However; the historical example of the rise of capitalist production within the feudal system at a very early period of Medieval European history, its gradual rise to power throughout the Late Middle Ages, and its eventual emergence as a competitor to and supplanter of the Feudal system in the 18th and 19th centuries provides a suggestive model for the possible development of socialist society. Certainly, all historical evidence shows that the urban industrial proletariat of 19th century Britain did not emerge out of the peasantry. By the 18th century, the English peasant was as rare as a banana tree in Manchester. The British industrial proletariat is mostly drafted from an amalgam of semi-skilled and skilled craftsmen, unskilled immigrant physical labourers, and women and children. As such the industrial proletariat, and their capitalist masters were entirely different classes from the classic peasant-landowner classes of feudalism, and the rise of capitalism was not a matter of the supplanting of one ruling class for another but of one whole productive system, classes and all, for another.
Marx was indeed making predictions regarding the vague and distant future, hence he never really produced concrete concepts regarding the form of capitalism's successor or even of the process, i.e. the technological developments and changing relations of production, whereby the new mode of production would emerge. His theories of the changeover from capitalism to socialism are far far more schematic than are his theories about the capitalism of his day. Korsch's regard for the "Gotha program" as the Marxian model for future socialist society is in my view badly misplaced. It hardly provides a comprehensive model of a universal mode of production comparable to capitalism. Lenin did produce more concrete concepts than those of Marx regarding the "great transformation". While some of his theory of revolution where extremely effective (mainly in the establishment of party control of the state and of society), history has shown him to be dead wrong as regards the establishment of modern industrial socialism.
Any effective (practical), concrete description of the future socialist society and of the processes whereby such a society will emerge can only be based on continuous on-going SCIENTIFIC MATERIAL work that follows the changes within the developing capitalist system. Considering the history of the emergence, rise and eventual dominance of the capitalist system within Feudalism, I suggest that we, like Marx, not be enslaved by traditions - glorious as they may be, and like the inimitable Mao, give priorities to investigation over "book worship".
Victor Friedlander-Rakocz victor at kfar-hanassi.org.il ----- Original Message ----- From: "Culture Lab" <info at pulpculture.org> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Sunday, October 23, 2005 20:42 Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Some Observations on Class, was Re: working class?
>I don't see how it's in need of much. He wrote extensively about a variety
>of classes and their relations to one another in a variety of texts,
>including _Capital_. Even when he wrote about working class v capital, he
>was speaking to the future, not the present. He was making a prediction,
>which is why there is an extensive literature that addresses that
>prediction, asks why it never came to pass.
>
> Marx also wrote about whether intellectuals would fall down on the side of
> capital or the working class, for instance, arguing that it could go
> either way. He saw the significance of intellectuals, even then, asking
> whether they'd be capitalist tools or not. His answer was that there was
> no proclivity toward one side or the other. It depended on historical
> circumstances.
>
> Gar Lipow might make the argument that we just haven't reached the future
> Marx dreamed of, when the scales would fall from our eyes and it would be
> the masses of the working class, united, and staring down a minority,
> Capital. In the meanwhile, there's nothing particularly dangerous about
> discussing, analyzing, or theorizing. Marx surely did. And, his
> interpreters to English having him using the word _class_ throughout his
> oeuvre.
>
> someone once told me that the difference here -- a marker of how you see
> this perhaps? -- is how you see Marx's ouevre:
>
> There are those who think his writings are of a piece, that the old marx
> can be see as extending and clarifying and moving into a specific set of
> analyses (to address the questions that plagued economists at the time and
> make his mark) the work of the young marx.
>
> Others seem to be embarrassed by the work of the young marx and argue that
> there is a radical break between the two and that the work of the young
> marx really can't help us understand the old.
>
> Me? I think that the use of phrases signifying the existence of more than
> one class in the late Marx is enough to toss that debate into the
> recycling bin of history once and for all.
>
> Alas, this is about the fifth time I've written this since 1998, so
> d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d.
>
> At 10:29 AM 10/23/2005, Victor wrote:
>
>>I do not agree with you that there is no practical value to be had in the
>>investigation of class relations in the US. I suggest that considering
>>the datedness of Marx's analysis of Capital (the Capitalism described in
>>_Capital_ is mainly that of England up to the late 1850's, early 1860's),
>>and of his familiarity with alternatives to the capitalist mode of
>>production (mostly the 18th and early 19th century Utopias and Romantic
>>representations of cooperative peasant communities) the original Marxist
>>paradigm is in sore need of revision.
>
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