[Marxism] Marx political economy/notes of consciousness

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Waistline


CB:But I would reiterate the earlier point I made on consciousness. Marx's
idea is that the social revolutionaries who unravel captialism are more
conscious of the historical dimensions of what they are doing than those
social revolutionaries who unraveled feudalism, thus Lenin's emphasis on
class conscious workers.

Comment

I believe that it is a mistake to retreat to Leninism in this era.

^^^^^^
CB: This is not a retreat to Leninism anymore than discussing Marx's ideas
is a retreat to Marxism. Lenin's emphasis is just _Marxism_. I repeat, and
it applies to what we do today: People will have to be highly conscious to
make changes _today_.

^^^^^


 Marx idea is that a revolution in the material power of production takes
place, and this fundamentality has to be applied to American history and our
society as it currently exists. Because tools and machines are the product
of human beings it is not necessary to state that people make tools and
machines. The issue of
mediation is not in dispute and obscures the question.


^^^^^
CB: The reason it is worth saying it that sometimes the "material power of
production" starts to sound too unconscious. The socialist revolution is
highly conscious. It is not a retreat to point out Lenin's emphasis on
raising consciousness, attention to issues _not_ outside the consciousness
of the "basic social classes".

^^^^^

If the two basic classes of a social system are not free to overthrow the
social system it is a part of, this means another process outside the
consiousness of the basic social classes unfolds. Lenin, his Bolsheviks and
thousands of revolutionaries in Russia were social revolutionaries in the
sense of the landed property relations of fuedalism or industrial
revolutionaries because their goal could not exceed the historical mode of
production that is the industrial system.

^^^^
CB:  You haven't demonstrated or cited Marx/Engels on your claim that "the
two basic classes of a social system are not free to overthrow the social
system" , so, your premise above is in contention.  The general statement I
recall is that the working class abolishes itself and all classes in the
socialist revolution, but not that the working class , one of the two main
classes in capitalism is not free to overthrow it. What gives ?

The goal of Marxists is not to exceed the industrial system, but the
capitalist system. This is A, B,C. Please acknowledge that this is your
formulation , not Marx's. Fine to be creative, but don't attribute it to
Marx.

^^^^^^^^^

In this sense Henry Ford was a "social revolutionary" of the industrial
system. Lenin and his crew were very different than Henry Ford

^^^^^^
CB: Sure, Marx and Engels say in the Manifesto that the bourgeoisie are
constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production. Henry Ford's
assembly line was a leap in industry.  He didn't "exceed" the industrial
system though.

Agree that Lenin and his crew were very different than Henry Ford and his .
:>)

^^^^^

^^^^^^

Lenin and his crew were very different than Henry Ford. They were actually
insurrectionaries with the stated goal of the seizure of political power in
Russia. They were communists in the meaning of building an industrial system
without the bourgeois property relations.

In as much as the Soviet Union did exist and had an industrial system but
different property relations - whose fundamentality was not planning, but
rather the absence of the circuit governing the unrestricted law of value,
and because of this planning emerges, one can properly speak of the
industrial system or the industrial mode of production with the property
relation within.

^^^^^
CB: What good is a "fundamentality" of the absence of the circuit governing
the unrestricted law of value, if it doesn't end unemployment and poverty ?
The fundamentality is the absence of unemployment and poverty, which is got
to by more planning of the economy as a whole, which is got to by ending the
anarchy of production. The end of anarchy of production _is_ a
"fundamentality" if we "retreat" to Marx and Engels.

^^^^^^^^


Some underlying propositions from the past century needs reexamination in
the light of our new era and the emergence of the modern proletariat - not
the one that existed in 1848, during the ascendency of the industrial
system.

The working class raising itself to ruling class cannot abolish itself on
the basis of consciousness.

^^^^
CB: The working class cannot do that without class and socialist
consciousness. That's the proposition.  Throughout history
oppressed/exploitive classes have remained so because of the greater class
consciousness of oppresser/exploiting classes.

^^^^^^

 Something else must happen for the working class to abolish itself as a
working class. Something much larger than a change in the form of property.
There has always been a working class - since the dissolution of primitive
communism, by different names in history. In the past century we were taking
about the working class as an aggregate of industrial classes.

^^^^
CB: The Marxist terminology is that there have been oppressed/exploited
working classes since the dissolution of primitive communism. The industrial
class(es) Marx termed proletariat.

