Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Here's where I have problems with Chattopadhyay and others: "For him, even though the form of accumulation was not classical in the sense that it was based largely on accumulation of absolute surplus value," : 1. absolute surplus value is indeed a classical form of accumulation; perhaps the most classical form, one to which the bourgeoisie always turn and return when push comes to shove. 2. to accumulate absolute or relative surplus VALUE, value must be the organizing principle of property and labor; the production and reproduction of value for nothing other than the reproduction and accumulation of value must be the purpose, the necessity, the essential axis upon which everything rotates. 3. Can we actually say that the production of value was that organizing principle of property and labor? If so, we need to know not just why the Soviets did such a piss-poor job of it, but how they did it without embracing the international bourgeoisie, without in essence doing in 1933 what it did do in 1991. To say that the Soviets were permeable to the eruption of millions of pockets of petty capitalist reproduction; that the Soviets were eroded from the inside by the failure to overcome the laws of value is different than saying that the Soviets were engaged in a system of value reproduction. We might want to make a distinction between surplus labor and surplus value. Certainly the USSR developed through the accumulation of surplus labor and surplus product; but did that mechanism of accumulation take on the identity of surplus VALUE? - Original Message - From: "Leonardo Kosloff" I don’t have much time to elaborate but I wanted to make a reference to ’s book, ‘The Marxian concept of Capital, and the Soviet experience’. Chattopadhyay, who was a student of Charles Bettelheim and friends with Sweezy, argues that the Soviet Union was capitalist even to the extent that there was in fact no restoration of capitalism. For him, even though the form of accumulation was not classical in the sense that it was based largely on accumulation of absolute surplus value, the dynamic of competition between state enterprises and the characteristic problems of a mass of relative surplus population and overaccumulation of capital were still pungent in the USSR, with their own particularities. He relies quite a bit on the work of Janos Kornai. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I don’t have much time to elaborate but I wanted to make a reference to Paresh Chattopadhyay’s book, ‘The Marxian concept of Capital, and the Soviet experience’. Chattopadhyay, who was a student of Charles Bettelheim and friends with Sweezy, argues that the Soviet Union was capitalist even to the extent that there was in fact no restoration of capitalism. For him, even though the form of accumulation was not classical in the sense that it was based largely on accumulation of absolute surplus value, the dynamic of competition between state enterprises and the characteristic problems of a mass of relative surplus population and overaccumulation of capital were still pungent in the USSR, with their own particularities. He relies quite a bit on the work of Janos Kornai. I haven’t read the book carefully enough to have a well thought-out appraisal but I think it’s very well researched, so a good point to start, even if one disagrees. Chattopadhyay is quite the anti-Leninist too, so that should make it all the more enjoyable. _ Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469227/direct/01/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I think Paul's post is helpful as we actually try to circumnavigate the problem; the problem being social revolutions that expropriate the bourgeois class and then manifest themselves as a "substitute bourgeoisie." Couple of items-- I disagree over the evaluation of China's ascendancy-- actually I don't think it is an ascendancy at all. It certainly is a transformation, but as everyone knows, I think China is the "paper tiger" in network of capitalism. Secondly, somewhere, somehow China, and Russia before it, fit in to the world market as much as they were isolated from it, even before the restoration of capitalism. The history of the Soviet development is not quite that segregated from Great Depression. There are certain enormous quantitative differences-- like expanding output in the Soviet Union, and declining output in the US, etc. but the precipitating forces for the 5 year plans were very much keyed to terms of trade with the West and the worsening of those terms and that trade as well as the internal limits of the peasant based agriculture prior to the 5 year plans. Secondly, the growth of industry in the USSR is accompanied by dramatic declines in consumption among urban and rural workers, and... a real decline in labor productivity. The decline in consumption, certainly, is not that different from what workers experienced in the rest of Europe and North America. The decline in labor productivity reflects that decline of consumption, reflects an analogous appropriation of "absolute surplus value," an absolute decline in workers' subsistence levels, as well as the Soviet's ability to organize and direct masses of labor-power at specific projects. And somehow, despite the bourgeoisie's antipathy to both revolutions, China and Russia perform critical functions in stabilizing the "order of battle" of capital. We see this most clearly in political terms-- the roles played by the CP's in revolutionary struggles in other countries. I think there has to be an economic equivalent to this-- somewhere there is a participation of China and Russia in the actual accumulation processes that serves to stabilize capital. Maybe it's as simple as, after WW2, taking productive assets out of the circulation process of capital [i.e. the DDR, Czechoslovakia]. I