However, that is just my impression I could not support such a view.
My particular interest lies in the Mode of production schema as it emerges. In 1844 it is only just separated against other modes of existence. The schema which seems so rigid, is just a simple division between class and pre-class societies. Within the latter Marx finds a peculiar continuity in European history, just as capitalism presupposes dominant alienating form of production relation so does its immediate predocessors.
What seems to be three separate concepts (classical, feudal and capitalist) is in fact one (the Asiatic mode being class societies where a non-economic relation dominates - tribute). It has an extra rub of course at this level of abstraction the three are really four and includes the first stage of communism (socialism) as the finality of alienated labour itself - a by product of the previous domination of this aleinated relation. The historical termination of alienated labour comes from within its history of dominance which is unusual in world history and develops it to become a general determinate.
I think in here, the very peculiar nature of having an alienated labour relation as the determining relation is the secret to capitalism's technical innovation, at the same time the ongoing self-socialisation of capital. It is the latter fact which places the proletariat in a peculiar position vis a vis the history of alienated labour (specifically the history where it is predominant and determining). Socialism is in this sense pre-determined as the logical end place for the alienated labour process as a whole.
However a cavaet, without the right players in control the socialisation of capital leads no further ( not that things cannot go on, but there is no future stage for capitals development), hence in the end it is either proletarian socialism or distintergration (barbarism). The continuation of alienated labour relations exhausts its self when capital itself has more or less fully socialisied itself. That is while labour alienated from individual workers becomes available as a collective social tool but the society which alienates the labour at its source also excludes (alienates) the worker from social control and full social particpation in control of this social labour (more or less the conditions of today).
At such a point whereas the private control of such labour injected some real direction into the labour process as a whole which in the end supplied social needs to some vital extent, once this is socialisied, no longer under specific intellengent direction (once supplied by living human beings who owned privately the means of production), it cannot help but fall in on itself and become increasingly directionalless.
The power to produce rises expodentually (as potential and as real production) the relations of production become ever more a hamper to its social nature.
Ted sorry for this rambling, but in the case of the proletariat while Marx gives an excellent understanding of how it is respressed socially, the otherside, the means by which it rises is nowhere developed clearly (that is on the same basis) it is there implicitly but I think in a sense, in terms of the development of capital and its socialisation, Marx was at the other end of the process, hence revolution for him was a jump, a huge jump and a direct response to being repressed socially.
If the past of proletarian revolutionary struggle is anything to go by, the jump, full of promise and innovation, was too big, the problem of replacing the bourgeoisie thoroughly and in a historical sense too complex to be thoroughly successful. But I put this down to the old bourgeoisie's vital role in productive relations as derived from its private nature, a role they no longer fulfil.
The rise of communications specifically electronic communications was a necessity for increasingly socialisied character of capital, without a means of multilateral and mass of accurate details on a world wide basis, socialisied capital would have ground to a halt much earlier. The bourgeoisie is so distanced from the means of production that such communications is essential to it maintaining production and having any role whatsoever in it (regardless if we are talking about big share-owners or CEOs).
Now returning to Marx's schema which is not arbitary but dicated by the historical material itself. The general riegn of alientated class labour has one branch where this relation of production is dominant (other examples take a more lurching progress of flurries of aliented class production being tamed by tributary extractions producing an apparant statsis) has a begining and an end naturally enough. The private and semi-private (feudal) dominance of property is the natural extension of this alientated labour at the higher social level, here too is a struggle between the tributary and and relatively free existence of the property form which is the expression of the dominant nature of this type of labour relation.
But the interesting feature of all this is Marx's concept of the ongoing socialisation of capital. I believe we have got two different things mixed up within Marxism.
1)Marx's expectation of a gaint revolutionary leap where the proletariat rises socialisizes the leading means fo reproduction which stand in its way and then begin to dictate (control, manage, give direction to the economy, democratise society - whatever), it is a big leap determined by the level of development of capital in Marx's day.
2)The logic of Proletarian Socialism itself, which falls within the capitalist mode of production in so far as it is a struggle against the capital labour relation (hence protracted and taking place mostly under a regime of alienated labour).
The end product is that, for the movement, Socialism just becomes communism writ small. The gaint political leap becomes, in utopian fashion, mixed up with a historical transition as such, a transition which will probably take generations to move through is treated as resolvable by an act of political will (history has clearly shown that this is not at all easy to accomplish). Marx in his time had little choice, but we sit at the distal end of what is now a long history of capital's own self-socialisation.
