Re: [Marxism] YADL (Yet another disillusioned liberal)/all classunity is wrong

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 4/4/2009 10:38:46 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, 
_jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxx (mailto:jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx)  writes: 
 
Waistline2 writes: "Ideology accounts for much of the passivity of the  
American workers." 
 
This is, of course, an idealist explanation. Not that the poster believes  
it. What he actually believes seems to be that the working class is a 
capitalist 
 class, in the sense of a class inherently tied to capitalism and the 
capitalists  just as the serfs were to the landowners and feudalism. The 
ideology of  
cross-class unity prevails because capitalism itself is like that. The  
revolutionary class is constituted by those who have been cast out of 
capitalist  
relations, just as the revolutionary classes that put an end to feudalism were  
those outside feudal relations (the bourgeoisie but not just them, also the 
free  laborers and (depending on the place) land-owning small 
farmers/peasants). 
 
An interesting theoretical construct, but I just don't believe it. 
 
Joaquin 
 

Reply 
 
I do agree that, that that sector of the proletariat, cast out of the civic  
society of the bourgeoisie, existing at this stage of the revolution in the 
mode  of production is - personifies, the antagonistic element in society. 
There 
is  always a segment of the population cast out of the civic society of the  
bourgeoisie, as it passes through all its quantitative boundaries. For  
antagonism to crystallized something else must take place. 
 
The modern proletariat of which Marx speaks is birthed as part of capital,  
inasmuch as capital is a historically evolved social relations of production.  
The modern proletariat, and most certainly the industrial proletariat, is  
inherently tied to - bonded, to capital, in my opinion. As a class the modern  
proletariat cannot walk out of this relationship as one walks out of a divorce, 
 
nor can it desire such or conceive of such, precisely because it is bonded to 
 capital as wage labor. It is also bonded to the industrial shape -  
configuration, of productive forces which give it the industrial form of  
proletariat. 
 
As I understand matters the working class is called a working class because  
it work- labor, in the productive machinery of society. The capitalist class 
is  called the capitalist class because it owns capital. The working class is 
not  the capitalist class because it is propertyless. 
 
Pardon my unclearly, but the issue posed was not the role the various  
classes play in the entire scope of the revolutionary process. For instance the 
 
peasant/serf/semi-slave-serf, played a role in the overthrow of feudalism and  
czarism. The point was that the serf as one of the basic class component of the 
 
system of landed property, during the agricultural era, with its 
manufacturing  infrastructure, could not and did not overthrow the system of 
which it help 
 constitute. A revolution in the mode of production had to begin. 
 
I respect your disbelief.  

WL. 
**************Feeling the pinch at the grocery store?  Make dinner for $10 or 
less. (http://food.aol.com/frugal-feasts?ncid=emlcntusfood00000001)

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