have difficulty with the notion that the USSR was ever isolated from the world markets during the depression [despite the results of the 5 year plans] when it certainly wasn't isolated from what happened next. It's quite possible, IMO, when we talk about the "modernization" of the USSR, pre and post WW2, we're missing the boat, the boat being Russia's history, the boat being that the modernization we think we see is another iteration of uneven and combined development as labor productivity in general and agricultural productivity specifically lagged behind that of advanced capitalist countries. Anyway, this is mostly thinking out loud on my part. - Original Message - From: "Paul Flewers" To: "David Schanoes" Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I meant to buy the latest NLR, but there was a talk going on in my local bookshop by the time I arrived, and I couldn't get to the journal shelves. So I'll try to buy one next week, and see what Anderson has to say. However, I have been thinking a bit about the broader historical significance of the Soviet-style socio-economic formation, and below is something I circulated to some friends, a few necessarily tentative thoughts on the question. Paul F ++ Now that the Soviet Union is extinct and that China is for all intents and purposes a capitalist state, perhaps the Soviet-style socio-economic formation can now be seen within the context of the overall global development of capitalism. Capitalism developed in -- for want of a better term -- an all-round manner in a relatively small number of countries, mostly in Western Europe, but also in the USA and Japan. (The cases of certain British dominion territories: Australia, New Zealand and Canada have to be set aside for reasons of simplification, but I don't think that this disqualifies what I'm outlining.) This means that they have developed a large-scale, broad, modern industrial sector with a largely urbanised, literate population, and are not dominated economically or politically by other countries: indeed, these countries have dominated economically and/or politically large tracts of the globe; they are imperialist states. This process was largely completed a century ago, and no other country has managed to become a modern imperialist state since then. When modernisation has taken place in other countries, it has broadly been within the confines of their continued domination by imperialism (for example, South Korea), and has often been very lop-sided and distorted (Latin America, Africa). There are two exceptions to this: Russia and China. In Russia, the real break was not the October Revolution in 1917, although it was essential for what followed, but the launch of the First Five-Year Plan in 1929. This enabled a huge industrial sector to be set up in the Soviet Union (and also allowed the Soviet party-state apparatus finally to become a self-conscious ruling élite). The law of value was suppressed, as the regime, using considerable amounts of coercion, threw vast amounts of manpower and machinery into modernising the country, laying the basis for a modern, urbanised society: a state-led extensive programme of national development. This could not have been achieved under capitalism, and, although the Soviet economy was never autarchic in reality, it was in many ways divorced from the global capitalist market. In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party took power, not in a workers' revolution, but through a civil war led by a bureaucratic, military organisation. Politically, therefore, the CCP took power when it was in a similar situation as the Soviet Communist Party was at the eve of the First Five-Year Plan. Over the next two decades, it too implemented a state-led extensive programme of national development, with assistance from the Soviet Union up until the early 1960s, and very much in isolation from the world economy. In short, in these two cases, modernisation took place on a non-capitalist basis: such a vast programme could not have been possible under capitalism; the law of value had to be suppressed. However, the Soviet-style socio-economic formation has its own specific problems, which in the Soviet Union resulted in particular in slowing growth rates (I can't go into the causes or symptoms here) after the economy was rebuilt in the late Stalin era. This decline was sufficiently evident by the mid-1960s for mild market reforms (Lieberman reforms) to be implemented by the Soviet leadership. However, the disruption that these reforms seemed to threaten caused the leadership to cancel them, and to continue with the old system. My guess is that, as the economy as late as the early 1970s was still growing at a reasonable amount each year, the leadership felt that the system was still viable and was best left alone. Another decade saw stagnation set in, however, and by the mid-1980s the economy was actually contracting. Gorbachev's reforms failed to stem this decline, and even if a rational set of market reforms had been implemented after 1991, the Russian economy would still be in a pretty parlous state, if not as bad as it is today. As it was, opened up to the world economy with Yeltsin's policies in operation, disaster was inevitable, and there are limits to what Putin can do to reverse this. I think that the Chinese leadership recognised that the stagnation of the Soviet economy could be replicated at home if market reforms were not introduced in a rational manner by the state, and this is what happe
