Book proposal: Marx’s Fetters and the Realm of Freedom: a remedial reading. The Revolutionary Class
by Tom Walker
Econospeak
Book proposal: Marx’s Fetters and the Realm of Freedom: a remedial reading — part 2.7
The revolutionary class
“The working class is either revolutionary or it is nothing,” Marx wrote to German politician J.B. von Schweitzer and copied “word for word” in a letter to Engels. In The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels wrote “the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.” Marx cited that statement in a footnote at the very end of the penultimate chapter of volume 1 of Capital. Without denying the plausibility of other, canonical, interpretation of the revolutionary working class, there is one clear definition given by Marx in the Grundrisse that has escaped notice as a definition of the revolutionary working class:
The more this contradiction develops, the more does it become evident that the growth of the forces of production can no longer be bound up with the appropriation of alien labour, but that the mass of workers must themselves appropriate their own surplus labour. Once they have done so – and disposable time thereby ceases to have an antithetical existence – then, on one side, necessary labour time will be measured by the needs of the social individual, and, on the other, the development of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that, even though production is now calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will grow for all. (emphasis in original)
The first sentence is a compact version of Marx’s famous statement about fetters on the forces of production and reprises what he had said two pages earlier about the contradiction between the forces and relations of production. In Capital and in his work with the International, Marx repeatedly referred to the limitation of the working day as a preliminary condition or basic prerequisite for the emancipation of the working class.
The concentration of CO2 continues to go up, in spite of Kyoto, Paris and many other “efforts” to arrest this increase. And it is not just carbon either, but releases of methane and possibly other gases that impact warming have not really been restricted in any serious manner yet. What happens if disposable time increases significantly because the approach to climate change that finally shakes out here is heavily reliant on ending and possibly reversing economic growth? Marx wrote so much, that I have little doubt that the student can find something that seems applicable, but I don’t really believe he seriously thought about the impact of general and possibly pretty high decreases in production maintained as the accepted approach for humanity. Even if we never get reliable self-driving trucks, truckers might have a lot more disposable time if policies are made to have a lot less stuff in Walmart or Target. But they’ll be poorer, too, so how are they going to really use that disposable time if the production time shrinks because production did also? As a nearly complete tangent, drove by the Tracker boat facility on I-44 in Missouri a couple of days ago. Yearly Branson trip for my daughter’s final dance competition of the season. They just park inventory outside. Way, way more inventory than same time last year. Are they expecting strong sales, or did they build for strong sales and not get them?
Damn Eric, just when I’d given up on you. I’ve noticed the same thing with RVs: they build more than they can sell. No unlike Ford’s rollout of the F150 Lightening, V1
Why they build more than they can sell is open to speculation …
Ten
I speculate that their resident economists predicted that they would be able to sell more. That’s what makes capitalism so much fun.
and what does that excess production say about all those people who are going to be too poor to enjoy their free time if we cut production of power consming toys?
Eric
using less carbon does not necessarily mean poorer. we have created an economy that depnds on automobiles and other power intensive production. once we break the addiction..which we won’t absent some government coercion or simply climate disater too severe to ignore or escape, we can go about our lives comfortably and happily with all the “progress” we desire that does not depend on unsustainable use of “power.” overconsumption is …i was going to say “a choice” but it is more like a disease…not a necessity for survival or happiness.
on the contrary. your example seems self-contradictory…”how are we going to use all that free time if production time decreases?” how are we going to have more time if production time does not decrease? does our enjoyment of life decrease if we can’t have a new high powered motorcar, or huge houses that are designed to NEED huge energy inputs to be comfortable? or jobs in the city so we can drive to them from what’s left of the country we moved out to to get away from the city?
i do NOT mean to be insulting..but you, and I, and the government and the people suffer from a lack of imagination..which amounts to a lack of intelligence when it comes to actually solving our real problems.
that said, the only real world reason i can see for high mass consumption is the need for a big enough army to deter the other guy from coming in and making slaves of us to produce arms for his big enough army. i mention that not because i like big armies, but to acknowledge that it is a problem to solve.
in something hundred BC Greece was a very poor country. Persia, a very rich country, invaded Greece. after the Greeks defeated the Persians, the commander of the Greek army brought his men into the Persian camp to show them the riches of the Persians: “Look to see how the Persians came to steal from us our poverty.”
