: : You are adamant about denying the existence of the Industrial Revolution (and the corresponding capitalist mode of production) which has bonded the labor of all people together.: Except it hasn't really.
Is that it? You just say 'Except it hasn't really' and that's that?
To 'prove' that the Industrial Revolution and the capitalist mode of production has permeated every corner of life (in 'developed' countries) requires no effort. Look at your computer screen. Look at the stuff in your room. Look at the clothes on your body. Think about the food in your stomach. Everything we consume is produced by unified labor.
: : All they can do is accrue money to change their status within the relationship.
: I thought Stuart Gort had entirely changed his 'relationship'?
No, he has prospered within the existing social relations. He first had to acquiesce to them. He may be crushed by bigger capital in a few years---or lose his life saving's in one of those stock market crashes that, according to you, 'don't look so bad' if you study their 50-year course. The small capitalist lives most precariously. He is no master of his relationship with capital. It's dog-eat-dog out there. To submit to oppression does not lessen oppression; likewise, to learn to thrive in it does not justify it. Ever read Primo Levy?
: Millions dominated by hundreds huh? It doesn't happen without the *willing* complicity of the millions.
Would you care to say that about the Roman Empire? The antebellum American South? Stalinist Russia?
: : Now consider (very) basic Marxist theory. There are two great classes, the capitalist and the proletarian. They have different interests.
: (tolerated the dichotomy for awhile) They are also highly fluid, damn if those sons of guns in America, the 70+% of millionaire business owners who started out 'in the labor market' like most Americans do.
First, see SDF's most excellent post about the objective existence of two---and only two---classes.
Now, this business about '70+% of millionaire business owners who started out "in the labor market" like most Americans do.' Let's see the citation to prove that utterly magical claim! Seriously---let's see it, pal.
Nonetheless, the point is not how many lottery winners there are. The point is how many lottery losers there are. Unless you care to dream up another magical number and tell me something like 'most people are millionaires.'
Why begrudge the lottery winners? It really wouldn't matter what the lottery winners 'won'---if those 'wins' were not in actuality the unpaid surplus labor of the 'losers'!
: I never said that the capitalist class---after the proletarian revolution---gets to retain the rights they presently enjoy. Or even gets to simply walk away with all their land and loot and commence the counterrevolution. Oh no, I did not say that.
: I assume by this you do mean hereditary land owning privileged people, or will the terror be visited upon Gort, your local grocer, the one who started what became New&productive Inc, and the retired couple next door whose stock portfolio supplies a comfortable existence?
The sort of private propertythat generates surplus value from wage laborers---and only that sort of private property---will be abolished in the communist future. The private ownership of the means of production will be confiscated in the communist future. Yes, that would affect petty proprietors who exploit 'only' a few people. Yes, that would eradicate the stock market, that device to suck surplus en masse out of the toiling millions. It would affect all forms of property that are used to prevent others from ever acquiring property.
But people would have lots of private property in the communist future---the sort of property that is consumed! Property like decent housing, decent health care, decent transportation, decent access to education, etc., etc.!
Can you see a distinction between a private property that is meant for (final) consumption and a private property that is meant (only) for the production of profits?
Now, your word terror. Powerful word. But terror, as you mean it, signifies nothing but the 'terror' of losing privileges sustained by denying others the same!
And let's not forget that 'retired couple next door' you mentioned with such sentimentality! Are you aware of the fact that, in our capitalist-vampire society, only 25% of the people are even able to retire?(1) Everyone else has to work until they fucking drop! The communist future will create a social security fund for the aged to live comfortably upon----all 100% of the aged, that is.
: In communism one is tied to all other peoples whims, there is no arbiter in objective law, walking on eggshells forever having to check every action with ones 'brothers' or be checked by them.
Think about the workforce. Is not the worker 'tied' to the whims of the boss? Where’s the 'arbiter in objective law'? The threat of being fired! What 'brothers' are you speaking of? The stockholders who decide whether or not it would be more profitable to downsize this month and move the shop to Mexico where laborers work for a dollar a day? Are those the 'brothers' you have in mind?
Who are you trying to fool?
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Yes, some people actually substantiate their claims with actual cited authorities---such as:
1. Forbes, 16 June 1997, p. 159.
