Feminism and the transcendence of capitalism

[zlemflolia]

2 hours ago, chenGOD said:

Wait, a personal computer isn’t a moveable device? Personal property. 
Let’s use the example of a jewelry designer working out of their home. They may or may not attempt to source their jewels ethically. But gems from Myanmar are ridiculously cheap. So If the jeweller does purchase gems from one of the many conflict spots, their use of private property definitely exploits others’ labour. Yet they are artisanal and peasants (in analogy to people of the day in Marx’s societal norms). 
How would you propose dealing with their property?

You are imprecise because you are using personal and private interchangeably. 

You're not understand the Marxist conception of the differentiation between personal and private property if you keep bringing up "moveable", it's irrelevant.  As I pointed out, it's not about the device being movable.

A personal computer (which I will now just call "computer" from now on because of the name collision here of "personal"-computer which does not relate to the word "personal"-property) can either be personal or private property - it depends entirely upon the context, not upon the object itself.  That specific context upon which it depends is the relations of production surrounding the object's existence.  That context determines whether it's part of the means of production which is the sole determiner of whether it's personal or private property

If computers are ubiquitous and trivial for anyone to get within reason, it cannot be considered part of the means of production, and cannot be monopolizable, and therefore one's ownership of the object cannot be used to alienate any other workers from their labor.  This means it's personal property in that context

But during the early days of computers where they are scarce and time has to be allotted in some way, the computer would in fact become part of the means of production, and in this scenario it is private property in that context

As for your jewelry example, I am not using personal and private interchangeably, I am using them in line with the Marxist conception of the terms, you're just misunderstanding them.  I admit it's possible I mis-typed in the past without noticing it, if that's the case you can point out the specific location

Gems are raw materials labored upon for production of the refined object, in this case jewels.  They are part of the means of production, and as such are private property, not personal property.  In the peasant and artisan quote I gave from The Communist Manifesto, the personal property of the peasant or artisan is that which stays in their immediate vicinity and is used not for laboring upon, for producing anything, but for living.  To put it more specifically, those objects could be viewed as extensions of the body of the individual, the linkages of that individual to the material world, whereas the private property, the incoming stream of gems which are labored upon to produce jewels, are not part of that laborer's connection to the material world, and are in fact themselves, within the context of the specific example you gave, products of alienated laborer themselves, in this case that of the gem miners.

For these reasons the Marxist conception of the differentiation between personal and private property are rooted entirely in the concept of alienated labor, which is itself rooted entirely in the concept of state violence being applied to those who violence the private property rights of those of the higher class who are perpetrating the aforementioned alienation of labor, which brings this concept back of course to class struggle.

If I have not made myself clear I suggest reading Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 as well as The German Ideology

[zlemflolia]

To elaborate a bit more under the assumption that this distinction has been made clear, the entire reason for the communist desire to abolish private property is because the alienation of the individual from the material world inherent in the abstractions that the capitalist system's relations of production impose upon the proletariat class by the bourgeoisie, render the material world in which the proletariat find themselves separated from the body in a way that is similar to the lopping off of an appendage previously attached in an abstract and multi-layered way to the mind of the body.  The materialist viewpoint of Marx is deeply ecological and all-encompassing of the material realm of human existence.  The class struggle inherent in capitalism is itself a violent dissection, a separation of nature from itself imposed upon the majority of nature by an alien minority, the bourgeoisie.  He relates this also to the rape of the fields and its subsequent mineral depletion.

Marx was an ecologist and truly loved humanity and the material world and aimed solely to bring political economy away from the abstractions of bourgeois economists, away from any ideology which is isolated and solipsistically intellectual, and back into the material realm again, and this is what he has set in motion

[Braintree]

 

[chenGOD]

30 minutes ago, Zeffolia said:

In the peasant and artisan quote I gave from The Communist Manifesto, the personal property of the peasant or artisan is that which stays in their immediate vicinity and is used not for laboring upon, for producing anything, but for living.

What? Marx’s writing is clearly in response to the enclosure issue that had happened in northern England, where peasants had lived and worked on the same land. 
 

In the jeweller example, the house where the jeweller works is part of the means of production. It is private property. 
 

I've read Marx, mandatory for Econ history classes. Thanks though. 

[zlemflolia]

27 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

What? Marx’s writing is clearly in response to the enclosure issue that had happened in northern England, where peasants had lived and worked on the same land. 

In the jeweller example, the house where the jeweller works is part of the means of production. It is private property. 

I've read Marx, mandatory for Econ history classes. Thanks though. 