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Interesting. Thanks. On one level, I'm less concerned about what we call it than how we can explain the changes that have taken place in those countries without their wholesale destruction of the old state and its replacement with a new one. This is what's stumping me more than anything. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mark wrote: >>My impression is that many who put forward the idea did not think that the capitalist class did not exist, but that it mastered the economy through the mechanism of the state.<< There are many theories of state capitalism The term goes back to social democratic and anarchist critiques of the Bolshevik regime. Later came Raya Dunayevskaya, CLR James, Paul Mattick et al. Also it can apply to diverse phenomena. For example, Obama's bailout of the banks coiuld be called "state capitalism", and I would use it myself to apply to some third world nationalist regimes in the post-war era. It could also apply to the ":military-industrial complex". In all these cases there is indeed some kind of bourgeoisie present. Not in the USSR. Sure there were some elements of private enterprise, but not enough to be decisive. So Tony Cliff actually used the term "bureaucratic state capitalism" to apply to the stalinist states, but later one he and his followers seem to have decided it was too much of a mouthful, and let the first word drop. This should not be confused with "bureaucratic collectivism", the theory argued by Max Shachtman and Hal Draper. They didn't think the USSR was capitalist, they thought it was a new kind of class society. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Perhaps my understanding of state capitalism is strange...or perhaps it has been always imprecise. My impression is that many who put forward the idea did not think that the capitalist class did not exist, but that it mastered the economy through the mechanism of the state. Again, I could well be wrong My understanding may well be of a pre-Cliff IS kind of state capitalism that was passed by at some point... This is, I hasten to add, an issue on which I have no strong position...indeed, no position at all...but it's a subject of some importance to us all. In that, I'm in the same boat as Tom and Artesian ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Sartesian wrote: >I don't buy [nice choice of words, that] "state capitalism," for the simple reason that you can't have capitalism without a capitalist class; and a class, by definition, has a specific, and necessary social relation of production that it brings with it to power, and that brings it to power. So where is that social relation of production unique, specific, and necessary to the "state capitalists" in the USSR, or China, or Cuba, etc.?< Well I didn't, and don't want to get into an argument on the "Russian question". The immediate issue is whether the Chinese state can evolve into conventional capitalism without a rupture in the state. Yes, it can. But since you ask me directly: I agree you can't have capitalism without a capitalist class, meaning a social class that accumulates capital (dead labour) and exploits living labour via a wages system. It does not however have to be the bourgeosie. A state bureaucracy can drive, and be driven by the accumulation process. The social relations of production in the USSR included: top-down control of the means of production, alienated labour, a wages system, and a drive to accumulate capital. The latter was in turn driven by military competion with the west. The necessity for the bureaucracy to assume the role of "capitalist" arose from the historical coincidence which saw the workers lose power, with no bourgeois element capable of seizing it. Having taken the reins, it created a somewhat bizarre set of bureaucratic social structures to suit its needs, and a pseudo-Marxist ideology to validate the lot. This is a long way from Perry Anderson. Or is it? Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I think Tom's post is very good even where I disagree with it, but before we go too far down this road, I want to reiterate the original point-- that the analysis of permanent revolution Trotsky developed, and articulated pretty clearly I think in Results and Prospects is not a theory of development where "communists" can out-accumulate the bourgeoisie in countries enmeshed in capital's network through uneven and combined development. Mark's not the only one confused-- I have been trying to sort this out for more than 20 years-- ever since Poland 1981, in attempt to derive something a bit more dynamic than either "state capitalism" or "deformed workers' state." I don't buy [nice choice of words, that] "state capitalism," for the simple reason that you can't have capitalism without a capitalist class; and a class, by definition, has a specific, and necessary social relation of production that it brings with it to power, and that brings it to power. So where is that social relation of production unique, specific, and necessary to the "state capitalists" in the USSR, or China, or Cuba, etc.? The transformation of China has little to do with men or women, old or young, passing resolutions. It has everything to do with the enduring agricultural limitations that the revolution did not, could not, overcome; the inferior productivity of China's state industry; and the massive inflows of direct foreign investment. If the CCP has not lost total control of the process, we might caution-- wait awhile, the revolution only took place in 1949, this process started in 1979. I don't think China is going to escape an economic upheaval of immense proportions, and I expect that, if there a successful workers revolution as a result, the impact on living standards will make Russian post 1991, Russia of 1998, look good in comparison. What China was, in its social organization, was certainly an extension of Stalin's Russia. Returning to our criteria of class and the relations of production for determing the character of the economy, is it correct to say that the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, in and of itself, is sufficient to the change of those relations esssential to a