From: "Clayton Bagwell" To: Subject: Re: Criticism of Eugene Ruyle Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 01:52:21 -0800 charset="iso-8859-1" Hello to the group, I am an electrician living and working on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. I was notified of this seminar by another list that I read. I would like to comment on the article by Eugene Ruyle, "The Communist Manifesto in the Light of Current Anthropology." I think the article would be stronger without the denegration of the CM as "Euro-centric." The roots of mdern capitalism are easily traced to Europe. To conclude therefore, that the description of the influence capitalism was to have upon the globe as a whole is Euro-centric is incomplete logic. The story of capitalism as told in the manifesto would have the same essential character regardless from which continent it might spring, for it is the story of the conflict between labor and capital, the dialectic of capitalism. In the CM, culture is describe as bourgeois culture. Part I paragraph 18 says,"The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere." In paragraph 21 says, "Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries (a poor choice of words, but the sentiment of this historical fact is there-CB) dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West." And so it is that bourgeois culture is spread around the world. Even today we see the struggle of local artists to preserve their national cultural heritage in the face of global capital. It is my guess that local production of culture will give way to trans-national capital production of culture just as local productive industry has given way. I think Marx was wholly correct in his reference to bourgeois culture snuffing all others wherever contact was made. But I don't think this is Euro-centrism. I think this weakness in the article appears in other ways. I enjoyed the formulation of mal-development. The notion of structural underdevelopment and overdevelopment as opposed to advanced and backward offers useful analogies for problem solving . I concur that the present rate of consumption by the overdeveloped world cannot be extended to the remainder of the globe. Indeed the present rate of consumption in the overdeveloped world may not be sustainable as overproduction starts to clog the arteries of the global economy. New proletariat are sought in lands where slaves and peasants were formerly sufficient for the production of wealth as the bourgeoisie seek new markets to relieve the pressures of overproduction from a system beyond its control. What is different from Marx' time is the strongly international character of the capitalist class. Investments have surpassed national boundaries, and wealth has concentrated to such an extent that relatively few centers control virtually all of the productive wealth of the earth. Thus they are entwined, and new regulations are needed to establish ground rules for the exploitation of the earth as a whole by the international bourgeoisie. We speak of economic regions instead of nations, and trade agreements assume a different form and purpose (e.g. MAI). At this point in the article Ruyle comments that, "The Communist Manifesto of one hundred and fifty years ago does not, and can not, provide us with concrete answers." Here, the weakness of the Euro-centric argument appears again. By belittling the Manifesto with this decriptive, Ruyle overlooks the central theme: the advance of history through class struggle. Ruyle sees the description of the proletariat as a European concoction instead of a truth as universal as the bourgeoisie. Although the structure and shape of the proletariat changes over time with the changes in the means of production (how could it be otherwise?) the proletariat stubbornly remains as those who have only their labor to sell for the production of capital. Not Ruyle nor anyone has shown that capital can exist without the proletariat, so the dismissal of the proletariat remains a bourgeois fantasy. The solution to ever-increasing exploitation by the capitalist class remains the same as in the Manifesto of 150 years ago: the organization of the proletariat into a revolutionary class that assumes political power and abolishes bourgeois property. This is not a Euro-centric phenomenon, but one that must take place every where bourgeois property exists. It was not the role of Marx to describe the 21st century. The Manifesto gives us the most concrete answer possible: the conclusion of the capitalist dialectic is the movement of the proletariat to take political power and abolish bourgeois property. According to the Manifesto, Part II, para. 7,8,9: "The immediate aim of the communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat. "The treoretical conclusions of the comuunists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer. "They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes...." Some contributors to this list point out, almost gleefully, that the necessary organization of the proletariat has not come about. That is true, but that is about the only thing in the Manifesto that has not come about, and the bourgeoisie have spent untold billions to oppose this occurrance. The organization of the proletariat into a revolutionary class means the dissolution of the captalist means of production. You can bet that the capitalists are not going to let such an organization occur if they can help it. So far, it has not occurred; but the threat of that occurrence remains constantly present - the specter of an organized proletariat, the specter of communism. As Marxist, as adherents to the dialectical materialist description of history we must understand the role in the advancement of humanity, beyond the confines of bourgeois society, that the proletariat plays. Once in the know of this, the next step is to work in bringing about class consciousness, the key to victorious class struggle. Bring it about in the class rooms, offices, factories and streets. Beware of Part IV sections 2 & 3 of CM. After minimizing the proletariat as Euro-centric, in closing his article Ruyle quotes a Brazilian priest: ".....So only to the extent that the First World stops being first will we be able to stop being third. In the United States and in Europe, I think the church should be a kind of fifth column dedicated to undermining the present undemocratic capitalist system, to end imperialism and all forms of domination and cultural colonization." And then what? A utopian Christianity? I don't think the hearts of the authors of the Manifesto would be particulary warmed by this. It is too Euro-centric. Clayton Bagwell Union Bay, B.C.