Communism Misunderstood in America: Theory of Historical Materialism, Part III
Communism Misunderstood in America: A Perfect Democracy Though Utopian Part III, Theory of Historical Materialism For proper understanding of Marx's analysis of the societal system, it is utmost important to note that nothing discussed by him is static.
Nearly, all of his writings should be read and comprehended in terms of the operation of the dialectical process.
His method is an attempt to comprehend the nature of the change, the transformation of all that is becoming, without losing the essence of that it is.
Living human beings are subject to factors within and shapers of material production.
Through their presence, they all effectuate formal economic, social, and political structures and their interdependence.
Historical materialism, thus, relates all changes in human and community relationship to development of material means and relationship on class struggle.
In his view, in every society since the beginning of human history there have been two distinct classes, the ruling and ruled.
The former has ruled through the control of production under a specified mode of production.
The latter has been ruled for the lack of control over the means of production.
For example, in the slavery mode of production, the two classes comprised of the master who ruled by owning all the means of production, including labor, and slaves who were ruled by their owners; in the feudal mode of production.
He ruling class consisted of the landed aristocracy and the ruled class comprised of the peasants and serfs; in modern times, under the capitalist mode of production, the ruling class is the bourgeoisie, the capitalist, who controls the capital and technology, and the ruked class consists of the workers or proletariat as referred to by Marx.
This classification is very general.
In fact, each class is composed of several subclasses.
Since here our concern is the capitalist mode of production, it will serve our comprehension of the subject matter if we take a look at the stratification within each of the two classes of capitalist and proletariat in a modern industrial capitalist society like the United States.
The working class or the proletariat is composed of blue-collar workers or "commodity producing" class, comprising about 40 percent of the total labor force.
"White-collar" class, having advanced education and sophisticated skills, work in production related scientific or technical positions.
It constitutes about 13 percent of the total labor force, is known also as the "new working class" since it did not exist as such in Marx's time.
Furthermore, there are service and clerical workers amounting to about 35 percent of the total labor force.
Added all together, these three groups of workers approximate 88 percent of the total working population.
The remaining 12 percent constitute the capitalist or bourgeoisie class which is also subdivided.
The larger sector within this class consists of the private entrepreneurs and the small businessmen, petite bourgeoisie as labeled by Marx.
It comprises about three-fourths of 12 percent capitalist class or 9 out of every 12 persons which tend to maintain the myth of competitive market.
Another group consists of the professional intellectual class, the legal and medical professions, making up an enlarging sub-capitalist class, who, through private practice, high administrative and academic positions serve capitalism.
There remains a very small but enormously significant group, the real capitalist class.
Comprising about one percent of the working population, it controls the means of production and distribution.
Yet, a very small segment of this small group, only around 7300, controls the major industrial firms, financial institutions, retail business, insurance, utility companies and government.
Marx focuses on two main classes differentiated but related to one another.
This relationship, however, is antagonistic and based on a power struggle.
In order to play its historic role as an agent of change, each class must develop its own class consciousness.
But, under ordinary conditions, isolation, and illusion along with alienation, presents a kind of material and social conditions that is not inductive to the development of class consciousness.
However, it is in times of sharp contradictions and crises that through the increasing pressure of changing material conditions of the proletariat, circumstances for class consciousness are generated.
From this viewpoint, class relations as a whole: economic, political, and social, are not static but dynamic.
They are fluid expressions of dialectic historical materialism which expands into social and political conditions causing the transformation of society as a whole.
Thus, social transformation, according to Marx, is both historical and a mass concept.
Its two main objectives are freedom and material well-being for the masses, through the rational use of the material conditions of human life.
Marx's uncompromising character in regard to evolution of modern society may be attributed to the realism of his ideas in delineating power relations in a capitalist society, and to the recognition of the tenacity of class relations with both capitalism and socialism.
Inevitably, this is a dialectical process in which the proletariat assumes its own historic role in the continuing struggle between itself and the material conditions established and controlled by the capitalist class.
The aim of the struggle is for the capitalist to maintain the existing mode of production and for the proletariat to transform it into another.
Thus, it is a struggle over the direction of human history.
From Marx's viewpoint, the transformation of society and mode of production pursuant to revolution resulting in a true victory was fundamental and irrevocable.
Proletarian victory, however, did not mean domination by a new class.
The condition for emancipation of the working class is the abolition of all classes.
Regarding the ultimate disappearance of the government and class Marx argues that in the course of development, class distinctions disappears and all production has been concentrated in the hands of vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character.
Political power, properly so called, is only the organized power of one class for oppressing another.
If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstance, to organize itself as a class, and sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with those conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonism and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
Gradually, labor becomes not only a means of life but life's prime want.
After the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, only then the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and the life's aim will be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", which is the ultimate stage of communism.
We must take note that our world is not only what we have made it to be, but also, maybe more so, a product of the accumulated efforts of earlier generations.
This fact emphatically suggests that for full and proper comprehension of the present we must acquire a deep understanding of the past.
The writings of the great thinkers were substantially influenced by the history of their past generations and experiences of their own time.
The extracts were then put together in the form of new ideas by employing their unusual talent and intelligence.
Locke, Rousseau, Bentham, Marx, Hitler, Mao and a score of others can fully be understood only in the light of their intellectual, historical context and prevailing political, social, and economic conditions and norms.
