I agree Victor that the relations between classes have been "complicated"
and that it is necessary to trace how this process of concretisation has
taken place. I don't agree that if can be characterised in terms of
increasing proletarian control of production. Rather, that what was
formerly seen under the category of "control of production" has become
merged under the heading of "production itself".
In the 1844s, Marx talks of the practical and theoretical attitudes of
those who work and those who control work, but I think that theoretical
work, after Taylor, became "real work", exploitable just like "practical
activity". The labour process is still directed by capital, IMO.
Andy
At 01:36 PM 4/01/2004 +0200, you wrote:
>Andy,
>One way to read that long exegesis I just sent was to see it as an effort to
>make more concrete (concretize?) the abstracted analysis of class struggle
>presented in Capital. Current historical conditions are very different from
>those of the 19th century which inspired the original theory.
>
>It's very tempting to maintain the analytical elegance of the original
>theory and continue to discuss capitalist and proletarian class
>consciousness as if these both remain undifferentiated social entities
>within their range of geographic and historical distribution. This,
>however, would be tantamount to elevating what was a scientific analysis to
>the level of dogma and to a recapitulation, , of all the methological errors
>that eventually led to the bent scientologies of orthodox theory and the
>diamat.
>
>What I was trying to put accross was a collection of observations concerning
>the evolution of the proletariat and of the state of class conflict in the
>the metropolis. Here both the properties of capital and the proletariat
>and the relations between them have changed drastically to the point that we
>can already see significant signs of developed proletarian control of
>production and of enterprise. The advanced stage of the proletarian
>revolution in the metropolis allows us to project the kind of society the
>proletarian revolution will bring (not socialism in my current view) far
>more effectively than did KM (who witnessed and helped to facilitate the
>very beginnings of organized proletarian class struggle).
>
>You wrote:
> >While it would be tempting to deny the possibility of a single "agent of
>history" to overthrow capital, it is capital, a single agency, which is
> currently running the world. "Not capital" does not constitute a clear
>ideal, so a movement "against capital" cannot itself form the basis for
>the emergence of a new class consciousness.
>We do not really disagree on this point. At least not in principle. At its
>most abstract level all proletarian consciousness; of the high, middle, and
>low proletariat, oppose the principle that "ownership of means of production
>is the basis for control of the enterprise and of its surplus," but since
>each group's relations to production are different, the concrete expression
>of this opposition varies considerably between them and they are often as
>not at ideological and political cross-purposes. This was very true of every
>bourgeois-capitalist revolution (See Tawney, 1922, Religion and the Rise of
>Capitalism and Norman Cohen, 1961, The Pursuit of the Millenium on the
>capitalist struggle for dominance throughout the European Middle-ages and
>into the Renaissance, and Barrington Moore, 1967, Social Origins of
>Dicatorship and Democracy and Charles Tilly, 1964, The Vendee, on the French
>Revolution and the conditions that engendered it) and it is and will be true
>of the proletarian revolution.
>
> >I think class consciousness will be more of an outcome than a starting
>point.
>Here I don't agree with you. Class consciousness has and will appear,
>disappear and reappear throughout the class struggle; and it will, of
>course, change as the composition and the long-term and more immediate aims
>of the proletarians change. It's not likely to be monolithic and will
>include internal conflicts between different sectors of the proletariat.
>Also we should expect that in the course of their struggle sectors of the
>proletariat may engage in temporary alliances with other classes, or sectors
>of other classes. The high bourgeoisie of France, for example, allied
>itself with the Feudal Kings of 16th and 17th century France when the latter
>were engaged in "pacification" of the landed, military nobility (see Lionel
>Rothkrug, 1965, The Opposition to Louis XIV), while middle and lower
>bourgeois-capitalists had no qualms about making an alliance with the urban
>proletariat during the militant phase of the French revolution (as they had
>no qualms about betraying this alliance once their goals had been met).
>These alliances will have echos in the ideologies of the allied classes -
>read the early French proletarian ideologue, Prodhoun 1840, What is
>Property, 1840 Letter to Blanqui, and Marx's critique on Prodhoun, 1847, The
>Poverty of Philosophy - further complicating the expression of class
>consciousness.
>Regards,
>Victor
>
>
>.
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net>
>To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2004 1:11 PM
>Subject: Re: real and virtual worlds
>
>
> > Victor, when I said that "I cannot but see a future in which class
> > consciousness makes a comeback in some form, changed by the long period of
> > identity and representation politics" then such a "class consciousness"
> > would have to be something very different from what Lukacs my have been
> > talking about in 1923; I am talking about a kind of "negation of
>negation".
> >
> > I did not mention "class consciousness" in "For Ethical Politics" because
>I
> > thought it would only confuse matters, but that is not to say it does not
> > exist, but it is facing such dramatic transformation!
> >
> > While it would be tempting to deny the possibility of a single "agent of
> > history" to overthrow capital, it is capital, a single agency, which is
> > currently running the world. "Not capital" does not constitute a clear
> > ideal, so a movement "against capital" cannot itself form the basis for
>the
> > emergence of a new class consciousness. I think class consciousness will
>be
> > more of an outcome than a starting point.
> >
> > Andy
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