Re: Re: The new EU

[Waistline2]

I believe that the statement by Chris Burford is worth examining.


>>But most importantly, geopolitically, it is necessary now to call into
>>existence the Old World  to redress the balance of the New.
>
>I have no idea what this means.


<I would suggest that the meaning is clearly against US hegemonism. I would
<ask other US members of the list, and not just Louis Proyect, to consider
the possibility that this might be an important political task now on the
global level. After the fall of the state socialist bloc, it is not easy to
see how we can oppose US hegemonism. All the more reason to think about it
and discuss the basis for such cooperation.

(Concerning the phrase, I had forgotten the original quotation and perhaps
it would not be familiar on the other side of the Atlantic. It was a
statement by the British foreign secretary, George Canning in the middle
1820's that he was calling in the new world to redress the balance of the
old. It was actually a declaration of the intention of British imperialism
to extend its influence particularly in Latin America. Louis Proyect has
written a lot about how in the 19th century Latin America became a
semi-colony of British imperialism, and certainly that is well known.

It might appear a Freudian slip that I should allude to a British
imperialist to argue that Europe is now an important ally of the people of
the world against US hegemonism, but I have always been explicit, to the
point of tedium, in conscientiously acknowledging the imperialist nature of
<contemporary Britain and Europe, so I am happy to make the point explicit
<yet again. )

Reply

Old World and New world are terms whose meaning acquire life in the context - timeframe, of their use. Further, these concepts are imbued with a class meaning and standpoint. "US hegemonism" has given way to the hegemony of speculative capital as the dominant sector of the total world social capital and within this relationship, what was once simply USNA financial-industrial capital remains the dominant player.

Old World and New world from the Marxist standpoint, would in my opinion speak of a transition from something to something. This "something" is riveted to the productive forces. Old World in the era of 1820's meant the defeat of feudal economic and social relations and the ascendancy of capital, especially as applied to "Latin America."  


>>There is a sometimes a counterposed symmetry in the positions of Louis
>>Proyect and mine. I regard it as the first international duty of any
>>citizen of the USA to oppose US hegemonism, and to pay due attention to
>>all the rival forces in the world, including the other imperialisms in
>>order to have a realistic chance of doing so.


I believe you pose the question concerning the "first international duty of any citizen of the USA incorrectly."  The first international duty of the citizens of the USNA - the working class, is to wage the epochal battle to organize itself as a class at home - in its own country, as the first and immediate arena of struggle. The working class today is an interactive world class configuration and fully conforms to Marx description of such a configuration in section 1:5 of the Critique of the Gotha Program. Counterpoising fighting "US hegemonism" as the "first international duty of any citizen of the USA, in the framework of consolidating the market in the EU, would tie the working class of the US to a sector of capital.

Marxist must draw a clear line of distinction between opposing hegemony as the "first international duty of any citizen" and settling matters with their own bourgeoisie. The former formulation leads to and call for international brotherhood against imperialism and the latter leads to international organization of a class in all its historically evolved national formations. National in form and international in content is the Marxist approach to the class struggle and not the fight against "US" or any "hegemony."


Chris Burford states:

> But confident assertions do not always determine reality, as we saw with the citation.
Besides the issue is more whether for the people of the rest of the world,
the choice between US imperialism and European imperialism is like the
choice between cyanide and arsenic.

I think the Arab people would not say this. I think that the Argentinian
people would have been given more help in recovering from their
financial crisis. I think the people of Africa would do better with the
sort of international development proposals put forward by Gordon Brown
than by George Bush. I think the people of the world would do better with
>Europe's approach to global pollution than that of the Bush administration.

Reply

Slow death and fast death or fast death and faster death are not options for anyone desiring to be a spokesperson of their class. It is true that the world working class has varying opinions concerning whether it is better to live on ones knee or die standing and fighting on ones feet. It is understood that various individuals will step forward to explain why the "lesser of two evils" - being killed by napalm instead of nuclear radiation, is more desirable.

Posing the question of the material well being of the working class of Africa or Argentina as the difference in policy of a George Bush or Gordon Brown is genuflecting to capital pure and simple. In my estimate you confuse what at best might be a tactical question for a person involved in policy work loyal to the idea of a society of associated producers with the polarity that actually exist in the world today. The world polarity is capital versus labor as "what class will control the production process." It is true that the world peoples have yet to clearly understand the nature of the struggle for material survival by classes.  