You ask given Marx's analysis of the downtrodden proletariat, where is the motive force which can produce it as a ruling class? I think there is a significant hole in Marx here, determined by his times, excusable but also real. We could lapse into generalities (as the left normally does when this point is raised - or something like it), however, whereas Marx shows the grinding down of the proletariat in some realistic detail, the otherside of the coin is just not there to complement it.
However, history itself has filled the gap in. The desire for a better world is implicit in the condition of the working class (desire is one thing capability is another). What makes the working class capable of this role is perhaps a question we can only now reasonably raise.
Of course capablity itself rises out of struggle, but to say this is to say nothing because not all struggles lead to this capablity (economic struggle for instance) and otherwise struggle becomes a fairly empty concept that could be filled with anything.
If we could be more specific about what, at this time, is the field for extra-economic struggle to realise the immediate interests of the working class (those bits which are political not strictly pseaking economic) then we would be touching on the means of producing just those capabilities.
In this sense the fundemental (fundemental to any political struggle) point oif departure are that the working class compromise of human beings no different to any other, that their life outside work, circumscribed as it might be is different only in degree from everyone else - in short as an economic class they also have the virtue of being the social every-person.
This has always been the case, as Marx himself recognised (being alienated in their labour they have no "special" interest in any specific part of it, as counterposed to those that do via the property relation). Outside the specific economic struggles that arise from the very condition of being a worker, the worker has in embryo the general interests of society manifested in their own life as a thoroughly aliented being.
Because capital has socialisied itself and largely slothed-off its "private property" form in favour of forms of social ownership mediated by the state (public companies etc), the means are socially available for the proletariat to express its interest as general humanity - the political struggle which could not be conducted in Marx's day before the leading means of production were socialisied, can now be undertaken as capital has already achieved this critical transition.
Marx's big revolutionary jump, not just against the power of the bourgeoisie, but in capablities to rule gives way to the simple process of learning to rule by direct application. Political struggle will always involve revoluitionary jumps of one kind or another (I am not proposing progressivism), but one particularily important aspect (capablity of rule) can be achieved by direct application.
The irony is that the left stands in the way of this progress precisely because it gets too different things mixed up. For the left no learning in struggle is necessary, there is just one big leap to a better society and the problem is that the working class knows this to be an illusion.
The struggle of proletarian interests as the universal social interest under proletarian socialism, now is no different from the struggle for proletarian socialism itself, it all boils down to alienated humanity managing its own aliented labour for conscious (hence immediate and unmediated) needs, a process that in the long run eliminates this type of labour and classes along with it (ie under communism).
The movement however insists that one revolutionary effort is enough to achieve this, that the bourgeoisie can be removed as a whole and virtually within an instance and all the dictatorship of the proletariat has to do is mop up the so-called social left-overs. Of course this makes the transition of an underclass into a ruling class nothing short of miraculous and this I think is the point you are making.
In Marx this was understandable and forgivable, in the left today I am not so generous. There is a hole in Marx, as you correctly identify, not a hole that his theory cannot be simply extended to fill, but one which has to be first filled in by reality before it can be properly committed to thought. What was for Marx an abstraction which reflected the essence of relations, is today a concrete development which has gone for the most part, unnoticed.
I could rattle on about this from different perspectives, the role of social democracy in the past and the necessary collapse of it in the present, the co-dependance of communist ideology (Marxism) to this process and its loss of direction once reformism bit the historical dust. The contradictions of what by Marx's schema I can only dub emergant Bourgeois Socialism and the contradiction of a left which finds it difficult to even concieve of a bourgeois class which is not at the same time holders of property in its private form (it would be quaint if the consequences were not so grave). The rampant utopianism within the movement at a time in history when Proletarian Socialism is closer then it has ever been in a general historical sense. And what worries me most the steady emergance of features of barbarianism which are constantly ascribed to motives which existed in the past but are no-longer present (ie Classic Imperialism which seems to repository of anything which is retrog! rade).
Ted I am not up to speed on many aspects of such a view point, my Hegelianism is shaky at best, the rate of profit tendency to decline I only understand in the crudest way and cannot say anything worthwhile, I think, on it. My approach has been been very political, indeed raising out of over two decades of political frustration. My position on ontology stems directly from this as I know I am not capable of invention, so must, by external necessity, rely on the interconnectedness of what little I know of Historical Materialism. Ontology in this context makes so much sense I cannot concieve of HM any other way, hence my inability to give it proper expression in these postings.
