Lenin sets out the process by which Marxism had arrived at this objective, materialist definition of social class, and analysis of class struggle. Firstly, it develops the concept of the socioeconomic formation. This is arrived at by taking The Law of Value, as set out in his Letter to Kugelmann, as its starting point. The Law of Value, like the laws developed by Darwin, is a law of nature, because it is itself materially based and determined. It is a law that applies to all socioeconomic formations. This law starts from the premise and material fact, that Man must consume to live, and that to consume, Man must produce. The basic, physical, material fact that Man must consume drives the reality that he must also produce. Material reality also determines constraints on that production, such as the time each of his products requires to produce. The value of his products is determined by the time taken to produce them. His consumption is determined by certain objective needs, for example, he must consume sufficient calories, protein, vitamins and minerals, so as to reproduce himself.
Beyond that, his consumption is determined by what he assesses will bring him the greatest utility/use value. He continually seeks to increase this utility, but he has limited labour-time in which to produce it. So, The Law of Value says that the value of products is determined by the labour-time required for their production, and the proportion of labour-time devoted to the production of each type of product is determined by what maximises the amount of utility/use value that can be achieved with the given labour available. The Law of Value is a natural law that applies to all modes of production. It is the material basis of Marx's theory of Historical Materialism. The law simply manifests itself in different forms in each mode of production.
“Taking as its starting-point a fact that is fundamental to all human society, namely, the mode of procuring the means of subsistence, it connected up with this the relations between people formed under the influence of the given modes of procuring the means of subsistence, and showed that this system of relations (“relations of production,” to use Marx’s terminology) is the basis of society, which clothes itself in political and legal forms and in definite trends of social thought. According to Marx’s theory, each such system of production relations is a specific social organism, whose inception, functioning, and transition to a higher form, conversion into another social organism, are governed by specific laws. This theory applied to social science that objective, general scientific criterion of repetition which the subjectivists declared could not be applied to sociology.” (p 410)
The subjectivists argued that it was impossible simply by looking at the real world, and the relations within it, to separate the important from the unimportant. Consequently, they said, this separation could only be achieved by enlightened “critically thinking” and “morally developed” individuals. In other words, this is the application of Kant's Categorical Imperative.
“And they thus happily succeeded in transforming social science into a series of sermons on petty-bourgeois morality, samples of which we have seen in the case of Mr. Mikhailovsky, who philosophised about the inexpediency of history and about a path directed by “the light of science.” It was these arguments that Marx’s theory severed at the very root.” (p 410-11)
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