> For those of us who remain historical materialists and
> internationalists, I
> think the best means of coping with these pressures is to recognize
> them,
> and that they are objective rather than subjective in nature, and
> that if
> and until our friends, neighbours, workmates, and relatives are
> forced by
> necessity to revive the old mass socialist movement, there are very
> real
> limits to what good intentions and political organizing can
> accomplish. It's
> unfortunate that stating this obvious fact can sometimes cause so much
> recrimination.
Here's an "historical materialist" account of how capitalism generates a mass movement of individuals capable of actualizing social relations from which all barriers to full human development (and the ultimate actualization of an ideal society this makes practicable) have been removed.
"The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-estrangement, it recognizes estrangement as its own power and has in it the semblance of a human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated in estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence. It is, to use an expression of Hegel, in its abasement the indignation at that abasement, an indignation to which it is necessarily driven by the contradiction between its human nature and its condition of life, which is the outright, resolute and comprehensive negation of that nature.
"Within this antithesis the private property-owner is therefore the conservative side, the proletarian the destructive side. From the former arises the action of preserving the antithesis, from the latter the action of annihilating it.
"Indeed private property drives itself in its economic movement towards its own dissolution, but only through a development which does not depend on it, which is unconscious and which takes place against the will of private property by the very nature of things, only inasmuch as it produces the proletariat as proletariat, poverty which is conscious of its spiritual and physical poverty, dehumanization which is conscious of its dehumanization, and therefore self-abolishing. The proletariat executes the sentence that private property pronounces on itself by producing the proletariat, just as it executes the sentence that wage-labour pronounces on itself by producing wealth for others and poverty for itself. When the proletariat is victorious, it by no means becomes the absolute side of society, for it is victorious only by abolishing itself and its opposite. Then the proletariat disappears as well as the opposite which determines it, private property.
"When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the proletariat, it is not at all, as Critical Criticism pretends to believe, because they regard the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary. Since in the fully-formed proletariat the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity, is practically complete; since the conditions of life of the proletariat sum up all the conditions of life of society today in their most inhuman form; since man has lost himself in the proletariat, yet at the same time has not only gained theoretical consciousness of that loss, but through urgent, no longer removable, no longer disguisable, absolutely imperative need -- the practical expression of necessity -- is driven directly to revolt against this inhumanity, it follows that the proletariat can and must emancipate itself. But it cannot emancipate itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of life of society today which are summed up in its own situation. Not in vain does it go through the stern but steeling school of labour. It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do. Its aim and historical action is visibly and irrevocably foreshadowed in its own life situation as well as in the whole organization of bourgeois society today. There is no need to explain here that a large part of the English and French proletariat is already conscious of its historic task and is constantly working to develop that consciousness into complete clarity." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch04.htm>
According to this version of "historical materialism", what's required is the development of a particular "subjectivity". a particular "kind of state of character", namely, "poverty which is conscious of its spiritual and physical poverty, dehumanization which is conscious of its dehumanization, and therefore self-abolishing".
We're also told what's meant by "spiritual and physical poverty" and "dehumanization". The meaning derives from the ideas of "the rich human being and the rich human need."
"It will be seen how in place of the wealth and poverty of political economy come the rich human being and the rich human need. The rich human being is simultaneously the human being in need of a totality of human manifestations of life – the man in whom his own realisation exists as an inner necessity, as need. Not only wealth, but likewise the poverty of man – under the assumption of socialism[32] – receives in equal measure a human and therefore social significance.
"Poverty is the passive bond which causes the human being to experience the need of the greatest wealth – the other human being." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm>
The same manuscript provides an elaboration of what's meant by the idea of "the other human being" as "the greatest wealth".
Given that this is what is meant by "spiritual and physical poverty" and "dehumanization", capitalism has not worked to produce "poverty which is conscious of its spiritual and physical poverty, dehumanization which is conscious of its dehumanization, and therefore self-abolishing" in most self-styled "historical materialists" let alone in the "proletariat".
Moreover, Marx's account of how it would do this is mistaken. For instance, if it were true that "in the fully-formed proletariat the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity, is practically complete", such consciousness could not develop in "the fully-formed proletariat".
Ted