Once again I will return to a quote I copied a while ago

Quote

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally

acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the
groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of
the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to
abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still
destroying it daily. 

Once again you're failing to look at this entire question in terms of the relations of production.  Whether a jeweler's house is personal or private property is determined by the relations of production in which that house is located, which depends upon the time period in question.  

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01c.htm#c1

A jeweler's house which is located in a town in which that house is the product of and instrument of alienated labor is private property.  That same house anywhere or anywhen else, where it does not stand in relation to production in a way that alienates those who do not have it, is personal property.  In essence, after the communist abolition of private property, that house would crease to be private property and would be able to be personal property if the relations of production have become fully communalized

Quote

With guild-free manufacture, property relations also quickly changed. The first advance beyond naturally derived estate capital was provided by the rise of merchants whose capital was from the beginning movable, capital in the modern sense as far as one can speak of it, given the circumstances of those times. The second advance came with manufacture, which again made mobile a mass of natural capital, and altogether increased the mass of movable capital as against that of natural capital.

At the same time, manufacture became a refuge of the peasants from the guilds which excluded them or paid them badly, just as earlier the guild-towns had [served] as a refuge for the peasants from [the oppressive landed nobility].

Simultaneously with the beginning of manufactures there was a period of vagabondage caused by the abolition of the feudal bodies of retainers, the disbanding of the swollen armies which had flocked to serve the kings against their vassals, the improvement of agriculture, and the transformation of great strips of tillage into pasture land. From this alone it is clear how this vagabondage is strictly connected with the disintegration of the feudal system. As early as the thirteenth century we find isolated epochs of this kind, but only at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth does this vagabondage make a general and permanent appearance. These vagabonds, who were so numerous that, for instance, Henry VIII of England had 72,000 of them hanged, were only prevailed upon to work with the greatest difficulty and through the most extreme necessity, and then only after long resistance. The rapid rise of manufactures, particularly in England, absorbed them gradually.

With the advent of manufactures, the various nations entered into a competitive relationship, the struggle for trade, which was fought out in wars, protective duties and prohibitions, whereas earlier the nations, insofar as they were connected at all, had carried on an inoffensive exchange with each other. Trade had from now on a political significance.

With the advent of manufacture the relationship between worker and employer changed. In the guilds the patriarchal relationship between journeyman and master continued to exist; in manufacture its place was taken by the monetary relation between worker and capitalist — a relationship which in the countryside and in small towns retained a patriarchal tinge, but in the larger, the real manufacturing towns, quite early lost almost all patriarchal complexion.

Manufacture and the movement of production in general received an enormous impetus through the extension of commerce which came with the discovery of America and the sea-route to the East Indies. The new products imported thence, particularly the masses of gold and silver which came into circulation and totally changed the position of the classes towards one another, dealing a hard blow to feudal landed property and to the workers; the expeditions of adventurers, colonisation; and above all the extension of markets into a world market, which had now become possible and was daily becoming more and more a fact, called forth a new phase of historical development, into which in general we cannot here enter further. Through the colonisation of the newly discovered countries the commercial struggle of the nations amongst one another was given new fuel and accordingly greater extension and animosity.

The expansion of trade and manufacture accelerated the accumulation of movable capital, while in the guilds, which were not stimulated to extend their production, natural capital remained stationary or even declined. Trade and manufacture created the big bourgeoisie; in the guilds was concentrated the petty bourgeoisie, which no longer was dominant in the towns as formerly, but had to bow to the might of the great merchants and manufacturers. Hence the decline of the guilds, as soon as they came into contact with manufacture.

 

[ignatius]

24 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

What? Marx’s writing is clearly in response to the enclosure issue that had happened in northern England, where peasants had lived and worked on the same land. 

it's a fascinating part of history. that book (caliban and the witch by silvia federicci) i linked to goes in depth on that as it relates to women and religion and the idea of wages which many people were just disgusted with.. the idea of small wages for their time. it affected so many things and put so many things in motion. i should re-read. it's good stuff.

[chenGOD]

Lol I’m on my phone drinking beers (produced by the exploitation of labour) so yeah I’ll holler at you tomorrow, but you’re clearly being obtuse man. 

[whosebrian]

 

[dingformung]

Fun fact: Raster-Noton is based in Karl Marx City. Not sure why they renamed it to Chemnitz after the reunification, though.

[Zephyr_Nova]

I could see it being annoying living in a city where you're constantly reminded of some historical figure any time you consider where you live.

Imagine living in Bill Cosby Land.