[Marxism] (no subject) value, social revolution and revolution at the front

[waistline2 at aol.com]

You're argument as I understand it in earlier posts is that capitalism  was 
created by the application of steam power to production, thus  ordaining 
the 
extinction of craft, artisan, guild production; "putting  out" work to 
rural/urban households; and all "naturally powered"  manufacture. My 
response is that the capitalist social relation of  production was 
established, well established, prior to the introduction  of steam power, 
and 
that only because the social relation was  pre-existing could steam power 
find its application to production in  that it accelerated the 
appropriation 
of surplus value in the commodity  process.
 

Reply
 
Capitalism is a specific kind of “ism.” Capitalism is not machinery. The  
steam engine is a machine. manifesting a technology. The steam engine and  
related technology created the industrial revolution. You read this as “steam 
 power creates capitalism.”   
 
Social revolution comes about, is caused by revolution in the material  
power of production. 
You read this as “Political revolt and political insurrection is determined 
 and tied to technology.” 
 
One environment is always the environment of something else. The industrial 
 system is in crisis. What is the industrial system? The one created by the 
steam  engine. This is simple. The industrial system is not the meaning of 
capital. The  industrial system is a specific organizations of machinery + 
labor + motive  force, founded on electro-mechanical motion. You write from 
the standpoint that  bourgeois property - not just the concept “capital,”  
created the  industrial system. I do not. 
 
What creates the industrial system is technology that reconfigures the  
material power. 
 
You object. “one must understand the dialectic of property and the class  
struggle.”
 
Ok. 
 
WL.