First, I want to again address the people that say the Marxism
used to be an effective way to analyze society, but no longer is.
My last post, I thought, went some way to dispelling such an idea. The fact that we look at a class on-not how it exists at the present, how much money it makes, how it's presently regarded-but as its relation to the means of production should counter such notions. The working class, even if other conditions has changed, still does not own the means of production. The bourgeoisie still own the means of production, even if there have been variations. There are still small bourgeoisie that work to protect and maintain the means of production, there are still shop keepers that work as hard as the proletariat that still own a means of production; there are still gangsters and others that rob both the proletariat and others. These things haven't changed. The fact that we Marxists view classes in this way instead of a financial of even social figure should go some way in showing that the analysis still works even if certain conditions no longer are relevant. Lenin himself did some work in this while updating Marxist analysis to deal with imperialism and other factors Marx was not alive to see. Hence, again, the idea that analysis is important to the Marxist; while dreaming of future utopia that's already well planned is a pastime left to others.
Rei is mostly on target, I'll concede with a few minor scruples that are largely irrelevant at the moment; though for the Marxists it may be worth quoting Engels on a similar tangent (apologies for his outdated German language that was translated into English in an outdated way):
Engels wrote:The revival of trade, after the crisis of 1847, was the dawn of a new industrial epoch. The repeal of the Corn Laws and the financial reforms subsequent thereon gave to English industry and commerce all the elbow-room they had asked for. The discovery of the Californian and Australian gold-fields followed in rapid succession. The colonial markets developed at an increasing rate their capacity for absorbing English manufactured goods. In India millions of hand-weavers were finally crushed out by the Lancashire power-loom. China was more and more being opened up. Above all, the United States — then, commercially speaking, a mere colonial market, but by far the biggest of them all — underwent an economic development astounding even for that rapidly progressive country. And, finally, the new means of communication introduced at the close of the preceding period — railways and ocean steamers — were now worked out on an international scale; they realised actually what had hitherto existed only potentially, a world-market. This world-market, at first, was composed of a number of chiefly or entirely agricultural countries grouped around one manufacturing centre — England which consumed the greater part of their surplus raw produce, and supplied them in return with the greater part of their requirements in manufactured articles. No wonder England’s industrial progress was colossal and unparalleled, and such that the status of 1844 now appears to us as comparatively primitive and insignificant. And in proportion as this increase took place, in the same proportion did manufacturing industry become apparently moralised. The competition of manufacturer against manufacturer by means of petty thefts upon the workpeople did no longer pay. Trade had outgrown such low means of making money; they were not worth while practising for the manufacturing millionaire, and served merely to keep alive the competition of smaller traders, thankful to pick up a penny wherever they could. Thus the truck system was suppressed, the Ten Hours’ Bill was enacted, and a number of other secondary reforms introduced — much against the spirit of Free Trade and unbridled competition, but quite as much in favour of the giant-capitalist in his competition with his less favoured brother. Moreover, the larger the concern, and with it the number of hands, the greater the loss and inconvenience caused by every conflict between master and men; and thus a new spirit came over the masters, especially the large ones, which taught them to avoid unnecessary squabbles, to acquiesce in the existence and power of Trades’ Unions, and finally even to discover in strikes — at opportune times — a powerful means to serve their own ends. The largest manufacturers, formerly the leaders of the war against the working-class, were now the foremost to preach peace and harmony. And for a very good reason. The fact is that all these concessions to justice and philanthropy were nothing else but means to accelerate the concentration of capital in the hands of the few, for whom the niggardly extra extortions of former years had lost all importance and had become actual nuisances; and to crush all the quicker and all the safer their smaller competitors, who could not make both ends meet without such perquisites. Thus the development of production on the basis of the capitalistic system has of itself sufficed — at least in the leading industries, for in the more unimportant branches this is far from being the case — to do away with all those minor grievances which aggravated the workman’s fate during its earlier stages. And thus it renders more and more evident the great central fact that the cause of the miserable condition of the working-class is to be sought, not in these minor grievances, but in the capitalistic system itself. The wage-worker sells to the capitalist his labour-power for a certain daily sum. After a few hours’ work he has reproduced the value of that sum; but the substance of his contract is, that he has to work another series of hours to complete his working-day; and the value he produces during these additional hours of surplus labour is surplus value, which costs the capitalist nothing, but yet goes into his pocket. That is the basis of the system which tends more and more to split up civilised society into a few Rothschilds and Vanderbilts, the owners of all the means of production and subsistence, on the one hand, and an immense number of wage-workers, the owners of nothing but their labour-power, on the other. And that this result is caused, not by this or that secondary grievance, but by the system itself — this fact has been brought out in bold relief by the development of Capitalism in England since 1847.
The big difference is Engels looks at the material conditions like the way trade items moved, as well as the consolidation of the big bourgeoisie against the petite by use of leverage having to do with worker's demands—these being paramount as opposed to culture. Regardless, the narrative takes us to the same place with relatively little variation.
As Rei said, the haute-bourgeoisie were establishing ideological hegemony. They no longer need to make those changes.
This is not to limit the social importance of such changes. Marx himself speaks of this:
Marx wrote:Let us suppose the most favorable case: if productive capital grows, the demand for labour grows. It therefore increases the price of labour-power, wages.
A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.
The point being that the use of the Marxist analysis can remain the same even if the system itself is different. This is largely the point of Marxist analysis, and frankly, I think that a lot of opponents to such analysis wrongly apply their own utopian naivety to materialists and assume we all pray to sky gods, maintain our ideas have value over the observable world, and dance around the may-pole of ourselves.
We do not. We analyze, discuss, and measure. Mentioning that it's not the 19th Century to us is hardly a revelation. Nor was it when Marx and Engels were working.
Alis Volat Propriis; Tiocfaidh ár lá; Proletarier Aller Länder, Vereinigt Euch!
- By litwin
- By Doug64
- By Steve Melton