In the next essay (Part IV) we will examine Lenin's life, ideas, and experiences from these viewpoints and the present status of communism and Marxism in the world with a projection for the future.
Nearly, all of his writings should be read and comprehended in terms of the operation of the dialectical process.
His method is an attempt to comprehend the nature of the change, the transformation of all that is becoming, without losing the essence of that it is.
Living human beings are subject to factors within and shapers of material production.
Through their presence, they all effectuate formal economic, social, and political structures and their interdependence.
Historical materialism, thus, relates all changes in human and community relationship to development of material means and relationship on class struggle.
In his view, in every society since the beginning of human history there have been two distinct classes, the ruling and ruled.
The former has ruled through the control of production under a specified mode of production.
The latter has been ruled for the lack of control over the means of production.
For example, in the slavery mode of production, the two classes comprised of the master who ruled by owning all the means of production, including labor, and slaves who were ruled by their owners; in the feudal mode of production.
He ruling class consisted of the landed aristocracy and the ruled class comprised of the peasants and serfs; in modern times, under the capitalist mode of production, the ruling class is the bourgeoisie, the capitalist, who controls the capital and technology, and the ruked class consists of the workers or proletariat as referred to by Marx.
This classification is very general.
In fact, each class is composed of several subclasses.
Since here our concern is the capitalist mode of production, it will serve our comprehension of the subject matter if we take a look at the stratification within each of the two classes of capitalist and proletariat in a modern industrial capitalist society like the United States.
The working class or the proletariat is composed of blue-collar workers or "commodity producing" class, comprising about 40 percent of the total labor force.
"White-collar" class, having advanced education and sophisticated skills, work in production related scientific or technical positions.
It constitutes about 13 percent of the total labor force, is known also as the "new working class" since it did not exist as such in Marx's time.
Furthermore, there are service and clerical workers amounting to about 35 percent of the total labor force.
Added all together, these three groups of workers approximate 88 percent of the total working population.
The remaining 12 percent constitute the capitalist or bourgeoisie class which is also subdivided.
The larger sector within this class consists of the private entrepreneurs and the small businessmen, petite bourgeoisie as labeled by Marx.
It comprises about three-fourths of 12 percent capitalist class or 9 out of every 12 persons which tend to maintain the myth of competitive market.
Another group consists of the professional intellectual class, the legal and medical professions, making up an enlarging sub-capitalist class, who, through private practice, high administrative and academic positions serve capitalism.
There remains a very small but enormously significant group, the real capitalist class.
Comprising about one percent of the working population, it controls the means of production and distribution.
Yet, a very small segment of this small group, only around 7300, controls the major industrial firms, financial institutions, retail business, insurance, utility companies and government.
Marx focuses on two main classes differentiated but related to one another.
This relationship, however, is antagonistic and based on a power struggle.
In order to play its historic role as an agent of change, each class must develop its own class consciousness.
But, under ordinary conditions, isolation, and illusion along with alienation, presents a kind of material and social conditions that is not inductive to the development of class consciousness.
However, it is in times of sharp contradictions and crises that through the increasing pressure of changing material conditions of the proletariat, circumstances for class consciousness are generated.
From this viewpoint, class relations as a whole: economic, political, and social, are not static but dynamic.
They are fluid expressions of dialectic historical materialism which expands into social and political conditions causing the transformation of society as a whole.
Thus, social transformation, according to Marx, is both historical and a mass concept.
Its two main objectives are freedom and material well-being for the masses, through the rational use of the material conditions of human life.
Marx's uncompromising character in regard to evolution of modern society may be attributed to the realism of his ideas in delineating power relations in a capitalist society, and to the recognition of the tenacity of class relations with both capitalism and socialism.
Inevitably, this is a dialectical process in which the proletariat assumes its own historic role in the continuing struggle between itself and the material conditions established and controlled by the capitalist class.
The aim of the struggle is for the capitalist to maintain the existing mode of production and for the proletariat to transform it into another.
Thus, it is a struggle over the direction of human history.
From Marx's viewpoint, the transformation of society and mode of production pursuant to revolution resulting in a true victory was fundamental and irrevocable.
Proletarian victory, however, did not mean domination by a new class.
The condition for emancipation of the working class is the abolition of all classes.
Regarding the ultimate disappearance of the government and class Marx argues that in the course of development, class distinctions disappears and all production has been concentrated in the hands of vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character.
Political power, properly so called, is only the organized power of one class for oppressing another.
If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstance, to organize itself as a class, and sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with those conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonism and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
Gradually, labor becomes not only a means of life but life's prime want.
After the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, only then the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and the life's aim will be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", which is the ultimate stage of communism.
We must take note that our world is not only what we have made it to be, but also, maybe more so, a product of the accumulated efforts of earlier generations.
This fact emphatically suggests that for full and proper comprehension of the present we must acquire a deep understanding of the past.
The writings of the great thinkers were substantially influenced by the history of their past generations and experiences of their own time.
The extracts were then put together in the form of new ideas by employing their unusual talent and intelligence.
Locke, Rousseau, Bentham, Marx, Hitler, Mao and a score of others can fully be understood only in the light of their intellectual, historical context and prevailing political, social, and economic conditions and norms.
In the next essay (Part IV) we will examine Lenin's life, ideas, and experiences from these viewpoints and the present status of communism and Marxism in the world with a projection for the future.
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