Doug Henwood wrote:
> My point is that there's some real sociological and economic
> precision to the Marxist definition of class - one's relation to
> property and power. (Consciousness, well, that's another story.)
But Marx (as opposed to Marxists) makes the relation to property the cause of the developed degree of individual "enlightenment," where by enlightenment is meant the ability to think reasonably for yourself.
As such a relation, "the dialectic of negativity" that is wage-labour would, he claimed, develop in wage-labourers the degree of enlightenment required to "appropriate" the social forces of production also developed within capitalism and use them as means to accomplish the "act of universal emancipation," i.e. create "socialism."
It's this idea of the relation to property as the ultimate cause of enlightenment that underpins Engels's claim that the task of "scientific socialism" is first "to thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act ['of universal emancipation']" (an idea of "historical conditions" that finds "universal emancipation" - i.e. "true reality" - immanent in them as their "obligation" and "final goal") and then "to impart to the now oppressed class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish" (an idea of the "oppressed class" that attributes to them the developed degree of enlightenment required to "appropriate" a full knowledge of these conditions and of this meaning, this full knowledge being in turn necessary for the successful accomplishment of the act).
So in so far as by "populism" is meant an appeal to prejudice and superstition rather than to enlightenment, it's inconsistent with what Marx and Engels meant by "scientific socialism," as is any form of "Marxism" from which the above idea of the relation between modes of production and exchange and the development of enlightenment and between the development of enlightenment and "socialism" is missing.
As the continuing degree and extent of proletarian prejudice and superstition demonstrate, Marx and Engels were badly mistaken about the relation of capitalism to the development of "proletarian" enlightenment . So long as the degree of enlightenment required for its creation remains undeveloped, "socialism" in their sense - "universal emancipation" - is impossible.
Ted