In compresssed form the above is the result of a long 20 year odessey to find a way to move politically forward (I am sick of back stepping). Emotive stuff, but not perhaps the sound argument people on this list deserve. To the extent I know the proletariat (warts and all) nothing has impressed me as much as how the conditions of sometimes horrible existence are made bearable and how often this results in a point of view which places the whole of society's interest to the forefront of consciousness (even when it is mutilated in expression and sounds anything but progressive).
There is primitiveness and sophistication in this, not just the politicised proletariat, but within the very depoliticisied elements of it. I can only say by experience that if the proletariat was given an expression of these embryonic interests in a practical form they would respond enmass - in fact where others see passivity I am inclided to see bridling at the bit and a quite resignation to take that bit beween the teeth and bolt with it as soon as practical.
There is a contradition in the working class something the left with its reified concepts of ideologies fails to notice. The working class knows what it wants negatively, they are very good at smelling out what does not work, they are far from consciously (positively) giving it expression and what expression is given suffers this distortion more often then not. But it knows intuitively not only what needs to change but in a negative sense how this has to be done. Their rejection of the left is far more specific then the left will recognise because of the self-criticism involved. This is perhaps the hardest concept, that the rejection of the movement by the working class is not the result of objective conditions but of subjective ones deriving from the history of our movement itself.
In this observational mode I could add much but perhaps it is better to leave it there.
Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________
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--- Message Received --- From: Ted Winslow <egwinslow at rogers.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 15:36:17 -0500 Subject: Re: Science, Science & Marxism
Greg wrote:
> Now there might be a way of finding them aside from my very unpopular
> ontological approach, in fact, there is, but it involves self-criticism and
> taking apart concepts which we have assumed to be true but may not be - there
> is at least this bit of theory that needs to be done and that as I hope this
> illustration suggests, is a practical thing to do given our collective
> impasse.
>
> I believe intellectual self-criticism presumes an ontology, but there is no
> real need to go down this route. But no matter how things are looked at some
> real self-criticism needs to be done.
I suggest you just get on with making your ontological points Greg.
I read Marx as taking over from Hegel the conception of history as a set of internally related stages in the development of rational self-consciousness.
Even the "materialist" aspect of this, the emphasis on "sensuous consciousness" and the role assigned to labour within particular internal relations of production in the development of self-consciousness, has an antecedent in Hegel, namely in Hegel's account in the Phenomenology of role of the master/slave relation in the development of a degree of rational self-consciousness in the slave. This makes the master/slave labour process "contradictory" in the sense that the change in the slave's consciousness - the slave's subjectivity - is inconsistent with the continued existence of the master/slave relation.
"The recognition [Erkennung] of its products as its own, and the judgement that its separation from the conditions of its realization is improper - forcibly imposed - is an enormous [advance in] awareness [Bewusstsein], itself the product of the mode of production resting on capital, and as much the knell to its doom as, with the slave's awareness that he cannot be the property of another, with his consciousness of himself as a person, the existence of slavery becomes a merely artificial, vegetative existence, and ceases to be able to prevail as the basis of production." (Grundrisse, p. 463)
It seems to me, however, that Marx fails to explain how the capitalist labour process works to develop in wage workers the degree of rational self-consciousness that enables them to become the "architects" of a higher social form.
In fact, his claims about the effects of that process on workers are inconsistent with the role he assigns them. The lengthening of the working day, the intensification of work, the tendency of real wages to fall, etc. etc. would not produce conditions in which the kind of consciousness required could develop.
However, these results are themselves reached by means of what seems to me to be mistaken reasoning. The argument claiming to demonstrate a tendency of the rate of profit to fall, for instance, is not persuasive. Putting aside the question as to whether it requires an arbitrary assumption about future changes in technology, it's an instance of Marx falling victim to the Ricardian vice, an attempt to reach conclusions about the the long-run future by means of a long chain of deductive reasoning from fixed axioms. For reasons I've pointed to before, this is in invalid form of reasoning where, as in the case of social phenomena and as Marx himself assumes, internal relations are insufficiently stable to satisfy the presuppositions which its valid application requires.
If a better society requires that most people both consciously desire it and know how to bring it into being, then its creation presupposes the development of the degree of rational self-consciousness this would require. Marx's explanation of how this development is brought about is unpersuasive.
Ted