Técnicas e Instrumentos de Recolección de Datos

In theological language, it may be said that Marx and Engels envisaged that under capitalism the ’’fulness of time" had come. Prior to this time, there was no point where the contradiction between the forces and relations of production coincided with the emergence of the proletarian class which was so totally alienated. Marx insists that only when this coincidence occurs in history will the messianic and salvific proletarian revolution occur. Returning to the German

Ideology, we are reminded that this epocal moment in history is not like previous moments in history in which the revolution was conceived and hatched in the minds of the philosophers. Commenting on this fact Marx and Engels state:

This sum of productive forces, capital funds and social forms of intercourse, which every individual and every generation finds in existence as something given, is the real basis of what the philosophers have conceived as ’substance’ and

’essence of man’ , and what they have deified and attacked: a real basis which is not in the least disturbed, in its effect and influence on the development of men, by the fact that these philosophers revolt against it as ’self-conscious­ ness’ and the ’unique’ . 79

The bourgeoisie have disturbed the real basis of society but they were unable to effect the abolition of alienation. The moment had not

arrived for this to be enacted. Only when the socio-economic conditions 80

are fully "ripe" will the great "leap” forward occur. As Marx and Engels explain:

These conditions of life, which different generations find in existence, determine also whether or not the revolutionary convulsion periodically recurring in history will be strong

enough to overthrow the basis of everything that exists. And if these material elements of a complete revolution are not present - namely, on the one hand the existing productive forces, on the other the formation of a revolu­ tionary mass, which revolts not only against separate

conditions of the existing society, but against the existing ’production of life' itself, the 'total activity’ on which

it was based - then it is absolutely immaterial for practical development whether the idea of this revolution has been

expressed a hundred times already, as the history of communism proves. 81

Even in their own time, Marx and Engels made triumphalistic pronouncements concerning the dawning of precisely such a ’’kairos". In the Communist Manifesto they write, "But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself, it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons - the m o d e m working

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class - the proletarians." We rightly wonder about what it is that 07

makes the proletariat so unique. Marx explains that they are the most debased class, and are therefore the only class which, in seeking

to emancipate itself from its conditions is capable of emancipating the whole of humanity and of ending all alienation. In Kantian terms, only they, that is, the proletarian workers, are capable of making the move­ ment from a class "in-itself" to a class "for itself" into a movement of universal consequences. Axelos explains Marx's argument here when he writes:

Deprived of all property and all satisfaction the working masses, even though they activate productive forces and produce the wealth, take account of the fact that they have only to overturn those who hold the means of production and direct the relations of production in order to gain access to a human existence. Being reduced to a state of sub humanity and crushed by inhuman powers, the majority of mankind is the motor of the movement that leads to the appropriation of man by man and for man. The individuals that compose this class are no longer empirical, particular individuals. They are nothing and they have nothing in the present world. 84 It is in the face of such utter alienation that Marx and Engels sound their clarion call; "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their

chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, •unite’,

But the proletarians can only emancipate themselves and the whole of humanity if they have a transformation of consciousness, Marx does

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imply that he anticipates such a transformation. In his peculiar from

"sketchy” style,/what he says about philosophers, bourgeois capitalist thinkers, etc., the following conclusion concerning the proletarian consciousness suggests itself: Unlike those who conceived of real movement in thought alone, the proletariat conceive of historical move­ ment in terms of the real, sensuous, material conditions of life which are firmly rooted in the production process. Whereas their historical precursors before this time never fully saw themselves as having the messianic mission to emancipate the whole of humanity, the proletariat are fired by the vision of the possibility and inevitability of an

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unalienated future. This future is only theirs to create through their liberating praxis. They are no longer the victims of a false consciousness which leads them docilely to accept their lot in silence.

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There is a feeling of solidarity and mutual interdependence among them. The proletariat is the only class in the history of man that is capable of discerning the readiness of the objective conditions for the abolition of all alienation, and only that class can take the necessary steps to

turn the productive process towards a communist future which will in 89

turn be transcended. In seeking to establish a connection between the proletarian consciousness which Marx envisages and Hegel’s notion of the awakening of consciousness, which is so important in the dialectic of Hegel’s Phenomenology, Jean Hyppolite clarifies the nature of the proletarian consciousness when he notes:

The awakening of consciousness is not the passive reflection of some state of affairs. It is that which alone can embody

the dialectical contradiction and at the same time demand its resolution. The action in which the proletariat becomes conscious of the alienation of man’ signifies a contradiction within man himself. This contradiction is a real one and demands a solution precisely for the reason that it is at once objective and sub.jective. It expresses an empirical situation - man posited, as it were, outside himself, like an object - and the negation of that situation - man as an inalienable subject for whom it is impossible to recognize himself as a mere object. For Marx the proletariat is the subject that experiences to- the extreme the extreme of the human condition and is thereby capable of resolving it forever. 90 ( E m p h a s i s m i n e . )

Only the proletariat is capable of this active, revolutionary self- consciousness.

Our presentation of this transformed consciousness of the proletariat the subjective side of the conditions preparatory for the revolutionary

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