(And incidentally, I no logner regard the "slavd-owning" classes as classes but merely as statuses; ditto feudal lords, serfs, etc. The first and last class society is capitalism. Don't take the rhetoric of the Manifesto as developed theory.
^^^^^ CB: It's fine for you to have your own theory that there weren't any classes before capitalism etc.
It is evident nonsense for you to claim that Marx and Engels share your theory in their later years or whatever. There are a number of statements by Marx and Engels 1860's, 70's and 80's referring to classes in precapitalist societies. There are late prefaces to _The Manifesto_ in which its content is affirmed
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Capitalism developed behind the backs of the proto-capitalists, and no one knew it was capitalism until after it had blossomed into full-blown capitalism a couple centuries later.
^^^^^^ CB: Wrong. The proto-capitalists knew what they were doing. This is mystifying nonsense.
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And unlike feudalism (which is a term that should be applied only to some sectors of medieval Europe and perhaps Japan) or other tributary social orders, the laws of capitalism continue to operate behind the backs of both capitalists and workers. Property is NOT theft, and the capitalists are NOT robbing the workers. Let's keep such ahistorical value judgments out of this.
^^^^^^ CB: This is wrong too, For one thing , the capitalists knew about Marx. The capitalists are highly conscious of how their system works, what underlies their profit. They aren't robbing them , they are exploiting them, and they know it.
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They use the doubly "free" labor
> trick.
No they don't "use" it; free labor is not a wrench or a tractor or a mixing bowl. It is a social relation. Capitalism is _constituted_ by free labor, and it is totallyu confusing to see this as a capitalist "trick."
^^^^^ CB: They know what they are doing, and they know "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work " is a confusion. What is confusing and a mystification is your claim that the capitalists are not highly aware and conscious of what they are doing., as if it's all a big "objective" process with the resulting division of the product following from some objective , neutral law of economics. That's a crock. They know that if they didn't have the facade of meeting of the minds in a contract, 'freely" entered into by equal parties, they couldn't extract surplus value and profits. It is a trick.
> Because wage laborers are "free" of ownership of means of
> production, they _must_ get a job to make a living
Yes, this is true. But it is ALSO true that the capitalist MUST hire free labor in order to be a capitalist. Neither capitalist nor worker is free.
^^^^^^ CB: So what ? It's not a situation where we are all in the same boat or something. You are promoting part of the ruse. The capitalist will always find someone to work.
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> , so the employers
> have indirect coercion on them,
This is playing with words. Coercion MEANS direct coercion;
^^^^^^ CB: Whatever. The point, well known in Marxist thinking, made by James Heartfield earlier is that in feudalism the state repressive forces threatened the exploited class with bodily harm if they didn't disgorge the surplus. In capitalism , the coercion is a bit more circuitous. If you don't get a job , you are coerced to get a job by not having enough to eat. or if you steal you will be visited by direct state repressive force, the police.
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both capitalist and worker are forced (passive voice essential here) by the relations of production under capitalism to perform ans capitalist and worker. Because of the immense role of contingency in human affairs the former statement is only abstractly true, but it is an abstraction which has to be grasped to make any sense whatever of capitalism.
^^^^^^^^^ CB: And in feudalism the lords are forced by the relations of production to perform as a lord.
It's beginning to become clearer to ne how important it is to see social systems as historical rather than "just" or "unjust." Those terms are meaningless as applied to whole historical periods or a whole mode of production.
> sort of veiled coercion, in contrast
> with feudal lords and clergy sending knights out to brutalize the
> peasants if they don't give tribute and tithes of surplus product.
Footnote: As Fields notes, when only force is left, nothing is left. That is, the brutalizing of the peasants by itself was powerless but had to be grounded in a legitimizing common sense (i.e., ideology).
^^^^^ CB: Yeah, Christianity.
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> However, that doesn't get around the transhistorical claim that Marx
> and Engels explicitly make in the first sentence of _The Manifesto_.
> The problem with all these claims that _Marx_ doesn't make a
> transhistorical generalization on class struggle, exploitation and
> oppression is that he very clearly does make a transhistorical
> generalization in that sentence.
The word , "generalization" (as opposed to "abstraction") gives this a minimal but trivial accuracy. As a sloppy and untheorized generalization that sentence from the Manifesto holds, but it is a generalization of no real theoretical importance.
^^^^^ CB: The is Carrol Cox, not Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
The theoretical statement is " exploited classes struggle because they are exploited". The reason Marx had to write _Capital_ was that the fact that the capitalist system is exploitative is more veiled than in the previous systems. Contra your earlier comments in this post. Capitalism _is_ a trick more than the previous systems of exploitation.
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Moreover, it would be more correctly (but less usrfully for original purposes) as all history is a history of struggle over the surplus product. (Suplus labor is a feature of capitalist society only.)
^^^^^ CB: If you are referring to Marx's usage, wrong. It is surplus _value_ that is unique to capitalism in Marx's terminology , not surplus labor.
This statement by you shows you understand that Marx thinks in 1867 that the relationship between exploiting and exploited classes is a transhistorical question, but for some strange reason you choose to take an effort to understand the fundamentals of Marx's thinking, which are not that complicated, off into to some mystifying bullshitty I don't know what. i guess professorial mystifying confusion.
It makes no sense to try to argue that the classic Marxist focus on the use of the term "class" here should be disgarded. It's a quirky diversion , a mystification, the last thing we need for discussing Marxism today.
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Some (much) of Althusser's terminology is misleading, but his central point that Marx went on thinking after 1848 and that that thinking bore _very_ important results - that point has to be the point of departure for making sense of what Marx has to say to us.
^^^^ CB: That's is very wrongheaded. Marx went on thinking after 1848, but what you describe is a misrepresentation of what he thought about that was new. Anybody can discern this by just reading _Capital_ and especially examining his practice. The words "class" and "working class" remain central to his discourse.
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One can make all sorts of empirical generalizations about human history, but none of those genralizations, in and of themselves, have any theoretical status: they don't explain anything or identify the importance of anything but merely note the existence of the thing. People living in cold climates wear clothes. Big deal. That's a generalization which is, if you will, transhistorical, but uninterestingly so, having not theoretical value in undrstanding history. Marx in several places comments that men [sic] must first produce a product before it can be used or plundered, which is of course true and transhistorical but has nothing whatever to do with the _theoretical_ analysis of abstract labor, which exists only in relation to the capitalist market and is NOT a generalization about all history but part of an analysis of capitalism.
^^^^^^^ CB: One can make all sorts of such generalizations, but none of them are as important and central to Marxist understanding of human history and the human present than that one concerning exploiting and exploited classes and their struggle , and this was as true in 1883 as in 1848. Marx and Engels' references to the Realm of Necessity and the Realm of Freedom is the point at which the transhistorical significance of exploiting and exploited classes and their conflict turns more to theoretical question of _why_ history is a history of class struggles. It is because provision of material _necessities_ are conditioned upon giving up surpluses to the exploiting class.
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I'll continue with Charles's post later. I have some other exignencies now.
Carrol