reply-part 2

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

>3) You wrote: "A new qualitative development must take place within the
working >class whose growth and development is prevented by the framework of
capital. >Electronic-digital production is its trajectory of development is
absolutely >incompatible with a system based on the buying and selling of
labor, further >depresses wages driving greater sections of the class into
destitution, polarized >society into a camp of wealth and poverty and
engenders a "new class" of >proletariats who cannot live based on the
purchase and sell of labor and >consequently driven along a logic of fighting
for their needs."
>Perhaps indeed 'objectively' the working class is hampered from developing -
in the >long run - & that is why objectively revolution is needed. But while
indeed wages are >depressed, etc.; it is manifestly not true that
"Electronic-digital production is its >trajectory of development is
absolutely incompatible with a system based on the >buying and selling of
labor."  I have not seen the revolution yet in North America.

>Sincere Fraternal Greetings,
> Hari


The communist movement, or the Marxist movement, or the movement associated
with the methodology of Marx and Engels is historically and currently,
primarily an intellectual movement by definition. As an intellectual movement
we are among the most conservative human beings on earth and cannot admit
this. When the world changes we cannot change our thinking until the world
changes again and we end up in the same position.

We demand change in society along the direction of the productive forces, yet
change comes hard to Marxist. In my opinion soul searching and a spiritual
awakening is needed. In the language of our ideological doctrine we -  "me,"
need an "ideological drubbing." Marxism as a social movement is in denial and
refuses to subject itself to its own method of inquiry. We need a world wide
Marxist Anonymous with a 12 Step Program of recovery and resurrection. Allow
me to talk about myself.

"Hello Comrades, my name is comrade Melvin P., former head of the propaganda
division of the regional party committee and I am a grateful recovering
Marxist, taking things one day at a time. Although I may never achieve
sobriety I can state to all you good people, that I am clean today, no longer
trying to build military bases in Detroit from which to wage the armed
struggle; have cast off trade unionism, anarcho-syndicalist formulations,
doctrines of worker control devoid of property relations, and calls for
socialism without knowing what I was calling for.

"With the help of you good people and the working masses who repeatedly
kicked me hard between the two pockets on the back of my pants, pleading with
me to stop building foxholes and military units, I have come to recognize
that not only are there boundaries in all of life, but boundaries in capital,
quantitative expansion of the productive forces and qualitative changes in
technology that define boundaries in the economy. Then there are the limits
of the boundary of my own thinking.

"The root of my "stinking thinking" was I never did like the capitalist class
or for that matter my brothers and sisters, the war danger, my first 4 wives
- not including the second one, and could not escape the boundaries of the
doctrine of the class struggle that arose in another period of history. Heck,
I felt if it was good enough for Lenin I wanted some of that and if one drink
of Lenin was good, then I wanted 100 drinks of Lenin.

"Now that I have admitted that I am powerless over my own thinking and
submitted to a power higher than my self - the ceaseless self-movement of
matter, did a fearless moral inventory and reread Marx, I feel pretty good
about myself and grasping polarization, historical limitations and boundaries
and finally movement as antagonism.

"Thank You comrades for letting me express myself and I would like to offer a
cup of coffee to all our new comers and welcome you to the group. You don't
have to say anything but remember to take it one day at a time. If you don't
believe in a higher power then rely upon the strength of the group and
remember "stinking thinking" is the enemy.  Our thinking is what got us to
the circumstances that lead us to these tables trying to catch up to the new
boundaries.

"In closing I would like to give a "shout out" to brother Engels - the
General, and Karl Marx who said - I don't remember the exact quote, but it
went something like this, "I'm glad than a Mut*********, I ain't a gott-damn
Marxist."


The dialectic of the development of the working class is interactive with the
development of capital as a social power. The emergence of and ascendancy to
the helm of the world total social capital - speculative capital, is a mode
of investment and appropriation increasingly divorced from the material
production of commodities. Speculative capital as a specific mode of capital
at this phase in the development of the productive forces, operators on the
basis of the modes of expression of value as opposed to investment in the
production of commodities and the consequent purchase and sell of
labor-power.

