At 7:53 PM -0500 8/1/06, Charles Brown wrote:
>>If the working class were the ruling class, who would they rule over?
>^^^^
>CB: The bourgeoisie. They still exist , especially with state power in
other
>countries.
But why and in what sense would the capitalist class still exist?
^^^^^ CB: Actual history answers you in spades here.
The Russian Great October Revolution of 1917 was followed by just about nothing but the bourgeoisie trying to over throw the Soviet Union ! First an international bourgeois army from the US, Britain, France and the Russian whites/bourgeoisie/Czarist attacked in 1919. Surely, you see how the bourgeoisie still existed in that .
Then eventually the German war machine attacked on behalf of the international bourgeoisie. Then the whole Cold War.
In China, don't you think the bourgeoisie posed a threat to overthow that rev ? Cuba ? Viet Nam ? Korea ? Pretty clear that the bourgeois class still existed in relation to all these revolutions, no ?
^^^^^^^
I guess the point my Why not just expropriate the means of production? And if the means of production is expropriated, in what possibly way can the capitalist class be said to still exist?\
^^^^ CB: See above.
^^^
Without their ownership of the means of production and the special power and privilege that this affords them, former capitalists are capitalists no more. They are no longer a separate class in any meaningful way.
So the capitalist class would not still exist. Unless the working class, despite its power, chooses to retain a capitalist system and chooses to submit to capitalist bosses, in which case the working class would not be a ruling class in any meaningful way.
So it seems completely meaningless to speak of the working class as a ruling class.
^^^ CB: No it's not. See above. The bourgeois still exist in a very real sense in which you seem to have overlooked. The bourgeoisie are an international class just as much as the proletariat are. The bourgeoisie of the countries in which they have not been overthrown harbor foreign bourgeoisie who have been overthrown and develop counterrevolutionary programs and strategies. How do you think the Russian Revolution was overthrown 70 years later !
^^^^^^^
There would have to be other classes over which they are ruling, but why would a ruling class do all the work while allowing a subject class to do no work? The whole notion is preposterous.
>Take Cuba. The Cuban bourgeoisie are still trying to take Cuba over ( from
>Miami). The Cuban socialist state rules over them, preventing them from
>taking Cuba back over.
The "Cuban bourgeoisie" to which you are referring is not "Cuban", since they mostly live in America and in the main are not "bourgeoisie", in the sense that most of them aren't capitalists either. And of course the Cuban working class is in no sense ruling over these people.
^^^^^^ CB: Surely you see this false. Of course the Cuban people are ruling over or at least ruling them out of the country . But they still exist ! You'd have to be a real idealist to claim that the Cuban bourgeoisie don't exist right there in Miami.
>The Cuban state also rules in defense against the U.S. capitalist state.
That is irrelevant to the issue.
^^^^^
CB: It is completely pertinent to the issue. The bourgeoisie are internationalist. You ignore the whole issue of imperialism and the fact that the imperialist bourgeoisie are the main bourgeoisie in the colonies overwhich they rule .
The main role of the Soviet State was fighting against foreign bourgeosies , such as the Germans and American bourgeoisies.