worker's state being a worker's state? IMO, no. The "nationalized" "collectivized" whatever property relation as it exists in these areas is itself "deformed," a product of the inadequacies of capitalism, inadequacies determined by the international development of capital, inadequacies which the revolution absorbs into itself when taking power.I realize this is more metaphor than detailed analysis, and this does not mean we don't defend such areas from the assaults of the advanced capitalism; it does mean that any notion of development that does not include 1) international success of revolutionary struggle 2) actual functioning organs of workers power separate and apart from those of any party, is not a "worker's state," and will decompose into capitalism, and that decomposition can and will appear as economic development. - Original Message - From: "Tom O'Lincoln" Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Sartesian wrote: >The problem with talking about the "class nature" of China then or now, the >class nature whether we consider it "state capitalist" or >"degenerated/deformed workers state," is that the nomenclature holds to the >analysis, an analysis made obsolete in 1917, that the class nature is >peculiarly and specifically internal to China, or Russia, before it, and >does not take into account the "limbo" status of those revolutions based >upon the pressures of the world market and the void created/maintained by >the incomplete development/penetration of capitalism into the countryside.< On the contrary, it seems to me that the authors of both the state cap and the deformed workers' state theories (Cliff and Trotsky) premised them on a global analysis which said the world economy remains on the capitalist level of social development. Accordingly, so do/did the USSR and China. For Cliff, this meant that once workers' democracy was lost, the resulting Stalinist states were capitalist. For Trotsky, it meant they would eventually be returned to capitalism unless world revolution occurred. Either theory can reasonably account for China. Mark is right that capitalism can't be restored by the resolutions of old men; clearly there was/is a deeper social dynamic at work in the USSR and China. He is also right to ask: "Can you have a change in class rule without the destruction of the state?" I think we have to distinguish between the transition to a post-capitalist society and a collapse back from such a society to capitalism. The former will not happen without a rupture: smashing the state and creating a new one. The latter simply requires a gradual degenerative process. The reason being that *all*states by their very existence are a manifestation of the fact that society has not yet fundamentally transcended the capitalist mode of production. This what Lenin meant when he said a workers' state is a "bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie". So if a revolutionary society doesn't go forward to socialism, along with other countries, it will ultimately fall back to full-blown capitalism, in some form. The formal structures of the "bourgeois state" may remain, although the inner essence changes. [When I made this point once before, Sartesian replied that "you can't have a bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie". Actually, I agree, Lenin was being ironic; it would be better to call a workers' state a "capitalist state without the bourgeosie".] Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Not to split hairs, but I'm not talking about "the 'class nature' of China" but the class nature of the state. Historically, we have regarded the state as an instrument of class rule--something very specific to the class that rules. We are agreed on that, aren't we? If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that the events of 1917 rendered it obsolete to wonder whether it is "state capitalist" or a "degenerated/deformed workers state"...or that the nomenclature is somehow peculiar to Russia or China. I may be confused as to what you're saying here I don't know that a state's ever in limbo, though something like the fog of war might well obscure our sense of which class is shaping and using it. But it certainly doesn't stay in limbo for decades of time. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == What happened in China was massive foreign direct investment, to the tune of $700 billion dollars; what happened was China advertising a cheap labor policy, and encouraging not just investment by foreign capitalists but the development of an indigenous bourgeoisie. The problem with talking about the "class nature" of China then or now, the class nature whether we consider it "state capitalist" or "degenerated/deformed workers state," is that the nomenclature holds to the analysis, an analysis made obsolete in 1917, that the class nature is peculiarly and specifically internal to China, or Russia, before it, and does not take into account the "limbo" status of those revolutions based upon the pressures of the world market and the void created/maintained by the incomplete development/penetration of capitalism into the countryside. - Original Message - From: "Mark Lause" > > > Then, what is it that's happened in China and is happening in China. > > More's to the point, how can the class nature of a country that massive > and > important by changed by a handful of old men passing resolutions about it. > > ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Right. But I think it's relevant for us, regardless of our age, to ask: Can you have a change in class rule without the destruction of the state? Because that didn't happen in China...which leaves us to wonder whether it has changed its nature of late or whether those of us who saw it as ultimately a workers state before were wrong ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Mar 6, 2010, at 