>Firstly the thesis of Melvyn P. regarding . . . the "communist class" - the
vast, an increasing number of people in the world, mostly displaced peasants,
but also working-class permanently unemployed who have no place in the
capitalist economy and subsist either by "illegal" activities on the fringe of 
that
society or on the handouts of a "welfare
state", and

Secondly . . .the article by Michael D Yates. . . that

"The world will not be changed permanently for the better unless the mass of
workers do the changing. Wage workers are necessary for capitalism to
reproduce itself, so it is clear that only labor can stop this reproduction and
reorganize society mode of production and distribution." -

The article by Mike David in NLR raises the question for Melvin P's thesis
as to whether this "class" in the planet slums is possibly the revolutionary
communist class, or whether it has more the characteristics described in the
Communist Manifesto as

"The 'dangerous class' the social scum, that passively rotting mass
thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept
into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life,
however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary 
intrigue."

Reply

The communist class is not part of the "bribed tool of reaction."

This question of the lumpen proletariat or what is called the "underclass" in
the American Union, was resolved in the flesh as the difference between the
old League of Revolution Black Workers and the Black Panther Party.

The idea that the world will not change unless the workers do it is
meaningless chatter and runs against the materialist conception of history.

The world changes first - in its inanimate objects (the material power of
production or the productive forces) and then society is compelled to leap to a
new political and property basis. In our case to the abolition of property.

The social revolution has its genesis in the means of production and a class
of workers have always existed in different forms.

Yates advocate syndicalism and a syndicalist deviation within Marxism.

Perhaps this question of the lumpen proletariat needs to be looked at anew.

Comrades abstract Marx from his historical period - the transition from
agriculture to industry, and then try and apply his observations to what is in
front of us. Maybe later I will write exhaustively on the question of the lumpen
proletariat which is utterly different from the communist class, but penetrates
the communist class.

I swear to you Comrade Paddy, no one is going to debate this question in ten
to twenty years.

To overthrow a system of production the emergence of a new qualitative
ingredient is necessary. The serf did not and could not overthrow feudalism and 
the
workers as such cannot overthrow bourgeois property. The struggle of these
classes, by definition is to reform the system. Yes, we enter this struggle and
win the vanguard to the cause of communism.

What unravels a system of production is new productive forces and the classes
it calls into existence out side the basic components of the existing system
in its production logic. Then a period of revolution unfolds.

This concept of the dialectic is the American Marxists contribution to the
treasure house of Marxism. This contribution was paid for with blood.

Pardon me my brother,

It is time for the Marxists and communist workers in the imperial centers to
place themselves at the head of the world proletariat movement and engage the
bourgeoisie on the basis of the trajectory of the world communist class and
the national forms in which out peoples think things out and feel the impact of
imperial exploitation and oppression of humanity.

We are in uncharted territory and going to make monumental errors - mistakes.
However we have sworn on the blood of our children to never surrender and
withdraw from engaging the enemy - bourgeois property.

It has taken us a hundred years to figure out our place in history in the
concrete and to unravel the social process. We did not surrender to reaction but
face continuous defeat, incarceration and assassination. Our bravest sons and
daughters have made the blood sacrifice.

It is better - higher, to die on ones feet than live on ones knees,
genuflecting to capital.

A window has opened up that magnifies our blood sacrifice, and we are going
through the window that is the communist class.

Pardon, but we insists on going first and have dreamed for a century of being
in the position to take the first bullet. I am told that you do not hear the
bullet that gets you and this is all the better.

The lumpen proletariat is as Marx states and not the communist class.

You should know that a generation of Marxist rewrote the national question in
America on the basis of the Irish - the original modern "niggas."  We shall
die and live as one.

Pardon my brother, but you are standing in the way of my bullet.


Melvin P.

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