Dale, I do not at all like you specifically attributing to me, in quotation marks, stuff I did not write. They aren’t even reasonable paraphrasing of what I actually wrote. That out of the way, yes, over time the world will decarbonize, the ratio of energy inputs to material production will improve and certainly humanity’s sense of what makes for a good life will change. Right now though, I sense that the second two of those changes are slower than needed to hit the many decarbonization goals we collectively have announced without policy choices being made and enforced that will reduce standards of living in ways that really upset people. So if in five years the Tracker boat upholstery trim workers find they have 20 more hours of disposable time, but their paychecks are lower in line with that and finding a second job is far harder, because carbon, what did Marx think about this situation, if anything? my gut is the Yellow Vests in France experience was a good tell that social unrest outweighs climate. If we end up at +3C, well that’s better than +4C and future generation need their challenges.
Eric
” But they’ll be poorer, too, so how are they going to really use that disposable time if the production time shrinks because production did also? “
looks to me a lot like
”how are we going to use all that free time if production time decreases?”
feel free to explain what you meant.
what i meant is that people will discover free time is much more valuable than more plastic toys. your point in this coment appears to be that they won’t discover that as soon as they discover that their wages have gone down and they can’t buy all the plastic toys they want. you are probably right about that. but that is the problem we need to manage, not just plunge ahead with 3.5% because it’s less that 4% and future people will need problems to solve. But no longer have the means to solve them. We already have much lower standard of living that we had in 1950 if you count the loss of “the best things in life” that have made our lives so miserable we try to fill the hole with more plastic toys.
typo (sorta) Eric said 3C and 4C. i said 3.5% and 4% thinking I was saying what he had said. I may have got my wires crossed because (I think) an earlier commentator (now presumably deleted..as was my reply, which may have been too harsh) said 3% referring (i think) to the concentration of CO2 as being too small to mean anything (the concentration is, I think about 300 parts per million, which is much smaller that 3% and still the cause of planetary warming). So yes, I make mistakes, sometimes i am not as kind as i would like to be, but I don’t throw myself into a lifetime of hate because someone points it out.
censoring comments is a good way to lose readers.
coberly:
You need to start reading more carefully and thinking about your answers. I will get complaints about your comments from the others, end up deleting them, and then block you because you are too old to think. Maybe we should have a vote on your intellect, hmmmmm?.
I’m not an expert in economics or political philosophy. But from what I’ve read of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Mao never implemented Marx’s ideas and visions.
From what I’ve read, Marx thought the proletarian revolution would begin in industrialized societies like Germany and Britain. Those efforts in the 19th century failed. The so-called Marxist revolutions in Russia and China were not Marxist at all, as I understand Marx. They were totalitarian dictatorships that cloaked themselves in the phony flag of Marxism, imposed on agrarian societies.
Again, I’m no expert, but it sure looks to me that Marx was reaching for social laws of human behavior that mimicked the laws of physics. Certainly, no such thing existed in his time, and I can’t see it today, in the third decade of the 21st century.
At what point do we admit that Marxist economics is an anachronism?
Pretty Bidenesque that third decade of the 20th century! And I always figured you as one of the most stable geniuses here at AB.
@Eric,
Thanks for catching the typo. I fixed it.
As for this: “Dale, I do not at all like you specifically attributing to me, in quotation marks, stuff I did not write. They aren’t even reasonable paraphrasing of what I actually wrote.”
Dale is fond of straw men. If you didn’t say it, he’ll put the words in your mouth anyway. I got fed up with him lying about me like that, which is why I never respond to him on these threads. YMMV.
Joel
frankly, based on limited knowledge i agree with you.
not so much because Marx was wrong, as that Marxism has never been tried.
But Marx’ s ideas have led to a much more general awareness of what can and should be done to make life more humane than raw capitalism. The collapse of the Soviet empire told the Unfettered Capitalism folk they did not need to trouble themselves with the needs of the people or even fair dealing, because they no longer faced competition from “communism.” We are beginning to see the final results of that lack of a sufficient check and balance.
“Karl Marx was right. Socialism works. It is just that he had the wrong species in mind.”
~Edward O. Wilson
Joel
try to remember that the dangerous enemy here is Trump. not me.