Question to Various comments in In Digest 77

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Question to Various comments in In Digest 77
by Waistline2
05 March 2002 12:09 UTC


CB: Doesn't _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_ make it pretty clear that Marx's theory of history is rooted in the relations of production aspect of the forces of production, the division of labor, and the class struggle?  History is a history of class struggles, not technological innovations. Since producers are part of the forces of production, it is their development that is in the forces of production that makes history, and historical revolutions.




Melvin:
What compels classes to struggle or what defines the context in which classes struggle throughout history? Many things is a good answer. How does one delineate one period of history from another or rather I fall on the side of the equation that gives predominance to "man" as he is materially active identified on the basis of a specific technology. Perhaps I have been in the factory to long.

Marx Capital states:

"It is one of the civilizing aspects of capital that it enforces this surplus-labour in a manner and under conditions which are more advantageous to the development of the productive forces, social relations,

^^^^^

CB: Here's a reference to relations of production.  Like any opposition, at some point, forces and relations of production interpenetrate.

^^^^^

 and the creation of the elements for a new and higher form than under the precedingforms of slavery, serfdom, etc. Thus it gives rise to a stage, on the one hand, in which coercion and monopolization of social development (including its material and intellectual advantages) by one portion of society at the expense of the other are eliminated; on the other hand, it creates the
material means and embryonic conditions, making it possible in a higher form
of society to combine this surplus-labour with a greater reduction of time
devoted to material labor in general. For, depending on the development of
labor productivity, surplus-labour may be large in a small total
working-day, and relatively small in a large total working-day. If the
necessary labour-time = 3 and the surplus-labour = 3, then the total
working-day = 6 and the rate of surplus-labour = 100%. If the necessary labour = 9
and the surplus-labor = 3, then the total working-day = 12 and the rate of
surplus-labour only = 33 1/3 %. In that case, it depends upon the labor
productivity how much use-value shall be produced in a definite time, hence
also in a definite surplus labor-time. The actual wealth of society, and
the possibility of constantly expanding its reproduction process, therefore,
do not depend upon the duration of surplus-labour, but upon its productivity
and the more or less copious conditions of production under which it is
performed. In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labor
which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in
the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material
production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his
wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilized man, and he must do
so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With
his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his
wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these
wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialized
man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with
Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it
as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least
expenditure of energy and under conditions most favorable to, and worthy
of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of
necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end
in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only
with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day
is its basic prerequisite."



I read the statement

"The actual wealth of society, and the possibility of constantly expanding its reproduction process, therefore, do not depend upon the duration of surplus-labour, but upon its productivity and the more or less copious conditions of production under which it is performed,"

with emphasis on productivity as in instruments i.e. technology, as distinct from duration or intensifying the biological human energy or lengthening the work day. Or "expanding . . . reproduction process" revolves on the axis of technological innovation that comes from the mind of humanity.


I understand the statement

"Freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favorable to, and worthy of, their human nature,"

to mean socialized man, (that is to say me as an individual) the associated producers (in harmony with other "me's using) the least expenditure of energy to not simply infer but directly speak to a certain more than less continuous technology development that gives meaning to the definition of socialized at various stages of history.

Although the human mind in the most revolutionary ingredient on earth a better society is inconceivable without all round technological development. I would venture to say that more than less all round techological development is a condition for betterment. By "better society" is meant "least expenditure of human energy of the individual," which of course means I do not have to work today as hard as yesterday.

History is of course the history of human beings and technology as the interactive material activity of survival and reproduction. All of history is the story of humanity and technology from my standpoint point because their is no separation between man and his instruments of survival.

History is not simply the "class struggle" but specifically, according to the Communist Manifesto, all "written history" is viewed (my interpretation of the Communist manifesto) as society moving in class antagonism, or delineated by the struggle of classes to control the productive capability of a given society.


^^^^^^^

CB: I didn't say "history is simply the 'class struggle' " . I said " Doesn't _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_ make it pretty clear that Marx's theory of history is rooted in the relations of production aspect of the forces of production, the division of labor, and the class struggle ?" In the antagonism between relations and instruments of production , the relations are absolute and the instruments are relative, (as Engels puts in another context discussing Hegel's dialectic , the revolutionary side is absolute , the conservative side is relative). Note in the quote you give that Marx puts a lot of emphasis on "social relations", the division of labor into exploiting and exploited classes ( that is part of the division of labor), "socialized labor", _associated_ producers. These are all references to the _relations_ of production, not to the instruments of production.  The development of hardware technology is most dependent upon science which is another highly social!
 activity, including transgenerationally social. Most prior scientists are dead. Scientific texts are the product of regiments of associated producers. Tools are dead labor. They can't initiate anything. Living _social_labor is the source of all new and development.

With the fetishism of commodities, there is the widespread illusion that dead labor in the form of things, including machines or computers, are alive.

The main contradiction of capitalism is that production is more socialized than ever in history, but appropriation is private. Thus, we are prevented from entering the realm of freedom that the current technology makes possible by the form of the relations of production , private property. This is the classic Marxist revolutionary situation in which a fundamental aspect of the relations of production is a fetter on the forces of production and must be burst asunder. The technology we have is ready for socialism, communism and the realm of freedom.  It is the relations of production that bar our making history in the historical materlist sense of moving to a new mode of production.


You give above  a very important quote from Marx expressing the Marxist view on the realms of necessity and freedom. Often only Engels use of this concept is noted. Where is this is in _Capital_ ?


^^^^^^




This of course is what the debate is all about.


Melvin P.