^^^

When the working class was raised to the level of ruling class in Russia,
there was no possibility of it being able to abolish itself as a working
class, no matter what the political consciousness of its leaders or how one
defines class consciousness.

^^^^
CB: The idea is not that they stop working in industry, but that they are no
longer exploited and oppressed AND that they abolish the other main class,
the bourgeoisie. In doing this, they change their own nature, transform
themselves.

^^^^^

Here we need to rethink the meaning of class consciousness in respects to
our working class and proletariat for this era and not the preceding era of
Lenin.

The historical barrier the working class faces is the barrier faced by all
working classes in history - a certain stage in the development of the mode
of production, with the property relations within. Everyone understands the
world is interactive and in the real word case and effect are a unity.
Nevertheless, in the real world and real life of people we are charged with
locating that
which is fundamental to the social process. The answer cannot be human
beings because without human beings we are not talking about anything.

Conscious activity of human beings by definition is bounded by a certain
stage of development of the productive forces and specifically by the
quantitative boundary of the system they are a part of.

What brings slavery to an end as a historical force is a certain stage of
development of the material power of production or rather, slavery cannot be
abolished on a planetary basis without the steam engine, the mule and the
spinning jenny.

^^^^^^
CB: The Roman slave mode of production was not abolished by the steam
engine, the mule and the spinning jenny. It was more serfdom that was
abolished by these.

^^^^


Serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and in
general people - as a class aggregate, cannot be liberated - emancipated as
a class, without the labor being replaced by a more efficient form of
energy.

We need look no more than at our own history to understand the process.
After Emancipation and the defeat of Reconstruction the plight of the mass
of former slaves got worse and much of this is bound up in the fact that a
slave or sharecropper cannot be liberated without something to replace the
thing that make them such a laborer in the first place. Mechanization of
agriculture
liberated - abolished as a class, the sharecropper and bought this stage of
history to an end.

Then the political struggle leaped forward and completed its
fundamental legal goals by the end of the 1960s. Not all the goals but the
fundamental one which was desegregation. Black hands have won the right to
sit alongside white hands in the bombing of innocent people.

The point is the fundamentaily of the material power of production - not
consciousness. You can have all the consciousness you want and never exceed
a material barrier that is the specific quantiative boundary of a social
system.

^^^^^^
CB:
By the twentieth century, the "material power of production", the physical
power of production , such as the greater efficiency of energy capture and
use by mechnization of agriculture, or the lack of same before that,  was
_not_ a barrier on masses of oppressed/exploited people overthrowing their
oppressors.  Lack of class consciousness was.

It is not something in the physicality or materiality of the technique or
organization of production that is the barrier. It is the lack of
consciousness in the people.

It is false that what was needed was some new engineering discovery in
industry that would remove some barrier to the working class acting to
revolutionize.

^^^^^^^

The working class as such - as defined in a century of Marxist literature,
could not and did not and cannot overthrow capitalism as such. It is the
advance of industry that brings the bourgeoisie to its end and it's special
agent (the creation of the advance of industry in the flesh) is the
proletariat.

^^^^^
CB: Wrong. It is proletariat becoming class conscious and acting on that
consciousness that brings the bourgeoisie to its end. It is not the
proletariat's technical, industrial consciousness, or the development of
technical consciousness in working on newly developed machines and workplace
organizational structures that breaks throught some barrier. It is rather
their consciousness of property relations, wage-labor and capital. And this
"fundamentality" of the wage-labor/capital relationship does not change with
developments in industrial technique. When Henry Ford developed the assembly
line the autoworkers' technical consciousness had to change, but it is not
that type of consciousness change , but a change in level of _class_
consciousness or consciousness of property relations that is necessary for
socialist revolution.

^^^^^^^^^


The modern proletariat has to be defined the way Marx defines it as the
lowest stratum of society in 2004 . . . not 1848, for Christ sake.

^^^^^
CB: By "lowest stratum of society" Marx does not mean the lowest stratum of
the working class. He means the working class as a whole as the lowest
stratum of society, for Christ sake.

^^^^^^^^

The two basic classes of a social system are not free to overthrow the
social system it is a part of,

^^^^
CB: For this discussion, it is important for you to find support for this in
Marx or Engels.

I mean it could be true without that, but....

