http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2023/02/all-american-socialism-is-socialisms.html
Labor Power Wednesday, March 8, 2023 I’m saying that in the US over the last 90years , there has been a class struggle over the control of the state and thereby the working class has won some control of the state in the form of reforms , laws . The state expresses itself in laws.
Khrachvik Khrachvik KK: Claiming the victories of the working class doesn't need to reduce us to ignoring the class nature of the state. CB: I’m not ignoring the class nature of the state . I’m saying that in the US over the last 90years , there has been a class struggle over the control of the state and thereby the working class has won some control of the state in the form of reforms , laws . The state expresses itself in laws.
KK: We speak of the second revolution as a victory, the civil rights movement as a victory, etc. But Marxism is VERY clear in this. There's no sliding scale of socialism.
CB : where do you get this ? I’m saying that there is a “sliding scale “. Marxism does not treat the state dogmatically , metaphysically , as a fixity , rather dialectically , that is it develops . Socialism develops “ in the womb “ of capitalism ( that’s a paraphrase of Marx or Lenin). For example , in _Imperialism_ , Lenin says that Monopoly’s large enterprises are a precursor of socialist forms . Of course , the proletariat are developed in capitalism, but are a precursor of socialism.
KK :You can't just pile reforms on top of each other until we call society something different
CB : Yes I can by the dialectical law of transformation of quantitative change into quantitative change as I said to you previously. ( See Engels _Dialectics of Nature_ where he pronounces this as one of the dialectical laws .; it’s taught in all Party elementary classes on dialectics as water boiling , as I said before ) . Kk : The laws of the dialectic are the laws of nature. This is why the civil war is considered the second revolution, and the civil rights movement a political revolution.
CB : Yes the US Civil War is a revolution because a form of private property was abolished ( as Herbert Aptheker taught me). No the US Civil Rights movement was not a revolution, but rather a working class _reform_ of the state “piling up” to a quantitative, revolutionary change in the state .
KK : Telling the people that the bourgeois state has its interests in mind, that it's already socialism, is just aligning with the bourgeoisie.
CB: It’s a bourgeois state with working class reforms . Not already socialism , but in a precursor socialist form . The reforms - like the New Deal - _are_ definitely in the working class’s interests. That’s why the Bourgeoisie have been trying to repeal them since they were passed .
Kk : Working class people all over the country are finally waking up to the fact that the bourgeois state does NOT work in their interests (due to the rapid decline happening, and what we call re-proletarianization of the middle classes). CB : It’s not “finally “. The working class has been waking up to this since the early 20th Century, And through struggles it has won reforms of the state in its interest in the form of laws . The so-called middle class ( like high income auto workers who call themselves middle class ) _ has been working class all along because their relationship to the means of production is as wage-laborers.
Kk: The task of communists is to develop the immanent contradictions within capitalism. Or, as Stalin said: Hence, in order not to err in policy, one must look forward, not backward.
CB : Sure The immanent contradictions in capitalism , in the womb of capitalism , form precursor socially forms _ because of the objective laws of capitalism. ( See Chapter 32 of _Capital_ I.
KK: Further, if the passing of slow quantitative changes into rapid and abrupt qualitative changes is a law of development, then it is clear that revolutions made by oppressed classes are a quite natural and inevitable phenomenon.
CB : Yes that’s what Marx says .
Kk: Hence, the transition from capitalism to socialism and the liberation of the working class from the yoke of capitalism cannot be effected by slow changes, by reforms, but only by a qualitative change of the capitalist system, by revolution.
CB : Ok but you’re sort of begging the question ( in the classical logical fallacy sense ) . Your’e asserting as true your conclusion without argument. No , the qualitative leap is qualitative change coming out of quantitative change in this case
Kk : Hence, in order not to err in policy, one must be a revolutionary, not a reformist.
CB : No
Marxists struggle for reforms in a revolutionary manner .
KK :?Further, if development proceeds by way of the disclosure of internal contradictions, by way of collisions between opposite forces on the basis of these contradictions and so as to overcome these contradictions, then it is clear that the class struggle of the proletariat is a quite natural and inevitable phenomenon.
CB : Yes indeed it is ( See Chapter 32 of Capital I) . The contradictions here are those between bourgeoisie and proletariat; and the proletariat wins some and loses some of these struggles to reform capitalism.
Kk : Hence, we must not cover up the contradictions of the capitalist system, but disclose and unravel them; we must not try to check the class struggle but carry it to its conclusion.
CB : You are arguing against a straw person because I’m not covering up contradictions but rather disclosing that the working class, in contradiction with the bourgeoisie wins some of the struggles short of socialism. You are selling the working class short in claiming it has not won any substantial victories. KK :Hence, in order not to err in policy, one must pursue an uncompromising proletarian class policy, not a reformist policy of harmony of the interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, not a compromisers' policy of the "growing" of capitalism into socialism.
CB : Clearly I’m not pronouncing a policy of harmony. Nor am I pronouncing a reform_ist_ tactic but rather observing the historical fact that the working class has won substantial reforms short of full revolutionary change . Capitalism evolves toward socialism by its fundamental laws and contradictions. (See Chapter 32 of Capital below ): "As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the labourers are turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralisation of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralisation, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the cooperative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economising of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialised labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.
The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production. The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialised production, into socialised property. In the former case, we had the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in the latter, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people. [2] REPLY Sent from my iPhone cb at 1:32 PM Share No comments: Post a Comment ‹ › Home View web version About Me My photo cb Life is a date with the Earth. Eat, drink and be merry, and save the world ! I'm a what's-good-for-the-goose-is-good-for-the-gander feminist. Peace, love ; live long and prosper. View my complete profile Powered by Blogger.
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