1:52 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: > > Mark Lause wrote: > >> Then, what is it that's happened in China and is happening in China. >> >> More's to the point, how can the class nature of a country that >> massive and >> important by changed by a handful of old men passing resolutions >> about it. >> > > I don't think that when a old man like me writes about the class > nature > of Chinese society will have much impact... Sorry, you weren't among that particular "handful of old men." Mark was referring to the CPC leadership and how, by passing resolutions, they changed the Chinese state from a workers' state to a capitalist state. Shane Mage The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed. Joe Stack (1956-2010) Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mark Lause wrote: > Then, what is it that's happened in China and is happening in China. > > More's to the point, how can the class nature of a country that massive and > important by changed by a handful of old men passing resolutions about it. > I don't think that when a old man like me writes about the class nature of Chinese society will have much impact, least of all on the 45 million dollar apartments for sale in Shanghai. It is rather a question of understanding the world we live in. Marxism is not just a tool for changing society. It is also about understanding it. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Then, what is it that's happened in China and is happening in China. More's to the point, how can the class nature of a country that massive and important by changed by a handful of old men passing resolutions about it. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == If that's what Deutscher takes as the gist of permanent revolution [and I honestly don't remember if that's what he wrote], then he's wrong. If Trotskyists believe that is the gist of permanent revolution, then the Trotskyists are wrong [no surprise there]. That is not what Trotsky proposed, developed in the theory of permanent revolution. Trotsky's analysis is an assessment of two inter-related factors--1. the conflict of advanced means of production-- i.e modern factory production-- embedded in the midst of archaic, obsolete, apparent "pre-capitalist" relations of production and 2. the relative contending strengths of the classes historically seen as agents of revolutionary transformation, that is bourgeoisie and proletariat. Trotsky's conclusion is not that by espousing "Communism," a level of economic and social moderization in a scale superior to any bourgeois movement will be achieved in an underdeveloped country-- but rather that the "national bourgeoisie" of such countries are absolutely incapable of any of the tasks historically associated with the development of an autonomous, modern capitalism. They are enmeshed in the very "archaic" property relations that present the limit to capitalist development. Only through the expropriation of the bourgeoisie on the local terrain, can the stage be set for the emancipation of development; only through the emancipation of labor from wage-labor can the other tasks-- transformation of agriculture; development of strong connections between city and countryside be initiated... AND ony through the expropriation of the bourgeoisie on the international terrain, in the advanced areas, can that initiative be sustained-- can the proletariat's revolution receive the technical and social support to overcome the burdens of capital's adaptation to and adaptation of the backward property relations. There is nothing in permanent revolution that speaks of, and for, such "de-socialized" developmentalism. - Original Message - From: "Carlos Eduardo Rebello" Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yes, it's the piece in question. Anderson's being described with Gramsci's couplet (well not Gramsci's, but since everyone seems to think he originated it) On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 3:21 AM, Einde O'Callaghan wrote: > > Ehhhm - in case you didn't notice the piece posted by Louis is actually > by the very same Gilbert Achcar. > > Einde O'Callaghan > > Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Bhaskar Sunkara wrote: > > Is it? Anderson's perspective may have seemed out of place, even > "pessimistic", on the heels of Seattle, but I'll still defend Renewals and > would argue that it has been largely vindiciated. Quoting Elliott's > excellent "Ends in Sight": > > A more balanced rejoinder to ‘Renewals’ came from > the French Trotskyist Gilbert Achcar. > Ehhhm - in case you didn't notice the piece posted by Louis is actually by the very same Gilbert Achcar. Einde O'Callaghan > On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 4:14 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: >> >> >> This is a good analysis: >> >> Issue 88 of INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM JOURNAL Published Autumn 2000 >> >> The 'historical pessimism' of Perry Anderson >> GILBERT ACHCAR >> Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Mar 5, 2010, at 8:58 PM, brad bauerly wrote: > == > Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > == > ML wrote- >> The problem is that Marxists see "the State" as a mechanism for one >> >class > to dominate the society. > -- > Which Marxists do this? Marx, Lenin, Trotsky for three... Shane Mage > Porphyry in his Abstinance from Animal Flesh suggests that there are > appropriate offerings to all the Gods, and to the highest the only > offering acceptable is silence. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Instrumentalists? Engels? On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 8:58 PM, brad bauerly wrote: > == > Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > == > > > ML wrote- > >The problem is that Marxists see "the State" as a mechanism for one >class > to dominate the society. > -- > Which Marxists do this? > > Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/bhaskar.sunkara%40gmail.com > Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == ML wrote- >The problem is that Marxists see "the State" as a mechanism for one >class to dominate the society. -- Which Marxists do this? Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Mar 5, 2010, at 3:30 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: > Just because a government calls > itself Communist, it does not make a communist state. But what Anderson obviously means (or should mean) is that the "communist" government presiding over China's manifestly capitalist economy is every bit as "communist"--and therefore has the same class nature--as it did in 1949 and ever since. Shane Mage > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > Herakleitos of Ephesos > Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Is it? Anderson's perspective may have seemed out of place, even "pessimistic", on the heels of Seattle, but I'll still defend Renewals and would argue that it has been largely vindiciated. Quoting Elliott's excellent "Ends in Sight": A more balanced rejoinder to ‘Renewals’ came from the French Trotskyist Gilbert Achcar. He took issue with the ‘crude economic determinism’ on display in the passage from ‘Renewals’ quoted above, arguing that Anderson’s historical sense deserted him when, in an aberrant wagering on the worse, he looked to ‘a slump of inter-war proportions’ to redound to the benefi t of the left. On the other hand, Achcar noticed something of a paradox missed by many others: ‘In reality, Perry Anderson’s editorial expresses profound pessimism while simultaneously and unmistakably marking a new radicalization: the editor of NLR displays a particularly combative mood.’ This qualifi ed, without altogether cancelling, what was deemed to be Anderson’s ‘historical pessimism’ – the stance of someone ‘who has more and more become a practitioner of the “pessimism of the intellect” championed by Gramsci’. Champion of Gramsci though he undoubtedly is, Anderson would nevertheless dissent here, declining to subscribe to the Sardinian’s voluntaristic couplet: ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’. As we have seen, the posture he commends is one of ‘uncompromising realism’, repudiating the option of pessimism or optimism, whether of the intellect or the will, as fallacious. [...] The analytical duty to be discharged, closer in temper to Spinoza’s non ridere, non lugere neque detestari, sed intelligere (not to ridicule, not to lament or execrate, but to understand) than to Gramsci’s ‘pessimism of the intellect’, is accurate refl ection of the state of the world. But that need not preclude resistance to it. Two key questions, then: did ‘Renewals’ broadly refl ect the trends of contemporary political history at the time it was written? And has the reaction of ‘resignation’ – even with the qualifi cation: ‘for the foreseeable future’ – precluded resistance to them? Given the Deutscherite cast of Anderson’s Marxism over more than four decades, it would have been surprising to fi nd him enjoining anything other than ‘a lucid registration of historical defeat’ as the sole plausible starting point for what was left of the traditional left in 2000. On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 4:14 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: > == > Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > == > > > Bhaskar Sunkara wrote: > > > I'm actually just re-reading Considerations on Western Marxism now. I > > think Perry's piece was engaging, but that line did catch me by > > surprise (lower case "c" too)... did he give up on Marxist histography > > sometime after 1980? Because Arguments Within English Marxism, > > Considerations and his extended essay on Gramsci from the 1970s are > > masterpieces. Of his recent stuff I don't know, but I think his > > Renewals essay from 2000 and his critical coverage of The Age of > > Extremes have their merits. I'm far more critical of the recent > > trajectory of Tariq Ali. > > > > The key to understanding Perry Anderson is his disillusionment > with socialist revolution and a newly developed interest in > bourgeois ideology that surfaced in a 2000 NLR article and which > should explain his nod to the Brookings Institute guy. > > This is a good analysis: > > Issue 88 of INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM JOURNAL Published Autumn 2000 > > The 'historical pessimism' of Perry Anderson > GILBERT ACHCAR > Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mark Lause wrote: The problem is that Marxists see "the State" as a mechanism for one class to dominate the society. So, too, when a revolution happens, it involves the replacement of one state power with another. There are basic problems in seeing a revolution or a counterrevolution that does not blow away the old state and bring in a new one. ML ... >From Badiou's Logics of Worlds: Mao's reactions to the Manual of Political Economy published by the Soviets under Khrushchev, at the height of the post-Stalinist 'thaw'. The manual recalls that under communism, taking into account the existence of hostile exterior powers, the state endures. But it adds that 'the nature and forms of the state will be determined by the particular features of the communist system', which comes down to assigning the form of the state to something other than itself. Against this, as a good revolutionary formalist, Mao thunders: By nature, the state is a machine whose purpose is to oppress hostile forces. Even if internal forces that need to be oppressed no longer exist, the oppressive nature of the state will not have changed with respect to hostile external forces. When one speaks of the form of the state, this means nothing other than an army, prisons, arrests, executions, etc. As long as imperialism exists, in what sense could the form of the state differ with the advent of communism? Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The problem is that Marxists see "the State" as a mechanism for one class to dominate the society. So, too, when a revolution happens, it involves the replacement of one state power with another. There are basic problems in seeing a revolution or a counterrevolution that does not blow away the old state and bring in a new one. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Bhaskar Sunkara wrote: > I'm actually just re-reading Considerations on Western Marxism now. I > think Perry's piece was engaging, but that line did catch me by > surprise (lower case "c" too)... did he give up on Marxist histography > sometime after 1980? Because Arguments Within English Marxism, > Considerations and his extended essay on Gramsci from the 1970s are > masterpieces. Of his recent stuff I don't know, but I think his > Renewals essay from 2000 and his critical coverage of The Age of > Extremes have their merits. I'm far more critical of the recent > trajectory of Tariq Ali. > The key to understanding Perry Anderson is his disillusionment with socialist revolution and a newly developed interest in bourgeois ideology that surfaced in a 2000 NLR article and which should explain his nod to the Brookings Institute guy. This is a good analysis: Issue 88 of INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM JOURNAL Published Autumn 2000 The 'historical pessimism' of Perry Anderson GILBERT ACHCAR In its 40 year existence the distinguished New Left Review (NLR) journal, whose first issue came out in 1960, appeared to have become an institution as firmly anchored in tradition as Britain's monarchy or parliament. At the dawn of the new century, however, it has taken its entire readership by surprise and changed its editorial formula. The first issue in the year 2000 inaugurates a new series and so carries the number 1--after 238 bi-monthly issues according to the old formula. This 'second series' provides the opportunity for a change in layout and cover following a remarkable consistency over the past four decades. The new layout is airier, with a clearer typeface (a necessary concession to the rising average age of its readers!), a brief introduction to the authors of the main articles in each issue (up till now the journal would not on principle publish any information about the authors of its articles, other than in exceptional cases) and a systematic review section. In addition there is a commitment to publish debates regularly--the first new-look issue carries two debates: one between Robin Blackburn and Henri Jacot on pension funds as a possible lever for a 'new collectivism' under popular control and the other between Luisa Passerini and Timothy Bewes over a recent work by the Italian historian devoted to European culture. Perry Anderson, who took control of NLR very soon after its foundation and tirelessly inspired it, has given the whole thing punch by opening the new series with an editorial of which the least that can be said is that it is not banal! Under the title 'Renewals', this remarkable theoretician of history has sketched out a fresco of the political and intellectual development of our world, using the savoir faire he shares with such masters of English-speaking Marxist historiography as Isaac Deutscher and Eric Hobsbawm. Over time Perry Anderson has become more and more a practitioner of the 'pessimism of the intellect' championed by Gramsci. In his editorial he has now pushed this philosophical virtue to surprising extremes. For long, it is true, Anderson has displayed an inordinate taste for the superlative, a taste those familiar with his work know well. Nevertheless his writings have always been exciting and particularly enriching. But the editorial of the new series goes well beyond the momentary exaggeration that flows from individual idiosyncrasy. What he shows towards the state of both the world and the radical left is, rather, a kind of bitterness peculiar to a whole section of that generation of left intellectuals whose seniority means they now dominate the universe of critical social thought. This was the generation which expected the 1960s to open up a bright future and then became brutally disillusioned by the success of the reactionary counter-offensive in the 1980s, the culminating apotheosis of which was the collapse of the Stalinist empire and the advent of a unipolar world under US hegemony in the last decade of the 20th century. From the 1980s onwards a section of this generation withdrew from all militant political activity. Partly it did so out of distaste at the unappetising spectacle which the existing organisations of the radical left offered at the time (and still do), and partly because fatigue led it to abandon the task of constructing a more attractive political formation. This section retained its basic attachment to the left but tempered it considerably. After its own fashion it experienced a development closely resembling the one which emerged in response to the ebbing of the Russian Revolution and the rise of fascism, and which Perry Anderson himself analysed not so long ago under the heading of