Chris Burford further states:

>I hope Louis Proyect's breath is indeed taken away, because I detect very
little dialectical in his approach at all, whether you put the word in
inverted commas or not. I would be more convinced if he could explain how
from the existing contradictions in the world we get to world socialism. I
am aware of nothing strategic from him except an implication that if
everyone fought opportunism in their own country there would be a
revolution in each country, which would presumably gather momentum, country
by country, in the way revolutions are supposed to have spread out form
>Cuba across Latin America.

Reply

Marx has written about the revolutionary process as a strategic movement on the part of society from one mode of production to another in painstaking detail. The sum total of these writings is called the science of society. The social revolution begins in the productive forces as the result of the injection of new qualitative features that alters and run into conflict with the existing societal infrastructure and its relations of production. These material powers of the productive forces faces fetters by outdated relations of production and a period of social revolution unfolds. This is formulated as the "objective side" of development of the material powers of the productive forces.
The subjective side of the struggle is how peoples and classes grasp the changes in the material power of production and organize themselves to conform to that, which is new.

Stating that:

"that if everyone fought opportunism in their own country there would be a
revolution in each country," is a misunderstanding of the logic of process development as it is a component of the science of society.

The revolution is the leap or transition that takes place in the material powers of the productive forces. Once this transition begins taking place a shift is required that reconfigures all the political institutions expressing old relations of production to new political institutions expressing relations of production that allows for the development of a new law system of production. By definition this fight takes place in the domain of consciousness or what you call the "fight against opportunism." This fight against opportunism occurs within the more intellectual sector of society first.

If one is asking for a blueprint of each phase of the leap or transition it is available from Marx. If one is asking how the transition will occur in every national sector of the world, one is asking the impossible. How can a human being know the exact properties of a new form - external mode of operations, before it emerges? The Russian revolutionaries grasped the significance of the Soviets as new forms of organizations of the working class after they emerged not before.


Chris further states:

>I think I have been fairly clear that moves towards world government with
regulation of capital, and justice, is on balance more progressive than
economic and political affairs being controlled in a more fragmented and
less accountable way by existing imperialist and finance capitalist forces.

A world government can be used much more clearly to place on the agenda
issues like control of global pollution and phased development. People can
then promote progressive policies by all appropriate political methods,
including street demonstrations. That must weaken the power of finance
capital rather than strengthen it, and must accelerate radical change
>whether it comes through reform or revolution.

Reply

Here the word opportunism and genuflecting to capital becomes clear. The two paragraphs above reveal themselves for what they are: utterly reactionary and the power of capital as Marxism.

Comrade you state:

"A world government can be used" for "regulation of capital, and justice," and "is on balance more progressive than economic and political affairs being controlled in a more fragmented and less accountable way by existing imperialist and finance capitalist forces." "People can then promote progressive policies by all appropriate political methods, including street demonstrations."

I will be condemned for misstating your words but I have not altered the substance of what you bring to the table.

Advocacy for a world government at this juncture of history is reactionary. What you really mean is a unified singular world state authority. How can one speak of "justice" under capital when millions are being ruined daily?

In the 700 years of so of capital, the material powers of the productive forces have developed to a point of creating a unified world market. This unified world market is undergoing changes on the basis of new technological features creating an interactive world infrastructure with a capacity for total world distribution of all social products. A line of distinction must be made and understood between the development of the material power of production and the development of the material power of production as capital.

One must further understand the difference between an interactive world infrastructure - in birth, and the call for a world government. You state that a world government would be progressive because it will harmonize capital and dispense justice and allow for street demonstrations. Lou was generous in simply calling your assertions genuflecting, when you directly cater to the bourgeois state authorities on a planetary basis. Then again, perhaps this is the slip of a fast pen or fast typing.

The productive forces are currently organized as the power of capital. To advocate a world state (government) on the basis of the power of capital is the specific political projection and policy of the speculative sector of the total world capital.

You begin by criticizing the Marxist for not opposing hegemony and then advocate the world hegemony of the bourgeois state, after the revolutionaries in the US oppose US hegemony. In other words you support your own imperial bourgeoisie - as a tactic of course. You advocate the domination of a regional block over the world masses because the EU will dispense more justice and be kinder to the African and Argentina masses. This is nothing short of imperial banditry.

To buttress what is in fact a very reactionary political position you consult or rather insult Lenin, by confusing the method of Marx with the doctrine associated with the name of Lenin. You have not a clue to the distinct difference between "method" and "doctrine."



End of Part 1


Melvin P.