Speculative capital arises in unison with and as an expression of
polarization in society at large and polarization in the working class. The
polarization in the working class creates a sector of workers increasingly
divorced from the production of commodities to the same degree of speculative
capital. An aspect of the face of this transformation is the transformation
of the historical reserved army of labor into a more than less segment of the
working class, who in the best of times cannot sell its labor-power in
exchange for an amount of material values to sustain its own existence.

This segment of the working class unable to sell its labor power for an
amount of material values to sustain its own existence or reproduce itself as
social capital is referred to as a "new class" because it is qualitatively
different from the old reserved army of the unemployed.

The boundaries of the industrial infrastructure, on which set the industrial
production of commodities and capitalist appropriation of the social product
has unfolded in stages.

Generally speaking (I haven't the energy to run and get the books)
manufacture meaning "handufactuer" on the basis of scattered producers of
commodities, machino-facture using water and steam, industrial production
using steam and then petroleum based electrical power, electromechanical
production and automation and now the emergence of a qualitative distinct
technology which is developing on the basis of reproducing virtually all the
functions of the worker; recording these functions and storing them outside
the biology of the worker; replicating these functions in machinery and
playing them back in the absence of the worker.  This capacity constitutes a
qualitative change in technology as great as that of electromechanical
production process compared with manufacture.

All the quantitative boundaries in the expansion of the productive process,
which arose as part of the development of industrial society, have been
exhausted. The boundaries of industrial development are witnessed after a new
qualitative enhancement in the production process arises, and not before,
which is why I had to go the Marxist Anonymous and sign up for the 12 Step
program.

Society is not simply being torn from its foundation - which I never could
define, or rather defined on the basis of what I understand the words "crisis
theory" to roughly mean. Society is being torn from the foundation of the old
mode of production, which we could not concretely define until a new
qualitative development emerged that creates the definition. In the early
1980s the group I was a part of declared that there was no more reform in
capital - no more quantitative expansion left, as we watched the value of
labor power decline in all branches of industry, but could not define the
process with specificity.

We followed the trajectory of value - the amount of socially necessary labor
in the production of commodities, (or in my case Engels conception of value,
after all everyone called him the "General" for a reason) and by the mid-90s
the process was visible. In 1998 on the basis of an emerging
electronic-digital process the thesis that we are in transition to a new mode
of production was put forth and debated for a year and a half. (Following
Engels trajectory "might" contain a "slight" distortion, but I am taking it
one day at a time. I really really like Engels).

We are in transition to a new mode of production. Electronic digital
production in its nodal line or historical trajectory absolutely destroy the
value of labor power, creates a "new class" or a concrete communist class,
whose development cannot evolve on the basis of the private appropriation of
the social products. The "new class" needs social products, which they cannot
purchase. "To each according to their need, from each according to their
ability." Not the fight for socialism, but the revolutionary struggle for
communism or an association of humanity on the basis of a distribution of the
social products unfettered by place of employment, lack of employment, status
in the production process, nationality, color, national origin, sexual
habits, musical taste, weight, height, shoe size, or attendance in a 12 Step
Program.

The trajectory - path of development, is that technology undermined the basis
of buying and selling of labor power which sits at the base of the private
appropriation of the social product by capitalist.

"I have not seen the revolution yet in North America."  Really, this is the
best thing a person could have said to me.

Brother I am saving you a chair and hot cup of coffee and insist that you sit
next to me at the table. Together we can detox the Marxist movement. This is
the revolution I missed, but today I am taking it one day at a time. In
passing I should state that the older comrades now let me make the coffee at
the meetings.

Oh, anyone that desires can fight for Socialism but socialism is defined as
the first stage of communism. This means one has defined "stage" and
communism. In other words socialism is a transition by definition. Where in
consists the transition in terms of the productivity infrastructure as
distinct from the appropriation of the social products?

To be continued.

Melvin P.