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I'm actually just re-reading Considerations on Western Marxism now. I think Perry's piece was engaging, but that line did catch me by surprise (lower case "c" too)... did he give up on Marxist histography sometime after 1980? Because Arguments Within English Marxism, Considerations and his extended essay on Gramsci from the 1970s are masterpieces. Of his recent stuff I don't know, but I think his Renewals essay from 2000 and his critical coverage of The Age of Extremes have their merits. I'm far more critical of the recent trajectory of Tariq Ali. On 3/5/10, Louis Proyect wrote: > ineffable ineffable Walter Lippmann was subbed here, who first tried to > "explain" China in these terms. Just because a government calls > itself Communist, it does not make a communist state. Poor Perry > Anderson needs to go through a new members class on Marxism again: > Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Marv Gandall wrote: > Does he indicate in the text what "conventional measures" he drew on to > determine that the state is "unquestionably communist"? Not within the article but a footnote for that paragraph might help in a manner of speaking: [18] For the clearest recent analysis of the structure of the economy, see Joel Andreas, ‘Changing Colours in China’, NLR 54, Nov–Dec 2008, pp. 123–52; and of the continuities in the Party, David Shambaugh, China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation, Berkeley–Los Angeles 2008, who stresses its learning abilities in the wake of the collapse of the CPSU. Shambaugh is a Brookings Institute scholar to give you an idea of the well that Anderson is drawing from. Here's something from a review of his book that will give you and idea of his approach: "Shambaugh argues that the essence of a Leninist party is its organisational penetration and domination of society, and he believes that most of the initiatives in this area occurred since 2002, and especially after 2004, i.e., in the era of Hu Jintao. Shambaugh does not explain why such organisational initiatives did not emerge under Jiang Zemin or Deng Xiaoping. Fighting corruption, for example, certainly isn’t a recent challenge." full: http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/document4755.html Shambaugh argues that the essence of a Leninist party is its organisational penetration and domination of society... Right. That's exactly the lesson I draw from "State and Revolution". Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 2010-03-05, at 3:30 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: > I can this now that the phrase "predominantly capitalist economy with > what is still, by any conventional measure, unquestionably a > communist state" is utterly meaningless. > > > New Left Review 61, January-February 2010 > Perry Anderson > TWO REVOLUTIONS > > Explanation is one thing, classification another, evaluation a > third. Taxonomically, the PRC of the 21st century is a > world-historical Novum: the combination of what is now, by any > conventional measure, a predominantly capitalist economy with what > is still, by any conventional measure, unquestionably a communist > state—each the most dynamic of its type to date. == Does he indicate in the text what "conventional measures" he drew on to determine that the state is "unquestionably communist"? Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == NLR has been wack since Blackburn bounced as editor. It seems to have fallen into some esoteric, Post Marxism type politics. ELB Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Same bullshit we have heard from Martin Jacques who at least has no pretensions to Marxism. I might have more to say about this article behind the NLR firewall when I find some time. But I can this now that the phrase "predominantly capitalist economy with what is still, by any conventional measure, unquestionably a communist state" is utterly meaningless. It appears that Perry Anderson must have been reading the Marxmail archives when the ineffable Walter Lippmann was subbed here, who first tried to "explain" China in these terms. Just because a government calls itself Communist, it does not make a communist state. Poor Perry Anderson needs to go through a new members class on Marxism again: New Left Review 61, January-February 2010 Perry Anderson TWO REVOLUTIONS Explanation is one thing, classification another, evaluation a third. Taxonomically, the PRC of the 21st century is a world-historical Novum: the combination of what is now, by any conventional measure, a predominantly capitalist economy with what is still, by any conventional measure, unquestionably a communist state—each the most dynamic of its type to date. [18] Politically, the effects of the contradiction between them are branded everywhere into the society where they fuse or intertwine. Never have so many moved out of absolute poverty so fast. Never have modern industries and ultra-modern infrastructures been created on so vast a scale, in so short a space of time, nor a flourishing middle class arisen at such speed along with them. Never has the rank-order of powers been altered so dramatically, to such unforced popular pride. Nor, in the same years, has inequality ever spiralled to such dizzying heights so swiftly, from such low starting-points. Nor corruption spread so widely, where once probity was taken for granted. Nor workers, till yesterday theoretical masters of the state, treated at will so ruthlessly—jobs destroyed, wages unpaid, injuries mocked, protests stifled. [19] Nor have peasants, the backbone of the revolution, been robbed in such numbers of land and livelihood by developers and officials, in clearances as out of the Scottish Highlands. More users of the internet than in any country on earth, no terror, much freedom of private life; with more streamlined and effective machinery of surveillance than ever before. For minorities, affirmative action and cultural-political repression, hand in hand; for the rich, every luxury and privilege exploitation can buy; for the weak and uprooted, crumbs or less; for dissenters, gag or dungeon. Amid formal—even, not wholly unreal—ideological conformity, colossal social energy and human vitality. Emancipation and regression have often been conjoined in the past; but never quite so vertiginously as in the China that Mao helped to create and sought to prevent. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
