The Class Struggle - Kautsky

[The-Spark]

Okay, i am reading The Class Strugge by Kautsky, and i have 2 questions for you guys b4 i continue in that book so i could understand better.

"The development of society, therefore, corresponds to a development of property which it maintains" what is your guys definition of what he is saying there? how is the development of society correspond with the development of property?

That and please explain to me the relation of supply and demand, thankyou comrades.

[Iron]

Supply and demand is a capitalist idea basically it states that when the demand is greater than the supply the price of the good will increase. And when the supply is greater than the demand the price of the good will decrease.

[The-Spark]

thx

[blackstone]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24, 2007 01:16 am
Supply and demand is a capitalist idea basically it states that when the demand is greater than the supply the price of the good will increase. And when the supply is greater than the demand the price of the good will decrease.
I don't think that's what the quote means.

In my opinion, he is talking about historical materialism. Different modes of production(feudalism, slavery,capitalism, socialism) have differnent productive forces and different relations of production. As society develops through different stages, the relationship to the means of production(private property) change also. In capitalism, capitalists are the owners of the means of production(factories, tools, raw materials,etc), but if society develops( to socialism ) these relations to property also change. If it were to develop to socialism, it would change so that the workers and not capitalists, were owners of the means of production.

[Hit The North]

This is how Marx explains it:


In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.

The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing — with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.

Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made 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, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production.

No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the tasks itself arises only when the material conditions of its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.


Preface to "The Critique of Political Economy" (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm)

I'm intrigued that someone should still be reading work by Kautsky - the discredited "Pope of Marxism" Why did you choose The Class Struggle?

[The-Spark]

I chose Kautsky for one, his book was at my library, for two, i didnt see why his ideas on marxism shouldnt be values just as high as Lenin or Trotsky, his books were used as text books in the soviet union, and he personally did work with Fredrich Engels. Yes Lenin and him did have a disagreement because Kautsky didnt agree with the dictatorship of the proletariat but on everything else they were good, so why not give his ideas a shot aswell.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Originally posted by The-[email protected] 25, 2007 04:29 pm
I chose Kautsky for one, his book was at my library, for two, i didnt see why his ideas on marxism shouldnt be values just as high as Lenin or Trotsky.
He was a reformist goon, that's why.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by The-[email protected] 25, 2007 04:29 pm
I chose Kautsky for one, his book was at my library, for two, i didnt see why his ideas on marxism shouldnt be values just as high as Lenin or Trotsky, his books were used as text books in the soviet union, and he personally did work with Fredrich Engels. Yes Lenin and him did have a disagreement because Kautsky didnt agree with the dictatorship of the proletariat but on everything else they were good, so why not give his ideas a shot aswell.
He supported the imperialist war in 1914. And lately he completely abandoned Marxism and turned into some kind of liberal.

Luís Henrique

[The-Spark]

o i never knew that, great, i wasted my time lol

[gilhyle]

No you didnt waste your time at all. Irresepctive of Kautsky's subsequent political fate, his writings are highly informative....and incidentally VERY close to the views of Lenin on many issues. You should finish what you started.

The Class Struggle is the theoretical part of the Erfurt Programme (1891) on which the German party was built.

I wonder what edition you have ?

IN the 1910 Charles H Kerr edition the sentence which I think you are referring to reads (I quote the previous sentence as well):

"The forms of society and the relations of its members are intimately connected with the forms of property which it maintains. Hand in hand with the development of production goes the development of property. "

Kautsky by the way wasnt really a reformist, rather a 'centrist'.

[The-Spark]

i got the copy with an introduction by Robert Tucker copyrighted 1971 by The Norton Library

[gilhyle]

OK, well seems to me the older edition is clearer on what it means - assuming I have the correct sentence. What he means is that as the way production is organised changes, so to do the forms of property which are recognised. Many early societies only recognised the ownership of property by the King. Many others recognised the capacity to own people etc. The point is that societies come up with the legal concepts of 'property' which facilitate the way that society actually produces things.

[The-Spark]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25, 2007 10:55 pm
OK, well seems to me the older edition is clearer on what it means - assuming I have the correct sentence. What he means is that as the way production is organised changes, so to do the forms of property which are recognised. Many early societies only recognised the ownership of property by the King. Many others recognised the capacity to own people etc. The point is that societies come up with the legal concepts of 'property' which facilitate the way that society actually produces things.
cool i get it, thx for the help comrade! :)