^^^^^^^^



 and this means another process outside the consiousness of the basic social
classes unfolds.


^^^^^^
CB: Unfolds where ? In thin air ? In the spinning Jenny ? In what people
does this consciousness unfold ?

^^^^^^^^^^


History shows - in my opinion, that a class of sub class that is caught up
within a system of production as part of the basic components of the system
are part of the structural relationship. The only thing they can do is fight
over the division of the social product and for greater political liberties
within the prevailing political superstructure.

It is not a lack of class consciousness or even bribery of the working class
in America or the politics of this group or that group of ideological
Marxists that have blocked the revolutionary advance of our class but a
historically determined boundary in the industrial system itself.

^^^^^^^
CB: The "industrial system itself" is people doing things in a certain way
with each other and with certain things. As they are people, they have
consciousness about what they are doing. It is not something in the things
that creates a boundary, but rather the way the people are thinking about
the people they are doing it with and what they are doing that is the
boundary to acting differently with the people and the things. It is not the
discovery of some new technique or physical principle that will cause the
socialist revolution

^^^^^


Sure, wrong politics makes things worse and blocks one from exploiting all
the potential of a given period and give relief to the bourgeoisie. And yes,
this is the re writing of our
history. The basic classes of a society system cannot overthrow society
because they can't - not because they do not want to.

 The consciousness of the serf would not allow him to conceive of
overthrowing the system of landed property relations.
The fight against the lords is what the reform struggle means or as it is
called political feudalism. Our working class is not going to magically
develop class consciousness no matter how many million of books and
pamphlets we produce. Another process folds which cannot be accurately
articulated screaming "the working class overthrows capitalism," which is
not the process of social revolution in the first place. And all of us have
sensed this and known it in our hearts for a lifetime. We were victims of a
historical limitation.

^^^^
CB: Clearly , Marx and Engels thought the development of industry in the
1800's was sufficient so as to not be a barrier or boundary or limitation on
proletarian consciousness preventing it overthrowing the bourgeoisie (!) Are
you saying since then it has become clear that the level of development of
industry does place a barrier on the development of proletarian
consciousness . Come on !

^^^^^




Yes, we print books and pamphlets . .  but ones that describe the process
more accurately.

It did not matter in the last instance if you were a liberal Marxists,
Stalinists, Trotskyists, adhered to the Thought of Chairman Mao, a
Buddhists, anarchists, syndicalists, bourgeois nationalists or the
unibomber, . . .

If the whole world had gone socialism . . . we would face the same barrier
that is the limitation of the industrial system and it is not possible to
get to communism on the basis of the industrial system. The working class
cannot be emancipated on the basis of socialism or a change in the form of
property.

^^^^^^
CB: Ok , but this is not Marxism

^^^^^^

Property has to be abolished because it mediates . . . god I hate that term,
class antagonism. The point is that the salient feature of the social
process is the presentation of that which is fundamental to the social
process which is the revolution
in the material power of production or the Technological Regime, not the
conscious activity of people . . . however you define consciousness.

^^^^^^
CB: Well, the revolution in the Technological Regime comes about by a
conscious activity of people. Science and technology are conscious
activities.

^^^^^^^^

We are at a very similar period to the time of Marx, which is why he wrote
voluminous on the transition from manufacture to industry.

^^^^^
CB: But you agree, don't you, that Marx believed that modern industrial
production was not a barrier to social revolution and emancipation of the
working class ?

^^^^^^^^

In respects to our conscious activity this first of all means being
conscious of what is taking place and locating our moment in history. I am
from a school of thought that locates this moment radically different from
anything in the past century Marxists movement. I also define the
proletariat as did Marx -
the lowest stratum of society as it exits in 2004 . . . not 1848 or the time
of Lenin.

We can forget about imbuing the workers of our country with class

consciousness . . . however you define it as an immediate task. What our
class and society need is the national development of a social consciousness
that allows it to take a class stand - for something and against something.

Class conscious activity for me means what Lenin did . . . demanding
political power to carryout out your goals. Human beings are always
conscious to one degree or another as an inherit quality of our existence.
Marxism has to have meaning for us in America in terms of what we face today
and in the future and not yesteryear.

Of course what I have written on this subject over and over is crude in
respects to tomorrow but light years ahead of the boundary we have left.

Melvin P.
^^^^^
CB: Being light years ahead might be just as useless as going back to
yesteryear.

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