Conceptions and definitions are the basis of all thought processes. We call our method "Marxism" because the fundamental theoretical work was in the main accomplished by Marx. Three interrelated principles--the materialist conception of history, the class struggle and the theory of surplus value - worked together to initiate this method.

Through long and persistent intellectual and organizational work, Marx made his remarkable declaration in 1859 in the Preface to his A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy as follows:

"My inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life, the totality of which Hegel, following the example of English and French thinkers of the eighteenth century, embraces within the term "civil society"; that the anatomy of this civil society, however, has to be sought in political economy. The study of this, which I began in Paris, I continued in Brussels, where I moved owing to an expulsion order issued by M. Guizot. The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be summarised as follows.

"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms - with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.

"In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic - in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

 Hammer-sickle logo!

The hammer-sickle logo signifies class collaboration, i.e., worker peasant unity, that derives from the Leninist legacy and in no way from Marxian tradition that evolved through the three fundamental interrelated principles of class struggle, the materialist conception of history and the labour theory of value, all of which have been deliberately distorted by Lenin and his followers including the entire rank-and-file of the leftist, rightist, centrist parties, groups and individuals, and the all-pervading propaganda machine of capital – ‘friends’ and foes alike. Marx and Engels emphatically espoused in the Communist Manifesto, 
 

The capitalist relations of production for profit – i.e., wage-labour/capital relations – employer/employee relations have absorbed most of the world’s per-capitalist production for use - no matter how big or small the enterprises are. Pre-capitalist relations of production have been replaced with capitalist ones. Nowadays even the small ones employ partly wage-labour alongside their own family labour and self-employment – marginal ventures notwithstanding. They are modern petty-capitalist reactionary owners – farmers and firm owners and shop-keepers, not pre-capitalist peasants, artisans, craft and caste guilds, traders, merchants and usurers of the Middle Ages and up to the industrial revolution at any rate. 

The point here is how we should determine their class. Note that they are not producing pre-capitalist simple commodities (production for use as C1 – M – C2 where C2 = C1) not under feudal tenure, nor under the erstwhile guild system, but under global capitalism (production for profit as M – C – M' where M' (M + m) ? M). They are producing commodities. Peasant farming has got transformed into capitalist farming having been divided into exploiter and exploited classes – farm owners and wage labourers – catering to needs of the world market. Likewise, the artisanship and the guild master / journeymen relations have turned into capitalist ones – few raising themselves up to the capitalist class while most dropping into the ranks of sellers of labour power producing profit for their employers. Production for use has given way to the production for profit. Thus the small farms and businesses belong in the petty capitalist class who produce commodities to be sold on the world market with a view to profit. 

Our criterion of distinguishing classes pertains to the Marxian materialist principle - relations of production. The capitalist class comprises those who employ workers in order to exploit them with a view to profit by means of their ownership and/or control over means of production and distribution. The working class comprises those who sell their labour power – any ability to work in exchange for a wage or salary in order to survive under compulsion of being exploited. The capitalist class possesses, but doesn’t produce. The working class produces, but doesn’t possess. 

Further, we take into account the fulcrum of the system – the dominant relations of production which overshadow all other past relations to determine our present perspective. In addition, under capitalist competition one capital kills many; big capitals kill small ones. The process is going through continuous concentration and centralization whereby the very existence of petty capitalist owners is definitely at stake. Capitalist competition leads to concentration of wealth in the form of “an immense accumulation of commodities” on the one hand and poverty, pauperism and misery on the other. The great majority of the small farmers and petty firm owners are eventually being driven out of the market with their constantly decaying status as owners of some means of production, and getting transformed into job seekers – the unemployed – the "reserve army of labour" (Engels) beside other workers. And for that matter, finally they will have to take position in the world socialist movement; they will gravitate towards the total movement getting integrated into the revolutionary class-for-itself. 

Binay Sarkar

24 October 2013

The buying and selling of labour power is the historically distinctive characteristic – the differentia specifica of the capitalist mode of production. This heralds self-expansion of value; its change occurs not in money itself, nor in the second act of circulation (C – M'), but in the commodity bought by first act, M – C. The change originates in the use-value of the commodity, i.e., in its consumption. Moneybags find within the sphere of circulation a commodity whose use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value – labour-power. Labour-power or capacity for labour means the aggregate of mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, used to produce a use-value of any kind.

You know that a successful socialist revolution to happen nowadays two basic conditions must mature – 1) subjective i.e. revolutionary will and organisation of the immense majority of the working class world over and, 2) objective i.e. material productive abundance for all. Unceasing evolution of technology leading to artificial intelligence – robotics and automation – has revolutionized the forces of production to the extent of making a leisure society on hand

Devastation in Kerala
 
Janet Surman of the Socialist Party of Great Britain has sent the following statement on the horrific floods and consequent devastation in the state of Kerala for publication. According to her this cannot be isolated from the many other such weather catastrophes occurring globally with greater frequency. When talking of climate catastrophe the political discourse must be global. The necessary action must be global. All events need to be seen, not separately, but as parts of the whole. – the World socialist party (India).
Politics
 Almost a month on from the horrific floods and consequent devastation in the state of Kerala, south western India, it is interesting to look back at the commentary being put out by Indian writers at the time. There is blaming and shaming of different varieties, of different parties, with different emphasis depending on the main points raised by each individual commentator. This particular incident though, however serious and shocking

By nature “human nature” is gregarious, cooperative. It is the class division of society that has produced the ongoing alienation, competition and anti-Nature behaviour. It has criminalized society. Socialism is the negation of capitalism – the last class society in history.
In Socialism, gangsters’ cliques will lose their socio-economic breeding grounds

Socialist Freedom
The workers of the world are yet to unite to accomplish their over-a-century-long pending task of overcoming what Thorstein Veblen called “the predatory phase” of human development. They have yet to move on to the phase of “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels), by transforming human society from “a planetary community of production and consumption” (Albert Einstein) into a Universal Community of Scientific Beings – star-trekking beings. With the disappearance of classes from within liberated humanity, humans will leave behind their prehistory and enter into the realm of free history, as Marx envisaged.